SC: Chaos Theory for PS2 (first movie!)

Cybamerc said:
I don't think it's parallax mapping. Look at the silhouette of the bamboo wall. The floor tiles are clearly also fully modelled.
Now that you mention it, yeah the silhouettes are clearly there. Might be actual displacement mapping then perhaps :p

But in that case my pun about inventing new names applies doubly so :p
 
He stated pretty clearly in the video that the surface was actual full 3D (and it was pretty obvious too), so I do not think it is any sort of texture/lighting trick like parallax or just Dot3 (as if PS2 could do that). I still say its probably some sort of Displacement Mapping that will adjust the poly count depending on how close you are and whatnot.

What I found interesting is how he said that 20,000 polys of identical objects does not cost 20,000 polys in performance. Any idea about this, from the PS2 devs? Sounds like they are managing to cache the transformations and/or lighting from one instance of the model and re-use/offset it for all the others without having to T&L them once again.
 
Fafalada:

> Now that you mention it, yeah the silhouettes are clearly there. Might
> be actual displacement mapping then perhaps :p

But the floor for example is fully modelled it would seem. There's really nothing to displace as far as I can tell.
 
cybamerc said:
Fafalada:

> Now that you mention it, yeah the silhouettes are clearly there. Might
> be actual displacement mapping then perhaps :p

But the floor for example is fully modelled it would seem. There's really nothing to displace as far as I can tell.

Mayhap the tiles are modelled/displaced in realtime based on a normal map or something similar from just one texture?

I just don't see why they would make such a big deal of this "geo-texturing" psuedonym if it was just simply modelling, so this makes sense to me unless someone understands it better.

joe75 said:
http://ps2dev.org/files/ps2_normalmapping.pdf
... watch diz /DOT3 normal mapping/.

I am aware that its possible in an isolated environment but in my time here it has become pretty clear that there is no way (read: extremely unlikely) that the PS2 could run something like parallax mapping especially in a complex game.
 
Bohdy:

> Mayhap the tiles are modelled/displaced in realtime based on a normal
> map or something similar from just one texture?

FYI, height maps are used for displacement mapping. I don't see the point though. It's not like the floor or even the wall are terribly complex. Surely there can't be that much to gain from geometry compression in this case?
 
The PS2 is till getting the shaft though.
From what I heard the PS2 and GC version are still using the Unreal engine.
The Xbox and PC versions are using a better all new engine.
 
Nightz said:
The PS2 is till getting the shaft though.
From what I heard the PS2 and GC version are still using the Unreal engine.
The Xbox and PC versions are using a better all new engine.

You heard wrong.
In the new interview with the producer at TXB, he confirms that they are still using the Unreal engine for the Xbox/PC version of the game.
 
Riddlewire said:
In the new interview with the producer at TXB, he confirms that they are still using the Unreal engine for the Xbox/PC version of the game.


Just with everything either heavily modified (like the renderer) or just updated (physics/sound). :p
 
cybamerc said:
But the floor for example is fully modelled it would seem. There's really nothing to displace as far as I can tell.
Not sure what you mean - but the whole point of displacement mapping is to get visual results that look fully modelled.
If we want to read so much into the video, he states 100polys for one floor tile, and at least 200 tiles per floor. That's quite a bit of memory to save if you can represent all the geometry as a single tiled texture.

Bohdy said:
I am aware that its possible in an isolated environment but in my time here it has become pretty clear that there is no way (read: extremely unlikely) that the PS2 could run something like parallax mapping especially in a complex game.
I don't think so. Compared to spending 20k polys on the floor of a single room, emulating DOT3 passes instead would be quite cheap. Admitedly it wouldn't look nearly as good, but it'd be cheaper.
 
Fafalada said:
Bohdy said:
I am aware that its possible in an isolated environment but in my time here it has become pretty clear that there is no way (read: extremely unlikely) that the PS2 could run something like parallax mapping especially in a complex game.
I don't think so. Compared to spending 20k polys on the floor of a single room, emulating DOT3 passes instead would be quite cheap. Admitedly it wouldn't look nearly as good, but it'd be cheaper.

Ok, fair enough (even though I was under the impression that PS2 was more apt to that excessive amount of geometry rather than any sort of per-pixel work), but this brings us back to question of what the guy meant by the floor taking a lot less than 20,000 poly's performance in reality?
 
Fafalada said:
Not sure what you mean - but the whole point of displacement mapping is to get visual results that look fully modelled.
If we want to read so much into the video, he states 100polys for one floor tile, and at least 200 tiles per floor.
But the tiles don't look very complex. They're completely flat with sharp beveled edges.

Do you think they tesselate to achieve more accurate lighting?
 
Inane_Dork said:
london-boy said:
This might be a stupid question, but where exactly would a tile need 100 polygons each?
Edges & corners.

Isn't that a bit of a waste? They're tiles. Who's gonna see the 100's of polygons in the edges and corners? It's not even a fps game, no one's gonna see them from that close.
 
london-boy said:
Inane_Dork said:
london-boy said:
This might be a stupid question, but where exactly would a tile need 100 polygons each?
Edges & corners.

Isn't that a bit of a waste? They're tiles. Who's gonna see the 100's of polygons in the edges and corners? It's not even a fps game, no one's gonna see them from that close.

I agree.

I just watched the video and I'm extremely impressed with what they've done. The water effect is pretty damn funky. Best water effect I've seen on PS2. Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance, take a step back!
 
To be honest, i think pretty water effects are a given today... Of course, some games don't bother, but we've seen it done in first-gen PS2 games...

I still have to understand where on earth they would put 100 polygons in ONE floor tile. Sounds to me like big talk, no facts, which in turn makes me feel everything he's saying is not true... But hey this is just me being pessimistic. Ain't gonna buy the game anyway, hate SC.
 
I was surprised they didn't show a wire-frame mode for comparison...unless that wasn't the point (as in the UE3.0 demonstration)
 
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