Xbox 360 eDRAM. Where are the results?

[inefficient]

I believe those are what they call bull shots.

I'm quite sure GRAW2 and R6 don't have AA because of the deferred rendering techniques they are using - Similar to why Gears does not have AA.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I forgot that RS:V was a UE3 game, you're right those are probably bullshots, I can't seem to find any ingame screens.

GRAW2 though, I'm fairly sure is using at least 2xAA.

 

[Tap In]

I believe those are what they call bull shots.

I'm quite sure GRAW2 and R6 don't have AA because of the deferred rendering techniques they are using - Similar to why Gears does not have AA.

maybe so but please play them in real life sometime and I promise you the smoothness will surprise you.

Which leads me to my question (and I've asked it before) if GoW or RB6 or GRAW2 are not using AA how in all-that-is-holy do they appear to be anti-aliased smooth?

Not screen shots, I'm not talking about pulling up jaggies on an edge in screens I'm talking game play. what techniques ARE they using if they are not using AA to get these results (smooth as a baby's butt in game)

 

[aselto]

maybe so but please play them in real life sometime and I promise you the smoothness will surprise you.

Which leads me to my question (and I've asked it before) if GoW or RB6 or GRAW2 are not using AA how in all-that-is-holy do they appear to be anti-aliased smooth?

Not screen shots, I'm not talking about pulling up jaggies on an edge in screens I'm talking game play. what techniques ARE they using if they are not using AA to get these results (smooth as a baby's butt in game)

GRAW2 definitely has AA. I didn't play R6 Vegas, but Gears of War does have aliasing plus it has heavy use of of DoF (too have for me).

 

[inefficient]

I think its a combination of several things. Low contrast textures helps hide it a lot. Reliance on normal maps instead of a lot geometry for world details helps too. Motion blur and DOF cover some of it

 

[Tap In]

GRAW2 definitely has AA. I didn't play R6 Vegas, but Gears of War does have aliasing plus it has heavy use of of DoF (too have for me).

again I'm not saying that there is NO aliasing... just that it is pretty danged smooth relative to what I would call an aliased game and I'm surprised when people say that there is no AA used. I wonder then, how they get the results that they did.

edit: thanks inefficient

well whatever they are doing, it's working.

Are we sure that there is no AA used in any UE3 game?

 

[AlNom]

Are we sure that there is no AA used in any UE3 game?

There was evidence a little while back that there was AA applied to static objects in Gears of War, but I just can't find that thread at the moment. Someone took photos of it and it was pretty clear there was AA going on there.

edit: Found it, Mmmkay's post -

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=924735&postcount=18

 

[Tap In]

There was evidence a little while back that there was AA applied to static objects in Gears of War, but I just can't find that thread at the moment. Someone took photos of it and it was pretty clear there was AA going on there.

edit: Found it, Mmmkay's post -

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=924735&postcount=18

thanks!

I knew there had to be something going on there

 

[aselto]

Are we sure that there is no AA used in any UE3 game?

Apparently there will be AAx4 in Too Human, Silicon Knights must have rewritten the renderer.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

On the topic of 3rd party titles using tiling:

GRAW 2 seems to be 720p with 2xAA
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1619/full-res/1173411641.jpg

NHL 07 as well?
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1516/full-res/1155929242.jpg

Rainbow 6 Vegas
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1439/full-res/1171392118.jpg

Saint's Row
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1217/full-res/1152772109.jpg

So, it seems EA and Ubisoft are both using tiling in their custom engines, the two biggest 3rd party publishers in the game, so that's a good sign. Also, the majority of games that were really built for nextgen come out this fall, Assasin's Creed, Brothers in Arms etc

I fail to see how that proves anything. It's really not difficult to produce an AA fake that's visually equal or even superior to hardware 2x MSAA, and at that point tiling isn't a requirement. Assasin's Creed and BiA3 are UE3 titles, as is R6V, so I'd expect they're using some sort of trickery. Saint's Row, I seem to recall a lot of open hatred for tiling mentioned, and the screenshot you showed doesn't strike me as a very good example, though it seems the texture aliasing draws your eyes away from any poly-edge aliasing.

How is this different from my post?

If you bothered to read the rest of that paragraph, I was asking about the statement you were quoting. Do you happen to have a source? Just saying "they're using the eDRAM" is totally meaningless, and to say "using the eDRAM to achieve effects" doesn't make any sense.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I fail to see how that proves anything. It's really not difficult to produce an AA fake that's visually many times superior to hardware 2x MSAA, and at that point tiling isn't a requirement. Assasin's Creed and BiA3 are UE3 titles, as is R6V, so I'd expect they're using some sort of trickery.


If you bothered to read the rest of that paragraph, I was asking about the statement you were quoting. Do you happen to have a source? Just saying "they're using the eDRAM" is totally meaningless, and to say "using the eDRAM to achieve effects" doesn't make any sense.

I'm not really trying to 'prove' anything, but rather give specific examples of 3rd party games using AA so we can generate a REAL discussion about the trend of tiling usage and whether it's truly spreading or not.

As for AC using UE3.0, you are wrong there. It uses the Scimitar engine which is a new engine for nextgen consoles.

GRAW uses a ported version of the last generation engine I think.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

As for AC using UE3.0, you are wrong there. It uses the Scimitar engine which is a new engine for nextgen consoles.

Ah. That sounds more reasonable. I was wondering why it showed up on a list of UE3 titles when I'd never heard anything to that effect.

I do recall that for Saint's Row, Volition was looking towards PS3 (and recruiting heavily for PS3 staff) as well the whole time even very early in the production. Of course, back then people were still expecting PS3 and 360 to come out for the same holiday season, so I don't know what might have happened thereafter.

 

[aselto]

GRAW uses a ported version of the last generation engine I think.

No, it uses a new engine called YETI (GRAW single player mode and GRAW2 both modes). And I'm sure it has AA (I'd say it's AAx4).

 

[scooby_dooby]

No, it uses a new engine called YETI (GRAW single player mode and GRAW2 both modes). And I'm sure it has AA (I'd say it's AAx4).

Lol, so they say...but I remember all to vividly what GRAW looked like at TGS 05, and it sure as hell looked alot like the Xbox engine!

Also, the SP and MP were designed by two different studios (red storm?? did the mp) and they feel like two totally different engines to me. Different controls, different graphics, different games really. That's why I was so annoyed by the MP in graw.

 

[Tap In]

Also, the SP and MP were designed by two different studios (red storm?? did the mp) and they feel like two totally different engines to me. Different controls, different graphics, different games really. That's why I was so annoyed by the MP in graw.

GRAW2 feels/looks much more congruent than GRAW between SP/MP modes.

Of course some of the sp tricks in 2 are somewhat toned down for netcode in mp I'm guessing.

 

[Megadrive1988]

it's already been mentioned, but, I'd reiterate, if Xbox 360 did not have EDRAM, its performance would be abysmal.

 

[pipo]

Do you happen to have a source? Just saying "they're using the eDRAM" is totally meaningless, and to say "using the eDRAM to achieve effects" doesn't make any sense.

Check this thread: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=33423

They are very proud of the techniques they been able to employ to get a tremendous amount of good looking particle effects on screen without causing slowdown. They said that utilizing the Xbox 360 EDRAM for certain screen effects gives them great speed without hurting frame rate. They said that this EDRAM, along with learning to properly use the multithreaded processors, are the two "tricks to making Xbox 360 games run well".

 

[nAo]

Though this generation edram is not going to be as relevant as it was in the last gen (especially if you can't use it to store textures..) the main advantage behind it is the ability to have a huge sustained fill rate in simple rendering passes (particles are the most obvious candidate here..)
So we start to observe many 360 games doing an obscene (in a good way!) use of particles effects..there you have your proof

 

[pipo]

..there you have your proof

 

[Zeross]

I remember reading something on the EDRAM in the HDR presentation made by Bungie

[FONT=&quot]You can go even simpler than this, and forego the HDR combine altogether. [/FONT] [FONT=&quot]Just render once for the visible LDR range, and once for all the bloom effects. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The bloom target can even have reduced precision, since the banding will get blurred out. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This is an advantage on XBOX 360, as you don’t need to resolve the visible buffer from EDRAM, you [/FONT][FONT=&quot]can simply accumulate the post-processed bloom on top of it. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]However, it does sacrifice the benefit #3 of HDR rendering. (The “sunglassesâ€￾ effect). But this is [/FONT][FONT=&quot]probably the least important of the benefits.

I'm not sure to understand what they mean exactly (or more precisely how is it specific to the Xbox 360) but maybe one of our residents devs can enlighten me
[/FONT]