GDC: The Future of Graphics and Unreal Engine 3

"Tessellation in particular is a possibly major addition to Unreal Engine 3. The Xbox 360's graphics processor actually supports tessellation, but to my knowledge it's never been used. This alone could lead to some major enhancements to the visuals in 360 games - assuming that the 360 version of the Unreal Engine 3 development kit supports it."

[DrHouse]

It would be wise to keep these facts of n4g, as the community will quickly deem it as a false diagnosis...

[ChronoJoe]

There was an article about this about 2-3 years ago saying the exact same thing.

I think there's an underlying reason it's not viable on 360. I'm not educated enough to know why, do the current versions of U3 dev kits not support tesselation or something?

[dredgewalker]

Who knows, but it may affect framerate when used but that's my own guess.

[SuperM]

The reason is simple. Tesselation is not something that comes for free as long as the hardware supports it. As any effect do it actually requires resources (duh) and in the case of tesselation, quite abit. They might be able to add tesselation to a game but they would have to lower the graphics in general to make it happen. You cant keep everything as it was and expect to just add something else on top of it when there is no resources left. They would have to lower polygon levels, make worse lightning, worse textures etc. Overall it would make the game look worse.

[Computersaysno]

Realistically this generation of consoles cannot do anything like the speed or quality of tesselation seen in this demo. 360 does have a very crude tesselator that has not been used for various reasons, most of them because it is not worth trying.

[meetajhu]

This is extremely old news and x1900xt and x1950xt onwards had a tessellator built in it and its extremely poor quality tessellation with max of 3000 quad polygons.Its otherwise called as surface tessellation The entire point of its introduction was to smooth edges of a polygonal object which had no flow in vertex line.

http://docs.google.com/view...

[fr0sty]

PS3 also uses tesselation in GT5 for it's damage modeling.

[meetajhu]

lmao 7800gtx 512 ma ass

[fr0sty]

it doesn't use the GPU, but the SPU's (as many ps3 games do to enhance graphics, which is why PS3 has the graphical edge when the developers actually bother to use the power of the SPU's... remember the original PS3 design was to use another Cell as a GPU, it's that good at GPU tasks) to do the tesselation. It works quite well actually.

[fr0sty]

here's a pdf detailing how phyre engine has been using tesselation for a while now in it's LOD meshes.

http://www.technology.scee....

tesselation is very possible on PS3, just not via the GPU. Sorry to rain on your parade xbox fanboys, but ps3 can indeed tesselate.

[Arnon]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but GPU tessellation is much different than software tessellation. And no, the PS3 does not support hardware tessellation.

And, just in case you didn't know. Hardware tessellation > software tessellation.

[SkyGamer]

Oh a correction, the rsx in the ps3 only has 256 mb vram. So a 7800 gtx 256mb is the ticket.

[Vherostar]

I say lets see the actual games with this new tech eh?? Sick of the maybe and could be with 360 especially the last couple of years. PS3has been showing off its power and all I hear is maybe from 360 fans so lets see this new tech in ACTUAL games on the 360 and it will be great for 360 owners and the industry!

[ngecenk]

couldnt agree more. prove it! dont just put out a fancy article like this.

it doesnt make any sense if 360 support that cool tesselation but does not let its developer to use it in the first 6 years? if they apply it in the 3rd year, they could steal some graphic enthusiast on the ps3. so why bother holding it?

the thing that i like from ps3 devs is when they say they havent utilize the spu, they really mean it by releasing a cutting edge game, like nd when they said first uc is half the spu power. we all said "nah... it must be just another ps3s pr working through nd" but then uc2 came out and it does look better.

[Mizz_mai]

Let's just wait till the game's tell us this info...right..??

[Karooo]

Its old news it does support tesselation, the xenos gpu is very good

[fr0sty]

PS3 does as well, via the SPU's.

[wwm0nkey]

Wasnt this already known?

[ZombieAssassin]

Yea but I don't think it's ever been used and now with the UE3 supporting it for PC it's assumed that the X360 version of it will also support it meaning we might actually see it put to use.

[wwm0nkey]

Well actually BF3 might be able to support this as well.

[JOHN_DOH]

Sorry but this demo was using directx 11 so it's not possible on current consoles(hardware). Yes all ati cards since 2600 (i think) supported tesselation but it's different than the one used in dx11 (not compatible)

[Undeadwolfy]

@JOHN_DOH, Battlefield 3 will use DirectX 11. In fact, for the PC, I you need to have either a DX10 or DX11 card to play the game. The game is primarilary being developed using DX11 on the PC.

[JOHN_DOH]

yea I know I PC can support dx11 (i have a dx11 card) I meant that current consoles can't support dx11

[Elven6]

Yeah its been known for a while but developers really haven't been able to make use of it for multiple reasons. There were rumors that Bungie may have "cracked the code" in a sense with Halo: Reach but I never followed up on that, I think it was only for the water though.

[8thnightvolley]

should be intresting to see a graphical upgrade with tessellation on the 360

[Zir0]

I take it that this means the gap in graphics for multiplatform games running Unreal tech will be even greater now.

Interesting....

[BrianG]

Just because it is there does not mean it can be implemented.

Other resources have to be taken into account when designing a game.

For instance, consoles can probably do 16xAA, but game devs don't push that because it sacrifices valuable resources that can be used elsewhere.

That being said, its a great feature and I wouldn't mind seeing it put to good use in some upcoming titles.

[limewax]

Not really, as the guy above said, resources, but also this has been used before on both 360 and PS3 games, so both would be capable of tesselation meaning the 'gap' would be the same.

That said UE is normally a factor in me not buying a game, I cant stand the look of UE3, and multiplatform games run awful on it on both consoles anyway. I have plenty of UE3 attrocities for both 360 and PS3, The engine is the problem, not the console

[IHateYouFanboys]

so you didnt like Batman Arkham Asylum? you dont like the look of the new Mortal Kombat? you didnt like Bioshock? didnt like Borderlands? Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2? Mirrors Edge? Shadow Complex? Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2?

wow, you must have pretty bad taste in games, as some of those are amongst the best games of the generation.

if you even consider what engine a game is running in your purchasing, youre doing it wrong. UE3 is an absolutely fantastic engine, one of the best in the world. its proven this by being able to produce games across genres and graphical styles on different platforms, and producing tremendous results.

[Vherostar]

Go away fanboy there is only a gap in multi platform because of devs otherwise exclusives would look better too if your too stupid to figure that out your an idiot Zir0.

[TROLOLOLOL]

it has been used before, bungie used it in halo reach for water tessalation.

* lol 2 disagrees for a well known fact. lol at you ps3 girls. shaman i never knew that it did, cheers :)

[Shaman]

Epic also for Gears 2 water...

[BreakNeckSpeed]

It was used on some armour models as well, primarily for the elites.

[Elven6]

http://www.bungie.net/News/...

Would be interesting to see what developers can do with it beyond water effects though.

[BlackKnight]

When people say "water tessellation" that is different this the "tessellation" being discussed here which is HARDWARE tessellation.

PS3 can do tessellation as well (creating and destroying of polygons), however, it would have to be done through software and that is MUCH slower. Hardware tessellation, which the xbox GPU does support, is much faster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

(Search for xenos)

The tessellation of water is software and done so limitedly (not a real word, I know), that performance is still acceptable.

[joeorc]

"PS3 can do tessellation as well (creating and destroying of polygons), however, it would have to be done through software and that is MUCH slower. Hardware tessellation, which the xbox GPU does support, is much faster."

bull crap,

the SPE's are Hardware an they can do it.

Phyre Engine is an example of it's use on the SPE's which is Hardware!

both the PS3 an the xbox360 can do it by hardware mean's.

the software still has to employ it's techniques.

[fr0sty]

it is still considered software when the hardware is not specifically designed for it. thing is, ps3 has enough SPE's laying around where it can dedicate one to tesselation and it not be a big deal. that's why games like GT5 already use it for damage modeling.

as you said, phyre engine also uses it for LOD. it's not such a big deal (doing it by software) that it isn't practical on PS3, not at all.

[Ju]

You're both right :)

Sure, PS3 is all SW. But it reaches the speed of dedicated HW if done properly.

Does it matter if it is HW or SW? Only if the cpu is not fast enough to keep up with the discrete HW implementation.

Heck, you can write a complete render pipeline/rasterizer using shaders only. Now is that HW or SW? Does it matter? What matters is, which is faster.

And, well, joeorc, "SPEs are HW" is a funny statement. LOL It still runs code, thus it is a full SW implementation.

But I think we all agree, that shader programs are also SW and outperform dedicated HW in a lot of cases. World is not black and white but a sum of colors (not even just shades of gray).

[fullmetal297]

Lets all pretend to know what we're talking about and say the CELL is the holy grail of hardware and can do anything it wants.

[Lord_Doggington]

the title forgot this little tidbit from the article: "...assuming that the 360 version of the Unreal Engine 3 development kit supports it. "

[Elven6]

That doesn't mean the hardware can't support it (the title which doesn't follow N4G guidelines states it can), Halo: Reach already supports basic tessellation for water effects.

[JOHN_DOH]

It can't. To run dx11 tess you need a dx11 gpu. 360 gpu is dx9.

[Dingodile]

After 5 years , they found this now ?!

[Elven6]

Nope, its been known for a while, the issue was primarily with taking advantage of it. I think the only 360 game that supports tessellation is Halo: Reach but only for the water.

http://www.bungie.net/News/...

[theonlylolking]

IGN did but everyone else already knew.

[BlackKnight]

It's true. No dev ever uses it, from what I understand, since this is a feature that hasn't been made standard till DX11. Ati actually has hardware tessellation since Quake 3 I believe. They used to show it as a feature of their cards and ID, maker of Rage/Quake/Doom, actually supported it in Quake 3 (or was it 2?). They called it TruForm at the time as a marketing term.

"The GPU is equipped with an extra feature which is not part of the current DirectX 10.0 specification. It contains programmable tessellation units, similar to those within the Xenos GPU (codenamed C1) also developed by ATI."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

The xbox GPU is actually faster than the PS3's RSX and has extra features like tessellation. This is due to it being a prototype GPU for DX10. The real question is the xbox GPU vs a PS3 that uses the SPUs on the cell to take a little of the load off the RSX. That's where you have seen some great looking PS3 games. But it requires an engine built just for the PS3.

Who knows what would could see if devs actually put effort into tessellation and other strong points of the 360 GPU. MS seems to be lacking first party devs so you won't really see good xbox only engines. The reason multiplat does well on xbox is because it is easy to get that amount of performance, while if you put the same amount of effort into the PS3, you get less performance. Both the PS3 and Xbox benefit from devs making specific engines (which is very costly). You just don't see much on PS3 besides first party and you almost never see it on Xbox.

EDIT: Sorry, DX10.1 actually added support for tessellation, DX11 was not the first DX spec to have it.

[Ju]

The 360's DirectX implementation is often references as "9+". It does not have a driver model but sits on top of the metal (how MS calls it). It has extensions and allows accessing functions otherwise hidden through the standard DirectX (PC) API. This is certainly valid for all kind of EDRAM access and I am sure using the HW tesselator, too (meetjahu posted this link: http://docs.google.com/view... - it is even documented in MS 360 specs).

If Tessellation was avail in HW, especially on a console, developer would have used it. This is the purpose of a console. A fixed HW set which allows you to use the HW to the max - not just the API. It was even documented by MS and not a hidden feature.

UE3 might have used it or not. Maybe it does now in a more common way. But I think this is totally irrelevant for 360 games since it was available from the start. The question is, how useful this tessellation unit is and what performance benefits it can bring if any at all.

BTW: " Both the PS3 and Xbox benefit from devs making specific engines (which is very costly). You just don't see much on PS3 besides first party and you almost never see it on Xbox. "

Dice might want to have a word with you.

[Thoreau]

hey, ju... you back up what you type and disagrees but no response... i gave you the agree and bubs...

[Studio-YaMi]

I gave you a 1+ man
that was an really informative post

[MGRogue2017]

----

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[rob6021]

I'm sure 8mb of edram isn't a good fit for tessalation, like how it isn't for anything outside standard rendering.

[TROLOLOLOL]

10 meg actually XP

[Syaz1]

^10 meg pipe actually.

had to include an ncis quote :p

[bozebo]

The chip is 10MB but only 8MB of it is available to the programmer.

It is used to store extra framebuffers for use by deferred rendering and some types of lighting.

Tessellation won't put any stress on that memory anyway because of where it is applied in the graphics pipeline.

[BlackKnight]

@rob6021

I don't think you know what tessellation actually is. I don't know what it has to do with the xbox's edram...

[Syaz1]

if only microsoft actually had inhouse game devs that would take full advantage of the hardware. the only xbox exclusive games that i saw taking advantage of tesselation was forza motorsport 3 and the other games mentioned above. the tesselation in fm3 background scenery gave the game's graphics the upper hand over gt5 in that aspect.

[TROLOLOLOL]

i agree we would proberly see a 10-20% in graphics then what is out now due to the fact code would be much more refined and efficient for the 360. i give massive props to sonys devolpers for this.

[bozebo]

Sure, it supports tessellation. But there is nowhere near enough power there to actually tessellate effectively while also pumping out all the other graphical quality that a lot of games have.

Tessellation can criple even some mid-end PC gpus that are around 10 times more powerful - hence why metro is a pain for them to run.

Tessellation has to be applied in specific ways to be useful and I guess it could provide some nicer visuals on the 360, but nothing like what we see on upcomming PC titles.

[Convas]

This kind of news on N4G will NOT sit well with certain circles.

Popcorn anyone? I've got gummy worms too.

[BloodyNapkin]

Why this is old news? And 360 games have used this feature already....Heck give it everything in the book and the 360 still cant make a good exclusive. Maybe they will use that feature on (paid) timed exclusive content.

[Convas]

There are no good 360 exclusives? Alrighty bro, whatever the hell you say.

[FunkMcnasty]

@ BloodyNapkin - a "good" exclusive is a pretty subjective thing. Maybe you don't like Forza Motorsports, Halo, Splinter Cell and Alan Wake, but those MS exclusive titles all sold quite well and recieved high scores from the critics.

I sigh in sad disbelief at all of the blow hard know-it-alls on this site.. :/

[Thoreau]

man people are fronting hard if they think the 360 exclusives are ps3 equal. every 360 exclusive i run out and buy disappoints me. the last one was halo reach

heavens boxer-xbl i ain't been on since halo reach.....

the game did not look good. fable 2, some enemies dropped from the sky. i am awaiting gears 3, for some reason i am hyped for it...

[BloodyNapkin]

@Clizzz

Alrighty Bro? Really thats how you reply...BRO!

@FunkMcnasty
Wow nice, way to name some avereage game's there. Sells dont mean crap, and reviews are even worse. Take Halo 3 for instance, nuff said.

I am glad you are starting to learn i am a know it all. Here is the thing i am not going to sugercoat it for anyone so people dont get their "feelings hurt" or whatever. I am going to tell you how it is or how i feel. I could give 2 Sh1ts less what anyone thinks of me

[BubbleSniper]

proper tessellation is taxing an why you wont see it heavily used on XBOX games.

having option is good but when a dev gonna use it to differentiate game further from PS3 counterpart?

cuz multiplats are lookin more n more the same.

[wwm0nkey]

Hopefully this means 343i can use it to its full power.

I mean hell Corrinne Yu is making the new Halo engine so I expect the 360 to be maxed out with that engine lol

[Convas]

I'm DEFINITELY looking forward to seeing what 343i comes out with next after seeing that looking into their studios and the Defiant Map Pack Dev-Doc yesterday.

[wwm0nkey]

343i just has so many great people and developers. They are a huge team and their engine designer is pretty much the best in the field so I have high faith in them.

Oh also they listen to the community, so that too lol

[PS360PCROCKS]

Xbox GPU still is a pretty damn good GPU. PS3's SPU's with Xbox GPU, that'd be a pretty damn good machine.

[Pandamobile]

The Xbox 360 does NOT support tessellation in the same way DX11 video cards do.

Not even close.

Pretty much every ATI GPU since the 1xxx series have had this sort of "tessellation" support, but it's really too weak to do anything meaningful with.

[SnakeMustDie]

And even if they had the similar tessellation of DX11 cards, the 360's GPU is not powerful enough to produce great graphics. It's like saying a 420 GT will have better graphics than 260 GTX because it has DX11 Tessellation

[Studio-YaMi]

I'll take your words on the subject rather than any others (who think they do) since I have been tracking your comments and I know that you actually know what you're talking about at least,even though you can be an PC fanboy sometimes.

[Shackdaddy836]

IDK why people are disagreeing. DX11 video cards > console video card. Kinda obvious... Next gen consoles will have DX11 type tessellation but until then, it wont be nearly as good.

Buuuut something consoles can look forward to:) :
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

with games like shattered horizon:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[xstation79]

The 360 can certainly put out some really good graphics. I was playing the first gears of war the other day and that game still looks good.

[NitrousX]

It may well support tessellation but it may not be able to support Epics new engine. As the new requirements for it to run everything is direct x 11. And the 360 only supports direct x 9.

If MS were to launch a new revised version of the 360 or launch a whole new console then it may well have the latest hardware to run it. But lets see what epic/MS comes up with being hopeful that it could be mastered

[Xfanboy]

To be honest dx 9 can do tess but @ 3fps!

I have no ass since I LMAO!!

[Raven_Nomad]

As I've been saying, all this power tapped out stuff is all industry BS.

If Microsoft and say Epic have been secretly working on stuff using this tech, then I would reconsider what I was saying about the next XBox coming out in the next year and a half.

The Xbox 360 has a lot of untapped potential obviously, just gotta ramp up the developers to get them doff their butts.

[lochdoun]

The power of Direct X.

[sashimi]

Just because something supports it doesn't mean its viable.
for the next gen of consoles yes but not really for current ones.

[NateCole]

Show me the games!!

[slavish3]

Is this the reason gears was delayed !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!

[xtremegamerage]

This.

http://www.3dvelocity.com/r...

[Masterchef2007]

Im tired of UE3 show UE4 already

[humbleopinion]

So much stupidity spreads around in here, IGN with their not-so-professional analysis are partly to blame but so many people here got their fact so wrong it's sad...

Fact 1:
Hardware tessellation is enabled in the Xbox GPU. Halo Reach used it for water, Halo Wars used it for terrain, and even god damn Viva Pinata used it for characters back in around 2006 - So much for the "but to my knowledge it's never been used" in IGN, and so much for some butt-hurt fanboys who don't realize that GPU enabled tessellation was here for a long time.

Fact 2:
Software tessellation was actually done over a decade ago: Sacrifice in 2000 was the earliest example I remember. But this king of tessellation is resource heavy since it doesn't effectively use the heavy parallelism of the graphics card.

Fact 3:
The term became a buzz word with the introduction of DirectX11 which now also offers hardware tessellation via modern GPUs (OpenGL also allows it now). But then people realized that it was used before and that's it's not some kind of magical silver bullet that makes game awesome. It's just another tool that will make the game look a bit better if employed wisely, by allowing more detailed high poly models to be inserted directly into the game without impacting performance because the poly-count will drop automatically when they are far away and the small bits are to tiny to process (animals and terrain are the best candidates, as demonstrated in the games mentioned above).

Without this feature you either have to give up detailed models, or create multiple models at different detail levels and then swap them during game (which is what many games do now), but it's much more resource hungry and less clean as the player can in many times easily spot when the low detail model is instantly replaced with a high detail one.

[RandomDude655]

Heck....even the lowly ps2 had some tesselated games. Naughty "Gods" back in 1999:
"At the heart of our LOD system was our proprietary mesh tessellation/reduction scheme, which we originally developed for Crash Team Racing and radically enhanced for Jak & Daxter."

http://www.gamasutra.com/vi...

[Thoreau]

when my woman starts to talk about some nonsense, i always say baby, quit reaching. the 360 just can NOT do what the ps3 can do in terms of putting out great looking games. compare the xbox to the ps2. xbox games looked awesome and ps2 games looked a jagged mess. if 360 only owners want ps3 equal looking games then they may have to wait until the 720.....

[Adolf]

>360's graphics processor actually supports tessellation, but to my knowledge it's never been used

lol, tesselation used in Viva Pinata

[therapist]

the only place you will see any type of cutting edge graphic from here until new consoles drop is on pc

you saw the limit of consoles years ago

[Droid Control]

Reach does look very adverage...

Many other games on 360 look better.

I think Battlefield 3 is the 360's best chance of a boost in graphical quality. But if there is a boost, it will surely be a small one.

Xbox 360 runs DirectX 9.

9! PC's are on 11! 360 is OLD.

[plb]

If you want to see proper tessellation go buy a gaming PC or wait till next console gen. That said, tessellation alone does not make a good game.

[firetaw]

now this is great, i mean tesselation of course. till now all games work on LOD [Level Of Details] which requires more space because you have multiple versions of the same model simply to reduce the Digital print on the processors. now with once tesselation is fully supported we will have more room on the disc to add more content :) improvements

[Paballo]

With all these features they are add to unreal engine 3 I can't help but wonder how many years the unreal engine 4 being in development...its already being 5years now...I just wonder why epic games can't rewrite the entire unreal engine3 for ps3 to use those spu.Just assign a couple of engineers to it because unreal engine 3 just does not run well on ps3 and maybe just make it a deffered engine