*spin-off* Next Gen Gameplay and/or Graphics Differentiators

[kagemaru]

I'm in the camp that hopes for more consistent quality over the assets on screen. I'm sure developers will make use of the system's resources for better physics, AI, scenes, etc.

Brink does this too (on console). Wonder how many folks knew that.

*raises hand* :smile:

I have to wonder what a lot of games would look like during gameplay if they had been dynamic res. Surely there are many moments where there isn't a whole lot on-screen and the framerate would be fine at the maximum resolution. But then maybe the performance can drag down so much that it drops the res to lol-wtf levels, and on average it just ends up being an awful experience.

Would Call of Duty look that much worse if it were dynamically switching between 1024x600 and 960x544 during the heavier action bits?

I still don't know why more games haven't used dynamic MSAA as we saw in earlier Capcom games (Lost Planet and Resident Evil 5). I suppose that's not feasible for any game that is deferred, but... hey I wouldn't mind it if the Gears series had up to 4xMSAA when there's absolutely nothing going on (forward renderer).

I always wondered why more studios don't use the same technique, but I imagine the work wouldn't be worth the results. Unless your down to Halo 3-level resolutions, I think it's a non-issue to most of the userbase out there.

For example: Natural Motion for characters. There aren't a lot of games these days which can justify not having it in their games when GTA4 used it way back in 2007 for every character on screen ... including those not integral to the game at hand. And they have since done this for every game they make.

It's easy to justify:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/11/why-we-are-not-using-euphoria/

You assume that it's easy to make certain features standard across all games, but most games need to have their feature set tailored to best fit within their given budget (both time/money and performance).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

60 fps is doable.

In the case of Rage it also costs you dynamic lighting, interactivity, and an incredible lot of money.

Keep in mind - I really, really love Rage.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

3d would effectively be 'free' for any game targeting 60FPS so it'd be a good checkbox to have even if 90-95% of your potential audience doesn't care. If you can do better than Crysis 2 @ 60FPS then why push the art budget further into astronomical territory unless it can be justified with a known franchise? We've had a lot of talk here about diminishing returns on investment in visuals so why not predict that 60FPS would start to become a more attractive option, especially for the 99% of games which cannot be AAAA titles?

Except it's not and never will be.

Do you go for full resolution and full effects 3D? At which point your choice is to have the 3D user view a 60 FPS feed at 30 FPS or a 120 FPS feed at 60 FPS. So do we want to design a game to run at 120 FPS so that 3D viewers can experience the game at 60 FPS? You'll be leaving a lot of performance and hence IQ improvements on the table if you do. Using Crysis 2 with Dx11 and high res textures as an example again. There isn't a PC on the market capable of running it at those speeds (120 FPS).

You also split the screen (for left/right eyes) but then your poor 3D user now has to watch half-resolution gameplay. Or if that is full game resolution, your non-3D players (the vast majority) now have to view the game at lower resolution than if there was no 3D implemented.

On the other hand you can keep 60 FPS as the render target and just tell 3D viewers to eat it and only let them game at 30 FPS. Or you reduce the IQ and complexity of the scene so they can play a worse looking version of the game at 60 FPS. But then you just added more work removing much of the benefits of a console in being able to just target one spec. Instead of just targetting Console X you now have to target Console X and Console X with 3D.

Or you can go with the extrapolated 3D (like Crysis 2 on console). And then hear all the forum goers complain about your game.

For some companies it'll likely be worth it to still target that ever so small niche of players (Sony 1st party studios for example with a vested interest in trying to push 3D TVs), but I have a feeling most companies will continue to just skip 3D like they currently do.

And the other things I mentioned (better AA, Tesselation, higher res textures, etc.) are all significantly better ways to take advantage of a performance and feature gap between a Wii U and a next gen Playstation/Xbox.

Hell, for some of the things you need AA for, you could spend the extra power for proper fixes for rendering artifcts like shader aliasing which are memory/computation intensive.

Regards,
SB

 

[TheChefO]

It's easy to justify:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/11/why-we-are-not-using-euphoria/

You assume that it's easy to make certain features standard across all games, but most games need to have their feature set tailored to best fit within their given budget (both time/money and performance).

The link is to a small dev that wanted to use it, but was told he couldn't afford it, and then sour grapes.

http://aigamedev.com/open/editorial/naturalmotion-euphoria/

Another link on the subject.

Euphoria is a well marketed product of the concept I'm talking about, but that doesn't have to be the only way to get there. I'm just assuming a 3rd party middleware group that is platform agnostic could build libraries quicker and more affordable than taking on the task one studio at a time.

However studios want to get to that end result of more realistic behaving characters in game worlds, have at it. I'm just saying the moonwalk has to go. The bumping into people with no reaction at all, has to go (or worse, just walking directly through them *cough*). Floating feet off a ledge or on stairs has to go (heck even the Sonic team recognized this way back in the early 90's).

Dynamic behavior is also in its infancy, but having smart reactions to user behavior as Oblivion (and to a less extent GTA4/RedDead/LANoir) exhibits adds a ton to the believability (and fun!) to the game world.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The link is to a small dev that wanted to use it, but was told he couldn't afford it, and then sour grapes.

http://aigamedev.com/open/editorial/naturalmotion-euphoria/

Which fits directly into his statement that you have to fit the technology to the budget. If they had gone with Euphoria they may not have had enough money to even make the game.

Euphoria is a well marketed product of the concept I'm talking about, but that doesn't have to be the only way to get there. I'm just assuming a 3rd party middleware group that is platform agnostic could build libraries quicker and more affordable than taking on the task one studio at a time.

Sure but that doesn't mean it's going to be cheap or practical for all developers to use it, nor that it would be appropriate for the game designs of those developers.

However studios want to get to that end result of more realistic behaving characters in game worlds, have at it. I'm just saying the moonwalk has to go. The bumping into people with no reaction at all, has to go (or worse, just walking directly through them *cough*). Floating feet off a ledge or on stairs has to go (heck even the Sonic team recognized this way back in the early 90's).

Sure but we operate in a world where you have limited budgets. Smaller budgets for games with smaller mass market appeal. With the consumers being unreasonably antagonistic towards any increase in prices despite the fact that inflation continues to march on regardless of what the consumer wants, developers often have to a do lot with a limited amount of money.

Do you sacrifice gameplay for those things? Do you sacrifice graphics? Do you spend less time in QA? How many features should you cut or simplify?

The article also notes that is computationally intensive. So do you sacrifice complex lighting? Do you sacrifice realtime lighting? Maybe pare back the physics of other things making those less realistic? Maybe less AI is the way to go? Less computationally intensive graphical effects?

Dynamic behavior is also in its infancy, but having smart reactions to user behavior as Oblivion (and to a less extent GTA4/RedDead/LANoir) exhibits adds a ton to the believability (and fun!) to the game world.

Sure, bring up two of the largest and most well funded AAA projects which can afford to do these things. Something which is far beyond the scope of most developement projects which may have significantly less funding. I don't argue the added realism it can bring. Only that it's not possible for all devs to do it, even if the middleware was cheap and accessible.

There's a ton of things I'd love to see in games. It's highly unlikely I will ever see ALL of them in a single game due to the very simple restrictions placed on devs either through monetary budgets or hardware performance budgets. And I certainly expect to see most of them in most titles. But only in specific cases where a team has enough funding that they can afford to do it.

Both of those are very hard and inflexible restrictions on what a developer can reasonably do.

Eventually we may get there. Or least somewhere close. Physics middleware has been around for a LONG time now, and it still isn't ubiquitous in games. But at least it's to the point where it isn't unusual to see physics in games.

But certainly, along with the other things, I've pointed out it's yet another thing a company can do to distinguish themselves. There are a ton of things that could still be done to bring added realism to gaming. We just need more hardware power (and probably significantly more than even next gen consoles) to pull a lot of it off in a convincing manner. And that's not even taking into consideration the time and hence costs involved to pull them off which will make it impossible to do all or most of it.

Regards,
SB

 

[Prophecy2k]

I'd happily sacrifice gameworld size to an extent, stuff like high framerates and expensive AA methods (to an extent), for games with a polished and solid individualistic look, lots of believability to the game world (physics, AI, general interactivity etc), a tight and engaging narrative or atmosphere, and enough player mechanics that allows for truly emergent gameplay.

The games i enjoyed the most this generation are the ones where as the player, the tools at my desposable, and mechanics under my employ with which i was able to interact with my gaming environment were vast. I like to see alot more of that next generation.

For me next gen games don't all need to have endless checklists of features as standard. I don't care too much about stuff like player choice, branching paths, open worlds etc etc if it doesn't add anything meaningful to the game (which is something i saw alot of this gen). I'd simply like to see more games trying to do things differently and giving the player more tools to complete the tasks the game sets before him/her.

Games like Red Faction Guerrilla, Deus Ex HR, Skyrim, Rage, Batman AA/AC, RDR, GTA, InFamous, Vanquish, GT5/FM4, Fallout 3/NV etc are games I loved because they not only gave me tonnes to do, but also gave me lots of tools to use to do them. The Elder Scrolls games in particular i do enjoy simply because of the level of interactivity. I gladly trade dynamic lighting and super high res textures for a game that allows me to manipulate the world in so many ways (and I'm simply taking about the sheer number of items, useful and useless that i could pick up and mess around with).

 

[Rodéric]

Try Trine 2 for awesome graphics at the expense of viewing distance !
(And good story/gameplay too, plus coop !)

 

[kagemaru]

The link is to a small dev that wanted to use it, but was told he couldn't afford it, and then sour grapes.

http://aigamedev.com/open/editorial/naturalmotion-euphoria/

Another link on the subject.

blah blah blah...

I don't think you understand my point. Unless I'm mistaken, it's not like you license Euphoria and just use their tools to integrate this tech. You basically hire naturalmotion to help implement the tech into your game, that's additional overhead on top of the animation team you likely have already.

If you're a studio/publisher who can afford Euphoria, you likely have talent in-house already, and would benefit from creating your own custom animation solutions that could better fit your needs and budgets. ANT from EA is a good example of this IMO.

Do I think animation could use improving? Of course, but I would never be so ignorant to say the tech isn't used because of the lack of familiarity or pressure from the bean counters. It just may not be a logical solution when weighing the benefits to the drawbacks.

 

[TheChefO]

Which fits directly into his statement that you have to fit the technology to the budget. If they had gone with Euphoria they may not have had enough money to even make the game.

Barring a change in the methods a platform holder would take to ensure the dev kits they provide enable 3rd party tools to generate a "standard" on the platform, I'd say yes, this will likely be limited to AAA games. But even there this gen we did not see this take place, so improving that for nextgen would be great.

However, what I'd like to see is Sony/MS pony up to elevate the standards of game development on their platforms. If that means they provide the licensing/tools/libraries, then so be it.

Sure but that doesn't mean it's going to be cheap or practical for all developers to use it, nor that it would be appropriate for the game designs of those developers.

There are rare games these days which are not based in reality where physics and realistic behavior don't matter, but they are few and far between.

As for cost, see above.

Sure but we operate in a world where you have limited budgets. Smaller budgets for games with smaller mass market appeal. With the consumers being unreasonably antagonistic towards any increase in prices despite the fact that inflation continues to march on regardless of what the consumer wants, developers often have to a do lot with a limited amount of money.

Do you sacrifice gameplay for those things? Do you sacrifice graphics? Do you spend less time in QA? How many features should you cut or simplify?

see above.

The article also notes that is computationally intensive. So do you sacrifice complex lighting? Do you sacrifice realtime lighting? Maybe pare back the physics of other things making those less realistic? Maybe less AI is the way to go? Less computationally intensive graphical effects?

This is the thread for "Next Gen Gameplay ..." I'm pretty sure there will be additional computational resources. Hence, elevated expectations.

Sure, bring up two of the largest and most well funded AAA projects which can afford to do these things. Something which is far beyond the scope of most developement projects which may have significantly less funding. I don't argue the added realism it can bring. Only that it's not possible for all devs to do it, even if the middleware was cheap and accessible.

Sure, indi devs can't afford to do everything. But again, AAA has no excuse.

And I'd like to see Sony/MS step up to elevate standards on THEIR platforms.

There's a ton of things I'd love to see in games. It's highly unlikely I will ever see ALL of them in a single game due to the very simple restrictions placed on devs either through monetary budgets or hardware performance budgets. And I certainly expect to see most of them in most titles. But only in specific cases where a team has enough funding that they can afford to do it.

Both of those are very hard and inflexible restrictions on what a developer can reasonably do.

I disagree.

Both are proven methods which have been utilized in shipping games since 2007.

Developer teams, publishers and CONSUMERS need to get on board to make it happen, but it is hardly an impossible dream only to wish for.

As time goes on, expectations are, and should be raised.

Eventually we may get there. Or least somewhere close. Physics middleware has been around for a LONG time now, and it still isn't ubiquitous in games. But at least it's to the point where it isn't unusual to see physics in games.

Again we need Sony/MS to step up in this regard. Standards for their platforms.

If a dev isn't meeting these standards, they should meet a certain criteria to avoid having these standards in their game.

The lack of physics in games is just a poor excuse for cheap and quick design. That's just inexcusable these days for the majority of games.

We should be expecting more as gamers and developers, but it will take platform holders to stand up for their product, and set the standards.

But certainly, along with the other things, I've pointed out it's yet another thing a company can do to distinguish themselves. There are a ton of things that could still be done to bring added realism to gaming. We just need more hardware power (and probably significantly more than even next gen consoles) to pull a lot of it off in a convincing manner. And that's not even taking into consideration the time and hence costs involved to pull them off which will make it impossible to do all or most of it.

In time, obviously this will get better. It takes experience with using and studying new implementations of existing technology, but it isn't going to get any better at all sitting on the shelf or in one or two one off titles.

 

[TheChefO]

Do I think animation could use improving? Of course, but I would never be so ignorant to say the tech isn't used because of the lack of familiarity or pressure from the bean counters. It just may not be a logical solution when weighing the benefits to the drawbacks.

It's not just animation.

It's physics based animation along with behavior intelligence.

It's creating believable characters.

Is it 100% there now? Of course not, but it's a helluva lot better than 99% of the crap on the shelves.

Canned animation is cheap, but it's also cheap.

Anyone else enjoy the waking spinning bear in the cave at the outset of Skyrim? Yeah, me too.

Certain companies get it, and they approach videogames as an art-form and a profession with the intent of pushing it forward and building on the advancements of others. While other companies look at it as a quick way to try and make a buck based on old profit formulas.

 

[AlNom]

I don't think you understand my point. Unless I'm mistaken, it's not like you license Euphoria and just use their tools to integrate this tech. You basically hire naturalmotion to help implement the tech into your game, that's additional overhead on top of the animation team you likely have already.

If you're a studio/publisher who can afford Euphoria, you likely have talent in-house already, and would benefit from creating your own custom animation solutions that could better fit your needs and budgets. ANT from EA is a good example of this IMO.

Furthermore, there's going to be overhead time for relearning how to do their job. 3rd party solutions can be good, but if you're on a tight schedule, perhaps it's not the best use of time/money since by then you've probably already got a method for working on the animations and physics, which is perhaps more relevant to sequels or subsequent games in the same generation where 2 years development seems to be the norm.

In the case of GTAIV, it was their first big budget title for the generation, and the tech team would have had loads of time since the previous GTA. That work is clearly paying off for the other games they are making. Other studios simply don't have that luxury of time or budget. By the time Euphoria became feasible for the generation, there would have been loads of titles already released and the studios would have to focus on pumping out titles on a limited schedule.

Maybe we'll see a better uptake next gen just by nature of tech teams now having different options available from the start of their next-gen development.

 

[TheChefO]

Maybe we'll see a better uptake next gen just by nature of tech teams now having different options available from the start of their next-gen development.

I think it will be a shame if we don't see better uptake of euphoria-type implementations in nextgen titles.

Unfortunately it will be up to Sony/MS to mandate such a standard, and they likely will not have the balls to enforce such a standard.

So that leaves pubs/devs doing this on their own ... good luck without having gamers demanding it.

The nice thing about Euphoria is it puts the issue up front and center stage with gamers while at the same time, presenting a standard of quality to measure to.

At least Rockstar sees it as a standard while at the same time pushes other standards in game art with facial capture and story telling / character building.

 

[kagemaru]

It's not just animation.

It's physics based animation along with behavior intelligence.

It's creating believable characters.

Is it 100% there now? Of course not, but it's a helluva lot better than 99% of the crap on the shelves.

Canned animation is cheap, but it's also cheap.

Anyone else enjoy the waking spinning bear in the cave at the outset of Skyrim? Yeah, me too.

Certain companies get it, and they approach videogames as an art-form and a profession with the intent of pushing it forward and building on the advancements of others. While other companies look at it as a quick way to try and make a buck based on old profit formulas.

Hey let's cherry pick one part of my post, completely ignoring my point (again)!

I agree, Bethesda just doesn't get it, it's quite clear they don't treat development as an art form and instead go for the quick cash grab /sarcasm.

You are making too many assumptions and IMO insulting every studio that doesn't follow your narrow view of how development should be handled.

I think it will be a shame if we don't see better uptake of euphoria-type implementations in nextgen titles.

Unfortunately it will be up to Sony/MS to mandate such a standard, and they likely will not have the balls to enforce such a standard.

So that leaves pubs/devs doing this on their own ... good luck without having gamers demanding it.

The nice thing about Euphoria is it puts the issue up front and center stage with gamers while at the same time, presenting a standard of quality to measure to.

At least Rockstar sees it as a standard while at the same time pushes other standards in game art with facial capture and story telling / character building.

It's not about having the balls to enforce something, it's the realization that these things shouldn't be forced on developers.

Even with Euphoria being available from the beginning, it's still unrealistic to expect a broad adoption of that specific tech.

One size does not fit all with game development, it can't be explained any simpler than that.

 

[function]

One size does not fit all with game development, it can't be explained any simpler than that.

Just select the Euphoria option in Visual Studio and bingo, job done! The switch is in the "Project -> Art and Professionalism" menu, practically next door to the "Build -> Next Gen Port Auto Upgrade" option.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Anyone else enjoy the waking spinning bear in the cave at the outset of Skyrim?

I'm pretty sure Euphoria doesn't even cover anything remotely non-human in terms of it's behavioural physics based animation system.

Had something like Skyrim tried to use it (and i'm quite sure it would have been impossible for them in terms of time, and manpower) there would have been a HUGE visual disconnect between these realistic moving humans, and then animals which move unconvincingly so. Wouldn't work... Plus i'm also sure that on the consoles at least, Bethesda simply wouldn't have had the processing time to compute all their radiant AI systems, various other gameplay systems, alongside such a compute-intensive animation system (for so many characters). I may be wrong though, however if i am, it would much more than likely have been a case of them not having the time nor manpower to implement such a system (like Euphoria), and in many ways probably would have been cheaper for them to do their own.

Personally ChefO, I think you seem to have a very naive view of game development. As it would be practically suicidal for MS or Sony to try to mandate any such "standard" upon devs.
EVEN if they did write their own libraries for such things, which would amount to decades worth of manhours for systems that would more than likely prove applicable to very few devs and their own individualised production and dev pipelines, which they would recoup little or no financial benefit from.

Plus, conceptually at least, with your idea of trying to force triple A devs only to conform to your standard, whilst writing libraries for them, wouldn't it simply be better to just give the devs themselves the choice of whether to write their own libs or use available middleware, and not try to force them into anything. The nature of publisher and development competition would mean that devs would essentially aspire for these things next gen anyway, because they'll be looking for more and more ways to better differentiate their games.

A better way to see a higher standard of things such as animation, AI and physics would be to get gamers and the press to hype and review well those games that do do well in those areas. Then get gamers to buy said games.

If MS and Sony decided to offer things like additional marketing support for those games that did use those more sophisticated systems, or offered to subsidise the use of middleware like euphoria then perhaps that might be a less restrictive, more inductive approach that encourages devs to improve their games in those ways. It would benefit the platform holders because the more those games sell the more they'd get in platform royalties, and would improve the overall majority quality of games.

 

[function]

I have to wonder what a lot of games would look like during gameplay if they had been dynamic res. Surely there are many moments where there isn't a whole lot on-screen and the framerate would be fine at the maximum resolution. But then maybe the performance can drag down so much that it drops the res to lol-wtf levels, and on average it just ends up being an awful experience.

Would Call of Duty look that much worse if it were dynamically switching between 1024x600 and 960x544 during the heavier action bits?

I still don't know why more games haven't used dynamic MSAA as we saw in earlier Capcom games (Lost Planet and Resident Evil 5). I suppose that's not feasible for any game that is deferred, but... hey I wouldn't mind it if the Gears series had up to 4xMSAA when there's absolutely nothing going on (forward renderer).

It's interesting that Rage only reduced resolution in the horizontal direction. Was that because it's less noticeable or because the PS3's scaler is 50% bust? I couldn't find out what Brink does - DF doesn't say. If you use 2x MSAA in the direction that you're reducing your resolution that might help hide it.

OT, what would it look like if you didn't resolve your AA, and just scaled the unresolved final buffer to your output resolution? Would it look better or worse than resolve then scale?

Have to say, I didn't actually notice the dynamic AA in Resi Evil 5 (does that say more about me or the game?). I did, however, notice the mip-map transitions and it did my flipping head in. My single greatest wish for nex-gen visuals is trilinear filtering to be enforced, on everything. Visible mip-map changes make anything look bad, and once I notice them I can't stop staring at them and getting more and more distracted and annoyed.

 

[TheChefO]

Hey let's cherry pick one part of my post, completely ignoring my point (again)!

The rest of your "point" I already responded to previously. "Euphoria" or not "Euphoria" isn't the point. Get to the same results however they choose, but euphoria provides a nice benchmark/standard to shoot for.

I didn't see the need to repeat the statement again 6 posts down.

I agree, Bethesda just doesn't get it, it's quite clear they don't treat development as an art form and instead go for the quick cash grab /sarcasm.

Yeah and I didn't commend Bethesda above for other contributions ...

Perhaps you look at their contribution as a deity to be admired and never question anything they do, but *shockingly* I'm able to see the pros and cons of what they've done to this point and I pointed out one of the cases where even in a TOP NOTCH AAA GAME WITH MASSIVE SALES AND ACCOLADES, there is still room for improvement in this department.

You are making too many assumptions and IMO insulting every studio that doesn't follow your narrow view of how development should be handled.

Or perhaps the blame is with Publishers.

Or perhaps it's with the platform holders for not providing an ecosystem which lets developers get the results they envision without running in the red.

It's not about having the balls to enforce something, it's the realization that these things shouldn't be forced on developers.

I disagree.

It's about providing a standard of experience to build on.

There are exceptions of course, but within the confines of a certain game type, more realism should be something to strive for.

Realistic behavior, animation, and physics (within the confines of the intended gameworld design) should be a goal.

Sony/MS should be investing to help developers achieve this goal by developing libraries and toolsets specifically for this.

 

[ERP]

A big portion of the issue here is buying into the middleware hype.
This stuff doesn't just work, and it many case it's a very far cry from what's advertised.

Even Havok which has extraordinary adoption, if you go to a meeting with dev lead all you here is them bitch about there tools and Havok.

I have seen products on which Havok was used and almost certainly did far more harm than good, a game specific solution for character control can IMO be at least 20x faster than Havok's solution (and I might be understating that).

Havok (and I'll extend this to most middle ware) makes it easy to get things working and takes IME an enormous amount of work to ship something that actually works with acceptable quality in your game.

I'm not knocking Havok it's a well put together piece of tech, otherwise people wouldn't use it, and there is a value to having things working earlier in development, but don't assume that adopting complex technology is easier than building it.

As to Euphoria, there is a small class of animation problems it does very well, and a very large class where there are better solutions. Unless that small class of animations is of great value to the game, or is disproportionately represented in the game, the adoption cost would have to be relatively low. Everything I've heard says it isn't.

As to using TRC/TCR's to dictate technology, they already place an enormous burden on developers, go ask a PS3 team how many man hours go into implementing and testing save game. And I'm not talking about serializing game state, I'm just talking about writing that state to the media, and the associated UI.
Plus all your really asking todo is dictate game design choices and I have a problem with any restriction on that.

 

[TheChefO]

I'm pretty sure Euphoria doesn't even cover anything remotely non-human in terms of it's behavioural physics based animation system.

Again, it's a baseline/target to shoot for. Build on euphoria to support a broad range of creatures etc.

But the point is, static mocap animation works great when you have a planned static operation which doesn't interact with the world. This is counter to the direction videogames are headed.

Had something like Skyrim tried to use it (and i'm quite sure it would have been impossible for them in terms of time, and manpower) there would have been a HUGE visual disconnect between these realistic moving humans, and then animals which move unconvincingly so. Wouldn't work... Plus i'm also sure that on the consoles at least, Bethesda simply wouldn't have had the processing time to compute all their radiant AI systems, various other gameplay systems, alongside such a compute-intensive animation system (for so many characters). I may be wrong though, however if i am, it would much more than likely have been a case of them not having the time nor manpower to implement such a system (like Euphoria), and in many ways probably would have been cheaper for them to do their own.

Agreed. Introducing an advanced system like Euphoria on top of the capabilities Bethesda already has built into their engine would be problematic, especially on current gen systems. But we are talking about nextgen.

Personally ChefO, I think you seem to have a very naive view of game development. As it would be practically suicidal for MS or Sony to try to mandate any such "standard" upon devs.
EVEN if they did write their own libraries for such things, which would amount to decades worth of manhours for systems that would more than likely prove applicable to very few devs and their own individualised production and dev pipelines, which they would recoup little or no financial benefit from.

Direct cost/benefit is difficult to derive from such a venture, true. But sometimes investments are made for the sake of improving the art form with the thought that a better product will bring in more money.

Plus, conceptually at least, with your idea of trying to force triple A devs only to conform to your standard, whilst writing libraries for them, wouldn't it simply be better to just give the devs themselves the choice of whether to write their own libs or use available middleware, and not try to force them into anything. The nature of publisher and development competition would mean that devs would essentially aspire for these things next gen anyway, because they'll be looking for more and more ways to better differentiate their games.

The concept is a library which is available to all, and for all to contribute to and/or extend/improve for their own uses. But MS/Sony should be stepping up and saying "this is the benchmark, take it from here".

A better way to see a higher standard of things such as animation, AI and physics would be to get gamers and the press to hype and review well those games that do do well in those areas. Then get gamers to buy said games.

Rockstar sales already make that case. Where the industry goes from here is anyone's guess, but seeing Rockstar invest in projects like LA Noir and the facial cap leads me to believe they aren't done yet.

If MS and Sony decided to offer things like additional marketing support for those games that did use those more sophisticated systems, or offered to subsidise the use of middleware like euphoria then perhaps that might be a less restrictive, more inductive approach that encourages devs to improve their games in those ways. It would benefit the platform holders because the more those games sell the more they'd get in platform royalties, and would improve the overall majority quality of games.

That's a bit passive, but would be better than where we're at.

 

[AlNom]

It's interesting that Rage only reduced resolution in the horizontal direction. Was that because it's less noticeable or because the PS3's scaler is 50% bust?

For a landscape, vertical resolution is pretty important. On the other hand, horizontal resolution is more important for things like characters, which have limited pixel/screen width to resolve anything. Though it's quite possible that a single dimension scaling just looks better during the software upscale since they'd be using as cheap a filter as possible.

If they're using RSX to scale, then the HUD would be scaled too (don't recall if that's the case). On 360, dynamic res is necessarily done in software because of a quirk in how the scaler hardware works - it blanks the screen when changing input res.

I couldn't find out what Brink does - DF doesn't say.

IIRC, it's horizontal scaling.

If you use 2x MSAA in the direction that you're reducing your resolution that might help hide it.

Certainly. It's the reason why that MSAA remapping trick was used in several games on PS3.

OT, what would it look like if you didn't resolve your AA, and just scaled the unresolved final buffer to your output resolution? Would it look better or worse than resolve then scale?

hm... keep in mind that devs perform shading and other work on the aliased render target that has all the samples mapped to a pixel (post-resolve). So I'd guess you'd have a pretty plain looking game.

But otherwise, when you're using the MSAA samples to fill in for the sub-HD frame, you'll get a weird pattern on edges since your information is from one of the two sample positions, not the final resolved sample. For non-edge pixels, the two samples would be identical for a particular pixel, so you might get something weird or something better depending on what resolution you're dealing with and what you do with the larger buffer. It'd be different between say... starting with 640x720 and upscaling vs 1120x720 and upscaling/downscaling.

My single greatest wish for nex-gen visuals is trilinear filtering to be enforced, on everything. Visible mip-map changes make anything look bad, and once I notice them I can't stop staring at them and getting more and more distracted and annoyed.

Well, it'll work fine on plain textures, but once you start using non-linear representations (normal maps, parallax, displacement etc), you'll need something fancier. I get the feeling it might be something that is dealt with early on in the generation when devs have no clue what to do with the excess power, but as time goes on, there are other rendering features that take precedence.

On a related note, what's holding back AF on console is basically texture bandwidth and texture caches.

I do wonder about manual/shader filtering anyway (ala Rage for example). TBH, even on PC I find >4xAF a bit hard to discern in the general case (playing @ 1200p also mitigates the need to an extent). Performance on PC is, of course, in abundance, but I think it'd be a pretty fair compromise in a more limited hardware situation. At least in a lot of games that I play, it's not often I'm having to look down an empty corridor. Devs can always select higher filtering on particular textures for a given scene if they have that much time to do so as well.