Crysis

[Morgoth]

I hope a X1950Pro will handle this monster...somehow.  :'(

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LOL no

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No? Is there currently something better available from ATI than the X1950 Chip?

 

Read this, you jerk:

 

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Isn't calling someone "jerk" merely over dissent of opinion considerably harsh?

 

Jeez.

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Sumimasen?

[Slowtrain]

estimated wait 11 minutes. no.

 

Doesn't matter, I'm still looking forward to this game regardless.

[metadigital]

I hope a X1950Pro will handle this monster...somehow.  :'(

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LOL no

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No? Is there currently something better available from ATI than the X1950 Chip?

 

Read this, you jerk:

 

Here is a list of confirmed information...

 

    * Crysis will run on both DX9 & DX10 as well as Windows XP and Windows Vista.

    * A graphics card that supports Shader Model 2 or higher is required.

    * CryEngine2 is estimated to scale back 2 years, and scale ahead 1.5 years.

    * A single 7800GTX will run the game quite well on fairly high settings according to Crysis Art Director, Michael Khaimzon.

    * Jack Mamais of Crytek said in an exclusive Crysis-Online interview that his X1900XT runs the game very well at reasonably high settings ( still unoptmized ).

    * Crysis will dynamically utilize all processing threads available. Meaning quad-core processors will be supported.

 

From here.

 

It would be a pitty if only DX10/Vista owners could play it. A very expensive flop, to say at least.

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IIRC the game will be available but severely gimped for DX9.

[Bokishi]

It will probably be like Farcry 1.5 or something LOL

[mkreku]

I just have to point this out:

 

 

This is a snapshot from the new video of Crysis. At this particular scene the main character is crawling through some grass on top of a hill overlooking an enemy camp. It's the sniping scene just before he starts jumping around on the house roofs like an insane monkey. Anyhow, what surprised me was the low quality of the ground seen in the video when the main character is crawling. It's like two large triangles painted with some sort of blurry, green flowers. I don't know, but for some reason I thought Crysis would be far beyond that in terms of visual quality. Guess it's not as "next-gen" as I thought.

[alanschu]

I'm not really sure what you were expecting though. That scene on the whole still looks pretty good to me.

[mkreku]

I'm not really sure what you were expecting though.

Better graphics! More polygons used for the ground. More polygons used as grass to cover the ground. Bump mapping, perhaps, for the ground textures? I don't know, just something that fools me into thinking it's ground, not just a few ugly textured polygons.

 

Everything else about Crysis looks so unbelievably good that such an apparent flaw in the picture becomes extra noticeable.

[alanschu]

Is the engine 100% finished?

 

There's also the idea that perhaps they still need to have some restraint, as even with new hardware, there is still limits as well as acceptable performance requirements.

[Arkan]

I'm not really sure what you were expecting though.

Better graphics! More polygons used for the ground. More polygons used as grass to cover the ground. Bump mapping, perhaps, for the ground textures? I don't know, just something that fools me into thinking it's ground, not just a few ugly textured polygons.

 

Everything else about Crysis looks so unbelievably good that such an apparent flaw in the picture becomes extra noticeable.

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I'd imagine that while moving around, as in running, which it appears will be the case throughout a good bit of the game, the "flaw" in the ground will be much less noticeable.

[metadigital]

DX10 brings re-processing into the GPU, so (for one thing) the multiple drawing of trees / grass / Rome: Total War soldiers will be done using a template model that can be re-processed endlessly in the GPU, rather than starting from scratch every time (and draining CPU resources), so perhaps the scene would look better with a DX10 driver and GPU?

[alanschu]

I'm skeptical about applications of the term "endlessly."

[Bokishi]

Latest gamespot screens. Game looks fine to me

 

 

[karka]

Just fine?

[metadigital]

I'm skeptical about applications of the term "endlessly."

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In context of the sentence: the Rome: Total War man / leaf / tree need only be drawn once, then that template is fed in as many times as necessary to create the myriad different types of said item; at the moment (in →DX9) each time the game engine wants to draw a little man, leaf or tree it must be drawn from scratch each and every time.

[alanschu]

So how does DX10 independently animate each leaf/tree/little man, since they shouldn't always be doing the same animation. Or in the case of Rome: Total War, will there be much savings over the fact that the game engine refers to each individual entity of a unit in all of its combat mechanics (in other words, when your "unit" has 1 chevron of experience, it means it's the average of all your units. Each individual unit still collects experience on its own. You could have 10 guys with 8 experience each, leading that unit of 80 to have an average experience of 1).

 

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I thought that what you're describing already existed in game engines, which is why aspects of foliage and whatnot are repeated on the screen. For instance, NWN2 toolset doesn't recommend a large variation of trees created with different random seeds (giving them a different look), as it gets too intensive. But having lots of the same tree is much less intensive.

 

The main reason why I was skeptical about the term "endlessly" is because endless implies infinite. And I'd be surprised if you tried to display an infinite number of little men/blades of grass/trees, and it didn't choke any video card.

[mkreku]

Latest gamespot screens. Game looks fine to me

Yes.. but notice how they on both pictures are avoiding the close-up of ground textures!!1!

 

It's a conspiracy!!

[Bokishi]

Latest gamespot screens. Game looks fine to me

Yes.. but notice how they on both pictures are avoiding the close-up of ground textures!!1!

 

It's a conspiracy!!

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Well now that you mention it, notice how there are no shadows for those small leaves sitting on top of the metal roof in the second pic? WTF I thought these were

[Azure79]

[Musopticon?]

My god, that armor plating looks marvelous.

[Slowtrain]

my god. those screenies make Farcry look like a child's crayon scribbling. I hope the gameplay is at least decent.

[metadigital]

Um, Allan, I think you are missing my point entirely.

So how does DX10 independently animate each leaf/tree/little man, since they shouldn't always be doing the same animation.  Or in the case of Rome: Total War, will there be much savings over the fact that the game engine refers to each individual entity of a unit in all of its combat mechanics (in other words, when your "unit" has 1 chevron of experience, it means it's the average of all your units.  Each individual unit still collects experience on its own.  You could have 10 guys with 8 experience each, leading that unit of 80 to have an average experience of 1).

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We're talking about each image, not the animations. Animations are a sequence of images. To make a screen image full of little (STATIC) men, leaves, trees, etc.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I thought that what you're describing already existed in game engines, which is why aspects of foliage and whatnot are repeated on the screen.  For instance, NWN2 toolset doesn't recommend a large variation of trees created with different random seeds (giving them a different look), as it gets too intensive.  But having lots of the same tree is much less intensive.

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the way it is done in GPUs up to DX9 is to create little object one, then vertex shade and bump map it, then get next object.

 

With DX10, the same little object can be used and RE-used, so the initial figure doesn't have to be created each time.

The main reason why I was skeptical about the term "endlessly" is because endless implies infinite.  And I'd be surprised if you tried to display an infinite number of little men/blades of grass/trees, and it didn't choke any video card.

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I was talking about re-using a starting image, rather than having to create it from scratch; this is nothing to do with animation (though I suppose it could be cached for the next cycle).

[alanschu]

If the images aren't being animated, then what real purpose does it have? Because the leaves and little men in Rome: Total War are animated.

 

 

The idea of doing this for static images doesn't really strike me as new though. I thought stuff like this for grass had been done already?

[metadigital]

Um, you have to draw animation with a bunch of static images.

[alanschu]

Are 3D animations done with a bunch of static images? I'm not a graphics guy so I don't know. I know they are outputted in static images (hence the whole "frames per second" and whatnot), but is the animation itself created in static images?

 

I mean, I could see a tree, especially when operating somewhat dynamically thanks to the physics of wind blowing through it, rarely having the same image for two different leaves appear on the screen at the same time. It'd be a bit more likely in a game like Total War (except that they've gone with making people no longer look all the same, and having more distinct differences between soldiers in a single unit) where the attack animation is probably the same. Would you also get varying performance benefits with varying frame rates? With a higher frame rate, it's more likely that you'll get states where the same image will be drawn on the screen, but with a lower frame rate, it'll be less likely, simply because there is less opportunities for it to happen.

[metadigital]

You have asked a question well above my pay grade.