MGS4 3D engine post mortem [translation needed]

Nebula said:
OK you mean the trailer. IMO I think it is speeded up since I dont think the Cell + 7800GTX could do it at a solid 60fps. Would be amazing but I dont believe the 7800GTX is that powerful.

The final runs at a slightly unstable 30fps on the Cell at higher MHz + RSX. You really think the 7800GTX did that huge of a difference becouse the RSX was not finished year 2005 at showcase time?
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I suspect that the Devkit had some specs that enabled them to get that performance out. I doubt it was just a 7800GTX and a lower clocked CPU. If Kojima was expecting to get 60fps with that level detail then he might have achieved even more with the finalized product that had a more powerfull CPU (and probably GPU?). Yet they couldnt and tried to find work around solutions because they found many bottlenecks. Even at 25fps what we have seen was too impressive if it was supposedly running on weaker specs and was just the very early stage of production, They even said in the demosntartion that from there they can only get better. Yet the final game didnt have that level of detail and it run at 30fps

I suspect that the initial specs were suposed to be much powerful but got downgraded. Or I suspect that the design of the initial devkits was more efficient than the final devkits thus they dealt with unexpected bottlnecks later on.

We have seen similar things from other developers too. Armored Core´s first trailer showed better visuals than the final product. All claimed to be in game footage the lighting was more impressive, buildings custed self shadows and they had awesome destructibe physics! If I remember correctly the developers also said that they will make some extra stuff on the PS3 version but I could be wrong so dont quote me on that. The game at the end was nothing more than the same build found on the 360.
 
Nebula said:
I think it was 7800GTX and Cell at 2.4GHz.

Actually I think they had then the RSX instead of the 7800GTX setup. If it ran at 500MHz or 550MHz I dont know. But soon after the PS3 was going to be released.
:
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I know I missed out on this discussion but I just want to add somethings.

TGS is always traditionally later in the year, like October-ish, therefore TGS05 had to be Oct 05. Meanwhile in May at E305, where Nvidia's CEO and Ken Kutaragi both presented the PS3 in English, the presentation was:

Cell 3.2Ghz 90nm, RSX 550Mhz based on Nvidia's Geforce 7800 GPU aka Nv47 or G70, however instead of a 110nm process it was on a 90nm process and the bus was announced to be 128bit with 256MB for both XDR & GDDR ram.

The MGS4 tech demo was running on the PS3 evaluation hardware using a Engineering sample Cell but other than all the extra memory, speed and bandwith everyone knew that the PS3 specs were announced and so far the only things that changed at launch is that RSX is 50Mhz slower while still retaining, according to edepot.com 550Mhz for the Pixel Shader clock and that RSX boast other custom features and cache sizes.

Geforce 7800GTX was originally released as a 110nm process GPU with 430Mhz and 256MB ram however just a year earlier Nvidia did have Geforce 6800GT and Ultras that featured 512MB of ram that many PC parts reviewers dismissed as not offering more performance that the initial 7800GTX offered while being a single slot solution.

The GeForce 7800 GTX (could have been called Ultra) 512MB was a special run card that came out months later at 550Mhz and 512MB and a super heavy duty heatsink fan making it again a dual slot card. And just to add for the G71 GF 7900 GTX that was fabbed on a 90nm process and ran at 650Mhz, that card also featured the same heavy duty heatsink.

Hideo Kojima in my humble opinion, when he mentioned that his team did such and such performance is to be expected but it does not mean that if he and his team were to rebuild a 3d engine from scratch on PS3 that MGS4 would look the same or would still look inferior to the E3/TGS05 trailers.

I don't know if anyone here has any quotes or if people really followed Hideo Kojima as feveresly back when MGS2 was released in 2001 on PS2 but I am sure he used his game to indicate XX levels of power that later when Kojima and his team released MGS3 it was all surpassed.

Personally I believe this briefing is really more about all the progress they did in transitioning from PS2, to PS3 evaluation to PS3 retail but it is not indicating that they are stuck anywere.

Hideo Kojima can still make other non-MGS games like he did back on PS2 and previous consoles so its anybody's guess if he will make a Zone of Enders 3 featuring more progress over what was learned in MGS4, he could remake Snatcher, Policenauts or something new entirely.
 
Nesh said:
We have seen similar things from other developers too. Armored Core´s first trailer showed better visuals than the final product. All claimed to be in game footage the lighting was more impressive, buildings custed self shadows and they had awesome destructibe physics! If I remember correctly the developers also said that they will make some extra stuff on the PS3 version but I could be wrong so dont quote me on that. The game at the end was nothing more than the same build found on the 360.
Click to expand...

On that note remember Gundam Target in Sight aka Crossfire by Bandai Namco's BEC dev team that specializes in Mobile Suit Gundam action games. I have all of the footage and gameplay videos they released and was available, they did also have some nice self shadows and destructible physics and even though the final game was critisized it still boasts some impressive visuals however that game was done in 06 and the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise is going to have its 30th anniversary in Japan next year so this is another game developer that is going to redeem themselves.
 
Thanks for the info Akumajou, this clears things up a bit.

I also want to ask why do some people think final version of MGS4 uses all PS3 hardware in most optimised way.Do you have any proof?Any technical information?

NAO confirmed that ,graphically, Heavenly Sword was only RSX, Insomniac confirmed in their slides that R&C is only RSX, on a Naughty Dog slide it was written that Uncharted uses mostly %30 of spes power at once and animation was their priority.

What does MGS4 does better than these games?
 
Nightware said:
What does MGS4 does better than these games?
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Has much more variety in environments and textures, different characters/enemies (think Act I to Act II variations), a lot of content that needs to be on HDD because streaming is the only option (i.e. the textures that Octocamo copies ... that is a huge load of resources just for that element of the amazing game). MGS4 does a lot of things that a truly linear game like Heavenly Sword or Uncharted does not. I won't say MGS4 is open-worlded by far, but it is not as linear either. You do progress from scene to scene but in a more open environment, not sort-of-corridors. But I also know that Heavenly Sword has some huge battle scenes in real time and can pull them off without much FPS drop (or any at all? I don't remember).

In any case as you said before how do we know MGS4 is that "optimized" - well we don't know and don't say it is, but there simply are technical limits to what the RSX can do and can't do, even with the Cell...and it doesn't help that Japanese devs are repeatedly lagging behind in pulling off graphical showcases on the new PS3 or 360 consoles. They just didn't figure it out yet. Not even Capcom. They basically rely on Unreal Engine 3 for most of their stuff, or proprietary engines that look like upscaled PS2 ones, a little recycled with more shaders or effects.

In any case I think my point is that MGS4 isn't necessarily as optimized as say Killzone 2 will be, but it always was the amazing presentation we saw in 2005 that made everyone believe they are going to max the console out. Or at least try. Now one indication that they didn't succeed, I have to say, is the low resolution with very very little to no Anti Aliasing. That just shouldn't happen. You can't tell me KZ2 is 720p native with 2x or even 4xAA and MGS4 barely manages 1024x768, 2xQAA with nasty FPS spikes and even occasional drops.

But, all this aside, MGS4 is the best looking game of 2008 yet -for a third person shooter-. The graphics are insanely crisp which surprised me at that resolution, and I think it will only be "outdone" in terms of photo-realism by good shots of Motorstorm 2 (of the final product...I've seen it and it looks really good with very high res textures on mountains and the like).

Although, if you view it from the PURELY technological standpoint, when you disregard what the game LOOKS like, then MGS4 is being outdone on a daily basis by games like Hell's Highway, Resistance 2, Gears 2, Wipeout HD especially.
 
el_rika said:
MGS4 looks better than those games while having the cutscenes running in realtime with arguably the best looking character models in gaming and with zero pop ups or screen tearing.

And it's funny how some of you bring up Uncharted as having better textures than MGS4, but conveniently chose to ignore the absolutelly horrible pop ups and screen tearing the game is plagued with, while MGS4 is a completely smooth ride from start to finish. Imagine having pop ups, pauses and tearing with every camera change in MGS4's cutscenes or in gameplay. It would completely destroy the game. The developers really did an outstanding job eliminating those issues in MGS4 and i think the installing has a lot to do with it.
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The pop-ups only really occur at the beginning of the level, most of the loading was either masked by cutscenes or streamed, meaning you don't have to wait for the game to load at all, had Uncharted come out at the same time as MGS4, the screen tearing would have been gone by then, Uncharted has better lighting, shadowing and textures, and it was released months ahead of MGS4, and Naughty Dog had a smaller budget, MGS4 is a significantly longer game though and had real-time cutscenes. Both games were technical marvels, but obviously Uncharted did have better textures and AF.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
But, all this aside, MGS4 is the best looking game of 2008 yet -for a third person shooter-. The graphics are insanely crisp which surprised me at that resolution
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In many cases MGS4 looks like upscaled PS2 game IMO
http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/customer_stories/metal_gear_4/default.aspx
Surprisingly, the entire texture size for characters was kept to a resolution of 512×512, to restrict the amount of VRAM that is used. This is a relatively low resolution for a next-generation console. In the initial stages, since they were designing for the next-generation PS3, they used larger data.

The team did not use LOD for the background data. They made partial use of LOD only for large volumes of trees or grass. 150,000 to 200,000 polygons were imported into the PS3 in each load. If the data exceeded 200,000, they were divided into separate loads
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Kittonwy said:
Uncharted has better lighting, shadowing and textures, and it was released months ahead of MGS4, and Naughty Dog had a smaller budget, MGS4 is a significantly longer game though and had real-time cutscenes. Both games were technical marvels, but obviously Uncharted did have better textures and AF.
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MGS4 also has 10 times more action and characters on screen than Uncharted.
 
Hi everyone, i am french but i know someone who is japanese... so i asked him to translate me a ppt (power point document).

Japanese original ppt : PPT About MGS 4 - TGS 2005 Trailer

=BEGIN=

TGS 2005 Trailer Experience
- Light map * 3 vectors
- Shadow volume
- High-poly High-Res model
>> Number of polygon 800 000 (only the background)
>> Textures about 300MB (total)

FAILURE

- They could not realize enough high resolution because of 3 light maps
>> VRAM oppressed (too small ?)
- They abandoned the shadow volume
- Total data didn't mount on the memory

=END=
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2nd translation :

、

Japanese :
PS3ではピクセルフィルレートの性能が足りず、MSAA(マルチサンプリングアンチエイリアシング)の機能が使えないため、実装途上の段階で

English :
Performance of the pixel fillrate are not enough to use function MSAA (Multisample anti-aliasing) that is why it was not used.
Click to expand...
 
Both games take a sort of stylistic approach to character modeling and animation as opposed to hyper real. But I feel MGS4 has quite a bit more polish to the models and animation compared to Uncharted. Not to mention vastly more characters.

I know that on a technical level I was not as impressed with Uncharted when going back to it for trophies since my completion of MGS4. At a game play level, both games just are what they are and are excellent enough in their own different ways so I can enjoy them separately without comparing them.

The total number Uncharted characters I could literally count on my fingers. 3 good guys. 3 main bad guys. and a couple variations on grunts.

The one big advantage Uncharted has over MGS4 technically is the texture streaming off the disc. But on the other hand there is a considerable amount of texture pop-in in various places. Also there are some werid LOD issues. For example many many times in Uncharted I would be annoyed to see a bald smooth headed bad guy grunt model come at me, only to have a hat or bandanna magically appear on his head as he moved closer to me.

Also Uncharted constantly switching to prerendered FMV video was always very jarring to me. It looked different enough not to be a smooth transition. I know MGS4 had FMV in a few rare places. But they are really hard to spot comparatively. Also the fact that Uncharted resorted to FMV pretty much removes all the wow factor from the cutscenes.

The very last level in Uncharted on the boat looked unfinished to me. Quite sure they did not have enough time to meet their target for that stage due to the rush to release it for the holidays. Especially the beginning of the level there was quite a lot of texture pop in. MGS4 on the otherhand always looked picture perfected as soon as it came on.


Looking at both presentations it is quite obvious now how much time they spent specifically on the lighting system. Snake an the characters always looked like they belonged in the world they were roaming in. Not a moment did Snake or any other character look out of place. It was very convincing that they really existed in that world.
 
inefficient said:
Also Uncharted constantly switching to prerendered FMV video was always very jarring to me. It looked different enough not to be a smooth transition. I know MGS4 had FMV in a few rare places. But they are really hard to spot comparatively. Also the fact that Uncharted resorted to FMV pretty much removes all the wow factor from the cutscenes.

The very last level in Uncharted on the boat looked unfinished to me. Quite sure they did not have enough time to meet their target for that stage due to the rush to release it for the holidays. Especially the beginning of the level there was quite a lot of texture pop in. MGS4 on the otherhand always looked picture perfected as soon as it came on.
Click to expand...

Uncharted uses prerendered FMV so that it can load the next levels assets in the background, all the FMV's are is a recording of the real time rendering. Why did the last level look unifinished to you? it was one of the most impressive levels for me! the graphics wre amazing.

I didn't notice much if any pop-in in Uncharted but i wasn't looking for it.
 
MGS4 doesn't regularly have FMVs. I recall the one obvious example, the huge battle. And that's done with in-game assets, it's actually more likely to be a realtime captured video from a powerful PC that is just played back. So it's not really pre-rendered like the FMV in Uncharted or FF. That's why you don't notice a glaring difference. I also hate the use of FMV in gameplay heavy games. It's fine in Final Fantasy or other JRPGs because they rely a lot on story and emotion, but I hate it in shooters.

Also, the one thing that Uncharted has over MGS4 are the textures, which are MGS4's weakpoints - while MGS4 clearly has the edge in character polish and sharpness. Uncharted always looks a bit blurry, although that may be their desired stylistic approach.
 
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