*spin-off* Battlefield 3 on Consoles

[ultragpu]

Is it safe to assume dynamic radiosity is disabled on all the console footage that we've seen? That feature to me is what makes the PC footage look so amazing.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

I wonder if MLAA was disabled, would DICE have enough resources to do dynamic radiosity on the PS3 version? Which would you prefer, as gamers? AA or dynamic radiosity?

 

[(((interference)))]

I wonder if MLAA was disabled, would DICE have enough resources to do dynamic radiosity on the PS3 version? Which would you prefer, as gamers? AA or dynamic radiosity?

AA, unless they manage to hide the aliasing some other way (eg blur filter, DOF etc)

Image should look fine on 360.

I didn't say it wouldn't - I said it would be safe to assume that the PS3 will have better IQ (unless the game ends up sub HD on PS3) since the only thing the comparable with MLAA is 4xMSAA and I don't see the 360 version doing that.

The fact that they're not using their SRAA technique on PS3 probably means that MLAA works better. But perhaps they're using that on 360.

 

[patsu]

MLAA can't handle subpixel edges. It also needs SPU power. It depends on how DICE design their contents and balance the subsystems (e.g., MLAA vs more realistic destruction at run-time)

Since this is a cross platform title, the devs may not tailor the content to maximize MLAA advantages exclusively. I reckon it's too early to say either way but of course I can be wrong. ^_^

 

[Afrikan]

Is it safe to assume dynamic radiosity is disabled on all the console footage that we've seen? That feature to me is what makes the PC footage look so amazing.

wasn't this the case with their presentation slides awhile back? where the PC version was the only one that had that bullet point?

 

[ultragpu]

This "special lighting solution" really reminds me of the days when Crytek said they had a bunch of people in a "special isolated room" working on super secret PS3 technology and guess how that turned out? Not that I'm saying the same will happen to Dice in any means though.
OK, seriously we need directfeed screens and footage of either console version.

 

[Ghostz]

This "special lighting solution" really reminds me of the days when Crytek said they had a bunch of people in a "special isolated room" working on super secret PS3 technology and guess how that turned out? Not that I'm saying the same will happen to Dice in any means though.
OK, seriously we need directfeed screens and footage of either console version.

Well, Dice certainly has a much bigger budget to work with to work out some 360 magic sauce. I'm not sure that was the case for Crytek.

 

[scently]

Re: Special lighting solution on 360. I think that it would be advisable to read the tweet he was replying to, which was essentially asking if, given there article on SPU based lighting on ps3, if it was the same on the 360 to which he replied that the have a special lighing solution on the 360 that they can't talk about yet (given that the have stated that that will happen in SIGGRAPH 2011) and that it is awesome.

BTW: here is DICE's take on the whole console vs Pc affair http://battlefieldo.com/30-fps-720p-consoles-debate/

 

[Jedi2016]

I think that "special lighting solution" is just jargon for "we figured out a new way to make it look like this" on X360. It was never about making it "better" on the 360 than it is on PC.. just about making it as close as possible.

 

[AlNom]

I think that "special lighting solution" is just jargon for "we figured out a new way to make it look like this" on X360. It was never about making it "better" on the 360 than it is on PC.. just about making it as close as possible.

Of course. This late in the game, it'll be about neat tricks. Read it as "special solution", not "special lighting".

 

[liem107]

Maybe they should drop mlaa on ps3 for fxaa to regain some spu time to do something useful and efficient like spu skinning?

 

[ultragpu]

I'm hoping for some Object motion blur, lens flare or camera motion blur at least, though with the level of destruction it has I'm still content either way.

 

[assurdum]

Maybe they should drop mlaa on ps3 for fxaa to regain some spu time to do something useful and efficient like spu skinning?

I have read DiCE have changed some aspect of MLAA for its engine, but I don't know nothing of specific. Probably the best way would be to use FXAA & MLAA combined for the shimmering, I'm could wrong but if you use MLAA at this point I don't think FXAA added could change drammatically the cost in the performances imho.

 

[liem107]

Ok I though mlaa was adding more complexity to the pipeline ( I am not in the field of 3d, just a regular B3D reader). I was just not seeing the point of using a complex method which eats SPU time when FXAA achieves similar result on GPU for the same time budget... on the other side, spu skinning is up to 350% faster on SPU...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Er, that 350% speed increase was for a highly specific scenario which is never going to occur in any real world case. During any game the skinning takes a fraction of the processing power and thus the increase is probably going to be marginal at best. In fact I recall the people who published that paper decided not to use SPUs for skinning in the end, too.

You're jumping to conclusions way too fast, without considering the complexity of these systems. DICE has programmers way more qualified to make these calls, especially as they have the game itself running in front of them to work with.
Ignorant comments like yours are what lead to repi stopping to talk about this stuff. Apparently he was right...

 

[Jedi2016]

I'm hoping for some Object motion blur, lens flare or camera motion blur at least...

Unlikely for the consoles, I think. Although when done properly, it's a pretty subtle effect, so I'm not sure how much of a difference it will make. I'm sure the game will still look brilliant.

 

[patsu]

I remember 350% speedup is the measurement for the skinning subsystem + test contents only. For a brief moment, the "real-life" speedup was 5.7% after switching to SPU skinning:

Before the mlaa was introduced the main characters where however for a short while
skinned with the new SPU skinning solution, and a comparison was made between the old
hardware skinning method and the new SPU method for the main characters. The difference
between these actual characters and the versions in the test environment is that in the actual
game the models have textures, normals, binormals, and tangents, which also need to be
deformed. On average the framerate increased from 61.7 fps to 65.25 fps, which is a 5.7%
increase.

Other than framerate increase, I think the RSX may also have more free time for other effects, although this was apparently not explored.

In the article, the author confirmed that they didn't use SPU skinning because MLAA used up the resources. The Gamebryo engine at that time only utiltized 1 SPU. They plonked the MLAA code in and moved on. ^_^

I believe SPU skinning & animation is part of Sony's SDK. It's already used in some shipping games.

For Battlefield 3, DICE may have more use for the SPUs (e.g., concurrent destruction physics)

EDIT:
KZ2 uses SPU Skinning: www.guerrilla-games.com/publications/dr_kz2_rsx_dev07.pdf
PhyreEngine 3.0 also does SPU Skinning: http://research.scee.net/files/presentations/gdc2011/2011-GDC-PhyreEngine.pdf

 

[liem107]

Sorry i did not intend to boss around any dev nor criticising, i just wanted some clarifications about render time budget with all these fascinating unorthodox ps3 techniques. Thanks for the clarifications patsu. I understand the 350 % relates only to one part of the rendering pipeline.

 

[joker454]

Savings numbers from cpu skinning on ps3 don't mean much for purposes of comparison really, every games savings will be different due to the nature of rsx. Timing numbers are only useful for the one game they are used on and that's it.

 

[patsu]

If FXAA (fast approximate AA ?) quality is good enough for the game, doing it on the SPU may save time -- depending on how much the devs have optimized/changed the "original" SPU implementation of MLAA.