Regarding Insomniac's PS3 engine...

[Kittonwy]

When is it going to include HDR as well as a more sophisticated shadowing system (meaning self-shadowed characters/objects as well as more dynamic shadows)?

I notice that in R&CFTOD there were only a few instances where a light source would enable Ratchet to cast shadows on himself, namely the fire pits where the robot pirates were gathered, it's a bit of a shame that more dynamic lighting wasn't included in the bulk of the game. Just HDR/self-shadowing alone would really transform a game like Resistance and totally up that visual "wow" factor.

 

[jonabbey]

When is it going to include HDR as well as a more sophisticated shadowing system (meaning self-shadowed characters/objects as well as more dynamic shadows)?

I notice that in R&CFTOD there were only a few instances where a light source would enable Ratchet to cast shadows on himself, namely the fire pits where the robot pirates were gathered, it's a bit of a shame that more dynamic lighting wasn't included in the bulk of the game. Just HDR/self-shadowing alone would really transform a game like Resistance and totally up that visual "wow" factor.

It was interesting; playing R&CF:TOD, the thing that stood out the most in the game engine was the much greater use of fancy shaders on surfaces and the texture streaming. I know they significantly reworked their engine to make more use of the SPU's, but I didn't notice a whole lot more geometry being tossed around than was featured in Resistance, for instance. (Edit: Aside from R&C running at twice the framerate, of course. ;-)

I do wonder what they'll do in Resistance 2 with their upgraded engine. Texture streaming could be a significant win in terms of the quality of the textures in the game, but I'm not sure what kind of qualitative differences they'll bring out.

Insomniac is supposed to be announcing the next big _something_ in the next Full Moon Show, but I doubt we'll get details on this sort of level.

 

[xmu]

Insomniac is supposed to be announcing the next big _something_ in the next Full Moon Show, but I doubt we'll get details on this sort of level.

Ooh when is that again? At last GDC I heard rumours that they're working on a third IP besides Ratchet and Resistance, been waiting to hear news of it since.

 

[Cornsnake]

They are going to announce it on their next podcast on january 17. I expect it to be Resistance 2.

 

[Mr. Domino]

If you use the RYNO close to walls you can see it casts dynamic shadows of the enemies and crates on the environment though. I wonder why they made it not more obvious troughout the game that the engine supports this effect.

 

[Color me Dan]

If you use the RYNO close to walls you can see it casts dynamic shadows of the enemies and crates on the environment though. I wonder why they made it not more obvious troughout the game that the engine supports this effect.

Not having played the game I can't really say all too much about it, but personally i prefer effects of all kinds to be subtle and realistic to in-your-face garish; Obviously depending on the game.

Happy new years everyone.

 

[Legend]

I love seeing tech demos of such engines. although I don't understand them, I wish they would still release some info about these private engines which were used to create games with very impressive performances.

also, I think Insomniac said every game from Ratched onwards would be 1080p 60fps. am I correct?

 

[Mr Deap]

When is it going to include HDR as well as a more sophisticated shadowing system (meaning self-shadowed characters/objects as well as more dynamic shadows)?

I notice that in R&CFTOD there were only a few instances where a light source would enable Ratchet to cast shadows on himself, namely the fire pits where the robot pirates were gathered, it's a bit of a shame that more dynamic lighting wasn't included in the bulk of the game. Just HDR/self-shadowing alone would really transform a game like Resistance and totally up that visual "wow" factor.

It's more about the limit of the hardware.

They could put dynamic shadow, but it wouldn't be nice on the framerate. There's a lot of factor that change the performance such as Number of polygons, the size of the texture, how much physic & animation is implanted in the game.

 

[Blade47167]

I love seeing tech demos of such engines. although I don't understand them, I wish they would still release some info about these private engines which were used to create games with very impressive performances.

also, I think Insomniac said every game from Ratched onwards would be 1080p 60fps. am I correct?

1080p is a stretch I would think but they said 60FPS for sure. 720p at 60 FPS I believe was from here on out.

 

[Mr. Domino]

It's more about the limit of the hardware.

They could put dynamic shadow, but it wouldn't be nice on the framerate..

But it has dynamic shadows, it's just a matter of what weapons you're using.

 

[Gitaroo]

if you use the Ryno, you will see that it can make everything cast shadow.

 

[maluraq]

I saw plenty of shadows playing the game with various lighting sources.

The difference being that R&C:F is a very bright and colourful game, designed with light sources everywhere, so you don't end up with many shadows in the first place. If you want to see lots of shadowing on the PS3, check out Drake's Fortune.

 

[Kittonwy]

I saw plenty of shadows playing the game with various lighting sources.

The difference being that R&C:F is a very bright and colourful game, designed with light sources everywhere, so you don't end up with many shadows in the first place. If you want to see lots of shadowing on the PS3, check out Drake's Fortune.

I've already played Uncharted (hard and crushing) and know how really, really, really good-looking (and fun) the game is. I'm talking about HDR and self-shadowing though, not just shadow-maps, and self-shadowing is something that R&CFTOD doesn't seem to have much outside of very limited instances. Maybe it's too taxing for such a huge environment to have self-shadowed buildings/objects/characters but Resistance isn't as big and I hope the next game will have those features, it really ups that visual to another level along with HDR.

 

[deepbrown]

I thought you might like to learn about what they are doing with their shadows, and why they do so:

http://www.insomniacgames.com/tech/articles/1007/files/shadows_in_rcf.pdf

 

[Gitaroo]

Mod: Don't post links to scans!!! Read the Console Forum FAQ for details!

 

[Gitaroo]

crap, sorry I forgot, anyway, if anyone want to see them its in the new issue on gameinformer.

 

[desmond]

I love seeing tech demos of such engines. although I don't understand them, I wish they would still release some info about these private engines which were used to create games with very impressive performances.

also, I think Insomniac said every game from Ratched onwards would be 1080p 60fps. am I correct?

that's what i thought, we will have to wait for resistance 2 specs. hopefully it will be mentioned in one of the upcoming podcasts.

 

[Arwin]

60fps, but I doubt they said 1080p.

 

[Kittonwy]

60fps, but I doubt they said 1080p.

I doubt they'll try to push 60fps when they've pushing some pretty big environments with 60 players, they don't need to push 60fps when a rock-solid 30fps worked so well for them and the main problem with the game wasn't that it wasn't running at 60fps but it simply wasn't pretty enough, meaning they had to address the lighting/shadowing.

Not every game needs to run 1080p, frankly I don't think they should bother, they've got more important priorities.

 

[Blade47167]

I doubt they'll try to push 60fps when they've pushing some pretty big environments with 60 players, they don't need to push 60fps when a rock-solid 30fps worked so well for them and the main problem with the game wasn't that it wasn't running at 60fps but it simply wasn't pretty enough, meaning they had to address the lighting/shadowing.

Not every game needs to run 1080p, frankly I don't think they should bother, they've got more important priorities.

There were some huge open areas on R&C: TODF. The dinosaur world for example was massive. Not to mention they said in their podcast a few months back that every game to come will be 60fps from R&C on.