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Oct 25, 2017
4,426
Silicon Valley
So it'll take awhile for proper comparisons, yet gamingbolt is already saying naughty dog continues to push boundaries.
Well there are some things on display that look really REALLY good in the trailers, such as the animation quality, the rendering of skin and eyes, and thats what is driving their video so far. Of course, they are producing content in order to get clicks / views / ad impressions. It's a business thing.

They DID say crepuscular rays instead of the more common "god rays" though xD
 

Firefly

Member
Jul 10, 2018
8,624
Bloody barbaric fighting is a sport right? Not mma but...

vq3QHtn.gif
Not mma but as close as it can get to a medieval Madden game.
 
Sep 28, 2019
174
Yeah I don't know about that. This video is full of very generic observations about things like polycount (forgetting that ND uses silhouette tessellation) and doesn't really go over some of the aspects that you'd hope, such as how they are handling reflections for eyes, the material qualities of fabric and metal, even when layered, light bounces, physics based "fluid" projection, ray-casting for character and environment interaction, etc.

Instead, it's basic stuff about LOD for things like bloom effects and basic dynamics. Then again, maybe that's more than enough for a video like this. The video also looks quite muddy, as if they have taken a YouTube version of the video and used that instead of a high quality file.

...

yeah the whole vid stroke me as a stealth TLOU2 smear Piece haha - it was not quite that in the End . But still - there were some realy strange Statements in that Vid.
 

NXGamer

Member
Oct 27, 2017
372
I'm a VFX artist, but by no means does make me an expert in all of this stuff, especially with the insane specialization these days in various fields of runtime and offline rendering. Some devs spend all year working on just breaking things apart realistically!

However, I do know some of the folks you mean, who seem to either know some things or just enough, but let the "console wars" or some other personal issue(s) get in their way of actually having discussions and instead make it all about sounding superior or being right in a field that is all about illusions. See the poster below for a PRIME example :P

NX is a good dude, for instance, and while he may get a bit excited when discussing things or even mix up some technologies (especially as its getting harder to spot which technique or new effect is being utilized) he loves to deep dive into the games he analyzes.

For some, it may go over their head or even sound like techno babble, but for someone like me it helps me appreciate how X or Y developer has recreated aspects of real life. This is also why its good to have a video that explains at least the basis of various effects, like z-depth, displacement maps, ray marching, etc.

One small detail I'm in love with, despite how "boring" it may be, is the sweater Ellie is wearing. You can almost feel how rough the fabric is.
Can you elaborate on the highlight please, always learning so any errors I may make I always correct where possible?
 

bytesized

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,882
Amsterdam
I think it looks good but the lighting somehow doesn't seem natural at all, like it relies a lot on ambient occlusion to make it look deep but not in a realistic consistent way.

And also the snow deformation when Ellie jumps on that roof ledge also looks very jarring since the deformation doesn't really follow the position where the characters body is resting on.
 

GymWolf86

Banned
Nov 10, 2018
4,663
Oh yeah gaming bolt where every triple A game has the best graphics ever.

I stopped listening to them after the gears 5 video...
 
Oct 25, 2017
4,426
Silicon Valley
Can you elaborate on the highlight please, always learning so any errors I may make I always correct where possible?
Oh, it was long ago, and you may have even updated those videos. I was formerly "MultiverseMob", btw. Hello again!

Just finished your breakdown of the latest trailer and gameplay from the event. Fascinating stuff. Really insightful.

The per-object motion blur seems much nicer than in Uncharted 4, but I do hope they let us lower the amount of overall motion blur.
 
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chris 1515

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,074
Barcelona Spain
That's a pretty low bar for a small map based game that isn't open world and is completely static, no destruction, static lighting, static skybox, no time of day, static weather.

Again so many nonsense, why do dynamic weather when your game doesn't need it?Why being open world when you do a wide linear game? Why do destruction if your game does not need it?

Edit: And where is your UE4, Detroit demo?
 
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NXGamer

Member
Oct 27, 2017
372
The best analysis for now.
The effort and work on display in this early demo fills me with confidence we will have a great, great deal to talk about come launch.
Oh, it was long ago, and you may have even updated those videos. I was formerly "MultiverseMob", btw. Hello again!

Just finished your breakdown of the latest trailer and gameplay from the event. Fascinating stuff. Really insightful.

The per-object motion blur seems much nicer than in Uncharted 4, but I do hope they let us lower the amount of overall motion blur.
Thanks for the reply, it does look great overal and the POMB is much, much better from these samples. It gives a much cleaner and more CG look that I prefer and I think is effort well spent. Uncharted allowed you to tweak this so I suspect we will have that option.

Good analysis on the motion blur (Nx Gamer) l do love good motion blur.
Agreed, it really adds to a games impact and fidelity, it can also be a great way to hide lower buffers, rendering modes etc and this is the best I have seen from ND team IMHOP.
 

ShaDowDaNca

Member
Nov 1, 2017
1,647
Is it really that odd for the "best looking game of all time" to be something that happens twice, over a year and a half apart?

With graphics tech ever expanding.. it would be a bit strange if a new "best ever" wasn't crowned every once in a while.
Yes it's odd to have dated tech putting out the best visuals.
 

Jroc

Banned
Jun 9, 2018
6,145
I wonder how much of the graphical fidelity comes down to the art rather than the raw tech. I still think that TLOUR running at 60FPS looks awesome even though it's a "PS3" game. To me the quality of the graphics seem to depend a lot on the scene lighting. The outdoor part with the horses looks great, but nothing insane. The really dark indoor parts look like a logical progression of TLOU's graphics style. It's the parts that have interesting lighting (like the overcast backyard, or the building with the missing wall) that stand out as incredible looking.

The attention to detail is where this game will shine. The complete package is greater than the sum of its parts.
 

VFX_Veteran

Banned
Nov 11, 2017
1,003
I wonder how much of the graphical fidelity comes down to the art rather than the raw tech. I still think that TLOUR running at 60FPS looks awesome even though it's a "PS3" game. To me the quality of the graphics seem to depend a lot on the scene lighting. The outdoor part with the horses looks great, but nothing insane. The really dark indoor parts look like a logical progression of TLOU's graphics style. It's the parts that have interesting lighting (like the overcast backyard, or the building with the missing wall) that stand out as incredible looking.

The attention to detail is where this game will shine. The complete package is greater than the sum of its parts.

100% accurate.

As next-gen moves along, you guys will begin to judge overall look of a game based on the lighting (which is absolutely what's important in real life). It'll take a few generations, but we'll get there.
 

TazKa

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,016
I wonder how much of the graphical fidelity comes down to the art rather than the raw tech. I still think that TLOUR running at 60FPS looks awesome even though it's a "PS3" game. To me the quality of the graphics seem to depend a lot on the scene lighting. The outdoor part with the horses looks great, but nothing insane. The really dark indoor parts look like a logical progression of TLOU's graphics style. It's the parts that have interesting lighting (like the overcast backyard, or the building with the missing wall) that stand out as incredible looking.

The attention to detail is where this game will shine. The complete package is greater than the sum of its parts.

I am just replaying TLOU again and it is still a really good looking game, but alone the aliasing is still visible at full 4k resolution. You can see where they hide the end of the level and looking into distance/ skybox shows, I do not know how to describe it exactly, some method that it looks "worse".

Indoors are closer, but lighting is far superior, in general higher polygon count/ level complexity, better effects, far better movement of characters.

Of course we have great graphic standard already for years, but for my old eyes Naughty Dog still delivers.
 

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
I wonder how much processing time does it cost to implement Silhouette tessellation? It lends to the believability of the characters with rounded edges without driving up the polygon cost to cover the entirety of the character. Recently started played GeoW 5 and given everything is at such a fidelity, sometimes the exposed arms (deltoid, tricep and bicep) of certain characters would stick out because at certain angles their low poly nature was made quite evident.

As technology moves into next generation, realistic graphics is going to rely on the smaller touches making that last bit of pronounced difference in immersion.

Uncharted 4's silhouette tessellation added significantly to the fidelity:

 

Dictator

Digital Foundry
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
4,930
Berlin, 'SCHLAND
Uncharted 4's silhouette tessellation added significantly to the fidelity:
Are you certain it is there? I never saw definitive evidence of its existence tbh.

You would have to zoom in on a rounded edge and see if it keeps deforming to maintain it, no matter the distance. So macro to micro. THose are all gameplay camera distance which would not show it really.
 

NinjaGarden

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,548
Are you certain it is there? I never saw definitive evidence of its existence tbh.

You would have to zoom in on a rounded edge and see if it keeps deforming to maintain it, no matter the distance. So macro to micro. THose are all gameplay camera distance which would not show it really.
He might be talking about this. Hard to tell since other effects work their way in at the same time.

 

AegonSnake

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,566
Hate to say this but Iamthiatam isnt wrong here. He originally replied to some guy who seems to think TLOU2 will be the base line for NEXT GEN consoles. thats ridiculous. Next gen games will look much much better than TLOU simply because of the massive jump in GPUs. You can look at some of the latest Unity and Unreal Engine demos to see how close we are coming to photorealistic environments. Megascans are going to make create photorealistic worlds extremely easy.

And then there is the massive CPU jump which will allow for destruction similar to what we saw in Control, only on a much larger scale. There will simulations for everything. Weather systems, civilians in NPCs, fully simulated day night cycles, friendly NPCs, huge leaps in enemy A.I, physics in ways we havent seen before. TLOU will look dated compared to next gen games simply because its not doing any of that.

I mean i get it. hes annoying and its very tempting to rip his arguments into shreds, but ignoring his subsequent posts on Uncharted's lack of interactivity, his original claim about TLOU2 not being the baseline for next gen games is not some crazy diatribe. Next gen is going to be a massive leap in both rendering and interactivity in ways we cant even imagine. Luckily we have some footage from next gen demos and flight simulator which is clearly next gen.

UnfoldedRealDove-size_restricted.gif


AQsURaF.gif


megacity1.gif


The-Short-Film-Rebirth-2.gif


qVrlLCW.gif
 

Rendering...

Member
Oct 30, 2017
19,089
But is it the best looking game of all time?
It's best looking of all time
Picture every time you know, collectively. Now double them. Now imagine you're tripling those times once every five minutes for two weeks straight.

The amount of times you'd have after those two weeks wouldn't even hold a candle to all the times this game is the best of.

That's a pretty low bar for a small map based game that isn't open world and is completely static, no destruction, static lighting, static skybox, no time of day, static weather.
You've just described the conditions in my room, and yet TLoU2 looks better than my real life room.

checkmate_atheists.jpg
 

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
Are you certain it is there? I never saw definitive evidence of its existence tbh.

You would have to zoom in on a rounded edge and see if it keeps deforming to maintain it, no matter the distance. So macro to micro. THose are all gameplay camera distance which would not show it really.

I gotta go back and look through a quite a few behind the scenes videos because that's where I remember that ND were planning on using edge/silhouette tessellation, unless I am misremembering it.

Cursory google search revealed: https://gamingbolt.com/ex-naughty-d...ation-explains-drakes-powdered-doughnut-issue

And as for closer shots, kindly enjoy the following.


Compare these with the following purely on poly detail:

62265d1321811992.jpg

cd6e041321811995.jpg

93e3f61321812002.jpg


In motion, I'd very likely never be able to tell the difference and so this is personal nitpicking.
 

VFX_Veteran

Banned
Nov 11, 2017
1,003
I wonder how much processing time does it cost to implement Silhouette tessellation? It lends to the believability of the characters with rounded edges without driving up the polygon cost to cover the entirety of the character. Recently started played GeoW 5 and given everything is at such a fidelity, sometimes the exposed arms (deltoid, tricep and bicep) of certain characters would stick out because at certain angles their low poly nature was made quite evident.

As technology moves into next generation, realistic graphics is going to rely on the smaller touches making that last bit of pronounced difference in immersion.

Uncharted 4's silhouette tessellation added significantly to the fidelity:

I wouldn't bother trying to implement such a system. Not worth the money IMO.

Just hope that the boards are powerful enough to just tessellate the old fashioned way by having plenty of bandwidth and resources to render the higher resolution models. Keep in mind, next-gen for consoles isn't going to be the same as what's already on PCs now.
 

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
I wouldn't bother trying to implement such a system. Not worth the money IMO.

Just hope that the boards are powerful enough to just tessellate the old fashioned way by having plenty of bandwidth and resources to render the higher resolution models. Keep in mind, next-gen for consoles isn't going to be the same as what's already on PCs now.

But is it not cheaper (performance-wise) to implement edge tessellation over tessellating entire surfaces, most of which intersect the camera at around perpendicular to the direction of player camera input?

Edit:


I think it could just be matter of the drage model having a much denser polygon count on key areas of roundness where it is most obvious. But if you look closely, you can still see obvious edges where you would imagine such a tessellation scheme as described would eliminate them.
polyedge6rkhz.png

polyedge1rrkst.png

Thanks. I still have a nagging feeling that I have seen ND's presentation on silhouette tessellation before. I shall endeavour to find it and if I fail then I know that I was utterly wrong.

One thing about the pointers- Given you zoomed in even further on a 2D image that was taken a fixed distance from the camera, could it be that had I zoomed in to the same level in the game itself, the result would have been different?
 
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VFX_Veteran

Banned
Nov 11, 2017
1,003
But is it not cheaper (performance-wise) to implement edge tessellation over tessellating entire surfaces, most of which intersect the camera at around perpendicular to the direction of player camera input?

I'm not sure such a technique exists. I could be wrong, however. I would think that would be a complicated system to do edge-based detection at the displacement phase of the pipeline. It's pretty sparse in what operations you can/cannot do. Ideally, I would only want objects to be able to read texture scale maps, tessellate, and forget about it. Once the model is tessellated, you can use all the other LOD algorithms from previous code.
 

Dictator

Digital Foundry
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
4,930
Berlin, 'SCHLAND
But is it not cheaper (performance-wise) to implement edge tessellation over tessellating entire surfaces, most of which intersect the camera at around perpendicular to the direction of player camera input?

Edit:




Thanks. I still have a nagging feeling that I have seen ND's presentation on silhouette tessellation before. I shall endeavour to find it and if I fail then I know that I was utterly wrong.

One thing about the pointers- Given you zoomed in even further on a 2D image that was taken a fixed distance from the camera, could it be that had I zoomed in to the same level in the game itself, the result would have been different?
I'm not sure such a technique exists. I could be wrong, however. I would think that would be a complicated system to do edge-based detection at the displacement phase of the pipeline. It's pretty sparse in what operations you can/cannot do. Ideally, I would only want objects to be able to read texture scale maps, tessellate, and forget about it. Once the model is tessellated, you can use all the other LOD algorithms from previous code.
I think you could do such a scheme maybe with compute shader or Geometry shader tessellation? So not using the Fixed Function Pipeline for it.

It would be more expensive then of course.
 

Firefly

Member
Jul 10, 2018
8,624
Hate to say this but Iamthiatam isnt wrong here. He originally replied to some guy who seems to think TLOU2 will be the base line for NEXT GEN consoles. thats ridiculous. Next gen games will look much much better than TLOU simply because of the massive jump in GPUs. You can look at some of the latest Unity and Unreal Engine demos to see how close we are coming to photorealistic environments. Megascans are going to make create photorealistic worlds extremely easy.

And then there is the massive CPU jump which will allow for destruction similar to what we saw in Control, only on a much larger scale. There will simulations for everything. Weather systems, civilians in NPCs, fully simulated day night cycles, friendly NPCs, huge leaps in enemy A.I, physics in ways we havent seen before. TLOU will look dated compared to next gen games simply because its not doing any of that.

I mean i get it. hes annoying and its very tempting to rip his arguments into shreds, but ignoring his subsequent posts on Uncharted's lack of interactivity, his original claim about TLOU2 not being the baseline for next gen games is not some crazy diatribe. Next gen is going to be a massive leap in both rendering and interactivity in ways we cant even imagine. Luckily we have some footage from next gen demos and flight simulator which is clearly next gen.

UnfoldedRealDove-size_restricted.gif


AQsURaF.gif


megacity1.gif


The-Short-Film-Rebirth-2.gif


qVrlLCW.gif
This is what made the idea of Part 2 as base visuals for next gen so baffling to read. With much better CPUs to complement the GPU and now (finally) the shift to SSDs, next gen is gonna blow away the peak of this gen by a handsome margin.
 

Tiago Rodrigues

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Nov 15, 2018
5,244
Hate to say this but Iamthiatam isnt wrong here. He originally replied to some guy who seems to think TLOU2 will be the base line for NEXT GEN consoles. thats ridiculous. Next gen games will look much much better than TLOU simply because of the massive jump in GPUs. You can look at some of the latest Unity and Unreal Engine demos to see how close we are coming to photorealistic environments. Megascans are going to make create photorealistic worlds extremely easy.

And then there is the massive CPU jump which will allow for destruction similar to what we saw in Control, only on a much larger scale. There will simulations for everything. Weather systems, civilians in NPCs, fully simulated day night cycles, friendly NPCs, huge leaps in enemy A.I, physics in ways we havent seen before. TLOU will look dated compared to next gen games simply because its not doing any of that.

I mean i get it. hes annoying and its very tempting to rip his arguments into shreds, but ignoring his subsequent posts on Uncharted's lack of interactivity, his original claim about TLOU2 not being the baseline for next gen games is not some crazy diatribe. Next gen is going to be a massive leap in both rendering and interactivity in ways we cant even imagine. Luckily we have some footage from next gen demos and flight simulator which is clearly next gen.

UnfoldedRealDove-size_restricted.gif


AQsURaF.gif


megacity1.gif


The-Short-Film-Rebirth-2.gif


qVrlLCW.gif

No matter how great Naughty Dog is, they are making a videogame targeting 2013 $400 hardware VS that PC videogame you're showing that's coming out in 2020 with top hardware . It would be embarrassing if it looked worse. Where Naughty Dog usually excel is in the details. I still remember the first The Last of Us. Walking in each and every single house and looking around and everything looking so damn detailed. I still can't believe that came from a 2006 hardware, honestly.
 

iamthatiam

Banned
Apr 16, 2018
399
Hate to say this but Iamthiatam isnt wrong here. He originally replied to some guy who seems to think TLOU2 will be the base line for NEXT GEN consoles. thats ridiculous. Next gen games will look much much better than TLOU simply because of the massive jump in GPUs. You can look at some of the latest Unity and Unreal Engine demos to see how close we are coming to photorealistic environments. Megascans are going to make create photorealistic worlds extremely easy.

And then there is the massive CPU jump which will allow for destruction similar to what we saw in Control, only on a much larger scale. There will simulations for everything. Weather systems, civilians in NPCs, fully simulated day night cycles, friendly NPCs, huge leaps in enemy A.I, physics in ways we havent seen before. TLOU will look dated compared to next gen games simply because its not doing any of that.

I mean i get it. hes annoying and its very tempting to rip his arguments into shreds, but ignoring his subsequent posts on Uncharted's lack of interactivity, his original claim about TLOU2 not being the baseline for next gen games is not some crazy diatribe. Next gen is going to be a massive leap in both rendering and interactivity in ways we cant even imagine. Luckily we have some footage from next gen demos and flight simulator which is clearly next gen.

This is what made the idea of Part 2 as base visuals for next gen so baffling to read. With much better CPUs to complement the GPU and now (finally) the shift to SSDs, next gen is gonna blow away the peak of this gen by a handsome margin.

giphy.gif
 
Oct 25, 2017
4,426
Silicon Valley
Yea, I would probably put those resources in something else more important. But that's just me.
I think it was mostly used during cutscenes. At least, that's where I had seen it upon analyzing Uncharted 4 when it originally released. Even some of the main props in a scene seemed to get rounder / clean edges as the camera got closer and it wasn't just a model swap. It allows for them to have really organic outlines of the characters, and everything within was dealt with by the different maps and effects that normally run on it to begin with.

Sniper Elite 3 (and maybe 4?) uses this form of adaptive tessellation as well:

image006.jpg
 
Jan 20, 2019
10,681
Hate to say this but Iamthiatam isnt wrong here. He originally replied to some guy who seems to think TLOU2 will be the base line for NEXT GEN consoles. thats ridiculous. Next gen games will look much much better than TLOU simply because of the massive jump in GPUs. You can look at some of the latest Unity and Unreal Engine demos to see how close we are coming to photorealistic environments. Megascans are going to make create photorealistic worlds extremely easy.

And then there is the massive CPU jump which will allow for destruction similar to what we saw in Control, only on a much larger scale. There will simulations for everything. Weather systems, civilians in NPCs, fully simulated day night cycles, friendly NPCs, huge leaps in enemy A.I, physics in ways we havent seen before. TLOU will look dated compared to next gen games simply because its not doing any of that.

I mean i get it. hes annoying and its very tempting to rip his arguments into shreds, but ignoring his subsequent posts on Uncharted's lack of interactivity, his original claim about TLOU2 not being the baseline for next gen games is not some crazy diatribe. Next gen is going to be a massive leap in both rendering and interactivity in ways we cant even imagine. Luckily we have some footage from next gen demos and flight simulator which is clearly next gen.

To be fair, besides Flight Simulator, thoes tec demos are not gonna be base line for anything.

I do agreed, i dont think TLOU2 is gonna be base line for anything, maybe on the animation department and i whould give the benefit of the doubt to that user if he actualy came with the intent of having a discuss, which i didn't.