When will these next-gen features come?

Blond

With the coming of ps3 and xbox 360 on the console market, alot of stuff only the PC could handle well got democratised; normal maps, multiple dynamic lights, dynamic shadows, better surface shaders (spec maps and suchs), light probes to mimic GI , (fake)Ambiant Occlusion (SSAO) and other stuff ( I can't anme them all!).

This new GEn of console is offering a bit more of power so now surfaces can have of course more detailed textures with more polyfaces but we also democratised the use of light probes(?) for (fixed)reflections (I think O_o), better handling of particles, better AO, better GI simulation and bla bla..

But there are other stuff that haven't changed and you guys may know much more of the limitations of the techs than me ( I don't work in the industry yet)...

SO I wanted to ask you when at which generation of consoles some of these features could be available:


Dynamic Reflections: It seems like some games from last-gen consoles managed to handle some times real-time reflections as the reflected surface (water,mirror) stuff would dynamically reflects what was hapenning
Example with Chloe here:

http://youtu.be/AZ9LI3Xzrls?t=25s

. However, i haven't seen it that much being used. Most of the stuff are fixed reflections based on a spherical image file...


Follicles: This one seems kinda ignorant but let's be honest..hair sheets and alpha foliages looks ugly today, especially when those said hair sheets are fixed on a super realistic face with Sub-surface scatterings and hi-res pores textures. Today the only way to make them acceptable are to multiply them in exponential ways.

Flower managed to handle it but everything else in the game was very limited.



I know follicles are hard to render in real time but from your knowledge, when do you think game engines will be able to handle'em?


Normals that interact with indirect light: So we all know normal maps and bumpp maps gives the illusion of depth within a shape or a surface when lit within a certain angles by direct light sources.

But after playing more and more games games, some surfaces with nice normals still seems flat, especially when there's no direct lights source to illuminate the surface, basically normals feels flat whenever theu're in a shaded area. The only thing that could gives them more depth would be GI lighting but technology is not up to it yet

illo

I think they will be added once someone can make a compelling argument that having them in game will make it play better, or sell more copies.

pior

The objects in that indoor scene from AC don't seem to be floating because they lack shadows - what they lack is reflections off the shiny floor, and the occlusion of the big reflection from the windows (now I suppose one could always define shadows as occluded reflections, but you get my point )

Honestly, I keep getting my mind blown by the amount of visual fidelity in some recent games. My opinion is that we already have all the tools and features needed to represent pretty much anything. From there on, it's all about resource management and art direction.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idphc8MlwDs"]Call of Duty Advanced Warfare 60 FPS All Cutscenes Movie - YouTube[/ame]

As a matter of fact, I feel like the weakest link is now the game equivalent to cinematography, storyboarding, and acting direction. I keep seeing games with awesome visuals but plagued with virtual actors moving like kids in a child's play, not knowing what to do with their hands ; camera movement is also often quite nauseating, with a weightless virtual camera floating around the room in odd arcs. This gets me out of a game much more easily than approximative reflections or shadows

sprunghunt

Blond wrote: »

Dynamic Reflections: It seems like some games from last-gen consoles managed to handle some times real-time reflections as the reflected surface (water,mirror) stuff would dynamically reflects what was hapenning
Example with Chloe here:

. However, i haven't seen it that much being used. Most of the stuff are fixed reflections based on a spherical image file...

You can do completely dynamic reflections now and have been able to for a few years. The problem is that a reflection basically means you're rendering the same scene twice. The resulting framerate hit includes any lag you might have from player models being updated over the network etc. It's just very expensive.

Follicles: This one seems kinda ignorant but let's be honest..hair sheets and alpha foliages looks ugly today, especially when those said hair sheets are fixed on a super realistic face with Sub-surface scatterings and hi-res pores textures. Today the only way to make them acceptable are to multiply them in exponential ways.

Flower managed to handle it but everything else in the game was very limited.

I know follicles are hard to render in real time but from your knowledge, when do you think game engines will be able to handle'em?

A long, long, time in the future. To get hair on the same level as the main character of a movie such as brave you need a very fast machine. It's not just rendering splines - there's physics, shadows, and shading to do.

Normals that interact with indirect light: So we all know normal maps and bumpp maps gives the illusion of depth within a shape or a surface when lit within a certain angles by direct light sources.

But after playing more and more games games, some surfaces with nice normals still seems flat, especially when there's no direct lights source to illuminate the surface, basically normals feels flat whenever theu're in a shaded area. The only thing that could gives them more depth would be GI lighting but technology is not up to it yet

JedTheKrampus

Yeah, the AC:U screenshot would probably look a lot better with some kind of screenspace or otherwise raytraced reflection. The way the cubemap captures are placed means that the reflection doesn't even line up right with the window. In motion it probably wouldn't look quite as bad.

teaandcigarettes

pior wrote: »

As a matter of fact, I feel like the weakest link is now the game equivalent to cinematography, storyboarding, and acting direction. I keep seeing games with awesome visuals but plagued with virtual actors moving like kids in a child's play, not knowing what to do with their hands ; camera movement is also often quite nauseating, with a weightless virtual camera floating around the room in odd arcs. This gets me out of a game much more easily than approximative reflections or shadows

Amen.

I feel like were reaching the point where simply improving the quality of rendering is bringing in diminishing returns. I've been waiting for this because I feel that once we hit that barrier, people will be forced to look for other ways to make their games stand out.

Personally, I would love to see a push for better writing in games. It's crazy how good games can look these days and yet the writing and dialogue can be downright cringeworthy at times.

Deathstick

^^That's why Telltale is awesome

Muzzoid

Are you this negative and miserable in real life Blonde? I feel like you need a hug dude.

Kevin Albers

Photo-realistic hair is still pretty tricky for this generation (unless maybe you load ONLY a fancy hair sim into a console, with no other assets). Many of the other sorts of challenges are at least remarkably improved compared to last gen.

Nothing looks like Holodeck yet, of course.

artquest

teaandcigarettes wrote: »

Amen.

I feel like were reaching the point where simply improving the quality of rendering is bringing in diminishing returns. I've been waiting for this because I feel that once we hit that barrier, people will be forced to look for other ways to make their games stand out.

Personally, I would love to see a push for better writing in games. It's crazy how good games can look these days and yet the writing and dialogue can be downright cringeworthy at times.

Don't forget that current hardware's leap isn't as big as the last gen's jump in power due to economic reasons.

I remember Tim Sweeny urging for the extra power to make a lot of the "next gen" features we were promised come true. But ultimately MS and Sony just couldn't afford to take the same kind of risk they did at the time of the release of the 360 and PS3.

While we have indeed hit diminishing returns, there is still a lot of improvements to be made, including changes to how shading and lighting are done to make improvements to the art pipeline as well. For instance take a look at uncharted 4's character panel. You'll notice just how much of the fine details are being handled in the shader now instead of sculpted into the high poly. A lot of the next gen features you are speaking about are

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=70jVUBnp6lQ[/ame]

Noren

With exception of the hair perhaps, all of these are more or less possible today, but not all at once. Everything comes at a price concerning development and computation time. You have to decide what is most important for your project and works reliable for a large part of your customer base. Also in many cases there is no budget or time to include special cases. For example it probably might have been possible and beneficial to have realtime reflections in that one Unity shot,(I simply assume now it's a genuine shot and there doesn't exist a high quality version with reflections ) but to have a switch in rendering technique for one scene alone might not have been viable. (Programming and last not least: testing for different quality settings.) Or it simply got kicked out when time ran short and there were some problems. Maybe having large crowds is more important for your project than other stuff, so computations time is reserved for that. Deferred rendering can do almost uncounted number of lights, but you lose hardware AA. You can have as much shadows as you like, but each one costs. Directional lightmaps or lighprobes can use normal map information to a degree etc.

Blond

Muzz wrote: »

Are you this negative and miserable in real life Blonde? I feel like you need a hug dude.

He he that's the just effect of my avatar.I was cool when I posted this.I'm always cool