Of course, I'm only half kidding. I was more referring to the section where they show unlit vs. lit comparisons. It sounds like they shouldn't have set the level to a sunset or sunrise to avoid as few things being in shadow as possible.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
DF: Halo Infinite Gameplay Reveal Analysis: Are The Graphics Really Flat?
- Thread starter FLX-II
- Start date
It ultimately would have been hiding a low quality lighting model, and wouldn't have addressed the core issue.
I think everyone's kinda missing the point of Alex's hypothesis.
IIUC, it's that the assets are all built around PBR lighting, which is dependent on ray/path tracing, which isn't ready yet, so everything looks flat and dull. They didn't bake extra detail into the textures like you normally would in a standard GI-lit title. The example of Metro Exodus using standard GI vs RT GI might be what we can expect when HI finally has RT.
If that is the case, they uh, probably shouldn't have shown the game until it had RT ready.
IIUC, it's that the assets are all built around PBR lighting, which is dependent on ray/path tracing, which isn't ready yet, so everything looks flat and dull. They didn't bake extra detail into the textures like you normally would in a standard GI-lit title. The example of Metro Exodus using standard GI vs RT GI might be what we can expect when HI finally has RT.
If that is the case, they uh, probably shouldn't have shown the game until it had RT ready.
They probably shouldn't release the game until they have RT ready but instead they've tied it to the release of the XSX, and have already set expectations low by saying it won't come until some time after launch.
So accordingly...I look forward to playing the game some time after launch.
Thats even worse, if true
Red Dead 2 had similar numbers right? And look at how it looks...
Well one of them is made by a competent developer, that helps.
Rockstar had the advantage of already having the RAGE engine years ago and just needing to iterate on it. They first demoed it in that Table Tennis game which was a smaller game they could use to get used to the engine. Slipspace is a brand new engine getting used for a massive game right from the start.
There's another open world game that debuted on a new engine and I'd argue its one of the best looking games this gen.
343 has no excuse. It's developer incompetence or the talent just isn't there to push fidelity on par with the rest of the industry.
God, the infinite reveal trailer is probably my #1 trailer of all time... I can't even watch it now. Hurts too much :/
It's also running at 30fps instead of 60fps and doesn't have support 2 instances running at the same time in split screen.
I really admire Dictator's work and have nothing but respect for him. He also managed to put out this video in little over a day's work, so it's understandable that he may not have been able to address some of the other criticisms of the game's tech, and decided to focus on only one aspect of it, instead.
That being said, even if we're exclusively discussing the lighting, there are more glaring (no pun intended) issues than just how flat it looks. Yes, it does look very two-dimensional overall, due to the lack of contrast - which may have something to do with the lack of SSAO and other modern graphical features, such as volumetric lighting, light shafts and whatnot -, but that's not all.
For example, the sun is not the only source of light in many cases. That is very evident during the skirmish around the tractor beam that acts as an elevator - it emits a very bright blue light that doesn't cast shadows on anything surrounding it. The area where you fight the two Brutes that drop from the sky also has several floodlights that should have quite a wide range of illumination, but seem to have no effect on models.
The lack of dynamic lighting is also clear whenever there are energy projectiles flying around, as there is no visual feedback on their surroundings as they blast through the air. Even regular shots have no effect on the scenery, when fired. Notice how, on Alex's video, at around the 14:00 mark, Chief is shooting a couple of Grunts between two large rocks and there's nothing indicating that a weapon was fired, other than the Grunts being hit and the resulting (minuscule) green explosion. Most weapons don't even have a muzzle flash, which becomes obvious when the comparison with Reach starts - a game that looks much more atmospheric.
I get that indirect lighting is challenging, a point that John repeatedly made in his TLOU2 video, but 343 Industries didn't choose to run this demo during the golden hour by accident - that is, quite literally, the best case scenario when it comes to lighting in a game with dynamic time of day.
Outside of the realm of lighting, Alex glossed over the pop-in issues, and I strongly believe that those warrant a second video analysis. Both Microsoft and Sony are making a big deal of how SSDs will revolutionize the medium, but there was absolutely nothing in that demo indicative of such. The initial load time may have been fast, but the obvious pop-in (not just in the distance, like in the fog, where it was most noticeable) and very limited draw distance are of major concern - or at least should be. Halo isn't a particularly fast paced game to justify those, even when driving the Warthog (when grass, rocks and other objects appeared out of nowhere only a couple meters from the vehicle).
LOD is another area that needs improvement. The transition from the pause menu back to gameplay is egregious in how slow the LOD changes. Weren't SSDs supposed to "solve" this problem, as well? Character models and objects in the scenery don't exhibit a high level of detail, either. I've seen people arguing that Craig looks fine because he's a common Brute, but, again, John, in his Ghost of Tsushima video, took time to demonstrate how even a random NPC in that game looks so detailed and carefully constructed. And those look the same regardless if you're running on a 4.2TF machine or one that is only capable of 1.8TF.
I haven't even mentioned the intangible grass, the complete absence of terrain deformation (or even decals highlighting tire marks, footprints, bullets and explosions) and other non-interactive elements in the environment, plus the obscene and inexplicable amount of blurriness on the main antagonist's face, during what was supposed to be the trailer's money shot.
The biggest issue is that Microsoft dug their own grave, by overpromising and under delivering. Ever since E3 2018, when the Series X didn't even have a name, Phil Spencer and his crew have been talking about "power" - how Project Scarlett was going to be the world's most powerful, fastest console. Then came the traditional buzzwords: 8K, 120 FPS, "X" amounts the pixel processing power. And, of course, Halo. How important it was for them to release a console with Halo, like they did with the OG Xbox, back in 2001.
Thursday's showcase was underwhelming for several reasons, Halo notwithstanding. The biggest one being that they didn't even show Series X gameplay. Setting aside the obvious CGI, pre-rendered and "in-engine" stuff for a moment, Halo Infinite was confirmed to be running on a PC "equivalent to a SX" in terms of power. Why do that? Why not show people what the game will actually look like on the device that is releasing alongside it? If pushing for a simultaneous launch was so important - even when the game clearly doesn't look ready for that -, at least try to make the case for the console by showing your flagship title running on it.
And that's another thing: it is the company's flagship title. There are no unreasonable expectations when it comes to a game that's been in development for at least five years, coming from a first-party studio funded by a company with limitless resources. So, what is the problem here? Is it because it's cross-gen? That would make sense for the lack of features which depend exclusively on a fast SSD, but, then again, you have games running on a base Xbox One - Halo 5 included - that look better than Infinite. Is it because it's open world? There are open world titles with much better graphics and more complex maps and systems on the current generation (RDR2, for one). Then it can only be due to the "high" frame rate and resolution, right? In a world where Modern Warfare runs at 60 FPS on consoles looking phenomenally, that's hard to believe.
If it's related to a combination of those factors, why not come clean about how the game will run on all of their devices? It would shock literally no one if they admitted that the base Xbox One model would only be able to run the game at 30 FPS, in either 720p or 900p. 60 FPS in 1440p or 1800p on the One X would also be perfectly acceptable. But, for the SX, is 4K at 60 FPS really that unachievable, to the point where the team has to compromise and make a game that looks like that? Miles Morales will have a 4K/60 performance mode, after all - on a less powerful machine.
It seems, to me, that they are having some serious issues with their new engine. Building an engine from the ground up is no easy feat. There's a reason why there are only a handful that are so predominant, after all. Alex mentioned that they are skipping on some modern features, which is baffling for a studio that aims for their next game to become a "platform" which will last for the next 10 years. Yes, features can be added via patches, such as ray tracing, but why even launch with outdated techniques being implemented? Why did the E3 2018 engine presentation look so much better than what was on display during Thursday's Game Showcase?
The fact that Microsoft is focusing more and more on services is somewhat concerning for paying customers who expect - rightfully so - to have a complete and perfectly functional product on release day. Both MCC and Sea of Thieves launched in a deplorable state, for different reasons. It took developers a very long time to "fix" those titles. Is MS banking on Game Pass and its subscription business model to release an increasingly larger number of games in an unfinished state, just to meet their self-imposed deadlines?
At the moment, Halo Infinite does not look ready for prime time. If 343 does, indeed, need more time to work on their game, or even on the Slipspace Engine itself, they should be allowed to do that. However, we know that launching the Series X with a new Halo is of utmost importance to Microsoft, and Infinite is coming this holiday season, no matter what. If I were to bet, I'd say that we're about to witness another MCC situation, which is a damn shame.
Edit: Changed "Anaconda" to "Project Scarlett".
That being said, even if we're exclusively discussing the lighting, there are more glaring (no pun intended) issues than just how flat it looks. Yes, it does look very two-dimensional overall, due to the lack of contrast - which may have something to do with the lack of SSAO and other modern graphical features, such as volumetric lighting, light shafts and whatnot -, but that's not all.
For example, the sun is not the only source of light in many cases. That is very evident during the skirmish around the tractor beam that acts as an elevator - it emits a very bright blue light that doesn't cast shadows on anything surrounding it. The area where you fight the two Brutes that drop from the sky also has several floodlights that should have quite a wide range of illumination, but seem to have no effect on models.
The lack of dynamic lighting is also clear whenever there are energy projectiles flying around, as there is no visual feedback on their surroundings as they blast through the air. Even regular shots have no effect on the scenery, when fired. Notice how, on Alex's video, at around the 14:00 mark, Chief is shooting a couple of Grunts between two large rocks and there's nothing indicating that a weapon was fired, other than the Grunts being hit and the resulting (minuscule) green explosion. Most weapons don't even have a muzzle flash, which becomes obvious when the comparison with Reach starts - a game that looks much more atmospheric.
I get that indirect lighting is challenging, a point that John repeatedly made in his TLOU2 video, but 343 Industries didn't choose to run this demo during the golden hour by accident - that is, quite literally, the best case scenario when it comes to lighting in a game with dynamic time of day.
Outside of the realm of lighting, Alex glossed over the pop-in issues, and I strongly believe that those warrant a second video analysis. Both Microsoft and Sony are making a big deal of how SSDs will revolutionize the medium, but there was absolutely nothing in that demo indicative of such. The initial load time may have been fast, but the obvious pop-in (not just in the distance, like in the fog, where it was most noticeable) and very limited draw distance are of major concern - or at least should be. Halo isn't a particularly fast paced game to justify those, even when driving the Warthog (when grass, rocks and other objects appeared out of nowhere only a couple meters from the vehicle).
LOD is another area that needs improvement. The transition from the pause menu back to gameplay is egregious in how slow the LOD changes. Weren't SSDs supposed to "solve" this problem, as well? Character models and objects in the scenery don't exhibit a high level of detail, either. I've seen people arguing that Craig looks fine because he's a common Brute, but, again, John, in his Ghost of Tsushima video, took time to demonstrate how even a random NPC in that game looks so detailed and carefully constructed. And those look the same regardless if you're running on a 4.2TF machine or one that is only capable of 1.8TF.
I haven't even mentioned the intangible grass, the complete absence of terrain deformation (or even decals highlighting tire marks, footprints, bullets and explosions) and other non-interactive elements in the environment, plus the obscene and inexplicable amount of blurriness on the main antagonist's face, during what was supposed to be the trailer's money shot.
The biggest issue is that Microsoft dug their own grave, by overpromising and under delivering. Ever since E3 2018, when the Series X didn't even have a name, Phil Spencer and his crew have been talking about "power" - how Project Scarlett was going to be the world's most powerful, fastest console. Then came the traditional buzzwords: 8K, 120 FPS, "X" amounts the pixel processing power. And, of course, Halo. How important it was for them to release a console with Halo, like they did with the OG Xbox, back in 2001.
Thursday's showcase was underwhelming for several reasons, Halo notwithstanding. The biggest one being that they didn't even show Series X gameplay. Setting aside the obvious CGI, pre-rendered and "in-engine" stuff for a moment, Halo Infinite was confirmed to be running on a PC "equivalent to a SX" in terms of power. Why do that? Why not show people what the game will actually look like on the device that is releasing alongside it? If pushing for a simultaneous launch was so important - even when the game clearly doesn't look ready for that -, at least try to make the case for the console by showing your flagship title running on it.
And that's another thing: it is the company's flagship title. There are no unreasonable expectations when it comes to a game that's been in development for at least five years, coming from a first-party studio funded by a company with limitless resources. So, what is the problem here? Is it because it's cross-gen? That would make sense for the lack of features which depend exclusively on a fast SSD, but, then again, you have games running on a base Xbox One - Halo 5 included - that look better than Infinite. Is it because it's open world? There are open world titles with much better graphics and more complex maps and systems on the current generation (RDR2, for one). Then it can only be due to the "high" frame rate and resolution, right? In a world where Modern Warfare runs at 60 FPS on consoles looking phenomenally, that's hard to believe.
If it's related to a combination of those factors, why not come clean about how the game will run on all of their devices? It would shock literally no one if they admitted that the base Xbox One model would only be able to run the game at 30 FPS, in either 720p or 900p. 60 FPS in 1440p or 1800p on the One X would also be perfectly acceptable. But, for the SX, is 4K at 60 FPS really that unachievable, to the point where the team has to compromise and make a game that looks like that? Miles Morales will have a 4K/60 performance mode, after all - on a less powerful machine.
It seems, to me, that they are having some serious issues with their new engine. Building an engine from the ground up is no easy feat. There's a reason why there are only a handful that are so predominant, after all. Alex mentioned that they are skipping on some modern features, which is baffling for a studio that aims for their next game to become a "platform" which will last for the next 10 years. Yes, features can be added via patches, such as ray tracing, but why even launch with outdated techniques being implemented? Why did the E3 2018 engine presentation look so much better than what was on display during Thursday's Game Showcase?
The fact that Microsoft is focusing more and more on services is somewhat concerning for paying customers who expect - rightfully so - to have a complete and perfectly functional product on release day. Both MCC and Sea of Thieves launched in a deplorable state, for different reasons. It took developers a very long time to "fix" those titles. Is MS banking on Game Pass and its subscription business model to release an increasingly larger number of games in an unfinished state, just to meet their self-imposed deadlines?
At the moment, Halo Infinite does not look ready for prime time. If 343 does, indeed, need more time to work on their game, or even on the Slipspace Engine itself, they should be allowed to do that. However, we know that launching the Series X with a new Halo is of utmost importance to Microsoft, and Infinite is coming this holiday season, no matter what. If I were to bet, I'd say that we're about to witness another MCC situation, which is a damn shame.
Edit: Changed "Anaconda" to "Project Scarlett".
Last edited:
He's a console warrior? I had no idea, sorry about that! I should take the link down.
It's ok, but looking at the video history it's clear that youtuber has an agenda.
Yeah this is the 1st video I saw of him. That's pretty crazy that he's like that though. It appeared in my recommended feed.
Excellent video, and if anything, 343 have so many other issues to worry about this game other than graphical fidelity. I have no idea how MS was comfortable showing the game the way it is. And what a bad look for the companies biggest franchise on the most powerful system needing a patch post release to look better (ray tracing). I'm getting MCC ptsd already.
I know it's naive but if it's not representative of how the game will look, why even show it? I don't get it. It might increase the hype during development, and that's fun I guess. But at it end, x years later, it only results in negativity and bad PR. Happens every single time.
So why are they doing this? Why are they showing it before there is anything real to show? What are they gaining from it?
Can't be fun to work 5 years on a game and essentially have people going booooo when first showing the real thing.
500 million budget, 10 year plan. This sounds vaguely familiar. Can't put my finger on it...
Who was it?
I liked the video and his suggestion to use ray traced GI. I would say go one step further and add ray traced reflections on brute armors.
They will have to cancel the current gen versions, and tbh thats fine. Halo as in IP deserves the best hardware and it's obvious that the open world 60 fps and realtime time of day is simply too much for xbox one.
I dont think it will completely fix all the other issues with the game, definitely not the character models of those brutes, but it will really make the visuals pop. The dusk time of day is easily the best time of day to show off your graphics, but their engine doesnt seem to be able to do that. Going with ray traced GI should fix that. You will have realistic shadows, lighting and light bounce. It will instantly make everything look better.
It's going to be a hard decision, but it has to be made. Xbox fans will buy whatever console its on anyway. I really dont think people who own xbox ones will be upset by this.
They will have to cancel the current gen versions, and tbh thats fine. Halo as in IP deserves the best hardware and it's obvious that the open world 60 fps and realtime time of day is simply too much for xbox one.
I dont think it will completely fix all the other issues with the game, definitely not the character models of those brutes, but it will really make the visuals pop. The dusk time of day is easily the best time of day to show off your graphics, but their engine doesnt seem to be able to do that. Going with ray traced GI should fix that. You will have realistic shadows, lighting and light bounce. It will instantly make everything look better.
It's going to be a hard decision, but it has to be made. Xbox fans will buy whatever console its on anyway. I really dont think people who own xbox ones will be upset by this.
Man, I know the game won't have raytracing this year but I hope they can show a raytraced demo before launch.
i just checked wikipedia and they have 450 employees. there is no way any game or movie in history has cost $500 or even come close. most AAA games top out at $50 million with some going up to $100 million.
It's probably closer to $100 million.
I'm keeping my expectations low regarding RT. a lot of early games are just using reflections. a game that has to be arted for a non-RT environment might not see the full benefit of a more comprehensive RT suite since it might be too much work for little payoff.
Calling 343i incompetent is downright offensive and a huge stretch.
They have best in class gameplay at least, even if pretty much everything else is suboptimal.
It's not that PBR is dependent on ray/path tracing specifically. We don't even know what raytracing features the patch will have. It's just that PBR materials are lighting driven, so if you have poorly lit scenes the materials look indistinct. How you get good lighting that shows off the materials depends on a lot of things. The baked lighting referred to is for the environment, which is distinct from the materials on objects themselves. There's a difference between baked environment lighting featuring assets using PBR materials, and the sort of diffuse details baked into non-PBR textures like the Halo Reach AR.
Not a chance that this happens.
Red Dead 2 shipped on less platforms on an established engine. It's also finished.
I think Halo Infinite will be a decent looking game on all platforms, but I don't think the franchise will ever be in the top tier visually.
no it doesn't lmao
I think people need stop using this picture for comparison. It's not an accurate representation of Miles's character model in the first game.
I completely agree. It's a literal night and day difference, and in this case the emphasis is absolutely on the "literal" part. Where "night and day difference" is usually made to compare a stark contrast, i.e., a PS3 game versus its cross-gen PS4 version (like Shadow of Mordor), these are literal daytime and nighttime screenshots that I don't feel can really be used to compare a new lighting model, since we have no idea how SM:MM will handle daytime lighting compared to SM2018.
RT GI is very expensive.
Don't think they'll be aiming for that in a (up to)4k/60 open world game
I agree. As I said in the other thread a way they can salvage the situation is a video showcasing planned Series X enhancements. Funny, when I was watching the event I was waiting for "Xbox One" to appear over the demo and was waiting for a split screen or fade to Series X gameplay. But no...
PBR isnt dependent on raytracing, we have had PBR pipelines for a while now and it works great with all kinds of lighting setups. be it raytraced, baked or whatever you throw at it. PBR means that you setup your materials with real world values so you can more accuratly represent real world materials properties. when you combine this with a physically accurate lighting setup (can be baked/raytrace/dynamic or whatever) it will look realistic no matter what.
In this case the problem is the art style, not the pipeline.
edit:most of the problems you see are partly because of the unfortunate lighting choice for that demo, but mostly for the fact that they went for a deliberate, conscious decision to go with a more simplified art style with less focus on textures and more focus on big readable shapes and values and silhoettes.
Its an art style problem mainly.
edit2: They took the combat evolve look which was mostly defined due to its technical limitations, and they expanded it with the same restrictions or choices but in a higher resolution game with modern rendering techniques. so you get a very arcady, clean and simplified look, with everything having simple and readable shapes, values and silhouettes, which is great for MP games, but it doesn't look very impressive when you are thinking about a halo Single player game
Last edited:
Yeah, it irks me to see people compare a direct feed screenshot with what looks like a compressed YouTube capture. And you're spot on about the time of day difference.
I'm sure Miles will look much better on PS5, but this comparison ain't it chief.
SSDs don't have as much to do with pop-in as commonly assumed. As the video mentions, the strain is probably on the GPU, so either optimisation or lowering the resolution will be key to getting longer draw distances.
The common enemies are pretty detailed. The brutes have dirt on their fingernails. Could their textures be higher resolution? Of course, that's always possible. But there's already more detail there than is apparent in current conditions, and tbh than will usually be noticeable during gameplay.
Bolded kind of undercuts your own argument. The art-style is one part, but as the video shows the current lighting model out of direct sunlight isn't physically accurate. That's a huge part of what made the demo look the way it is. When everything's fuzzily probe-lit there's no light play to make the materials readable. Compare the shots of Chief in the open world and in interior shots and the difference is stark. It seems to be an unfortunate coincidence that the art-style relies on a type of lighting that the game currently is only pulling off in specific circumstances.
Last edited:
sure, I see what you are quoting there, in a perfect situation when you aim for photorealism, a well implemented PBR pipeline where your lighting is physically accurate and your materials are, then it will look good no matter what. even in that specific lighting situation.
The problem here is that they are not going for realism here. they are going for a stylisation, where as I said they have less detail overall. less contrast in their albedo maps, their models are clean simplified shapes. etc. Combine this with super simplified lighting, using lightprobes for GI and such where your lighting detail is dependent on geometry, you end up with what we see here under these lighting conditions.
That said, yess the lighting is a poor choice for this demo. a more direct midday sun would have made everything look a ton better.
and raytraced GI could alleviate some of those problems when you do have those twilight situations, since time of day is dynamic in infinite. Raytraced shadows would also be fantastic as it would give you more finely grained shadowing on models.
but we have no clue what will be raytaced. It could simply just be reflections and then you are still left the main issue.
Now if they would have created this artstyle with a full raytracing setup in mind, its baffling to me why it would be a post launch patch (how far post launch is again unknown) so I don't buy it.
in my eyes its an artstyle choice that happens to looks even worse when in certain lighting conditions.
Last edited:
It's more complicated than this.
The degree to which baked environmental lighting and object lighting differ is very implementation-dependent.
In Halo games, objects have typically been lit by sampling the lightmap on nearby environment surfaces, so the source lighting data is somewhat the same. How it gets used is a bit different, but mostly in terms of sampling: objects take a per-object sample rather than seeing it as a continously-varying texture. So for example, if a thin shadow is baked into the lightmap, a character will either be lit "entirely in" the shadow or "entirely out" of the shadow, even if some parts of the character are inside the shadow and some outside. So some inaccuracies do result, but, the lightmap data is mostly sufficient for driving complex materials on dynamic objects.
The other side of the puzzle is whether the material model and renderer can produce certain results, even if you can deliver good lighting data to the pixel being shaded.
For example, suppose you want to use normal maps to represent a scratch on a first-person gun model. If the screen-space size of the scratch is narrow compared with your rendering resolution, you've got a big problem: if you smoothly filter the normal map texture, the scratch will be smoothed away, and if you force the game to undersample the normal map, the scratch will show up aliased as shimmers.
I think people tend to overstate the extent to which not baking lighting into albedo textures is a recent concept. Developers have been aware of the fact that such details won't react correctly to lighting for as long as per-pixel shading has been a thing. For instance, here's a slide from a presentation that NVidia's Mark Kilgard gave at GDC 2001 titled "More Advanced Hardware Rendering Techniques":
While older games often have many details "inappropriately" baked into the albedo texture, they also typically have lots of details that aren't. (Otherwise, there'd be little point in material textures besides albedo!) Ultimately it really just depends on what the artist could get away with in a particular situation.
The potential impact that a physically-based philosophy has in this regard isn't so much that it introduces new concepts, as it demands a certain degree of adhesion to them.
Care to explain what you mean?
-never mind I thought you were talking about the DF video!
I honestly don't mind the art style at all, but the lighting as noted really doesn't do it any favors.
The only reasoning I can think of to have the chunky models stand out so drastically, if that is the intended effect, is to account for smaller screens (ie mobile displays via Xcloud).
Edit: The more I'm thinking about the some of the complaints in the video, the more I'm thinking about how Halo being more platform agnostic (via xcloud) the more some of these choices make design sense. The exaggerated shield recharge hexagons, grunt gas hit effects, bold flat shields and explosion effects, etc all lend themselves to being more geared towards accommodating smaller screens sizes.
The only reasoning I can think of to have the chunky models stand out so drastically, if that is the intended effect, is to account for smaller screens (ie mobile displays via Xcloud).
Edit: The more I'm thinking about the some of the complaints in the video, the more I'm thinking about how Halo being more platform agnostic (via xcloud) the more some of these choices make design sense. The exaggerated shield recharge hexagons, grunt gas hit effects, bold flat shields and explosion effects, etc all lend themselves to being more geared towards accommodating smaller screens sizes.
Last edited:
Why does this sound like damage control? The game looks average at best, period. All these lighting talks is BS, everything is average. Animations, models, textures, you name it.
MS should have shown a new trailer for Hellblade II to show what their console is capable of, 343 is clearly not capable of that.
MS should have shown a new trailer for Hellblade II to show what their console is capable of, 343 is clearly not capable of that.
For me it isn't the lighting but the textures and materials. There's no shimmer or shine to anything, which makes everything look like plastic.
Agreed, it seems like an excuse. People can justify why the game looks bad and talk about probe lighting and textures and screen space reflection, but at the end of the day the game still looks bad.
Meanwhile we have games like Ghost of Tsuhima looking as good as they do, by using even less advanced techniques.
Agreed, it seems like an excuse. People can justify why the game looks bad and talk about probe lighting and textures and screen space reflection, but at the end of the day the game still looks bad.
Meanwhile we have games like Ghost of Tsuhima looking as good as they do, by using even less advanced techniques.
The same as Alex! :D
Hehe, a cop out answer but really, he is spot on.
One thing he doesn't mention very much (if at all) is the lack of small light sources. Effects, shields, small light are emissive in the sense that they are bright on their own, but they don't light up other things. Also, for many cases they shouldn't just use emissive materials, but use proper light sources. Colored point lights for the shields etc are cheap (unless they use forward rendering for some reason) and would do wonders.
All in all, MS missed the mark. They forgot to make the game look awesome. Banking on raytracing, building fully dynamic systems etc - it can never get in the way of making the game actually look awesome. If you have to cheat in some cases to reach that (a baked, per asset AO for example) you do that. They went a "purist" way and now they pay the price - all over internet people talk about how flat it looks.
If anything I was just impressed at how good Halo Reach looked in the comparisons... Which is actually embarassing when a soon to be 2 gen old game can look impressive side by side with what is probably the highest budget launch title next gen. There really is no excuse for Infinite to look anything less than mindblowing. It's just so disappointing.
I don't think this game has anywhere near a 500m budget but GTA V had a budget of almost 300 million. I wouldn't be surprised if GTA VI has a near 500m budget.
Yeah, I don't think they planned around a comprehensive ray-traced lighting solution and think expectations for that should be kept in check. More likely that like many devs this gen they planned for a more ambitious GI solution and had to scale it back. Who knows, there could be improvements in this or related areas coming in the final stages of development, at least for the more powerful target platforms.
Thanks, your posts on graphics are always insightful!It's more complicated than this.
The degree to which baked environmental lighting and object lighting differ is very implementation-dependent.
In Halo games, objects have typically been lit by sampling the lightmap on nearby environment surfaces, so the source lighting data is somewhat the same. How it gets used is a bit different, but mostly in terms of sampling: objects take a per-object sample rather than seeing it as a continously-varying texture. So for example, if a thin shadow is baked into the lightmap, a character will either be lit "entirely in" the shadow or "entirely out" of the shadow, even if some parts of the character are inside the shadow and some outside. So some inaccuracies do result, but, the lightmap data is mostly sufficient for driving complex materials on dynamic objects.
The other side of the puzzle is whether the material model and renderer can produce certain results, even if you can deliver good lighting data to the pixel being shaded.
For example, suppose you want to use normal maps to represent a scratch on a first-person gun model. If the screen-space size of the scratch is narrow compared with your rendering resolution, you've got a big problem: if you smoothly filter the normal map texture, the scratch will be smoothed away, and if you force the game to undersample the normal map, the scratch will show up aliased as shimmers.
I think people tend to overstate the extent to which not baking lighting into albedo textures is a recent concept. Developers have been aware of the fact that such details won't react correctly to lighting for as long as per-pixel shading has been a thing. For instance, here's a slide from a presentation that NVidia's Mark Kilgard gave at GDC 2001 titled "More Advanced Hardware Rendering Techniques":
While older games often have many details "inappropriately" baked into the albedo texture, they also typically have lots of details that aren't. (Otherwise, there'd be little point in material textures besides albedo!) Ultimately it really just depends on what the artist could get away with in a particular situation.
The potential impact that a physically-based philosophy has in this regard isn't so much that it introduces new concepts, as it demands a certain degree of adhesion to them.
Re: your final point, we also see it cutting back the other way. A lot of artists this gen were discussing little tricks such as baking some cavity AO data in, pushing albedo colours in line with gloss/roughness etc... to give assets a little extra pop, especially in less favourable lighting.
That's at least $225 million if each employee cost them 100K a year for five years and that's on the low side for average total compensation. Add into that outsourcing, software costs, hardware costs, real estate, marketing and the number balloons exponentially.