The Graphics Rant

[Von_Blackhardt]

*Thinks CPU load doesn't effect FPS*
*Says I have no idea what I'm talking about*

You can scream "BLUR!" till next year, it won't make it true. As gentlemen such as @Sectus and @Everglaid pointed out, it's a transparency issue that was present in other Namco UE4 games like Tekken 7 (Go compare Lili's hair from T6 to that of T7).


I don't really feel like talking about Lost Souls Aside to avoid derailing the thread further, but just wanted to point out that again, you're wrong. It moves in, gameplay too. Especially apparent in the latest video (Though I don't expect you to notice it given how obtuse you've been so far).

So it looks like they've fixed the not-moving hair. I wasn't gonna go digging up gameplay of a boring, generic action game that I don't give a shit about when everything I needed to see was in the video you showed me. The game doesn't look any less bland, in spite of the fact that the man's extra polygons now move a little bit. Why would I notice something I never looked at? You told me to look at the video you posted and there was no moving hair in gameplay. You must be dumb to think I'd go looking through footage of every build of the game when I could barely be assed to watch 15 seconds of the video you showed me. Though, if anything, it does provide something worth considering - the developer fixed the hair between builds. Would you imagine that?

I also never said CPU load doesn't affect FPS. If that's what you took away from my point, then that's unfortunate. I've been PC gaming for 25 years and I've built every PC I've ever owned from scratch. I know what the components do and how they affect performance. You, however, conflated the AI programming with the frames being drawn as though they were the same thing, once again stemming from a lack of knowledge. Also, look at some of Soul Calibur 5's stages. Some are more detailed than any environment in FFXV.

 

[ProjectTango]

So it looks like they've fixed the not-moving hair. I wasn't gonna go digging up gameplay of a boring, generic action game that I don't give a shit about when everything I needed to see was in the video you showed me. The game doesn't look any less bland, in spite of the fact that the man's extra polygons now move a little bit. Why would I notice something I never looked at? You told me to look at the video you posted and there was no moving hair in gameplay. You must be dumb to think I'd go looking through footage of every build of the game when I could barely be assed to watch 15 seconds of the video you showed me. Though, if anything, it does provide something worth considering - the developer fixed the hair between builds. Would you imagine that?

I also never said CPU load doesn't affect FPS. If that's what you took away from my point, then that's unfortunate. I've been PC gaming for 25 years and I've built every PC I've ever owned from scratch. I know what the components do and how they affect performance. You, however, conflated the AI programming with the frames being drawn as though they were the same thing, once again stemming from a lack of knowledge. Also, look at some of Soul Calibur 5's stages. Some are more detailed than any environment in FFXV.

Wut.
If A.I is handled by CPU, then it's CPU Load. Of course large number of A.I simulations will effect FPS. See the Total War games. FFXV obviously doesn't have NPCs anywhere near Total War, but it's still a decent number, coupled with the scale of the environments. It's natural that it wouldn't hit 60 FPS. How many Open World games are 60 FPS this generation, actually? Aside from MGSV which is mainly last-gen, there is none AFAIK. Because open world games are usually taxing on performance.

So tell me again why are you fixated on this 60 FPS nonsense? You struggle to understand the reason why I compared the two games from the beginning, and and think they're incomparable because one is 30 and the other is 60 FPS. All while ignoring what each game is offering technically.

Also, I've never said SC stages were empty, only that they are small in scale compared to actual open world games. So take your strawman somewhere else.

 

[Von_Blackhardt]

Wut.
If A.I is handled by CPU, then it's CPU Load. Of course large number of A.I simulations will effect FPS. See the Total War games. FFXV obviously doesn't have NPCs anywhere near Total War, but it's still a decent number, coupled with the scale of the environments. It's natural that it wouldn't hit 60 FPS. How many Open World games are 60 FPS this generation, actually? Aside from MGSV which is mainly last-gen, there is none AFAIK. Because open world games are usually taxing on performance.

So tell me again why are you fixated on this 60 FPS nonsense? You struggle to understand the reason why I compared the two games from the beginning, and and think they're incomparable because one is 30 and the other is 60 FPS. All while ignoring what each game is offering technically.

Also, I've never said SC stages were empty, only that they are small in scale compared to actual open world games. So take your strawman somewhere else.

It obviously affects the CPU load. But the CPU handles that while the GPU handles rendering frames. If the CPU hits 100%, you end up with a bottleneck which will drag your frames into the mud. However, this is a console and these games are tailored specifically so that the issue doesn't come up.

I'm comparing them because you brought it up. You brough FFXV and that shitty Lost Souls game into this conversation, comparing them to Soul Calibur and what they've done graphically. You said dumb shit like "Bamco doesn't care about the game" over a fucking hair mesh. And while making the comparison, you are talking about a game with resplendent detail that had a target of 30 FPS versus a fighting game that actually needs to run at 60FPS to work properly and going "Well why doesn't game A do the things that game B does?" The FPS is important because it explains why Bamco can't just go full tilt and make a game that has the same visual fidelity as a game that has better graphics, but runs much more slowly.

I don't care about 60 FPS, if it wasn't locked I'd be running the game at 100+, it's no skin off my back. However, fighting games MUST be at 60 FPS.

 

[Von_Blackhardt]

Wait... you didn't know that fighting games have to be at 60FPS!?

 

[ProjectTango]

It obviously affects the CPU load. But the CPU handles that while the GPU handles rendering frames. If the CPU hits 100%, you end up with a bottleneck which will drag your frames into the mud. However, this is a console and these games are tailored specifically so that the issue doesn't come up.

I'm comparing them because you brought it up. You brough FFXV and that shitty Lost Souls game into this conversation, comparing them to Soul Calibur and what they've done graphically. You said dumb shit like "Bamco doesn't care about the game" over a fucking hair mesh. And while making the comparison, you are talking about a game with resplendent detail that had a target of 30 FPS versus a fighting game that actually needs to run at 60FPS to work properly and going "Well why doesn't game A do the things that game B does?" The FPS is important because it explains why Bamco can't just go full tilt and make a game that has the same visual fidelity as a game that has better graphics, but runs much more slowly.

I don't care about 60 FPS, if it wasn't locked I'd be running the game at 100+, it's no skin off my back. However, fighting games MUST be at 60 FPS.

Did I ever say the CPU was rendering the frames? You never run out of those strawmen, I see. I only mentioned how additional strain on the CPU would effect the performance. Which it can do.

(Even though CPUs can also be used for graphics processing along with the GPUs, albeit not as efficiently... But that wasn't even my point)

SCVI already looks better than FFXV in most areas, so yes they can achieve better visual fidelity while maintaining 60 FPS... What makes FFXV more ambitious is the scale... If FFXV takes place in closed areas with two characters on screen at a time, do you honestly think it will struggle to hit 60 FPS? No, of course it fucking wouldn't. And FFXV-quality hair sure as shit won't bring a game like SCVI below 60 FPS, Hence why I brought up Lost Souls Aside. I don't know why this is hard for you to understand.

Oh yeah, and I only said Namco may not care about fixing the hair issue, not that "they don't care about the game". You constantly make up shit in your posts to try and discredit me, how disingenuous can you get?

Wait... you didn't know that fighting games have to be at 60FPS!?

HURRR

Stop double posting.

 

[Von_Blackhardt]

Did I ever say the CPU was rendering the frames? You never run out of those strawmen, I see. I only mentioned how additional strain on the CPU would effect the performance. Which it can do.

(Even though CPUs can also be used for graphics processing along with the GPUs, albeit not as efficiently... But that wasn't even my point)

SCVI already looks better than FFXV in most areas, so yes they can achieve better visual fidelity while maintaining 60 FPS... What makes FFXV more ambitious is the scale... If FFXV takes place in closed areas with two characters on screen at a time, do you honestly think it will struggle to hit 60 FPS? No, of course it fucking wouldn't. And FFXV-quality hair sure as shit won't bring a game like SCVI below 60 FPS, Hence why I brought up Lost Souls Aside. I don't know why this is hard for you to understand.

Oh yeah, and I only said Namco may not care about fixing the hair issue, not that "they don't care about the game". You constantly make up shit in your posts to try and discredit me, how disingenuous can you get?


HURRR

Stop double posting.

You really didn't know. My mind is blown.

 

[FluffyQuack]

Here's another example of what Everglaid was talking about. This is a sphere with a hair material: https://forums.unrealengine.com/filedata/fetch?id=1058097&d=1414023654

Left side uses the engine's "masked opacity" setting which clamps alpha to a 1-bit range (this is basically what all UE4 games do for hair), and right side uses blended opacity (which older games would do). And if you pay attention to the middle of the right sphere side, you can see things aren't rendered in the correct order and that messes up the transparency.

I wonder if they could fix it by ordering the hair mesh polygons based on the camera position, but I'm no expert when it comes to 3D rendering so I'm assuming there's a reason why that isn't a viable solution. The engine also supports other kinds of transparency (and it also supports forward rendering, though I don't know if you can combine it with deferred rendering), but I'm assuming it isn't easy applying it to hair as I can't find a single example of a UE4 game doing it.

Actually, here's yet another example of a UE4 game rendering hair, and this might be the ugliest example I've found so far: http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com...e6b61544dc1074b46281bc58000e.jpg?t=1512082661

Anyone here experienced with UE4 or graphics programming? Is the core problem that deferred rendering has become the most popular way to do 3d graphics, and there's no good easy way to do alpha blending with that kind of renderer?

 

[ProjectTango]

Here's another example of what Everglaid was talking about. This is a sphere with a hair material: https://forums.unrealengine.com/filedata/fetch?id=1058097&d=1414023654

Left side uses the engine's "masked opacity" setting which clamps alpha to a 1-bit range (this is basically what all UE4 games do for hair), and right side uses blended opacity (which older games would do). And if you pay attention to the middle of the right sphere side, you can see things aren't rendered in the correct order and that messes up the transparency.

I wonder if they could fix it by ordering the hair mesh polygons based on the camera position, but I'm no expert when it comes to 3D rendering so I'm assuming there's a reason why that isn't a viable solution. The engine also supports other kinds of transparency (and it also supports forward rendering, though I don't know if you can combine it with deferred rendering), but I'm assuming it isn't easy applying it to hair as I can't find a single example of a UE4 game doing it.

Actually, here's yet another example of a UE4 game rendering hair, and this might be the ugliest example I've found so far: http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com...e6b61544dc1074b46281bc58000e.jpg?t=1512082661

Anyone here experienced with UE4 or graphics programming? Is the core problem that deferred rendering has become the most popular way to do 3d graphics, and there's no good easy way to do alpha blending with that kind of renderer?

FWIW, a Korean studio is making a game with UE4, and they managed to achieve decent looking hair transparency by tinkering with the engine's source code (which come and think of it, it's available for everyone.) They have a slide show presentation here, maybe you can take a look it at it and extrapolate more stuff from it than me.

https://www.slideshare.net/KiHyunwoo/rendering-aaaquality-characters-of-project-a1

Bonus body fat ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) video that also showcases their hair

 

[FluffyQuack]

FWIW, a Korean studio is making a game with UE4, and they managed to achieve decent looking hair transparency by tinkering with the engine's source code (which come and think of it, it's available for everyone.) They have a slide show presentation here, maybe you can take a look it at it and extrapolate more stuff from it than me.

https://www.slideshare.net/KiHyunwoo/rendering-aaaquality-characters-of-project-a1

That's a good find. It's really weird how SC games used to feature some of the best of graphics within gaming, but now they're using stock rendering features in UE4 to render hair which was designed for their previous engine, and they don't do anything about it. I know previous SC lead programmers were assigned to work on Pokken after SC5, and this makes me feel they're not on this project. Maybe this is a conscious decision by Namco: have some of their projects use UE4, and then assign their best programmers on projects which are using inhouse engines.

 

[Pyrrus]

Paragon uses the unreal engine and I think the hair looks good :O I dont know much about the technical side of things but this thread sure makes me want to learn it.