PGR 3 - Pictures and Framebuffer Discussion

[Shifty Geezer]

12 million polys!!!!! What!?

You have 8 cars at 50,000 each @ 30fps =12 million.

You're reasoning is the same as mine, only I imagine there's less car polygons being rendered. The major point was I felt (perhaps wrongly. That's what we're discussing nicely here) that with the cars eating up 12 million poly's, there's not much going on in the scenery. Some people have suggested I'm crazy delusional and not really paying attention for suggesting the scenery isn't particularly high geometry, and maybe they're right, but all it'd take is a link to a PGR3 pic that's showing the detail.

eg.
http://www.bizarreonline.net/img/screenshots/pgr3/03.jpg
The building is quite high geom for scenery. Dunno how the corrugated railing thing is modelled, whether there's lots of triangles consumed there.

Some scenarios the poly count is probably *only* 10 million, but on the average I would say 40 million

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

That's cool. Can you show me some pics like that? Just saying I haven't seen any. The 'most poly's' I could find was probably this IGN pic http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/741/741362/img_3113359.html or maybe http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/741/741362/img_2998787.html/http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/741/741362/img_3113365.html because of the crowds.

If you like me factor the cars comes to say 10-12 million, and if as you say PGR3 can handle maybe 40 million/frame, do you think the pics I've linked to show 25-30 million trianlge scenery models? If not, do you have example pics that look so detailed?

From what I'm seeing (which is what I've said) is that scenery doesn't look too high geom, and all it'd take from those that disagree wtih me is either an explanation why (like Jawed's explanation of using vertex capacity for things besides trianlge rendering) or a screenshot or two that clearly shows a highest-case situation. Like a grab of several cars with a very filled and detailed skyline maybe.

 

[Powderkeg]

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

I don't know if it's posted anywhere yet, but I know someone who reviews games and has the final review build, and that's what he told me.

 

[c0_re]

I don't see how people can't be impressed by this if thats not next gen I don't know what is.

 

[London Geezer]

I don't know if it's posted anywhere yet, but I know someone who reviews games and has the final review build, and that's what he told me.

And... how would he know? even with final hardware and software...?

Not saying it isn't true, i don't know.

Personally i don't see the point. The Xenos would hardly be fillrate limited at 720p to have to lower to 1024x600. So much for a "fast game"...

 

[Farid]

PGR3 pushing 120M pps per seconds?
A game "journalist" being able to tell a ~20% reduction of the size of a backbuffer?

What's going on in this thread?

 

[expletive]

I don't know if it's posted anywhere yet, but I know someone who reviews games and has the final review build, and that's what he told me.

How did this person ascertain from a review build that the game was being rendered internally at 1024x600?

Out of curiosity, what would be the framebuffer size rendering at that res? Maybe less than 10mb so no tiling for AA?

However, if youre going to scale the image anyway i wonder what impact that would have de-AA'ing a scene....

I kinda find this hard to believe and really wish we could get some official info from BC on this, all the speculation from this all the way to 60fps/4xAA always derails things.

 

[[maven]]

Out of curiosity, what would be the framebuffer size rendering at that res? Maybe less than 10mb so no tiling for AA?

It would exactly fit (1024x600x4x2x2 ^= X * Y * BPP * AA * C/Z)...

 

[Powderkeg]

And... how would he know? even with final hardware and software...?

With a dev kit it's easy to know. Also, I have noticed that all recent screenshots have been at 1024X576 resolution.

Personally i don't see the point. The Xenos would hardly be fillrate limited at 720p to have to lower to 1024x600. So much for a "fast game"...

I agree. It seems like the game should certianly be capable of more.

But then again, it is a launch title. Perhaps they just didn't have the time to optimize it to the point they wanted.

 

[Jawed]

If true, it would be just another indication that the "it's too close to launch, we can't re-engineer the game engine for predicated tiling" hypothesis prolly has merit.

Certainly, I'm generally disappointed in the remaining jaggies we see in screenshots.

Jawed

 

[London Geezer]

With a dev kit it's easy to know. Also, I have noticed that all recent screenshots have been at 1024X576 resolution.

Oh, well you said he's a "reviewer" so i assumed he was from the press and as such, obviously without a devkit...

I agree. It seems like the game should certianly be capable of more.

But then again, it is a launch title. Perhaps they just didn't have the time to optimize it to the point they wanted.

I'm beginning to think PGR3 really isn't a very optimised game, which would make sense cause it's a launch title. In a sense it's f**king good news, i mean it already looks gorgeous, imagine when a very optimised PGR comes out!!

 

[expletive]

Out of curiosity, what would be the framebuffer size rendering at that res? Maybe less than 10mb so no tiling for AA?

It would exactly fit (1024x600x4x2x2 ^= X * Y * BPP * AA * C/Z)...

If true, this seems like a logical reason becuase clearly the 360 on its own is would not be limited in any other capacity...

 

[Powderkeg]

Oh, well you said he's a "reviewer" so i assumed he was from the press and as such, obviously without a devkit...

Many people from the press get dev kits. How do you think they run preview versions of unfinished games?

I'm beginning to think PGR3 really isn't a very optimised game, which would make sense cause it's a launch title. In a sense it's f**king good news, i mean it already looks gorgeous, imagine when a very optimised PGR comes out!!

I'm not complaining. I loved PGR2's gameplay enough that the 30FPS really didn't bother me. Sure, I would love to see 60, but it's a minor issue and definitely not a deal breaker for me.

 

[Jawed]

I suspect it's heavily optimised implementation of the current engine for XB360.

The problem being that the engine, overall, is out of whack.

It's a bit like running Halo2 on XB360 except here the starting point is not quite that old-skool.

Having said that, it does seem like Bizarre has had fun adding pixel shader effects (e.g. heat haze from the exhaust) that, I guess, aren't heavily dependent on the engine.

Another thing I don't like in the graphics is the lame smoke from the tyres.

Jawed

 

[London Geezer]

Many people from the press get dev kits. How do you think they run preview versions of unfinished games?

Well i thought some "journalists" just spent their day on intradent forums and wrote their articles with info gathered from there.

 

[Jawed]

Sure, I would love to see 60, but it's a minor issue and definitely not a deal breaker for me.

In the Kikizo video interview the Bizarre guys say the physics runs at 60fps and they think it should make the game feel good.

They uhmed and ahed over the 60fps graphics question. Clearly they wanted to give the impression that 30fps graphics wasn't definite - but their body language said something quite different.

Jawed

 

[[maven]]

Having said that, it does seem like Bizarre has had fun adding pixel shader effects (e.g. heat haze from the exhaust) that, I guess, aren't heavily dependent on the engine.

The things with the heat haze that miffs me a bit, though, is that it's simply a dependent texture read, and they're using it as some sort of "look how physically correct we are" type-of-thing (which it clearly is not - it is a simply post-processing effect which could've been done on any current console (but especially the Gamecube)).

 

[expletive]

With a dev kit it's easy to know. Also, I have noticed that all recent screenshots have been at 1024X576 resolution.

How do these screenshots get captured? Arent they limited to the output resolutions of the console itself and then scaled from there?

I dont believe 1024x576 is one of the output options for the 360, it could just be scaled to that size as i think its a somewhat standard lower resolution for 16:9. (i.e. lower-end DLP projectors run at that res.)

 

[Powderkeg]

In the Kikizo video interview the Bizarre guys say the physics runs at 60fps and they think it should make the game feel good.

They uhmed and ahed over the 60fps graphics question. Clearly they wanted to give the impression that 30fps graphics wasn't definite - but their body language said something quite different.

Jawed

PGR2 was the same way. Graphics were at 30FPS but physics and controls were sampled at 60FPS.

 

[Powderkeg]

Well i thought some "journalists" just spent their day on intradent forums and wrote their articles with info gathered from there.

Some do. Not all reviewers are created equal.

 

[one]

It's 30fps & 2xFSAA, according to the most recent review for the 99% build...

I don't know if it's posted anywhere yet, but I know someone who reviews games and has the final review build, and that's what he told me.

I suspected it before for other games, but not PGR3. Can you really confirm it for PGR3?