New Tim Sweeny interview

[MrWibble]

So, you're logic being they can show absolutely anything they want as long as they "think" that's possible. And we'll just give them the benefit of the doubt on that? Sounds like carte-blanche to make up any sort of fairytale you want to.

At least Microsoft showed real footage for the most part, they took the highroad. They could have easily created amazing fake videos, and spun their words so most CONSUMERS believe these were actual games in development.

Why don't sony clarify what was and wasn't pre-rendered?

Why are they saying the KZ demo was rendered in real time when it was made by a CG development company? Is that a blatant lie right there?

Why did they mislead the majority of consumers into thinking all the demos were actually running off PS3 hardware, with the CELL?
(To be fair MS did a similar thing, but one question from a journalist and they freely admitted it was a dual core G5, Sony continues to mislead and not be honest)

Sony seems like a sleazy plotician, they can make somthing out of nothing. Despite having no console, and NO games in development, despite having very similar system specs, despite the fact CELL is unproven, and the power of RSX vs R500 is unknown, Sony has convinced the vast majority of people that the PS3 is much more powerful. They did it with a cheapshot! CG demo's that were completely unrealistic.

Pretty convenient to put all the blame on the journalists don't you think?

To be fair I'm only slightly blaming journalists, and quite heavily blaming idiots with internet access making wild and unfounded statements about subjects they know nothing about, on the flimsiest of evidence, and frequently making completely erroneous claims with totally false evidence.

QED.

 

[mckmas8808]

quite heavily blaming idiots with internet access making wild and unfounded statements about subjects they know nothing about, on the flimsiest of evidence, and frequently making completely erroneous claims with totally false evidence.

That does go both ways right? You know the believers and non-believers.
________
WHOLESALE VAPORIZER

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Is it that hard to add 2 and 2 together?

Basically the following parties could prove wether the KZ demonstration was realtime or prerendered:
- Sony. Obviously, they don't want to do that.
- Guerilla. They have to do what SCEE says, and Sony probably don't want them to do it either.
- The studio that produced the animation. They have signed a contract with Sony for the job, so they also have to do what Sony says.
So what good is it to keep repeating that there's no evidence, when it's clear that there won't be anything as long as Sony does not want it?

People working in the quite small game and CG animation industry, who have some friend at that animation studio, certainly know this...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

"KZ Situation"? It's a situation now?

Any more criticism for my English? It's not my first language, you know.
Nevertheless, top gaming websites like Gamespot and IGN have decided that it's important enough to post some editorials about it. After all, KZ is still the number one thing that consumers, press and others use to show how much better the PS3 will be compared to its competitors.

"doing everything they can to hold it back from the public"?? Don't tell me! They've hired people to bump-off anyone that asks awkward questions? They're secretly infiltrating magazines and editing articles to remove references to the issue? It's a massive conspiracy!

So you think that they've gone out of their way to show that it is a realtime demonstration, as they've done with UT2007? That they've allowed the animation studio that's said to have produced the animation to come out and say what exactly they have created?
Making fun of my post won't change that, you know.

 

[mckmas8808]

That they've allowed the animation studio that's said to have produced the animation to come out and say what exactly they have created?

Oh so now all of a sudden its proven that the KZ video was made be this animation studio. Ok where did you hear that? So you went from it being prerendered to knowing who did it for sure.
________
Bmw 7 series

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Oh so now all of a sudden its proven that the KZ video was made be this animation studio. Ok where did you hear that? So you went from it being prerendered to knowing who did it for sure.

You probably haven't paid attention in the days right after E3. I know a person who worked on that video, but all that the studio can officially say is that they did the all the assets, and did them "according to hardware spec".

There's a reason why I'm so certain about this stuff, you know. Same with at least a dozen other guys working in game dev and CG animation.

 

[MrWibble]

Is it that hard to add 2 and 2 together?

Basically the following parties could prove wether the KZ demonstration was realtime or prerendered:
- Sony. Obviously, they don't want to do that.
...

They already did. It was posted here, days ago. There is *no* debate about the matter anymore. There never should have been to start with.

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.

That's SCEE's Phil Harrison talking to a journalist. A journalist who asked the question that it is claimed "no one is asking". And the answer, direct from senior management at SCEE is that all of the videos were prerendered to PS3 specifications. Some were rendered out from a video-card on a PC using game assets, and some were just rendered.

There is no room at all in that scenario for KZ to be in any way realtime. If it was created by an animation company in the UK to some specifications, then that is *entirely* according to how Sony described it.

That interview is well over a week old and has been posted here before. So your entire argument is in fact based on a lie (that Sony won't admit it's prerendered), whereas Sony are being entirely honest.

Ironic, no?

 

[MechanizedDeath]

Is it that hard to add 2 and 2 together?

Basically the following parties could prove wether the KZ demonstration was realtime or prerendered:
- Sony. Obviously, they don't want to do that.
- Guerilla. They have to do what SCEE says, and Sony probably don't want them to do it either.
- The studio that produced the animation. They have signed a contract with Sony for the job, so they also have to do what Sony says.
So what good is it to keep repeating that there's no evidence, when it's clear that there won't be anything as long as Sony does not want it?

People working in the quite small game and CG animation industry, who have some friend at that animation studio, certainly know this...

How much of the demo was done by the animation studio? I wouldn't put it beyond them to farm CG out to independent studios, but how much of this was really necessary? Jan-Bart said this:

How long ago did work start on the sequence?

Jan-Bart: We started working on it in late November, and only finished it three days before the show, at the very, very last moment!

If they were working on this from last November, then what exactly did the animation studio do for that time? It doesn't take 5 months to create a short clip like that...at least it shouldn't. For CG, it's really not that good. We've been seeing CG of that quality since a decade ago. Did Guerilla setup the action sequence and then send it to be lit and textured by the animation studio? I'm curious to know exactly what they did that Guerilla themselves couldn't do in-house. You don't work for that studio, and I'm sure some of these details can be divulged without letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak.

I have to ask, b/c with GoW doing a bangup job on models and lighting in realtime already, expanding a scene wouldn't seem to need the assistance of an animation studio IMO. You're the CG expert, and mentioned some of the lighting differences, but what else makes this blatantly CG? It's a cutscene, I'm not buying that it's somehow impossible in realtime. Again, J. Allard didn't even want to say it was impossible, and he hasn't exactly pulled many punches thus far. It would have been a nice opportunity for him to get a dig in at Sony by throwing more fuel on the fire. What makes you so certain it can't be done? I ask this honestly, b/c I'm truly puzzled by some of the reactions on here in light of what has been revealed for the Xbox 360 in the past few weeks. PEACE.

 

[jvd]

Jan-bart also said its only a representation of the gameplay . Its cgi people . I can't believe we are still debating this .

 

[Laa-Yosh]

If they were working on this from last November, then what exactly did the animation studio do for that time? It doesn't take 5 months to create a short clip like that...at least it shouldn't.

Now how on earth do you know that? Why do you think CG costs that much?

For CG, it's really not that good.

Most collegues and I think it's quite good. A lot of work is in it, from detailed models to very complex animation, lots of technically difficult things etc. etc.

You don't work for that studio, and I'm sure some of these details can be divulged without letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak.

My friend however works there, and if any details slip out that Sony doesn't want... do the math.

I have to ask, b/c with GoW doing a bangup job on models and lighting in realtime already, expanding a scene wouldn't seem to need the assistance of an animation studio IMO. You're the CG expert, and mentioned some of the lighting differences, but what else makes this blatantly CG?

Global illumination requires raytracing. Cell can't do that in realtime, especially with such scene complexity.
The amount of geometry is HUGE. It's been discussed here, with images - do a search. Many millions of polygons in the scene... multiply that with 30 for a smooth playback, and we're counting more than a hundred million polygons per second. I doubt we'll see that much geometry in this gen, not even with X360's tesselation units.
There's a lot of volumetric rendering for the fire and smoke effects.

GOW uses 2-3 point lights per scene and no soft lighting. GOW uses normal mapping and far less actual geometry. GOW uses textured sprites for explosion and smoke effects.

These should be very obvious differences for a start that any artist could easily spot. Then there are programming related issues, like the small space and tight timing of the events - it's far too much for ingame scripted sequences, a bad step from the 'player' would ruin them. See Call of Duty for how a very tightly scripted sequence looks... there aren't any jeeps broadsiding within 2 meters from the player...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

That's SCEE's Phil Harrison talking to a journalist. A journalist who asked the question that it is claimed "no one is asking". And the answer, direct from senior management at SCEE is that all of the videos were prerendered to PS3 specifications.

And another SCEA person said that "it's all real gameplay". Should I get the quote or can we wait for mckmas8808 to paste it here again?

 

[pc999]

The amount of geometry is HUGE. It's been discussed here, with images - do a search. Many millions of polygons in the scene... multiply that with 30 for a smooth playback, and we're counting more than a hundred million polygons per second. I doubt we'll see that much geometry in this gen, not even with X360's tesselation units.
There's a lot of volumetric rendering for the fire and smoke effects.

GOW uses 2-3 point lights per scene and no soft lighting. GOW uses normal mapping and far less actual geometry. GOW uses textured sprites for explosion and smoke effects.

Is suposed that xenus will do 500M polys per second with no trivial shaders in real word performance. So is suposed to see games with such complexity in future games, right

 

[Gollum]

The debate is not wether its CGI or not, only a total nut would still argue this was real-time footage. Many aspects of this sequence could probably be reproduced fairly faithfully, no question, but a lot of the fine and subtle detail would get lost. Yet those are exactly what distinguish this particular sequence, from typical real-time footage. I've already posted comments on the technical aspects in other threads, as have others including Laa-Yosh. Between those you can paint a pretty accurate picture of how selling this as realistic expectations for PS3 in-game graphicsis pretty bold.

The real debate is wether Sony intentionally mislead the public into believing they're actually viewing game footage. The general opinion I run across in less well informed parts of the web certainly still is that KZ3 (its actually KZ3 people, not KZ2) is real and what people will get when PS3 arrives.

I think there's a very fine line here, its very subjective and depending on viewpoint anybody can argue his case. Sony certainly didn't lie about the footage IMO. They never claimed it to be realtime, but have also been very vague about how exactly this and other footage was produced. Gaming publications in general were overly enthusiastic at first and quickly declared the PS3 the winner of the next console war prematurely because of KZ3 and other pre-rendered clips blew them away. How much of this can be blamed on their own stupidity for blindly believing what their minds should have told them to be at least questionable? How much blame can be put on Sony for, maybe, misleading and decieving on purpose? I honestly don't know.

The damage has been done though. When a mainstream TV station tells people in their evening news to avoid the X360 and wait for the PS3, based on this and other pre-rendered videos, then I think the BS has to stop (this happened here in Germany BTW). Wether they lied, mislead, or only the press is to blame is pretty much a moot point.

 

[Fafalada]

Many millions of polygons in the scene... multiply that with 30 for a smooth playback, and we're counting more than a hundred million polygons per second. I doubt we'll see that much geometry in this gen, not even with X360's tesselation units.

No offense, but what the heck are you talking about? More then one PC game in development has already been working with budgets of 1-2M polys/frame, and among other things that's what U3 stuff seems to be targeted around also.
And we're not even talking about console native titles yet...

I as thinking in the dancing demo, the fighting demo, skeleton demo, in some ways there is games that surpassed some things, but I think that overwall none surpassed it, but almost.But it may be by the use of the tech (like Tekken 5 vs Dancing demo)wich is diferent from games to demos.

Care to help me out here - what do you define as "surpassing" then? Stuff like ballroom demo has roughly order of magnitude less textures, many times less polys, much worse IQ, and a lot more primitive lighting model then most modern PS2 games.
If compared to something with two characters on screen like a fighting game, what is this "some things" that haven't been improved upon?

 

[mckmas8808]

When a mainstream TV station tells people in their evening news to avoid the X360 and wait for the PS3, based on this and other pre-rendered videos, then I think the BS has to stop (this happened here in Germany BTW).

Well this is nothing that MS isn't used to. They have always hype Halo to be bigger than it was, so I figure they will find a way to overhype Sony's hype.

And another SCEA person said that "it's all real gameplay". Should I get the quote or can we wait for mckmas8808 to paste it here again?

You darn right. I would have said it had you not done it first. The VP said that is exactly what we will play when we get Killzone. So I don't know.

If they were working on this from last November, then what exactly did the animation studio do for that time?

Laa-Yosh you didn't answer the question. But to extend the question to what did Guerilla do with the PS3 devkits for 6 months? See this is one of the reasons why I don't believe Laa-Yosh. If that animation company took 5 months to make a one minute clip (I'm really not believing this, I wonder how long it took them to make the CG for Killzone 1 ) then why exactly did Guerilla get the PS3 devkits so early? Just asking honestly because I really can't figure this out.
________
Maryjane

 

[thatdude90210]

Laa-Yosh you didn't answer the question. But to extend the question to what did Guerilla do with the PS3 devkits for 6 months? See this is one of the reasons why I don't believe Laa-Yosh.

See, this is exactly the reason why Sony has been evasive about saying that KZ was CGI. If they don't come right out and say it, the faithful will go on believing, regardless of what anyone else says.

 

[pc999]

I as thinking in the dancing demo, the fighting demo, skeleton demo, in some ways there is games that surpassed some things, but I think that overwall none surpassed it, but almost.But it may be by the use of the tech (like Tekken 5 vs Dancing demo)wich is diferent from games to demos.

Care to help me out here - what do you define as "surpassing" then? Stuff like ballroom demo has roughly order of magnitude less textures, many times less polys, much worse IQ, and a lot more primitive lighting model then most modern PS2 games.
If compared to something with two characters on screen like a fighting game, what is this "some things" that haven't been improved upon?

I dont remenber which demo is the ballroom one but taking the dancing one and tekken5, I think that T5 did have a better lighting and IQ, but I think the the caracters and cenarios arent so god.

By "surpassing" I mean in every single aspect, but lastest gen of games some have some thinghs better and other things worst.For example GT demo and GT4, GT4 as better IQ, textures... but (in game gfz) it had lost the reflexions.

It had been a game, here dev win in some thinghs and lost in others (which should be somewhat "obvious",if the power is the same), never surpassed (IMO).

Anyway I am not speaking in tech terms, I cant say if the poly number/textures/lighting are better, I am speaking in impressive terms, which is very subjective (but for example I think that last gen of XB games(some) had surpassed (most)3dmark2001 demos).

Anyway, as a programer, if you can tell me that they had been surpassed, I belive and respect you, but I am speaking just as a "naive" gamer.

It is late here and if I do not make sence I will try,latter, to explain myself better.

 

[Gollum]

Well this is nothing that MS isn't used to. They have always hype Halo to be bigger than it was, so I figure they will find a way to overhype Sony's hype.

Outside the US Halo packs a lot less punch, but that isn't the point. MS will have to deal with it one way or another, you're right. The point is that Sony seems to intentionally try to keep people believing in this myth of KZ3 being real, while it obviously isn't.

You darn right. I would have said it had you not done it first. The VP said that is exactly what we will play when we get Killzone. So I don't know.

I don't know the quote, but if he really said that, then I'd have to retract my comment about Sony not lying.

Laa-Yosh you didn't answer the question. But to extend the question to what did Guerilla do with the PS3 devkits for 6 months? See this is one of the reasons why I don't believe Laa-Yosh. If that animation company took 5 months to make a one minute clip (I'm really not believing this, I wonder how long it took them to make the CG for Killzone 1 ) then why exactly did Guerilla get the PS3 devkits so early? Just asking honestly because I really can't figure this out.

Why do you think Pixar need years to finish a 90 minute movie, when they've got literally hundreds of people working on the movie full time? Creating good CGI is anything BUT easy and fast!

The way I understand it, Axis was provided with the concept art and storyboard for the animation and then produced all the assets, animation, etc. from scratch, within the specifications given to them. From then on it becomes fuzzy (how it is rendered etc.). I don't know how big Axis is in terms of manpower, but I suspect they're a rather small team, so its realistic for this project to take several months.

It's entirely possible we'll end up seeing many of the same assets and animations they created ending up in the game (whenever that is due to arrive, my guess is its sill a LONG time away). IMO they just won't look the same in real-time though, and neither will the volumetric effects, surfacing or lighting. Will it look good? Most likely! Will it be of the same quality and feature all of the effects seen in this clip? Naaaah!

Edit: BTW, I'm sorry for participating in taking this thread Off-Topic. Won't happen again...

 

[marconelly!]

By "surpassing" I mean in every single aspect, but lastest gen of games some have some thinghs better and other things worst.For example GT demo and GT4, GT4 as better IQ, textures... but (in game gfz) it had lost the reflexions.

But GT3 and 4 does have spherical env. mapping (reflections) and it looks better than in that GT2000 demo. Just look at my post several pages earlier where I linked to a picture of that demo - you can see that reflected textures are not even filtered!

Neither is it publicaly stated anywhere that the art assets in the demonstration weren't even produced by Guerilla, but by a UK animation studio. This is a verified fact, but Sony carefully avoids it (and journalists aren't asking about it either).

Does it really matter if UK studio produced the assets if they will end up being used for a game eventually (no matter how much you want to lowball the expectations, those objects could be used as a source for lower res, normal mapped objects). Also, the assets/trailer were produced according to Guerilla's artist artwork and storyboards, that much we've seen at least, so it's not like they did absolutely nothing, even if the artworks is all they did.

At least Microsoft showed real footage for the most part, they took the highroad. They could have easily created amazing fake videos, and spun their words so most CONSUMERS believe these were actual games in development.

Why don't sony clarify what was and wasn't pre-rendered?

Microsoft is being very shady wherever they can, it's just they are not as good at it as Sony's people. Seriously, you can't mention FUD in a sententence without good ol' MS, and I'd think people would know that by now.

Want examples? Peeter More saying that a basketball player demo dunking was running realtime on Xbox 360 hardware, and that the 2K6 NBA game will look just like that. Truth: The demo was confirmed to be pre-rendered by Visual Concepts people at E3, and the actual game looks nothing even close to it (it literally looks like an Xbox version of the same game, only in higher res - however, that is not important, they still have much time and work to do on the final hardware - the important thing is that Moore didn't say the truth). Or how about releasing the teaser picture concept art of Joana Dark and having people all over the internet speculating whether that's realtime or not? That lasted for maybe two days before the actual game was shown, so the teaser was more detrimental than anything, but still. Or how about mixed realtime/CGI footage of PGR3 where most of it is pre-rendered, but Allard only admitted that days after, when someone pressed him with a straightforward question? Yeah, they are real saints, those MS people

I doubt we'll see that much geometry in this gen, not even with X360's tesselation units.

Hundred millions poly/sec doesn't seem that far fetched. After all, the announced R500 specs are 500M/s with "non-trivial" shaders running. SPE units should also be very good at tesselating, but even without that, I don't see the RSX poly/sec specs being much if any lower than 500M/s (in fact, the leaked G70 specs list 860M/s but don't mention shaders running)

 

[MechanizedDeath]

Now how on earth do you know that? Why do you think CG costs that much?

Most collegues and I think it's quite good. A lot of work is in it, from detailed models to very complex animation, lots of technically difficult things etc. etc.

My friend however works there, and if any details slip out that Sony doesn't want... do the math.

Global illumination requires raytracing. Cell can't do that in realtime, especially with such scene complexity.
The amount of geometry is HUGE. It's been discussed here, with images - do a search. Many millions of polygons in the scene... multiply that with 30 for a smooth playback, and we're counting more than a hundred million polygons per second. I doubt we'll see that much geometry in this gen, not even with X360's tesselation units.
There's a lot of volumetric rendering for the fire and smoke effects.

GOW uses 2-3 point lights per scene and no soft lighting. GOW uses normal mapping and far less actual geometry. GOW uses textured sprites for explosion and smoke effects.

These should be very obvious differences for a start that any artist could easily spot. Then there are programming related issues, like the small space and tight timing of the events - it's far too much for ingame scripted sequences, a bad step from the 'player' would ruin them. See Call of Duty for how a very tightly scripted sequence looks... there aren't any jeeps broadsiding within 2 meters from the player...

I understand why CG costs as much as it does, but I wasn't sure why such a short clip, farmed out to a Cg studio would take that much time. Honestly, it's not very good CG. Not for someone who'e just a consumer of the stuff like me. But I'll take your word for it. I would have expected more, but if it used game assets, then that could explain why it's not exactly mindblowing.

As far as what your friend would find out, I guess you've got to honor his wishes first. But you understand how it's hard to be convinced, right? I mean, you say Sony has all these people under contract, but even you (someone removed from said ontracts) is afraid to speak on it. Sony isn't the Illuminati, but they apparently have everyone shook on this. Yet, they've gone on record multiple times form multiple people associated with the project making claims that corroborate the video being prerendered. So if they admit it's prerendered, what exactly is there to hide? Again, I have no reason to think you're lying, but it's a bit much to swallow. I hope you understand.

Is GI and the poly count the only thing that sets this thing apart? I understand the GI might be a result of the rendering process. That I can expect to be beefed up. But as Faf said, the polygon counts shouldn't be anything crazy, should they? Are you certain there's no normal-mapping going on in these scenes? With the action as frenetic as it was, I don't think it's possible to say for certain what was a normal map and what wasn't. What of the volumetric effects? Haven't we seen a lot of that already this gen? Not of this detail, but certainly we should expect volumetric effects to improve, right? I beleive one of the Epic guys pointed this out in particular, the impressive particle-pushing power of Cell.

It's clear I want the final product to look like this (maybe sans lighting). I've said as much numerous times. But either my expectations are out of wack, or there's more these systems are capable of than we expect. I don't expect GI, but again, not even J. Allard hit the t-ball question that was offered him. He instead took the conservative route and said it's probably doable by the system's end. If it's not telling, then at least it might hint at something. Really, I wouldn't put it out of reach of the Xbox 360, but again, that's my expectations more than anything. I will admit, I love this debate. I think it's the most interesting thing to come out of E3 this year. And I'm glad we have CG experts and coding experts alike to keep everything somewhat grounded in reality. PEACE.