Crytek: Current gen will last until 2012

[labs23]

Haven't people realized by now that the CryTek guys are no longer PC guys first anymore?

Expected.

[zanzabar]

Sources please? I have never seen any mention of UT3 support for hardware tessellation.

UT3 dosnt support it, UT3 for the 360 supports it (i guess that the pc might also support r600 and rv7xx since its the same as the 360's)
http://www.unrealtechnology.com/feat...?ref=rendering

Artist-driven terrain system:

* Terrain building and editing tool, using a dynamically deformable base height map extended by multiple layers of smoothly blended materials including displacement maps, normal maps and arbitrarily complex materials, dynamic LOD-based tessellation, and vegetation layers with procedurally-placed meshes.
* Artist-controlled layers of procedural weathering – for example, grass and vegetation on the flat areas of terrain, rock on high slopes, and snow at the peaks.

its by no means full tessellation rendering

[trinibwoy]

mass effect uses it =)

and that pina pinate or w/e something game (the lil kiddie one)

they were in AMD sides in 2005 for it so im sure quite a few use it

Ah yes, viva pinata does use it, I remember now. I would expect tessellation to be used by Microsoft exclusives like Halo or Forza but the hits there are pretty meagre, far less for cross-platform titles. I don't think mass effect uses it either, a quick google just returns people guessing on forums without backing it up with real info.

[trinibwoy]

UT3 dosnt support it, UT3 for the 360 supports it (i guess that the pc might also support r600 and rv7xx since its the same as the 360's)
http://www.unrealtechnology.com/feat...?ref=rendering

its by no means full tessellation rendering

I don't know if that's using hardware though. At least not according to this Sweeney interview back in 04. http://www.beyond3d.com/content/interviews/17/. Looks like the terrain tessellation he's referring to there is either being done on the CPU or is just regular old displacement mapping. Also, that seems to be referring to the terrain editor, not real-time dynamic tessellation.

I find it strange that there isn't more readily available information on this out there. You would think Microsoft would push people to use one of the 360's advantages to greater effect. In any case, it's limited usage even in 360 exclusives should give you an idea of how widespread it's going to be on cross-platform engines and games.

[zanzabar]

the 360 gpu is a modded r580 and ati has had tessellation is almost every gpu since the x1800 and it might not be viable for cross platform or performance to be used in large scale. and im not 100% sure but dosnt tessellation use alot more memory than rasterization and the 360 has 512MB or ram and 10MB of gpu only ram

[trinibwoy]

Tessellation actually uses less memory. It's a form of geometry compression (fewer vertices required to represent the base mesh). However, on the 360 it uses more bandwidth as the hardware doesn't have built in support for the domain and hull shaders so it has to use a lot of hacks to simulate those with data moving around in a less than optimal fashion.

[RaZz!]

the 360 gpu is a modded r580 and ati has had tessellation is almost every gpu since the x1800 and it might not be viable for cross platform or performance to be used in large scale. and im not 100% sure but dosnt tessellation use alot more memory than rasterization and the 360 has 512MB or ram and 10MB of gpu only ram

ati-hardware features some sort of tesselation since the radeon 8500. back then the feature was called truform.

unfortunately, ati has been very weak at establishing new standards respectiverly technologies ever since, so truform was never really used. they advertised it heavily, but they failed to convince game developers of using it. in this regard, nvidia is doing a way better job - they know how to establish a new technology, even though it might be crap. but they sell it as a godly new feature. i really think ati had to abandon a lot of good features in the past just because they suck at marketing.

[Lightman]

id and Epic have already said publicly that their current engines are going to last for a few more years so I wouldn't expect anything new from them before 2012 either. id is also looking to go the voxel route so we may never see tessellation from them. Valve maybe, but I'm still skeptical they will use it in any big way for the reason that DX11 will be a miniscule segment of the market for a long time. Tessellation isn't like increasing texture resolution, you literally have to have two versions of all your geometry, the one to be tessellated and the regular one for older hardware.



And where are the games using it?



You're going to have to clarify. That's a video of tech demo of some tessellated rocks (which I myself posted in the R8xx thread).

So lets start from X360 games using tesselation.
- all titles mentioned before + very old KAMEO, GOW, GOW2, many more I haven't played yet ...

Clarification: in that video you can see a crowd model and if you look at the bottom right corner of the screen description says DiRT2. Wonder why


You don't need two versions of models for tesselation. You will simply have DX11 path and if they bother DX9/10 path. The difference will be in picture quality and/or framerate. (it will be the same as when playing Morrowind with TruForm ON/OFF - same game, same models, but tesselation did the job )

I don't understand why you're so sceptical about Tesselation if even biggest developing studios are saying this is one of the most important additions of DX11.

[iboomalot]

what said or maybe I don't realize how fast time flies but doesn't it seem awfull the down time between improvements??

Computers are evolving every 1-2 yrs and new GPUs hit about every 12 months example ATI 9700 , 2900 , 1900 , 3800 , 4800 , etc or in CPUs e6700 , e8400 , i7

consoles on the other hand X-box - nov 2001 X-box 360 - nov 2005 thats 4 yrs between and anything new this Nov????

4+ yrs is a long time in the PC world to do improvements thus our gaming experience will suffer due to consoles becoming so popular


oh and if the new X-box uses an IGP instead of dedicated GPU then we will all suffer with cartonish poor graphix for 4+ more yrs

[Hornet331]

the 360 gpu is a modded r580 and ati has had tessellation is almost every gpu since the x1800 and it might not be viable for cross platform or performance to be used in large scale. and im not 100% sure but dosnt tessellation use alot more memory than rasterization and the 360 has 512MB or ram and 10MB of gpu only ram

Correction they had it since the R200 (8xxx seriers) in hardware, but droped it with the R300 (only software emulation) and reintroduced it with the R600.

[trinibwoy]

You don't need two versions of models for tesselation. You will simply have DX11 path and if they bother DX9/10 path.

Then you obviously don't understand how tessellation works. You have to have both a HOS representation to tessellate and a regular triangle mesh for non-tessellation hardware. DX11 doesn't make tessellation magically happen, artists have to create new models compatible with it.

I don't understand why you're so sceptical about Tesselation if even biggest developing studios are saying this is one of the most important additions of DX11.

I'm not skeptical about tessellation. I'm skeptical about tessellation being used in any meaningful way because that means developers have to maintain two sets of assets for everything they want to tessellate. They aren't going to make DX11 only engines.

[Lightman]

Then you obviously don't understand how tessellation works. You have to have both a HOS representation to tessellate and a regular triangle mesh for non-tessellation hardware. DX11 doesn't make tessellation magically happen, artists have to create new models compatible with it.



I'm not skeptical about tessellation. I'm skeptical about tessellation being used in any meaningful way because that means developers have to maintain two sets of assets for everything they want to tessellate. They aren't going to make DX11 only engines.

Have you ever used any 3D modeling software? Do you need to models with different triangle numbers to tesselate?
So can you explain to yourself how Morrowing, HL and other patched for TruForm games got their higher poly took on Radeon8500?

Do you think designer made all the 'new' geometry fit in 1MB patch to enable TruForm?

For me tesselation needs just one object and depending on input it is doing subdividing of surfaces (triangles). There are different algorithms to achieve this. Ones are better for Spheres other are better for irregular shapes.

[trinibwoy]

I don't need to use modelling software, there is a vast amount of information on the topic out there. Are you just guessing or have you actually done your research? Models submitted for tesselation aren't made up of triangles! They're made up of higher order surfaces like Bezier / NURBS patches. Truform isn't tessellation.

[Lightman]

I don't need to use modelling software, there is a vast amount of information on the topic out there. Are you just guessing or have you actually done your research? Models submitted for tesselation aren't made up of triangles! They're made up of higher order surfaces like Bezier / NURBS patches. Truform isn't tessellation.

Link me to them please. Because no one is using curves to describe objects (models) in games. Unfortunately hardware haven't got there yet.

And I'm guessing DX11 implementation of tesselation, but this is educated guess. TruForm and Tesselation are not the same, but they are doing same thing. Difference is that Tesselation gives you much greater control of what you can do to surfaces. It is like shader model to fixed function.

I would like to be corrected, because I'm always open to new knowledge


Here is what I've quickly found.

The hull shader takes control points for a patch as an input. Note that this is the first appearance of patch-based data used in DirectX. The output of the hull shader essentially tells the tessellator stage how much to tessellate. The tessellator itself is a fixed function unit, taking the outputs from the hull shader and generating the added geometry. The domain shader calculates the vertex positions from the tessellation data, which is passed to the geometry shader.

It's important to recognize that the key primitive used in the tessellator is no longer a triangle: It's a patch. A patch represents a curve or region, and can be represented by a triangle, but the more common representation is a quad, used in many 3D authoring applications.

What all this means is that fully compliant DirectX 11 hardware can procedurally generate complex geometry out of relatively sparse data sets, improving bandwidth and storage requirements. This also affects animation, as changes in the control points of the patch can affect the final output in each frame.

Not a single word about special object required for tesselator to work. It simply takes points from the mesh and applies algorithm to divide more dense mesh, then sends it for further processing as vertexes.

[deathman20]

the 360 has similar tessellation to dx11, i would expect it be included on the pc

and i think that MS needs a new console now but reasonably at the end of next year if they just keep it the same or minor updates and include a blue ray that would be fine but they are keeping the whole gaming industry back with the ridiculous licensing on multi disk and having such small capacities to work with

What ridiculous licensing fee on multi disks?

Think they are a little more for it now since multiple companies are having issues getting it to fit on one disk and well really I don't find an issue with it as long as I can install it to my HDD.
Only way MS will release a new console is when its time for its next gen one. They won't toss in a BR or even license the defunked HD-DVD just to get more capacity and leave everyone else that owns the console in the dark. Gaming Devs will not alienate a good portion of its market by doing that.

[Xello]

So no new consoles 'til 2013+, that's been known for a while now, and yeah it's highly likely that the extended console cycle will severely inhibit developers wishing to put money into visuals that will only be seen on the PC version of a game. This is the first time this has happened so we're in uncharted waters, and the industry is still so young that it's unpredictable enough as it is.

What ridiculous licensing fee on multi disks?

Zanzabar is right, the fees for 2, and especially 3 or more discs per game rise exponentially. This is just one example i found:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53976

That isn't enough motivation for MS to abandon the 360 and pump out a new console just yet, however, they'll be holding off for a few years just like Sony.

[trinibwoy]

Link me to them please. Because no one is using curves to describe objects (models) in games. Unfortunately hardware haven't got there yet.

You're looking in the wrong places DX11 supports higher order surfaces such as Bezier curves to describe objects for tessellation.

Microsoft Presentation

You can then use various subdivision techniques like Catmull-Clark in your hull shader. It works on quad meshes, one of the new primitives in DX11.

Catmull-Clark
DX11 Tessellation Overview

TruForm and Tesselation are not the same, but they are doing same thing. Difference is that Tesselation gives you much greater control of what you can do to surfaces. It is like shader model to fixed function.

It's much worse than that, Truform just blindly tries to smooth everything out. Which obviously is not what you want. That was one of the big reasons it wasn't adopted, it's only useful for smooth, round surfaces.

[Stukov]

I would actually expect based on past time frames that MS will announce the 360 successor in 2010 after the Christmas season, to be released either very late 2010 or 2011.

[Olivon]

Impressive video with Cevat Yerli himself presenting the Cry Engine 3 on the PS3.

It's a little laggy sometimes but still impressive especially at the end of the video.

Crytek is really a strong actor, very talentuous, in gaming industry.

According to the video, "the plan is for end september" for a launch.

[Lightman]

You're looking in the wrong places DX11 supports higher order surfaces such as Bezier curves to describe objects for tessellation.

Microsoft Presentation

You can then use various subdivision techniques like Catmull-Clark in your hull shader. It works on quad meshes, one of the new primitives in DX11.

Catmull-Clark
DX11 Tessellation Overview



It's much worse than that, Truform just blindly tries to smooth everything out. Which obviously is not what you want. That was one of the big reasons it wasn't adopted, it's only useful for smooth, round surfaces.

Nice reading, thanks!

But I still can't see where it says you will need two sets of models to enable tesselation. They working on a base model and applying subdivision to surfaces. Granted, after loading they are converted from triangle/rectangle polygons to desired data format before being transformed by tesselation stage.

[deathman20]

I would actually expect based on past time frames that MS will announce the 360 successor in 2010 after the Christmas season, to be released either very late 2010 or 2011.

Announcing a new one probably won't happen til after Natal is released.

2012-2013 is where everything is pointing fingers for the next next gen consoles and not including what Crytek is saying.

[zanzabar]

What ridiculous licensing fee on multi disks?

Think they are a little more for it now since multiple companies are having issues getting it to fit on one disk and well really I don't find an issue with it as long as I can install it to my HDD.
Only way MS will release a new console is when its time for its next gen one. They won't toss in a BR or even license the defunked HD-DVD just to get more capacity and leave everyone else that owns the console in the dark. Gaming Devs will not alienate a good portion of its market by doing that.

the fees on the 360 are $15 for the 1st disk then u add $15+5(x) for each additional disk so its $35 in fees for a 2 disk game and for 3 it would be $60. thats why except for square and MS u will never see a multi disk game. (and for the storage of a single layer blue ray thats $60)

and think of HD-dvd it would be great for a console, u would not beable to pirate with it since there are no disks in the consumer market and the printers should be cheap since the only ones using it is the chines gov

[Buckeye]

Aion was built around the Crytek engine, not sure if its the latest one or not.

http://aion-online.net/cryengine.php

Characters and enviroments look great. If this is a non DX11 version then I can't wait to see what it will look like.

[Manicdan]

Impressive video with Cevat Yerli himself presenting the Cry Engine 3 on the PS3.

It's a little laggy sometimes but still impressive especially at the end of the video.

Crytek is really a strong actor, very talentuous, in gaming industry.

According to the video, "the plan is for end september" for a launch.

it looked like there were alot of effects that need to be improved.
all the lights in the city section were somehow perfectly circular, looks like crap in my opinion.
shooting a tree gave off lots of big square chunks of wood, minor thing and easy to fix.
light from the vents in the tunnel that would come from the side should still have an effect on the view (not the gun and arms being brighter, but hdr type effects. think of driving with the sunset being on the side and how driving past trees would make it go from shaded to "in you face" and back rapidly).
the smoke on the boats at the end were too white and looked like steam, if it was steam it would have looked great, but it wasnt.
polygon counts changing quickly when standing just 20-30ft is so 1990s.

thats all

[initialised]

Laws were made to be broken.

Moore's Law is broken, Amdahl's Law rules now that a quad core with a stream array is the standard that these developers need to grapple with.