The Order: 1886

[HTupolev]

Are you saying it reflects the silhouette of the object but not it's color?

No, just that they use it very subtly and conservatively.

Case in point..

I think that's just the lighting and reflections being subdued and grey-on-grey. Check the other image, it's extremely unlikely that a hall of mirrors effect (in which the shapes shouldn't exist at all as silhouette or depth data in their own right) would be picked up like that unless the game was sampling from the color buffer.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I think that's just the lighting and reflections being subdued and grey-on-grey. Check the other image, it's extremely unlikely that a hall of mirrors effect (in which the shapes shouldn't exist at all as silhouette or depth data in their own right) would be picked up like that unless the game was sampling from the color buffer.

Ok.

But how can we tell if it's a cube map reflection or an actual re-rendering of the scene, stored in a buffer, and retrieved via ray-casting (or however they calculate the SSR)? The former technique would be good for static objects, but the latter is needed for dynamic objects.

 

[HTupolev]

Hmm.. I guess I'm wanting more realistic reflections.

I think most games are struggling with reflections right now (except the driving games).

"Right now"? SSR is a modern but unstable technique, and planar reflections have always been costly and lacked versatility. Games have always had issues with real-time reflections.

This is part of why stuff like The Tomorrow Children is exciting; GI and real-time reflections and whatnot result naturally from the lighting model, and aren't simply expensive hacks that operate in addition to it.

The racing games so far that I've seen use them properly.

If you're referring to Driveclub, it's true that it tries to avoid cubemaps, but its alternative is to just incorrectly resample pixels (i.e. from the edge of the screen if it's trying to reflect sky). If you free-cam around in photomode, it shimmers like crazy, especially on bodies of water and such.

The reason Driveclub's SSR looks so good most of the time is that the racing cameras avoid a lot of obvious miss cases. The implementation would look terrible in a game like ISS.

Ok.

But how can we tell if it's a cube map reflection or an actual re-rendering of the scene, stored in a buffer, and retrieved via ray-casting (or however they calculate the SSR)?

Not really sure what you mean by "re-rendering of the scene." The whole idea of SSR is that the ray-casting is the re-rendering; you don't have to "fully" render the frame again, like you do if you use a planar reflection.

As far as "how we can tell", I'm not sure what you mean. We can tell based on whether it's reflecting dynamic objects, and usually also based on how accurate the projection is*. In the case of the image I posted, it's reflecting a hall-of-mirrors effect that was clearly created on the fly by Delsin moving against an untextured wall.

*Even the best cubemap implementations still tend to have some wonkiness with how they move around, since each individual cubemap was taken at a single point and isn't entirely aware of how it should change with parallax. By contrast, most real-time reflection methods parallax reasonably correctly; the worst I've seen is Destiny's SSR, which has strange "corners" and such.

 

[nightshade]

Chromatic aberration + DOF +motion blur + grain. It's like looking at a magazine scan.

Motion blur does not appear when you are still and we have screenshots which were taken where the camera and objects are not in motion. DoF is what it is, games have been using it for years now and I haven't noticed CA so far in the Order.

My end point is, show me instances where these things are used to hide flaws in the Order (and do mention these flaws) and I'll agree with you.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

"Right now"? SSR is a modern but unstable technique, and planar reflections have always been costly and lacked versatility. Games have always had issues with real-time reflections.

Yea, true. I was thinking of "now" because SSR (ray-casting method) is fairly new.

This is part of why stuff like The Tomorrow Children is exciting; GI and real-time reflections and whatnot result naturally from the lighting model, and aren't simply expensive hacks that operate in addition to it.

I'll definitely be getting TTC to see what they do.

If you're referring to Driveclub, it's true that it tries to avoid cubemaps, but its alternative is to just incorrectly resample pixels (i.e. from the edge of the screen if it's trying to reflect sky). If you free-cam around in photomode, it shimmers like crazy, especially on bodies of water and such.

Well, DC and some of the other PC racing games like Assetto Corsa, Project Cars, GRID, etc..

The reason Driveclub's SSR looks so good most of the time is that the racing cameras avoid a lot of obvious miss cases. The implementation would look terrible in a game like ISS.

Yea, in Assetto for example, you can move the camera around anywhere you like and reflections still hold up.

Not really sure what you mean by "re-rendering of the scene." The whole idea of SSR is that the ray-casting is the re-rendering; you don't have to "fully" render the frame again, like you do if you use a planar reflection.

Yea, I'll read up on that to get a firm grasp at what they are doing.

 

[HTupolev]

Yea, in Assetto for example, you can move the camera around anywhere you like and reflections still hold up.

I don't have Assetto, but if you're talking about reflections can reflect off-screen objects, it's not SSR.

Driving games do sometimes use the classical approaches of actually rendering the game world to produce reflection data; it's pretty common, for instance, to use a low-quality low-res render for the rearview mirror.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I don't have Assetto, but if you're talking about reflections can reflect off-screen objects, it's not SSR.

Driving games do sometimes use the classical approaches of actually rendering the game world to produce reflection data; it's pretty common, for instance, to use a low-quality low-res render for the rearview mirror.

Gotcha. Well then that's the most accurate because it represents real ray-tracing. Yea, Assetto is pretty dope in the reflections department. Everything is reflected in multiple mirrors and there is no hacks involved (i.e. missing characters, or objects, low res, etc..), just pure brute force. It's expensive though. I have to trade the reflections for all the post-processing FX (which also has to render the entire world) but it looks truly astonishing -- especially since they added a really good fresnel term in the BRDF.

 

[L. Scofield]

Motion blur does not appear when you are still and we have screenshots which were taken where the camera and objects are not in motion. DoF is what it is, games have been using it for years now and I haven't noticed CA so far in the Order.

My end point is, show me instances where these things are used to hide flaws in the Order (and do mention these flaws) and I'll agree with you.

Every screenshot of The Order has CA. Just look at the edges of the screen. Most games don't simulate the point of view of a myopic person (DOF overuse). What flaws does it hide? Low res textures:

Dark environments help as well.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Every screenshot of The Order has CA. Just look at the edges of the screen. Most games don't simulate the point of view of a myopic person (DOF overuse). What flaws does it hide? Low res textures:

Dark environments help as well.

YIKES! Hmm.. I don't like that there is no self-occlusion on the brick left ledge, in-between the bricks over the characters' head, or the pipe not casting shadow on the brick wall. The brick texture would have looked much nicer with POM. I do see the CA though.

 

[Lukebg]

Every screenshot of The Order has CA. Just look at the edges of the screen. Most games don't simulate the point of view of a myopic person (DOF overuse). What flaws does it hide? Low res textures:

Dark environments help as well.

that is from a very old build of the game....

 

[VFX_Veteran]

that is from a very old build of the game....

Ah! That's a relief!

 

[DavidGraham]

Honestly I dislike it when people say this for pretty much any situation where the game is pushing a lot of effects on screen. Some people say Driveclub "hides" its flaws with all the blurry weather and rain, some people say I:SS hides its flaws with the neon lights, wet look and "blurry" DoF. Some say Killzone hides its flaws with its blurry Motion blur. Some say BF4 hides its flaw with all the bloom and lens flare. I think it's a ridiculous way to over simplify things especially relating to technology.

All of these people speak the truth, the fundamental graphics under most of modern games is severely flawed, to the point that if stripped of their "post FX" their visual look would be shameful. And even with them intact, their visual quality isn't sustainable under all conditions, it quickly falls apart in MANY scenes.

It stems from the fact that most games use a lot of hacks to achieve their final "look", leaving fundamental features ignored and decades old problems intact. Polygon count is often bad, and still remains bad to this day. Texture resolution is progressing very slowly, and still doesn't hold up under close inspection. Lighting and shadows still rely on tricks and compromises, (few shadow casters, post process lighting ..etc). LOD is still abysmal with horrendous transitions. Even physics simulations took a hit, after making a huge U turn, (most games no longer have interactive objects like they used to in the past, most don't even care to have ragdoll physics any more).

 

[L. Scofield]

that is from a very old build of the game....

And we know RAD has improved in that area because...

 

[chris1515]

All of these people speak the truth, the fundamental graphics under most of modern games is severely flawed, to the point that if stripped of their "post FX" their visual look would be shameful. And even with them intact, their visual quality isn't sustainable under all conditions, it quickly falls apart in MANY scenes.

It stems from the fact that most games use alot of hacks to achiever their final "look", leaving fundamental features ignored and decades old problems intact. Polygon count is often bad, and still remains bad to this day. Texture resolution is progressing very slowly, and still doesn't hold up under close inspection. Lighting and shadows still rely on tricks and compromises, (few shadow casters, post process lighting ..etc). LOD is still abysmal with horrendous transitions. Even physics simulation took hit, after making a huge U turn, (most games no longer have interactive objects like they used in the past, most doesn't even care to have ragdoll physics any more).

Polycount is not so bad. Micro polygon is the best way to kill Pixel Shading performance.

If someone decide to create a Reyes GPU it could be another story...

I hope we will often see adaptative tessellation on PS4 and Xbox One. It is a clever use of polygon under the razterization limits...

 

[DavidGraham]

Polycount is not so bad. Micro polygon is the best way to kill Pixel Shading performance.

It's so astronomically bad that looking at anything but the main characters becomes an exercise in visual agony! Even those main characters often have apparent flaws too, with sharp edges around the shoulders and sometimes faces as well (scalp, ears)!

I hope we will often see adaptative tessellation on PS4 and Xbox One. It is a clever use of polygon under the razterization limits...

Seconded, but for LOD transitions.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Polycount is not so bad.

It actually is. I can't find a game that has rounded corners on ALL assets.

If someone decide to create a Reyes GPU it could be another story...

Nope. You'd still run into baking data out to approximate things that would normally take an extremely long time to render. I hate point clouds! And that's basically what REYES would amount to after all is said and done because the ray-tracing would become the bottleneck. The film industry is moving away from REYES and into brute force path-tracing. Which is the way it should have been done long ago. Gaming world will have to choose which route to take. We are already seeing some ray-casting and ray-marching to achieve things, but it's all in 2D space.. which brings it's own set of problems.

All in all, DavidGraham is right. Most games today still lack a lot of things. That's why I'm happy when at least one of them does ONE thing right. Take for instance, The Evil Within. Very crappy texture work for props, flat lighting, etc.. and yet, they still nailed down the importance of lights casting shadows on everything (not just a few things). I'm enjoying the game because it's lighting is doing what I expect when walking around with a lantern, or a torch. Petty? Not really. It's that kind of thing that makes me know that whoever designed the game knew the importance of shadows.

 

[Nesh]

And we know RAD has improved in that area because...

We dont know. But AFAIK we didnt spot low ress textures to talk about in the recent trailers either. So we are hopeful

 

[chris1515]

It actually is. I can't find a game that has rounded corners on ALL assets.



Nope. You'd still run into baking data out to approximate things that would normally take an extremely long time to render. I hate point clouds! And that's basically what REYES would amount to after all is said and done because the ray-tracing would become the bottleneck. The film industry is moving away from REYES and into brute force path-tracing. Which is the way it should have been done long ago. Gaming world will have to choose which route to take. We are already seeing some ray-casting and ray-marching to achieve things, but it's all in 2D space.. which brings it's own set of problems.

All in all, DavidGraham is right. Most games today still lack a lot of things. That's why I'm happy when at least one of them does ONE thing right. Take for instance, The Evil Within. Very crappy texture work for props, flat lighting, etc.. and yet, they still nailed down the importance of lights casting shadows on everything (not just a few things). I'm enjoying the game because it's lighting is doing what I expect when walking around with a lantern, or a torch. Petty? Not really. It's that kind of thing that makes me know that whoever designed the game knew the importance of shadows.

Realtime is full of compromise. I like the choice of Ready At Dawn for The Order 1886. I was just saying that polygon count limitation is inehrent to rasterization.

Path Tracing look a bit expensive for real time. We will probably stay with rasterization and GI approximation for the foreseeable future.

 

[L. Scofield]

We dont know. But AFAIK we didnt spot low ress textures to talk about in the recent trailers either. So we are hopeful

How could you even spot them when the IQ is blurry in the first place.

 

[Nesh]

How could you even spot them when the IQ is blurry in the first place.

Define blurry. Most games were 720p last gen and we could spot low res textures. Why should it be impossible now?