Rage (id Software)

[Silent_Buddha]

The textures are going to be same on PC, well atleast the same as PS3...unless they want to make a 50-60GB game for PC.

Something will have to be cut down on consoles with regards to textures however even if the base textures remain the same. With your average PC video card now having 512 MB - 1024 MB of video memory compared to PS3 with 256 MB and X360 with less than 512 MB.

Even the vaunted storage of PS3 won't be able to do much to alleviate this problem.

Regards,
SB

 

[N_B]

Wasn't megatexture supposed to help that problem somehow?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Exactly. Rage probably uses a lot less texture memory for the entire scene than any other game, that's the point of virtualizing it. I suggest reading up on the issue

 

[Neb]

Something will have to be cut down on consoles with regards to textures however even if the base textures remain the same. With your average PC video card now having 512 MB - 1024 MB of video memory compared to PS3 with 256 MB and X360 with less than 512 MB.

Even the vaunted storage of PS3 won't be able to do much to alleviate this problem.

Regards,
SB

But if PS3 has 256MB VRAM then that will be the limitation since they all share same texture res unless Carmack goes with the thought of doing a special version for PC a real thing. Atleast game will be fine with ancient hardware!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Who knows perhaps more aggressive LOD for textures in the distance?

Didn't ID also mention detail/enhancement textures on objects as they get close the camera? Those might be reduced or non-existant on console.

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

But if PS3 has 256MB VRAM then that will be the limitation since they all share same texture res unless Carmack goes with the thought of doing a special version for PC a real thing. Atleast game will be fine with ancient hardware!

The point will more likely be to balance out every bottleneck anyway, as loading times for getting the texture information could be the bigger issue. If that wasn't the issue, they could be better off just doing the assets as big as they can on both PC and PS3, and then their system will show as much of that as it can on whatever the system can handle. This is a good solution to be scaleable on various kinds of PCs, as well as make as much of the PS3 as possible. But as it is very likely that getting the information off the disc is in fact an issue and there are probably other quality/scale management issues as well, we'll just as likely see the same assets being used across all platforms, which probably mean max 7GB for each of the two megatextures.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

World texel density is limited by the actual size of the source dataset. They are not going to remake the entire megatexture in a higher resolution just for the PC users' sake, so don't expect more detail when you move closer to something.

The runtime memory load has been balanced so that all the texture information in any scene at 720p resolution will be the same for all platforms. The required texel information at this fixed resolution is limited, theoretically you'd need less then a single texel per pixel (although you need to multiply it because of normal, specular and probably some custom extra maps). As the camera moves around, some of the textures disappear from view so data can be discarded, while other tiles get into the view or get closer and thus have to be streamed in. Again, this is the point of using virtual texturing - they're not loading an entire 2K map for a single object if only 1/4th of it is going to be visible, or if it's far away from the camera.
This is why they can keep memory consumption at a constant and relatively low level. I repeat: they probably aren't even using 100MB of texture memory at all. That is the other and even more significant advantage of this technology, instead of the lack of texture repetition.

What the PC can do is to run the game at a significantly higher resolution, which would cause tiles further away from the camera to require a higher MIP level and thus increase the texture memory requirements. But tiles close to the camera are already at the highest MIP level and cannot load any better versions.

I really suggest reading up on the technology itself because there seems to be some misconceptions about it.

 

[AlexV]

wtf, that sounded almost sexual.

Odd, didn't seem sexual at all to me (otherwise I'd not have written it).

 

[_phil_]

I might get flames for that , but i'm very underwhelmed.
Seems like megatexture can't streeam enough data yet.It's ok to great beyond 25 meters, but the 5 to 10 meters before the player are really poorly detailled (like a 256x256 stretched on a 4x4 meter surface).
It's way less than most games out there,and no detail texturing to compensate, by tech constraint.
Static lighting is very flat outside and much better on dynamic objects.
Animation is pretty bad, floatty and cheap.
And first thing i saw is 2 similar details on 2 different pits,but it was just one obvious case.
Interiors seems to look better.I'll see that when i'll get the whole file.

 

[Svensk Viking]

I remember ID saying that the 360 version would look a bit worse than the PS3 version in some aspects due to fitting it onto 2 discs...Will be interesting to try spotting differences when the game is released

 

[Neb]

I remember ID saying that the 360 version would look a bit worse than the PS3 version in some aspects due to fitting it onto 2 discs...Will be interesting to try spotting differences when the game is released

Didn't Carmack say they "solved the problem" and it now is same for all?

 

[Richard]

World texel density is limited by the actual size of the source dataset. They are not going to remake the entire megatexture in a higher resolution just for the PC users' sake, so don't expect more detail when you move closer to something.<snip>

All correct but remember that the deployment MT texel density doesn't have to be the same as the development MT texel density. Like with regular artwork, working with huge 1TB uncompressed MTs and then downsizing/compressing to fit each platform's media requirements.

Not that I genuinely believe it will happen mind you. They're trying very hard to get the console versions [strike]not to suck[/strike] hold their own when compared to a high end PC. Like Nebula says this is great for ancient PCs and laptops but we have 12-thread CPUs, 16GB ram, XFIRE 5970 dream machines now; in a year's time when Rage ships this kind of hardware won't require forfeiting of any soul.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I still don't think that they'd work at a higher density and increase their workload at least by 50%, jus tfor the ~1 million PC users that could benefit from it.

 

[Scott_Arm]

PC guys will have to wait for Doom4 to see their PC muscles flexed. Is Carmack not working on Rage now? Some comments suggest that. Is he working on Doom4 instead? Or is he just not involved beyond the tech prototyping nowadays?

I still think Rage looks fantastic, even if some of the tech is old school. Watching some of the higher resolution vids, it looks like the artists have really been able to leverage MT to create a beautiful landscape. I'm curious if virtual texturing is going to catch on, or if it is already a somewhat dead concept because it's hard to do things like terrain deformation, which seems to be a big buzz item. Or is it hard to do that?

 

[zed]

@_phil_ I agree, this is the first time a carmack/id flagship game has underwhelmed me, Its good to see him/them try new tech and esp a different gaming genre but personally I find this to be a misfire. I dont see other companies wanting megatexture as well since it has IMO only a limited use. With MMOs etc the quality is too low, thus the world has to be medium sized to small, Any suggestions of a game where this tech would fit? quake3 maps or similar games perhaps but then you have the issue of a single map having GB's, plus times that by X number of maps (even blu-ray wont be enuf)

 

[Rangers]

I emailed Carmack (google ftw) on a lark and asked him the proverbial "X360 or PS3" question and got this back:

They are close enough that I could fairly easily design a workload that would make either system look superior. For Rage, we have to expend more effort on the PS3 to maintain 60 hz than we do on the 360, but the PS3 is able to transcode more texture pages in a frame, which helps in some cases.

John Carmack

Transcode more texture pages in a frame? What does that mean?

Edit: I'm guessing it has to do with the SPU's decoding compressed textures for megatexture?

 

[Richard]

Decompress/Compress at run-time, probably because they offload the SPUs.

 

[jlippo]

I still don't think that they'd work at a higher density and increase their workload at least by 50%, jus tfor the ~1 million PC users that could benefit from it.

Indeed, those 128kx128k maps must be hard enough on the rendering farm.

 

[nightshade]

Indeed, those 128kx128k maps must be hard enough on the rendering farm.

Imagine the difference in size if they were to improve it even 10% more....really not a practical idea for a super PC version.

 

[assen]

The textures will surely be drawn aiming for 720p; I can imagine the PC hardcore IQ fanatics (hi Nebula) be unhappy about it. It wouldn't be practical drawing 3x additional texels, and going from ~14 GB (two Xbox 360 DVDs) to 30-40 (3-4 dual-layer DVDs) for the PC version.

Also, if they really stress the SPUs for transcoding, or even one full 360 core with low-level VMX - single-core and low-end dualcore PCs will have trouble keeping up.