Screenshot of the Month March 2011 [Winner announced!]

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 1:47 pm

serengeor wrote:
ent1ty wrote:
serengeor wrote: Well I don't think that something should win just because its using a "complex" technique, normal viewer would just see random lights in the scene.
You should instead create some sort of level that could use it to make it more appealing.
Not trying to flame you, just my opinion.
Well the problem is, i'm not an artist, so i can't create some nice level. And since this is a coder's forum, i though implementing a nice technique would be good enough.
I understand that as I'm not a good artist myself, but this competition should be about nice scenes instead of just random things, you could have just used some freely available models/scenes and used your deferred renderer there, that would make it a lot better for this competition

Well, this is pretty much a metter of taste and opinion. As an example, I find scenes with fantasy models often quite distracting, while open terrains or technical drawing are rather appealing to me. This even includes these strictly technical tech demos as ent1ty showed here. Just check my example 23 (IIRC, the SMesh handling one), which is pretty similar from the objects, and looks IMHO pretty nice.
Whether such an image will have a chance to win is still open of course, but having such an entry is definitely welcome. After all, this entry could even win if no one ever knew about the actual techniques used to render it, just from being nice to look at. Who cares.

Mel · Post by **Mel** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:25 pm

IMO, antialiasing is overrated, and the lack of AA is unnoticeable to me. One of the most interesting deferred rendering screens i've seen in a long time in this forum.

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:30 pm

Mel wrote:IMO, antialiasing is overrated, and the lack of AA is unnoticeable to me.

Exactly, AA is just an optional final polishing tool, not a required element
If a scene doesn't look good without AA, it won't look any better with AA

Mel · Post by **Mel** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:34 pm

Yep, besides, the funny thing of the antialiasing is that it eats quite a lot of processing power that can be used somewhere else. Having the option is enough.

serengeor · Post by **serengeor** » Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:05 pm

As an example, I find scenes with fantasy models often quite distracting, while open terrains or technical drawing are rather appealing to me. This even includes these strictly technical tech demos as ent1ty showed here.

Yeah, its a matter of taste, but still a nice scene using this would be much more eye catchy than just a dark terrain with randomly colored lights

viejodani · Post by **viejodani** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:46 am

Antialiasing was more of a solution as games in 3D were maturing slowly. It added a level of realism that was very appreciated at that time. With low poly meshes and low def textures. It was bigger deal back then.

Nowadays, only a few care about AA and many developers use it completely for screen capture while in action you start to see that the game does not. With the current artist and the polycount many computers and engines can handle, AA is not as important ad back then

hendu · Post by **hendu** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 7:07 am

I disagree, lack of AA is very noticable to me in stills, and still noticable in moving picture. It's a significant contributor to lack of immersion, "hurts my eyes, and reminds me how that ugly thing* is merely a game".

I guess I should've put irony tags around my post, I do know it's the major lacking point of deferred. It's very much undervalued, which is why I pointed it out. It may just be more important to a successful game than you guys think

* ugly thing as a generic term, not referring to the posted pic.

ent1ty · Post by **ent1ty** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:14 am

Don't you worry, i'm gonna provide an antialiasing post processing shader for you guys who can't live without it

For the rest of you - thanks for supporting me

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 1:40 pm

hendu wrote:I disagree, lack of AA is very noticable to me in stills, and still noticable in moving picture. It's a significant contributor to lack of immersion, "hurts my eyes, and reminds me how that ugly thing* is merely a game".

I guess I should've put irony tags around my post, I do know it's the major lacking point of deferred. It's very much undervalued, which is why I pointed it out. It may just be more important to a successful game than you guys think

* ugly thing as a generic term, not referring to the posted pic.

I leave out AA in most of the games I play, the slight removal of jaggies isn't worth the large overhead it brings to me (even though my machine could easily handle a high AA level)

It also seems that when running at high resolutions, AA gets even more redundant (I mostly run games at 1600x1200 or 1920x1080)

hendu · Post by **hendu** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:08 pm

Interestingly, on console games AA is usually permanently on whenever possible (read: not on the wii

).

I agree on the large resolutions in general, but not on the usual display. If only we had better screens, with a DPI of 200 or over, one wouldn't need AA.

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:36 pm

hendu wrote:Interestingly, on console games AA is usually permanently on whenever possible (read: not on the wii ).

I agree on the large resolutions in general, but not on the usual display. If only we had better screens, with a DPI of 200 or over, one wouldn't need AA.

A flatpanel's display DPI is the same as its maximum resolution you know, and running a lower-resolution game on a higher-resolution display mostly does not give a better result, AA actually originated from the exactly opposite idea: using a high-resolution image on a lower resolution display

And yes with most consoles they seem to enforce a standard AA level on a low level, I believe the Xbox 360 enforces a minimum AA of 2x for example

But then again, most console games don't have to run at very high resolutions (how many console games actually run natively at a resolution of 1920x1080?) and just get upscaled to fit your display, and they can be extremely optimized since they only have to be run on a single platform

Strong99 · Post by **Strong99** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:11 am

Vote now for the best screenshot of March 2011!
The poll will be active until April the 5th

Mel · Post by **Mel** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:54 am

hendu wrote:Interestingly, on console games AA is usually permanently on whenever possible (read: not on the wii ).

I agree on the large resolutions in general, but not on the usual display. If only we had better screens, with a DPI of 200 or over, one wouldn't need AA.

Don't think it is that often. AA is very memory demanding, and the video memory that can be dedicated to antialias isn't precisely a lot on consoles. On Xbox360, the amount of video memory that support antialias is 10Mb. When that memory runs out, the system starts using Tile Based Deferred Rendering on its own. Which is somewhat slower than the regular rendering.

The memory usage for a display buffer of 1280x720x2*MSAA its around 7 mb, so there is little space else to more stuff. Using 4*MSAA enables instantly the TBDR. If the framebuffer must be of 1920x1080, there is no room for AA.

Consoles, on the other hand, are closed devices, and if the program is well planned, the antialiasing can be always enabled.

Radikalizm · Post by **Radikalizm** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 7:27 pm

Since we were talking about AA, here's a very nice solution posted on gamedev.net
http://www.iryoku.com/mlaa/

This gives very fast and very nice results, and can be applied perfectly to any type of renderer

Voted for jorgerosa btw, very nice and polished scene!

hendu · Post by **hendu** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 7:45 pm

Radikalizm wrote:Since we were talking about AA, here's a very nice solution posted on gamedev.net
http://www.iryoku.com/mlaa/

This gives very fast and very nice results, and can be applied perfectly to any type of renderer

Voted for jorgerosa btw, very nice and polished scene!

Yep, I was waiting for them to release sources for months

I couldn't get the only other public MLAA implementation to work, back when I tried it.

Small downside that it's HLSL only, but porting should still be fairly doable.