TLOU: Real-time GI or not?

[Clukos]

Thread inspired by the discussion in this thread: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...4-visual-comparison.57581/page-4#post-1894999

Took some pictures today

Did ND ever explain how they did this on Ps3? It's definitely some lower than native resolution effect but is it GI? Because it looks like it.

 

[Clukos]

In gif form

 

[Rurouni]

I think the most obvious example of gi is when you pointed the light to the green wall and it reflected green colored light.

 

[Nesh]

At least on the PS3 version the game had the GI effect on selective areas. I havent played the PS4 version enough to see if it is applied everywhere

 

[orangpelupa]

cant it be faked by bloom?

if the flashlight texture in collission with x texture, give x bloom.

 

[L. Scofield]

Hard to say because this could be achieved with a fill light. You could just do a raycast from the flashlight to a surface and that's how you'd get the color for the fill light.

 

[milk]

Hard to say because this could be achieved with a fill light. You could just do a raycast from the flashlight to a surface and that's how you'd get the color for the fill light.

All points to it being some variation of that. Still counts as a very rudimentary implementation of VPL, which is a known and established way of doing dynamic GI. I´d guess they do more than one single raytrace, and I´m pretty sure they have more than just a single fill light. Maybe they just render the albedo of surfaces as well when rasterising the flashlight´s shadowmap instead of doing a raytrace, and cluster them into a handfull of soft pointlights ( like in reflective shadow maps )... If they raytrace, I´de guess they do it against a simplified and maybe prefiltered representation of the scene... But it looks a lot like something along these lines. Its definetly not bloom, nor anything screenspace. Doesn´t behave like so.

 

[L. Scofield]

All points to it being some variation of that. Still counts as a very rudimentary implementation of VPL, which is a known and established way of doing dynamic GI. I´d guess they do more than one single raytrace, and I´m pretty sure they have more than just a single fill light. Maybe they just render the albedo of surfaces as well when rasterising the flashlight´s shadowmap instead of doing a raytrace, and cluster them into a handfull of soft pointlights ( like in reflective shadow maps )... If they raytrace, I´de guess they do it against a simplified and maybe prefiltered representation of the scene... But it looks a lot like something along these lines. Its definetly not bloom, nor anything screenspace. Doesn´t behave like so.

I actually tried to do the raycast method in Crysis a few years ago but the Raycast method available didn't give any color information so I had to scrap the idea.

 

[eloic]

Did ND ever explain how they did this on Ps3? It's definitely some lower than native resolution effect but is it GI? Because it looks like it.

Well, I recall reading something about this a long time ago, but I can't seem to find that again. At least, I found this paper (by Michal Iwaniki, ND):
http://miciwan.com/SIGGRAPH2013/Lighting Technology of The Last Of Us.pdf

Just in case you can find some clues.

 

[jlippo]

It's just an old school reflective shadowmap method on low res buffer and only on some very selective areas.
Basically render depth and albedo from lights point of field, spawn bunch of lights to visible points and take color from albedo.
http://www.bpeers.com/blog/?itemid=517

Square Enix has cheaper method which uses two virtual area lights to get better results.
http://www.jp.square-enix.com/info/library/

 

[Egmon83]

It's GI, and it's Real-Time yes. PS3 had it. This teaches us that talented developers are more important than high end hardware;

It's just an old school reflective shadowmap method on low res buffer and only on some very selective areas

Yes, it's just that. Now look at the PC, how many games developed for that platform had similar solutions? On PC it would have been a high res buffer and it could have been on every single surface in the entire videogame. The answer is: none to my knowledge.

The same with... SoTC? With the velocity based object motion blur... on PS2 for christ sake!! Again: PC could have had this effect for years, but not a single developer was able to come up with an efficient method, as demonstrated by the complete lack of games displaying this effect.

 

[Nesh]

Yes regarding SoTC I was blown away with the visuals. The OMB and physics based animation gave it a next gen feel that I didnt get from the "next gen" games that were being released on the 360 and the PC. Truly amazing what very talented developers can come up with on very limited hardware

 

[jlippo]

It's GI, and it's Real-Time yes. PS3 had it. This teaches us that talented developers are more important than high end hardware;

Yes, it's just that. Now look at the PC, how many games developed for that platform had similar solutions? On PC it would have been a high res buffer and it could have been on every single surface in the entire videogame. The answer is: none to my knowledge.

Alien isolation has a superior bounce light from flashlight. (and most likely from other dynamic lights as well.)

 

[Egmon83]

That might be true, but for the versions that have it enabled (PC, PS4) you are looking at about 5-10 times the processing power when compared to the PS3.
"PC, how many games developed for that platform had similar solutions" < I meant up to that point. Looking at raw performance, PC could have had GI from flashlight years before TLoU, superior (like Alien:Isolation) even

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That discussion doesn't really belong here. You're asking why a software technique isn't introduced earlier than it is, and maybe why console games use techniques earlier than PC games. If you want to discuss that, start a new thread.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That might be true, but for the versions that have it enabled (PC, PS4) you are looking at about 5-10 times the processing power when compared to the PS3.
"PC, how many games developed for that platform had similar solutions" < I meant up to that point. Looking at raw performance, PC could have had GI from flashlight years before TLoU, superior (like Alien:Isolation) even

Eh? AFAIK, Crysis 2 on PC had GI. And that was years before TLOU.

Regards,
SB

 

[milk]

Eh? AFAIK, Crysis 2 on PC had GI. And that was years before TLOU.

Regards,
SB

It did use a reflective shadowmap, though resolved in voxelspace instead of vpls