id Talks about Tech5 and Rage at SIGGRAPH

[Zer_]

Several new screenshots of stunning Rage environments were included in a SIGGRAPH 2009 talk given by id Software senior programmer J.M.P. van Waveren. [Source [http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/59886]]

Having been somewhat excited about id Tech 5 because of the texturing potential I could have never imagined Rage looking so amazing. I expected the textures to have little or no tiling, that's for sure, but I never imagined the textures being so detailed and high resolution. Upon first seeing the Megatexture technology I imagined it as being a neat little alternative to standard texturing models. Now after having seen these screenshots I'm outright blown away. I honestly believe that id is on their way to setting a new texturing standard for games.

Those screenshots just blow Crytek and UE3 away...

 

[oliveira8]

Why can't you just post the screenshots here?

Anyway, it does look nice, but the Cryengine is still better. Some of the textures on those cliff screenshots were abit off and the water kinda sucked.

 

[not a zaar]

I don't care about an Id game engine until a company that actually knows how to make GAMES gets their hands on it. Id hasn't made a good game since forever.

 

[Zer_]

Why can't you just post the screenshots here?

Anyway, it does look nice, but the Cryengine is still better. Some of the textures on those cliff screenshots were abit off and the water kinda sucked.

I cannot post screenshots here mainly because Shacknews uses a flash based program for their screenshot galleries. You can't right click and save-as or get the direct URL.

As for your comment on the water:

Notice the areas where the water is shallow. You'll see the water gets a green tint. That's what Rage is simulating, hence why the water may look strange when compared to something like Crysis.

To me the water in Crysis doesn't look all that real:

Spoiler: To me, the water in Crysis falls flat when looking at it up close

 

[oliveira8]

Why can't you just post the screenshots here?

Anyway, it does look nice, but the Cryengine is still better. Some of the textures on those cliff screenshots were abit off and the water kinda sucked.

I cannot post screenshots here mainly because Shacknews uses a flash based program for their screenshot galleries. You can't right click and save-as or get the direct URL.

As for your comment on the water:

Spoiler

Notice the areas where the water is shallow. You'll see the water gets a green tint. That's what Rage is simulating, hence why the water may look strange when compared to something like Crysis.

To me the water in Crysis doesn't look all that real:

Spoiler: To me, the water in Crysis falls flat when looking at it up close

It wasn't because it was trying to imitate shallow water, it feel like it wasn't water but something goey, the last screenshot mainly. Maybe in-game looks better.

 

[BonsaiK]

All this is very bad, it's just going to tack years onto the devlopment time for games, and all this effort spent on graphics means there'll be few precious resources left for gameplay innovations. When I'm playing a game, I want to play a game, not see a pretty picture. If I want to look at nice scenery I'll go for a hike in the woods, the 3d modelling and texture mapping is better.

I think there should be a moratorium - no new technology in computers for 10 years, and all games must be able to run on a 2Ghz single-core machine. That way we can give some time to allow gameplay to catch up to where graphics is.

 

[Peeling]

>All this is very bad, it's just going to tack years onto the devlopment
>time for games, and all this effort spent on graphics means there'll be
>few precious resources left for gameplay innovations.

According to the artists I've spoken to here, quite the reverse. This will save them huge amounts of time, because (by their estimate) around 80% of their effort is expended after the first pass of the game assets have been made. Then they have to go back and try to make them look good within very tight texturing constraints, argue back and forth about whether this texture should be 256x256 at the expense of another being 128*128, etc etc. Artists can work alarmingly quickly when they aren't hamstrung.

It also allows for greater parallelism in development, by decoupling art from the 'make it play well and make it smooth' process. With this system you can start making the game with nothing more than crude untextured high-poly placeholder objects, and you know that when the artists are done you aren't going to suddenly have to halve the number of enemies or shrink the levels by two thirds to fit everything in. Making it play well and making it look good become seperate issues rather than competing ones - this is a very very good thing.