Next Gen Graphic Effects Are Amazing (Xbox 360, PS3)

[Hardknock]

So I'm sitting here playing this new game called Kameo and from the first opening scene I'm completely blown away with the various effects in play. From the HDR lighting, particle effects, 4xAA and real-time depth of field, to the number of enemies and geometry, everything is just so phenomenal. While all of these things are highly impressive, the one thing that amazed and interested me the most were the textures. I'm not sure what's being used(I'm guessing some advanced form of parallax mapping), but Kameo takes structures made out of flat low count polygons and adds all sorts of details, lighting and depth to it. Normal mapping this gen attempted to do the same thing, but the illusion is lost as soon as you get close to an object and the lighting always looked off. With Kameo no matter what angle or how close I get they still maintain their resilience. I've taken a few pics from my crappy digital camara on my 44inch HDTV just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. These are from the first training area, but the effect is seen everywhere through-out the game. (Pay particular attention to the wall and floor textures in these screens.)


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/hardknock/Picture1314a.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/hardknock/Picture1323a.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/hardknock/Picture1317a.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/hardknock/Picture1346a.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/hardknock/Picture1327a.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/hardknock/Picture1329a.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v333/hardknock/Picture1338a.jpg


Seeing these kinds of advanced effects in launch games has me wondering what other graphical effects besides Parallax Mapping can we look forward to in the future?

 

[Farid]

It seems that the Rare games have some procedural textures for the detail texturing, or is it just classical detail texturing?

I'm saying because PD0 had some very good, and quite complex, detail texturing applied some surfaces.

Seeing these kinds of advanced effects in launch games has me wondering what other graphical effects besides Parallax Mapping can we look forward to in the future?

In the "obvious" shaders category that one could expect from the next-gen games, there's the Vertex Texturing, which looks very good, especially for rendering waves.

 

[tEd]

screenshots look really nice indeed.

Could be parallax occlusion mapping or something similar , the same thing ati has in their toy shop demo

 

[Bill]

In some ways, I'm amazed at X360 graphics.

Yet in some ways, I'm underwhelmed as well.

A good example of this is PGR3. I sit slack jawed at the photorealistic detail on the car models in the showroom, then when I start driving, a bit of "this is nice but is this it?" sets in. And PGR3 is one of the early graphical standouts no doubt, dont get me wrong.

It depends on what PS3 looks like, because you cant judge without looking at what the other guy pulled off, or second gen games, but I'm not stunned and wowed on the whole. Or at times I am but overall I'm not.

PDZ has this..shiny bumpmapping or something on everything, much like those Kameo shots, I really dont like it. I'd rather they put whatever horsepower into some other graphics than that. It's just..artificial looking. Stuff is not normally that shiny.

 

[Hardknock]

One thing I've noticed is MGS4 uses a very high amount of Polygons, but the textures on the environment(walls, ground and the tank) are all low-res and not using many effects. Contrast that with Gears Of War, Kameo and other 360 games that don't necessarily focus on polys but rather insane textures... Is this a preview of what to expect from each console? Personally I prefer advanced texturing techniques to higher polys anyday.... Does the 360 have anything special in it's hardware that allows for superior shading and texturing?

 

[Skrying]

One thing I've noticed is MGS4 uses a very high amount of Polygons, but the textures on the environment(walls, ground and the tank) are all low-res and not using many effects. Contrast that with Gears Of War, Kameo and other 360 games that don't necessarily focus on polys but rather insane textures... Is this a preview of what to expect from each console? Personally I prefer advanced texturing techniques to higher polys anyday.... Does the 360 have anything special in it's hardware that allows for superior shading and texturing?

This could be mainly do to the fact that MSG4 is not ran on a actual system. I except vastly different visuals really. Also, it can be largely up to what the developer wants to do, their perference in art style. I'm expecting lots of amazing little treats in store with the Xbox 360, but on the PS3 just more of what we've seen just done with a lot more detail. I think both consoles will have their strong suite. Generally it'll be largely up to the person what they really like more. I'm generally a texture person myself.

 

[Farid]

Is this a preview of what to expect from each console?

No. Both the X360 and the PS3 are virtually capable of the same things from a qualitative standpoint.
Now, from a quantitative point of view, I can't tell, there might be some differences. But it won't be related to texturing.

A difference in texturing quality could have existed if there was a difference in the amount of RAM in each Console, and/or if one of the machine had a TC technology other than the ones based on S3TC.

It's all up to the developers and the art direction they choose.

One thing I've noticed is MGS4 uses a very high amount of Polygons, but the textures on the environment(walls, ground and the tank) are all low-res and not using many effects.

What effects were missing? Not that I was specially impressed with the MGS4 demo, but it had all the SM3.0 class effects one could expect.
Some wall textures, especially, were really bad, that's a fact.

 

[_phil_]

sorry ,find it all ugly(IMO) .It's technically simple paralax mapping (recognised by it's over stretched pixel effect).It's overused IMO ,and specularity seems never alpha-ed (masked).

These Rare games all feel their xbox roots.It looks like the most easy and obvious way to improve these game was to bump it up with paralaxe everywhere.
People impressed by this should worry for their pants the incoming years,when technology will pair with real artistic direction on from the ground nextgen dev.

 

[Fafalada]

Is this a preview of what to expect from each console?

I would think it's pretty damn obvious MGS4 looks different then just about anything else shown for PS3. It has its own strong stylistic choice.
Plus it was running on a software platform that is clearly built from their existing PS2 tech (I am willing to bet most of the codebase for that demo came straight from their SilentHill stuff) - so you get stuff like shadowing looking extremely familiar to last couple of Konami PS2 games...

 

[Hardknock]

A difference in texturing quality could have existed if there was a difference in the amount of RAM in each Console, and/or if one of the machine had a TC technology other than the ones based on S3TC.

True, I don't expect any huge differences, but if one machine was particularly better at shading and texturing wouldn't that enable more advanced effects?

It's all up to the developers and the art direction they choose.

What effects were missing? Not that I was specially impressed with the MGS4 demo, but it had all the SM3.0 class effects one could expect.
Some wall textures, especially, were really bad, that's a fact

With MS owning DirectX, I'm pretty sure they are allowing ATi to put more advanced(unreleased) features into Xenos that RSX won't have...

Yeah, the texturing on MGS4 is horrible IMO. Check out these screens and look at the wall and the tank:

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen005.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen006.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen004.jpg

Contrast those with the superior textures in Kameo and Gears Of War.

This is not a knock on MGS4 because I think the smoke, lighting and character models are excellent. Snake in MGS4 has more polygons than any other character I've seen for Next-gen so far. It appears to be a trade off of sorts.

One thing to think about though is a high-polygon model is immediately noticable on either high-def or Standard Def TV. SDTV users will be very happy with MGS4's graphics because they don't have the resolution to see the low-res textures. So that might be why Konami went that route, but the low-res textures might turn a few HDTV owners off. Now with the more detailed and advanced texture techniques(like what we see in GOW and Kameo), it takes an HDTV to truly appreciate them. So HDTV owners would be very happy, but it would be harder for SDTV owners to distinguish any differences from this gen.

 

[dodo3]

If memory serves me right, someone asked Kojima in an interview why the wall, tank, and ground texturing was so low, he responded somewhere along the lines of not caring so much for objects no one really pays attention to.

 

[BTOA]

Plus it was running on a software platform that is clearly built from their existing PS2 tech (I am willing to bet most of the codebase for that demo came straight from their SilentHill stuff) - so you get stuff like shadowing looking extremely familiar to last couple of Konami PS2 games...

I agree and this what I have always believed about MGS4.

 

[rabidrabbit]

I'm an animation and lighting person, more than texture or polygon.
Those two are still very current gen in the "next gen" games.
Better textures and models, they come for granted with increased processing power, and imo with them there's more diminishing returns between this and coming gen than there is potential in the animation, physics simulation and lighting.

 

[Avon_Implosion]

True, I don't expect any huge differences, but if one machine was particularly better at shading and texturing wouldn't that enable more advanced effects?



With MS owning DirectX, I'm pretty sure they are allowing ATi to put more advanced(unreleased) features into Xenos that RSX won't have...

Yeah, the texturing on MGS4 is horrible IMO. Check out these screens and look at the wall and the tank:

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen005.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen006.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen004.jpg

Contrast those with the superior textures in Kameo and Gears Of War.

This is not a knock on MGS4 because I think the smoke, lighting and character models are excellent. Snake in MGS4 has more polygons than any other character I've seen for Next-gen so far. It appears to be a trade off of sorts.

One thing to think about though is a high-polygon model is immediately noticable on either high-def or Standard Def TV. SDTV users will be very happy with MGS4's graphics because they don't have the resolution to see the low-res textures. So that might be why Konami went that route, but the low-res textures might turn a few HDTV owners off. Now with the more detailed and advanced texture techniques(like what we see in GOW and Kameo), it takes an HDTV to truly appreciate them. So HDTV owners would be very happy, but it would be harder for SDTV owners to distinguish any differences from this gen.

I doubt that the MGS4 tech demo shown at TGS indicates that the final version will feature low-res textures and high-poly characters, and wouldn't represent the PS3, as a whole, to be technically ineffective when compared to the 360 in terms of advanced texturing/shading. The theory is that the textures and a few lighting effects seen in the demo were recycled from previous tech...ie, PS2, perhaps...just beefed up a bit for the PS3 and to please the masses.
Also note that i doubt that there are many who consider it logical to build a game which revolves around the advantages of having SDTV...especially a next-gen game. Sony and MS seem to be pushing for high def damn hard next gen, and their consoles would reflect this. The fact that some of the textures in MGS4 look like oatmeal smeared on paper could be simply to save time, IMO...i expect that they wanted you to focus on the things that counted, ie Snake, Otacon, and the areas in the environment that mattered.

 

[Farid]

With MS owning DirectX, I'm pretty sure they are allowing ATi to put more advanced(unreleased) features into Xenos that RSX won't have...

I don't know what you're trying to say. The graphical API used in the DevKit have no direct incidence in the feature set found in the GPU, if that's what you meant.

Yeah, the texturing on MGS4 is horrible IMO. Check out these screens and look at the wall and the tank:

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen005.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen006.jpg
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/257/reviews/926596_20050916_screen004.jpg

Contrast those with the superior textures in Kameo and Gears Of War.

I hope you know what you just did...
You turned your own thread into a X360 VS PS3 debate, plus "Screenshots cherry picked-ton".

And, remember that MGS fans are expert in that art.
In a few hours the thread will be full of cherry picked pictures of Kameo and GoW...

Fun times ahead.

 

[Titanio]

With MS owning DirectX, I'm pretty sure they are allowing ATi to put more advanced(unreleased) features into Xenos that RSX won't have...

And there are features in RSX that Xenos won't have. Neither ATi nor NVidia stick rigidly to DirectX specs, both tend to include things beyond the spec, their own tech etc.

As for MGS4, I think any relatively undercooked environmental texturing is probably more a product of the game's early state vs anything else. Compare the texturing on the environment to the texturing on snake (some of the best I've seen). Kojima has said a few times now that the game will look better than it did at TGS, which is saying something, and maybe environmental texturing will be high on the list for sprucing up. That said, if it were a tradeoff between a better textured "static" environment and a what we've seen till now, but with an "active", physically realistic environment, I'd take the latter any day. I don't see why that tradeoff would need to exist for anything other than time reasons, though. Regardless of the gap between the character texturing (on Snake) and that of his environment, the combination of everything (the HDR, the lighting, the DOF, the movement of the scene, the modelling, the texturing etc.) paints a brilliantly beautiful picture, so I'm not too fussed.

(Oh, and one look at screenshots for Kameo on GS only illustrates how easy it is to pick and choose views that show better and poorer texturing - just like MGS4 If texturing is your thing, clarficiation as to the filtering issue on X360 games, if it still exists, might also have seemed more pressing).

 

[BlueTsunami]

*glares at Hardknock menacingly

You can see the imperfections through screenshots but part of the amazement (for me) comes from the fluidity of the animation and the nice high poly character models.

 

[liverkick]

Novice question for the graphics gurus here. Will parallax mapping (and other related techniques) be practical for anything other than traditional bricks and mortar next gen? Its use in games so far looks rather impressive, but it seems to be consistently applied to the same types of textures (sides of buildings etc). Is it applicable for more organic surfaces? Like grass on a playing field for example? How about actual characters? Is it more advanced than normal mapping or are they different techniques?

 

[Farid]

Novice question for the graphics gurus here. Will parallax mapping (and other related techniques) be practical for anything other than traditional bricks and mortar next gen? Its use in games so far looks rather impressive, but it seems to be consistently applied to the same types of textures (sides of buildings etc).

Because of its nature, it works better on flat surfaces.

Is it applicable for more organic surfaces? Like grass on a playing field for example?

Not really, because just like Bump Mapping, it creates an "emboss" effect, which cannot recreate complex models like blades of grass.

Is it more advanced than normal mapping or are they different techniques?

Actually it's basically a normal mapping "plus".

Here some papers if you're really interested:
http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/games/SteepParallax/
http://www.infiscape.com/doc/parallax_mapping.pdf

 

[Hardknock]

I don't know what you're trying to say. The graphical API used in the DevKit have no direct incidence in the feature set found in the GPU, if that's what you meant.


I hope you know what you just did...
You turned your own thread into a X360 VS PS3 debate, plus "Screenshots cherry picked-ton".

And, remember that MGS fans are expert in that art.
In a few hours the thread will be full of cherry picked pictures of Kameo and GoW...

Fun times ahead.

Hey, I wasn't trying to "cherry pick screenshots" and I hope noone else starts that in here. I was only proving a point. I don't like to make baseless claims like MGS4 has low-res textures without providing proof, because then people will think I'm trolling. But since I show proof people won't be so quick to discredit what I'm saying.