PGR 3 - Pictures and Framebuffer Discussion

[Farid]

You know that the Brooklyn Bridge is 1 million polys, all on its own, don't you?

Without LOD.

In-game, cars include, you're still under what we thought was to be the bar minimum for a next-gen game 1M pps per frame. (well, actually, I knew that long months ago, though... But I'm still depressed about it ).

The fact that you haven't been paying attention does, indeed, disqualify you from making comments that are worth a damn.

You know, this part of your post is uneccessarily agressive, Jawed.
We're not here to discuss who can make relevant comment or not.
(Well, the Moderation Team is here for that. ).

 

[Jawed]

Overall, I agree, this game looks like SM2 (perhaps the odd bit of SM3) tech, running really really fast.

There are known features in Xenos (adaptive tessellation) which are clearly missing from the graphics (the steering wheel really would be round). The game looks like it was built for an insanely fast X800.

In the Kikizo interview, right near the end, the Bizarre guys relate how the devs wanted to re-build the game when they actually got their hands on a real XB360. Sure there was prolly a degree of jokeyness there - but I expect there was some truth in it. It must be a real pain to be contracted to make a launch title and get so little time with the actual hardware.

Anyone here who seriously thinks that we're gonna see "next gen" in games that have had 3 months with the actual hardware is clearly nuts.

From what we've heard about UE3 I honestly doubt that is gonna look next-gen, either. That's another great example of an engine built for a feature set well below what XB360 is capable of.

Jawed

 

[Jawed]

By the way, I can't see any cars reflected in these screenies so it's either an old build or badly bugged.

Jawed

 

[Farid]

I agree with all the pointd you made, Jawed.

I too, think that the UE3.0 is falling short from what you'd expect from the X360/PS3, BTW.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Jawed seems pretty grumpy today. Ask a simple question and get a grumpy answer . As for Brooklyn Bridge, does PGR3 render all million triangle of that bridge? Or does it LOD down to what you can see? If it does render all million triangles, why are the non-city tracks looking so very simplistic? Why do the trees look so fake?

Given XB360 is using DX, if Xenos is capable of rendering 20 trillion poly's a second then why would launch games be using less? Accessing the rendering capabilities of Xenos, in the main, ignoring clever tricks to get better performance, is no harder than accesing any GPU part. It works the same. You send trianlges and it renders them. It's not hard and so why wouldn't it be running at far less than capabilities in launch titles? If devs had to do something special I could understand it, but as MS have said they've kept development easy and standard.

Hence my civil questions for discussion. Sheesh, there's been so little technical discussion on this forum of late I thought it'd make a nice change - how well do they think PGR3 is doing with the hardware; how many poly's a second do people think it's managing; what are the limiting factors? Isn't the max rate of Xenos 500 million a second? And if we're getting 12 million a second in PGR3 (no one else has offered any estimates yet) what's the limiting factor?

Just trying to get some discussion going. If you've contrary points then educate me! Point me to scenes that show what looks like much higher geometry detail! Provide you're own calculations as to how many poly's are being rendered. Explain why you think PGR3's trees look no better than existing solutions.

 

[Hardknock]

Jawed seems pretty grumpy today. Ask a simple question and get a grumpy answer . As for Brooklyn Bridge, does PGR3 render all million triangle of that bridge? Or does it LOD down to what you can see? If it does render all million triangles, why are the non-city tracks looking so very simplistic? Why do the trees look so fake?

No offense Shifty but you really need to look at some more media from PGR3, the game is not lacking geometry anywhere in the environments.(Now those headlights on the vehicles that's another story )

Explain why you think PGR3's trees look no better than existing solutions.

Like I stated earlier, the game is in motion, that's why the trees are blurred.

 

[PC-Engine]

These screenshots don't do the game justice.

 

[London Geezer]

how many poly's a second do people think it's managing; what are the limiting factors? Isn't the max rate of Xenos 500 million a second? And if we're getting 12 million a second in PGR3 (no one else has offered any estimates yet) what's the limiting factor?

Games on PC (and therefore next gen consoles, seeing how they are using GPUs that are largely based on PC GPUs) haven't been geometry limited for AGES.
All GPUs released in the last couple of years can process a lot more geometry than has been displayed in games. Obviously the limiting factor hasn't been geometry for a long time.
These days it's all about fillrate and shading.
Plus a good deal of CPU-boundness thrown in for good measure. Do we know how Bizzarre are using the X360 CPU? How many cores they're using, how optimised their code is...

All these things add up. One thing is for sure, the game is hardly geometry limited.

 

[Powderkeg]

Those trees are all 3D not 2D folks. If you've paid attention to the game you'd know that when the cars are in motion, the backgrounds are blurred, that's why the trees and things look so blurry.

http://www.xboxfront.de/daten/screenshots/bilder_17303.jpg

The dark 3D trees on the left forgot to turn and face the same direction as the same colored dark 3D trees on the right.

 

[London Geezer]

http://www.xboxfront.de/daten/screenshots/bilder_17303.jpg

The dark 3D trees on the left forgot to turn and face the same direction as the same colored dark 3D trees on the right.

Thanks but...

Dieses Bild findet Ihr auf www.xboxfront.de

 

[Jawed]

Adaptive tessellation in Xenos would mean that the steering wheel would be truly round.

The rendering pipeline in Xenos consists of stages that no SM2/SM3 GPU has - the only way to utilise those stages is with an overhaul of the engine.

It's similar to the predicated tiling question. To activate AA in a game requires predicated tiling. We're apparently seeing some games without AA, and the hypothesis is that this is because the engine hasn't been built to allow predicated tiling.

Here's an example:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=572515&postcount=166
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=572526&postcount=167

which is for Vista (DX10). It's hard to be sure about the extent of the commonality of features between DX10 and Xenos, but a look at the block diagram for Xenos:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=561340

implies there's a lot of commonality.

The upshot is that during vertex rendering passes (there might be 5 or 15 per frame) the full power of Xenos (all 48 pipelines) is there to transform the world into screen space, perform occlusion culling, calculate per-light shadows, calculate depth of field, perform adaptive tesselation, generate particles and a pile of other things I can't think of.

Some of those steps require triangle setup (anything that renders to Z) so will use up the 500M triangles per second capability of Xenos. But as far as I can tell adaptive tessellation is free of the setup rate - i.e. only after the GPU calculates the triangles to suit the LOD/viewport is triangle setup performed.

Because PGR3's been "built for SM2 running on a PC", a whole raft of advanced vertex techniques simply aren't in the engine. It's pretty pointless saying it doesn't look "next gen" because the poly count is "low" when it's just a very fast rendering of a "PC gen" game.

Jawed

 

[London Geezer]

Jawed, you keep saying it's a very fast rendering of a PC game....

But at 30fps, it's not THAT fast is it... Even 60fps wouldn't be a "very fast rendering".

 

[Jawed]

If I can find a PC game that looks anywhere near as good and runs anything like as well I'll let you know...

Jawed

 

[blakjedi]

you know one week pgr3 is confirmed 60fps w/4xfsaa the next week its not.

Maybe B3d should invite more developers to our "dev diary" section to tell the truth their way a bout their games... no filter. It been kinda empty as of late and might boost the technical discussion to a great degree.

 

[EricVonZipper]

12 million polys!!!!! What!?

You have 8 cars at 50,000 each @ 30fps =12 million. forget LOD, Bizzare HAVE to budget the fact, you may have all 8 fully rendered cars(100,000) on the screen at once + the Brooklyn bridge(and the NY skyline) + backgrounds + people + split screen + ect...

You MUST budget the possibility that you have ALL the cars + Highly detailed scenery, on the screen at once. I can't repeat this enough! Your fps will slow to a crawl if you do not . You must build the models from a worst case senario.

Some scenarios the poly count is probably *only* 10 million, but on the average I would say 40 million AND @ 1280x720p this is impressive......XBOX was 12 million(on a good day) @ 640x480p, sans cool effects.

And not to mention the high quality/large textures, or the HDR + AA, or ECT.....

I have little doubt this game can push 75 million polys, split screen probably 120 million.

Polygons add up quickly. example: adding a 2000 poly tree to a enviroment, really means you are adding 60,000 polys to your engine(2000x60fps) and thats just ONE tree! imagine 30 or 40 (or 5,000 trolls in KAMEO). I think the people in the stands are probably only 50 polys or so, but that's really 1,500(or 3000) to your 30fps budget. 200 fans in the stands = 200 * 50 * 30 = 300,000 polys(@30fps)....thats like an extra 3 cars, instead of having a cheering crowd.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The upshot is that during vertex rendering passes (there might be 5 or 15 per frame) the full power of Xenos (all 48 pipelines) is there to transform the world into screen space, perform occlusion culling, calculate per-light shadows, calculate depth of field, perform adaptive tesselation, generate particles and a pile of other things I can't think of.

Some of those steps require triangle setup (anything that renders to Z) so will use up the 500M triangles per second capability of Xenos. But as far as I can tell adaptive tessellation is free of the setup rate - i.e. only after the GPU calculates the triangles to suit the LOD/viewport is triangle setup performed.

See? Now that's a nice response. It's informative and constructive. Out of 500 million setup limit max, some of that's being gobbled up with other processes.

I can't believe how jumpy some people have been over this. Someone even gave me bad rep for asking how many poly's people think PGR3 is pushing

 

[rosman]

BC uses speedtree for the trees in PGR3
http://www.bizarreonline.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8828

 

[Powderkeg]

you know one week pgr3 is confirmed 60fps w/4xfsaa the next week its not.

It's 30FPS.



I'll really burst your bubble here.

It's rendered internally at 1024X600 and upscaled to 1280X720 for display.

 

[Powderkeg]

BC uses speedtree for the trees in PGR3
http://www.bizarreonline.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8828

OK, but I'm left unimpressed by it's implementation.

 

[London Geezer]

It's 30FPS.



I'll really burst your bubble here.

It's rendered internally at 1024X600 and upscaled to 1280X720 for display.

Is it? where did u read that? Never heard...