Thoughts about REYES approach, PlayStation 3 and Visualizer

[chaphack]

Actually i meant those cool DX9 demos(like Dawn Monkey Nature). If you read my post i did mention DX9 game(or 'game' engines) from 3Dmark03 and D3/HL2 etc will not be too impresso come next gen consoles.

I mean how many game models, today/near tomorrow, have the coolness of Dawn. Has there been any game that is as cool as DX8 Nature demo too?

Thus, I expect Dust level of modelling and Nature03 level of environment as the base of next gen consoles.

As unknown as PS3 maybe, i dont think it will leave the graphical linearness of nature!

the question isn't if the unconventional design is good or not (I counldn't care less) for REYES but whether it is fast enough for comparable REYEs rendering versus the traditional GFX pipeline.

eh, that IS what im concerned about....PS3 offline <> realtime REYES rendering? :?

 

[chaphack]

i dont know why, but when i think about PS3 and Xnext i think about dynamic graphics, not necesseraly DETAILED graphics. of course they will be detailed, but i think the focus here will IMO be on animation, lighting and physics. at the end of the day all those Flops will not only go into polygons if u know what i mean...

I dont think we need radically dynamically changed architecture to do good physics/animations/lightings...

 

[Brimstone]

If the future consoles are going to be outputting 2003/4 level graphics (eg. STALKER, Max2, 2nd generation Source and Doom Engine) then why even care?

THATS the thing. i expect the overall "look" of console games to get even more distant from the look of PC games. the trend started with PS2, and i expect things to keep progressing that way.
at the end of the day PC's will always have much more RAM than consoles, with poor bandwidth. Consoles have been going the other way. (the old "small buckets and big pipes VS big buckets with small pipes" thing) of course the look of the games will be different.
PS3 and Xnext will have quite a lot of RAM, but it will still be less than what can be put into a PC. at the same time those consoles will have a whole lot more bandwidth and sheer calculation power available to them.

games specifically designed for such different architectures will OF COURSE look different.

so, NO, i do not expect PS3 games to look like hi-end PC games outnow and in the near future, or even PC game sout at the same time.

i dont know why, but when i think about PS3 and Xnext i think about dynamic graphics, not necesseraly DETAILED graphics. they will be detailed, but i think the focus here will be on animation, lighting and physics IMO. at the end of the day all those Flops will not only go into polygons if u know what i mean...

I agree the direction will be more about a more alive and consistent world, than photo realistic pixel generation. The best image quality of Pixar is great, but you can still notice the CG look. The PS 3 is going to be no where near the pixel quality of Finding Nemo.

Take John Madden football as an example. Making the game look better will come from more convincing player movement and interaction. Players simply don't move like they do in real life. Arms don't flail around and knees don't buckle under pressure. When a player gets tackled hard does his helmt slightly move? As a player runs on a rain soaked grassy field, does the dirt slightly give way alterting the running animation because of less traction and effecting the players speed?

 

[London Geezer]

Take John Madden football as an example. Making the game look better will come from more convincing player movement and interaction. Players simply don't move like they do in real life. Arms don't flail around and knees don't buckle under pressure. When a player gets tackled hard does his helmt slightly move? As a player runs on a rain soaked grassy field, does the dirt slightly give way alterting the running animation because of less traction and effecting the players speed?

now THAT's what i'm talking about. the imperfections that make reality look... real...

 

[Phil]

Take John Madden football as an example. Making the game look better will come from more convincing player movement and interaction. Players simply don't move like they do in real life. Arms don't flail around and knees don't buckle under pressure. When a player gets tackled hard does his helmt slightly move? As a player runs on a rain soaked grassy field, does the dirt slightly give way alterting the running animation because of less traction and effecting the players speed?

If they manage to capture the above in real time, I believe video games will look more realistic than many high end demos that lack those things that define realism. This is the very reason why I rate games such as Metal Gear Solid 2 (with the rain) more realistic in terms of visual appearance than superiour games of its kind. Also the reason why GT3 (wet track) is one of the most realistic presented racing moments I have experienced so far.

IMHO, I wouldn't mind having another PS2 with PS3 in terms of texturing compared to the other consoles and PCs, aslong as the hardware is powerful at rendering physics and above mentioned effects. IMO, that will always make a game way more realistic than just the superiour textured one.

 

[London Geezer]

IMHO, I wouldn't mind having another PS2 with PS3 in terms of texturing compared to the other consoles and PCs, aslong as the hardware is powerful at rendering physics and above mentioned effects. IMO, that will always make a game way more realistic than just the superiour textured one.

WELL maybe not another PS2 in terms of texturing compared to the competition, but yeah i'd take detailed effects like those anyday over textures...
at the end of the day there's only so much texture detail u can show on TV's (even HDTV's), what will be the determining factor to achieve realism is all those little effects, imperfections that we are accustomed to in real life....

 

[ChryZ]

I just had a look at the Siggraph 2003 website and found something interesting:

http://www.siggraph.org/s2003/conference/sketches/17.html[/URL]]Implementing Renderman on the Sony PS2
Sony PS2 Linux provides a cheap, powerful development system with flexible graphics hardware. Here, it's applied to a production-style renderer, supporting curved surfaces and a programmable shading language.

Ian Stephenson
Bournemouth University

 

[marconelly!]

And thats what is bothering me about PS3...the rumored CELL unconventional approach just seems so prone to hiccups...

Well we don't know much about it really, but that is supposed to be a CPU and fast one at that. I was talking about the rasterizer part (which is THE complete unknow actually) I thing going the REYES way would probably be a waste of resources and would make it more of a limiting factor (as in speed will have to drop off a lot compared to OpenGL/DX) than what it would gain you (pixel displace mapping is nice, but is it worth the huge speed decrease)

That is of course if they somehow don't make some amazing shaders that take care of all that and hybridize the best of OGL and REYES like some people suggested might be the case.

has there even been any game that look as good as 3dmark01 Nature scene?

No... not really. That scene still looks better than any of the announced PC games to me (Stalker, Doom 3 and HL2 included)

 

[chaphack]

Yah man yay!

I mean, just look at some old GF2MX demos(Gothic temple for instance), and you be surprised to see how cool they actually look compared to many real games today.

Of course, there are some improvements here and there with newer and newer games, better pixel lighting, more polygons, better BMs etc.


Take KOTOR2 for instance, i wont be surprised to see it with say, 3dmark03 nature scene, only x10 more fully polygonal draw distance to explore around. We will have Dawn like models, maybe more rounded body and defined boobs(?). ATI's ape will make up the enemies, 5-6 of them swarming you at the same time! Fight them of you can jump onto Nvidia-DX9-vehicle-demo like speedster and take off to join a bunch of them in a full flegded race mini game!

Now add it some nifty effects like dust and leaves swirling around the realtime windlol, some intense sunlight or crazy foggy clouds! Finally finishing off with next gen cinematic blur filter and we can get pretty nice base graphics, all at 60fps at HDTV res!

 

[zurich]

Ran the Dawn demo on my friends R9500pro, and am I the only person out there who was completely unimpressed?

 

[megadrive0088]

I was talking about the rasterizer part (which is THE complete unknow actually)

yep, that hits the nail right on the head.

THATS the thing. i expect the overall "look" of console games to get even more distant from the look of PC games. the trend started with PS2, and i expect things to keep progressing that way.
at the end of the day PC's will always have much more RAM than consoles, with poor bandwidth. Consoles have been going the other way. (the old "small buckets and big pipes VS big buckets with small pipes" thing) of course the look of the games will be different.
PS3 and Xnext will have quite a lot of RAM, but it will still be less than what can be put into a PC. at the same time those consoles will have a whole lot more bandwidth and sheer calculation power available to them.

games specifically designed for such different architectures will OF COURSE look different.

so, NO, i do not expect PS3 games to look like hi-end PC games outnow and in the near future, or even PC game sout at the same time.

i dont know why, but when i think about PS3 and Xnext i think about dynamic graphics, not necesseraly DETAILED graphics. they will be detailed, but i think the focus here will be on animation, lighting and physics IMO. at the end of the day all those Flops will not only go into polygons if u know what i mean...

I agree 100% on this.

"sheer calculation power" - love that

 

[Paul]

i expect the overall "look" of console games to get even more distant from the look of PC games. the trend started with PS2, and i expect things to keep progressing that way.

Bingo, you hit the nail on the head and than hammered it in.

PC games have that ultra high res "synthetic" look, which in turn doesn't end up looking realistic at all.

Am I the only one that hates the look of many PC games? Unreal 2003, unreal 2?

PC games will continue in it's classic photo realistic fashion such as STALKER, whereas console games will head IMHO into the way of the whole CGish look. Not that metalish cgish look though, but that of FFX CGI.

 

[Vince]

Ran the Dawn demo on my friends R9500pro, and am I the only person out there who was completely unimpressed?

No. Besides, any girl with hair that short just gives me the creeps.

 

[London Geezer]

THANX GUYS...

i also think that until new display methods and especially new controlling methods are introduced, the console market will become rather stagnant after a certain level.

i mean, do we really want to play games looking like FFTSW with a typical console controller? (at the end of the day they are all the same from a functionality point of view, even though i do prefere the DualShock)

i mean, EYEtoy is all nice and all but i dont think think thats the way to go, it has limitations and not everyone wants to wave his/her hands around for up to 9 hours (sometimes it happens that i stay up and play games for that long)

i heard AGES ago some people were studying methods to control your PC with your electrical pulse (just a little thing stuck on your finger thats all, no matrix style crap) plus your eye movement... i wonder what came out of that.... basically there was a demo of a guy just standing in front of a monitor "thinking" he wanted to move the cursor on an icon and click on it, and it kinda worked..... and i mean that was literally at least 6 years ago, i'm sure that someone could pick up on that technology and make it useful.... i mean, just think about controlling your photorealistic games without moving a muscle.... which is rather lazy i guess, but hey it must be useful for some games....

we will see graphical power reach a limit where it cant go any further without new display methods.

the thing that worries me the most is that we will MUCH SOONER reach a limit on gameplay, which will just not be overcome without new control methods. new ideas are already VERY far and few between, EyeToy is a cool new idea which should very well be used in some REAL games, not only funny tech demos resembling mobile phone games...

more to come...

 

[Colourless]

Ran the Dawn demo on my friends R9500pro, and am I the only person out there who was completely unimpressed?

No. Besides, any girl with hair that short just gives me the creeps.

Almost everything about dawn was no where near as impressive as nVidia would like you to think.

Her hair was as short as it was because making it long and to get it to flow properly would have been really hard. The woman in 3DMark03 GT3 has more advanced hair, even though IMO Dawn's hair does look better, but hey, that's just me.

Dawn's feet... uh yeah what feet. I've seen lower polygon models with 'properly' modeled feet with toes. Dawn's feet are just shocking.

The wings, could have been better. They would have been really impressive if the were properly clipped against her back, and if there were actually doing more than just blending the shader result to the background. Some blurring would have been interesting, even though the reality is few people would notice it.

Her breasts... no comment, other than I have seen better

The background, a 'low res' environment map is totally uninteresting.

 

[chaphack]

The 'PC' look has more to do with the way PC games are played on and not how PC games are made.

It is becuase they are played at high resolution high refresh ratesmonitors over blurry limited res conventional 50/60hz TVs, do the flaws become more evident.

I dont see anything special about 'console' hardware. Once you higher resolution with current tech, the flaws will still be there...

The only way to overcome highres = clearer gfx flaws, is to have more rendering power. Sometime which 3d hardware(PC and Console) will try to acheive in time. Its already improving with games like D3/HL2/Stalker looking hires with adaquate poly and lighting.

Play a PC game, turn up the res and video out to a TV, and you will get the 'console/ps2' look too, only with better textures..

I just cant see it man...

PC games will continue in it's classic photo realistic fashion such as STALKER, whereas console games will head IMHO into the way of the whole CGish look. Not that metalish cgish look though, but that of FFX CGI.

CGish look is just CGish look. Once technology is available, all games will look CGish. The only difference will be the artwork....

 

[London Geezer]

The 'PC' look has more to do with the way PC games are played on and not how PC games are made.

It is becuase they are played at high resolution high refresh ratesmonitors over blurry limited res conventional 50/60hz TVs, do the flaws become more evident.

I dont see anything special about 'console' hardware. Once you higher resolution with current tech, the flaws will still be there...

The only way to overcome highres = clearer gfx flaws, is to have more rendering power. Sometime which 3d hardware(PC and Console) will try to acheive in time. Its already improving with games like D3/HL2/Stalker looking hires with adaquate poly and lighting.

Play a PC game, turn up the res and video out to a TV, and you will get the 'console/ps2' look too, only with better textures..

I just cant see it man...

PC games will continue in it's classic photo realistic fashion such as STALKER, whereas console games will head IMHO into the way of the whole CGish look. Not that metalish cgish look though, but that of FFX CGI.

CGish look is just CGish look. Once technology is available, all games will look CGish. The only difference will be the artwork....

well, at 640x480 the textures will only look as good as maybe Xbox textures, there's not much u can do at that resolution, the little texture details will be lost.
that is why, in order to make graphics more realistic, we need more polygons to get rid of sharp polygon edges, loads of particles to simulate all those imprefections we see in real life, realistic cloth, hair and vegetation animation and physics... things like that. if u REALLY take a look at a TV program or even a DVD, u'll see that the REALISM doesnt come from super detailed surfaces but from all the other things that make reality look like reality, which is MOVEMENT and SHAPES. of course surfaces are detailed and we still have a long way to have photorealistic surfaces, but even with 100 texture layers The Hulk still looks like a comic/cartoony character and not realistic at all, and u know why? because, apart from the fact that WE KNOW the image is CG (and that plays a HUGE part in our perception of what is real and what isn't IMO), no real thing moves like that. this is also true for FFTSW characters.
the fact that WE KNOW that it's CG is paramount i think. our minds are too spoiled. if we know something is fake, then we will even subconsiously try to find flaws about it to prove it's not real.
the way those characters move also give A LOT away.

god i'm writing some wicked posts lately, so impressed with myself....

 

[chaphack]

Sorry but are you discounting the importance of good textures? With 10980X polygons, 982X particles and MGS2 like textures, games still wont look photorealistic....

By goerge gosh man! How far has the texturezilla of a PS2 changed the mindset of gamers..??? Suddenly we can get by with tonos of polys and tonos of particles effect.... :?

PS3 better do more than raw polys power..

 

[London Geezer]

Sorry but are you discounting the importance of good textures? With 10980X polygons, 982X particles and MGS2 like textures, games still wont look photorealistic....

By goerge gosh man! How far has the texturezilla of a PS2 changed the mindset of gamers..??? Suddenly we can get by with tonos of polys and tonos of particles effect.... :?

PS3 better do more than raw polys power..

SWEETHEART, try reading the words, without filtering them with your MS brain (TM).

i said that of course textures need to be realistic, but at 640x480 there's not much u can do after a certain level.....

gosh chap, at least read the posts before going into PS2 bashing mode...

 

[chaphack]

Please dont limit ourselves to 640x480
Current texture quality are way off from photorealism