Remij

Just took a sweet pic.  This game looks fucking bonkers man..

 

7 minutes ago, -GD- said:

for real! i have a lot of respect for them. hopefully, these techniques can be incorporated into programs like cinema4d. having to use a render farm blows...

Cinema4D will undoubtedly have plugins to take advantage of RTX.  

Nice.  I have the first one but never played it.  Heard is was good so I got it cheap at some point.  Will likely do the same with this.

3 hours ago, Aza Team 2019 said:

$110 million budget guys.

 

 

 

 

Yea, there's areas which are definitely less impressive than others... and the animation is still typical for this series.  Not really improved at all imo.  But Aza.. there's some really jaw dropping shit at times.  They could definitely work on their consistency, that's for sure.

3 hours ago, kaz said:

looks like the game is full of magnet jumps 

It absolutely is.  I've had some pretty hilarious shit happen.. they're not even close to Naughty Dog in this regard.  

7 minutes ago, -GD- said:

the foveated rendering and dlss seem pretty awesome, and clever ways to boost visuals.

Yea.  Everything here is extremely clever.  Developers and these scientists that create this shit are fucking real life wizards.. seriously.  

Long post is long  

 

First off.. I get that people here don't care about this.. I'm fine with that.  I love you all.   Anyway, I'm just posting this shit because it's super fucking interesting to me, and maybe some of you will also find it a bit interesting as it really does have implications of the future of 3D rendering and image processing.  I made posts before about Ray Tracing, but the Turing architecture is so much more than just that.. which people don't seem to realize.

Nvidia unveils a new alternate shader pipeline with Turing

This series of GPU absolutely IS Nvidia's biggest and most significant architectural advancement since the introduction of programmable shaders.  If I wasn't convinced before, I'm convinced now. There's so much new technology in this GPU that it's kinda crazy that we're getting all of this at once.  Not only does the new family of GPUs have all this new Ray Tracing and AI technology, but the entire shader pipeline is undergoing changes that are going to help with massive amounts geometry that future games will have by reducing the amount of stress processing that amount of geometry puts on the CPU. 

Advanced Shading Technologies

 

Mesh Shaders:

The biggest change in the pipeline is what are called "Mesh shaders".  These introduce two new steps in the pipeline, a "Task Shader" and a "Mesh Shader".

Before, the CPU was responsible for determining LODs and Object List Processing, as well as the draw calls per object... then the Vertex Shaders would produce the polygons for those objects to either be tessellated or submitted directly to be rasterized and then pixel shaded.  Now instead of the CPU having to calculate LODs and Object List Processing, the task can become bundled as shader which can be efficiently parallelized on the GPU called a "Task Shader". This essentialy combines those steps of deciding what needs to be rendered or not.. and then passes that to the Mesh Shaders.  The Mesh Shader is then responsible for deciding the level of detail those objects should be rendered at.  Meaning how many polygons to generate/display for any given geometry.  Not only that.. but developers can segment objects into smaller meshes (called meshlets) and optimize the amount of verticies of each segment individually based on their needs.

 

 

So for example a large object with tons of individual parts connecting and moving.. like say a car engine.. can be segmented into these meshlets, and then the number of verticies (triangles) per meshlet can be optimized reducing the amount of data fetching required.  Essentially, they can process more geometry while at the same time reducing the bandwidth required to do so.

 

 

This is a HUGE advancement in the efficiency of the pipeline, and incredibly important in reducing the amount of work submitted and performed by the CPU... which is a BIG bottleneck on games with tons of unique geometry... which games of the future most certainly will be.

 

Variable Rate Shading:

 

The goal of this technology is to reduce the amount of unnecessary shading work done by the GPU that doesn't visibly improve the image quality of the final rendered frame.  Most of the time, there are various elements to a scene which don't need the same level of quality as other elements which are in focus.  There have been methods of reducing the work done by the GPU in this regard already.  As I said before that intelligent methods of rendering for VR would trickle over to standard gaming.  We've had multi resolution shading.. where the periphery of an image could be rendered at a fixed lower resolution in a fixed portion of the screen..improving performance.  But this new Variable Rate Shading method takes that same basic principle and makes it much more flexible.

 

 

VRS can now be fully dynamic.  Every 16x16 set of pixels can be shaded at different rates.  This means that they can take a scene, segment it into 16x16 pixel boxes, and then shade those pixels in any fashion they want completely separate from the others... A single triangle can actually be shaded using multiple rates across the grid.. This is some crazy shit!

 

The example they gave was Forza Horizon 3. (just an image not an actual functioning example) You can see the different colored segments which are shaded at different rates.. Important elements such as the Car, and the environment on the horizon appearing at full rate, while the sides of the roads and the road closest to the camera are shaded at a much lower rate due to the fact that they are high motion elements of the scene.    As the car slows down or stops, the scene dynamically adjusts the shading to full. This comes at no noticeable visual degredation to the player.

 

It's not just racing games.. but all games could utilize this for elements which don't require full shading for every pixel.

 

There's 3 notable algorithms for VRS:

 

Content Adaptive:  Which basically adjusts the shading rate of slowly changing detailed elements.  Say the sky, or walls, things of similar colors... or anything that basically doesn't change rapidly.  This can be used to tell the next frame that it doesn't have to be shaded at full resolution again because it already has relevant information from the previous frame. Saving performance.  Developers can essentially dictate tiny details that require full shading rate, and separate them from others which aren't as detailed and don't require it.

 

 

Motion Adaptive:  The way our eyes work and perceive motion is linear.. we see the same detail in motion as we do when objects are stationary.  Display technology doesn't work like that.  An image is scanned to the screen and updated at a variable/fixed rate.  As the image is drawn top to bottom, left to right... the object motion shifts causing blurring between frames.  The resolution of a display may be 4K or 1080p or 1440p.. but when it motion, the percieved resolution is lower.  Detail gets blurred the faster the motion... it's unavoidable.  Higher refresh-rates can help.. and black frame insertion can greatly improve this...  (You may have heard of LightBoost or ULMB) but it's never going to be perfect.  So in that case, it's wasteful to shade fast moving objects at full resolution.  This can be used in conjunction with Content Adaptive shading... which the Forza example above would make use of.

 

Foveated Rendering:  This is basically the example of what I said above where the periphery, or the outer elements of an image can be rendered at a lower resolution due to it not being in the focus center of the image.  Some VR games utilize this technology, and even though this mostly makes sense for VR, Shadow Warrior 2 actually makes use of this kind of technology already.

 

 

Developers are able to create their own algorithms which work best for their own use cases and can use the technology how they see fit.  Apparently Wolfenstein 2 will utilize Content Adaptive Shading and the press who saw a demo said it looked damned fine with no perceptual change in quality.  The demo let you toggle it on and off and Nvidia said it can boost frame rate by 20fps or more when targeting 60fps on a mainstream GPU.  Impressive stuff.

That's not it for Turing though, then there's the AI side of the GPU.. which isn't just about being wasted when Ray-tracing isn't involved...

 

NGX Technology (Neural Graphics Accelleration)

We already know that huge performance gains can be had by intelligently rendering computer graphics.  Whether it's checkerboard rendering, temporal injection.. whatever the case may be.  The goal is to improve performance by rendering less and intelligently determining the values of neighboring pixels without having to expensively render them.  In many cases, the visual reduction is negligible, especially when considering that the performance improvements can be massive.  Nobody will argue that these technologies will be important for the future.  AMD, Sony, and MS are working on their own solutions, developers have their own solutions.. and Nvidia of course, has solutions of their own.  All of these solutions can co-exist and regardless of how it happens or how it's implemented, the goal of increasing performance with as little impact to visual quality is universal.. and we should all be excited for what it means in the future.

 

Nvidia has a few new technologies for improving performance and image quality that they are introducing with Turing, which take advantage of their Neural Network services and utilizes thier efficient Tensor cores to accelerate those operations for the end user.

 

DLSS (Deep Learning SuperSampling)

 

DLSS actually has two different modes.  There's "DLSS" which is the standard mode which uses supercomputers to train neural networks how to generate a full target resolution image by rendering an image with half the pixels.  They train the network by gathering images of extremely high quality from developers for their games.  These "ground truth" images use 64x supersampling, which essentially creates an image with perfect detail and anti-aliasing quality. At the same time they take "raw" versons of those images actually rendered by the GPU at half the resolution, then run it through their supercomputer, asking it to match the target image.  They weigh the difference each time and the network adjusts its algorithm until it keeps getting closer and closer to the target image. Eventually it matches resulting in an image rendered at basically half resolution with presumably very little to no discernable difference from the full 4K resolution image with TAA.. and at the same time has the added benefit of reducing/eliminating the ghosting of TAA.

 

The second mode is "DLSS 2X" which instead of having the goal to improve performance, is meant to purely improve image quality further.  This mode has the GPU render the full resolution image and then combines that with DLSS to produce an image which is essentially a match for those high sampled 64xSS images.  So this is like rendering with 64x the samples meaning that the ghosting and loss of detail with TAA is virtually non existent.  TAA blurs when in movement because it utilizes the motion vectors of the moving objects from the previous frame.  This causes high movement scenes to lose detail.  DLSS 2X eliminates that and avoids the issue altogether.  It provides a much more temporally stable image while retaining clarity.

 

 

DLSS is gaining a fair bit of traction.  With over 25 confirmed games already and Nvidia has stated that it will be possible for previously released games to implement this technology relatively quickly.  It remains to be seen just how easy Nvidia can make this for developers... but considering the fact that most of the heavy work is done by Nvidia's super computers and their drivers.. and that it's completely free, means it has a good chance at being highly adopted.  It's not something only big AAA developers have the capability to implement.. thankfully.

 

So you have these new technologies, along with the fact that the CUDA shaders are ~50% more performant than the Pascal architecture, and memory bandwidth has been improved by ~50% as well, means that I think Nvidia was quite right to introduce RT cores and AI cores onto the chip and make up that difference and more with advancements in their shading architecture and memory subsystem.

 

Yes, performance takes a massive hit with Ray Tracing.. but the technology is undeniably pushing real-time graphics forward.. allowing things never before possible.  The thing is,  Nvidia didn't skimp on general raster performance just to introduce this.  The new GPUs are still massive leaps over their predecessors in standard raster graphics.

 

This just isn't possible elsewhere atm.  MS and Sony are undoubtedly working on this stuff too.  I think we could all be surprised where this goes.

 

 

 

 

11 minutes ago, TLHBO said:

But but teh power of X!!

 

It's equal to a GTX1080!!!

 

Couple pics I took from the demo..  This game is fucking glorious  

 

 

 

Crazy to think that we have an open world racing game with full time-of-day transitions and all 4 seasons.

 

I took a bunch of pics that are much better than these but I can't access them because I did them in with the photo mode... which we aren't able to share or access yet.  Hopefully when the game launches all those pics will still be there ready to share.

Ultimate Edition all the way.  

 

I think the Pre-load went live today as well.  I'll grab it at the end of the week.  

6 minutes ago, McWickedSmawt85 said:

Then you should rephrase, 'cause that's not what it sounded like you said when you responded to Cookster.

There's nothing wrong with how I phrased it.  The Switch online service has always existed... and Nintendo charging for online ISN'T a new service... nobody said it was.  Cheating has been an issue in Splatoon 2 for a while... but NOW it's relevant and important to discuss because now people will be paying for the online service.  That's what the thread means... "starting off with a bang" ... because despite the fact that they introduced Anti-cheat, cheaters are still prevailing... and this is being announced RIGHT BEFORE they start charging people.

2 minutes ago, Jon2B said:

It's bad enough cloud saves are locked behind a paywall ( that get deleted if you unsubscribe) but now Nintonto is locking controllers behind a paywall LOL 

 

In any case, potential purchasers should be aware that these special NES controllers can only be used for a handful of classic games, and they will become completely unusable if you stop subscribing to Nintendo's online service. That makes them more of a novelty than anything else, in our view.

Jesus  

6 minutes ago, McWickedSmawt85 said:

No, it's been happening for months now.  The anti-cheat when in a few weeks ago.

 

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/08/nintendo_appears_to_have_finally_added_an_anti-cheat_system_to_splatoon_2

 

Literally all the service does is lock the multiplayer behind a paywall.  That's it.  It's not adding any additional hurdles for cheaters to get over that we know of.

 

 

That's my point...  Now that they'll have paying customers for online... the onus is on them to provide a cheat free experience...  

 

Nintendo added measures to the game a while back to combat this... what this is doing now, and what the timing is saying is "Hey Nintendo... we can still cheat... and soon people will be paying for the privilege to have to deal us..."

 

That's why it's relevant.  

Just now, Cookester15 said:

But the service isn't running yet

The service IS running... it's their network..  Games already use the network... Now they are simply starting to charge people to use it.

 

The whole reason why this is of relevance is because RIGHT BEFORE they go to start charging people to play online... this happens.

1 minute ago, Cookester15 said:

This game already had online, Nintendo's new service has nothing to do with a cheater currently playing splatoon before the service launches 

It has something to do with the service... because now this happens just as they are beginning to charge people to use it  

 

11 minutes ago, Jon2B said:

I was downloading planet coaster and steam kept cutting out .

 

Went over to origin and was getting 25MB 

 

Battlenet 25MB 

 

Xbl 25MB

 

Steam

What do you mean cutting out?  lmao.. that sounds like a Jonb issue  

1 minute ago, madmaltese said:

Do you think they are going to move forward with the franchise though? I think it is pretty much an identical Deus Ex situation where they will shelve it for a while and tbh I think that was the plan all along given they already took their A team off it and by all accounts their are prioritizing their Marvel games

Yea, I think Eidos will continue on with the franchise.  I think they'll look at the next stage in the evolution of Tomb Raider as a chance to reflect on what works and what doesn't and use this as motivation to improve and change things up further.

 

If they're thinking of releasing another trilogy with this same gameplay loop.... even as a huge fan of these reboots... it will be dead in the water.  I'm pretty sure they realize it by now.

1 minute ago, モンキー said:

They won't shelve an IP as big as Tomb Raider over one flop unless they want to reduce their overall AAA SP game output. Would like to see Crystal Dynamics be the ones to reboot it again though. 

 

 

Yea, I know it's unlikely.. but I don't want to see these guys bleeding money.  I want them to have good success with this franchise.  I'm very pleased with how Eidos has handled this game honestly..  If they took over the franchise I wouldn't mind at all.  Of course CD would be fine as well... 

1 minute ago, madmaltese said:

The worrying part is that the Rise inflation of sales numbers came from huge discounts later in it's life so even the Rise to TR comparison using total sales is poor cause the Reboot had a big launch at full price. Rise had a fairly well publicized disaster launch on the Xbox One. Another worrying aspect is why did Square release both in the shadow of other giant games (Fallout 4 and now Spiderman), especially considering Shadow went gold in late July. 

 

Yeah I agree regarding how Square has felt handled these where the first was the big revolution then the rest are just pretty much more of the same. They did the same with Deus Ex and had the same disaster in sales with the sequel. Shame because all are high quality titles. Seems like they just can't learn from their mistakes though. 

Yep.  The problem with designing a trilogy of games with very much the exact same gameplay loop is that people get worn out and stop caring.  They had a huge launch with the reboot... but some people realized that it wasn't there thing... many of those people decide they are done with the series right then and there.  Rise comes... stumbles a bit out of the gate, and launches exclusively to Xbox... again.. it does well enough... but due to being the same gameplay loop as the original, it's not drawing in new people and growing the franchise.. By this time... people may have been let down by Rise of the TR and lost any faith in a sequel... let alone one that's being developed by a different company.  Again, you get another drop in purchasers.

 

But it's not all clear cut and dry like that.. as we all know.  There's so many factors like the pricing, the release timing... the competition... the quality of the product... and not to mention, now more than ever it's harder to judge if a game is truly successful based on specific numbers alone.  There's all these different versions of games like this now... season passes... DLCs... soundtracks.

 

I think it's understandable that this series has taken the trajectory it has.  I'm playing Shadow of the TR and it's could very well end up my favorite one.. but some people don't like all this collecting shit.. and after 2 games of it... they might not be willing to bother until this one reaches a deep sale price.

 

I hope the game does well enough that they can move on from this "origin story" and maybe design a new game with a different gameplay style which could be interesting to a wider audience.  This team is definitely capable of creating high quality games... they just need a different direction now.

10 minutes ago, madmaltese said:

Since when is each subsequent sequel having a 50% drop off in sales considered standard? 

 

If anything you're supposed to grow the brand not be near 80% down by the end of the trilogy. 

 

Well those games aren't done selling yet...  Those numbers come from massive sales later on in the games life.  Rise could eventually reach TR2013s numbers, Shadow could eventually reach Rise's numbers.   Shadow could be doing much better than these numbers suggest already.

 

And I said with a "series like this"... typically games like these usually cause series fatigue where they don't change enough between releases.

 

 

It's currently #1 and #6 still on the Steam Global Top Sellers list.

 

Steamspy has it at 200-500K, although it's only been released for 2 days, so the numbers will be very inaccurate and usually on the low end.  It usually takes a week to get a decent sense of what the first few days sales are like.

 

Tomb Raider 2013 has sold 5,000,000 - 10,000,000

Rise of the Tomb Raider has sold 2,000,000 - 5,000,000

 

Shadow should get between 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 easily enough.  Pretty standard falloff for a series like this.

4 minutes ago, Jon2B said:

I Kno so . Origin , xbl and even barflenet are faster and more consistent 

Nah... Origin doesn't report speed correctly and neither does XBL.  Battle.net is slower.

 

Steam >>>>  

1 minute ago, Jon2B said:

Steam is probably the slowest .

If you say so  

1 minute ago, DynamiteCop! said:

Searching doesn't do you any good when you're just looking for good games with no specificity in mind, you have to wade through what is now easily 12,000 garbage titles just to find something good. 

Let me ask you a question.... so uh... how do you know a game is good or not when you haven't played it??

 

 

You read reviews  

 

There's an Explore tab which essentially gives you recommendations... there's curators... 

 

You have the ability to ignore all games by certain publishers/devs, genres, tags... ect.. so that you NEVER see them.

 

You literally DON'T have to look around much at all to find good games... lmao.  Good games are everywhere on Steam.. and it's VERY easy to ignore the thousands of shitty games.  It's literally more work for you to go through your racks of stacked games and find the one you want... pull it out, put the disc in... and then finally play.

 

Your argument is lame.