RSX: Vertex input limited? *FKATCT

[ShootMyMonkey]

Don't want to be anal..but what's the difference between giving the impression of being high poly and being high poly for real? It seems like the latter is considered to be smarter/cooler..when it should be the other way around.
R&C characters look very detailed to me, though their design certainly helps.

Well, it's not as though anyone is arguing that being more efficient in poly-counts isn't preferable, but the way the uninitiated post about R&C makes it sound as if they think it's high in absolute quantities rather than entertaining the idea that artists think about such things as technical limitations.

Being high poly for real is considered cooler for the same reason engines of high peak horsepower are considered superior to those which have broader powerbands -- big numbers sound more impressive.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

When you're trying to gauge performance, being high poly is obviously better, even if you're being inefficient! That is, if a 5 million triangles per frame game could look exactly the same as a 1 million triangle per frame game, despite being grossly inefficient, it shows the hardware is capable of pushing a lot of triangles. As this thread is about RSX being vertex limited, and Heinrich4 cited RnC as being high-poly, it's important to clarify if RnC is pushing more polygons than normal. From that position we can then say 'yes, ND got round limits' or 'ND are doing nothing more with RSX's vertices than other devs'.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

From that position we can then say 'yes, ND got round limits' or 'ND are doing nothing more with RSX's vertices than other devs'.

Or we could make the same comments about Insomniac...

 

[betan]

Good god, of all the threads to resurrect! I know people keep bringing up Ratchet and Clank. Believe me I love my PS3, and I'm a *huge* blu-ray movie fan.

I don't think you need to start politically correctly anymore.

But...R&C, to me, looks like it's a "relatively" average poly game. There's other things they do to make the game look very pretty, but a high vertex count, in my opinion, is not one of them, nor does it have to be for that type of game. I'd wager that just one of our baseball players has more verticies than all of their characters on screen at a given time combined, based on what I see.

Were you guys vertex shader limited on PS3? What was the bottleneck before you incorporated EDGE like solutions?

 

[nAo]

Being high poly for real is considered cooler for the same reason engines of high peak horsepower are considered superior to those which have broader powerbands -- big numbers sound more impressive.

Big numbers sound more impressive..but only if you can measure them.
Looking at R&C in motion I can only say that characters must have a LOT of triangles (relatively to their distance from the camera) cause they look very detailed.
I'd like to know why you think they are not high poly, not saying you're wrong or anything..

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Big numbers sound more impressive..but only if you can measure them.
Looking at R&C in motion I can only say that characters must have a LOT of triangles (relatively to their distance from the camera) cause they look very detailed.
I'd like to know why you think they are not high poly, not saying you're wrong or anything..

Just a relative measure, really. They are high-poly if you looked at them compared to previous-gen certainly. I just get the impression that they're pushing overall polycounts which are pretty typical of what a lot of other people are pushing on PS3, even without the aid of things like SPU culling and what not. Of course, it's not like they need massive polycounts for those characters anyway, so looking "detailed" is a different condition from looking like each character is 120k polys or something.

 

[Frank]

Don't want to be anal..but what's the difference between giving the impression of being high poly and being high poly for real? It seems like the latter is considered to be smarter/cooler..when it should be the other way around.
R&C characters look very detailed to me, though their design certainly helps.

Then again, that's mostly because of the way 3D hardware evolved: don't spend too much transistors on geometry, because you can fake it. And calculated directional lighting per pixel is has become regarded to be the wider tool.

But then again, you could do the same with a very high polygon count, especially if you allow that hardware to create them. REYES and all.

It's not clever to fake it by itself; it's just the direction taken. If correct representation was regarded the higher good, it would have been by now.

Ironic, isn't it? Because people think it has higher kudo to fake things, it has become so.

 

[Neb]

A high resolution image of the Ratchet and Clank 3 main characters upclose in cut-scene. Geometry detail is visible, thought it may be interesting.

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/a...re-tools-of-destruction-20070711052133257.jpg

 

[Arwin]

Well, according to Insomniac, they are pushing 4x the data they have been for Resistance, and are now streaming textures (they didn't have time to get this in for Resistance). I'm guessing that there are definitely a fair bit of polys being pushed. Also, they have big parts of their environments that will tear down during the game, and a lot of stuff is happening during the game in terms of weapons, collectibles and powerups, crates and so on. Could be a fairly impressive budget. I'm not the one to tell though, but if you see the real thing live in action, it does look pretty impressive, even if a lot of the smoothness also comes from clever art, color use and textures that contain edge enhancers baked in (colors more suitable for edges integrated in the edge of the texture, a technique that I already admired in their and Naughty Dog's PS2 antics).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Nebula, I don't really think that those models are the ones used in the actual gameplay...

 

[SonComet]

Nebula, I don't really think that those models are the ones used in the actual gameplay...

I think Insomniac said that they are the same models in gameplay and cutscenes (I know I read that somewhere). Hence the reason they look so perfect in gameplay when you zoom in. But, they do have better shadows in the cutscenes.

 

[MBDF]

For sure Uncharted has a ton of polygons though... so that bodes well

Also, I was wondering how much time texture work takes up the shaders on PS3... is it negligeble?

 

[Fafalada]

Ironic, isn't it? Because people think it has higher kudo to fake things, it has become so.

I don't think it's ironic, it's always been the nature of realtime CG - who is the best and most creative at faking things.
It's also the original reason for the 'cool' factor of various demoscenes.

In the early days where tech was too limiting to allow art to be the main differentiator, this was only more true, but as long as we work in realtime, it will always be a fundamental part of what we do.
For that matter even offline CG is heavily based on creative faking, but that's another story.

 

[Betanumerical]

For sure Uncharted has a ton of polygons though... so that bodes well

Also, I was wondering how much time texture work takes up the shaders on PS3... is it negligeble?

It sure does, and we only know the numbers for the characters, the backgrounds look highly detailed to!.

I'm wondering my Insomniac didn't use much (if any) texture filtering in R&C (The game is beatiful) if you don't use the TF units wont they just sit their doing nothing?, wasting their potential?.

 

[Arwin]

The homebrew scene is reverse engineering (the legal way) RSX on Linux fast now. It'll be a while before they'll know real performance figures, but they're making some impressive progress. They have textured triangles now, among others:

http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=8364&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=120

It's a very interesting thread for people who want to know more about the RSX.

 

[Mintmaster]

Wow, they got vertex buffers, texturing, shaders, and z-buffering working.

All that's left for decent usability is being able to set the plethora of renderstates.

 

[peacegamer]

It must be said that most of the amazing look of GoW comes from the fantastic job done by the artists in setting up each scene, most probably greatly helped by the slick tool chain.
From a purely engine perspective, I also can't see anything that can't be done with a RSX and anything that can't be done better on the 360 in future titles, especially with engines tailored to each console's strengths and designed to exploit them.

Mark Rein himself said that with Unreal Engine 3 on UT3 on ps3 they are already technically beyond what they did with gears on 360, when it came out.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

And when they release Gears 2 on the Xbox, Mark Rein himself will say that they're technically way, way beyond what they did with UT3 on the PS3 when it came out.

Seriously...

 

[peacegamer]

Which will probably be true. But maybe you didn't notice that I was referring to a previoun post claiming of difficulties on recreating gears on ps3...

 

[liolio]

You misunderstood Fran post, and he's a dev so far even if you would want to argue with him... good luck cause you will need to have serious knowledge.