ClioSport.net

Register a free account today to become a member!
Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Read more here.

Realtime Graphics / Game Engines



SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
I know a few people here (myself included) have an interest in realtime graphics / game engine technology so I thought I'd kick this thread off with a few vids from the recent Game Developers Conference 2014 (GDC 2014). This stuff fascinates me and always will. :eek:

A fresh look at some of the features available in the Unreal Engine 4:



A demonstration of UE4 toolset and use:

 
Last edited by a moderator:

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
To continue from above (and the 2 video post limit)...

CryTek have been busy, too - and showed off some of the projects using their CryEngine:



And Ubisoft show off some of the tools and features exposed through their SnowDrop engine (requires YouTube login to prove age) :

 
Last edited by a moderator:

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
I also quite liked this technology from Quixel. It's a hardware device that can effectively photograph and store a high-fidelity surface image compelte with normal map generation, occlusion capture, specularity capture and various other properties. the results can then be fed into a rendering engine of choice. In this example, a scene is rendered with the CryEngine from CryTek and the surface textures and properties were captured using Quixel's Megascan technology.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Whilst not a game engine with such fidelity as those shown above, I was lucky enough to be part of a team who recently won "Innovative Product of the Year 2014" at a recent ESTnet awards with our mass crowd and visualisation simulation. Having only a single 3D artist and a couple of guys programming the 3D engine (myself included) meant that we were a little pushed at times; but the results were something I'm particularly proud of. :eek:

Compared to the likes of the engines above our product looks dated - but, then again, the CryEngine and UE4 engine can't scale across many, many cores / processors and cannot simulate and visualise crowds of 500,000 synthetic people in realtime, at the individual level... As said, whilst looking somewhat dated, the engine (running on DirectX9 level API, Shader Model 3.0) does have a lot of the effects commonly seen in modern engines - such as HDR, tone mapping, bloom, cascaded/split shadow maps, depth of field, camera lens effects, atmospheric scattering, screenspace ambient occlusion and others. With the correct hardware it can also pump out the synthetic video feeds as HD output to multiple screens, from different viewpoints (as the engine supports an effectively unlimited number of cameras). The product also has a 2D component (not shown) which allows the user to interact with the simulation in realtime; affecting behaviours, adverse weather, blocking lifts/escalators, emergency situations (evac, fires, etc) and so forth.

You can see a snippet of the product in action in the video below (from 1m50s onwards).

[video=vimeo;90140377]https://vimeo.com/90140377[/video]
 

Silent_Scone

ClioSport Club Member
  Evo 5 RS
That megascan is very impressive. Well it all is to be fair. Very interested to see Snow Drop in action as well, some of the best lighting I've seen in real time.
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
That megascan is very impressive. Well it all is to be fair. Very interested to see Snow Drop in action as well, some of the best lighting I've seen in real time.
Ditto - I've been very impressed with how SnowDrop is evolving. I was hoping that Ubisoft would have released some information / papers [about the technology they are using in the engine] at this year's GDC. As you mention, the way they do the light propagation is nicely implemented and gives stunning results.

Can't wait for UE4, it's looking good and they've changed the licensing which makes it very favorable for Indie developers!
Indeed - the subscription model is very attractive and I can see a lot of Indie's jumping onboard. Mind you, with CryTek doing the same (subscription model) I expect they will see a few more developers onboard, too (although, until they include support for mobile devices, I don't see it being quite as immediately popular as UE4's offering). I'm tempted to subscribe for a few months with UE4 (to grab a look at the source code if nothing else).
 

Darren S

ClioSport Club Member
Ditto - I've been very impressed with how SnowDrop is evolving. I was hoping that Ubisoft would have released some information / papers [about the technology they are using in the engine] at this year's GDC. As you mention, the way they do the light propagation is nicely implemented and gives stunning results.


Indeed - the subscription model is very attractive and I can see a lot of Indie's jumping onboard. Mind you, with CryTek doing the same (subscription model) I expect they will see a few more developers onboard, too (although, until they include support for mobile devices, I don't see it being quite as immediately popular as UE4's offering). I'm tempted to subscribe for a few months with UE4 (to grab a look at the source code if nothing else).

Chop chop. Let's see some of your results then! :cool:

D.
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Very interesting stuff. Cheers.
No worries mate - glad there are other people on here who also find it interesting. :)

On a sort-of related note, I was discussing GPU technology with a friend recently (who is an avid gamer, but not particularly clued-up on technology) and trying to explain how complex and powerful current GPU's actually are. I was also trying to explain why true 4k gaming at ultra-high framerates is still a little way off (for the mainstream at least), and why the perceived 'jumps' in graphics fidelity with each new generation of hardware (console or otherwise) is not so significant as before. Despite being hard work (!), I worked out a rough metric detailing the number of instructions required to render an image at 1920x1080p at 60fps. The numbers are quite staggering...

If we assume the game engine in question is something cutting-edge like the CryEngine3 or UE4 (running on a top-end GPU setup) an individual pixel can easily require 220 instructions to calculate the final colour that it is eventually plotted to screen. A pixel, in this case, typically requires somewhere in the range of 50-400 instructions depending on the complexity and composition of the scene, and the shaders being used. So let's assume the 'average' value of 220 instructions per pixel. A 1920x1080 screen has 2073600 pixels.

So, a single frame render can feasibly require (2073600 x 220) = 456,192,000 instructions.

Hence, assuming a frame rate of 60fps, the GPU is performing some (456192000 * 60) = 27,371,520,000 instructions per second

Of course, this is a very 'back of a napkin' type calculation, but it kinda gives some insight into the processing power required to realise a virtual world through a cutting-edge game engine.

Just out of interest, let's assume a consumer format 4k display (3840 x 2160) is being realised at the same framerate (60fps) and with the same level of instruction complexity (220 per pixel)...

Pixel count = (3840 x 2160) = 8294400 pixels

Single frame render requires (8294400 x 220) = 1,824,768,000 instructions.

Assuming a frame rate of 60fps (1824768000 * 60) = 109,486,080,000 instructions per second

(Sorry) :eek:
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
I just stumbled across this voxel-based realtime fluid simulation from nVidia. Sadly it will be a while before we see this level of effect in games... seeing as it needs a $3000 nVidia Titan Z just to run it!

 
Last edited by a moderator:

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Nice one, Mike - thanks. Somehow I'd managed to miss that! That looks impressive and I do hope he's able to take the time / effort to port to 4.0.

As for HL3... I have very high expectations. :eek: It's been a long time coming. If it does look like that guys interpretation of the HL universe then I'll also be very happy :)
 

Darren S

ClioSport Club Member
No worries mate - glad there are other people on here who also find it interesting. :)

On a sort-of related note, I was discussing GPU technology with a friend recently (who is an avid gamer, but not particularly clued-up on technology) and trying to explain how complex and powerful current GPU's actually are. I was also trying to explain why true 4k gaming at ultra-high framerates is still a little way off (for the mainstream at least), and why the perceived 'jumps' in graphics fidelity with each new generation of hardware (console or otherwise) is not so significant as before. Despite being hard work (!), I worked out a rough metric detailing the number of instructions required to render an image at 1920x1080p at 60fps. The numbers are quite staggering...

If we assume the game engine in question is something cutting-edge like the CryEngine3 or UE4 (running on a top-end GPU setup) an individual pixel can easily require 220 instructions to calculate the final colour that it is eventually plotted to screen. A pixel, in this case, typically requires somewhere in the range of 50-400 instructions depending on the complexity and composition of the scene, and the shaders being used. So let's assume the 'average' value of 220 instructions per pixel. A 1920x1080 screen has 2073600 pixels.

So, a single frame render can feasibly require (2073600 x 220) = 456,192,000 instructions.

Hence, assuming a frame rate of 60fps, the GPU is performing some (456192000 * 60) = 27,371,520,000 instructions per second

Of course, this is a very 'back of a napkin' type calculation, but it kinda gives some insight into the processing power required to realise a virtual world through a cutting-edge game engine.

Just out of interest, let's assume a consumer format 4k display (3840 x 2160) is being realised at the same framerate (60fps) and with the same level of instruction complexity (220 per pixel)...

Pixel count = (3840 x 2160) = 8294400 pixels

Single frame render requires (8294400 x 220) = 1,824,768,000 instructions.

Assuming a frame rate of 60fps (1824768000 * 60) = 109,486,080,000 instructions per second

(Sorry) :eek:

Great synopsis Andy! At times it really does shock me the whole level of 'detail' that goes into graphics tech. A card like the GTX690 has over 7 billion transistors in it - imagine the total number that exists in something like Scone's PC! ;)

Despite that, you clearly show just how much grunt is needed to push along our graphics at a decent enough rate. We take the CODs and the Battlefields in our stride - expecting no less than 1920x1080 and super-smooth frame-rates. Yet if you totalled up the number of each instructions carried out after a 30 minute game for example, the figures would be astronomical.

Amazing stuff. :cool:

D.
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
:eek: I may have geeked out for a moment or two the other day when I wrote that... but I don't care. As long as I know I'm not the only one who finds this stuff interesting. Thanks technology fwend!!

Roll on DX12!
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Whilst not a game engine with such fidelity as those shown above, I was lucky enough to be part of a team who recently won "Innovative Product of the Year 2014" at a recent ESTnet awards with our mass crowd and visualisation simulation. Having only a single 3D artist and a couple of guys programming the 3D engine (myself included) meant that we were a little pushed at times; but the results were something I'm particularly proud of. :eek:

Compared to the likes of the engines above our product looks dated - but, then again, the CryEngine and UE4 engine can't scale across many, many cores / processors and cannot simulate and visualise crowds of 500,000 synthetic people in realtime, at the individual level... As said, whilst looking somewhat dated, the engine (running on DirectX9 level API, Shader Model 3.0) does have a lot of the effects commonly seen in modern engines - such as HDR, tone mapping, bloom, cascaded/split shadow maps, depth of field, camera lens effects, atmospheric scattering, screenspace ambient occlusion and others. With the correct hardware it can also pump out the synthetic video feeds as HD output to multiple screens, from different viewpoints (as the engine supports an effectively unlimited number of cameras). The product also has a 2D component (not shown) which allows the user to interact with the simulation in realtime; affecting behaviours, adverse weather, blocking lifts/escalators, emergency situations (evac, fires, etc) and so forth.

Here are a few screenshots from the mass crowd simulation and visualisation software that I worked on and talked about above. Ultra pretty graphics weren't feasible due to the lack of resources and the fact that our system needed as much grunt elsewhere as possible. However, the simulation does run at 30fps / 1080p on a high-end nVidia GTX with over 150k entities. I was also able to implement some of those cheesy effects you see in some games, such as lens flares, dirty camera lens, depth of field and so forth.

(See Silent_Scone - I can do realtime as well!) :p

A view of the 2D component.

pic01.jpg


pic02.jpg


And the 3D component.

Variation is built into the system so that entities appear with different skin tones, eye colours, clothing, and so forth.

pic03.jpg


pic04.jpg


pic05.jpg


pic06.jpg


pic07.jpg


pic08.jpg


pic09.jpg


pic10.jpg
 
  LY 220 Trophy+IB PH1
You may need to install the x86/x64 Visual Studio 2013 C++ Redist Runtimes before it works.

Aye, I got that one initially, then I got one for X3DAudio1_7.dll (Which I believe is a component of DX11)

It was on the works laptop, so that's probably the fault right there :rasp:
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Ah yes... a works laptop might not be ideal! A decent spec DX11 capable system should do the trick though. To be honest, you're not missing much. It's easier just to watch the youtube video of it at 1080p to get some idea of it! :)
 

Silent_Scone

ClioSport Club Member
  Evo 5 RS
That realtime demo is pretty awesome Andy :D. Nice work


And I tried Epics Elements demo but frankly it doesn't look as good as I remember it. Thinking it's a little watered down? Maybe the PS4 version?
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
And I tried Epics Elements demo but frankly it doesn't look as good as I remember it. Thinking it's a little watered down? Maybe the PS4 version?
I think it's more down to the fact that things have moved on so much since the demo originally appeared in public. It's getting on for a couple of years old now and things have really ramped up recently (in terms of texture fidelity and shader complexity). On PC at least ;)
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Something a little different. Physics simulations from this years Siggraph and GDC.

Siggraph:


GDC:


I love this shizzle :eek:
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Silent_Scone

ClioSport Club Member
  Evo 5 RS
Woooo Physx! Needs a serious kick up the backside though. Support has been very lacking recently. I would kill to see that level of physics in a first person shooter. It's still very CPU bound though. Hopefully DX12 will open up some new avenues with this kind of performance
 

SharkyUK

ClioSport Club Member
Yeah, a shake-up is definitely needed. As wonderful as hardware is in some ways, in other ways it sucks. I think the fidelity of the physics seen in the demonstration videos (such as those I linked) are a little way off yet. The computational effort required would leave little room for anything else! It's just a matter of time though... algorithms will get better, techniques improved, more bandwidth, yada yada yada blah. :) Some of the fluid demonstrations are incredible.
 

BoatNonce

ClioSport Club Member
Something a little different. Physics simulations from this years Siggraph and GDC.

Siggraph:


GDC:


I love this shizzle :eek:


That is utterly amazing. I hate to think how much resources it must take up to do each simulation though, as a tiny part of an environment - say in a game where a character shoots through a window - It must be hella demanding. But just think of it as part of a game!
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Jonnio

ClioSport Club Member
  Punto HGT Abarth
Can't imagine how good games will look in another few years lol. Cramazeballs.
 

Silent_Scone

ClioSport Club Member
  Evo 5 RS
Indeed :( A friend/former colleague who works at Crytek Nottingham says that things aren't so good at the moment.


Some might see this as either candid, or blanket but I honestly believe it when I say their biggest mistake was looking at Crysis sales in 2007, and thinking, lets take MS up on their offer and bring all of this to consoles. They totally trashed what they set out to do without following through in the next games.
 


Top