Killzone 2

[Somebody]

btw, it said increase brightness until u see the Helghast symbol. I put full brightness and i still couldn't see any symbol in the black box

found the problem. i had to change the 'black-level' of my LCD to 'High'. Now i cn see the heleghast symbol.

 

phew... had to dig thru 30 pages to find that post of min

[pixeljunkie]

Anyways what I am REALLY stunned to see is that GG managed to sort off the three BIGGEST drawbacks devs have when using a Deferred Render Engine.

 

1) AA [Deferred has teh biggest conflict with enabling AA on the game]

2) Transperancy

3) Texture resolution. [Deferred render means much much higher memory usage than normal forward rendered game & hence the texture resolution takes a big hit...but they managed to sort it out & make the textures look godly]

 

Can you elaborate further or quote the source please, especially for points 2 and 3.

[praveer]

Can you elaborate further or quote the source please, especially for points 2 and 3.

 

Eh...well see this is not something that was mentioned in a tech interview or anything like that.

This is how Deferred Works.[search about Deferred Rendering in internet...you will find that those disadvantages that I mentioned are Deferred's main Drawbacks]

 

Anyways I'll try explain about Transperancy. [kinda...lol]

Transperancy as you know means how much visible the textures are behind a layer.

Now this layer can be anything Shadows,Water,Glass,Cloth etc etc

When devs go Deferred they face issues in making layers transperent,almost all devs dont bother to fix this thing cause it needs some exceptional

coding skills & takes time.They rather concentrate on the other more important parts of games & use some tricks to mask this.

For instance check GTA4's water its not any great at rendering transperancy either since its using same rendering techniques.

When it comes to shadows they decided to make the shadows dithered so as to make it look transperent rather than using hard shadows.

 

The reason why I think KZ2 manages to sort this problem is due to the hardwork of Devs & also till some extent the hardware structure of

PS3 is also responsible.Like for a fact, 360 games are rendered at

 

10 Red

10 Green

10 Blue

2 Alpha [thats 64 bits of Transperancy]

 

While PS3 games are rendered at

 

8 Red

8 Green

8 Blue

8 Alpha [Thats 256 bits of Transperancy]

 

Its may be noted that its also due to these numbers that PS3 games in comparision to the 360 games have a dull look to them.

But at the same times gives a huge advantage when it comes to Transperancy,& this is the reason why ou will rarely find games with Dithered Shadows on PS3

[though you many find games with Jagged Shadows] but you'll find many doing so on 360.

 

Also KZ2 doesnt uses any API,its Direct Coding to the RSX [GG mentioned this in one of the tech interviews]

By Doing that they omit some of the limitations caused when using a particular APIs

[Tyler]

[Ne0]

@praveer, Now I've to ask, do you work as game developer ?

 

your observations are quite interesting to read though. If you have any books/online materials for understanding such stuff in layman terms pass across

[Karooo]

Eh...well see this is not something that was mentioned in a tech interview or anything like that.

This is how Deferred Works.[search about Deferred Rendering in internet...you will find that those disadvantages that I mentioned are Deferred's main Drawbacks]

 

Anyways I'll try explain about Transperancy. [kinda...lol]

Transperancy as you know means how much visible the textures are behind a layer.

Now this layer can be anything Shadows,Water,Glass,Cloth etc etc

When devs go Deferred they face issues in making layers transperent,almost all devs dont bother to fix this thing cause it needs some exceptional

coding skills & takes time.They rather concentrate on the other more important parts of games & use some tricks to mask this.

For instance check GTA4's water its not any great at rendering transperancy either since its using same rendering techniques.

When it comes to shadows they decided to make the shadows dithered so as to make it look transperent rather than using hard shadows.

 

The reason why I think KZ2 manages to sort this problem is due to the hardwork of Devs & also till some extent the hardware structure of

PS3 is also responsible.Like for a fact, 360 games are rendered at

 

10 Red

10 Green

10 Blue

2 Alpha [thats 64 bits of Transperancy]

 

While PS3 games are rendered at

 

8 Red

8 Green

8 Blue

8 Alpha [Thats 256 bits of Transperancy]

 

Its may be noted that its also due to these numbers that PS3 games in comparision to the 360 games have a dull look to them.

But at the same times gives a huge advantage when it comes to Transperancy,& this is the reason why ou will rarely find games with Dithered Shadows on PS3

[though you many find games with Jagged Shadows] but you'll find many doing so on 360.

 

Also KZ2 doesnt uses any API,its Direct Coding to the RSX [GG mentioned this in one of the tech interviews]

By Doing that they omit some of the limitations caused when using a particular APIs

 

ya that makes sense

[RenegadeRocks]

Eh...well see this is not something that was mentioned in a tech interview or anything like that.

This is how Deferred Works.[search about Deferred Rendering in internet...you will find that those disadvantages that I mentioned are Deferred's main Drawbacks]

 

Anyways I'll try explain about Transperancy. [kinda...lol]

Transperancy as you know means how much visible the textures are behind a layer.

Now this layer can be anything Shadows,Water,Glass,Cloth etc etc

When devs go Deferred they face issues in making layers transperent,almost all devs dont bother to fix this thing cause it needs some exceptional

coding skills & takes time.They rather concentrate on the other more important parts of games & use some tricks to mask this.

For instance check GTA4's water its not any great at rendering transperancy either since its using same rendering techniques.

When it comes to shadows they decided to make the shadows dithered so as to make it look transperent rather than using hard shadows.

 

The reason why I think KZ2 manages to sort this problem is due to the hardwork of Devs & also till some extent the hardware structure of

PS3 is also responsible.Like for a fact, 360 games are rendered at

 

10 Red

10 Green

10 Blue

2 Alpha [thats 64 bits of Transperancy]

 

While PS3 games are rendered at

 

8 Red

8 Green

8 Blue

8 Alpha [Thats 256 bits of Transperancy]

 

Its may be noted that its also due to these numbers that PS3 games in comparision to the 360 games have a dull look to them.

But at the same times gives a huge advantage when it comes to Transperancy,& this is the reason why ou will rarely find games with Dithered Shadows on PS3

[though you many find games with Jagged Shadows] but you'll find many doing so on 360.

 

Also KZ2 doesnt uses any API,its Direct Coding to the RSX [GG mentioned this in one of the tech interviews]

By Doing that they omit some of the limitations caused when using a particular APIs

 

I am sorry my friend, but 10 bit panels are a rarity still, and I don't think 99% of people playing these games have a 10 -bit panel. 10-bit panels will be used when we have true HDR images as output from a console and a display which can display 10 -bit colours. There is no limitation on either console for that, it is the panels which are missing for now. So, there is no validity in saying that that is the reason for dull ps3 games,as no display can show you 10 bit color as of now. In fact, the video levels are 16 to 255 for each channel and 0 - 255 for a PC. So, in any case a TV will only display 16-255 colours even if it is a true 8-bit panel. Some TVs do support the full range if enabled from the ps3 as "RGB full mode on" or from a 360 "Expanded mode on".

 

And , to correct you, no "Game" is rendered with alpha, it is a texture which can have an alpha channel in it or not. Basically, if we save an image at 32bits, we are providing 8-bits for alpha which might be used by an application if required. What you get as an output from a console is a series of Opaque images to be displayed on screen. There is no point in talking about alpha there.

 

and shadows are dithered to mask low resolution shadow maps and not to add transparency to them. Deferred rendering can produce great shadows too, provided you have the required amount of RAM. Look at STALKER ! yes, transparency is a major pain for deferred approach, coz the lighting is applied as a post processing, and see through objects get messed up there.

 

Guerilla has done a great job, and I think they have become the Crytek of Consoles, but the reasons you are listing are invalid and irrational.

[Ne0]

^^ battle of the G33KS....

[Gautam]

I wont go in details about everything as it'll make a hell lot of things [Lol trust me when I say I really know this quite deeply ]

 

I'll just say two things:

 

1) GeOW 2 lacks shadows [the only actual shadow is the character shadows & they too are casted in a direction wherever the game wishes..not against the light source]

2) It lacks lighting in real time for objects [the lighting is only for characters],I mean check the source of light in a scene & then check the object.

The object wont be dynamically lightened up due to the light.

 

In KZ2 due to deferred render there are tons of amounts of local lights & every light has the ability to cast shadows as well even muzzle flashes [KZ2 is the only game where I have seen shadows due to muzzle flashes]

 

--------------------------------------

Anyways what I am REALLY stunned to see is that GG managed to sort off the three BIGGEST drawbacks devs have when using a Deferred Render Engine.

 

1) AA [Deferred has teh biggest conflict with enabling AA on the game]

2) Transperancy

3) Texture resolution. [Deferred render means much much higher memory usage than normal forward rendered game & hence the texture resolution takes a big hit...but they managed to sort it out & make the textures look godly]

 

Yes, I noticed the lack of dynamic shadows in GeOW 2 as well. But I don't think that's a limitation of the engine. It's a trade-off for better performance. You can see dynamic shadows in cut-scenes and specific levels(where the number of light sources are limited). Same goes with lighting which i feel is more dynamic compared to the shadows. Muzzle flashes and flamethrower are sources which do cause lighting to change on surrounding objects.

 

In KZ2 due to deferred render there are tons of amounts of local lights & every light has the ability to cast shadows as well even muzzle flashes [KZ2 is the only game where I have seen shadows due to muzzle flashes]

 

I believe you haven't played FEAR then. It released in 2005. Also, it's funny, I downloaded .kkrieger, the 96kb game mentioned in the article that uses procedural content generation. Guess what? Even that has muzzle flash shadows

[reaper]

arrrrrrrrrrghhhhhh!!!

[tushiq]

OMG

Somebody plz :ouch: or these guys

[RenegadeRocks]

Yes, I noticed the lack of dynamic shadows in GeOW 2 as well. But I don't think that's a limitation of the engine. It's a trade-off for better performance. You can see dynamic shadows in cut-scenes and specific levels(where the number of light sources are limited). Same goes with lighting which i feel is more dynamic compared to the shadows. Muzzle flashes and flamethrower are sources which do cause lighting to change on surrounding objects.

I believe you haven't played FEAR then. It released in 2005. Also, it's funny, I downloaded .kkrieger, the 96kb game mentioned in the article that uses procedural content generation. Guess what? Even that has muzzle flash shadows

Yup .kkreiger was a cool experiment. Actually its a ratio of Tme and space, if you reduce the space (size), the rendering time increases, if you try to decrease the render time the space required increases. Surprisingly .kkreiger ran fine on my PC long back ,but, yes, it had pretty less elements on screen.

But, I didn't notice if it had muzzle flash shadows too................... If yes, thats cool.

 

Also, I want to clarify that Deferred rendering does allow you to put a enormous number of lights in a scene but shadow maps are still heavy, just the way they are. So, though there will be a lot of lights in KZ2, all of them will not cast shadows.

[Tyler]

LOL... they aren't listening...

[praveer]

Deferred rendering can produce great shadows too, provided you have the required amount of RAM. Look at STALKER !

 

I never said Deferred cant produce shadows...its just that its hard to produce proper soft shadows without making them go dithered or have them hard shodowed/fake soft shadows.

 

and shadows are dithered to mask low resolution shadow maps and not to add transparency to them

 

They may be used to mask low res shadow mapping but they are also used to add transparency.

 

 

As for the guy who asked me about FEAR...well I played that game when I didnt had a monster GPU So sorry I never knew about that But even than I said that "as far as I remember" so I am right in a way

[TechGuitar]

STFU guys and see this

[Ne0]

time to buy my ps3

[RenegadeRocks]

STFU guys and see this

 

 

Holy Sh1T !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait begins ! Sam do it now !

[RenegadeRocks]

I never said Deferred cant produce shadows...its just that its hard to produce proper soft shadows without making them go dithered or have them hard shodowed/fake soft shadows.

They may be used to mask low res shadow mapping but they are also used to add transparency.

As for the guy who asked me about FEAR...well I played that game when I didnt had a monster GPU So sorry I never knew about that But even than I said that "as far as I remember" so I am right in a way

How, may i ask do we add Transparency ? You can increase the ambient light to make the shadow lighter ..............

I am not being rude here, just asking, are u saying shadows cast by transparent objects ? How does dithering help in that?

[abhi90]

btew it's great to read the above posts.....

[Tyler]

Poor sam has a busy weekend...