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

Traditional deferred rendering and "light prepass" are very similar techniques. Especially when you are doing light prepass in a single pass like Cryengine 3 and most other new games do it. I personally consider single pass light prepass as being fully deferred. The only difference really is that LPP saves one tfetch for each overlapping light, but you need to fetch the light accumulation buffer later to finish the light equation. The g-buffers of single pass LPP are identical to "fully" deferred renderers (you just do not use them all in the lighting pass, color/specularity g-buffer is sampled later).

Tiled deferred techniques have been used a lot in PS3 games (the Uncharted 1 was one of the first ones to use it). Majority of PS3 deferred renderers seem to be tiled, as tiling suits PS3 architecture better. Tiling is just a bandwidth optimization. The lighting is calculated exactly the same way as in any other deferred renderer, and the g-buffer contents are identical. Also all the same downsides and upsides of other deferred techniques apply.

Tile based deferred techniques are also capable of efficient MSAA. Black Rock's microtiled renderer (4x4 tiles) can identify tiles that contain edges, and apply MSAA lighting only to those tiles. It's also very efficient in shadow sampling, since they do not need to sample shadowmaps at all for blocks that are fully lit or fully in shadow (very cost effective if you have complex soft shadows).

I recommend this article for anyone interested in recent high end deferred renderers: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1837046 (Back Rock's "Screen space classification for efficient deferred shading")
 
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Amazing they couldn't afford MSAA. Wonder if they went deferred.

So the deferred rendering may be the reason for the lack of any proper AA solution..the blur effect was also present on their previous 360 games (L4D1/2) though Orange Box didn't have any AA at all IIRC.

I'm really surprised that an engine that old looks so bad on the 360 after all these years of experience on the system, I guess the Source engine and the 360's hardware don't get along very well? the IQ is still as bad (or maybe worse?) as it was on the first L4D back in 2008.
 
So the deferred rendering may be the reason for the lack of any proper AA solution..the blur effect was also present on their previous 360 games (L4D1/2) though Orange Box didn't have any AA at all IIRC.

Well, it was just a question. I'm not saying it is deferred, but not being able to afford any MSAA (even 2x) is rather surprising given how simple the environments are from a geometry stand-point (since we all know the tiling issue).

I guess the Source engine and the 360's hardware don't get along very well?

The portal technology itself is the only thing that seems complex, but I'm not sure how that figures into their GPU rendering.
 
Platform politics may also play a role. Gabe already did a 180 when he decided to announce their appreciation of the PS3 and Sony's online system after all those years of bashing the console - I wouldn't put it past Valve and Sony to "help" one version look better (or worse) than the other.
 
Any comparison on game asset sizes on disc?


Platform politics may also play a role. Gabe already did a 180 when he decided to announce their appreciation of the PS3 and Sony's online system after all those years of bashing the console - I wouldn't put it past Valve and Sony to "help" one version look better (or worse) than the other.

I think the tinfoil is wrapped too tightly around your head. The only reason Gabe said the PS3 version would be the best among the console versions is because Sony's network was more open and allowed them to offer steamworks + steamplay.
 
I wouldn't put it past Valve and Sony to "help" one version look better (or worse) than the other.

That just seems a little too much IMO. :p I have to believe the people working on the game actually have some pride in their work. At the very least, just not having AA would already be a "negative" compared to MLAA. Doing more work to make it look worse is a bit silly. Sub-HD would have accomplished that, plus they could do worse things.

But anyways...
 
Plus if their intention was just to gimp XB360's versions, they'd apply a flat blur. The current blur is a selective blur, which means someone was deciding when and how to apply it. It's clearly there to serve a purpose even if that purpose is lost on us.
 
Well, it was just a question. I'm not saying it is deferred, but not being able to afford any MSAA (even 2x) is rather surprising given how simple the environments are from a geometry stand-point (since we all know the tiling issue).



The portal technology itself is the only thing that seems complex, but I'm not sure how that figures into their GPU rendering.

Portal 1's in-game commentary had quite a bit of info on how portals worked. Hopefully Portal 2 includes similar commentary, it's really interesting..

edit: I actually recall something about AA and portals being incompatible, but that might have been an earlier version of the tech
 
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Platform politics may also play a role. Gabe already did a 180 when he decided to announce their appreciation of the PS3 and Sony's online system after all those years of bashing the console - I wouldn't put it past Valve and Sony to "help" one version look better (or worse) than the other.

I reckon that's why they gave one version pink blinders in that starting room ...
 
Plus if their intention was just to gimp XB360's versions, they'd apply a flat blur. The current blur is a selective blur, which means someone was deciding when and how to apply it. It's clearly there to serve a purpose even if that purpose is lost on us.

I don't think that Yosh meant that Valve gimped in purpose the 360 version but more like that they didn't put the same amount of care or time in the 360 version as they did with the PS3 version which makes sense as the PS3 version may interest them more for a business standpoint with the steam integration and all.

360 got a basic port with no further improvements on the engine (for example using again selective blur like L4D1&2) from their previous efforts when they have much bigger experience with the 360 - maybe the reasons for all of this are technical (as Al said maybe they went with deferred rendering, edram bottleneck or something else) but as of now it just seems that they didn't put the same amount of effort and time into both versions.

The inevitable DF analysis will shed some more light on this one I guess and we'll see how the two versions compare frame-rate wise.
 
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So... "lazy devs"? Looks like this statement is accepted only when PS3 version of multiplatform game is better.

In the face of all the games that arguably exhibit more technological prowess on either platform, a simple edge filter is rather surprising, so please, let's just leave the platform bias out of it.

I mean, just think about what Portal 2 is actually displaying. Empty box rooms with zero characters...
 
I don't think that Yosh meant that Valve gimped in purpose the 360 version but more like that they didn't put the same amount of care or time in the 360 version as they did with the PS3 version which makes sense as the PS3 version maybe interest them more for a business standpoint with the steam integration and all.
That doesn't make any sense.

"We'll sell maybe 2 million on 360 and maybe 3 million on PS3 because it has better Steam integration."
"Really? Let's just make the 360 version on the cheap then because it's not as big."

You don't deliberately reduce sales because you can't be arsed! Whatever choices were made regards the 360 development were in view of making the most money. The cynical notion of holding back 360 games to match inferior PS3 versions because PS3 can't cope makes some sense, because of the "they didn't try hard enough" reaction from lunatic fans resulting in less PS3 sales. But having a game that could be better not being better is going to lose you sales for no gains. What's the thinking here? 360 owners were never going to buy Portal 2 because it hasn't got Steam integration, so you may as well not bother?!

The most plausible reason for one version of a game to look inferior to the other platform is technical, by along chalk. I can agree comparable results my by political, with a choice to hold back one platform, but I can't believe either of the 50ish million install base of each console is worth brushing aside with a cheap port, such that developers won't try to make the best game they can. So looking at something like Crysis 2, the reason it looks worse on PS3 isn't because MS moneyhats bought CryTek out, but because they had trouble getting their game to run as well on PS3.
 
Valve probably did not have resources to both upgrade the engine tech AND make a PS3 version.

Also, the only improvement the PS3 version has is MLAA right? Are there anything that the PS3 version is worse at?
 
I'm still wondering why such an old-ish engine such as Source runs so poorly in general on consoles. Is it just a matter of the implementation not being polished?
 
Shifty, how would you explain the blur that's clearly worsening the image quality? A straight 720p image with aliasing should look far better. And it isn't just an edge blur, texture quality is compromised as well.
 
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