In Response To: My technical disection of the Reach trailer (FyreWulff)
Excillent writeup! I think I may check out Steam to look into what you said about the Steam engine and shadows. :)
: Okay, first off, it's definitely in-game and real time, because there is
: still some aliasing.
:
: Onto view distances. It seems the Reach engine is a lot better, because
: Bungie is making much better use of 'real' geometry mixed with skyboxed
: mixed with matte to keep performance up.
:
: The white line is where the 'real' geometry ends and where you start seeing
: lower-detail skybox. the cyan line is where you stop seeing skybox and
: start seeing a matte painting.
: This a big improvement over Halo 3. Halo 3's super wide shots like this were
: 99% matte-only. Most cutscenes were real-geometry closeups or just a
: skybox to keep performance up. Not anything wrong with that, mind, but
: it's obvious how much better the Reach engine is. The cutscenes in this
: game should be [I]spectacular.[/I]
: If you still don't know what i'm talking about, this is what the scene would
: look like from the side if i'm correct:
: It looks like they've got a new lighting and shadowing strategy compared to
: halo 2 and 3. Looks like everything casts a shadow, no matter how far
: above the ground it's sitting:
: Also the shadows on everything combine correctly, something not even the
: source engine is doing on PC (I believe, I haven't looked at episode 1 or
: 2 yet, so I may be wrong, and apologize if so). They're also very
: edge-blurred so they look very nice. Also this shot makes the slight film
: grain effect they're putting on everything more obvious. The film grain is
: 'smoothing' out the image thanks to how our eyes work and does not allow
: any harsh edges to grab our eye's attention.
:
: very nice use of depth focus to keep aliasing from showing up on the near
: arm. But this shot is the most obvious answer to "how is Bungie
: pulling off that much AA on 360?". Well, the answer is, they're not.
: They are however exploiting the human eye and using a new technique. Look
: at the edges of the arm:
: Yep, they're use a new technique where the edges are blurred into the
: surrounding area. This assists the 360's hardware AA and creates smoother
: edges. This technique has a name but I'm forgetting it now. It's similiar
: to what Nintendo used in Mario Galaxy to make poly edges seem super
: smooth. Now it's being used on the 360.
: Another shot showing the technique. When you watch in HD, it's really
: obvious:
:
: So, final verdict: Bungie played it a lot safer this time around in regards
: to engine features, believe it or not. There is no real time helmet
: reflections. What we saw in this trailer? Yeah, the final game is gonna
: look that good. Halo 3 actually looked better than the E32006 trailer
: (minus the realtime visor reflection, which had to be dropped). Everything
: you saw in this trailer is possible on the 360, due to clever technical
: tricks and exploitation of how the human eye works.
: The graphics for Reach can only go up from here.
: Of course, all we care about is the gameplay, right?
: Right?
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