Shadow of the Colossus

[nintenho]

I wrote a nice long reply to this and then the board ate it... bah.

Anyway, we're probably all agreed that HDR = "High Dynamic Range", but as far as I am aware, there is no standard definition of how dynamic your range has to be to qualify. Does it have to be 16 bit? Does Nao's technique qualify? Do we need floats?

Also, there is no clear definition of which bits of the rendering need to use HDR for us to be able to say "we're using HDR". Textures? Shaders? Compositing? My monitor?

If we use a GPU manufacturers marketing department, they'd probably say "HDR throughout the whole pipeline" - which is all very nice, but probably unnecessary and not actually that helpful a definition anyway. SotC certainly doesn't do this - the PS2 would certainly struggle to implement HDR at this level, being based around decidedly non-HDR friendly hardware. And until we get new HDR monitors, all HDR solutions will need to map down to a decidedly non-HDR output format anyway.

However in the real world I feel we can be more pragmatic and assume that HDR need only be used in part of the rendering to give a significant advantage to the quality of the output. In this case, SotC certainly *is* using HDR, as it composes the final image from several other images using varied exposure levels along with a kind of tone-mapping and bloom effect. It's not used with the ease or overall ability that a modern GPU could do it, but it's still making use of a higher dynamic range of brightness to produce the image.

HDR is IMHO hyped with justification. It's a significant improvement in the way we render images and will result in far more subtle and "real" looking images, as well as opening up a host of interesting special effects and such-like. Sadly at the moment all it's being used for is over-bright lighting and blurry light-sources. Just as soon as people get bored of that, I think we'll start seeing it's potential be realised.

Thank you!:smile:

But you have to remember, SotC's art style is probably the best in any game for HDR.

 

[pixelbox]

Also let's not forget the most amazing part of the graphics, most amazing because of the way they pulled it off on little old PS2, Fur shading. Sure, it's not done with pixel shaders, but it looks bloody amazing, and it even has a part in the gameplay (it's the only surface you can "grab" on to, which is needed to climb the giants).
The fact that Fur, HDR, large environments and huge charaters, LOTS of particle effects and fabulous animation (for the most part) are there all together at the same time, is what i think makes this game one of the most taxing on PS2, and it really shows in the framerate at times. The style also helps a lot.

Most other games in comparison look like silly cartoony games.

They also have shaders on the horse and main guy.

 

[Reverend]

I've played quite a bit more of this game and would like to withdraw my earlier comments about its graphics quality, The game looks really good; really good in a way that is understated. It's almost the exact opposite of MGS3, where Kojima infused every scene (and frame) with gobs of detail. The scenery in SotC is kind of "muted" but realistically done so. The detail on the colossi are great and the shadows are quite amazing for a PS2 title.

Did a search and found this page to provide interesting technical bits about SotC.

 

[rabidrabbit]

After reading that "making of", I really do appreciate the game even more now.
As Reverend said, it's beauty is subtle, but it's what makes the game feel so good, even though the sometimes grainy image quality might not lead you to believe it can be a beautiful looking game.
Can't wait to see what they'll be able to do with the PS3.
Really shows what creative designers and programmers can achieve when they tink "out of the box".
Sometimes just faking it can be convincing enough.

 

[nintenho]

Did a search and found this page to provide interesting technical bits about SotC.

Yeah, this explains how the HDR worked. It basically centered around the main character. How hard that is to pull off on the ps2, I have no idea. But it looks damn nice!

 

[pipo]

Interview: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70286-0.html?tw=rss.culture

 

[arhra]

Also let's not forget the most amazing part of the graphics, most amazing because of the way they pulled it off on little old PS2, Fur shading. Sure, it's not done with pixel shaders, but it looks bloody amazing, and it even has a part in the gameplay (it's the only surface you can "grab" on to, which is needed to climb the giants).

The basic technique for fur-shading (concentric shells with alpha textures) should be utterly trivial on the PS2 (all it really needs is some extra geometry for the shells, and a lot of fillrate for the alpha textures), so i'm not sure why it's got so much press, and why it hasn't been done much before. The only time pixel shaders would really come into it is when you want to use complex lighting models, which afaict, hasn't been done much in games, probably due to performance concerns (or if any games _have_ used complex lighting, it really doesn't make that much difference, or i simply haven't seen them...).

The only reason it's been particularly associated with the xbox, from what i can tell, is that the technique was originally developed by a Microsoft researcher (and they probably threw some example code for it in the dev kit/docs).

 

[_phil_]

The only reason it's been particularly associated with the xbox, from what i can tell, is that the technique was originally developed by a Microsoft researcher (and they probably threw some example code for it in the dev kit/docs).

an automated version.the basic principle has been hand made for long.It's still way better when done by hand by good artists ,but it's very very tedious.