[PC] Aliens vs. Predator

Didn't much like this quote.

Implication being that having to take into consideration AFR means they have to be more conservative with engine/game features. God, how I absolutely HATE AFR.

I do like the fact that he's hoping XP will die soon, though.

Oh looks like they are using LOD tesselation and reducing/increasing the poly count depending on how far it is from the camera, very cool. You can actually watch the number of polygons being reduced as the camera moves away from the Alien after it has been turned on.

Regards,
SB

 

I have a slight (major) beef with the tessellation implementation in this game directly related to above... Basically it's gone completely to waste. They're using it almost exclusively as an LOD tool, instead of actually using it to increase model detail. They adaptively tessellate and smoothe what appears to be *everything*, but it doesn't appear they use any displacement maps on characters *at all* (and with those base meshes, who would?!), and if they're using displacement on the environments, I've completely over-looked it.

Why does this bother me, though? Hundreds of thousands of tessellated polygons per character with no displacement, and no real improvement to model quality?! Seems a little wasteful, and more than a little pointless.

This is why I basically characterize the implementation in this game as being an afterthough, or at-best a tack-on feature. Realistically, that's probably what it was, too - toward the end of development, someone likely said, "Hey, we're porting our DX10 code over to a DX11 path on PC - Let's chuck tessellation in there to sound futuristic", only problem is all the geometry was built from the start with efficiency as a cornerstone, not displacement (Hard-surface modeling and game modeling look COMPLETELY different from a modeling perspective).

/rant

 

It may be tacked on, it may be beefier than what was shown. Basically it's just a tech demonstration of what Dx11 features they've used.

Not going to hold my breath that it's better than the tiny bit that was shown, but I'm also not going to go all doom and gloom until we get to see the actual game in action. Remember that was made 6 months or more ago and shows just one model on which it was used. I'd say it's a bit hard to say with any certainty how much or how well it is actually used within the game.

Perhaps it's only used for increased performance. If that's the case and they then used the extra performance budget to add in additional features, then it's all good.

That said, we'll find out soon. Isn't the game due out in Feb.?

Regards,
SB

 

It is used for creatures/humans and terrain and possibly also objects.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVo_5VCWIzM&fmt=18

 

Impressive, can't wait to try it out when the game is released.

Regards,
SB

 

I agree they could potentially come a long way since the videos that have been shown, but I've also seen recent shots of the game, and displacement is still nowhere to be seen. Now admitedly, tessellation *could* be used as a performance enhancer, but I just don't see that being the case here. If they're using it for LOD, they could probably get better performance with discrete LODs. It'd likely hit bandwidth a little harder to constantly load different LODs, but it'd also be faster on the geometry side of things because you're not drawing hundreds of thousands of redundant polys.

Now that's not a doom and gloom prediction in general, but a statement that this game should probably not be looked upon favorably as a showpiece for the virtues of tessellated geometry - Though this and Dirt 2 are both notable first shots.

Correct- nearest I can tell everything is tessellated, but nothing is displaced, I.E. the models are certainly a bit smoother, but they have *zero* added details - It's a bit of a waste because you probably could get away with some displacement judging from the base meshes. They could achieve litterally the same visual effect using a handful of discrete LODs instead. It's understandable, though - it's a proof of concept if anything. The idea to show off tessellation was probably made long after all the geometry was finalized, and what is there isn't entirely suitable for displacement.

 

I still don't understand what is the big fuzz over tessellation. Isn't it just extra geometry and polygons? Why can't it be done on previous generations of cards? What makes it any different than just the rule of extra detail = lower performance? Looks nice but will it be worth the fps hit?

 

I think in this way they can control not only texture LOD but also geometry complexity dynamicly, so you'd see more polygons the closer you are to the object. Performance may not be necesarily a problem because at the same time they increase poly count in the foreground they can reduce it in the background, also a "zoom" normally implies that you see less of the rest of the scene so even if total poly count is constant it can "distributed" on the fly for better perceived quality.

just my 2 cents

 

There's a lot of fuzz actually, and with good reason. Tessellation can be used for everything from water simulation and terrain, to adaptive LOD. It increases mesh density dramatically, making practical the use of displacement maps for radically more detailed characters, worlds and objects. It is kinda essential in bridging the gap between offline CGI and realtime simulation. Tessellation is already a reality in offline CGI - has been for a loooong time, and it's why CGI models can have nearly impossible levels of detail and smoothness, while realtime simulations are usually comprised of comparatively very-low-polygon, blocky objects.

Why is it a necessity? Because each vertex of a 3D model has to live in memory and on disk, and for multi-million poly models we could saturate a 50GB blu-ray very easily - we could also very easily saturate RAM and clog our data lanes in a flash. Storing and manipulating those much more complex assets is still beyond a little impractical, otherwise.

Why can't older hardware do it?

Well to an extent it can, but you run the risk that it will be achingly slow and you're likely going to have to find another way to achieve it - maybe on the CPU, maybe on the GPU, but written in CUDA, or something else. Something like DX10 as an API doesn't support it at all IIRC. From a hardware perspective, older hardware may not support the types of commands required to extrapolate tessellated geometries from lower-resolution meshes, so there's another problem.

Also - in an ideal situation, games will be designed with this in mind from the start, so no frame-rate hit. Today it may be a different story - Enabling tessellation in a game with both a DX10 and a DX11 render path most likely will result in the DX10 path running at a higher frame-rate, but in the future it's more likely there will be no option to fall back to older render paths (Especially on console) which means the only frame rate hit will be when the game is running on slower hardware.

 

Sunscar I noticed that for the game Metro 2033 the dev said a GTX2xx will run fine with everything enabled which would include tesselation and their 'MLAA' solution. Could this be CUDA in action?

 

Quite possibly. That would be my most direct guess. It'd be the most obvious path around that limmitation in DX10 on Nvidia hardware, IMO.

 

OT, but maybe interesting to some of you:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/3730/

So, this is the third time I bought this one , hope it'll sell well. Too bad the great music from Rich Ragsdale is now compressed and not in audio CD quality.

Cheers...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JR4ABdQvlw&

Too much Gore

 

Hehe, funniest comment of the year.

A game based on a couple movies which features chest bursters bursting out of peoples chests, aliens tail spiking through bodies, aliens biting through peoples skulls, predators that blow off peoples heads, predators that skin the creatures (including humans) they hunt then string them up for all to see (without skin), predators that...oh hell you get the point.

Regards,
SB

 

@Silent_Buddha

I get your point, but I agree with nightshade that this looks too much/tacked on. Not because of the gore per se, but because I get the feeling that it was put in to be "cool", without much purpose.

For example, if you compare the perverse scene (even though everything that is based on Gigers work is perverse in its roots) in the hospital (IIRC, the second AvP movie) with the old scenes you get that certain things were put in to shock on a unimaginative level/be cool instead of raise fear. Really hope they do not "learn" from the crappy AvP movies (ok, Alien 4 manages to be crappy as well), rather use the original movies as base.

This is the reason why the original Alien is much more frightening than all those gory slasher like movies, even the special effects have gone a long way since the seventies.

So, in the case of the game; after the trophy move has been executed x times it is just as frightening as playing Mortal Kombat on the Mega Drive (which I adored when I was a kid, but it was just a great beat em up with over the top violence, certainly not frightening).

Anyway, if the new AvP game will be 80% as fun as the first one I will be more than happy...

Cheers...

 

Well, yes if this were just an Aliens movie and you only followed the first two then the gore "might" be considered over the top. As much of the gore is accomplished off-screen.

But this is Aliens vs Predator. And the Predator movies have always had over the top gore and violence. One of the signature scene's was the skinned corpse of a guy hanging from a tree...

But yeah I'm hoping this turns out with gameplay and atmosphere similar to the first AvP game.

Regards,
SB

 

no multiplayer yet,
I wonder if it will be compatible with the original

 

I dont have a problem with Gore in games,I love a good few games cause of Gore [Gears springs into mind] but the problem is they are showing it in a way it feels to be tacked on...Like those Trophy Kills.