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[DesertFox]

I get what you are saying, but that assumes 100% efficiency in the code, which of course is never really attainable. Eventually they will get closer to the PC version, and it won't be a matter of raw hardware but programming improvements, techniques, optimizations made to compilers etc.

This ^

I'm not shocked to see a PS4 tech demo not quite matching up to it's PC counterpart. But console development has always been like this. I mean compare Xbox 360 launch titles (Perfect Dark Zero, Call of Duty 2) to titles launched when the console reached maturity (Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3, Halo 4).

The fact that the launch titles for PS4 look so good already makes me very optimistic for the next gen going forward.

http://www.upload.ee/image/3202626/background.gif
http://www.upload.ee/image/3202625/sammas.gif
http://www.upload.ee/image/3202621/uks.gif
http://www.upload.ee/image/3202624/koll.gif
These GIFs really illustrate the wonders that can be achieved when you pit a cut-down HD7970M with 8GB of GDDR5 against a GTX 680 with just 2GB of GDDR5!

Not to play devil's advocate here, but to me the biggest difference from those shots are lighting direction, and DOF. Both these issues were addressed by an Epic employee:

...

"The biggest changes actually came from the merging of two separate cinematics, the original Elemental and the extended Elemental we showed at PS4's launch event. Each had different sun directions and required some compromises to join them. This resulted in some major lighting differences that aren't platform related but were due to it being a joined cinematic. Another effect, in the original...

"Feature wise most everything is the same, AA resolution, meshes, textures (PS4 has tons of memory), DOF (I assure you both use the same Bokeh DOF, not sure why that one shot has different focal range), motion blur.

"Biggest differences are SVOGI...

Not sure why they did that... but everything being in muddy shadows really makes the PS4 version look worse than it is. Compare the shots that are both in sunlight and the difference isn't as dramatic.

 

[BigTnaples]

The missing SVOGI really has me down. That was the most exciting thing to me about UE4.


Just imagining a Bioshock 1 remake with UE4 and SVOGI had me drooling.

 

[AstroNut325]

Yeah... the lack of SVOGI is really disappointing. I imagine fully destructible environments are going to be much more difficult to without since you have to bake the lights for so many different scenarios.

 

[Perkel]

And the first shot of the hand shows no AO for ps4 demo versus high quality AO in pc demo.

Isn't AO just fix for lack of GI ?

 

[MaLDo]

SVOGI maintains cohesiveness in motion and based upon objects in the gameworld. Objects in the gameworld which move... also bleed their color. This is different to static baked solutions where only color bleed comes from static objects which then also can be transfered to moving objects. Further more it provides glossy reflections..

I will miss svogi too, but take in consideration that epic will use lightmass "evolved" only for static sceneario and then, a new layer of "lite" gi for dynamic elements. At the end, the final IQ can be great for the most part because the static part use to be bigger than dynamic parts (using high quality baked gi) and dynamic objects will have some kind of gi. Maybe we can see the best of both implementations although the baked gi will be innacurate when using dynamic TOD changes over the level. Only guessing.

Isn't AO just fix for lack of GI ?

Yes, that's why it is strange that when removing the gi, they forgot to add some kind of AO in ps4 demo.

 

[Perkel]

Yes, that's why it is strange that when removing the gi, they forgot to add some kind of AO in ps4 demo.

Well good AO alone is very demanding feature especially if there is a lot of things on screen. Even without it framerate of that demo was 23-25 in places.

I wonder if they have already beta or still alpha kits. I mean there is no APU on market that could emulate PS4 and a lot of things mentioned about hardware are not directly connected to power but efficiency of system.

 

[MaLDo]

Well good AO alone is very demanding feature especially if there is a lot of things on screen. Even without it framerate of that demo was 23-25 in places.

I wonder if they have already beta or still alpha kits. I mean there is no APU on market that could emulate PS4 and a lot of things mentioned about hardware are not directly connected to power but efficiency of system.

There is cached AO in console UE3 games combined with async AO that need 5 to 15 frames to the final result. You can see this type of AO when the corners become darker after moving the camera. The shot of the hand in the very beginning of the demo is static camera and no AO at all.

 

[Canis lupus]

The missing SVOGI really has me down. That was the most exciting thing to me about UE4.


Just imagining a Bioshock 1 remake with UE4 and SVOGI had me drooling.

Can't they implement SVOGI and other stuff with UE 4.5? The enhanced UE3 had these added:

Ambient Occlusion - A method for producing soft shadows by shadowing in spacial relation to other objects.
High Density Crowds - The engine now supports far more characters on screen at once than previous versions did, as demonstrated in Gears of War 2, with hundreds of locust seen on screen at once.
Realistic Fluid Dynamics - Creates life-like liquids in-game. With the use of this feature, water acts like water in the game and whatever you do in or to it will result in a dynamic and realistic reaction.
Soft Body Physics - Simulation of elastic or deformable objects, as well as stickiness. Materials such as mercury or gelatin can be simulated accurately.
High Dynamic Range - Offers the player an expanded dynamic range. Allows very bright things to be very bright, very dark things to be very dark, and details will remain consistent in both.
Destructible Environments - Allows developers to use fracture effects on static meshes, basically enabling destruction of an environment without changing the game world's basic geometry. This means that the technology is somewhat cosmetic; for example, a column may only be broken down until it is just a steel bar at its center.

(credit to giantbomb)

 

[fatgamecat]

I'm not a techie but it seems like they can add or remove features from the engine as needed. Any disgruntled PC gamers should cheer up, the improved dev tools and similar PC/PS4 hardware should allow for easier ports between the two. That means more games for everyone to enjoy.

 

[USIGSJ]

Was reading cryteks GDC paper, here's their thought on currently available real time GI techniques for next gen at the moment.

 

[Stallion Free]

Devs really need to step up their AO implementations anyways. UE3's default was pretty ugly.

 

[Dictator93]

Devs really need to step up their AO implementations anyways. UE3's default was pretty ugly.

Crytek SSDO is quite great looking. So is BitSquids (has an angular component).

Oddly enough... crytek has Real Time GI that has a specular component (and even a low rez glossy component). It works alright... but only works for sun light. Every other point of GI is just artist placed in doors.

I hope Crytek cooks up some new version of their GI that works for all light sources.

 

[Stallion Free]

Crytek SSDO is quite great looking. So is BitSquids (has an angular component).

Oddly enough... crytek has Real Time GI that has a specular component (and even a low rez glossy component). It works alright... but only works for sun light. Every other point of GI is just artist placed in doors.

I hope Crytek cooks up some new version of their GI that works for all light sources.

Will they be able to without it burning a hole through a next-gen console the UE4's probably did?

 

[Dictator93]

Will they be able to without it burning a hole through a next-gen console the UE4's probably did?

Probably not!

IMO.. if we are talking about engine features we should not care too much about how they perform on next gen consoles. More likely than not... there is no "high quality" real time solution for next gen consoles that has indirect specular, glossy, and diffuse for all world lighting. And if there is... it probably would be very low quality or have to be extremely clever. Perhaps the boxes just do not have it in them FLOPs-wise.

Instead companies like crytek and epic should try and dev solutions that scale down. Technically SVOGI can scale down. but most likely by that time the quality starts turning its ugly head. Much like low quality low radius SSAO with no clamping. It usually looks like garbage (read far cry 3 and deus EX)

 

[Perkel]

Probably not!

IMO.. if we are talking about engine features we should not care too much about how they perform on next gen consoles. More likely than not... there is no "high quality" real time solution for next gen consoles that has indirect specular, glossy, and diffuse for all world lighting. And if there is... it probably would be very low quality or have to be extremely clever. Perhaps the boxes just do not have it in them FLOPs-wise.

Instead companies like crytek and epic should try and dev solutions that scale down. Technically SVOGI can scale down. but most likely by that time the quality starts turning its ugly head. Much like low quality low radius SSAO with no clamping. It usually looks like garbage (read far cry 3 and deus EX)

Baking stuff won't go anywhere. Also real time GI or other effects are mostly used for games with dynamic lighting like day/night. Most of games today still use static model so i expect even more games using baking like Mirrors Edge did (with terrific outcome)

 

[fizzelopeguss]

You have no idea what you're going on about, do you?

Where do you think they get the initial flop ratings for their alus? Out of thin air?

And windows overhead is at the thread/process level. You are bordering on cluelessness.

I have published papers at international conferences dealing with performance analysis on GPUs. But maybe the peer reviewers failed to recognize my total cluelessness.

No, they get them from how the hardware is designed. If one ALU is designed to retire N floating point operations per cycle, and there are M of them, then you get N*M theoretical FLOPs per cycle. It's not rocket science.

Please enlighten me as to the impact of this thread/process level overhead. I currently have a student investigating the overhead of thread and process level synchronization primitives on Windows, I'm sure he'd be thrilled to compare notes with you.

Maybe? IDK. You've proven nothing of your knowledge to me, so my assumptions are what they are *shrugs*




Of course its how the hardware is designed. Again, it doesn't come out of the thin air. If you design an alu to perform , say a multiply-add ,do you think they just take a leap of faith and say "welp its designed that way, it should work, next" Or do you think they go thru an extensive testing regime to make sure this alu can do these three flops within the clock at an acceptable rate?



Send him my way . We could discuss thread level parallesim and some of windows pitfalls in that area, scheduling deficiencies, or execution delays, or overall thread management. There's a whole world to explore.



Yeah, no. And as far as I know, only Sony's first party has did any meaningful work "to the metal" this generation. And they released alot of their work to share.

I haven't did anything cool, but yeah it means nothing to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgBA1jA2-mo

How this entire interaction appeared to me.

 

[Vidpixel]

I find the lack of SVOGI fairly strange, especially with how enthusiastic Epic seemed with the specs of the PS4 after it was revealed.

 

[Madness]

A lot of the stuff goes over my head, but isn't a head to head comparison sort of missing the point? Unless the PS4 is launching for $799 and above, you'll never match the raw output of a high end gaming PC.

The idea is to get reliable hardware at a great price point that you can then optimize as you learn to use it no?

I mean the video card in a lot of these PC's is almost the price of the console.

Xbox 360 came out in 2005, look at what they've achieved comparing a game like perfect dark zero to Halo 4.

I don't know, I'm not disappointed at all, because the ps4 is quite capable and this in turn will only make PC ports and other games better.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

A lot of the stuff goes over my head, but isn't a head to head comparison sort of missing the point? Unless the PS4 is launching for $799 and above, you'll never match the raw output of a high end gaming PC.

The idea is to get reliable hardware at a great price point that you can then optimize as you learn to use it no?

I mean the video card in a lot of these PC's is almost the price of the console.

Xbox 360 came out in 2005, look at what they've achieved comparing a game like perfect dark zero to Halo 4.

I don't know, I'm not disappointed at all, because the ps4 is quite capable and this in turn will only make PC ports and other games better.

I don't think that it's useless by any means, because it's good for people buying the hardware to get some idea of what they can expect in relative terms. However, I fully agree that people expecting the PS4 version to be comparable are delusional for precisely the reasons you've said.

 

[El_Chino]

Was reading cryteks GDC paper, here's their thought on currently available real time GI techniques for next gen at the moment.

Interesting.

 

[Norml]

Was reading cryteks GDC paper, here's their thought on currently available real time GI techniques for next gen at the moment.

Gaf was in it lol

 

[Vidpixel]

Not sure if this has been brought up yet, but the article in the original post has been updated (Source) with the following quote from Epic's senior graphics programmer Brian Karis:

"The biggest changes actually came from the merging of two separate cinematics, the original Elemental and the extended Elemental we showed at PS4's launch event. Each had different sun directions and required some compromises to join them. This resulted in some major lighting differences that aren't platform related but were due to it being a joined cinematic. Another effect, in the original you could see the mountains through the door where in the merged one we made the view through the door white since the mountains outside were no longer the same. Same deal with the mountain fly by. The old mountain range doesn't exist in the new one. These changes from the merge make direct comparisons somewhat inaccurate.

"Feature wise most everything is the same, AA resolution, meshes, textures (PS4 has tons of memory), DOF (I assure you both use the same Bokeh DOF, not sure why that one shot has different focal range), motion blur.

"Biggest differences are SVOGI has been replaced with a more efficient GI solution, a slight scale down in the number of particles for some FX, and tessellation is broken on ps4 in the current build which the lava used for displacement. We will fix the tessellation in the future."

I found the bold portions to be particularly interesting. This was also updated at the end of the fifth paragraph in the article:

To clarify, it's our understanding that there won't be a real-time GI/Lightmass divide between PC and console in final UE4 games - we're looking at the pre-computed solution across all platforms.