The Technology of GTA IV/RDR *Rage Engine*

[SG79]

Sure, so here's a clue as to how much the spu's are being used.

That comparison of yours could work on every single published PS3 game, of a comparable genre or otherwise SPU utilization does vary greatly from one title to another, and I don't think it's fair to look at archaic graphics and be thankful games don't look that bad. All console tech is basically outdated after all at this point, and early PS3 games.. even Uncharted 1 was reportedly being pushed largely by RSX. Certainly leagues ahead of anything from 2005.

Anyway, Graham made a good point so I'm just gonna stop here until concrete information is known.

 

[deepbrown]

Famous again =)

This resolution was discovered by the users of the Beyond 3D technical forum. The forum enjoys the input of technically minded enthusiasts as well as game developers, with member Quaz51 making a name for himself as a 'pixel counter'. In the past he has revealed the sub-HD rendering resolutions Halo 3, Haze, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Alan Wake. He even created the now infamous LittleBigPlanet calculator, which inspired Media Molecule's sequel. You can discover the true rendering resolutions of your favourite games in Beyond 3D's handy list.

Red Dead Redemption's lower resolution on the PS3 results in a slightly less-sharp image, as can be seen in the comparison screenshots posted in our gallery. These were provided by another Beyond3D member, MazingerDude, who has since migrated to the NeoGAF gaming forums.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=247305

 

[AlNom]

Just out of curiosity, would MLAA work in a game like this? The game is using A2C, which from my understanding requires MSAA, or can the MLAA perform the same kind of sampling?

The MLAA algorithm can introduce a slight in-polygon blur, but it wouldn't be to the extent that it'd be a replacement for A2C & MSAA or perhaps even just alpha test sans MSAA; you'd still get the alpha texture aliasing.

Would they be able to use quincunx AA for A2C on foliage and MLAA for other geometry, or is that a huge loss in efficiency?

hm... maybe they could do something like Pure's "post-process alpha rendering".

Perform the opaque render pass. Send off the resolved image for MLAA processing while then performing the separate alpha render pass for foliage. Wouldn't need AA to have decent looking foliage, going by the results in Pure as they do a couple other things during the pass to make it look blended.

Not sure how that'd work out on render time though.

Just curious what the advantages and disadvantages of MLAA are. I don't remember exactly how God of War 3 handed foliage, but I know there wasn't much in the game. There are those vines on rock faces that you climb, but I can't remember how they're rendered.

They used a dither for foliage and hair, though they tended to hide it with lots of layers (in the absence of other image-space effects).

 

[dragonelite]

Comparing wasteland vs. a city with full of buildings, cars etc. , priceless.

How do you know that they're already losing money? As for optimizing the engine for Agent; heavily optimized engine is not a trouble, it's good for product quality and also R&D for their next PS3 titles.

I think he meant they are losing potential money they could earn on the 360. The user base buys almost everything. And a game that will appeal to the userbase it will probably sell like hotcakes.Expect sales to go 1:1 on both console, that twice the money not twice the dev costs. We are all told that putting a game from ps 3 to 360 is easier.

And they should have done the R&D already with gta 4 when doing the main game and dlc for the ps 3.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The MLAA algorithm can introduce a slight in-polygon blur, but it wouldn't be to the extent that it'd be a replacement for A2C & MSAA or perhaps even just alpha test sans MSAA; you'd still get the alpha texture aliasing.

hm... maybe they could do something like Pure's "post-process alpha rendering".

Perform the opaque render pass. Send off the resolved image for MLAA processing while then performing the separate alpha render pass for foliage. Wouldn't need AA to have decent looking foliage, going by the results in Pure as they do a couple other things during the pass to make it look blended.

Not sure how that'd work out on render time though.

They used a dither for foliage and hair, though they tended to hide it with lots of layers (in the absence of other image-space effects).

Out of curiosity I looked at Black Rock's siggraph paper where they describe how they handle foliage in Pure. The ground coverage uses some pre-calculation, which wouldn't seem to work in a game where you had a lot of control over the camera.

In RDR most, if not all of the foliage I could find could be approached. You can walk right up to it. I'm assuming at some distance they'd swap for a simpler sprite based tree or cactus. You can also walk up the a cactus and shoot off the arms. I'm going to do a test tonight, to see how far I have to move away from a cactus for the arms to "grow back". Might give some idea as to how far you have to travel away from a location for that to be swapped out of memory, or at least some lod change. Maybe I can figure out some way of guessing a distance on the map.

I'm also curious to know how a game like Flower would render ground coverage, which seems very sophisticated, and how that would differ from RDR or another game that would use a more traditional alpha transparency approach. Why haven't we seem something like Flower, even greatly reduced, in other genres of games? Say with grass density reduced by 50-75%, or even more. Did flower have trees and bushes? Never played it, only seen vids.

I'm just trying to understand how RDR handles these things, and why. The most obvious difference to me, between the 360 and PS3 versions, besides the slight image blurring on PS3, was the reduction in quality and density of the ground coverage (grass, small plants). Grass has always seemed to be a performance killer. I remember Oblivian on my PC being absolutely crippled by grass detail. Reducing detail and draw distance seemed to be the easiest way to get a large performance boost. Is it simply a fillrate problem, because of massive overdraw?

 

[nightshade]

I'm also curious to know how a game like Flower would render ground coverage, which seems very sophisticated, and how that would differ from RDR or another game that would use a more traditional alpha transparency approach. Why haven't we seem something like Flower, even greatly reduced, in other genres of games? Say with grass density reduced by 50-75%, or even more. Did flower have trees and bushes? Never played it, only seen vids.

Since flower renders each blade of grass individually instead of using alpha textures.
I don't think we'll see that kind of approach in other games,as it probably requires tons of resources and isn't quite a feasible idea with other usual games; where grass just adds superficial touches to the visuals instead of being a major part of game.

 

[TheWretched]

And, flower uses all SPUs to render them too... I distinctly remember some interview with the devs, when it was released.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Since flower renders each blade of grass individually instead of using alpha textures.
I don't think we'll see that kind of approach in other games,since it probably requires tons of resources and isn't quite feasible idea with other usual games; where grass just adds superficial touches to the visuals instead of being a major part of game.

I figured as much. So, in general, they're just consuming far too much in the way of resources for it to be considered, even if the density was reduced significantly. Like, the final product is not worth the price, for something superficial.

 

[nightshade]

IIRC we have seen an exact case like this before, the game was Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Big sandbox world with, good draw distance, lots & lots of alpha blended grass everywhere....the PS3 ver. saw a major cut in grass density as well as the buffer resolution, though it was still alpha blended rather than alpha tested.

I can't say that this has always been the case cause I actually cannot recall many games where there are lots of grass, in the first place (I think sacred 2 had lots of grass & there were no cuts in grass density from PS3 ver either..could be wrong though)

 

[assurdum]

Could be interesting to see the next Agent exclusive if help to reach better result on the ps3. This time we don't worry of the tiling or cache of RAM but only to parellel works of spe in the ps3 & lack of edram. I think could be an advantange to see something of different on the ps3.

 

[Delta9]

So, do we know the size of the game yet?I remember this being posted by Quaz51 I think it was,showing the difference between San Andreas and JC2.

 

[AzBat]

So, do we know the size of the game yet?I remember this being posted by Quaz51 I think it was,showing the difference between San Andreas and JC2.

Can somebody add the RDR map to this...

http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/large-video-game-worlds2.jpg

or

http://i.imgur.com/xJU7Q.jpg

Tommy McClain

 

[dragonelite]

Can somebody add the RDR map to this...

http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/large-video-game-worlds2.jpg

or

http://i.imgur.com/xJU7Q.jpg

Tommy McClain

I heard it was two times San Andrea so it would be just smaller then farcry 2.

 

[green.pixel]

Famous again =)

These were provided by another Beyond3D member, MazingerDude, who has since migrated to the NeoGAF gaming forums.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=247305

Why he doesn't post on B3D anymore btw?

 

[SG79]

Why he doesn't post on B3D anymore btw?

He took the disagreements about his conclusions in the DF head to head feature of Ninja Gaiden II/Sigma 2 as an offense. Apparently most of the NeoGAF denizens are.... very civil

 

[Neb]

I'm also curious to know how a game like Flower would render ground coverage, which seems very sophisticated, and how that would differ from RDR or another game that would use a more traditional alpha transparency approach. Why haven't we seem something like Flower, even greatly reduced, in other genres of games? Say with grass density reduced by 50-75%, or even more. Did flower have trees and bushes? Never played it, only seen vids.

Far Cry 2 has grass built up by geometry and is 3D. According to devs upwards 2-3 million vertices per frame for grass alone for X version of game. I say X becouse I dont know if they mean consoles or PC as the detail settings differ greatly and game has one quality category named "console grass" some notch(es) below highest quality. Some shading differences and LOD distances. Either way game has tons of grass no mather version.

I remember Oblivian on my PC being absolutely crippled by grass detail. Reducing detail and draw distance seemed to be the easiest way to get a large performance boost. Is it simply a fillrate problem, because of massive overdraw?

TSAA could impact perfomance greatly based on amount of foliage and grass. Same in Fallout 3 where I can run with settings far beyond menu and maintain 40-50fps with 4xMSAA and 4xTSAA but increasing grass 4-8x amount of the otherwise moderate amount of grass can shave of upwards 20fps. That is a bigger perfomance impact than widening cell area rendering for high detail sector by 4-8x times which would add tons of polygons, shading, textures and per frame updated AIs.

 

[Sigfried1977]

IIRC we have seen an exact case like this before, the game was Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Big sandbox world with, good draw distance, lots & lots of alpha blended grass everywhere....the PS3 ver. saw a major cut in grass density as well as the buffer resolution, though it was still alpha blended rather than alpha tested.

I can't say that this has always been the case cause I actually cannot recall many games where there are lots of grass, in the first place (I think sacred 2 had lots of grass & there were no cuts in grass density from PS3 ver either..could be wrong though)

There's a metric ton of grass in Far Cry 2 as well (plus all that other nifty stuff like a big open world, elaborate physics). And it runs great. Sadly that game never really got quite the credit it deserved for it's tech.

 

[Neb]

There's a metric ton of grass in Far Cry 2 as well (plus all that other nifty stuff like a big open world, elaborate physics). And it runs great. Sadly that game never really got quite the credit it deserved for it's tech.

Yeah, cant believe so few talked or even noticed the indirect lighting with color bleeding like CE3 does. Yes FC2 had it although not as robust but still. That and so much more.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Jesus Christ I had no idea that Fuel and GW:Nightfall were that huge

I'd like to see a comparison of Just Cause 1's Esperito in terms of size and design as to JC2's Panau. Design wise I prefered Esperito, it was more realistic and natural. Panau's design just seems convenient in order to have so many environments. Both are good games, but I like to nit-pick

 

[green.pixel]

Good question! Or for instance look at the Killzone 2MP maps - there are some ultra huge ones with massive draw distance (I am thinking about this brownish map, the one where at the ground you have this sand constantly wavingyrrhus Rise iirc ) - it is so ultra huge, no pop in superb graphics massive action/particle 16+ people playing + physics!

But you can't actually go there as far as I understand it? That's just backdrop mix/LOD.