WipEout Fury tech interview on Eurogamer

[stever]

Some fairly interesting stuff:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-wipeout-hd-fury-interview

[Haywire_Guy]

Awesome thanks for this, the interview was pretty interesting =D

[okam]

Great find, very interesting indeed. 8 months to port a track from PSP into HD, wow!

[abukii]

Excellent interview. Thanks for sharing. I especially like the quote from SL : "We usually dont try to max our engine, but thats usually what happens when we do anything..." LoL-- Best line ever!!
(Not an exact quote, but you get the idea).

[IH8YOU]

Thanks for that - was a very interesting read.

So those weather effects so many of us desired - were too difficult to implement.

Whhhierd. My PSX didn't have much trouble in doing so. :P

You know - if it took 720P to get my weather effects, time of day effects (night / dusk, ect...), Wipeout / XL / 3 / 3SE tracks on screen again - that's a compromise I'd be happy to make.

I'm not sure I'd even consider that a compromise.

[abukii]

I dont think they were saying weather effects were too difficult, I think SL said that they would have to sacrifice ammounts of polygons to incorporate them because of the way the engine is set up to run off the GPU and SPUs.

[tileon]

It looks like it's in English but I don't get a single word of what they're talking about.... nice though.

[Golgofier]

Thanks stever! Very interesting, if a bit to technical for me to understand all of it. This part about tearing was especially enlightening:


On some televisions you can see that the tearing is actually present all the time in the top few pixels of the screen. This is due to the software v-sync implementation used in WipEout HD - this is not 'framing out', it's just missing the true v-sync by a few pixels.

I see this on my 1080p set and have wrote it off as a problem with my particular TV, good to hear it's "meant to be that way" :)

[Frances_Penfold]

Very fun read-- thanks for making us aware of this, Stever :)

[AG-wolf]

wait so running WOHD at 720p will actually improve a lot of the effects? did I read that wrong?

[RedScar]

This is without doubt the most commonly asked question: why do we not have tracks from the PS1 era? The answer is pretty simple really, we don't have the art assets readily available for the PS1 tracks and as a result the amount of work required to recreate them for HD would not be cost effective. We have 30-plus tracks from the previous PSP versions that we can choose from all of which provide us with the assets required, even with these assets it still takes the [B]art team eight months of solid effort to get one HD/Fury track to look like it does.

Wow, that's intense o.O
It makes me sad though, since that means our bid for the next DLC "More Stuff" is gonna take another while, even more if we want pre-pure tracks.
I don't understand some parts of the article, but I know its all hardcore work so SL take your well deserved break :beer

[Lance]

That was a damned good interview. Very informative. Thanks for the link.

[PLazarou]

Thanks for that - was a very interesting read.

So those weather effects so many of us desired - were too difficult to implement.

Whhhierd. My PSX didn't have much trouble in doing so. :P

You know - if it took 720P to get my weather effects, time of day effects (night / dusk, ect...), Wipeout / XL / 3 / 3SE tracks on screen again - that's a compromise I'd be happy to make.

I'm not sure I'd even consider that a compromise.
I dunno. I've run HD in 720p before and it's nowhere near as awesome. I'm sure they can find a way of doing weather at 1080p. The most obvious way is for it to be track-specific like Pulse. If you could select your weather across all tracks, this would involve a vast amount of optimisation.

But if they just worked on an HD Fort Gale, they could easily maintain the rain effects during the upgrade of the track assets. It could mean that the detail in the track environment was slightly less ambitious than other tracks, but it would keep the performance in order to have rain.

[Darkdrium777]

wait so running WOHD at 720p will actually improve a lot of the effects? did I read that wrong?The only difference between 1080p and 720p is the way the aliasing is smoothed out. It's done better in 720p.

I'm one of the people who noticed real-time shadows from spotlights! \o/
Though there weren't many lights that did it pre-2.00, the new Fury tracks have it full lenght! And yes, lighting does look better now. Downside of Fury tracks is that there is no bloom for bomb explosion, though this is probably because of the increased polycount.
On the other hand, you introduced a new way of optimizing. Pre 2.00, the full track was rendered at all times (without LOD, only draw distance on some objects, quite impressive!), but now only a part of the track (The one you are in) is rendered. I suppose this is to compensate for Eliminator straining the engine. Unfortunately that new draw distance setting makes for some pop-in issues on some objects :( Though not many people have noticed, and really it's only just a few small things in certain very specific situations.

Interesting interview :)

[Crob]

Unfortunately that new draw distance setting makes for some pop-in issues on some objects :(

Hmm - the PVS system hasn't changed - there shouldn't be any pop in unless you managed to launch yourself skywards through a hole in the collision mesh somewhere ;)

[Vartazian]

I did that once crob, And I got lot of Screenies to prove it!

[Darkdrium777]

Unfortunately Vartazian having screenshots is impossible in 99,9% of the cases of pop-in issues I think, as in Photo Mode all the objects are rendered again. I tried on Vineta-K, the easiest track to get out of, and in-game when you're outside of the track you don't see anything but the small section you're near to, however when you enter Photo Mode the whole track is rendered again just like it was pre 2.00

Crob: I will invite you to ride the overpass on Anulpha Pass until almost the very end, and jump off just before the end while looking at where the start line LCD panel is. POP! :) That's one of them, I reported others I found here (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showpost.php?p=138275&postcount=75), though some predate 2.00. My remark in the Edit I made is inaccurate though, some tracks do not have pop-in under normal circumstances (I think Chengou and Metropia are some of them, though I'd have to check back to be certain.)

[brummpahh]

Hi m8s,

great link. Thanks 4 that.

In the interview SL says 60fps is the most important
for a fluid gameplay. Since 2.00/2.01 this is not the case
anymore. No prob to have repetitive framedrops at start
situations, or other situations with heavy GPU-load.

Obviously they had to deliver at a given date. Developers
fate. My fate as a customer is to wait for 2.0x or what it takes to make it fluid again. Maybe they will say it won't be cost effective to fix it. Like the making of the old legendary Psygnosis-tracks. (Fans surely would spent a fair amount for a BluRay full of these...)

Hope never dies,
brummpahh

[RJH]

Downside of Fury tracks is that there is no bloom for bomb explosion

Nothing's changed as far as I'm aware. Can you explain further ?

[Darkdrium777]

When a bomb explodes on the HD tracks, a temporary bloom effect is used. On the Fury tracks, this is absent.
Can't explain further, if you don't know what bloom is look it up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_(shader_effect)).

[Sven]

No Psygnosis era tracks =(

But there is hope? They have the assets for the Pure Classic packs, no? Surely they could use those to release HD Classic packs? Although I'm not sure why it matters since I can't see how PSP assets would have any bearing on an HD PS3 game...

Note to whom it may concern: I would pay $60 for a complete set of Wipeout 1-3 classic tracks. $40-$50 for just XL and 3. $100 for all tracks from 1, XL, 3, Pure, and Pulse.
Now that I'm on the subject, I'll say I'd pay $20 for the Pulse content that North America never got, but that's a different issue.

But to be honest, I might like to see some new original tracks show up in this game.

[RJH]

We ramp up the bloom when the detonator bombs explode. This doesn't happen for the normal bombs however, whether on HD tracks or Fury tracks.

[Darkdrium777]

Well that's another "feature" removed. There was/is bloom prior to 2.00, because I definitely remember it happening on Sol 2.
And if you're a dev, make sure to get that tag like Crob has under his username.

[Z_Zoquis]

Well that's another "feature" removed. There was/is bloom prior to 2.00, because I definitely remember it happening on Sol 2.
And if you're a dev, make sure to get that tag like Crob has under his username.

I think you should spend more time playing the game and less time analyzing it in super slow-mo... :beer

[Darkdrium777]

I take it 200 hours in WipEout HD is not enough for Mr. here?
How about if I add the 109 hours from Pulse, the 109 hours from PurE NTSC and the few hours on WipeOut, WipeOut 2097, WipeOut 64 and Wip3out?
Thanks for the 'sous entendu' though. :/

For the record, everything I mention here is something I noticed while actually playing the game. I have yet to go around any track at slower speeds other than Modesto Heights. Yeah, even Sebenco Climb, my favourite track, didn't get that treatment.

Now about that bloom effect on the bombs RJH, it does it on Sol 2. That I am certain. Probably more tracks, though I'm not sure if its all of them anymore... I think Chengou Project has it too.

[RJH]

Well that's another "feature" removed. There was/is bloom prior to 2.00, because I definitely remember it happening on Sol 2.
And if you're a dev, make sure to get that tag like Crob has under his username.

Nothing has been removed with regards to the bloom. Check Sol 2 and you'll see nothing has changed.

Bloom is on all the time, at various intensities, as dictated by the tone mapping. It will be more noticeable on certain tracks and under different conditions. When a bomb explodes on Sol 2 it is particularly apparent. I'm sure Crob could explain it in more detail.

As regards getting a dev tag, what do I do ?

[sny]

I'm guessing a PM to the forum administrator (infoxicated) would do it. :)

EDIT: Regarding the bloom effect on pre-Fury tracks like Sol 2, I also seem to recall it's either much less noticable or not present at all, but I'm going to check now just to be certain, since I haven't played much on them since fury came out.

EDIT #2: I checked, there is definitely a bloom effect on old tracks as well. I guess it was a reverse placebo effect... :)