*spin-off* Deferred Rendering & 360

[Ruskie]

Could someone give some insight could there be any problems with deferred shading and 360?I know there was big discussion on deferred lighting but I thought some developers here said deferred shading on 360 is no-no especially since that is handled by SPUs in BF3.Where does that leave 360?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Could someone give some insight could there be any problems with deferred shading and 360?

The main problem is the lack of space on the EDRAM framebuffer, but it can be managed by using either tiling or a sub-HD resolution.
Crysis 2 uses a form of deferred rendering, and so does Trials HD.

 

[Ruskie]

The main problem is the lack of space on the EDRAM framebuffer, but it can be managed by using either tiling or a sub-HD resolution.
Crysis 2 uses a form of deferred rendering, and so does Trials HD.

Yea I thought of that although how big would buffer be in game using deferred shading?I think I read it was 34 megs for KZ2.That would be a nightmare for eDRAM...

And yea,doesn't RAGE engine(GTA and RDR) use deferred renderer?It does it in 720p and 2xMSAA though.

 

[AlNom]

The main problem is the lack of space on the EDRAM framebuffer, but it can be managed by using either tiling or a sub-HD resolution.
Crysis 2 uses a form of deferred rendering, and so does Trials HD.

I wonder if developers shouldn't just do it the way Trials HD did. Cut off 20pix top and bottom, which should be well below any TV with overscan. Hell, maybe just make it less obvioius with vignetting of sorts.

Yea I thought of that although how big would buffer be in game using deferred shading?I think I read it was 34 megs for KZ2.That would be a nightmare for eDRAM...

That's 36MB for 5 buffers (depth + four MRTs) and doubled for Quincunx.

And yea,doesn't RAGE engine(GTA and RDR) use deferred renderer?It does it in 720p and 2xMSAA though.

That's light pre-pass. They do a first pass to fill up depth and normals then perform the lighting accumulation pass followed by a second geometry pass to apply more materials. Another variation was depth, normals, spec, albedo followed by lighting accum.

Lots of games use this, including Uncharted series and Resistance 2.

I'd still call them all deferred shading, but eh.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I wonder if developers shouldn't just do it the way Trials HD did. Cut off 20pix top and bottom, which should be well below any TV with overscan. Hell, maybe just make it less obvioius with vignetting of sorts.
...

Nah, just do 640x360. No one will notice. Anything to stop the vignetting.

 

[AlNom]

Vignetting is so cinematic though. ಠ_ಠ

Actually, IIRC, Far Cry 2, Call of Juarez, and Split Second also use black bars in the 720p frame.

 

[(((interference)))]

The main problem is the lack of space on the EDRAM framebuffer, but it can be managed by using either tiling or a sub-HD resolution.
Crysis 2 uses a form of deferred rendering, and so does Trials HD.

I thought Crysis 2 uses deferred lighting/light pre pass like Reach and Uncharted do.

Has there ever been a non XBLA title using a fully deferred renderer on 360?

Hope the 360 version isn't a flawed like BFBC2 (where they used A2C for seemingly no reason at all) otherwise i'll be getting it on PS3 (and I don't particularly like the DS3 for shooters).

Though with the amount of SPU utilisation in Frosbite 2 you'd expect it'd be hard for the 360 to keep up.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Dead Space 2 is fully deferred, and it's 720p too.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Though with the amount of SPU utilisation in Frosbite 2 you'd expect it'd be hard for the 360 to keep up.

Maybe, maybe not. My guess is that we'll find out just how capable the X360 GPU may or may not be at GPU compute shaders.

I'm looking forward to seeing just how DICE end up using the X360 for FB 2.

Regards,
SB

 

[(((interference)))]

Maybe, maybe not. My guess is that we'll find out just how capable the X360 GPU may or may not be at GPU compute shaders.

I'm looking forward to seeing just how DICE end up using the X360 for FB 2.

Regards,
SB

Well, apparently the PS3 is running faster atm due to offloading shading to the SPUs.

http://twitter.com/ChristinaCoffin/status/45211733962391552

So we might finally get some vindication for the PS3 fans after all
However Crysis 2 was apparently running faster on PS3 at one point as well, so who knows.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

*sigh* Anyway, isn't Dice doing DX11 stuff on the SPUs? I thought I saw something about that in one of the dev slides.

 

[jlippo]

*sigh* Anyway, isn't Dice doing DX11 stuff on the SPUs? I thought I saw something about that in one of the dev slides.

Nope, it's doing 'normal' graphics work on SPUs.
Only related thing to DX11 is that PC version of the game has similar setup that is done with compute shaders, ps3 version does not use same code.

Also Frostbite2 isn't first engine that uses SPUs for tiled deferred rendering, at least Uncharted2 did tiled deferred lighting in SPUs.

 

[patsu]

Nope, it's doing 'normal' graphics work on SPUs.
Only related thing to DX11 is that PC version of the game has similar setup that is done with compute shaders, ps3 version does not use same code.

Also Frostbite2 isn't first engine that uses SPUs for tiled deferred rendering, at least Uncharted2 did tiled deferred lighting in SPUs.

Isn't it meaningless to specify DX11 for the SPUs anyway. It's a CPU and can be programmed whichever way the developers want to.

 

[jlippo]

Isn't it meaningless to specify DX11 for the SPUs anyway. It's a CPU and can be programmed whichever way the developers want to.

Yes..

I just hope that marketing people do not read this and start to market all CPUs as 'DX11 capable' hardware..
I'm sure that they would have proper pie charts to show Atom running Word faster than GPU.

 

[Neb]

I thought Crysis 2 uses deferred lighting/light pre pass like Reach and Uncharted do.

It does.

Though with the amount of SPU utilisation in Frosbite 2 you'd expect it'd be hard for the 360 to keep up.

It's all relative to how much 360 GPU can do that PS3 GPU cant and need Cell to do.

 

[Neb]

Vignetting is so cinematic though. ಠ_ಠ

Actually, IIRC, Far Cry 2, Call of Juarez, and Split Second also use black bars in the 720p frame.

Vignetting like Crysis 2 is the best solution I've seen. Subtle yet adds to the visuals. It's called, HDR vignetting.

 

[chris100]

Though with the amount of SPU utilisation in Frosbite 2 you'd expect it'd be hard for the 360 to keep up.

source: Approximating Translucency for a Fast, Cheap and Convincing Subsurface Scattering Look
http://publications.dice.se/

In regards to our implementation on PS3, this technique takes advantage of our
light-tile renderer on SPUs. We basically divide the screen in multiple tiles, and
render translucency using SPUs only for tiles that have translucency. For more
information about this, you should definitely attend Christina Coffin’s talk on SPU
deferred shading.

 

[Rangers]

Is bf3 the first instance, or first major instance, of deferred shading on spu's?

 

[kagemaru]

So we might finally get some vindication for the PS3 fans after all

With the amount of ignorance displayed by the typical ps3 fan on the internet, I don't think they deserve vindication.

*sigh* Anyway, isn't Dice doing DX11 stuff on the SPUs? I thought I saw something about that in one of the dev slides.

No and what does this have to do with deferred rendering on the 360?

Is bf3 the first instance, or first major instance, of deferred shading on spu's?

I don't believe so, though I could be wrong.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Nope, it's doing 'normal' graphics work on SPUs.
Only related thing to DX11 is that PC version of the game has similar setup that is done with compute shaders, ps3 version does not use same code.

Also Frostbite2 isn't first engine that uses SPUs for tiled deferred rendering, at least Uncharted2 did tiled deferred lighting in SPUs.

I thought the differences between DX9, 10, and 11 were the abilities to perform certain techniques. If so, that is the spirit of what I'm talking about. Are these compute shader tasks, etc simplified on a DX9 GPU where as they don't have to be on the SPUs? Supposedly, a lot of tasks have better final results when done on the SPUs instead of the GPU.

source: Approximating Translucency for a Fast, Cheap and Convincing Subsurface Scattering Look
http://publications.dice.se/

Ok, so this is a direct speed comparison between Xenos and the SPUs? If so, Xenos is definitely faster in that particular task. I would like to see breakdown numbers when RSX and SPUs are working together on certain tasks. I like this information as well, though.