The Technology of GTA IV/RDR *Rage Engine*

[Karamazov]

So, now that they were able to make a real lighting system in realtime for the entire city and every object, is that to say that they saved disc space by not having to put textures for daytime and textures for nightime, or do they still use both ?

 

[D3B]

Here is a compare from that yoda link. I like PS3 color better and its shadows are more pronounced and clean.

http://i25.tinypic.com/110cdhz.png
PS3 on left.


I love just standing or sitting in a car and watching the shadows pass by,it looks amazing:smile:

 

[JPT]

Here is compare from that yoda link. I like PS3 color better and its shadows are more pronounced and clean.

http://i25.tinypic.com/110cdhz.png


I love just standing or sitting in a car and watching the shadows pass by,it looks amazing:smile:

I have no idea which is PS3 and which is X360, but I like the "left ones" of the comparison shoots. It feels less sterile and warmer, so based on others comments I am guessing those are PS3 shoots?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Adjusting color balance on your TV is more than enough to fit the tone to your preferences...

 

[patsu]

What amazes me after playing both versions extensively is how some gamers say the PS3version is not blurry. Maybe this due to them not seeing the 360 version side by side but its the main reason I can't touch the PS3 version. It is blurry and very hard on the eyes, I have to keep refocusing my eyes to play it for longer periods. For IQ no doubts for me the 360 is much better.

What TV are you using ?

The sky at the starting point was a little blurry to me when I first played the game (Everything else was "ok"). I did not notice the blurriness since then even after long playing time. I can also pick out small/far objects and NPC faces easily (I thought I saw an NPC who look like Niko, so I doubled back to check ;-) ). In general, Liberty City is fine to look at.

Just don't run into fences up close. The car was hard to control initially, so I kept running into stuff.

 

[Pugger]

I'm using a calibrated Pani PV500 set to 720p on the PS3, same with the 360. Both throught HDMI. I know some people say its soft looking the PS3 version that is others say it looks like the screen has been wiped with vasiline. To me the game looks slightly out of focus on the PS3 thats the best way to describe it, the 360 image is much cleaner and easier on the eye.

 

[joker454]

If you can watch football or Wimbledon in SD without painful eyes, as people have done for years, I don't see why the PS3 game would be any different. If millions of people can play Halo 3 without eyestrain, which is scaling in the same way, or COD3, or the plenty of other upscaled games from this gen and last, why should GTA be any different?

See thats just it, these screen shot comparisons here remind me of the dvd/bluray comparison screenshots on avsforum. Over there the bluray gets picked, over here its the dvd. I would not have expected that! Also, I don't think Halo3 and COD4 did quite the same thing as GTA4. Those two games pay the aliasing penalty from running at lower res, however they don't have that excessive blur that GTA4 does. I'm guessing its because GTA4 is doing something else in a post process step, perhaps intentionally, to give it that look. Anyways, the blur certainly isn't enough to not play the game. Heck, I was just recently playing Beyond Good And Evil PS2 on my PS3 and loving it! I'm mostly interested in what is making people pick it over the other.

Bias stuff aside, one thing I try to keep in mind (not always successfully ) is that by nature of our work we tend to look at things differently, sometimes overlooking/ignoring things that less informed observer would concentrate on over obvious details we keep in mind.

Yeah I'm thinking that may be the case here. I wish they had in house focus testing where I work, because what I'd love to try is to take our game as is at 1280x720, and have another version at some lower res with a "cinematic blur" or whatever post process pass applied to it. Show both versions to the focus testers, but don't tell them what the difference is, and see which one they visually prefer. Maybe the results would be eye opening. Perhaps people see the blurrier version as more "cinematic"? Maybe they don't notice the blurriness at all? That's certainly possible as I've heard many a story from people that can't tell the difference between dvd and blu-ray. Maybe the blur ads a certain quality to the lighting? To my eye the lighting on both is largely the same, but maybe it's perceived a bit differently by people due to that post process pass? Needless to say I'm curious, perhaps Rockstar is onto something. If they are, I want to know what it is, how they did it, and how I can copy it


EDIT: Adding one addendum here because I read my previous post and I can see how it may come off as elitist. To clarify...my intent on asking for devs opinions isn't because theirs matters more, it's because I'm hoping they can provide a technical explanation for whats going on. Believe me, I know devs can be just as biased as anyone else But maybe they can shed some light on the situation.

 

[nAo]

We noticed it on MLB. Initially we were using fp16 on PS3, and switching away from that gave us a nice gain. There's always a chance we were 'doing something wrong', but I double checked with fellow devs outside our studio as a sanity check and they seemed to confirm our results.

It's difficult to do something wrong about this. In all PS3 games I worked on it was basically impossible to be bandwidth limited in the color opaque pass, unless as I said you have been using some very very simple shader, so short that the bandwidth needed to hit the frame buffer becomes relevant.

Incidentally, I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on shadows, as well as which GTA you visually prefer

I have only seen the PS3 version so far, so I don't know which one looks better. No thoughts on shadows and dithering, I don't really know what's going on..

 

[novcze]

I don`t know if it was mentioned before, but PS3 version is nicely sharp (at given resolution) at night. So this blur thing is artistic intention.
btw. Wet road and rain at night is beautiful.

 

[aaronspink]

Yeah I'm thinking that may be the case here. I wish they had in house focus testing where I work, because what I'd love to try is to take our game as is at 1280x720, and have another version at some lower res with a "cinematic blur" or whatever post process pass applied to it. Show both versions to the focus testers, but don't tell them what the difference is, and see which one they visually prefer. Maybe the results would be eye opening. Perhaps people see the blurrier version as more "cinematic"? Maybe they don't notice the blurriness at all?

shouldn't you be able to do a private alpha/beta via marketplace or PSN? I know MS has had this capability for quite some time.

 

[Tap In]

See thats just it, these screen shot comparisons here remind me of the dvd/bluray comparison screenshots on avsforum. Over there the bluray gets picked, over here its the dvd. I would not have expected that!

actually you are not alone

I have been reading on other forums that many who have tried both versions are also choosing the 360 as preferred. so many are seeing what you are seeing on their real HDTVs and not just basing this off of flawed screen shots and vids

oh and see the mission "Russian revolution" (at night) for some incredible visuals and lighting from this game (firefight)

also the night time and wet/rain graphics are jaw droppingly beautiful in all areas

 

[B1663r]

I am starting to think the purpose of the post process effect, on the xbox at least, is to lower the visual fidelity of the game to that of 480p, so that people who play the game online in HD do not have a built in advantage over those playing at 480p.

 

[Mintmaster]

We noticed it on MLB. Initially we were using fp16 on PS3, and switching away from that gave us a nice gain. There's always a chance we were 'doing something wrong', but I double checked with fellow devs outside our studio as a sanity check and they seemed to confirm our results.

I have to agree with nAo on this. Even though I don't have specific experience of the matter, theoretically it seems unlikely. A full 720p screen of opaque FP16 only costs you 3.7MB more memory access than RGBA8.

Imagine these conditions:
- 8ms per frame devoted to the opaque pass (i.e. half the render time of 60fps)
- 720p with 2x net overdraw (i.e. that which can't be eliminated by early-Z)
- BW limited using RGBA8 due to, say, texturing
- 70% BW efficiency

Even in these extreme circumstances, enabling FP16 should only be a 6% hit in the opaque pass (7.4MB extra per frame, 116.5MB available). I think FP16 costs you more significantly in the transparent and post-processing passes, and that's why it isn't used too much on consoles (that and the inability to use MSAA with it on RSX or alpha blending with it on Xenos). Transparency is the main cause of pixel-related workload fluctuation. Usually there are better ways to get HDR effects that look just as good.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

One thing I noticed only on the 360 version of GTA was the screen tearing.

When the tearing happened, it was very consistent that I could actually capture it with cam.

It seems like the tearing is more related to the weather (overcast, rain) than traffic on the screen, and when it happens, it happens all time including cut scenes.

I've played the both versions of GTA for about 10 hours each, and initially I thought the 360 version looked way better with its sharper smoother look. As for PS3, it's not just the blurs, but the flickering jaggies that killed my eyes all over the screen.

However, after spending some time on both, I now have feeling that PS3 version does provide somewhat more impressive pictures overall. I'd say PS3 version's got more uglies, but more pretties as well. The 360 version is more easy on eyes, with more polished visuals overall.

The frame rate was pretty much the same, but I do feel it slightly chugs on PS3, and at one occasion, I experienced some kind of shadow flickering bug which brought down the frame rate to 10~15 range. It happened once so far, I think it happened right after playing some MP games, going back to SP.

 

[djskribbles]

dot50cal also mentioned that the 360 has more tearing.

 

[Fafalada]

Does the PS3 version have tearing at all?
Specifically I'm wondering if both run with VSync off or not.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

Does the PS3 version have tearing at all?
Specifically I'm wondering if both run with VSync off or not.

I've yet to experience tearing on PS3.

It happened about 3~4 times on 360 that lasted until weather/lighting changes.

So, I suppose it happens only in certain circumstances (it makes cut scenes tear as well) and I'm pretty sure it's got something to do with weather/time.

 

[warb]

I haven't seen any screen tearing in the GTAIV 360 yet.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

See thats just it, these screen shot comparisons here remind me of the dvd/bluray comparison screenshots on avsforum. Over there the bluray gets picked, over here its the dvd. I would not have expected that!

Just take a look at the sign on the center 'DENTAL CENTER' which is clearly readable on PS3, but NOT readable at all on 360.

Also check out the phone number on the right side 555-3263


* added highlights, and increased gamma, so those with faded monitors can read as well

 

[AlphaWolf]

Just take a look at the sign on the center 'DENTAL CENTER' which is clearly readable on PS3, but NOT readable at all on 360.

Also check out the phone number on the right side 555-3263

didn't know bluray provided less detail than DVD

The only thing I can read in either of those shots is the word Dental.