Naughty-God's putting in work.
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End [PS4]
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Naughty-God's putting in work.
Are you doing an analysis? These might be of some use to you. I took them when I was playing the beta:
http://i.cubeupload.com/7CGD17.png
And here are some Sam close ups
http://i.cubeupload.com/YpxY8W.png
http://i.cubeupload.com/uxcAbC.png
http://i.cubeupload.com/VMAYXJ.png
L. Scofield
Veteran
Main difference is the monocromatic-high-contrast filter in the 2016 footage. That and the dead eyes.
Polycount is reduced and shaders seem simplified even in the menu models. But that's the case even in the multiplayer of the previous games, which was running at the same framerate/res. Else we wouldn't have this:
or this
This is common practice for all multiplayer games though, because in SP you only have one major random factor, the player; while in mp, every player is a random factor and you have to optimize the game for the worst case scenario, one example of such optimization is Luke Skywalker in Battlefront: Showcase Model - Showcase model closeup -> In-game model - Another angle of the in-game model
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Since some of us praised the game enough it's time to see what sort of performance optimizations ND have done to improve the visuals (it ain't magic after all). Time to fuel the L.Scofield hate machine (for Uncharted 4, no hard feelings)! 
At least from what I've seen, some images so spoiler tag (1.2mb not anything crazy)
At least from what I've seen, some images so spoiler tag (1.2mb not anything crazy)Dithering for almost all shadows and some shaders in the game for the first ~10 frames (like their TAA implementation) on screen. 1st frame just after position/shadow change, second after 10 frames, third frame movement again -> shadow changes -> dithering
And this is probably why there are no visible problems with shadow lods and incredible draw distance for a Ps4 game in the story trailer, very perf efficient shadows. A perfect example of what i'm talking about is this scene, you could probably hog a system with a Titan X just by running every shadow in this scene at full res for every frame.
And their screen space shader LOD (only what is in the screen after ~10 consecutive frames is "high quality" although it seems to be selective in some areas, looks like they optimize per scene), also notice how their AA leaves traces on screen that are cleaned up afterwards. 1 frame right after hand moves downwards, second frame 7 frames after and last frame after 20-30 frames
Without being an expert on this topic i'm guessing it's something similar to what Guerrilla have talked about temporal reprojection
gif + images are around 1.2mb which is probably fine for this page so i'm using img tags instead of links. And of course, this is pre-release footage and anything can change in the final build.
And this is probably why there are no visible problems with shadow lods and incredible draw distance for a Ps4 game in the story trailer, very perf efficient shadows. A perfect example of what i'm talking about is this scene, you could probably hog a system with a Titan X just by running every shadow in this scene at full res for every frame.
And their screen space shader LOD (only what is in the screen after ~10 consecutive frames is "high quality" although it seems to be selective in some areas, looks like they optimize per scene), also notice how their AA leaves traces on screen that are cleaned up afterwards. 1 frame right after hand moves downwards, second frame 7 frames after and last frame after 20-30 frames
Without being an expert on this topic i'm guessing it's something similar to what Guerrilla have talked about temporal reprojection
gif + images are around 1.2mb which is probably fine for this page so i'm using img tags instead of links. And of course, this is pre-release footage and anything can change in the final build.
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Great minds think alike, I was just thinking about this yesterday! I am also certain that the game uses temporal reprojection as well. Sometimes the image is super clean and others it makes me doubt its native 1080p. With the amount of things the game is doing I am not surprised. This is an awesome technique that more games should definitely experiment on, rainbow six siege has a similar technique that works extremely well. I also made a gif showing the level of detail of the different shaders. Take your pick, I think the beta was running between level1 and 2. Subsurface starts at level 2 and finalizes at level 3.Since some of us praised the game enough it's time to see what sort of performance optimizations ND have done to improve the visuals (it ain't magic after all). Time to fuel the L.Scofield hate machine (for Uncharted 4, no hard feelings)!
Dithering for almost all shadows and some shaders in the game for the first ~10 frames (like their TAA implementation) on screen. 1st frame just after position/shadow change, second after 10 frames, third frame movement again -> shadow changes -> dithering
And this is probably why there are no visible problems with shadow lods and incredible draw distance for a Ps4 game in the story trailer, very perf efficient shadows. A perfect example of what i'm talking about is this scene, you could probably hog a system with a Titan X just by running every shadow in this scene at full res for every frame.
And their screen space shader LOD (only what is in the screen after ~10 consecutive frames is "high quality" although it seems to be selective in some areas, looks like they optimize per scene), also notice how their AA leaves traces on screen that are cleaned up afterwards. 1 frame right after hand moves downwards, second frame 7 frames after and last frame after 20-30 frames
Without being an expert on this topic i'm guessing it's something similar to what Guerrilla have talked about temporal reprojection
gif + images are around 1.2mb which is probably fine for this page so i'm using img tags instead of links. And of course, this is pre-release footage and anything can change in the final build.
No subsurface on mp gameplay but yes in the character select screen. Maybe the final mp release will have it. Great analysis btw.
During mp gameplay there is some sss present, at least on Drake, but it's very cheap. You can see that here for example (his ear): http://abload.de/img/u4iep3v.jpg
L. Scofield
Veteran
Dithering IS a visible problem.
Doesn't look more demanding than a Crysis level from almost a decade ago where all the lighting and shadows were real-time.
So in order to achieve the quality they need to distribute the rendering over several frames. Good idea but knocks off the impressiveness factor.
Something has to give though, the Ps4 isn't a rendering powerhouse. I think moving rendering to temporal solutions is probably the best bet for the current generation systems. And of course, that applies to PC as well, more efficient rendering = better looking result. And i think it's fine in motion, i.e. not visually distracting. Epic are doing very similar things with Unreal Engine 4.
Edit: Until Dawn was also doing something similar with shadow maps (using the Guerrilla engine) https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...eprojection-and-shadow-test-confidence.57336/
Edit #2: Dithering is only really visible for a fraction of a second. And even then each consecutive frame is improving the visual output. Realistically when playing the game dithering should only be an issue if you take screenshots at very specific moments.
I'm not sure i can agree with that, too bad i don't have Crysis 1 on my PC anymore but that picture should be enough, you can clearly see the differences in geometry density and shadows. In the U4 video you can also see every shadow moving according to the foliage movement, pretty sure that's real-time.
Edit: Until Dawn was also doing something similar with shadow maps (using the Guerrilla engine) https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...eprojection-and-shadow-test-confidence.57336/
Edit #2: Dithering is only really visible for a fraction of a second. And even then each consecutive frame is improving the visual output. Realistically when playing the game dithering should only be an issue if you take screenshots at very specific moments.
I'm not sure i can agree with that, too bad i don't have Crysis 1 on my PC anymore but that picture should be enough, you can clearly see the differences in geometry density and shadows. In the U4 video you can also see every shadow moving according to the foliage movement, pretty sure that's real-time.
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L. Scofield
Veteran
So many frames to render what most games do in 1. And NX Gamer thought it was adaptive tessellationGreat minds think alike, I was just thinking about this yesterday! I am also certain that the game uses temporal reprojection as well. Sometimes the image is super clean and others it makes me doubt its native 1080p. With the amount of things the game is doing I am not surprised. This is an awesome technique that more games should definitely experiment on, rainbow six siege has a similar technique that works extremely well. I also made a gif showing the level of detail of the different shaders. Take your pick, I think the beta was running between level1 and 2. Subsurface starts at level 2 and finalizes at level 3.
I understand the need to use temporal solutions for advanced techniques such as Remedy does for the realtime GI in QB. But here it seems to be applied for very basic stuff like specularity in materials. It would be one thing to do it for objects far away from the camera but they do it even for objects that are front and center and over so many frames too. With such a noticeable trade-off you'd think they'd be able to achieve 60fps but nope.
So many frames to render what most games do in 1. And NX Gamer thought it was adaptive tessellation
That's not separate frames, they were just going through their shading techniques and the different layers here at 32:45 (the lady talking is Yibing Jiang):
It may be one of the reason why the game has many animations and everything is realtime. What's interesting though is (iirc) you see the first gameplay demo I did not notice any image oddities, I think it started post e3 2015. Look here, a comparison of gameplay reveal vs a hq screenshot of the latest trailer:
L. Scofield
Veteran
14:18
Look at the objects next to Helena and pay attention to how long it takes the specularity to be fully rendered.
That's what NX Gamer was claiming it was adaptive tessellation, lol.
They used a different AA and shaders back then. Cleaner in images but most probably not as clean in motion.
Yeah, i know i was one of the first to point that out. I think (without knowing for sure) that it is a custom screen space shader lod but it's not applied to everything (that would look really out of place) and it's mostly used for background objects, or even some character clothing.
Oh yes it could be that.
A little bit off topic but is what rainbow six used and they will go more into detail about it at gdc 2016
With Temporal Checkerboard rendering you can win up to 50% GPU time without significant quality loss. This technique also allows you to cut the memory footprint of all fullscreen render targets by half.
Using a GPU-Driven pipeline can vastly improve drawcall count scalability allowing you to draw tens of thousands of possibly unique objects per frame.
It will be interesting to watch the uncharted 4 technical video and see if they are indeed using something similar. Hopefully next week.
You might wanna read these threads by sebbi (the MSAA trick part in particular) and pretend that you understand half of the content like most of us
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/gpu-driven-rendering-siggraph-2015-follow-up.57240/
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/programmable-vertex-fetching-and-index-buffering.57591/
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/modern-textureless-deferred-rendering-techniques.57611/
will definitely give it a read, thanks!You might wanna read these threads by sebbi (the MSAA trick part in particular) and pretend that you understand half of the content like most of us
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/gpu-driven-rendering-siggraph-2015-follow-up.57240/
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/programmable-vertex-fetching-and-index-buffering.57591/
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/modern-textureless-deferred-rendering-techniques.57611/
I also posted this in the moblur thread: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...plementations-spawn.57607/page-2#post-1898634
ND is almost certainly using an AA similar to the Unreal Engine 4 temporal super sampling used in the demo a boy and his kite. Although it's an improved version of that, not nearly as much ghosting and the errors aren't as obvious. The result is IQ that looks super sampled at the expense of some ghosting.
ND is almost certainly using an AA similar to the Unreal Engine 4 temporal super sampling used in the demo a boy and his kite. Although it's an improved version of that, not nearly as much ghosting and the errors aren't as obvious. The result is IQ that looks super sampled at the expense of some ghosting.
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