Dynamic weather and light conditions not in Gran Turismo Sport
- Thread starter djm99
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- 14,436
- Los Angeles, CA
- Lma_robot
- lImaRobotl
If it's not dynamic, wouldn't that classify it as pre-rendered?
From what I've understood with video games, is that it's more difficult to do it in multiple's of 15 than it is of 30. From what I gathered, it's built that way to go a long with refresh rates of TV's.
EDIT: Treed.
ColouredBadger
(Banned)
- 396
- England
- ColouredBadger
Refresh rates work based on Hertz and their rates. TV's can go up to 75Hz (maybe higher, I don't know), and this is where they can go in terms of gaming. Refresh Rates are in 15's as far as I know, so a 45 is possible in terms of TV, but it's ideal because it's weird in gaming. Whereas 75Hz could work, and be completely possible to have games at 70+ FPS, and 75Hz and then lock them down at 60FPS on 60hz refresh for silky smooth gaming.
- 14,436
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- Lma_robot
- lImaRobotl
It might depend on country, but TV's here are generally 60hz, 120hz, 240z, and so on. They never go into multiples by 15, more so they seem to just double from the base of 60hz. The only ones I see that do those odd Hz( and they are very few, and far in between) seem to be budget, or very, very crappy computer monitors. The vast majority follow the 60/120/240 scale.
- 28,470
- Windsor, Ontario, Canada
- Johnnypenso
If you can't tell the difference between 1280 (it was 1280 not 1440) x 1080 and 1920 x 1080 you might need a new monitor or need to sit a little closer.
ColouredBadger
(Banned)
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- ColouredBadger
Some HD TV's do 75Hz, but they're quite rare and expensive. For instance, a Sharp FullHD TV does 100Hz, which isn't in the multiples of 30 which you claim all TV's are in. TV's have a variety of Refresh Rates, that don't fit into 30's.
Monitors. They do 55Hz through to 120Hz, including 75Hz. However, if you use a Monitor TV (32 Inch or larger) then you can get 75Hz quite easily as well as going up to 120Hz, or even 240Hz if you spend enough.
Standard UHD TV's run at 120Hz (to my knowledge).
Yeah. It must be country based because I have a 20 inch 75hz TV that I used to run my PC through because of the HDMI output on my graphics card. A Samsung UHD TV is available here that has 1Mhz (1000Hz). That's just crazy.
- 1,437
- The Motherland
- Manasseh257
My question is, Is PD choosing not to push the limits on the PS4 right now? Or is it actually incapable of having dynamic conditions while holding 60 fps. The fact that no other racing game on current-gen has dynamic conditions AND 60 fps kinda worries me. And I'm not trying to dish out $400+ for a new "powerful" version of the current console I have.
Quite honestly if the system itself is incapable, iont see how the PS4 was so much easier to work with than the PS3 as Kaz claimed before..
Quite honestly if the system itself is incapable, iont see how the PS4 was so much easier to work with than the PS3 as Kaz claimed before..
- 14,436
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- Lma_robot
- lImaRobotl
Yes, that may be true, but the majority fall in line with the whole multiples of 60's thing. I've not once seen a TV at the market with a different refresh rate. I notice it's far more common for PC monitors rather than TV's.
I'm also finding some mishaps from people that game on console using a Sharp 100hz TV;
These guys offers a good explanation on the subject;
With games being ran at 30/60, if at a 60hz(or divisible of it), then it will be able to accurately and easily bump it up to and match it up wit likely minimal to no problems. With a TV at such an odd refresh rate like 75, or 100, it's taking out half a frame and not being able to reflect it accurately, resulting in problems ranging from sloppy fps, to screen tearing.
These people are not the definitive answer on the subject, but they do offer good insight on it. While I'm not the best-versed on this subject, this is what I could put together from a few quick google searches.
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- 8,723
The concept of a full-screen refresh is outmoded in the context of interactive, synthetic media like computer games. There will likely be progress on that front within a decade - it's started already with nVidia's Freesync and equivalents, but will probably appear first in HMDs.
The issue is primarily the shadow maps, which are usually something like texture-based "depth maps" from the perspective of the light; you need at least one per light, but only the sun was dynamically rendered in GT6's case. Re-rendering them every time the sun moves perceptibly is expensive, as it involves a depth-only raster scan of the geometry scene into the map at its chosen resolution. Doing it every frame is madness!
That is why the shadows were lower resolution on time-change versions of tracks than the fixed time ones on PS3, because they'd take too long to calculate at the same resolution, resulting in visible stepping (like you see in other games) at the higher time acceleration rates.
An alternative of course would be to limit the rate at which time advances, but you can still potentially get better quality shadows through "offline" rendering at any given resolution, because you can be longer about it.
The lighting itself is still entirely dynamic, by necessity, through the fact that the cars move within a scene that contains a range of light sources (sun, trackside illumination, headlights etc.) in different places, meaning the cars need to be lit differently according to position and orientation. That's achieved using a combination of environment maps (rendered from the scene at a low resolution from the viewpoint of the car, originally for reflections, but can be used as a light probe to set the ambient colouring: "image-based lighting") and direct light sources such as street lamps, the sun etc., the latter of which are comparatively simple, depending on the shading model used.
Not necessarily, certainly not in entirety. Parts of any given scene will be pre-rendered (e.g. textures and maps of all kinds) and others will be rendered every frame, or every other frame or at some interval on the fly. All rendering, whether it's called "realtime" or "pre-rendered" effectively uses a combination of both, the only difference really being the time it takes to obtain output.
The issue is primarily the shadow maps, which are usually something like texture-based "depth maps" from the perspective of the light; you need at least one per light, but only the sun was dynamically rendered in GT6's case. Re-rendering them every time the sun moves perceptibly is expensive, as it involves a depth-only raster scan of the geometry scene into the map at its chosen resolution. Doing it every frame is madness!
That is why the shadows were lower resolution on time-change versions of tracks than the fixed time ones on PS3, because they'd take too long to calculate at the same resolution, resulting in visible stepping (like you see in other games) at the higher time acceleration rates.
An alternative of course would be to limit the rate at which time advances, but you can still potentially get better quality shadows through "offline" rendering at any given resolution, because you can be longer about it.
The lighting itself is still entirely dynamic, by necessity, through the fact that the cars move within a scene that contains a range of light sources (sun, trackside illumination, headlights etc.) in different places, meaning the cars need to be lit differently according to position and orientation. That's achieved using a combination of environment maps (rendered from the scene at a low resolution from the viewpoint of the car, originally for reflections, but can be used as a light probe to set the ambient colouring: "image-based lighting") and direct light sources such as street lamps, the sun etc., the latter of which are comparatively simple, depending on the shading model used.
- 3,157
- United Kingdom
- ask
Well...
Part of me is pretty sad that we'll no longer have dynamic TOD and weather, but another part of me is happy that PD have taken this step. I mean, Forza 6 did it, and that has an incredibly stable frame rate, so here's hoping PD are able to pull off the same thing.
Part of me is pretty sad that we'll no longer have dynamic TOD and weather, but another part of me is happy that PD have taken this step. I mean, Forza 6 did it, and that has an incredibly stable frame rate, so here's hoping PD are able to pull off the same thing.
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- Lma_robot
- lImaRobotl
Thanks for all that, it was informative 👍
With that said, would it be safe to assume that what is going on in Forza is also technically dynamic in a sense as well? In that game, the light sources you mention produce shadows in the way your explaining throughout the game.
- 8,723
Most games nowadays have what is called "dynamic lighting", which was new to real time computer game graphics in the late' 90s (but not at all new to real time graphics per se). It basically means either the light moves, or the geometry moves within the lit space, or both. Contrast with "baked lighting", which refers to the ability to render lighting phenomena into the textures somehow, very useful for scenery. Many games use both for different things, sometimes even in combination (e.g. Quake II, which modifies the environment's lightmaps in real time; video of Q3 here, watch the player's glow march on the underlying lightmap texel grid).
What Forza did not have that GT had, if relevant, is most simply expressed as "dynamic time of day" and "dynamic weather", filtered through players' unwavering expectation of graphic fidelity for the era. How that is achieved delves too far into complexity with terminology that most people would struggle to follow; hence this unhelpful aside into "dynamic lighting".
In short it comes down to dynamically lighting the entire scenery with moving lights, whose colours and intensities vary, accompanied by moving shadows, cast by the scenery onto itself. You can still use "baked lighting" here, by modifying the contribution of direct and "ambient" levels and fading the shadows, or using several maps and interpolating / switching between them, and I've seen several games take that approach - often the direction of lighting does not change, only its intensity. GT basically did this for the overcast weather, but that's where the IBL-based ambient / diffuse lighting of the cars came into its own. If you have to calculate any of that on the fly, it stands to reason you are likely to suffer a quality problem as compared with having all the time in the world to calculate it before the game ships.
I suspect Forza's historical use of "baked lighting" would halt somewhere around shadowing anyway, e.g. ambient occlusion and shadow maps, just as GT's does in the non-dynamic locations - we've come a long way since Quake. The car shadows would be handled by something designed to take into account varying angles between car and light source. Self-shadowing is tricky (and another layer deeper into "dynamic lighting"), but GT5 had that as well.
Now, dynamic, real-time global illumination (indirect lighting), on the other hand, is where we should be today and GT was for a time closest purely due to its use of IBL during gameplay, and not just during photomode - even on PS2. Whilst the lighting of the scene itself is not necessarily dynamic or taking account of light bounces, the lighting of the cars is taking into account the indirect lighting due to their environment as well as that coming directly from hand-placed light sources. Hence "GT has good lighting". But other devs have cottoned on by now, and the state of the art is advancing ever rapidly.
- 536
- United States
This really disappoints me. I am hopeful that I can set the clock to many different times on all tracks. I do not want just a few of them to offer time and weather.
- 1,159
- Finland
- CONTINUE_F5
Please, don't go the "Kaz is a liar" route. It is well known fact that PS3 was many times a nightmare platform for devs.
Kaz said in a recent interview (video) that the team actually enjoys the developement process now, compared to PS3.
It seems they have reached the old PS4's limits. The truth is a lot of optimizing is needed to polish GTS. We could see it in the London event footage. Anyway, I believe GTS is going to be the prettiest GT ever on it's release day.
Reaching the limits is not any news at current gen remembering various game titles, for example Fallout 4's latest DLC which is a slide show occasionally (and it is a 30fps game!).
LeGeNd-1
Premium
- 7,264
- Australia
- GTP_LeGeNd-1
It is pretty disappointing for me. After seeing more tracks in GT6 get the time and weather transition, I expected ALL tracks to have it in the next GT, and now they dropped this bombshell...In the PS3 generation they can say it's all due to the hardware limitation, but now with the hardware being orders of magnitude more powerful and they still can't do it? I know there's VR requirements but still.
This also means we can expect no proper 24h endurance races (or 24 minutes even). Seeing the sun come up after the long darkness in GT5's Nurb 24h was one of the most amazing gaming moments in my life. Won't happen this time I'm afraid.
This also means we can expect no proper 24h endurance races (or 24 minutes even). Seeing the sun come up after the long darkness in GT5's Nurb 24h was one of the most amazing gaming moments in my life. Won't happen this time I'm afraid.
- 2,012
How about 75hz and 144hz monitors? Or CRTs, that at each resolution had many, many options?
Somebody here posted different values are only found in budget TVs and crappy monitors. Nothing farther from the truth, as 144hz LCD monitors are by far the best for gaming today, and professional CRTs destroy any TV today in all regards (outside using a ton of space).
And about the topic in discussion, I think it's a good idea to remove dynamic weather in what's a spinoff game with VR capabilities. Dynamic weather is practically impossible to optimize. For example in GT5 that made FPS go from 60 to 20, as tested by Digital Foundry.
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- Johnnypenso
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- Lma_robot
- lImaRobotl
That was me. It was not far from the truth, because given the parameters and the exact refresh rate he was mentioning, anything within those confines where far and few in-between, which was exactly my point. My point was that the vast, vast majority of TVs on the market follow the 60/120/240 refresh rates. I included budget monitors because that's what most of them where, within 100hz. I'm not too familiar with monitors so I didn't even know there would be one at 144hz, but still with FPS on a desktop essentially being up to the user in most cases, it wouldn't be as bad a scenario as a locked frame rate with an refresh rate that doesn't match up to it, I would imagine. I can't seem to find much praise when it comes to console gaming with those odd ones.
Never had much experience with using a monitor on console though.
- 1,537
- GTP_Soundtrack
Reading this thread it seems many people are confusing frame rate and screen/pixel refresh rates. HDTV's support the following standard frame rates (input source): 23,976/24/25/29,97/30/50/59,94/60. Depending manufacturer and model HDTV's will, on their own, refresh/display those flows at higher rates. Figures with multiples of 50 and 60 are reminiscent of PAL/NTSC ages.
- 75
- United Kingdom
- dance1211
It makes complete sense to have static time of day if you have a race that is at most 2 hours or so. However if GTS decides that they want to go down the "Endurance racing" route then they have screwed themselves over. Doing a 4 hour, 6 hour, 12 hour or 24 hour race just will feel like more of a chore if there's no sense of progression. Racing until night fall is much more impaction than racing until 150 laps.
If it is because of the VR then I would have it so when you go in the pits, the game would load the new time of day track into memory and now you race on it instead. It's not exactly pretty but it's much better than a 24 hour race where everything is daylight.
If it is because of the VR then I would have it so when you go in the pits, the game would load the new time of day track into memory and now you race on it instead. It's not exactly pretty but it's much better than a 24 hour race where everything is daylight.
- 14,436
- Los Angeles, CA
- Lma_robot
- lImaRobotl
I don't think anyone is getting confused by that. A TV will handle any framerate you throw at it. That is not the discussion, however. More so that from what I've found that when you have a game outputting at 30/60fps, that a TV that has a refresh rate that is in multiples of that will look more fluid and natural, and just flows better. Like I said, it was hard to find so much as good praise about someone gaming on equipment with the odd refreshrates.
I haven't been able to test that myself, as I've not once seen a TV at the store that offered a refresh rate that wasn't in those multiples.
I myself have only gamed on a 60hz LCD, but I've seen my friends 240Hz LCD and I do like it much more. I enjoy that unnatural smoothness.
Seemed to have taken this far off topic
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