Fantasy Engine - The First Game Engine with Real Time Global Illumination

Without much fanfare, independent video game developer Fantasy Lab Inc. introduces its Fantasy Engine, a game engine that features real-time global illumination system.

Global illumination algorithms, as used in 3D computer graphics, not only take into account a path directly from a light source (direct illumination), but also light which has undergone reflection from other surfaces (indirect illumination). The Fantasy Engine supports an environment where any surface can emit light (glow), reflect light and shadow any other surface in the environment. This means that images created using global illumination are more photorealistic and natural-looking than images lit with direct light only.

[Alexander]

...Halo 3 has this and was shown in game prior to this, so it is not the first.

[Sphinx]

it's pretty cool looking... and there is a difference between cinemas and gameplay.

[MoonDust]

Halo 3 is gameplay, get your facts right.

[andy capps]

If it's gameplay, how would you control Master Chief with those camera angles? Where is the customary first person view and the HUD?

There's a difference between an in-engine cutscene, and in-engine gameplay. The Halo 3 teaser was not in-engine gameplay. But this type of illumination will probably be used in a lot of games in this next generation.

[achira]

when halo 3 gameplay is, was killzone 2 gameplay too.

[MoonDust]

1.3:
It's 3rd person to show the lighting and shading and all the textures of the game. That's how the game will look, look at the documentary of halo 3 on bungie QUOTE: This is how the game will look.
1.4
Kill zone was a video there was no game play and no controllable characters. The makers admited it was a CGI trailer.

[andy capps]

Guerrilla still won't really admit that it was CGI. They dodge the question and say that they're confident that they can reach the level of quality shown in the trailer. That is if you can get them to answer any question about Killzone PS3, they're focusing on Killzone Liberation now. They're working on both, but Sony's NDA with them is either not permitting them to speak about Killzone PS3 or they don't want to yet. Probably TGS of this year we'll see more on Killzone PS3.

I'm sure that Halo 3 will be close to the footage that they showed, Bungie is a good studio. But the trailer was not gameplay, it was a cutscene. If you want to take their word for it, that's fine, but it's obvious to me that it's a cutscene just like the MGS4 footage released thus far is all in-engine cutscenes. The game will look very similar in both cases, but it's not gameplay.

[MoonDust]

There is a new Bungie video where they show behind the scenes and they show the master chief is controllable, it's gameplay. The where moving the master chief, that's all the prove you need.

Killzone was a video, they never did any behind the scenes video where they moved the characters around or anything else, why? It's a video CGI. The guy that was offer to do it said it in a video, CGI.

[andy capps]

Was artificial intelligence for the enemies being used in the Halo 3 teaser? This is a stupid discussion that I don't see how we're arguing over. Were the MGS4 videos that were manipulated in real-time, gameplay?

[joemutt]

In engine, the one you saw for H3, can be rendered on the fly, AI was controlling the enemies, and a real person was controlling another character, like playing co-op, you can see Master Chief, you can go right up to him and look at him, just like in the teaser, and Bungie said multiplayer was possible at E3, so thats where they got the footage. It will really look like that when it comes out.

On the other hand, Killzone and MGS4 were CGI or Pre-Rendered, which usually takes about an Hour to render 1 frame. So if they were showing it at 30 frames per second, it would have taken 30 hours to create that one second of video. But H3, being in engine, took 1 second to create 1 second worth of video.

Hope this clears up anything that was confusing to you.

[andy capps]

So when Kojima manipulated the lighting in a particular scene at TGS last year, was that CGI? I'm asking rhetorical questions in this post, and in my previous one. Of course it's not, it's an in-engine cutscene. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Nice discussion though. :)

[MoonDust]

It's plain and simple, when Halo has a cut scene is doesn't show CGI, it doesn't show character moving their mouths that you wouldn't see in the real game. It just turns to 3rd person but the game looks the same and everything else even the characters mouth moving looks the same.
On the other hand when you see a cutscene on MGS it looks alot better and alot more detailed than the actual game does.

[Droidbro]

This is nothing new

[FamoAmo]

I know it is being used in the upcoming games but I thought it was a nice read.. Good story NEWS BOT!!

[Shadow Flare]

its pretty cool that games have features like this. it makes the games look so good

[Sidherich]

Global illumination is not dynamic global illumination. Fantasy Engine claims to do dynamic GI. Halo 3 most likely uses Static GI implemented using PRT. PRT is shipped with the DirectX SDK. It allows moving Lights but not moving Geometry. Fantasy Engine claims that it can do dynamic Geometry. I'm not sure which approach they did with it but i'm pretty sure its this one http://graphics.cs.ucf.edu/...

[PS360PCROCKS]

I don't see much of a difference to be honest lol

[Sidherich]

the effect is very subtle. I'm not sure if it is worth the CPU cycles used for it

[gamerriffic]

finally the effect i've been waiting for that hasnt been done yet, light reflection, finally. but will the reflecting light cast its own shadows? thats gonna be hard to realisticly cast shadows of a normal room with white walls and sunlight coming in the room, but no direct light, only reflected light, thats what i'm waiting for, i hope this engine can get somewhere near it.

[Sidherich]

I'm not sure about the exact implementation Fantasy Lab did with this but on their videos (talking about this one http://www.fantasylab.com/n... )
you can see a soft shadow on the ground. So in theory it should be possible to have correct shadowing from an infinite number of light sources of arbitary shape.