Tessellation, years later

[toyota]

Any one know why Crysis 3 was such a let down, when it comes to tessellation? Especially compared to Crysis 2.

well the overall graphics in Crysis 3 make Crysis 2 look like a joke.

 

[jimhsu]

This is why Crysis's implementation of tessellation is not, in fact, a good thing. As an amateur modeler, I screamed in horror upon seeing that ... solid polygon blob thing up there in the images.

And of course, the lovely "simulated water" -- under dry land with absolutely no water showing:

There is tessellation (as in Unigene, though that's subjective as well), and then there's tessellation that adds absolutely no detail (note said concrete slab is still pretty poorly textured, and has pretty poor AF on top of that) while chomping through graphical power...

 

[moonbogg]

Marketing, yeah? Just another thing to sell, YES?

 

[lamedude]

The old consoles didn't have the hardware to do tesselation so I expect this to change once primary development shifts to ps4 and xbone

360 can do tessellation but AFAIK the only game that used it was Viva Piñata.

 

[Blitzvogel]

360 can do tessellation but AFAIK the only game that used it was Viva Piñata.

It's tessellation engine has to be used much earlier in the pipeline and is much less flexible IIRC.

Halo 3 used it for water I recall.

 

[boxleitnerb]

This is why Crysis's implementation of tessellation is not, in fact, a good thing. As an amateur modeler, I screamed in horror upon seeing that ... solid polygon blob thing up there in the images.

And of course, the lovely "simulated water" -- under dry land with absolutely no water showing:

There is tessellation (as in Unigene, though that's subjective as well), and then there's tessellation that adds absolutely no detail (note said concrete slab is still pretty poorly textured, and has pretty poor AF on top of that) while chomping through graphical power...

I removed the image for a smaller quote.
You know that in wireframe mode, certain culling techniques are not applicable, right? The devs over at Crytek said so themselves, so what you see there doesn't necessarily mean it's what gets rendered in normal mode.

Regardless of that, Crysis 2 had excellent tessellation in many places and Crysis 3 has not. That's an undeniable fact. Look at brick walls in Crysis 2 and Crysis 3.

 

[SirPauly]

Some gamers play games with wire frame and make blanket views I guess and ignore what CryTek offered about culling!

 

[Pottuvoi]

It's tessellation engine has to be used much earlier in the pipeline and is much less flexible IIRC.

Halo 3 used it for water I recall.

Halo Wars used it for terrain vector displacement as well. (Displacement in X, Y and Z axis and thus superior to standard displacement.)
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1277/HALO-WARS-The-Terrain-of

IMHO.
DX11 based tesselation has it's place, but in many cases properly used and optimized meshes with proper LoDs or dynamic LoD system might be better in both quality and speed.

 

[bystander36]

Any of you that has Crysis 2 should download all the patches and load up Maldohd 4.0 if you haven't already. I'm sure you'll be impressed. Other than that game, I haven't seen all that impresses use.

That said, not all tessellation uses has to be about more visuals, it can be used to improve performance when used in place of traditional high polygon methods.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Tomb Raider

 

[Carfax83]

Any one know why Crysis 3 was such a let down, when it comes to tessellation? Especially compared to Crysis 2.

Who said it was a letdown? Crysis 3 uses tessellation extensively as far as I can tell.

There is tessellation on practically all the vegetation, on the characters (Psycho for instance), and on the water surface when very high is enabled.

Comparison shots:

Tessellation off

Tessellation on

The effect is most clearly seen on Psycho, and on the trees in the background.

Honestly, Crysis 3 is as close to a next gen game as we have right now. The only thing I find disappointing about it is the linearity of the levels (which can't be helped due to the setting I suppose) and the physics.

The physics is especially disappointing, because I learned a few days ago that Crysis 3 uses a lot of canned animations, even for basic physics like tree destruction. Also the cloth and vegetable simulation was also disappointing, compared to what we saw in the tech demo (check 2:25) Although the tall grass looks great I admit.

This game should have used either Havok or PhysX....preferably the latter :biggrin:

 

[wilds]

Tessellation does make a cool difference.
I notice there is a sweet spot because Tessallation can become very resource costly and look amazing, or very resource-light and not noticeable.

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/ar...ics-breakdown-and-performance-guide#4a-engine

A good read.

 

[Red Hawk]

Halo Wars used it for terrain vector displacement as well. (Displacement in X, Y and Z axis and thus superior to standard displacement.)
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1277/HALO-WARS-The-Terrain-of

IMHO.
DX11 based tesselation has it's place, but in many cases properly used and optimized meshes with proper LoDs or dynamic LoD system might be better in both quality and speed.

That was a fascinating presentation, thank you. I was aware that the 360 had a rudimentary tessellator, but I wasn't sure if it had actually ever been put to use and if so, how.

Who said it was a letdown? Crysis 3 uses tessellation extensively as far as I can tell.

There is tessellation on practically all the vegetation, on the characters (Psycho for instance), and on the water surface when very high is enabled.

Comparison shots:

Tessellation off

Tessellation on

The effect is most clearly seen on Psycho, and on the trees in the background.

Honestly, Crysis 3 is as close to a next gen game as we have right now. The only thing I find disappointing about it is the linearity of the levels (which can't be helped due to the setting I suppose) and the physics.

The physics is especially disappointing, because I learned a few days ago that Crysis 3 uses a lot of canned animations, even for basic physics like tree destruction. Also the cloth and vegetable simulation was also disappointing, compared to what we saw in the tech demo (check 2:25) Although the tall grass looks great I admit.

This game should have used either Havok or PhysX....preferably the latter :biggrin:

If the point of those screenshots was to demonstrate advanced tessellation...it really doesn't. All I see is some basic character model tessellation, which games have been doing for some time now (like Deus Ex: Human Revolution). It's nice, but I don't see it used to the extent of Crysis 2. But the argument can be made that the environment tessellation was overdone and ultimately unnecessary for what it added to the game's visuals.

And no thank you, I'll pass on the PhysX. Even if I had an Nvidia GPU I'd want a better performing alternative.

 

[Carfax83]

If the point of those screenshots was to demonstrate advanced tessellation...it really doesn't. All I see is some basic character model tessellation, which games have been doing for some time now (like Deus Ex: Human Revolution). It's nice, but I don't see it used to the extent of Crysis 2. But the argument can be made that the environment tessellation was overdone and ultimately unnecessary for what it added to the game's visuals.

The point of the screenshots was to show that tessellation is being used in Crysis 3, in more diverse ways than it was in Crysis 2. I don't believe Crysis 2 used tessellation for characters, but only for various inorganic surfaces..

And Crysis 3 does use a lot of advanced tessellation, but the screenshots I posted admittedly don't show that. If you play the game, you'll notice that the foliage and vegetation in particular is tessellated. This is the first game to use tessellation on foliage I believe.

And no thank you, I'll pass on the PhysX. Even if I had an Nvidia GPU I'd want a better performing alternative.

What performs better than PhysX? The latest PhysX SDK is one of the highest performing physics APIs on the market and at least it gives you the option of running it on the GPU, which Havok doesn't.

 

[Red Hawk]

The point of the screenshots was to show that tessellation is being used in Crysis 3, in more diverse ways than it was in Crysis 2. I don't believe Crysis 2 used tessellation for characters, but only for various inorganic surfaces..

And Crysis 3 does use a lot of advanced tessellation, but the screenshots I posted admittedly don't show that. If you play the game, you'll notice that the foliage and vegetation in particular is tessellated. This is the first game to use tessellation on foliage I believe.

Batman: Arkham City did foliage tessellation.

What performs better than PhysX? The latest PhysX SDK is one of the highest performing physics APIs on the market and at least it gives you the option of running it on the GPU, which Havok doesn't.

It still causes performance to tank to the point where you'd want a separate GPU to do the full effect. I'm not saying that there is a better performing alternative, it's just sad that the options are so slim that it makes PhysX viable in its current state.