News Meet the Team #6- Ben Parry (Graphics Programmer)
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I saw someone mention the specular model in the newsletter thread, and I thought "who would be telling people about that kind of thing?"
(yeah, I was at the pub)
Non blur filter AA modes (like MSAA), together with LoD transition effects, SSAO and Anisotropic Filtering are some of the things that all most modern game engines have in their arsenal for graphical fidelity. Really hoping to see some more from FDEV in that department too, fingers crossed..C:
Thank you for answering on a friday night Greg, but shouldn't you also be doing something else besides work 
Yes I know, ray tracing have been a buzz word for quite some time and usually with people referring to images with nothing but chrome, pun intended, and sharp shadows (from lights that should have area) but since iRay and all the other interactive path tracing renderers appeared in our favorite 3d-programs I thought we all had the thought 'this will be able to run real time some day in the not too far future', and the Brigade demo seemed to cut my time estimate in half..so 2018?
Aaaanyway, as you are using a deferred approach, have you seen the game Reset from the Finnish guys Theory Interactive, if not take a look:
Some screens:
http://reset-game.net/?p=380
Two videos:
http://reset-game.net/?cat=11
..talking about deferred rendering:
http://reset-game.net/?p=196#more-196
Can't wait to see the lighting adjustments Greg and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a dynamic exposure check box
Yes I know, ray tracing have been a buzz word for quite some time and usually with people referring to images with nothing but chrome, pun intended, and sharp shadows (from lights that should have area) but since iRay and all the other interactive path tracing renderers appeared in our favorite 3d-programs I thought we all had the thought 'this will be able to run real time some day in the not too far future', and the Brigade demo seemed to cut my time estimate in half..so 2018?
Aaaanyway, as you are using a deferred approach, have you seen the game Reset from the Finnish guys Theory Interactive, if not take a look:
Some screens:
http://reset-game.net/?p=380
Two videos:
http://reset-game.net/?cat=11
..talking about deferred rendering:
http://reset-game.net/?p=196#more-196
Can't wait to see the lighting adjustments Greg and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a dynamic exposure check box
Well I figured a meet the legend of Parry thread was a good place to drop some graphics terms ;-)
@JensSchmidt Doing something else besides work? Pffft (In fairness I was waiting for a match in my MOBA of choice to start and browsing the forums). However I am working now, well I was until I took a break to write this.
@Dante80 SSAO is in, not sure we're that happy with it. There is some HBAO code kicking around that I'm not sure we've integrated yet. Anisotropic filtering is fully supported, however the surfaces need marking up. MSAA isn't an option for us, but there are a number of other AA options we support.
@JensSchmidt I'll have a look at my next tea break at the links, cheers.
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Oh Greg, never say never
Add energy drinks at just the right moment and you never know what you'll get.
Oh Greg, never say never
Maybe that is why he doesn't do it?
As Head of Rendering he probably want to know for sure what he is going to get!
As Head of Rendering he probably want to know for sure what he is going to get!
Oh I know what I'll get if I add energy drinks.... and it scares me.
But Ben is correct, MSAA could work with some magic, just non trivial magic.
The Red Robots? No, it's TopatoCo/ExplodingDog
Methinks a couple of energy drink crates will get us at least OGSSAA.
I wonder what would a barrel of ouzo do..
Well, at least we know what to send with the pizza instead of Coke on Beta 2 day!
Great interview.
On the subject of planets as light sources, does this mean that E: D will implement Earthshine?
I'm going to guess that they are planning tiny light sources as representations of cities on planet surfaces. as long as it is not to expensive from a rendering perspective. love these kinds of interviews.
Original... Gangster... SSAA?Methinks a couple of energy drink crates will get us at least OGSSAA.
I wonder what would a barrel of ouzo do..
I had to look that up, I think we've got an oversampling option that can currently be enabled by text file. Greg didn't want it right there in the option screen at first release, for fear that people would turn it on and then complain about the performance.
So technically, yes. If energy drinks are inserted, you'll get at least OGSSAA.
Hopefully Ben is off doing something beyond just coding as it's Friday night.
Interesting read on Christian Shüler blog, nice to see some thought out points - thanks for the link. I'll throw in a few quick answers
We handle AA in software (mainly due to our deferred lighting). We have a couple of options that we let people choose. We might bolt on more in the future, but it'll be later in the day as it's a "low tech risk" to add more, compared to some other work. FXAA is very soft and it does smush interiors of polys, though it also fights some specular aliasing gremlins. There are definitely better out there, but it's quick and we had a version of it already.
I'd be a rich man if I got some money for every time I heard ray tracing was the future of real-time graphics. Lets just say we're not there yet (IMHO)
Dynamic Exposure (thank you for not calling it HDR
Internal shadows, in the works.
Greg
Thanks for the response Greg!
It's great having such a responsive and wonderful dev team giving us an insight into what is going on behind the scenes. :smilie:
Hope you enjoyed the pub Ben!
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Hehe, thats nice to hear.
Speaking of player fears about performance, here is an idea. Mike Evans did a very good job putting explanatory tool-tips to the almost two hundred different key/controller bindings. These really help the player a lot in determining what each setting affects, and if we get in the future different tabs/menus for specific control groups I think that the options menu will be perfect.
Recently, DBOBE has spoken about the fact that ED is made as a future-proof product, easily pushing current gen hardware to its limits. I think that putting advanced (and GPU hungry) graphical options in the game (and not as a line in a text cfg file) would not hurt it, provided FDEV does the same thing with graphics options as it did with the controls and provides documentation for all options in tooltips. For example, you could put in a hover tooltip for the AA modes in the options menu, listing what they do and how big a hit in performance they have.
Cheers..C:
ps: on a completely unrelated note, what is your favorite energy drink Ben and Greg?
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Just added it to my todo list. Didn't know we even had the ability to do it, but the GUI guys showed me where to break the options screen......
There are pro's and con's to this. Maybe a halfway house is an advanced option tab. Need to think about it some more.
ps: on a completely unrelated note, what is your favorite energy drink Ben and Greg?
Tea, normally Assam in the AM and Sri Lankan in PM.
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