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Summer Haze · Apr 17, 2015

First of all, for those of you who don't know what PBR is exactly:

(Shamelessly stolen from the first poster in the this Reddit thread)

It's a way to make everything look more photorealistic/natural-looking by changing how light bounces off everything. Since lighting controls how you see everything in the game (because you couldn't see in the pitch-black dark), it affects how every single part of the game looks.
Basically: instead of current lighting techniques like using multiple diffuse textures/specular maps for each part of every object in the game to represent different conditions, they can just create 1 texture for each part then artificially define properties like a refractive index to help parameterize a physics model that controls how light and shadow work when rendering frames of an in-game scene that contains that object.
In most implementations the physics model basically uses a predictive set of converging functions to determine how light from a specific source will reflect/refract off a given surface with different reflectivity and absorption/diffusion characteristics, which then refracts and reflects off other surfaces at a) different angles, with b) reduced intensity and c) a different wavelength, etc.

In productivity terms: people creating textures for in-game assets now have to spend less time creating multiple maps for each surface because they can just say "this panel is steel" or "this seat cushion is leather" with specific reflectivity/diffusion/texture/etc. rather than having to create multiple different copies of them that behave differently under different lighting conditions (such as in space, in atmosphere, indoors, etc.)
In visual terms: different types of surfaces (such as metal, leather, plastic, glass, etc.) should look more photorealistic and more "natural" because the way that light reflects off them and the way shadows are created will be more accurate.

And thanks to Sneaky Stephan for the following videos:

SneakyStephan said:
PBR is awesome, makes materials look lifelike (or at very least like they're straight out of cgi)
The pictures in OP do a poor job at showing what it is though.

For those who don't know what it looks like:
Here: look at this tech demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYX9I3ONHc4
Look at the materials, everything looks convincing

different video of the same tech demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErWicf6yuDo
Skip to 49 seconds where it zooms in on the camera.

This is PBR at it's best and it's fucking glorious

Once you've seen it in games and you go back to a game without it that game suddenly looks painfully fake and outdated.

The overall look PBR gives to videogames that utilize it is, imo, the best and the most significant improvement we've seen so far this gen in terms of visuals. I love how much more realistic and life-like certain materials/textures can look when a game is using PBR. I think it makes games that don't use PBR look very ...dated and "gamey" in comparison, for lack of a better word. I'm really liking how its becoming more and more commonly utilized so far this gen and hope it becomes even more widely used as the gen goes on.

Here are some examples of released and upcoming current-gen/PC games that utilize PBR:

Sunset Overdrive

Unreal Tournament 2015

Ryse

AC:Unity

The Order 1886

Final Fantasy XV demo

Driveclub

Infamous: Second Son

And I believe the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront also utilizes PBR if the latest screenshots and 'game engine' trailer are anything to go by.

There are other games that utilize PBR also, but I didn't want to clog up the thread with huge shots any more than I have.

So what do you think, GAF, do you like the look of games that utilize PBR? Do you want to see it become used more commonly in videogames? I know I do.

Kolgar · Apr 17, 2015

Seeing your screens, I can't disagree. No sir, not one bit.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I had no idea this technique was used in Sunset Overdrive, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Ryse, Driveclub, and others.

Just breathtaking.

pizzacat · Apr 17, 2015

It's also really cheap to get drunk from

Mexen · Apr 17, 2015

Screens look good, OP. Sadly, I never admire environments on my first play-through, unless they are absolutely noticeable.

xemumanic · Apr 17, 2015

There was a time when we called most of these bullshots.

Because they were.

Woah.

DryvBy · Apr 17, 2015

I'm sorry but there's absolutely no way that Battlefront is going to look like that. May I eat the fattest crow in the world if I'm wrong.

There's just no way.

Spazznid · Apr 17, 2015

Been saying this for a while, now. I love it.

JumPeRJumPzZ · Apr 17, 2015

Halo 5 is going to use PBR.

Danlord · Apr 17, 2015

I don't have a comprehensive list of games that support physically based rendering but I am a big fan of it myself and I do consider it to be one of the best types of technology to get right for any game.

I know Dying Light use PBR and at times that is a beautiful game, and the upcoming Killing Floor 2 on PS4 uses it also.

MrRoflWaffles · Apr 17, 2015

I was under the impression that DA:I didn't actually use PBR? Regardless, when it is implemented it always makes things look brilliant.

Also, you're correct, Battlefront does indeed make use of PBR (click for source):

RoboPlato · Apr 17, 2015

Absolutely. It really adds an element of reality to the scene.

UrbanRats · Apr 17, 2015

Global Illumination is the most impressive thing i've seen, from a visual standpoint.
Even when it's prebaked, it just changes the realism of a scene drastically.
Some examples can be seen in the OP as well, like in the DA:I shot, and how light bounces off of the floor into the ceiling.

Summer Haze · Apr 17, 2015

DryvBy said:
I'm sorry but there's absolutely no way that Battlefront is going to look like that. May I eat the fattest crow in the world if I'm wrong.

There's just no way.

Maybe not in terms of IQ, texture quality, geometry complexity...but I do think the way textures and materials are lit, and thus the overall look of the game due to it's use of PBR will look like it does in the shots we've seen so far.

Mivey · Apr 17, 2015

UrbanRats said:
Global Illumination is the most impressive thing i've seen, from a visual standpoint.
Even when it's prebaked, it just changes the realism of a scene drastically.
Some examples can be seen in the OP as well, like in the DA:I shot, and how light bounces off of the floor into the ceiling.

Maybe we will finally get GI in real time next gen?
The VXGI from NVidia is already quite impressive.

Shredderi · Apr 17, 2015

I love it.

DryvBy · Apr 17, 2015

Lukas Japonicus said:
Maybe not in terms of IQ, texture quality, geometry complexity...but I do think the way textures and materials are lit, and thus the overall look of the game due to it's use of PBR will look like it does in the shots we've seen so far.

These screen shots?

I'm willing to bet it will look like a tweaked version of Battlefield 4 with better IQ and lighting (it's a laser show so why not). Don't Watch_Dogs yourself.

Karak · Apr 17, 2015

I am not sure about the biggest but its a fairly big improvement for sure.

Kayant · Apr 17, 2015

PBR + Photogrammetry I need to play Vanishing of the Ethan Carter to see how it looks.

Star Wars:BF is using both.

Jedi2016 · Apr 17, 2015

Not really exclusively a next-gen thing, it showed up at the tail end of last-gen, too. But yes, glad to see more devs using it.

Denton · Apr 17, 2015

How do you not post Alien Isolation, the best showcase of PBR ever ?
And Star Citizen.

Man · Apr 17, 2015

.

shandy706 · Apr 17, 2015

Yeah, it looks amazing.

Despite 1:1 pixel ratio, those shots of The Order look lower res than any other game (minus FF). That is taking the grain filter into account. Strangely, even Sunset Overdrives and Ryse look higher res.

Anyway, back on subject. Love how great these current-gen games already look.

Portugeezer · Apr 17, 2015

It looked great at times in Bloodborne.

stryke · Apr 17, 2015

Mivey said:
Maybe we will finally get GI in real time next gen?
The VXGI from NVidia is already quite impressive.

A variation of it is being done now in a PS4 game.

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

And isn't Fable doing their own real time GI thing as well?

UrbanRats · Apr 17, 2015

Mivey said:
Maybe we will finally get GI in real time next gen?
The VXGI from NVidia is already quite impressive.

I hope so.
Linear games can realistically get away with it, since you have mostly static environments, or predictable scenarios, but more open games with day/night cycles, like Assassin's Creed Unity, have big problems getting around it.
Wasn't a huge part of ACU dedicated to light maps?

Refreshment.01 · Apr 17, 2015

i read an article about PBR some years ago. At the time it seemeds to me more like aproach applied to the assets production pipeline and educating the art team about it.

So my question is, could you apply or have good looking PBR in last generation hardware like 360 or PS3? So in that sense if we had a more wide spread practice of PBR back in 2005, would games would have looked substantially better in terms of lighting?

Summer Haze · Apr 17, 2015

Denton said:
How do you not post Alien Isolation, the best showcase of PBR ever ?
And Star Citizen.

These were the first games that came to mind. I did think of these games too, but Like I said, I didn't want to clog the thread up with huge screens.

DryvBy said:
These screen shots?

I'm willing to bet it will look like a tweaked version of Battlefield 4 with better IQ and lighting (it's a laser show so why not). Don't Watch_Dogs yourself.

Yes, those shots. And again, I'm talking specifically about the lighting of certain materials/textures due to the game's use of PBR, I'm not saying the game will look like those shots in terms of anything else but that.

Laconic · Apr 17, 2015

PBR and Natural Lighting.

benny_a · Apr 17, 2015

Dragon Age Inquisition isn't using PBR.

Portugeezer · Apr 18, 2015

shandy706 said:
Yeah, it looks amazing.

Despite 1:1 pixel ratio, those shots of The Order look lower res than any other game (minus FF). That is taking the grain filter into account. Strangely, even Sunset Overdrives and Ryse look higher res.

Anyway, back on subject. Love how great these current-gen games already look.

PC version of Ryse.

Deleted member 17706 · Apr 18, 2015

I, agree, OP. The improvements in lighting in games over the last few years have been great.

Too bad this generation also brought in chromatic aberration in a bunch of games.

DryvBy said:
I'm sorry but there's absolutely no way that Battlefront is going to look like that. May I eat the fattest crow in the world if I'm wrong.

There's just no way.

It might on PC... but it's unlikely. Any geometry and texture downgrades made for the consoles will probably also apply to the PC version.

DryvBy · Apr 18, 2015

Lukas Japonicus said:
These were the first games that came to mind. I did think of these games too, but Like I said, I didn't want to clog the thread up with huge screens.

Yes, those shots. And again, I'm talking specifically about the lighting of certain materials/textures due to the game's use of PBR, I'm not saying the game will look like those shots in terms of anything else but that.

Gotcha. I've been up for 20-hours. Textures? Sure. Lighting? Possible. But I don't think anything in these screenshots nor the reveal trailer is from the game engine though. I've seen this same reveal hype year after year.

Until I see a HUD with some actually people walking around playing it, then I'm gonna be very skeptical.

Cosmo Clock 21 · Apr 18, 2015

How would I tell if a game was using PBR by inspection?

Dictator93 · Apr 18, 2015

It is indeed quite great that people have moved over to it for metals and most plain diffuse materials. But subsurface materials, anisotropic, and transparent materials are still far from being physically based actually.

Cosmo Clock 21 said:
How would I tell if a game was using PBR by inspection?

It depends on how they are doing it, but some simple things:
1. Look for fresnel
2. Look for differing loevels of gloss
3. The game is probably using image based lighting from probes or cubemaps
4. Light attenuates more realistically and is linear (something is not reflecting more light than it receives)

But those are just basic things, to make it more physically based requires more stuff. A lot more in fact.

edit: did the guys on sunset say they were going for PBR like features in their shading?

Summer Haze · Apr 18, 2015

MrRoflWaffles said:
I was under the impression that DA:I didn't actually use PBR?

benny_a said:
Dragon Age Inquisition isn't using PBR.

Oops, my bad guys, it seems you're right. I always thought it was using it to a certain extent, but I can't find anything to back that up. I should have googled it beforehand.

I'll replace DA:I with something else in the OP.

Sword Of Doom · Apr 18, 2015

DryvBy said:
These screen shots?

I'm willing to bet it will look like a tweaked version of Battlefield 4 with better IQ and lighting (it's a laser show so why not). Don't Watch_Dogs yourself.

I hope the game looks nothing like Battlefield. I just don't like how those games look. When you enter a room it always looks like everything is made out of paper and cardboard.

Danlord · Apr 18, 2015

Man said:
.

VR isn't a graphical improvement.

stryke · Apr 18, 2015

shandy706 said:
Yeah, it looks amazing.

Despite 1:1 pixel ratio, those shots of The Order look lower res than any other game (minus FF). That is taking the grain filter into account. Strangely, even Sunset Overdrives and Ryse look higher res.

Anyway, back on subject. Love how great these current-gen games already look.

EuropeOG said:
PC version of Ryse.

Yeah lol

Here's the original 4K image

Summer Haze · Apr 18, 2015

Cosmo Clock 21 said:
How would I tell if a game was using PBR by inspection?

For me there's just a certain look a game has if it's utilizing PBR. Materials/textures/surfaces just look so accurately and realistically lit. I didn't know what it was when I first noticed it in Infamous:SS, but I knew something about it looked different, better.

Mivey said:
Maybe we will finally get GI in real time next gen?
The VXGI from NVidia is already quite impressive.

I thought Driveclub used real-time GI?

DryvBy · Apr 18, 2015

Sword Of Doom said:
I hope the game looks nothing like Battlefield. I just don't like how those games look. When you enter a room it always looks like everything is made out of paper and cardboard.

I'd expect it. Development hasn't been there to build a graphics engine that detailed. It's a modified version Frostbite 3, the same Engine for Battlefield 4 and Hardline. If it were 5 years from when they announced this game, I'd believe it somewhat more.

I'd also like to say I think this game is going to be awesome and it will look good, but I'm going to doubt until release it looks anything near this -- even on PC.

C.Dark.DN · Apr 18, 2015

Teh sex0rs. Man, so pretty.

benzy · Apr 18, 2015

Mivey said:
Maybe we will finally get GI in real time next gen?
The VXGI from NVidia is already quite impressive.

FFXV and Driveclub already have a form of real-time GI implemented. Aren't as advanced as the voxel cone tracing model, but still impressive nonetheless.

PsihoPerihelion · Apr 18, 2015

Indeed it is, OP. Games look way more natural now, more than ever. If only we could get higher res shadows on consoles...

Man said:
.

lol

MrRoflWaffles · Apr 18, 2015

Lukas Japonicus said:
Oops, my bad guys, it seems you're right. I always thought it was using it to a certain extent, but I can't find anything to back that up. I should have googled it beforehand.

I'll replace DA:I with something else in the OP.

No problem! You're not the first to think so - DA:I is a really nice looking game anyway

Cosmo Clock 21 said:
How would I tell if a game was using PBR by inspection?

Non-expert attempt at explaining it:
PBR will affect the way light reflects off different materials; if something is stainless steel, it's going to reflect very differently to something made of old, decaying wood.

If you look at a game like DA:I, you'll notice that a lot of the environment looks like it's been sculpted out of one kind of putty, regardless of what the object actually is. Materials don't really have varying reflective properties.

Take this screenshot for example: link

The sandbags, wood, floor, and leaves all reflect light in pretty much the same way. I don't really know a better way to describe it than this.

Garrett Hawke · Apr 18, 2015

I thought DA:I used it... there's a very clear difference in the way different materials are lit :/

edit: I mean clothes. Clothes look very clothes-y, armour looks very metallic...

lord pie · Apr 18, 2015

Think of PBR as being a measured approximation to how real world materials react when light hits them.

When light hits a mirror, it typically bounces off in the reflected direction. For a rougher surface (eg, plastic) some of it bounces off in 'roughly' the reflected direction. Some light gets absorbed, and bounces around inside the material - some will come back out in fairly random directions and be visible.

The science behind PBR is effectively a study of how light acts when it hits a material. You then use this study to create very simple mathematical approximations to use in realtime.
The PBR model simplifies these equations down to a set of common inputs (in the case of unreal; base color RGB, specular, roughness and metalic). The idea is that any combination of these values when fed into the equations will produce an output lighting that is hopefully physically plausible.

This means if the input light is accurate, you can expect a convincing looking output light to show the player. One big requirement is that the output light isn't greater than the input light. It sounds simple, but mathematically it's a surprisingly complex thing to get right especially with specular, etc (taking this into account started getting popular midway through last gen)

There are two major problems with this approach which dev teams are still working on though; how to actually author those input values (eg, base color etc). This is where photogrammetry comes in - it's a brute force method where you attempt to measure the real world.

The second problem is much bigger; you still have to calculate the input lighting accurately. This means shadowing, bounce light, reflected light, etc. A PBR material model doesn't account for this. This is a problem pretty much every game has, those with realtime Time of Day especially. This is why you will still find that PBR can often make a single asset look amazing - but a whole scene can look flat and unconvincing if it lacks lighting detail (think watch dogs).

Hence the vast majority of the great looking PBR games still rely very heavily on baked lighting. It's a hopefully obvious reality that being able to spend literally days of CPU/GPU time precacluating lighting will always produce a better result than any realtime approximation that has to work in a few 1000ths of a second.

Dictator93 · Apr 18, 2015

Denton said:
How do you not post Alien Isolation, the best showcase of PBR ever ?
And Star Citizen.

Got ya covered
http://a.pomf.se/hofcnq.webm
http://webmup.com/BQhCg/vid.webm
http://a.pomf.se/hwkcjy.webm
http://a.pomf.se/quixny.webm
http://webmup.com/87e83/vid.webm

Azure J · Apr 18, 2015

This stuff looks gorgeous. Even as a technical scrub, I always felt like lighting was the next big thing.

DeSolos · Apr 18, 2015

Totally agree. Here's a quick crash course at what PBR is.

In the physically based rendering model, all materials are defined by 3 main components.

Base Color(Albedo):
This is the most straight-forward component. It's just the color of the object. The only slight change from last gen, which is more of a guideline, is that the base color is the base color of the object under flat lighting with no shadows(this is the ideal, not always the case).

Towards this end you'll see a lot of devs using one of these when taking reference pics.

Roughness

This is component represents the way the light scatters when it hits an object. The more rough an object is, the softer the light will look when it hits an object.

Metalness
Metalness determines whether an object conducts electricity or not. This changes the way light reflects off of a surface. In proper PBR, an object is either metal or it isn't(no inbetween). On the left the Material has a metalness setting of=0. Objects not made of metal(dialectrics) reflect light as it is. While for metal objects, their base color tints the reflection as shown in the sphere on the Right which has a metalness setting of= 1.

Examples of Non metals: Foliage, rocks, skin, wood

Examples of Metals: copper, gold, chrome

Three · Apr 18, 2015

Dictator93 said:
It is indeed quite great that people have moved over to it for metals and most plain diffuse materials. But subsurface materials, anisotropic, and transparent materials are still far from being physically based actually.

Transparent materials in SE's luminous engine looked amazing. Not sure if they were PBR but they looked convincing, I know the engine does do PBR.

https://youtu.be/YZ3xRBDnOOI

Don't get why they changed some of their games from it to Unreal. I assume it's because Unreal is more multiplatform friendly?

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