The Game Technology discussion thread *Read first post before posting*

Folks, this is the Game Tech thread, not a game screenshot comparison contest. There is not much (if anything) to be gleaned from highly compressed movies.
 
Since this was a bit OT for the image quality thread I would like to mention it here.

In this pic from FF13 it seems that the Xbox 360 ver. is missing some normal maps in the collar, warb suggested that its due to the IQ differences/blur caused by upscaling, I on the other hand believe its straight away due to missing those normal maps in the first place.

http://i47.tinypic.com/2uz4jkm.png


EDIT: oopsy just saw Al's post...I don't mind if my post needs to be deleted for being what it is.
 
nightshade, the pattern is faint but still there at the top of the collar.

If you open this in photoshop and add some blur, you can get it to look very much like the 360 pic, with the pattern only visible where it's strongest under the collar.
 
I tried that, and IMO the texture isn't destroyed due to blur. If it is, why is the blur localised to the collar and not the shirt? I agree with nightshade that it's missing, but at this point I don't think it points to anything about the engine or platform differences as it could be a 'bug' addressed in a later build.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I tried that, and IMO the texture isn't destroyed due to blur. If it is, why is the blur localised to the collar and not the shirt? I agree with nightshade that it's missing, but at this point I don't think it points to anything about the engine or platform differences as it could be a 'bug' addressed in a later build.
Click to expand...
I might be seeing things that aren't really there, but I'm pretty sure the pattern is also faintly visible on the collar, top-middle: http://i46.tinypic.com/35iualz.jpg

PS3 resize and scale has it disappear from most everywhere but under the collar, as with the 360 pic:

121644p.jpg
 
That's certainly similar. Do we have context for this crop? I was assuming blur was a result of upscaling, which even with a significant upscale isn't this destructive. If the blur is being applied as a DOF, that could account for it.
 
 
Last edited by a moderator:
@ChristerEricson Nice review! Ben Diamand also gets some personal kudos: "best shadows we've ever seen in a game..."
Click to expand...
by Naty Hoffman - Technical Director at Activision

Sometimes you don't see shadows for some characters is not the result of bad algorithm but because of light sources.
 
warb said:
I might be seeing things that aren't really there, but I'm pretty sure the pattern is also faintly visible on the collar, top-middle: http://i46.tinypic.com/35iualz.jpg

PS3 resize and scale has it disappear from most everywhere but under the collar, as with the 360 pic:

121644p.jpg
Click to expand...

There do seem to be faint lines there, though they seem to be going in the opposite direction to the ones on the PS3 pic and also the lines on the rest of the shirt in the very same pic. If im seeing it correctly it would suggest a different texture.
 
You mean ripped directly from the pirated version. Give me a break.

Not that I'm saying the videos aren't 1024X576. Just commenting on the source.
 
I saw the source from where it originated from, the gamer did not clarify on where or how he obtained the footage. more so there's no way to extract media from a 360 disc that's heavily encrypted, and the answer is why would you? why waste all that time trying to break all that encryption when you can link a capture card and grab the footage and compress it your self.

and out all the footage that this guy "supposedly" saw he hand picks one that doesn't have dubbing. how do we know if this person didn't grab footage from the Japanese version and just compressed it? and what be the point in saving the media at that rez? XBL demos them selves come with advertisements or trailers embedded and manage 720p.

a typical 1 min wmv 720p file on XBL weighs at 50 mbs, FF13 has 90 minutes of it. that's 4.5 gbs scattered on three discs. now Bink weighs even more less so the reason to lower the rez would be pointless.

not going to say that this is fake but i am going to say that there is no really relying on it. this gamer didn't even make screen captures of in game stuff. there needs to be more evidence to support this claim.
 
How common is BINK in 360 games? I always thought it was strange it was being used instead of h.264 or VC-1 for the 360 sku in the first place. Depending on the amount of game data that had to be duplicated from disc to disc, I wouldn't find it that surprising if they had to cut down the video size and bit rate even more than we had presumed.
 
Bink is a really bizarre choice given the storage constraints. Had Square Enix used implementation of VC-1 or h.264 they could have easily had fit 90 minutes of video in 4.36 gigabytes at an average bitrate of 6.625 megabit per second. Or even 1080p in 8 gigabytes at an average bitrate of 12 megabit per second.
 
COPS N RAPPERS said:
I saw the source from where it originated from, the gamer did not clarify on where or how he obtained the footage. more so there's no way to extract media from a 360 disc that's heavily encrypted, and the answer is why would you? why waste all that time trying to break all that encryption when you can link a capture card and grab the footage and compress it your self.

and out all the footage that this guy "supposedly" saw he hand picks one that doesn't have dubbing. how do we know if this person didn't grab footage from the Japanese version and just compressed it? and what be the point in saving the media at that rez? XBL demos them selves come with advertisements or trailers embedded and manage 720p.

a typical 1 min wmv 720p file on XBL weighs at 50 mbs, FF13 has 90 minutes of it. that's 4.5 gbs scattered on three discs. now Bink weighs even more less so the reason to lower the rez would be pointless.

not going to say that this is fake but i am going to say that there is no really relying on it. this gamer didn't even make screen captures of in game stuff. there needs to be more evidence to support this claim.
Click to expand...

Didn't square enix say that there is over 10 hours of cutscene's? (some ofcourse, not pre-rendered, but still)
 
More specs about GOW 3 : AA on the cpu is MLAA Morphological Antialising. We saved 5-6 miliseconds by moving it off the cpu's. Many props to our coder Cedric for making this happen and it looks way better!For GoW3 we are not using screen space ambient occlusion. We are using a couple other versions of AO including baked for environments, AO texture maps and a pixel calculation that creates better shading on normal maps in indirect lit areas
 
hyaru said:
Didn't square enix say that there is over 10 hours of cutscene's? (some ofcourse, not pre-rendered, but still)
Click to expand...

If I remember correctly, it's over 9 hours of cutscenes, 3 of which are CG FMV @ 1080p.

EDIT: http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2009/12/18/ffxiii_cinema_scenes/

Just a few stats. Final Fantasy XIII has nine hours of cut scenes. This is split between pre-rendered movies, created by Square Enix's internal movie production team "Visual Works," and six hours of real time rendered scenes. The latter area was the topic of the lecture, and according to Tanaka, it took 16 months to produce the full lot.
Click to expand...

It's not quite accurate is it?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Shifty Geezer
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]
134 135 136
Replies
3K
Views
241K
pjbliverpool
P
BRiT
  • Locked
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]
252 253 254
Replies
5K
Views
533K
chris1515
C
L
ARM based Game Consoles on the way?
2 3 4
Replies
73
Views
8K
Lurkmass
L
S
Discussion about lighting (usage of lighting techniques).
2
Replies
21
Views
3K
Frenetic Pony
F
R
State of GDeflate *spawn
2
Replies
25
Views
2K
Remij
R
Back
Top