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

Kinectimals is top-notch visually, definitely. It does only one thing well - okay, two - lush vegetation and felines - but it does them head and shoulders above other console games. For all the talk about how important animation is as a next step in visual realism, you'd think a title that does animations so well would get more recognition.

 

Well, obviously 4xMSAA will be better, but compared to no AA, temporal AA, QAA, the edge detect + blur that C2 is using or probably even 2xMSAA, MLAA looks pretty damn good.

And how many AAA games are using 4xMSAA anyway, besides Fallout 3, GT5 and Alan Wake.

I dunno, it has quite limited environments so it can't exactly be compared to a FPS/TPS game, I don't think they're doing anything beyond what Rare could do with the Viva Pinata/Banjo Kazooie engine.
And of course it's not very likely that some smaller third party dev making casual games will have better tech than some AAA title studio

 

A "Visual Effects" award goes not to whoever has the greatest tech, but to whoever uses it best.

Kinectimals was made by Frontier, the studio of David Braben (of Elite fame); they were also doing a very ambitious, recently killed, spy game, The Outsider (spent seven years or something like that). B3D local celebrity Humus spent some time working there. Don't dismiss them

(Also, don't dismiss the Banjo Kazooie engine.)

 

I wonder if Braben's gonna do a new Elite now...

 

Yeah I saw the list on the other thread, thanks again.

As for MLAA on the 360, I thought I read some reports of the effect running on the GPU, but the performance was less than ideal. However, and maybe my memory is fading on this, I thought whoever implemented it was using XNA so the performance may suffer compared to the access major studios have to the hardware.

I also remember reading some slides from Dice about Frostbite 2 where they mentioned MLAA on the GPU, though I'm not sure if they were talking about both the 360 and PC or just the PC.

Yeah I'm pretty sure it's confirmed to be using MLAA

Indeed, Banjo N&B is still a gorgeous game. Shame it looks like that tech will be going to waste with Rare relocated to Kinect games.

Would still love to see another proper Perfect Dark game developed for the 360, I bet it would drop jaws.

 

Looks amazing, I really like the beautiful Mirror's Edge-like lighting...can't wait to see what Dice can do for us console peasants with this new baby.

Also wondering if they implemented an AA solution for BF3 on consoles this time...Can't wait to see BF3 in action.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-02-07-uncharted-3-boasts-brilliant-fire-effects

sound pretty crazy.

 

Iteration times should definitely be a big concern, because waiting hours to bake a scene just plain sucks any way you look at it. Personally though I'm not convinced that Crytek's approach is the right one, since I'm not really impressed (visually) with the results they've gotten. Of course that's my opinion and others may disagree.

I also think there's a lot of area to explore in terms of using GPU computing (CUDA, CL, whatever) to speed up lightmap/vertex bake calculations. Personally I would rather spend some more time pursuing that before I say "**** it, let's do it all realtime".

 

The write up does make it sound like its incredible, but the video was a letdown (for me). The fire particles looked nothing special and the scenery destruction was obviously scripted... I was watching the video wondering if they were showing about the same effects they were describing xD

 

dunno, its easily some of the best I have seen

http://h-6.abload.de/img/uc3peelm5yp.gif

 

If this really is procedural and dynamic, then the environment deterioration should look different every time. I bet it won't.

 

could not find the "facial animation" thread but here is the new LA Noir reveal

http://www.rockstargames.com/lanoire/videos/

 

We've discussed it quite extensively there already. In short, it's more like facial recording and playback
It does produce very impressive results, but the entire engine suffers the huge resource hunger of the tech. Very primitive lighting and very simple shading on the characters.

 

you need to check out Far Cry 2 fire

 

true.

since it's the first time it's neatly implemented into a game that looks to have an extensive amount of varied game play as part of a package, rather than a glorified tech demo, I'm pretty pleased with the results.


Can you imagine next gen that this will become standard?

 

I think it's likely that a lot of techniques and effects will be come standard next gen. Very similar to how certain effects like normal mapping were rare last gen but common this gen.

 

It's only viable for certain types of games:
- willing to put less focus on other tech and environment compared to other games
- only featuring real human characters
- budget to afford casting every single role and recording/capturing every line of dialogue and every bit of performance

Also, increasing the quality (higher resolution textures, more geometry, more complex shaders) means an even bigger memory footprint compared to methods less dependent on massive digitizing.

I'd really wouldn't like Uncharted type of games, for example, to replace their characters with these "real" people. Something like Mass Effect would have problem with its aliens and environments.

Heavy Rain is a better fit for this type of tech, on the other hand. I'd seriously look into it if I were them.

 

PS3 footage is lookin' pretty nice. I think the facial work adds a lot to this game. It's pretty incredible. Obviously, as Laa-Yosh has pointed out, this can't be used in every game, but I'd take this over any other human facial animation I've ever seen.

 

I cant call it nice: heavy aliasied, blurred, many ridiculous low res textures, strange choppy framerate, often low res shadow that flickers strangely.
Really i'm curious if Rockstar will ever developer game on ps3 that dont have framerate issues and use MLAA [its really good on PC in GTA 4], i love their games, but just cant stand shitty framerate and they just hate PC lately ;\. Oh man, its so frustrating, because LA Noire concept is so great.