LAIR Thread - * Rules: post #469

can someone please explain how a game can look better at 30fps than 60fps, it goes against commonsense (but sometimes commonsense aint always correct) but im cvalling bollux on this, ild love to be proved otherwise though (perhaps they think its cause films are at 24fps, but are ignoring, youre sitting back a ways from the screen + theres typically motion blur with film, personally though ild like to see film up its fps rate as well)

 

The music video is a bit of a dark horse - actually has some really nice cutscene footage in it, particularly some very impressive stuff from that same city level from the dev walkthrough.

 

The aerial combat in the dev walkthrough pt.3 is fairly intense, would like to watch a proper direct feed for that, and in 1080p! Also they briefly change the viewpoint to first person near the end.

 

I like the look of just about everything EXCEPT the particles (especially on developper video 3) and army AI. Unfortunately, I highly doubt they can fix these before release.

 

The music rocks btw. A game of epic scale should have a fitting soundtrack, and it has.

Edit: Is it just me or does the fire look different in the one on one battles ?

 

I'm guessing that when people say the game looks boring they are forgetting that this is more of a simulator then an arcade game. It'll look just out of place if everything was chaotic and fast pace.

 

Not really. Frame rate can be considered part of cinematography just as much as grainy or coloured filters. A slower frame rate seems to make things seem more epic, more big budget. I watched Curb Your Enthusiasm on More 4 here in the UK recently, and it was being played in a much smoother framerate than you get from the DVDIt looked amateurish - like a home video production. While this may be a TV show and not a game, but I don't think a game like Shadow of the Colossus would have nearly as immersive an atmosphere at 60fps (granted SotC doesn't exactly have the smoothest of framerates).

 

When the game features a nice Motion Blur + DOF like Lost planet/Gow/Lair/Motorstorm, it can end up being more beautiful than a simple game at 60fps with no post processing effects.

 

They have just added 3 more videos (total 5 new ones today):
* Part 3 walkthrough: http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?type=wmv&id=18617
* The Music of Lair: http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?type=wmv&id=18615
* Gamer Day trailer: http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?type=wmv&id=18639
* Creature presentation: http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?type=wmv&id=18647
* In-depth Interview: http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=18644&type=wmv&pl=game

 

Well if everything else remain the same 60fps will look smoother but not look better. Things remaining the same are rarely the case though, with 30fps they have longer time to render every frame, thus having chance to do more calculations, etc to get it to look better.

Beside 60fps is generally for better control playability, it was never about look. However I heard the motion sensor in Sixaxis isn't that fine grain to begin with, so maybe its no use to make 60fps games that rely on the motion sensor for the main control.

 

Except it's not. The flight dynamics really annoy me. The dragon is slowed to virtually no forward motion at all at times - it ought to drop out of the sky! And the physical battles cut weirdly into the game and then look pretty hokey. It looks like it feels like an arcade game. Like Warhawk with dragons, and not Ace Combat.

 

There seem to be a lot of QTE as well in Lair. In order to show off animation ?

 

Dragons aren´t supposed to hover?

 

i really love the dragons dueling in the 3rd wkthr. the intensity and aerial movement were really imressive. the fire effect in the duel was also impressive to look at especially the color tone which showcased the intensity of the fire quite well. only thing is there could b more smokes after the fire. i know the fire isnt cg quality and it could b greatly improved but they do hav a deadline and im happy to hav what's been shown.

 

Dragon's aren't supposed to fly anyway, unless everyone got them completely wrong and they actually fly with their tails in front and they breathe fire in lieu of jet-propulsion so Shifty's point is totally moot.

 

Dragons are real?

 

How would you implement the 'flight-based' fire ?

So it seems that Lair is using two types of fire effects, one for ground based combat, which looks quite nice, and the other for flight based, projectile combat, which looks sprite based and sticks out like a sore thumb given that everything else looks amazing.

So to the tech heads in this forum, how would you implement the flight based projectile fire ? What technique would you use ? What techniques are there that could be used ?

Personally, I don't see F5 changing the fire effects at this stage of the game, but am hoping that they can.

 

The draw distance in the game is 20000 feet (6096 meters) according to Eggebrecht in the dev videos. Seems a bit more though in the videos...

 

I don't think its sprite-based. It just looks that way in some of the videos. I've been watching the higher-quality gametrailers vids, and the fireballs look a lot better.

 

Yep. Only ground combat though