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DF/Eurogamer: The making of Gears 5: how the Coalition hit 60fps - and improved visual quality

Deleted member 12635

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Deep dive technical interview with The Coalition's technical art director Colin Penty and studio technical director Mike Rayner.

Massive detail blowout about the graphical effects were used for Gears 5.


Interesting quotes from the interview!

The Coalition said:
We are most proud of how we were able to push visual quality noticeably ahead of Gears of War 4 while simultaneously pushing the game to 60fps on Xbox One X and 60fps for all MP modes on Xbox One. It was an immense collaborative effort between engineers, technical artists, and the art team to constantly keep 60fps at the forefront of everything we did while not compromising quality, and in-fact improving quality. We had to adopt many new workflows and techniques - especially around keeping the CPU running at 60fps.
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The Coalition said:
On Gears 5 we are using GPU compute-based ray traced distance field shadows which works across all platforms and does not depend on DXR or dedicated ray tracing hardware. We are excited with the possibilities of DXR and Project Scarlett's native hardware support for accelerated ray tracing.
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The Coalition" said:
With Gears 5, all of our cinematics (except for the Gears of War 4 recap and title sequence) are rendered natively in real-time. In the past these would be locked as 1080p videos. In Gears 5, the cinematics will scale to your system and run in 4K on Xbox One X, they will adapt to your PC video options quality settings providing continuity with the gameplay visuals. We feel that the overall visual quality of the real-time cinematics eclipses the off-line rendered cinematic videos we had on Gears of War 4.
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The Coalition said:
We love running a game at native resolution and the simplicity and purity of that - but we feel like this will become less and less common, especially if we begin to see 8K games next generation. Temporal reconstruction techniques offer cheap performance returns allowing for higher quality visual systems with very hard to perceive visual quality loss - especially at higher resolutions.
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I think Sony and MS were not joking talking about 8K games for next gen consoles ...

Dictator
Great interview with a lot of information in it. Thanks!
 
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bcatwilly

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Oct 27, 2017
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Thanks for sharing, a good read for tech geeks to be sure. Gears 5 really is a technical masterpiece in how the visuals look when still running at a solid 60 FPS, and I suspect that some of the techniques that they used will definitely be shared with other Xbox Game Studios for future development. I thought that this was quote was interesting as you wouldn't expect Rare to necessarily have such a contribution to a Gears game, lol: "We made a big push for GPU based particles on Gears 5, so we integrated some GPU spawning technology from Rare which helped ease the particle burden on the CPU and helped us achieve 60fps on Xbox One X."
 

Deleted member 20297

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Was waiting for this, I like these interviews a lot.
Edit: now I'm eager to find out how both next gen system will differ when it comes to RT hardware.
 
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lupinko

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Oct 26, 2017
6,154
How's Gears 5 on the Xbone or the 1S? I don't really want to spend the money on a 1X but a 1S would be nice.
 
Mars People

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P40L0 said:
Native 4K most of the time + 60fps + Better graphics and fidelity compared to Gears 4, on X1X.

It's almost unbelievable what The Coalition have achieved here.
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I wish more developers (and players) would see the immense value in 60fps.
Sadly too many people are wowed by bells and whistles with a 'gud enuf' 30fps.
 
PLASTICA-MAN

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lupinko said:
Uh, I'm interested in the game and would like to know how well it runs on the cheaper 1S. That's all.
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No because all I saw is talk about 1S even in DF to the extent that I thought this game couldn't run on base Xbox One but only strating from 1S since it has a little more juice under the hood.

FacelessSamurai said:
The base one isn't for sale anymore, so the S has kind of replaced it as the base console. That's pretty much the only reason.
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I see but the game works on base X1 right?
 
Dictator

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PLASTICA-MAN said:
I see but the game works on base X1 right?
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Of course it does - it would be suicide for microsoft if such a thing occured. Also - it is just the tiniest of GPU upclocks + HDR support. Only real difference between 1 and 1s. So you will see *maybe* a slightly higher resolution ever 1000 frames... or maybe one or two less tears.

We do not cover it anymore because it is so miniscule.
 
PLASTICA-MAN

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Dictator said:
Of course it does - it would be suicide for microsoft if such a thing occured. Also - it is just the tiniest of GPU upclocks + HDR support. Only real difference between 1 and 1s. So you will see *maybe* a slightly higher resolution ever 1000 frames... or maybe one or two less tears.

We do not cover it anymore because it is so miniscule.
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Ah I see. Thanks.
 
P40L0

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PLASTICA-MAN said:
No because all I saw is talk about 1S even in DF to the extent that I thought this game couldn't run on base Xbox One but only strating from 1S since it has a little more juice under the hood.



I see but the game works on base X1 right?
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Of course it works also on the base X1.
Devs only mention X1S because it is the new baseline now.
They do not sell old base X1 anymore if I recall correctly.
 
PLASTICA-MAN

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What about MP modes? Is it 30 FPS or 60 FPS for both XB O X and X1? Because, you know MP requires between both consoles so one won't get advantaged over the other (eventhough I know some MP games who doubled FPSon mid-gen over base consoles like Battleborn).
 
bcatwilly

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dan2026 said:
I wish more developers (and players) would see the immense value in 60fps.
Sadly too many people are wowed by bells and whistles with a 'gud enuf' 30fps.
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I really do enjoy 4K output resolution on my big 4K HDR TV, but I am so glad that Phil Spencer has repeatedly mentioned improved frame rate as a design goal for Xbox Scarlett (in fact in one interview he said that 4K 60 FPS was a design goal). There is no denying that games just play better at 60.
 
bcatwilly

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PLASTICA-MAN said:
What about MP modes? Is it 30 FPS or 60 FPS for both XB O X and X1? Because, you know MP requires between both consoles so one won't get advantaged over the other (eventhough I know some MP games who doubled FPSon mid-gen over base consoles like Battleborn).
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60 FPS in all multiplayer modes for BOTH Xbox One and Xbox One X, these guys are freaking wizards.
 
0ptimusPayne

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Hands down the best looking console title that runs at both 60fps/high resolution this generation. None of that 1080p/60fps mode or nothing just straight crisp high frame rate/resolution across the board. I really hope dynamic resolution and 60fps become the norm next gen, especially for MP games.
 
OP
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0ptimusPayne said:
Hands down the best looking console title that runs at both 60fps/high resolution this generation. None of that 1080p/60fps mode or nothing just straight crisp high frame rate/resolution across the board. I really hope dynamic resolution and 60fps become the norm next gen, especially for MP games.
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It seems it will ...
The Coalition said:
We love running a game at native resolution and the simplicity and purity of that - but we feel like this will become less and less common, especially if we begin to see 8K games next generation. Temporal reconstruction techniques offer cheap performance returns allowing for higher quality visual systems with very hard to perceive visual quality loss - especially at higher resolutions.
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R.T Straker

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Outside of some minor problems on PC, the game is a tehnical marvel.

Super impressed.
 

ced

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Oct 27, 2017
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Holy shit with how many times I've read 60 FPS on this forum about the game I was under the impression it was 60 during campaign on my Xbox one.

Just goes to show for me locked 30 is fine and I can't tell the difference.
 
OP
OP

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What The Coalition has achieved here shows how capable the Xbox One X already is. All this improvements over Gears 4 and still maintaining a higher frame rate. With next gen I foresee all their first party games will be 4K/60.
 
BigTnaples

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I'm going to stop playing this on my Xbox One (been playing MW Beta a ton anyhow) until I order my 2080ti next Friday.

Feel like I really want to see how beastly this looks.
 
Edgar

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PLASTICA-MAN said:
No because all I saw is talk about 1S even in DF to the extent that I thought this game couldn't run on base Xbox One but only strating from 1S since it has a little more juice under the hood.



I see but the game works on base X1 right?
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I heard a rumor if you try gears 5 on X1, it explodes .
 
melodiousmowl

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nice article! love reading about really technical stuff.

edit: i really appreciate 60fps on this on the x, along with all the gameplay tweaks. i haven't really enjoyed a gears game since 1.

don't read the comments on the df site though =(
 

edryr

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Feb 15, 2018
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"Temporal reconstruction techniques offer cheap performance returns allowing for higher quality visual systems with very hard to perceive visual quality loss - especially at higher resolutions."

That's the part I'm most happy to read actually. When you think it never reach native 4k during gameplay and can go down to 1080p onX, and when you see the incredible mind-blowing iq they made. It gives me hope for next gen with the increased quality of temporal reconstruction techniques. Hope all devs will jump on this wagon.
 

Deleted member 13101

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Oct 27, 2017
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Looking forward to reading this later.

On the one S it runs fine at 30 fps. The action is well-integrated into the environments and feels fluid, as do the scripted moments.

It looks pretty great, too - at times. Image quality is great. The game's opening descent is very impressive, as are a few atmospheric sections. Other times it doesn't impress as much as other titles on base consoles do, to be honest. I know DF said the versions' images are virtually identical, but I would hope that higher texture resolution on X would make more of a difference here. It seems to me this is a bargain struck in service of the 60fps on X.

There is also some obvious environment object clipping (JD walking through a tall plant, barrels rolling into other barrels) that is hard to ignore but does not interfere with the overall combat gameplay.

I think 1/S owners like me can rest easy here.
 
XboxCowdry

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A shame nothing was said about Gears sound. It must be the most impressive use of the Xbox audio system and Dolby Atmos yet.
 
RedStep

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XboxCowdry said:
A shame nothing was said about Gears sound. It must be the most impressive use of the Xbox audio system and Dolby Atmos yet.
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Playing Borderlands directly after Gears 5 was like a glass of ice water to the face. All the beautiful dynamic range and directionality (my favorite demo is the Escape intro) gone, replaced with what sounds like somebody just stretched a bad Stereo engine over surround speakers.
 
RoboPlato

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Oct 25, 2017
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Awesome interview Dictator!

Love seeing devs being so candid and excited about the tech that goes into their games. Also glad to see a lot of devs embracing reconstruction methods to
improve visual quality and performance. Game seems spectacular on the tech front. I'm very jealous that I don't have a way to play it myself right now.
 
Gestault

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Equanimity said:
I was under the impression that Gears 5 uses reconstruction to hit 4K, it's never native.
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It varies by load, and they confirm in the interview (and I think in the separate DF analysis) that it's sometimes native, though I'd assume barely in the action sequences.

The pipeline is set up so post-effects and some other elements are still done natively after any geometry reconstruction, which is a smart way to keep IQ looking good for the output target, even when the engine is strained.
 
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