Frostbite Tech Director: “PS4 C++ Toolchain Is Superb;” SMAA T2X Attempted On PS4 BF4 but too Costly

Frostbite Technical Director Johan Andersson had words of praise to share recently for the toolchain available to PS4 developers to compile their code and more, defining it "superb" in a conversation wit SN Systems Optimizer Team Leader Greg Bedwell, that is working on it on behalf of Sony. He also mentioned that the studio attempted to use SMAA T2X on the PS4 version of Battlefield 4, but it was considered too costly.

[OculusRift]

I have no idea what that is.

[Volkama]

That's very honest of you. Now just copy it to your clipboard and regurgitate it all over N4G comments, and you'll fit right in here.

[OculusRift]

Wow, you must be fun at parties.

[Azmatik]

this is surprising considering The order 1886 is using 4x MSAA at the moment which is very resource intensive im sure in the next year or so the PS4 games such as BF5 and more will be using the likes of 4x MSAA

[JsonHenry]

I'm with Volkama on this one. I would have put it nicer but still the same end meaning. Obviously "thereapersson" didn't read the article because it states NOTHING of the sort. If anything the recent news of DX12 for Xbox1 there will be less of a gap (though my money is still on PS4 for edging out the competition visually) than was previously expected.

All this article stated, in layman's terms, is that Sony's dev tools for C++ programming are helpful and make it easier for them to do their job than they had expected.

[Cam977]

@OculusRift
He doesn't go to any parties

[Ipunchbabiesforfun]

lmao @ volkama. That was pretty funny

[MidnytRain]

Vokama, you deserve ALL the bubbles...

[thereapersson]

I read the article, and I know my conclusion wasn't aligned with the topic. But it's a true statement, what I said, so the semantics are unnecessary. People just still want to deny reality...

@ JsonHenry

You can't make an 8800 gt perform better than a 790 regardless of the amount of optimization and driver updates you apply to achieve parity. DX12 is going to make it easier to achieve good results on the One, but suddenly you have the usual ignorant ones thinking the gap is going to magically disappear.

[Ritsujun]

Don't give up, MS!!!!

[shivvy24]

Same lol

[Mr Pumblechook]

EA is one of the two massive video game publishers, over the next-gen Frostbite is going to be their main development platform. So if the technical director is singing the praises of the PS4 tool chain then this highly significant. It means Sony have done a great job in designing a powerful system that is also easy to develop for which has got plenty of developers excited. It also means that PS4 is likely to be the lead platform for Frostbite (EA) games which means that with time, multi-platform games that will take advantage of unique PS4 graphical capabilities.

[Volkama]

Frostbyte is a powerful engine, but so far every game we know of uses the PC as the lead platform.

BF4 holds up well against anything on the market and Dragon Age 3 is on the right track to be gorgeous as well.

EA do not license this engine out, and there are no signs that their support for PC gaming is going quiet any time soon so I expect the PC will remain the lead platform.

The only Frostbyte 3 game currently available on consoles (BF4) runs better on PS4 than on the One, so as it stands this is still a significant advantage for Sony. People may not like EA, but they are a powerful player in the industry and do release some top games.

[OculusRift]

@Volkama, you know what? The PC gaming scene is overrated. Why do I say that? Because, I just got a new PC that's more than capable of running a few games at Max detail, 50-60 FPS thinking I was missing something and that console gaming was boring, and Let me tell you.. IT ADDS NOTHING TO THE EXPERIENCE, IMO. Having the most powerful hardware doesn't mean crap, it's the games that tell the story. Go ahead, name a game that ran on those "gorgeous" textures and that told a story and it didn't suck? I can name a few that went down that path and how much they sucked story wise: Battlefield 3/4, every MOH since 2010, Killzone SF(MP was fun, but the story was trash), Crysis 1/2/3, Duke Nukem: Forever, RYSE.. Shall I continue?

[Stapleface]

@Oculus I'll name one, Skyrim. I'll just go by the numbers of people still playing the game, to know that it doesn't suck. Running 2k or 4k textures with other immersion mods (Lush trees and grass, Better Blood, Climates of Tamriel etc) makes that game way better to play on pc. Not to mention the mods that add the most important thing, hours of extra story line and gameplay. Quite simply, mods, make the pc the better place to play certain games. Others, it's just the availability of stuff like PhysX, better AA options, etc. Hell, options period, because you barely get those elsewhere.

[Flutterby]

It's good that devs tell everyone how good the ps4 is instead of Sony just making up crap or pretending things are better than they are, the ps4 does all the talking via the games it doesn't need bs pr or smoke and mirrors , it just shows results non stop.

[Shane Kim]

I agree with Staple however, for most people, modding isn't easy and the games that come out in their native form isn't much better looking than their console counterpart. I have a GTX 670, and i7-3770 nad 16GB of RAM running Windows 7 in 64-bit mode and a game like AC4 don't look much better than the PS4 version at max settings. At least not 2138 USD better as I payed for this PC a year ago.

[Ju]

NFS Rivals also runs on Frostbyte, FYI.

[RegorL]

@Volkama NFS Rivals is also available on consoles.
(but I read some were that it was not stock Frostbite 3, both targeting console launch it only makes sense not to interfere in either game with the improvements made for the other...)

[NovusTerminus]

C++ is general coding. you could considering it the foundation for most everything used in computer programs.

SMAA T2X is Anti Aliasing... which makes edges smoother, if I recall correctly.

[shivvy24]

oh now I get the second son reference in the article

[OculusRift]

Oh, ok! Thanks.. Bub for you

[WalterWJR]

C++ is just one coding language, a very popular one.

[Bladesfist]

C++ is not general coding. It is not often used for coding. It is a low level programming language and is not used in most everything. C# and Java probably closer fit that description.

C++ is difficult as memory is not managed for you which makes it easy to write bad code. Which means for most things it is 'better' to use a managed language as your savings in cost and time will far outweigh any performance hit.

[NovusTerminus]

@ Bladesfist

Hence why I said it could be considered the foundation for most programs. All engines are built at a C++ base line level using C# and Java to build on the foundation on what was build, tis why building an engine is a daunting task. C++ has to be done precise and has a large room for a bloated, ineffective engine being the outcome, which makes the game run bad.

I was trying to keep it very simple and not get into the confusing details.

[Bladesfist]

@LordMe
Sorry if I jumped at you there, the nerd in me has been starved of language discussions recently.

[M1ST4K3]

A toolchain is a set of tools that run one after another (chain) used to compile your code into a playable game (in this context)... It might include stuff as Texture Compressor, Linker, Assembler, Shader Compiler, etc, etc, etc... C++ is just the programming language they use for the tools.

@Blades In performance programming you HAVE to program in a language that is compilable (C++, C, etc) and not interpreted (Java, C#, etc).

A compiled language generates low level code that runs directly in the machine, while interpreted generates bitcode that runs in a virtual machine, and that virtual machine reads the bitcode and runs it on the machine (well, I'm not in the mood of talking about JITs and stuff...) so it's MUCH slower.

Yes, you have free memory management in interpreted languages but you DON'T even want that when programming a game. Naughty Dog went in my university to give a speech about PS4 programming and they told us that they even "override" the malloc() / free() / new() / delete() functions from C++/C (functions used to (de)allocate memory) because they were far too inefficient for large allocations and caused far too much memory fragmentation.

TL;DR: You don't want stuff to be magically done by a programming language when doing high performance code (such as a game).

EDIT: Here, I found the presentation I was talking about:

http://www.gamepur.com/news...

It was held at Tecnico Lisboa (Portugal).

[Bladesfist]

@M1ST4KE
I don't work on AAA games so it is much better to focus on cost and time over performance for me. The performance of C# vs C++ is not even as cut and dry as you make it sound. It is entirely plausible for C# to outperform C++ in some situations.

I am not doubting that C++ should be used for engine development but writing game logic at such a low level is a bad idea and is why most engines offer something like lua, c# or UE 4s blueprints. The stuff you linked is engine level stuff.

Also C# is not an interpreted language. It is compiled to IL and then jit compiled to machine code at runtime.

[Ju]

Managed code comes with all sort of garbage collection troubles which is the death in (high performance) gaming because it gives you "micro spikes" which trashes your frame rate - even if so small. That's why most high profile game engines have a lower impact scripting language or a native C++ interface. Unity offers C# (with a Mono runtime and AOT compiler on most consoles) with the result of those said garbage collector problems.

Managed code in gaming - while elegant to use - creates so much more headaches because people tend to be even more careless with their memory handling. In C++ you simply can't do that because you will be punished with a crash.

Boost/shared/smart pointers in C++ will also give you a form of managed memory without the troubles of a garbage collector (but also require to be considerate how to use those) and custom allocators can improve over all memory performance and stability.

The problem with C++ is the requirement of ahead of time compilation (using the said "tool chain") while in C# or Jave the turn around time is much much faster - and hence nice to use for prototyping.

VS can dynamically relink code at runtime - but this does not work with a target compile such as is the PS4 (for example). This almost gives you the illusion of rapid "programming" like C#/Java.

[M1ST4K3]

@Blades Yup, mb, don't even know why I called C# interpreted (although Java is) but it has a huge overhead over C++/C (it has a virtual machine running between it and the machine) and the JIT runs at the same time as the code (Just In Time Compiler), and I highly doubt you could outperform an -O3 (g++) optimized C++ code with any C# (not a scientific statement, though :) )...

As far as game logic, you're right, SCRIPT languages are usually used (Naughty Dog said it used Scheme :D to program sound physics, etc...) but even that is usually pre-compiled and free from any garbage collector you are used too in the daily compilers/interpreters.

On my comment I clearly stated multiple times "while programming high performance code" (or something like that), of course that for your non-AAA game you can even use brute force algorithms with Java or whatever... I doubt there's any complexity that a good x86 CPU nowadays can't solve for you.

Your PC CPU has technology much more advanced to cover for bad (not attacking you or something xD don't even know you... just proving a point) programming than PS4. I recall Naughty Dog saying PS4's (consoles in general) CPU had a terrible Branch Predictor and they really had to pay attention to that, while your amazing i7 even makes some sick moves (statistic analysis, etc) to be able to predict the correct jump.

EDIT: Well, Ju's answer is pretty complete... You can speed up your C++ programming time (produce code faster) with a good toolchain + API + libs... to the point that it's much more productive to produce fast performing code right away other than producing slower code and then wasting a lot of time battling with garbage collectors / whatever to speed up your code.

[Bladesfist]

@JU

Yes the garbage collector spikes are a problem but most of the time resources can be pooled and "real time" allocations can be brought down to nothing (or close to nothing) by allocating locally to the stack / pooling and making sure your stuff won't meet the garbage collector.

I think you would be suprised at how little the performance difference is when you make sure you are not generating any additional garbage to the C++ memory management functions.

And this is what I mean about C# being faster in some situations.
http://stackoverflow.com/qu...

@M1ST4K3
The VM is not really a virtual machine at all, it is an abstraction of a processor so that your code runs on anything. The JIT compiler converts methods to bytecode when they are needed and from then on the bytecode will be called. So it is a one time performance hit. Also some c# compilers use ahead of time compilation.

[Ju]

I believe you. But with that said, you loose quite some advantage of "quick and dirty" implementation because you yet again need to spend the time in proper planing which is true for any programming language.

[Yaay4me]

Well its pretty much what MS is talking about with DX12 minus the PR talk. (From what i gather)

[Lior]

Wait people are saying how powerful the system is when he indirectly says it's not when they could not do SMAA because the system would not do it at 60fps

[SnakeforPresident]

My guess is they just didnt have the time to optimize it and getting it working for the ps4 at a level they wanted in time for launch. Idk if you noticed but that game didnt have the best launch and was probably rushed out the door.

[Anonagrog]

To add to what 'LordMe' said, this isn't directly talking about C++ programming. This is referring to supporting the developers in getting their C++ work up and running easily on the ps4, and providing a targeted, rich feature-set for testing and debugging. In other words it's headache, time, and cost reduction improvements for the devs.

The other thing, SMAA, is just referring to a post-process anti-aliasing technique that provides much better filtering accuracy than some of the existing techniques like standard FXAA or the original MLAA. FXAA is what they opted for as it's cheaper to calculate, but that comes with an inherent degradation to image quality in comparison.

[sigfredod]

It means what other developers have state before, that the PS4 have a very good api that allows pedal to the metal coding, what is an advantage if you take the time to use it

[fr0sty]

Enhanced sub-pixel morphological anti-aliasing. It basically combines 3 other AA techniques, morphological anti aliasing (which is cheap as far as processing requirements, but not always accurate and can produce unwanted artifacts), SSAA, and MSAA, which are far more taxing on the GPU but produces more accurate results. The combination of them gives a lower performance hit than SSAA/MSAA, but better results than MLAA because they contain sub-pixel information (they can sample from a higher resolution image). It also uses temporal AA, using data from other frames to more accurately detect where edges should be in the current frame.

His comments about the API just state that PS4's API is very solid and doesn't need much updating, though you will still see massive improvements in the toolchain and middleware that will make games in 4 years do things we never would have thought possible on PS4's hardware, much like we saw with the last gen consoles and their later released titles.

[deathisgamesok]

With how many technical problems BF4 had on any platform I'm almost certain that they could've implemented SMAA T2X on PS4 if they didn't rush the game out to compete with CoD.

[pyramidshead]

Haha I love the parody accounts of the well known Xbone fanboys that lurk here.

I get your username reference ;).
+bubbs

[PyramidsHat]

Yeah it is hilarious when that happens
+bubbs

[pyramidshead]

should have went with a lowercase p and 'feet' :P
pyramidsfeet ;p.

[PyramidsHat]

Perhaps, but honestly the joke was already more effort than it was worth lol

[asmith2306]

Oh look, I guess the PS4 can still compete against cloud power and DX12 ;)

[MasterCornholio]

I'm sure it will.

:)

I'm a firm believer that most of a systems power comes from its hardware and not its software. This is the main reason why a Titan based PC running on a clunky operating system vastly outperforms a console.

[pyramidshead]

are you serious? PS4 will obviously optimise backwards, unscrewing itself into individual factory components in developers hands as cloud power and DX12 progresses. /s

xD

*psst, btw the '/s' stands for sarcasm*

[elhebbo16]

Did you even read the article?

[asmith2306]

I sure did! Then I ate biscuits.

[elhebbo16]

lol

[Agent_hitman]

It only means that powerful hardware is the most important not the API itself.. Because if you have a powerful console like Ps4, any API like PSSL or even DX12 would further enhance the system and it's capabilities..

Not the ridiculous power of the clouds gimmick that only minor consumers can accommodate but majority of the users are still using not-so-fast internet..

[00001]

this makes me hopeful that DICE will optimize Star War Battlefront a lot better than they did Battlefield 4 for the PS4.

[WitWolfy]

Don't hold your breath, this is EA we're talking about here.

[Predaking77]

I'm glad that when they praise the PS4 is with actual prove and implementation. Not just about talk talk talk and no delivery, no actual prove and no developer feedback.

There are other companies that will say anything, lie to customers and sell false hopes just to save their product.

[hollabox]

How did MS let Sony get the one up on them regarding software platform? I mean MS is a software company with a very popular graphics API. Oh well we will see what DX12 has to offer in the PC and Xbox departments next year.

[theXtReMe1]

Infamous Second Son is far more technically advanced than Battlefield 4. There is no reason they couldn't have had the PS4 resolution at 1080p and used SMAA. The problem was, they were developing the game across what... 6 platforms? They just didn't take the time to optimize the game on any platform. I didn't see much of anything in Battlefield 4 that was all that impressive. The character models, granted, are some of the best Ive ever seen in a video game. But, background textures were blurry, and there wasn't a whole bunch going on the environments that I saw that was really taxing the system. Now, granted, some environments were better than others... but overall, I place it slightly above COD and significantly under Killzone, visually and technically.

Killzone was a first party title and they had quicker and better access to the hardware and the tools. So they had an advantage in developing for the system. But, it is still no excuse to at least not have the game running at 1080p. It's all in optimization for each system. When a developer takes a lazy approach and doesn't do that or rushes the game to store shelves, they end up with a game held back by prior generations hardware... Which I believe is the case for Battlefield. It suffers from when I like to call, generation anxiety. Dice was so gung ho on getting the game on next gen systems on launch day, that they failed to optimize the game to fully take advantage of next generation hardware. Leaving us with a port that sits somewhere in between last generation and next-generation.

Of course, none of this excuses Dice for the game crushing glitches and horrendous net code. It's totally disgusting they released a game in this state. As I said before, I imagine some gamer/lawyer is going to file a class-action lawsuit against EA and gamers will receive their money back for buying the game. Last year, I got all the money I paid for Madden from 2006 up til last year, because of a class-action lawsuit against EA.

This isn't a world anymore where game developers can get away with releasing broken titles. Thankfully, the courts have caught up to these developers and are holding them accountable for such actions. So gamers like us don't have to worry about buying games that they can't finish or play online due to a developers need to rush the game to store shelves to fulfill stockholders quarterly earnings forecasts.

Well I'm glad that Dice is praising the PS4 hardware, they need to better optimize their engine to take advantage of it. They can't cut corners, to release the game on multiple platforms and they can't rush a game to store shelves that has issues that prevent us from fully enjoying it.

So, I hope their newer games fully take advantage of the great hardware we have in front of us. And, I hope better things for their future projects then what has transpired with Battlefield 4.

[bornsinner]

nice essay but ps4 couldn't handle bf4 with it because it was aiming for 60fps, maybe if they went 720p but for ps4 its either 1080p 30fps or sub hd 60~

[webeblazing]

I believe they rushed to, but bf4 is on a different scale not only is it 60fps, the stuff in infamous Dont even compare. Destruction, physics, player interactions, and effects definitely goes to bf4. You can even drive in infamous . Particle effects looks great when drain neon for power but underwhelming during explosions like other games do. The old misdirection. People that say a game has amazing particle effects, usually mean everywhere like crysis, metro, just cause, etc. Its stuff that infamous shine better at especially when it comes to the detail in the environment.

Every game have things that they do better than one another, but Dont act like a games perfect because its exclusive. I haven't been impressed with a game yet. That goes on any platform. I been having more fun with indie games. And next gen consoles definitely not impressing me. It more of what I been see from the last couple of years. Its more of adding graphic highlights from different games and putting it in theirs. Not a big enough leap. That's why I'm skipping this gen and gonna get nvidia next gen GPU in '16. Plus not a fan of paying for online

[Ju]

Technically inFamous is far beyond BF4 - the animation system (incl. facial expressions) dwarf BF4. It's also open world. What BF4 plays with is the sophisticated (and IMO overdone) physics system (incl. weather). Lowballing inFamous' particle system is actually quite an insult, this is the most sophistic particle system created for gaming ever.

But at the same time, it runs 30-40fps, while BF4 runs closer to 60. This has an impact of course. I would think, with proper short cuts being platform exclusive would either let BF4 run full 1920x1080 or implement infamous' SMAA. It's quite astounding how smooth inFamous runs - at that level of visual fidelity. No video can actually express this.

[FanOfRootBeer]

It's finally happened: DualShockers is so obsessed with technical specs that they've started posting headlines they don't even understand.

[DrJones]

Costly how? In terms of development time, money or performance? That's what I want to know.

[Pandamobile]

Performance.

[larrysdirtydrawss]

bornsinner + 10h ago

nice essay but ps4 couldn't handle bf4 with it because it was aiming for 60fps, maybe if they went 720p but for ps4 its either 1080p 30fps or sub hd 60~

give it more time,and more understanding of the tools... this game specifically was crazy rushed from being a launch and being on so many dif platforms