New Mark Rein interview

[liverkick]

I had it a little wrong, he is actually referring to all the demo's:

Around 4 minutes in:
http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/748/748475/vids_1.html

Erm, thats the exact quote I talked about in my earlier post.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=799613&postcount=46

You've got the quote wrong (as a lot of people did at the time and ended up blowing out of proportion). What was actually said... "That's something Ted wanted to make sure everyone understood, that's real gameplay". Watch it again if you like.

I'm really shocked peopel are actually saying "they don't remember it" or something to that extent. just wow.

I assume thats a reference to me. What I said was I didnt remember any Sony PR "outright claiming" CG was gameplay. Annoyingly danced around it, you bet. But not "outright claim". The anonymous rep in the UK gamespot article was new to me, and I'll take it with a grain of salt considering their was no context or name attributed to the quote. The other stuff has been covered. Whats amazing to me is how some can consistently single out SCE PR and marketing as if their particularly special compared to their peers.

 

[scooby_dooby]

You've got the quote wrong (as a lot of people did at the time and ended up blowing out of proportion). What was actually said... "That's something Ted wanted to make sure everyone understood, that's real gameplay". Watch it again if you like.

So? That doesn't account for the first half of the statement which is a blatant lie.

It's definately real, I guess we're pretty good at keeping secrets because the dev kits are out there. The dev kits are very intuitive, and people have done some incredible things. That is something Ted wanted to make sure everyone understood, that is real gampley everybody is seeing out there.

He even goes so far as to say they were done on devkits, don't even try to spin this one. The statement was in direct response to a question regarding Killzone and other demo's in general, not I-8.

 

[liverkick]

He even goes so far as to say they were done on devkits, don't even try to spin this one. The statement was in direct response to a question regarding Killzone and other demo's in general, not I-8.

First, I'd appreciate it if you didnt accuse me of spinning anything, thats not my intent. You got the quote wrong (in regards to gameplay) and I clarified it for you. It was misconstrued and blow out of porportion, that was my only point. I agreed a lot of the PR was ambiguous and they annoyingly danced around it.

 

[Arwin]

The way I've always understood it, the general questions were along the line of

- 'this is what we are expecting to achieve on the PS3'
- 'In Realtime?'
- 'Yes, in realtime.'

And by the way, I don't know what others are doing but I'm not comparing E3 2005 Motorstorm with E3 2006 motorstorm. Instead, I'm talking about the latest movie I saw and was just released a week ago, which still had weak 'TV cam' visuals (the physics looked good, but especially a heli-cam showed a lot of jaggies and nearly no effects), but the on-board cam visuals were great.

Sony did a lot of PR and hyping, sure, and they paid for it at this year's E3, with Microsoft reaping the rewards, and Nintendo stealing the show with a well-oiled, professional presentation that was, by the way, orchestrated like a 90 minute TV commercial.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

To characterize the post E3 05 coverage as 'balanced, calm and rational debate' makes me laugh!

You missed the sarcasm

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Sony PR even instructed the companies making the CG movies, they were simply forbidden to use the words 'CG' 'rendered' and such; dunno about others but I personally think that's an obvious sign of intentionally misinforming the press and the public.


And it does not matter how much the PR quotes are analyzed word by word. The general reaction to the Sony demonstration was that these movies show real gameplay with realtime graphics on devkits, or framebuffer grabs like Heavenly Sword (and I also feel for the Ninja guys as they've done some real and serious work - and got overshadowed by the CG, too; and same goes for Epic and anyone else who had real ingame stuff to show). This is why both the press and the public has decided that E3 2005 belonged to Sony and that the PS3 was already better then the almost completed X360, I think KZ even got some awards after the show. And all the time they had no playable games at all and never bothered to tell this to anyone.

Maybe they weren't trying to lie from the start but got cought up in it and decided to go with the flow, instead of loosing face by admitting that it was just smoke and mirrors. It could have backfired on them, who knows - but they sure got out of the whole thing without any loss of face. Even now that the swindle has been finally proven, suddenly everyone forgot about last year. I haven't seen any publications on it, probably because the supposedly independent press is ashamed of how they've all been misguided and used. And the public is also forgiving; though at least it's not the same people who flamed us last year and who are now saying that Sony has never lied about the issue.

One of the reasons I think we should not forget this is that these companies (not just Sony) will probably try to fool us again. We should all keep in mind that they've done it once and are perfectly capable of trying to lie again. The other thing is that people also seem to forget just how good those renders looked and claim that the obviously inferior relatime graphics are 'comparable' - but that is a more subjective issue.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

And by the way, I don't know what others are doing but I'm not comparing E3 2005 Motorstorm with E3 2006 motorstorm. Instead, I'm talking about the latest movie I saw and was just released a week ago, which still had weak 'TV cam' visuals (the physics looked good, but especially a heli-cam showed a lot of jaggies and nearly no effects), but the on-board cam visuals were great.

Sorry but these are your very own words here:
Actually, the latest trailer of Motorstorm (see Motorstorm thread elsewhere on the site) does seem to match the target render surprisingly well.

 

[Jesus2006]

Sorry but these are your very own words here:
Actually, the latest trailer of Motorstorm (see Motorstorm thread elsewhere on the site) does seem to match the target render surprisingly well.

Yes, and that's not so wrong after all

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There were a lot of other little quips and interviews as well, but the emphasis was always on the PS3 could do this and the videos, like KZ, were specifically designed to look like gameplay.

That's absolutely true. However, until PS3 fails to deliver this quality over it's lifetime, it's not yet a lie. Perhaps I'm being extra lenient, and allowing devs time to try to get that level of results rather than expecting that quality in the first titles? There's also the point of what do you show if you don't have any realtime gameplay demos? But all that was covered before in the old threads on this matter.

Anyway, yes there were one or two downright false claims from some Sony persons, but the majority were clear to express that these demos were 'realtime or rendered to spec'. Your links show that. (Except the Gamespot one which links to IGN. I tried searching for a Gamespot quote on that but can't find it.). It's a previs, a render to show the look and feel that they're aiming for.

"Yeah, it's basically a representation of the look and feel of the game we're trying to make"

That's from the KZ dev. Here's another one for Phil

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9051

And what about the game footage clips?

Not all of that - in fact, none of it was real-time because it was all running off video. If you make a presentation to two and a half thousand people, you're going to put some of it on video just to be on the safe side.

I've been asked this question a lot. The way we put those videos together, everything was done to specification. Everything was done to PS3 spec. Virtually everything used in-game assets; some things were rendered.

How representative of what we're actually going to be seeing in PS3 games were those videos?

I think very. I think depending on the game, different games took a different approach to their way of expressing what the games are like - but clearly, something like Motor Storm uses more cinematic, replay-like cameras than you would ever enjoy in-game. So that makes a big difference... But everything is done to spec.

How is that not saying 'these are impressions of games that we think PS3 will be doing', comments the same as the way the games were introduced as visualizations?

Now it could be that Sony gave their devs a bogus spec to create a presentation far better than PS3 can ever achieve. It could be the devs wanted to show off and didn't tie themselves to spec at all. It could be they didn't understand the spec and overshot, or were just too optimistic in what they could pull off, especially in the first attempts. It could be the renders are pretty accurate examples of what willl eventually be appearing on PS3.

The question here isn't one of 'were those demos realtime in-engine or CGI renders'. Pretty much everyone should know they were renders by now - that was cleared up nicely at the time. The question is, as presented as examples of what to expect, how accurate were these 'previs' movies in portraying what PS3 could finally achieve? I don't know how that argument can be answered without waiting a few years to see. If in 2009 Killzone comes out (KZ2 or KZ3, or even KZ4) and looks like that E3 render, Sony weren't misleading anyone (except maybe one or two spokespersons who claimed it was realtime in-engine, who were either lying, misinformed, or confused as to the tech demos versus the game movies ).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

One of the reasons I think we should not forget this is that these companies (not just Sony) will probably try to fool us again. We should all keep in mind that they've done it once and are perfectly capable of trying to lie again.

I would say that's quite an easy thing to avoid if when the game is shown, the words 'visualisation' or 'an idea of what to expect' or similar are used, we know it's not realtime in-engine! It seems to me the idea that those movies were somehow realtime stemmed from people who didn't understand the presentation, and once the idea was out there people started running with it and the FUD took on a life of its own.

The other thing is that people also seem to forget just how good those renders looked and claim that the obviously inferior relatime graphics are 'comparable' - but that is a more subjective issue.

That is very subjective. Some people will look for a very close visual match. Others will look for a fair approximation. Motorstorm as it looks now captures the feel of the E3 05 trailer IMO, but not the visual quality. Considering things can only get better though, there's got to be room to get much closer to E3 05. I can't believe Evolution have maxxed the PS3 already!

 

[fearsomepirate]

Shifty, you can be intentionally misleading while still technically speaking the truth. Those answers were carefully designed to let people think that the trailers were real-time, yet still never technically say they were real-time. That's just deceptive. It's like when your boss asks you "Did you finish the project?" and you say "I took care of it," when you mean by "took care of it" that you mentally scheduled a day to start the project. Each answers was a "No" that was carefully crafted to sound like "Yes." And that's deceptive. An honest answer to "Were they realtime?" would have been "No," not "That's what you should expect from the final game," "This is what the PS3 can do," or "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky."

 

[Qroach]

why is this still being questioned?

The CG "made to spec" comment from sony was simply another way to spin the fact it was CG, while not admitting that at the same time. The CG was made by Axis animation and Ark VFX.

http://www.spinquad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9904&highlight=killzone
Thread from a newtek lightwave employee stating the killzone footage was made with lightwave. Jeremy hardin an axis employee comes in to say some Maya and mostly lightwave was used to render the CG.

Anyway, the ligthing in the video the particle systems (hyper voxels for smoke and clouds) are things that can't be done in realtime, so how is that making something to spec? There was even a post telliing us the amount of polygons used in the character models (millions in the video). Far too dense a mesh for a game to use. Same with other objects in the video. Usually when you make something "to spec", you create the art in a way that it it could be used in game. Siomethign you'd expect a game to run with, hence "making it to spec". This clearly was not done.


http://jeremy.lwidof.net/jeremyhardin_resume.html
This gent worked at axis animation, the company that produced the killzone CG. The poor guy had to change his website due to everyone checking out the small clip showing what he did regarding the killzone footage. he even had to remove killzone from his resume and clips from his site. He was abruptly silenced by someone. i wonder who.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I agree, that's a very likely possibilty, hence I said in my second post
"They never made any such claims - everyone else filled in the deliberate blanks." That's PR though. Stir up debate (or rather rampant feuds) and keep people talking. Pretty much all companies operate on a similar way when they can, and those that don't probably wish they knew how . eg. I'm seeing game trailers on TV that are CGI to advertise a game that doesn't look as good in real life. The advert never claimed the real game looks that good, but left it for the viewer to assume it was in-game footage. The purpose of advertising is to generate interest, and not (as it should be) showcase your product for what it is so people can make an informed choice.

One can also argue a point that Sony couldn't really do anything else rather than be what people would call misleading. You have a new product you want to impress people with, but no software to show on it. Do you just put the empty casing in a glass cabinet and have people walk past without any interest? Or try to predict what the results of the hardware will be and create mockups to show those? If the latter, how do you respond to queries about the validity of those movies? Do you say 'no, they're categorically not realtime and we haven't any hardware producing this' at which point everyone thinks you were presenting a bald-faced lie? Or do you constantly affirm that though these aren't in engine, they're what you expect to see? Plenty of busniesses do this, especially if deadlines are overrun and the product isn't in a state to be shown as is, so you use a mockup.

The repercussions from Sony's choice might well come round to bite them in the butt. They tried to showcase their product before it was in a position to be showcased, in contrast to MS who only showed what was being achieved in realtime (actually that's not entirely true either. XB360s demos at E3 05 was on PCs and alpha kits - a simulacrum of what they intended to achieve with the final hardware once they got it, based on specs they had for what the final hardware would be capable of). If so, that'll be a lesson for Sony's future to only show what you're achieving, rather than showing what you hope to achieve, rather like Molyneux's vociferous claims of his games that don't materialise - talking up intentions and expectations only sets people up for a fall when you don't come up with the goods, and that will end up deterring them.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Shifty, there's one single problem with all your toughts here. You are trying to interpret and explain the events in hindsight, knowing that the material was CG and Sony had no working hardware.
But you should do it in context, at the hype surrounding the E3 show and the PS3 presentation, when people knew far less about the console and its state of development. Back then, the things Sony PR said were indeed decieving and thus the majority of people believed that the movies were realtime, and a lot of the rest thought that while prerendered, it was 100% achievable. We even had a poll here in B3D with the same results, and I think we can consider the users here considerably more educated then the general public.
Fearsomepirate has a good point about the PR talk, too.

As for capturing the feel, that's entirely subjective. However, I've said it before and I'll repeat again: those trailers were not made to spec, or meant to represent the game. They were created by independent animation studios, and their only goal was to make something cool - to drive the attention away from whatever games the competitors have on the show floor.

 

[PARANOiA]

Sony's PR is really made in the gutter. It's so frustrating trying to explain to people how they "fake" it while using specific methods which are designed to be deceptive. And after the months of debate about "was it realtime? yes it was/no it was not", now people in this thread deny it was ever claimed to be realtime? How can you argue with that? It's like trying to drink from a firehose.

Anyway, is there any news on the Epic "big secret"?

 

[Qroach]

Yes this thread needs to get back on topic.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The CG "made to spec" comment from sony was simply another way to spin the fact it was CG, while not admitting that at the same time. The CG was made by Axis animation and Ark VFX.

Anyway, the ligthing in the video the particle systems (hyper voxels for smoke and clouds) are things that can't be done in realtime, so how is that making something to spec?

If you get the same look, what does it matter what tech you use? If Cell can produce volumetric clouds using a differnt method (see Warhawk) then if the spec was 'add volumetric clouds' and the offline renderer uses hypervoxels and the realgame uses bozo-particles to get the same effect, is that not 'to spec'? I think it depends what the spec was exactly

There was even a post telliing us the amount of polygons used in the character models (millions in the video). Far too dense a mesh for a game to use. Same with other objects in the video. Usually when you make something "to spec", you create the art in a way that it it could be used in game. Siomethign you'd expect a game to run with, hence "making it to spec". This clearly was not done.

If you're going to use normal mapping to get the detail of a 10 million poly model onto a 30k poly model, and you want to create a render of what that might look like, would you as a CG company tell your artists to create the high-level models and then the low level models and then do normal mapping and then render, or would you just throw in the high-res models knowing that apart from a few more angular edges on the profile most people won't notice any visible difference?

He was abruptly silenced by someone. i wonder who.

Interesting question. Was it Sony's ninjas wanting to cover up the truth? Was it Guerilla who knew they had commissioned a movie beyond the specs provided them by Sony and wanted the idea of it being CG kept in the dark? Was it his employer Axis because he was in breach of some NDA?

Further questions that need to be answered before the finger of blame can be firmly pointed at Sony. When the models rendered were umpteen million polys, way beyond what's feasible on the hardware, did Sony provide bogus specs to Guerilla? Or did Guerilla provide bogus specs to Axis? Or did Axis take the specs and just go with high-res models factoring in normal mapping that would be used in game? Was voxel modelling part of the specs Sony provided? Was it a tech Guerilla thought they could pull of looking at the SPEs? Was it an approximation of the volumetric techniques usable on PS3 given what was usable on Maya (I mean, if PS3 uses technique A to create volumetric clouds and your renderer only has technique B, you're going to have to use technique B even though that's not exactly to spec, right?)

I'm guessing that render to spec means more 'get the look of' than exactly to the specifications of the hardware, simulating workarounds if needed, but I have never seen an official definition of 'rendered to spec' and maybe it does mean everything from poly counts to same techniques? In which case I agree with you that saying 'render to spec' wasn't truthful, and if Sony knew the techniques used in the movie they showed weren't what the PS3's specs were capable of, then yes they were deliberately misleading people.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

When the models rendered were umpteen million polys, way beyond what's feasible on the hardware, did Sony provide bogus specs to Guerilla? Or did Guerilla provide bogus specs to Axis? Or did Axis take the specs and just go with high-res models factoring in normal mapping that would be used in game? Was voxel modelling part of the specs Sony provided? Was it a tech Guerilla thought they could pull of looking at the SPEs? Was it an approximation of the volumetric techniques usable on PS3 given what was usable on Maya (I mean, if PS3 uses technique A to create volumetric clouds and your renderer only has technique B, you're going to have to use technique B even though that's not exactly to spec, right?)

There weren't any specs. My pal told me they've even wondered why they weren't to use game-lvel normal mapped models (which would've been possible), but they were instructed to work this way.

The volumetric stuff in Warhawk is nowhere near as complex as the smokes in KZ, by the way. And it wouldn't ever be because of the performance; additional iterations of fractals take up most of the render time so it would make them impossible to work in real time.



Also note that Axis still does not use the KZ animation in their portfolio, even though it's their best work to date. Would they be that stupid, or are they not allowed to?

 

[AlNom]

Anyway, is there any news on the Epic "big secret"?

Not yet, probably on Monday. Mark Rein did say "next week" on the 24th. Just the same stuff I posted earlier in the thread, but it might have been looked over in the heat of this more interesting discussion. I request a thread split.

 

[TheChefO]

I'm guessing that render to spec means more 'get the look of' than exactly to the specifications of the hardware, simulating workarounds if needed, but I have never seen an official definition of 'rendered to spec' and maybe it does mean everything from poly counts to same techniques? In which case I agree with you that saying 'render to spec' wasn't truthful, and if Sony knew the techniques used in the movie they showed weren't what the PS3's specs were capable of, then yes they were deliberately misleading people.

As Laa-yosh said - those videos were not rendered to spec - Sony lied period.

The sole purpose of Sony's showing at e3 2005 was to prevent xbox360 from doing as well as it could. They showed ps3 specs in a manor which gives the impression of a machine which significantly outclasses the 360 and had everyone convinced of its vast superiority in this regard and then proceeded to "prove it" by showing cgi videos which faked real gameplay and then skirted direct questions.

If they truly wanted to have games to show at e3 without actually having games why would they not have done what Laa-yosh said and used models that were not 1m plus with smoke fx and lighting that were not realistic to expect this gen. Why would they use movie quality AA when they knew full well rsx and the bandwidth available would not allow anywhere near this and in fact with this level of graphics they would be lucky to get 2x? In one sense shifty you're right - they have until the end of this gen to match this quality, but unless they truly plan to treat the ps3 like a pc and continuously updgrade the guts of the system (including the cpu, gpu, bandwidth, ram, etc) then I don't see how it will be possible.

They lied period. Not to say nobody else showed cgi, but nobody here is defending the other cgi efforts as anything but cgi and lies. They could have used hi-res models (100k) which were well within the realistic limitations of ps3 along with limited/no aa rendered at 720 with textures that fit in 256 or even 512mb. The general fx such as the mud and the smoke - I won't slam them too much for as devs may find workarounds this gen that do come close.

I'm not trying to lynch Sony here, but the Sony defenders need to come clean on this so it can be dropped.

EDIT - see Laa-Yosh's post above

What could "The big news" be that isn't news already? Have they been hiring enough people over the past year to add another dev team and possibly announce/show a new game? Perhaps something exclusive for ps3 along the same lines as a Gow?