Did Forza really look that bad? wow, my memory must suck. I don't remember it looking THAT bad...
The Big Forza 2 Thread *
- Thread starter Cheezdoodles
- Start date
Did Forza really look that bad? wow, my memory must suck. I don't remember it looking THAT bad...
Funny I thought the exact opposite. I think it looks fantastic compared to what was going on last gen. I was actually impressed with how close it looked to Forza 2 considering the hardware improvements.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Cool than I could use my Ferrari F1 model im making in PGR3
Hehe this new hardware is great, makes it alot easier for my not very poly efficient model skills.
Booh! Motion blur adds a ton to the visuals and sense of speed. 60fps isn't enough for my taste.
....
I am shocked they are talking about removing motion blur... how many of the PR features are they going to cut
Hum, didn't you just say a few pages back that you could live with the framerate and the smoothness that PGR3 offered?
All I know is, at 60 fps, motion blur is not needed and wouldn't enhance the smoothness much (if at all), but could potentially make it seem even less realistic depending on how the motion blur is implemented. I think after playing hours of other games that are locked at 60 fps (WipEout Fusion, Gran Turismo, etc) that didn't feature any motion blur, it's really not that big of a deal. Consider this: Burnout had motion blur, but it only used it as an effect when the player used the Boost button - which admittedly worked well, since for one, Burnout is an Arcade-Action game and realism isn't its selling point. In a game like Forza though, do we really need the fancy motion blur? Not at all, IMO.
Aren't PGR and Forza like very different games? Forza is definitely a simulator. PGR never struck me as being in that category, at least that's not the impression I've gotten. I've never played the series.
If that's the case, who really cares if PGR looks "better" (which I really doubt). I'm interested in sims, not arcade mechanics. Ridge Racer 6 looks good, but the gameplay is so mundane that I laughed at the demo.
If that's the case, who really cares if PGR looks "better" (which I really doubt). I'm interested in sims, not arcade mechanics. Ridge Racer 6 looks good, but the gameplay is so mundane that I laughed at the demo.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Well PGR is not nearly as arcade as e.g. Ridge Racer, I actually find the driving mechanics in PGR to be quite satisfactory.
Two issues: Display refresh rate versus object velocity.
I can notice the difference between 30fps and 60fps. Even games that overage over 100fps on my display (75Hz) and Vsync enabled I can detect some hitching when their are minor drops (e.g. BF1942 with a 6800GT is capped at 100fps and mainly stays there but may see very, very short dips). Tearing bothers me much more than 30fps, and an unstable high framerate than a lower locked one.
So I can "see" a display refresh rate difference, and the impact it has on fluidity, but I am not as sensative to it as I am to other factors. In most games it doesn't impact my gaming experience much.
But I think the "60fps solves all problems" mantra (currently being pushed by Turn10) is very misleading and confuses the display refresh rate (and the associated fluidity of the screen) with object velocity -- two very different problems.
60fps may be substantial enough for your eyes to resolve all motion velocity issues, but I must say not for mine. Not even close. See the following attachement for an example of the issue imo:
A1 / Frame1: The Ball is not on screen.
A2 / Frame2: The Ball has entered the screen space about 50 pixels.
A3 / Frame3: The ball, in 1 frame's time the ball has moved nearly 1000 pixels from left to right.
B1 / Frame1: The Ball is not on screen.
B2 / Frame2: The Ball has entered the screen space about 50 pixels with associated blur due to motion.
B3 / Frame3: The ball, in 1 frame's time the ball has moved nearly 1000 pixels from left to right. Not that motion blur is present expression the object velocity and motion during the duration of the 1/60th exposure.
In Example A, the problem is that the object blips across the screen. It is impossible for your eye to compensate for the missing motion (as a camera or the eye would) because there is no data for the eye to interpolate. As far as they eye would be concerned in this scenario it is just a circular object (UFO?) popping up on the screen for 2 frames and dissappearing. Little, if any, sense of motion is conveyed.
In Example B, the object's velocity is considered. The ball is moving at a very high rate of speed and during the 1/60th exposure of the frame the places the ball was during the frame are represented.
And that is the difference: Example A (60fps without motion blur) treats moving objects as if they appear at static, singular positions during the frame.
In Example B, which is more realistic, an object is expressed as its placement during the entire exposure and not as an arbitrary point.
Now this is an extreme example, but there are similar conditions you will see in a racing game. A fast turn will see the gamers field of view change very quickly, and a spin out could see > 10 degrees (over 150pixels) of change in the centerpoint on a 720p display (about 4 frames from center to off screen). And most commonly are objects on the perephrial portion of your field of view. While driving down a straight away at 200MPH objects in the center of the display and at a great distance away have very little relative movement on the screen. But objects on the far right and left of the display are moving EXTREMELY fast as they pass by. And object 25% from the far left or right in Frame1 may not even be on Frame2 due to the speed of the car.
So what Che/Turn10 has said, that at 60fps there is no need for motion blur because 60fps recreates all the blur, is not true at all.
YMMV with your eyes and what you are comparing/contrasting it to. Granted a lot of racing fans have yet to see a 60fps racer with "propper" motion blur so it is hard to get excited about it. But there is a reason why Bizzare and Turn10 were both aiming for 60fps AND Motion Blur.
It seems both feel short, one on 30fps with and the other 60fps without.
True, just like any other artistic effect (HDR and Bloom, Lense Flares, Reflections, etc) they can be illconceived, misapplied, a poor technologically implimentation, or just artistically lacking. I do think BC's motion blur in PGR3 was well balanced and don't see why Turn10 couldn't have gotten some advance from them.
I obviously won't argue with your eyes! But they are not mine.
And I would say that statements like, "All I know is, at 60 fps, motion blur is not needed and wouldn't enhance the smoothness much (if at all)" sound very, very similar to the:
"All I know is, at 30fps, the game is smooth and 60fps is not needed and wouldn't enhance the smoothness much (if at all)".
And while this is my opinion, I am a very firm hunch that by the Xbox3/PS4 gamers will be demanding motion blur at 60fps for an improved sense of motion. 30fps with, and 60fps without, won't match up to the graphic-centric "desire". Of course the portion of the market demanding such is small, likewise the segment demanding 60fps. In the FM2 case there is no game pushing them to this standard. Once a technically solid racer appears that does both I think people will be more inclined to demand both. IMO of course (as what people what/demand, well, is hard to gauge... Wii?)
Motion blur isn't necessary by any stretch, neither 60fps. A game stands on a collection of merits.
For me it is a selling point. FM2 is one of the games I have been looking forward to and might compell me to a purchase. The PR handeling of FM2 is pretty poor, especially the delay+significantly cut content and features.
On the other hand I think their rebalance of the lighting, toning down of the HDR, and toning down of the reflections has done a TON for the graphics. Right now graphically it looks fine to me (a good next gen racing game... ableit I will wait to see it in motion to make my final judgement!) So I am not dogging FM2, I am mildly surprised at the progress they have made. But I am annoyed that they market a laundry list of features... and then fail to deliver on many.
And even more annoying when they make factually incorrect statements to sick on the "haters" as Che keeps saying.
Attachments
Just want to point out that that kind of blur which is shown in those example images can't be achieved by current 'classic' post processing blur implementations, as these techniques can only blur within an object silhouette, so a ball will have its interiors blurred, it will not 'draw' any trail.. [/nitpicking mode off]
Marco
Marco
Just want to point out that that kind of blur which is shown in those example images can't be achieved by current 'classic' post processing blur implementations, as these techniques can only blur within an object silhouette, so a ball will have its interiors blurred, it will not 'draw' any trail.. [/nitpicking mode off]
Marco
I was waiting to get nailed! I figured Faf would get me first. In my defense I am not an artist and I was just using a blur filter in Fireworks (again, I ain't no artists lol). Velocity maps (or accumulation buffers or whatever you guys are using these days) have some limits, just like normal maps and parallax maps do with faking geometry, but I don't see why with a good implimentation they shouldn't be used :smile:
In my defense PGR3 has some nice motion blur and artistically is well applied.
And in your defense, it definetely adds a lot to the experience. For another good example of the use of vector based motion blur, Lost Planet uses it to great effect.
nAo from what i understand you are reffering to per-screen motion blur which is a pp effect.Just want to point out that that kind of blur which is shown in those example images can't be achieved by current 'classic' post processing blur implementations, as these techniques can only blur within an object silhouette, so a ball will have its interiors blurred, it will not 'draw' any trail.. [/nitpicking mode off]
Marco
What about per-pixel vector motion blur ? I ask because i had heard some 360 developers to call it "real motion blur".
Mintmaster
Veteran
No, nAo is just talking about the difficulty of getting realistic post-processed motion blur in realtime. Offline you can do some fancy algorithms without actually rendering the scene 10 times, but it's tough to do it here.
The problem is that if you use a velocity vector for each pixel, you know where that unblurred pixel is supposed to blur to. The GPU programming model, however, operates on one pixel at a time and samples from the unblurred image.
So you can define a blur vector for every pixel in the vicinity of the ball, but for every pixel immediately outside the ball, the velocity vector is zero. When rendering those pixels, you don't have any information telling you to blur the ball.
The only feasible solution to this is to use the vertex shader to sort of stretch the geometry in a way that puts the velocity vector everywhere it needs to be (in particular, outside the confines of the original object silhouette). This is pretty tough to do without artifacts, as it can really funk up your geometry in an unintended way.
It's worth mentioning that realistic motion blur is very intensive computationally, and there are a lot of patents by Pixar that cover effective speedup solutions (stochastic sampling and such). Most offline renderers more or less suffer with 3D motion blur, so people end up using post processing on projects with short schedules and a combination of 3D and 2D when they have more time.
Then there are issues like motion blur on reflections and shadows... these can be ignored most of the time though, very few people tend to notice the lack of them
Someone on another forum posted these comparisons. Not quite as striking as GTHD, but close in regards to the cars.
Obviously seeing the game in motion (non-photomode) is what we all want to see, but they have made a lot of progress from this.
Obviously seeing the game in motion (non-photomode) is what we all want to see, but they have made a lot of progress from this.
There is IMO, nothing wrong with the models, or how detailed they are.
The problem lies in the colors.
The problem lies in the colors.
I'm sure it will look worlds better on a high end plasma/lcd tv.
And there is that thing called artistic license
Joshua Luna said:
Thanks for the example Joshua, which I think is very relevant to show why 30 fps is just not enough. With 60 fps though, which is nearly up at the limit of information the eye can process in a given second, I'm not convinced that additional blur between frames is necessary and would enhance the realism.
The problem I see with adding motion blur is highlighted somewhat by nAo's reply above. In a racing game such as Forza, the motion blur would be best used on the road, right? Now, imagine from the first point of view, the road in front would have to be blurred non-linearly: The patch of road closest to the viewer would have to be blured more heavily than the patch of road further away. I haven't seen motion blur implemented in such a way yet - in fact, the only game that comes to mind that did run at 60 fps and featured some kind of motion blur is Burnout. I find the motion blur that's being used when the "boost" is on, doesn't enhance the feeling of speed in the slightest but rather just blurs it.
Even when driving very fast in my car, I can make out details (like rocks etc) on the surface rushing by at incredible speed - if you implement any kind of bluring to the road or any objects in the game, those instances of details will be lost in the game as well.
I guess having played countless of games that feature a rock solid 60 fps framerate, I never found additional blur to be necessary. Even in fast corners, there's nothing that comes across as jerky as one would be led to believe when you look at your example A. In a game that only runs at a rock solid 30 fps, yes, it is noticable. But that's why PGR3 works great with motion blur - because it has to make up for what it's lacking in the framerate department.
If there is a game out there that does feature motion blur that does work in a game that features a rock solid 60 fps framerate, I'd be happy to see if it can convince me that is indeed a feature that is worth the effort and performance. I am not aware of a game that does feature this on the market today though, so there's nothing but a theory that seems to support that argument IMO.
Joshua Luna said:
Point taken, though from what I understand you are saying, is that your eyes haven't seen a game that implements good motion blur and a steady 60 fps yet either, so there's nothing you yourself can base that on, other than the example you posted above? I take it that PGR3 works fabulous with motion blur, but just because it can enhance a 30 fps game, doesn't mean it can also enhance a 60 fps also?
Joshua Luna said:
I'm not going to argue about the PR side of things. I do think though if the team behind Forza feels there is no benefit of doing motion blur when they are in fact aiming for double the framerate (which they may not have been when they went public about using motion blur), it's better to leave it out. Surely we all want features in the game that can benefit the experience. Features that don't benefit the experience are IMO not worth the time and effort - time and effort that could be spent else where...
My wrong, i was talking for realistic motion blur in real time.Mintmaster said:
As i understand it now is still a pp effect but it has far better visual results (and ofcourse more performance cost) than traditional full screen motion blur.
Two racing games that use it right now is PGR3(30 frames) and Bournout360 (60 frames).
Obviously Polyphony Digital and Turn10 dont use it for performance reasons.
Love_In_Rio
Veteran
did you see this video ?
http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=18676
It is from X06 but still is the best video from that show i´ve found so far. Quite good and that was 30 fps!!
http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=18676
It is from X06 but still is the best video from that show i´ve found so far. Quite good and that was 30 fps!!
