Killzone 2

[geminidude]

Is it just me or does Killzone 2 look like the best freaking game on the entire freaking planet. I hope its not just me. I think that will get game of the year.

[Omeganitros]

RE: Killzone 2

That video was NOT in-game play. You can tell.

[biggieprice]

RE: Killzone 2

Actually the in-game play will seem like a FMV sequence. I believe Killzone 2 is going to be on PS3, meaning it will be in Hi-Def.

[suicidalmuskrat]

RE: Killzone 2

lol. Yes, Killzone 2 is going to be on PS3, and like Omega said, that wasn't actual in-game play. For the most part anything Sony has shown us right now is just smoke and mirrors.

EDIT: And it won't be out until 2006, so debating Game of the Year right now is retarded, especially when all we've seen are cutscenes. Oh, and the original killzone was mediocre AT BEST...Of course that's what Sony will be doing a lot of. Taking mediocre games, giving them fresh paint, and calling them franchises.

[evilbutterfly]

RE: Killzone 2

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05...s_6126204.html

So how does Sony respond to the allegations? Far from being evasive, it met them head-on. "Yes, it is real time," a rep told GameSpot.

Way to have your facts straight. No Omega, other than having ridiculously good graphics, there is nothing startling about the video that would betray it as being prerendered. That one game...Killing Day, I think was the name, you can see obvious things such as the way the guns move around fancily for no reason that betray it as prerendered, and they've said it is, but that is not the case with Killzone 2. May be you've confused the two? Either way, the fact that people are even debating whether it's real-time or not shows just how amazing the PS2 is.

But about the original post: graphics have nothing to do with the goodness of the game, and have little to do with who gets GotY. Sony is banking on people like you who will get the PS2 just because it's the most powerful system, regardless of how breakable it may or may not be. In fact, a lot of the game industry is banking on people like you who think that graphics are everything and will suffer through horendously terrible gameplay just to look at the pretty explosions and super-detailed worlds. Good graphics != good game.

[Verruckter]

Re: RE: Killzone 2

That video was NOT in-game play. You can tell.

The Playstation can run Unreal 2007. I don't see why it shouldn't run Killzone 2. The video card is powerful enough, I'm pretty sure. It's about as powerful as two 6800s Ultra combined. Plus, I don't see the point of showing CG at E3. People want in-game, fresh stuff, not computer animated videos.

[Omeganitros]

Re: RE: Killzone 2

That video was NOT in-game play. You can tell.

People want in-game, fresh stuff, not computer animated videos.

Which is exactly why Sony would bullshit and saying it's in-game play. It wouldn't be the first time they've flat out lied.

[SpookG]

RE: Re: RE: Killzone 2

When else have they flat out lied? Are you reading all the gaming articles like those on ign.com , or how about the video game guy from cnn.com who thinks he knows what he is talking about with his smoke and mirrors?

No shit E3 is hyped up, it is like walking into a 100 different casinos at once, but that doesn't mean the footage they showed wasn't legit. I think it is more that the graphics were just so unrivaled that people can't believe it to be true instead fo accepting that in game rendering has come so far.

Keep in mind, they did develope Cell for the specific purpose (in sony's mind, at least) of running their next gen console, so it is no surprise I think that it can render beyond current standards so impressively.

Don't get me wrong, I am still all about super nintendo and NES, but I feel it is whack to just call bullshit on something you don't know much about.

[evilbutterfly]

RE: Re: RE: Killzone 2

There have been some games that were questionable (like that one with duel pistols that I already mentioned before) and their makers admitted it wasn't real-time. Other things, like Killzone and that Unreal demo, made very clear that they are, in fact, rendered in real time. The PS3 is ridiculously powerful, and it doesn't surprise me at all that it would be powerful enough to do this kind of stuff.

Pretty much the way things go (as far as I can see, at least) is that the prerendered stuff from the previous console is about on par with the real-time renders of the next one. Killzone 2 looks like a PS2 prerender, but it's actually PS3 gameplay. Not that hard to believe.

[suicidalmuskrat]

However, do you think they have an actual complete PS3? With EVERYTHING finished, ready to be shipped? I highly, HIGHLY doubt it. The fact is Sony, if they are indeed running real-time, is doing it on extremely powerful PCs, most likely, and X-box was showing most of their stuff on Alpha 360's, which are supposedly 1/4th as powerful as the finished X-box will be. I don't so much question if this is real time or not, as much as if this will be what the finished product will look like. However, IGN doesn't even give it that much credit.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/616/616591p1.html

Read that, and what all the editors think...So it's not like me and Omega are the only one's questioning Sony's integrity on this.

[SpookG]

I've read all that, and keep in mind, i -was- at e3 and got to see some of this. I feel my own opinions are bit more well versed than you own for that simple fact, and call it arrogance, what have you, but there is little that would change it.

From talking to reps about it, I get the general feeling that the critics are being misled on it simply because they don't get what Sony showed them. It may not be actual gameplay like someone recorded a player, and I can't vouch for that since I didn't see it, the main point it is being rendered real time.

So what?

Think of the WC3 cut scene system, where it was still rendering things real time, and you will probably understand the idea I am trying to pass over here, as to it being scripted commands no longer becomes important, because it still running the game engine, and thats' what everyone wanted to see to begin with, since it is much different then watching a prerendered movie.

Misleading people? hell no.

you need to see what they are actually saying before you pass judgement. They wanted to showcase how the game will look and feel, which means they don't need a finished level to do that and record actual gameplay, but they are showing what it can do with real time processing, and therefore you can expect something near that quality, if not better with a more refined and optimized system.

As for what ign.com said, I stopped listening to them a while back since they aren't entirely trustworthy and don't bother with their sites except to take a look at screenshots.

[Musical_Master]

Ok.. I skipped through some of the posts in this thread, but I think I know the general idea of whats going on.

Some named Madmartigan6 posted on the IGN boards the other day. He stated that he has been working in 3d for about 7 years. He says most of his work is doing 3d film and broadcast, but he did also work on a game prototype. Here is what he said about the Killzone footage.

"Is the killzone trailer a real, realtime gameplay?" and, "Can we expect to see these types of graphics on the Ps3?"

Sadly, the answer to the first question is, no, it's not real. The killzone trailer in my opinion was composited, and pretty bad IMO. For those of you who don't know what compositing is, imagine an image or image sequence broken up into different parts, like, background, foreground, etc. Compositing is the process in which you compile all the layers into one, tweak color settings, matte out objects, etc. My wife has been a compositor for some years now, 3d artists in film must work closely with compositors to make sure the compositor has all the proper elements they may need to compose a shot. Elements are also broken up into different layers to save on rendertimes, or give the artists more flexibility for changes, example, a client doesn't like the smoke in a shot, no problem, you can just re-render that specific element without having to re-render the entire scene.

Realtime 3d to any extent holds no need for compositing, because everything must be within the frame and environment all at once.

So, lets look at the trailer again, frame by frame, lets start from the beginning, lets focus on this explosion for now



and pay close attention to what objects pass in front, and what passes behind, especially the bullets.





notice how this bullet is cut in half as it's supposed to pass in FRONT of the volumetric cloud, this particular element is hard to composite, because in the beginning of it's animation it lays in front of most objects, then passes to the background.

Now, if this was REALTIME 3d, the bullets would normally be placed on a flat polygon, and not be cut in half as it passes the smoke.

Toward the end of it's cycle, lets now focus on this black cloud,



this black cloud is obviously in front of or closer to use than the exlposion that comes off the building behind it right?

but lets see what happens when those two elements meet,



is this what were used to seeing in realtime games? No.

"So if the volumetric's weren't realtime, what about the rest?"

There are traces of questionable physics during explosion sequences, and MULTI PASS MOTION BLUR. For those that don't know what that means, there are many different ways software can simulate motion blur on an object, one of the most common ways it's done in pre-rendered image sequences is by rendering the object multiple times and offsetting it. This takes very long to render a single frame, as, it's doing in minimal cases 4 times the work.

But first lets examine the questionable physics, The next part in the trailer I'd like to jump to is when the dropship on the ground explodes.



notice how this peice never even touches the ground,





and this peice's geometry moves through many objects.

Now, this can still happen in realtime, because most developers use a low rez cage for the physics calculation, and if the low rez cage doesn't resemble the high cage close enough, you may see something like this, but...I'm guessing in this situation it's doubtful.

But, back to the motion blur and compositing, during the trailer there was one frame that stuck out to me the most, one common flaw that tells me it was composited from pre-rendered elements, and those elements we not realtime, it's this frame



notice the whit ring around the lower wheel, now...people how have no working knowledge of 3d won't notice this, but...this is a problem that is common throughout many software packages, "raytraced transparency, and volumetric's"

It's a difficult one to explain, but, think of raytracing as a beam of light, that shots out from a single source in space, whatever that light hits, it sends that data back to the renderer, like, "I just hit a surface, with these properties"

Now lets discuss the pre-rendered volumetric's part, volumetric's in the render order usually always come LAST, here's an example of what order a non realtime render is thinking, "geometry and raytracing, transparent polygons, volumetric's, post process effects"

The inherit flaw basically is, anytime you've got transparencies (a motion blur trail is considered a transparency)and volumetric's, the alpha channel is not going to display the proper image. And that's what were seeing here, the alpha channel for the wheel is solid, ONLY when it passes by the background volumetric's.

This is NOT what we see in a realtime game environment.

Lastly, some more examples of multipass motion blur, and transparency problems.





So, I've come to the conclusion that there's a very good possibility that NONE of this is being shown to us in REALTIME.

can we expect to see this in the final game? Unlikely, multipass motion blur, and volumetric's like this can currently take top notch PC's hours to calculate one single frame. These volumetric's act, look, and behave far better than the tech demo they showed. It's hard to tell, but it also looks as if the shear geometry count in these scenes won't be available on next gen platforms.

I'm very disappointed that Sony would let people even get the idea that this is possible on their next gen system. If there's people that are still expecting the shipped version of Killzone to resemble this type of quality, their sadly mistaken."

[evilbutterfly]

multipass motion blur, and volumetric's like this can currently take top notch PC's hours to calculate one single frame.

That was one of Sony's big things that they talked about. They used a model from the Spiderman movie and messed with it in real time using things that would normally take a long ass time to do. I think Sppok has the right idea about it, though. It's probably a scripted movie, just rendered in real time. They say that's an example of what it will look like because it isn't actually somebody playing a level, but it uses the in-game character models and whatnot.

And people keep citing the gun movements as a big reason as to how it's fake. Other than the waving of the arms as they get off the dropship, which could easily be a scripted thing put into any game in a situation like that, all the motions of the gun make perfect sense. People act like there's no way this could be real, but given the other stuff the PS3 has shown that has had just as many or more characters on screen at once, extreme detail, and all that jazz, I think it's very well possible. Regardless of if it's actual gameplay at the moment, by the time the PS3 comes out I expect this game to look almost just like this.

[SpookG]

I'm reiterating this one more time, since apparently it still isn't really understood..

THat entire movie was rendered real time, and includes cinematic and gameplay elements combined into a concept video to illustrate the point that you cannot really tell the difference between either anymore because Cell is just that powerful.

Anyone who says otherwise is wrong, and that is the truth. Learn to accept the fact that it can render so well.