NEW Lair Screens Plus Interview!

[blakjedi]

Ok Lair was originally announced in July of 2005 and first demoed at TGS 2005. Rendered on development hardware in realtime... and that realtime "rendering" looks way better than anything within the game currently. That is all I'm saying.

According to Gamespot:

Aside from giving us an idea of what kind of style Lair will have--that is, a mature, realistic fantasy one--the TGS trailer indicated the quality of graphics Factor 5 is going to achieve on the PS3. Before the trailer began, it was stated explicitly that all of the footage contained thereafter was running in real time on the development hardware; if that message is to be believed, the game will be visually impressive indeed. Granted, the system was only processing at most two characters onscreen at once, with little or no background geometry to consider, but the dragons were easily comparable in quality to many prerendered CG movies we've seen.

 

[mrboo]

I really must go and have my eye's looked at, because i seem to be the only person in here that cant see lair's texture detail in these stupidly low quality video's to say wheather they suck or not.

EDIT : Perhaps the clearest footage of LAIR yet http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=13309&type=wmv&pl=game

 

[Eagle-Vision]

Ok Lair was originally announced in July of 2005 and first demoed at TGS 2005. Rendered on development hardware in realtime... and that realtime "rendering" looks way better than anything within the game currently. That is all I'm saying.

According to Gamespot:

The dragons are the same. Again, the only difference is the "wetness". We haven't seen that level again so we can't really compare and say it looks worse. Also, according to Eggebrecht, that effect is still in the game.

IGN: The original teaser shown at PS Meeting said that the footage shown was "in-game." How far has the project come since then and what improvements have you made on those original visuals?

Eggebrecht: It was footage directly grabbed out of the engine, running in real-time on the PS3, and with game assets. In levels that have our rain engine active the dragons are still as shiny as they were in that trailer. The teaser deliberately didn't show the hero or any other bits of the world of Lair because we wanted to introduce our technology, and what is possible on the PS3 in real-time.

That demo, as nice as it looked, only used a very primitive lighting system. Nowadays we have a full atmospheric light simulation running on RSX, so if we re-did the demo it would look considerably better. And then there is of course the dragon art: The Dark Dragon looks quite different these days because it evolved visually, but the Flame Dragon is almost unchanged in the game.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/733/733921p3.html

We'll have to wait to see if it was downgraded (or improved) after all or not. In the meantime, the game looks pretty good as it is.

 

[Platon]

The dragons are the same. Again, the only difference is the "wetness". We haven't seen that level again so we can't really compare and say it looks worse. Also, according to Eggebrecht, that effect is still in the game.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/733/733921p3.html

We'll have to wait to see if it was downgraded (or improved) after all or not. In the meantime, the game looks pretty good as it is.

Maybe the dragons are the same, but it seems they are using some very strong LOD system, that that kind of dragons almost never really appear in the game...

 

[groper]

what bothers me more about this game is the fact that apart of the main dragon , who is very well modeled imo , all the npc dragons are low-poly models and very bad modeled overall.
Someone can see it in this picture posted by Eagle-vision.
The npc dragon is blocky and you can imagine whow ugly will look this in a big hdtv.
http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/761/761161/img_3933492.html

But what is going to look realy horrible in a 40'' hdtv is the tail of the npc dragons when you see their back very close to your screen.
As you can see this tail is 4 different pieces.

So these NPCs are very bad modeled or at a very early stage (or both )

Edit: Here is the video: TGS 06 Dragon Raid Gameplay(0:57sec)

 

[Eagle-Vision]

Maybe the dragons are the same, but it seems they are using some very strong LOD system, that that kind of dragons almost never really appear in the game...

Well, they show up in the one on one fights.

 

[London Geezer]

As you can see this tail is 4 different pieces.

So these NPCs are very bad modeled or at a very early stage (or both )

Wow.. Hardware capable of moving hundreds of millions of polygons per second and this is what we get...

I'm guessing it's the broken LOD system, or a very insignificant dragon there, cause that's just plain bad. Even on PS2 that would be ugly!

 

[Nesh]

Wow.. Hardware capable of moving hundreds of millions of polygons per second and this is what we get...

I'm guessing it's the broken LOD system, or a very insignificant dragon there, cause that's just plain bad. Even on PS2 that would be ugly!

Not just ugly. Thats disgusting.

 

[3roxor]

@ london-boy and Nesh
You guys must be exclusively talking about the seemingly low poly dragon tail (which looks weird..), because everything else in that pic can't be accurately judged.

 

[Avon_Implosion]

London and Nesh, i think that you need to look at this pic from a more..err..mature perspective.

Now, i think that we're nitpicking a bit too much here...judging from the past history with next gen titles-and PS3 titles especially (for some reason)-they tend to take dramatic leaps in a matter of months...remember Resistance? Or Motorstorm? Two once "just decent" titles that are now competing for the flagship launch/launch window title for the PS3...in just about 4-5 months.

 

[ultragpu]

London and Nesh, i think that you need to look at this pic from a more..err..mature perspective.

Now, i think that we're nitpicking a bit too much here...judging from the past history with next gen titles-and PS3 titles especially (for some reason)-they tend to take dramatic leaps in a matter of months...remember Resistance? Or Motorstorm? Two once "just decent" titles that are now competing for the flagship launch/launch window title for the PS3...in just about 4-5 months.

i agree, especially considering lair is at its VERY early stage, and after all, they havent even touched 50% of Cell's power.

 

[Tap In]

i agree, especially considering lair is at its VERY early stage, and after all, they havent even touched 50% of Cell's power.

those % statements are utterly meaningless IMO but I will agree with you that the game is early.

 

[Bohdy]

I'm sure the LOD system still has a lot of tweaking to go. There are just a lot of bad example of it in that level. I'm positive the final game will look much better and more consistent.

 

[tsek]

New video interview:
http://trailers.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_tgs_lair_int_gt_h264.wmv

 

[Angelcurio]

i agree, especially considering lair is at its VERY early stage, and after all, they havent even touched 50% of Cell's power.

You could even be using 100% of Cell's power and that wouldnt mean that you are actually using it efficiently.

 

[Eagle-Vision]

You could even be using 100% of Cell's power and that wouldnt mean that you are actually using it efficiently.

I think that's what he actually means with the 50% comment, it's talking about efficiency.

 

[Nesh]

London and Nesh, i think that you need to look at this pic from a more..err..mature perspective.

Now, i think that we're nitpicking a bit too much here...judging from the past history with next gen titles-and PS3 titles especially (for some reason)-they tend to take dramatic leaps in a matter of months...remember Resistance? Or Motorstorm? Two once "just decent" titles that are now competing for the flagship launch/launch window title for the PS3...in just about 4-5 months.

You are right. But still we cant help it not to judge the current state of the game. It does look ugly....currently. Ofcourse that doesnt mean we are totally ruling out the possibility that it might be improved and impress us at the end

 

[London Geezer]

Not with this percentages rubbish again, i thought we already covered this...

Whatever way you look at it, that tail is ugly. And i'm looking it from the right perspective thank you very much, in fact i even specified that it's probably just a broken LOD system (cause it's in early development? leaving aside silly percentages) and not proof of anything.

 

[Firewarrior]

Compared to 2005 shots, this is definitely one step back.. But, hey, we got the HUD now

Btw, there are still a lot of time before release.. Given than it is now at 35% completion, I guess they can crank up the quality meanwhile. This becomes likes a classic progression in all next-gen titles. First they look impressive, then they look awful, then they settle somewhere close to initial target but at the very end of development cycle.

Is Lair a launch title or Q1 07?

Not launch title I'm afraid its 2007 game ATM

 

[rabidrabbit]

Launch window game. The launch window extends far into 2007.