Tessellation, years later

[yottabit]

So probably the most hyped feature of DX11, I honestly don't play many new cutting-edge games but can't recall any particularly meaningful uses of Tesellation in games. I wanted to ask you all, what (if any) games out there made good use of Tessellation?

Was it worth anything or was it just another overhyped feature?

Was tessellation in PC games held back due to the stagnation of consoles? If that's so do you think we'll see a rise in it's use following the next gen console launches?

 

[bystander36]

The best use of Tessellation was in Crysis 2 with the DX11 patch, and almost mind blowing with the Maldohd 4.0 mod. The roads and walls come alive.

It's actually the "Displacement mapping" that is awesome, but it is a form of tessellation.

It is use to more mild effects in a lot of other games.

 

[f1sherman]

The best use of Tessellation was in Crysis 2 with the DX11 patch, and almost mind blowing with the Maldohd 4.0 mod. The roads and walls come alive.

I hope you've prepared your hyperium shields; the army of red does not negotiate when it comes to Crysis 2.

Anyway idd Crysis 2 had the fullest tessellation implementaion,
but Assassin's creed III snow was the biggest graphics game changer when it comes to that particular tech

Other than that, just like any other tech - if it's used prominently, ppl will say it's overdone and sticks out,
and if it's used in a bigger picture then it is meh...you can turn it off w/o losing much (similarly to what OP hints)

I just wish they lose hexagons when drawing valves, heads, barrels etc

 

[Stuka87]

Its used all over in lots of games. You just don't notice it as there typically no way to disable it.

As for Crysis 2, I consider this to be the worst use of it ever. Even on nVidia cards it caused a huge drop in FPS in certain areas. Plenty of videos on youtube showing big fps drops. Some when looking at a fairly basic area that has needles amounts of tessallation for no real reason.

 

[bystander36]

With a high end system, and the Maldohd 4.0 mod, the displacement mapping was pretty incredible. Without the mod, it was still pretty good, but you really have to try that mod out. I did not recall any problems with FPS. I even played with the mod in 3D Vision and maintained 60+ FPS almost the whole time, with a few dips into the 50's.

I also don't know why this would be upsetting to AMD users, when I first started playing the game, I was using 6950's. It worked fine, from what I recall.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Well, wasn't there like an ocean of tessellation under the map that lagged everyone unfairly and was never fixed?

 

[bystander36]

I can only give you my experience. I didn't play it maxed out on 6950's, but it worked well on 680's. The Maldohd mod fixes a lot of problems and uses a lot more tessellation.

Oh yeah, I recall not too long after release, the AMD CCC added a new slider to control how much tessellation was able to be used. Based on your recall, I wonder if Crysis 2 is the reason for that slider.

 

[boxleitnerb]

While Unigine Heaven surely has overdone it, I would like to see much much more tessellation. Most of todays games still have a lot of flat surfaces which in 2013 is unacceptable I think.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

While Unigine Heaven surely has overdone it, I would like to see much much more tessellation. Most of todays games still have a lot of flat surfaces which in 2013 is unacceptable I think.

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

 

[Qbah]

Crysis 2 with Maldo HD 4.0 was rather incredible. No idea how much it was used in Crysis 3 but Psycho's model looked incredible. Or the other characters, like Rasch.

 

[BigChickenJim]

Tessellation can look amazing if it's implemented right and you have high-end equipment, but as of right now the performance cost is so high that I don't think it's worth it if you aren't running a NASA build.

Uningine Heaven at full tess absolutely devours my 2x 7870 setup, and I mean like 30-50% performance loss. Not worth it in my book.

 

[gorobei]

tessellation of displacement mapped subdivision surface meshes will be significant as soon as people stop using dx9. aside from bf3 no game has truly been full dx11 with non trivial use of tessellation.

as long as developers still target their games for any platform with a dx9 path, they wont take full advantage of adaptive tess, instancing, displacement maps, or more advanced lighting models.

a model pipeline that is designed from the base up to use displacement maps, surface normal maps, and tessellate based on camera distance is so radically different from a dx9 mesh pipeline that you would have to build every model twice over. no developer has/will ever do that.

as soon and xbone and ps4 become mainstream and any windows ver older than vista is retired, you will see games that take proper advantage of dx11/OGL1.4 features.

 

[zlatan]

Was it worth anything or was it just another overhyped feature?

Sure it's drastically overhyped, but it's still a very good feature.

Was tessellation in PC games held back due to the stagnation of consoles? If that's so do you think we'll see a rise in it's use following the next gen console launches?

I'm sure that tessellation is a way to the future but now there are too many problems with the current implementation. The actual pipelines use the NoSplit tessellation model, which is the worst of all. It's very limited in adaptive tessellation, and mostly produce cracks along patch boundaries. We must replace this with DiagSplit, which is performs adaptive crack-free tessellation. Also we need a quad-fragment merging pipeline to boost rasterizer efficiency with small triangles.
Also implementing tessellation is not easy. Writing the code is not a problem, but the developers don't have time, money and human resources to design a game that looks good with and without tessellation. This is a huge problem.

 

[boxleitnerb]

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

 

[Ibra]

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

Because of AMD...
http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/catalyst-hotfix-11-1a-amd-admits-defeat-in-tessellation/

... and Crytek, since they want to make Cryengine 3 more consoles friendly removing PC features.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0ffBZI5PpM 2:20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do5AxRLIDDY 6:25

Even Assassin's Creed 4 will have plants physics. :thumbsup:

 

[boxleitnerb]

Hm I don't know about AMD. Crysis 3 is a Gaming Evolved title, but it has entered into the program very late. Basically AMD paid EA/Crytek money shortly before release to be allowed to bundle the game exclusively and advertise with it. No optimizations took place, and Crysis 3 runs up to 50% faster on Nvidia hardware.

I find the console explanation much more likely.

 

[Imouto]

The problem is basically Crysis 2. In other words developers doing things wrong.

Anyway avoiding tessellation can save a lot of man hours when modeling and developing a game. You can also avoid performance issues.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TessellationDX11.html

 

[zlatan]

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

They use different solutions for the problems. Like Pixel Accurate Displacement Mapping. It don't need to use extreme polygon count and the result is better.

 

[boxleitnerb]

They use different solutions for the problems. Like Pixel Accurate Displacement Mapping. It don't need to use extreme polygon count and the result is better.

The result is less plastic. Most surfaces in Crysis 3 look flat compared to Crysis 2. In my eyes it definitely is not better, but worse.

 

[sontin]

They use different solutions for the problems. Like Pixel Accurate Displacement Mapping. It don't need to use extreme polygon count and the result is better.

There is not alternative for real geometry. If there would be something then there is no reason for Tessellation at all.

 

[zlatan]

There is not alternative for real geometry. If there would be something then there is no reason for Tessellation at all.

And why do we want real geometry? You see pixels on your screen. If you get the same pixels with real geometry and an alternate solution than why bother about it? The alternate solution is faster and with the same quality that's an advantage.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Is this alternate solution good from any viewing angle? Why was it not used everywhere in Crysis 3? Especially brick walls.

 

[SirPauly]

I don't mind a mix of tessellation and other features based on hardware isn't quite there to tessellate everything yet, according to CryTek!

 

[Black Octagon]

I thought it was done reasonably well in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Came with barely any performance hit, too (though that game was never very demanding compared to the likes of BF3)

 

[imported_bman]

I am with gorobei on this. Once engines are designed from the ground up with tessellation we will see its full utility. Using tessellation to replace lod swaps with dynamic lod is going to be big. It could also enable some interesting options to developers such as using a dynamic lod systems to maintain a targeted frame rate.