Ratchet and Clank PS3 - High Resolution screens

A little Q&A from Threespeech if anyone's interested...

http://threespeech.com/blog/?p=422#more-422

This surprised me a little:

How much does the progressive mesh differ from the original PS2 R&C-engine in terms of scale?

Al Hastings, Chief Technical Officer: Our level-of-detail techniques are actually much simpler on PS3 than they were on PS2. We made the decision to steer away from doing heavy amounts of geometry processing on the SPUs, so instead we’ve focused on techniques that can be implemented directly on the graphics chip. There are a lot of trade-offs with this approach, but ultimately we like the fact that it gives us more flexibility in our engine and it frees up the SPUs for gameplay related processing.
 
Only a couple of interesting bits. The LOD is one. I guess they found they had enough drawing capacity for what they wanted that they didn't feel it necessary to implement agressive LOD.

I'm really keen to see what appears on PSN. Sony definitely seem to be backing their download service with top-grade development.
 
Nice to see Insomniac, Al and Mike, picked my questions to answer (#7,8 and 9). :D Good answers i think.

I can't wait to see how this game turns out, next stop is the demo for E3 in July which they are working on right now. Hopefully this demo makes it to PSn also. :smile:
 
How much does the progressive mesh differ from the original PS2 R&C-engine in terms of scale?

Al Hastings, Chief Technical Officer: Our level-of-detail techniques are actually much simpler on PS3 than they were on PS2. We made the decision to steer away from doing heavy amounts of geometry processing on the SPUs, so instead we’ve focused on techniques that can be implemented directly on the graphics chip. There are a lot of trade-offs with this approach, but ultimately we like the fact that it gives us more flexibility in our engine and it frees up the SPUs for gameplay related processing.

Hmm....well thats interesting. I wonder what they mean. If it's all done on the gpu, then presumably its one vert in -> one vert out. How can they discard/prune unnecessary ones? Or perhaps they are talking about something totally different. With progressive mesh, you can tweak verts with the spus, discard unnecessary ones, and rebuild a smaller vertex buffer that gets sent along its merry way to be rendered. If they are gpu only, then the only thing I can think of is that they keep multiple lod's of each model and switch them out based on distance as is typically done, but then they take the additional step of 'moving' verts right in the vertex shader such that when the lod switch is made, the change is imperceptible since many verts have been moved to the point of being almost overlapped. At least thats all I can think of. Ideas anyone?
 
Hmm....well thats interesting. I wonder what they mean. If it's all done on the gpu, then presumably its one vert in -> one vert out. How can they discard/prune unnecessary ones? Or perhaps they are talking about something totally different. With progressive mesh, you can tweak verts with the spus, discard unnecessary ones, and rebuild a smaller vertex buffer that gets sent along its merry way to be rendered. If they are gpu only, then the only thing I can think of is that they keep multiple lod's of each model and switch them out based on distance as is typically done, but then they take the additional step of 'moving' verts right in the vertex shader such that when the lod switch is made, the change is imperceptible since many verts have been moved to the point of being almost overlapped. At least thats all I can think of. Ideas anyone?

I don't think they are using Progressive Mesh at all. It is only mentioned in the question which apparently came out of nowhere. To me the answer reads like "we don't use any SPU's for gfx processing and here is why...".

Considering the guys are really proficient on SPU usage, I guess SPU aid to RSX isn't very practical (yet?).
 
I don't think they are using Progressive Mesh at all. It is only mentioned in the question which apparently came out of nowhere. To me the answer reads like "we don't use any SPU's for gfx processing and here is why...".

Considering the guys are really proficient on SPU usage, I guess SPU aid to RSX isn't very practical (yet?).

or given that they did not nearly have the time to write a from the gound up engine Resistance... is it possible their engine is mostly based on tech used from their PS2 engines (ie different quality meshes based on draw distances). I seem to remember a God of War dev saying that the engine used for God of War on PS3would be based on ps2 tech as they have to much invested in it for a redo.
 
Considering the guys are really proficient on SPU usage, I guess SPU aid to RSX isn't very practical (yet?).
That's really jumping the gun, especially given the material we've seen on Edge! It's more a case that they chose not to use SPE's to help, as the guy answering said. Discussion on resons why ought to be held in the Technology thread methinks, as it's more appropriate there.
 
I seem to remember a God of War dev saying that the engine used for God of War on PS3would be based on ps2 tech as they have to much invested in it for a redo.
If I remember correctly, that was mostly related to the tools that the artists used to design the scenes, that still leaves lot of room to change the engine that actually draws the scene, even if the scenes are described in a similar format.
 
New screenshot from the level Insomniac will demo at E3. The same city, Metropolis, found in the original game and the GDC-demo from ages ago.

754594362_43f6776063_b.jpg
 
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Totally unimpressive. Geometry level is good, but other than that it looks subpar. Not a single hi-res texture in there, no shadows and badly done sprites...
 
the pic is amazingly detailed. i think the textures themselves are still high res since they're crispy clear. the sheer amount of details on screen is clearly impressive and reminds me some pixar films.
 
:LOL: Are you talking about the cardboard trees? Who knows it might be intentional. :LOL:
LOL.

the pic is amazingly detailed. i think the textures themselves are still high res since they're crispy clear. the sheer amount of details on screen is clearly impressive and reminds me some pixar films.
Lets not get carried away. I agree that most sufaces look extremely clean, but to me, it looks as if they are basically untextured.
 
Totally unimpressive. Geometry level is good, but other than that it looks subpar. Not a single hi-res texture in there, no shadows and badly done sprites...

I don't know impressive or not, but the shot looks very good, apart from being a bullshot. Some shadows (particularly Clank's on Ratchet) are missing. But I really don't get this high resolution texture obsession. I don't see any pixelated or blurry textures and R&C can easily get away with flat textures (and maybe low poly vegetation).

And of course there is 60 fps target which we should soon see if they reached or not.
 
Totally unimpressive. Geometry level is good, but other than that it looks subpar. Not a single hi-res texture in there, no shadows and badly done sprites...
Unimpressive?
I think the visual fidelity in this title is extremely high, despite some of the bad aspects you mention.

The bullshot thing, this screen is rendered in 2160p for prints and such so it's kind of a bullshot, but considering how resistance "bullshots" looked, and how the final game looked, and by the videos of R&C we have seen I don't think in the end this image is much of a bullshot. Insomnniac tend do deliver on it's promises.

We should have new videos of this level in motion in a few days, probably HD-versions, so we'll se how it really looks like, and @ 60 fps. :smile:
 
I still don't get why they aren't using the spu's on geometry, their foliage could look much better if they did. Or maybe that's how the art style of that series is supposed to be? It's been ages since I've played a R&C game so I don't really remember anymore.
 
Does more foliage add to the game play ? Perhaps (Hopefully ?) Insomniac wants to spend the SPU power on something more important to gamers. :)

Also, I think we have seen enough next gen games + screenshots to know that this is a work-in-progress. Watching the video or playing the demo later would be a more accurate way to judge the game.
 
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