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

[Laa-Yosh]

How common is BINK in 360 games?

Mass Effect 1 definitely uses it, don't have the sequel (yet) though.

 

[DonaldDuck]

From a design point of view a 576p cutscene may be acceptable if the resolution of the in-game parts are the same. The result would be a more cohesive IQ. But, are they?

I really want to know the technical approach Square took when porting the game. What we have seen of the PS3 version seems far from unreachable in Microsoft hardware. I know time can be a determining factor when you have to reach parity in IQ and performance, but XTS hardware is well known for it´s accesibility.

We´ll see soon what happened.

I suppose that being the project manager in such a big production can become a nightmare. Things are never easy, you know.

 

[assurdum]

From a design point of view a 576p cutscene may be acceptable if the resolution of the in-game parts are the same. The result would be a more cohesive IQ. But, are they?

I really want to know the technical approach Square took when porting the game. What we have seen of the PS3 version seems far from unreachable in Microsoft hardware. I know time can be a determining factor when you have to reach parity in IQ and performance, but XTS hardware is well known for it´s accesibility.

We´ll see soon what happened.

I suppose that being the project manager in such a big production can become a nightmare. Things are never easy, you know.

FFXIII has HDR+2xMSAA & in a limited EDRAM cause tiling. However It has been explained in different occasions that it isn't exactly so absurd the use of subhd to solve the tiling (ng2, halo, tomb raider for example) .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

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.

What do they mean by 'moved it off the CPUs'? There's got to be a typo there somewhere. Off the GPU? Off the PPU onto SPEs? Off the SPEs onto PPU? Off Cell onto GPU?

 

[Butta]

Would MLAA even make sense on SPU? Are there any other examples of this being done (and unlike Saboteur which turned out to be blur)?

 

[inefficient]

Would MLAA even make sense on SPU? Are there any other examples of this being done (and unlike Saboteur which turned out to be blur)?

I found this paper on MLAA written by Intel engineer Alexander Reshetov
http://visual-computing.intel-research.net/publications/mlaa.pdf

He writes:

"The algorithm is embarrassingly parallel and can be executed concurrently with rendering threads (using double buffering), allowing for better processor utilization. The algorithm achieves reasonable performance, in many cases without any noticeable impact."

Sounds like a good match for the SPUs. I've never heard of a PS3 developer offloading work from the SPU to the GPU because the SPUs were so over worked and the GPU had some time to kill.

 

[Brad Grenz]

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/



It's not quite accurate is it?

Yeah, 90 minutes sounded low. I think 3 hours of actual FMV sounds accurate, perhaps split into 90 minutes each of high quality CG and pre-rendered in engine using game assets. That could easily cause confusion, but it changes the numbers game substantially. Now it's how to get 9 GBs of video spread across 3 discs in addition to 6.8 GBs of game data, a not insignificant portion of which must be duplicated across all three. Sounds like the answer was to squinch that 9 GBs down even further.

 

[Jurai]

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.

almost all 360 games lately have implemented BINK as their fmv codec of choice, at the start of the console WMV was very prevalent but it's slowly falling off the chart

 

[Jurai]

Also on the topic of BINK, I do know it has pretty good support for multi-channel audio options, might be why it's gained so much popularity but don't quote me on that.

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.

I like how you bust out a ton of info on filesizes yet don't realize that it is relatively simple to read the data off a 360 disc, multiple applications exist which can read an original 360 disc if you have the right drive connected to your PC.

 

[cal_guy]

Yeah, 90 minutes sounded low. I think 3 hours of actual FMV sounds accurate, perhaps split into 90 minutes each of high quality CG and pre-rendered in engine using game assets. That could easily cause confusion, but it changes the numbers game substantially. Now it's how to get 9 GBs of video spread across 3 discs in addition to 6.8 GBs of game data, a not insignificant portion of which must be duplicated across all three. Sounds like the answer was to squinch that 9 GBs down even further.

Well you have to remember that the first two discs has 1 GB of free space each while the third disc has about 200 MB of free disc space.

almost all 360 games lately have implemented BINK as their fmv codec of choice, at the start of the console WMV was very prevalent but it's slowly falling off the chart

Well most of those games probably don't use FMV nearly as much as Final Fantasy XIII.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

I like how you bust out a ton of info on filesizes yet don't realize that it is relatively simple to read the data off a 360 disc, multiple applications exist which can read an original 360 disc if you have the right drive connected to your PC.

Actually no it isn't. most little utilities for xbox to pc stuff are made to view logs of the files....not to open them or decrypt it so that everyone can access it. in actuality your talking about breaking the 2gb encryption just to read the files and then extract it. Reading files off of an xbox 360 disc isn't like reading stuff off a bonus or extra's disc from a movie.

the files don't show up as readable thumbnails that you just find, execute, and pluck off of the disc. everything is encoded, even the little movie files. to read, extract, and get these media files to view for every pc is much more complicated than just making a capturing of it and leaking it on the net.

i'm surprised at how much negative speculations is being conjured up yet there's no direct captures of the game it's self being leaked. too many people are focusing on a specific subject and are taking advantage of the game not yet being out to the masses.

 

[phleg]

i'm surprised at how much negative speculations is being conjured up yet there's no direct captures of the game it's self being leaked. too many people are focusing on a specific subject and are taking advantage of the game not yet being out to the masses.

These shots appear to be from the leaked 360 version (posted in the IQ thread) and appear to match up to previous suspicions regarding the resolution:

http://i47.tinypic.com/vzd6aw.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/aca729.jpg
http://i49.tinypic.com/2mpanfn.jpg
http://i47.tinypic.com/r74nqx.jpg

 

[Jurai]

360 games generally store pre-rendered fmv in standard video containers as far as I'm aware, considering the video is already compressed it doesn't make much sense to try to store it in an extra compression container too. FF13 360 stores it's FMV in 'wmp' files, but in reality they are just regular BINK videos with an extra header at the start. If you delete the extraneous header you can play them back in Rad Tools. It looks like Square-Enix skimped out on audio for the FMV's too though, best I can tell there is one stereo track devoted mostly to sound effects of the FMV, one mono track for the voice overs, and one more stereo track focusing on the music and some ambient sound effects. Whether this can accomplish any true surround effects during playback, I'm not really sure.

Also, yes, it is as simple as reading the disc to access the files. Multiple applications exist which understand the filestructure employed by the 360, you can use a modified pc dvd-rom drive or purchase a secondhand drive from an actual 360 and access disc content from your retail game.

 

[corduroygt]

These shots appear to be from the leaked 360 version (posted in the IQ thread) and appear to match up to previous suspicions regarding the resolution:

http://i47.tinypic.com/vzd6aw.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/aca729.jpg
http://i49.tinypic.com/2mpanfn.jpg
http://i47.tinypic.com/r74nqx.jpg

Yikes on that last one, the hair looks awful.
However regardless of which version, the general textures and shaders don't impress me much in this game.

 

[TheWretched]

Actually no it isn't. most little utilities for xbox to pc stuff are made to view logs of the files....not to open them or decrypt it so that everyone can access it. in actuality your talking about breaking the 2gb encryption just to read the files and then extract it. Reading files off of an xbox 360 disc isn't like reading stuff off a bonus or extra's disc from a movie.

There's no mystical 2GB encryption on 360 discs... the first track of 360 dvds is simply a video session telling you to put it into a 360, if you put it into a DVD player or something else.

And... reading a 360 disc is, as others also pointed out, not that much work either!

 

[ultragpu]

Some preview about the HDR and SSAO implementation in Uncharted 2 at GDC 2010. Also the folks from Santa Monica studios would present GOW3 tech tidbits.
http://playstationatgdc.eventnewscenter.com/contents/details/678-playstation-sessions

Uncharted 2: HDR Lighting
Speaker: John Hable (Naughty Dog)
Date/time: Saturday 3:00- 4:00
Location (room): Room 305, South Hall
Description: This session talks about HDR Lighting in Uncharted 2. The main focus will be Gamma/Linear-Space Lighting, Filmic Tonemapping, and Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion. Throughout the session, we will talk about all the little details that no one tells you, like why our SSAO only affects ambient light, how our highlights avoid clamping, and if specular maps should be stored in linear or gamma space.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Throughout the session, we will talk about all the little details that no one tells you, like why our SSAO only affects ambient light, how our highlights avoid clamping, and if specular maps should be stored in linear or gamma space.

Sounds like stuff that many other devs should learn from...

 

[Jurai]

Just an update to a previous statement I made, the .wmp files on FFXIII 360 actually contain multiple BINK videos, though I'm not discerning any type of filelist/offset information in the files, guessing the game has the appropriate offsets hardcoded for reading

 

[marcus_rocks]

Uncharted 2's lighting

Speaking of lighting, Lead Graphics and Engine Programmer Pàl-Kristian Engstad explains that Naughty Dog chose to use not just deferred rendering and not just forward rendering but both. "We're using what we call 'deferred lighting', or what is also called a 'light pre-pass.' Essentially, we run a pass - well, actually several passes - before our standard forward-pass that handles lighting. This way, we're decoupling lighting from the geometry pass, hence alleviating the combinatorial explosion resulting from having to handle N materials with L different lighting schemes. It is similar to the "deferred rendering" approach used in Killzone 2, but it is also very different.

Studios like Guerrilla Games, Insomniac and Santa Monica Studios were great sounding boards for technical advice. Specifically Guerrilla and Insomniac helped us eliminate the screen tearing that was present in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. We're good friends with Alex Evans from Media Molecule, he gave us great advice from his experience with the online features of LittleBigPlanet."

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=5545

 

[AlNom]

I'd say light pre-pass is very different... wrong thing to focus on in the quoted part. The actual tech discussion isn't something particularly new, but nice to confirm (again). They used this lighting method in the first game, for instance. Hope we get the slides from GDC. That'll be far more enlightening.