• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The Tomorrow Children GDC Tech presentation

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
We've had a thread before about this game's rendering and tech, but the latest presentation at GDC goes into a fair bit more detail on how it all works:

fqmvvaF.png


http://fumufumu.q-games.com/archives/TheTechnologyOfTomorrowsChildrenFinal.pdf

Talks about lighting (the cascaded voxel cone GI), the landscape system, the benefits they saw from async compute, optimisation etc. Also mentions they're targeting summer. edit - apparently that bit about the summer release window was from an older version of the slides that is now out of date...see below.
 

RiverBed

Banned
Interesting. I like their explanation of cone tracing. Can't follow everything, but I was able to learn a few things. I didn't know the difference between it and ray tracing. The game will demonstrate some cool features including this one. Looking forward to seeing more of their work and I wish the team success. They are good.
 

Vindicator

Member
Nice to have some explanation for their voxel cone GI, although I don't understand everything in that presentation.
Their 60s soviet toys Art style looks awesome, can't wait to play this.
 

KupoNut

Member
So hard to wrap my head around raytracing/cone tracing/PBR, wish my school taught me that instead of traditional Phong-based shading which will soon become obsolete anyway.
 
Just taking a look at this now from my own (failed) thread post. Awesome stuff inside this pdf with enjoyable commentary.

SSDO, cool way to fake 3rd bounce, cutting up some of the technique. Awesome stuff!
 

Eggbok

Member
The Tomorrow Children, Devil May Cry 4, summer is looking wonderful right now. Especially since summer is usually the emptiest time for game releases.
 

okonomiyonda

Neo Member
Maybe next year we can convince Jero to do a GDC talk about the landscape tech. Thats actually just as interesting as the lighting. IMHO
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
I've mentioned it before but I really do love how a small team is doing such cool things with tech. It gives their game a unique look and makes me excited to see what other small studios can cook up. I expect more to surprise us in the next couple years.

This lighting tech blows me away more than any other single technique I've seen this generation and I hope more devs implement it into games.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
"We use this to perform Super Sampling, which helps us to Anti Alias our resulting voxelized geometry."

Heh, that's pretty cool.

EDIT: Whoops, double post
 
After experiencing the game during alpha this became my 3rd most anticipated title behind Bloodborne and No Mans Sky.

Will be giving this a read soon.

This game is going to be something special
 
Finally was able to read through this. Awesome how they are using the Compute units so extensively and gaining so much more time on final frame rendering due to it.

The end result is no doubt extraordinary. The game in motion is surreal. Especially at night. The Lignting going on at night is insane and downright beautiful.

Glad to know the current timeframe is Summer. Can't wait!
 

okonomiyonda

Neo Member
Small correction: I think James was specifically referring to using the async compute pipes, not the compute units or converting gfx shaders to compute shaders running on the gfx pipe. There are some gains to be had moving to compute shaders but nowhere near as huge as moving to the async compute pipes

The async compute thing was a huge win. With some manual tuning and scheduling we were able to get 6ms GPU time back in a typical scene, and 9-10ms back in our scene of death.
 

HTupolev

Member
To summarize: "And then we used another volume texture to enable this other effect..."

Although the methodology is using a simplified low-frequency scene to carry out lighting, it's still astounding how fast everything is and how little memory is being used. Just going by the descriptions, it sounds costlier, but the real-time performance speaks for itself.

It's crazy how much stuff is being handled in stable and sort-of-accurate (if not particularly precise) world-space.

Really speaks both to what modern GPUs are capable of, and to how we're beginning to reach the point where the limitations of traditional not-that-generalized real-time lighting approaches are worth avoiding.
 

pottuvoi

Banned
Loved the idea of using 'cubemap' for the distant lighting to get better performance. (And other 'old' tricks.)
Cannot wait where volumetric methods grow from here. (Distance fields etc.)
 
Small correction: I think James was specifically referring to using the async compute pipes, not the compute units or converting gfx shaders to compute shaders running on the gfx pipe. There are some gains to be had moving to compute shaders but nowhere near as huge as moving to the async compute pipes

The async compute thing was a huge win. With some manual tuning and scheduling we were able to get 6ms GPU time back in a typical scene, and 9-10ms back in our scene of death.

To summarize: "And then we used another volume texture to enable this other effect..."

Although the methodology is using a simplified low-frequency scene to carry out lighting, it's still astounding how fast everything is and how little memory is being used. Just going by the descriptions, it sounds costlier, but the real-time performance speaks for itself.

It's crazy how much stuff is being handled in stable and sort-of-accurate (if not particularly precise) world-space.

Really speaks both to what modern GPUs are capable of, and to how we're beginning to reach the point where the limitations of traditional not-that-generalized real-time lighting approaches are worth avoiding.

Awesome info thanks! Do we know of any games in the PC world taking heavy advantage of compute pipes / units?

Is love to see a game that was really targeted at the real high end taking advantage of that tremendous power advantage over a console unit. Just to see how far it could be pushed

As to the async compute pipes vs units I would of thought they would be together lol. My confusion there. Most everything here is over my head a bit but I get the general idea of what is being attempted and perfected and it's quite exciting
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Small correction: I think James was specifically referring to using the async compute pipes, not the compute units or converting gfx shaders to compute shaders running on the gfx pipe. There are some gains to be had moving to compute shaders but nowhere near as huge as moving to the async compute pipes

The async compute thing was a huge win. With some manual tuning and scheduling we were able to get 6ms GPU time back in a typical scene, and 9-10ms back in our scene of death.
This is really the first time I've heard about how much of a benefit async compute is on PS4. I hope more devs get into it.
 
When it comes to async compute does the CPU need to know anything about what is going on or is it all about timing everything just right in the frame rendering?
 
When it comes to async compute does the CPU need to know anything about what is going on or is it all about timing everything just right in the frame rendering?

I would imagine in certain cases it has to, since both cpu and gpu are reading/writing from the same memory pool. I'm no programmer but isn't the CPU scheduling the compute work in the first place? That alone tells me yes, the CPU has to know what is next in line for compute or what is currently in process.

CPU: I'm working on this task right now so GPU you should work on these tasks at the same time, you know, since you're free for the next [insert time here]. Thats my take on it but I am probably wrong.
 
I would imagine in certain cases it has to, since both cpu and gpu are reading/writing from the same memory pool. I'm no programmer but isn't the CPU scheduling the compute work in the first place? That alone tells me yes, the CPU has to know what is next in line for compute or what is currently in process.

CPU: I'm working on this task right now so GPU you should work on these tasks at the same time, you know, since you're free for the next [insert time here]. Thats my take on it but I am probably wrong.

I was thinking the same thing but the presentation talked a lot about the scheduler or scheduling and that made me think ...

Well, the CPU wouldn't really need to know what the GPU compute is doing as long as everything is being out together in the right order and in the end the result is proper. So that was the main reason for my question.

Could completely take the CPUs " mind " off the whole thing if everything is timed just right in the end rendering.

But like you I'm not talking with much knowledge on the subject.
 
okonomiyonda should get a tag so that people know he's Jaymin Kessler of Q-Games, and one of the three folks who designed the Cerny T-Shirt.
 
Oh god I remember seeing the Unfinished for this game from Giant Bomb, but that was last year. I totally forgot about this game, but I want it because it looks pretty damn awesome.
 

benny_a

extra source of jiggaflops
Am I reading the slides right that with the traditional (non-async) approach the rendering would be 17-18ms and by moving the unmodified shaders to async this is reduced to ~12ms?

Edit: Seems like that is what this and their previous slides are saying.
 

HiVision

Member
Is there a thread for the Cerny t-shirt? :)

I'm the other one who helped design it based on a fan fiction from neogaf (me being Dylan of Q-Games).

btw, not sure where the rumour of Summer being announced came from, our release date still doesn't have an announcement attached, and our announcement doesn't have a release date attached :)

We're working really hard on this game and there is just *so much* good stuff going in daily.
 
Is there a thread for the Cerny t-shirt? :)

I'm the other one who helped design it based on a fan fiction from neogaf (me being Dylan of Q-Games).

btw, not sure where the rumour of Summer being announced came from, our release date still doesn't have an announcement attached, and our announcement doesn't have a release date attached :)

We're working really hard on this game and there is just *so much* good stuff going in daily.

It came from the tech slides in this very thread.

So... oops James?
 

Amir0x

Banned
This game is gorgeous to behold, they got some talented folk over there.

I bet the game would be on this Holiday season, so I hope it makes it :D
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
A very interesting read. Thanks you.

Seems like using async compute was a big win for them. I hope more developers take the same approach.

Graphics looks astonishing. It looks like a CGI movie.
 
Is there a thread for the Cerny t-shirt? :)

I'm the other one who helped design it based on a fan fiction from neogaf (me being Dylan of Q-Games).

btw, not sure where the rumour of Summer being announced came from, our release date still doesn't have an announcement attached, and our announcement doesn't have a release date attached :)

We're working really hard on this game and there is just *so much* good stuff going in daily.

It came from the tech slides yeah. WOOPS lol.

Is there plans for a 2nd Alpha phase? Or a Beta?
 

Spineker

Banned
There's a reason why there are cars and roads in the game. These cities that we are going to be building together are gonna be massive.
 

Tycho_b

Member
"We use this to perform Super Sampling, which helps us to Anti Alias our resulting voxelized geometry."

Heh, that's pretty cool.

I had something similar on my Economic Geography classes at university, it required a dictionary of its own to understand what the hell they were trying to teach us :)
 

Finalow

Member
this game seems very interesting. I'm not sure if I'll be there at D1 but I'm probably going to play it sooner or later.
 
Is there a thread for the Cerny t-shirt? :)

I'm the other one who helped design it based on a fan fiction from neogaf (me being Dylan of Q-Games).

btw, not sure where the rumour of Summer being announced came from, our release date still doesn't have an announcement attached, and our announcement doesn't have a release date attached :)

We're working really hard on this game and there is just *so much* good stuff going in daily.

Awww, was really hoping this would be a summer release. You know if we'll be maybe getting our hands on it in any form at all this year? I keep hoping VMC or GBTN will drop me a code one day. Seems I missed the last beta test, but I couldn't find an EU sign up in time.
 
Top Bottom