Why RE4's lighting may be the GCN's Best

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just to let u know, Edge Magazine (*apparently* the most impartial, serious, whatever else Mag in the UK at least) gave this game a nice 5 out of 10. :?
 
It would all have to be spherical.
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No, it can also be cubic, parabolical and I am sure one could always come up with more mapping methods if there was a need.
Spherical just happens to be the only one not requiring any special hw support for good performance, and has therefore seen more widespread use over years.

Anyway I am not quite sure where the tangent about real reflections and raytracing came frome, but I wasn't trying to go there with my previous post :oops:
 
Spherical just happens to be the only one not requiring any special hw support for good performance, and has therefore seen more widespread use over years.
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In my experience (just from playing PC games of course) Cube Mapping always seemed to be very costly to performance, even with full hardware support. Which is why it suprises me that, in WaveRace, GC is pulling off entire cube mapped lakes, at 60fps (in a game where the CPU already has to calculate quite complex wave physics) with no hardware support for CEM! How did they they manage to do that with only a 486mhz PowerPC and limited external bandwidth?

Incidentally, has anyone seen another game using Cube Mapping anywhere near as liberally as Wave Race?
 
Teasy said:
Spherical just happens to be the only one not requiring any special hw support for good performance, and has therefore seen more widespread use over years.
Click to expand...

In my experience (just from playing PC games of course) Cube Mapping always seemed to be very costly to performance, even with full hardware support. Which is why it suprises me that, in WaveRace, GC is pulling off entire cube mapped lakes, at 60fps (in a game where the CPU already has to calculate quite complex wave physics) with no hardware support for CEM! How did they they manage to do that with only a 486mhz PowerPC and limited external bandwidth?

Incidentally, has anyone seen another game using Cube Mapping anywhere near as liberally as Wave Race?
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I'm pretty sure it was a 30fps title, still very impressive nontheless... especialy since (IIRC) the water reflects everything including the players..
Also it moved amazingly well...
sure it was full CEM? i mean CEM is not the only way to do reflections as we've seen, it was probably a simplified version of the real thing.
PS2 doesn't support CEM (of course), still some PS2 games feature perfect reflections (MGS2, ICO, GT3+4 etc)
 
I'm pretty sure it was a 30fps title, still very impressive nontheless... especialy since (IIRC) the water reflects everything including the players..
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Oh yeah it is 30fps, as you say though its still impressive considering the scale its used on and that it reflects everything accross the surface of the water including the players. Also everything under the water is distorted accordingly and as you say the water physics is very good too.

Also it moved amazingly well...
sure it was full CEM? i mean CEM is not the only way to do reflections as we've seen, it was probably a simplified version of the real thing.
PS2 doesn't support CEM (of course), still some PS2 games feature perfect reflections (MGS2, ICO, GT3+4 etc)
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I don't know, I do definitely remember hearing that it was CEM though and it certainly didn't look simplifed. BTW the reflections in those games you mentioned, aren't they all flat reflections?

I'm sure PS2 could do CEM anyway, but I doubt it could do it on the same scale as WaveRace.
 
Teasy said:
BTW the reflections in those games you mentioned, aren't they all flat reflections?

I'm sure PS2 could do CEM anyway, but I doubt it could do it on the same scale as WaveRace.
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nah they were all water-related reflections, so it's like WR really... probably lower res.
ICO did not reflect the horny boy though, while MGS2 did reflect everything perfectly...
there are other games, but i can't really remember them all...

also, i was curious, sometimes the reflections seem to be "low-res" (like ICO's water) while sometimes they are pixel-perfect (like the floor on some levels Timesplitters2 -just remembered- which reflected everything including all of the characters)... why is that? different methods? :?
 
Phil & Marconelly both said it (DOT3) can be performed in 5 passes.
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I'm pretty sure it's four passes. Which actually puts it in the area where it should be accomplishable in real life game situations, if there isn't a problem that I'm not aware of. It actually surprises me that none of the PS2 hardware guru-developers haven't atempted to do it, or at least made a comment why it wouldn't be feasable.
 
Marc :

the 5 passes (whole process ) thing is quoting a Sony R&D paper (devstation 2003) .But probably not all passes requires re-submitting geometry.
 
Actually, there's one in-game bumpmapped surface on PS2 -- I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned it with all the BM-frenzy going on here... :)

In Silent Hill 3, take a close look at the floor in the room where you find the flashlight. Quite simple emboss technique, though.
 
_phil_ said:
Marc :

the 5 passes (whole process ) thing is quoting a Sony R&D paper (devstation 2003) .But probably not all passes requires re-submitting geometry.
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How would you do another pass and not resubmit geometry? Wouldn’t that require an on-die geometry buffer?

london-boy said:
nah they were all water-related reflections, so it's like WR really... probably lower res.
ICO did not reflect the horny boy though, while MGS2 did reflect everything perfectly...
there are other games, but i can't really remember them all...

also, i was curious, sometimes the reflections seem to be "low-res" (like ICO's water) while sometimes they are pixel-perfect (like the floor on some levels Timesplitters2 -just remembered- which reflected everything including all of the characters)... why is that? different methods? :?
Click to expand...

Maybe because one is static geometry, and the other is dynamic?
Even N64 could do that kind of large flat reflections, like the mirror in Mario 64, that the shadow Link place in LoZOoT. and the large shiny floor in Jet Force Gemini.
 
VNZ said:
Actually, there's one in-game bumpmapped surface on PS2 -- I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned it with all the BM-frenzy going on here... :)

In Silent Hill 3, take a close look at the floor in the room where you find the flashlight. Quite simple emboss technique, though.
Click to expand...


You sure? I'm sure that if the engine supported it, then they would have used it more often than ONE floor in ONE room in the whole game...

By the way, not to be too pedantic, but that is why I sometimes hate reading these threads... I mean a game like SH3 shouldn't be analyzed on its *checklist graphical features* but on the overall look, which I think is outstanding. I mean, one is not expected to *stop playing and zoom on the floor to see if there's bump mapping or not*...
Anyway, some of the textures can be very high res, so much so that they can be confused for bump mapped surfaces where they're *just* prebaked bump maps. The trick is checking whether the colour/pattern changes by moving the light source...
And by the way PS2 has showed that you can *fake it* quite convincingly in many occasions... ;)
 
london-boy said:
just to let u know, Edge Magazine (*apparently* the most impartial, serious, whatever else Mag in the UK at least) gave this game a nice 5 out of 10. :?
Click to expand...

Which game? Wave Race? RE4?

BTW, wave race was a 30 fps game(with loss of detail in 4 player mode) but it did not reflect everything. Most things were, but a few things weren't, for instance, on the one modern city type level, I don't think the helicopters were reflected.(either that, or they were, and practically everything else wasn't)

Hey, duke nukem 3d had reflections, what was that using? I'm sure other, fully 3d games have too, just not so sure about transparent reflections. I also think I've seen some games do reflections that were lesser quality.(the reflection just didn't look as good as the original model for whatever reason, like the polygon count was greatly reduced, but maybe it was an intentional effect?)

Also, as for Silent Hill 3 using bump mapping in only like 1 room, didn't Luigi's Mansion use bumpmapping only for like 1 wall in the basement?
 
In Silent Hill 3, take a close look at the floor in the room where you find the flashlight. Quite simple emboss technique, though.
Click to expand...
Not sure for SH3, but embossed bumpmapping was almost certainly used in BG:DA at places. I was talking about the DOT3, though.
 
marconelly! said:
In Silent Hill 3, take a close look at the floor in the room where you find the flashlight. Quite simple emboss technique, though.
Click to expand...
Not sure for SH3, but embossed bumpmapping was almost certainly used in BG:DA at places. I was talking about the DOT3, though.
Click to expand...

The question was asked to the dev when the game was released. No bump mapping of any sort, just marvelous work on textures.
 
How would you do another pass and not resubmit geometry? Wouldn’t that require an on-die geometry buffer?
Click to expand...

I thought that only the triangle list needed to be resent (and even that requires some careful planning beforehand), thus requiring no additional transforms?

also, i was curious, sometimes the reflections seem to be "low-res" (like ICO's water) while sometimes they are pixel-perfect (like the floor on some levels Timesplitters2 -just remembered- which reflected everything including all of the characters)... why is that? different methods?
Click to expand...

probably, the devs might hae been flexible with the resolution map during tweaking. it not uncommon to use half resolution where you think you can get away with it.
 
Again I must ask yet again, before growing uncontrollaby violent. Dynamic vertex lights are accomplishable, as are projected light maps on the GC. (ED used them) But what of true HDR effects? ICO & GT3 use versions, or possibly hacks of it because they are done in software & not on a hardware "shader" format. (although still looking very much impressive regardless) HL2 as well as Splinter Cell used pixel shaders to produce the effect, the TEV can produce the same pixel effects ala RS3. Is this feasible? :devilish:
 
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