Adaptive Tessellation

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TorqueHappenS08

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Adaptive Tessellation,What it is.
What it does, And how it will drastically change the current generation visuals of Gran Turismo, bring the current gen next gen.

Basically, take a high quality GT5 model in Photo travel LOD, now smooth out all the edges, add very soft shadows, you now have a car that looks like a next gen title rather then a PS3 title, This is what Adaptive Tessellation will do, and GT6 will benefit from it greatly,it's an incredible piece of technology.

Here is basically what it does.


Meaning cars, can, and probably will look next gen in the final build, but honestly so far i have noticed cars have very smooth edges around the bodies, lights and wheel/rim this is most likely the tessellation at work,even smoother than photo mode or photo travel from GT5.

I just want to know, how PD managed to get tessellation working on a current gen console.
 
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Judging by in game videos, It seems the shadows must be benefiting greatly from this, also everything just looks smoother, tessellation is definitely in effect, it's an interesting piece of technology that will give GT6 that next gen edge, with out having to sacrifice FPS, it's a win/win situation, Super high quality LOD models,very high quality shadows and stable FPS.

Just still wondering how PD managed to pull that out of a bag on a current gen console, very few games have ran tessellation, and if they did it was a very simple version only good for small particle effects.While PD is taking full advantage of a incredible piece of software. Most GT6 images make GT5 look kind of edgy, especially the shadows and model LOD.

Once again PD does something to blow me away.
 
I don't recall them saying exactly how and on what adaptive tessellation will be used for and from what very few stuff we've seen from the game so far, the GT6 cars don't really seem that much different from what we currently have. In GT5, you'd have to look rather close and at specific angles to see the low polygon count on round stuff which we don't have the luxury of doing for GT6 at the moment. The shadows do seem much improved but you can have smooth shadows without tessellation. For now, color me skeptical.
 
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The way GT6 uses it is to smooth the transitions between the various LOD models of the cars, at least as far as I can see
 
AFAIK when we are talking about tessellation in a 3d model your talking about adding more faces or tris or taking those polygons and adding more definition within them , in response making textures, bump maps,normal maps,height maps... basically maps and materials in general look more realistic.I dont know enough about adaptive tessellation to point exactly what this does for the cars in GT6 but I can assure that it dosnt have anything to with the shadows.I think thats more along the lines of anti-aliasing.I dont think most people will notice a difference because the cars are already high detail, I think they just mentioned adaptive tessellation for the people that knows about that stuff and will notice it and because its something relatively new to gaming and not really heard of in console gaming in this generation.
Now if we are talking about tessellating the standards than we can expect some great looking standards with way better textures but they still wont be premium quality which would be a waste of time imo.
 
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Cosbuster
I don't recall them saying exactly how and on what adaptive tessellation will be used for and from what very few stuff we've seen from the game so far, the GT6 cars don't really seem that much different from what we currently have. In GT5, you'd have to look rather close and at specific angles to see the low polygon count on round stuff which we don't have the luxury of doing for GT6 at the moment. The shadows do seem much improved but you can have smooth shadows without tessellation. For now, color me skeptical.
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They showed a tessellation model of the Alpha romeo's exterior, interior and headlamp during their presentation.



Skip to 10:09
 
*I haven't watched the video yet*

I'm curious on how Adaptive tesselation will be handled. I was discussing tesselation with a rude egg and I don't think the RSX could handle tesselation. Maybe i'm wrong.

That being said, i'm about 90% sure that tesslation will be handled via CELL which makes me curious on how resources will be handled with this new Game/Physics engine.
 
From what i have seen, tessellation allows for decreasing or increasing the polygons depending on how far or near the object is. So if you are half 100 feet from a car, that car would be modeled with fewer polygons and as it gets closer more polygons will be added for greater detail. This would mean a more efficient use of resources. This would mean that they could now use the extra resources for other things. This is quite amazing, we could theoretically see improvements not just in graphics but maybe AI and sound.
 
tinram
From what i have seen, tessellation allows for decreasing or increasing the polygons depending on how far or near the object is. So if you are half 100 feet from a car, that car would be modeled with fewer polygons and as it gets closer more polygons will be added for greater detail. This would mean a more efficient use of resources. This would mean that they could now use the extra resources for other things. This is quite amazing, we could theoretically see improvements not just in graphics but maybe AI and sound.
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👍
Now I get what the adaptive part means.It will be modeled with few detail but it will still appear to be a high lod model from far.
 
CoolColJ
The way GT6 uses it is to smooth the transitions between the various LOD models of the cars, at least as far as I can see
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tinram
From what i have seen, tessellation allows for decreasing or increasing the polygons depending on how far or near the object is. So if you are half 100 feet from a car, that car would be modeled with fewer polygons and as it gets closer more polygons will be added for greater detail. This would mean a more efficient use of resources. This would mean that they could now use the extra resources for other things. This is quite amazing, we could theoretically see improvements not just in graphics but maybe AI and sound.
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I'm hoping that this is the case, because the game engine and PS3 are going to be pretty busy handling improvements in every area. I'm counting on the team baking in tesselated and refined car bodies with their modeling kits to start with, but seeing as Kaz insists that the Standards will be good enough that they won't be excluded from anything in GT6 this time, I expect this to be the case.
 
After watching that video I am confident that GT6's cockpit-less cars are going to look great. There is a reason PDI is going to allow the cockpit-less cars in Photo Mode and adaptive tessellation is it.

GT6 vs FM5 screenshot comparisons are incoming and PDI is going to be enjoying every bit of it.
 
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but adaptive tessellation is really just a much smoother, more efficient version of the level-of-detail scaling that we're already used to? Whereas before you had a few different quality models of a particular car (one at the highest quality detail with the most polygons, maybe a few in-between, and one with the least amount of detail), the GT6 engine will be able to infinitely scale the quality of any given model?

Great find and post, I'm trying to understand and get into 3D modeling.
 
glassjaw
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but adaptive tessellation is really just a much smoother, more efficient version of the level-of-detail scaling that we're already used to? Whereas before you had a few different quality models of a particular car (one at the highest quality detail with the most polygons, maybe a few in-between, and one with the least amount of detail), the GT6 engine will be able to infinitely scale the quality of any given model?

Great find and post, I'm trying to understand and get into 3D modeling.
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Yup, exactly what it is. GT6 up close is going to look awesome. Search Adaptative Tesselation in Youttube and you'll confirm it.
 
glassjaw
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but adaptive tessellation is really just a much smoother, more efficient version of the level-of-detail scaling that we're already used to? Whereas before you had a few different quality models of a particular car (one at the highest quality detail with the most polygons, maybe a few in-between, and one with the least amount of detail), the GT6 engine will be able to infinitely scale the quality of any given model?

Great find and post, I'm trying to understand and get into 3D modeling.
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Basically yea.More than likely with the premiums they removed the different LOD models as this essentially replaces it and does a better job overall.
 
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It saves memory by only having to load two models for each car, one with the highest poly count and one with the lowest poly count. They can then use the extra memory freed up on other assets or effects.
 
tinram
[...]
This would mean that they could now use the extra resources for other things. This is quite amazing, we could theoretically see improvements not just in graphics but maybe AI and sound.
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Theoretically, this is correct. But remember that the amount of resources freed by this is variable and subject to what is currently in your field of vision. So, in order to have enough resources available when you see all other cars going into the first chicane ahead of you (maybe even in the rain), you can't use those resources for processes that need to be run no matter what you can currently see in the game.

That means that you can't use that much more resources e.g. for AI, because they have to be calculated at all times. Sound could benefit from this maybe, because you don't need to hear 16 cars when they're close to you.
 
Processing power is the limiting factor on what can be in your field of view, generally for racing games, assets like cars have to stay in memory, regardless of whether you can see them or not. The models are not loaded in an out as a car falls behind you or comes into view. They are all loaded in at the start of the race.
 
Some more for those interested
http://www.nerdparadise.com/tech/graphics/hardwaretessellation/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476340(v=vs.85).aspx

Tesselation can be used also to render highly detailed surfaces using displacement mapping. Except for the level of detail rendering, it can be used to make lower poly renderings appear more detailed (think better looking standard cars).

It will be interesting to see to what extent PD uses this, but I am almost certain it will be restricted to the cars for extended detail, since displacement maps using tessellation is heavy on resources as can be seen on games using tessellation on PC's(Metro last light comes to mind). We might see some kind of LOD tessellation for terrain as well though since it seems to improve performance.

One thing is certain though it will take some tricky programming to implement on the PS3, just shows how talented the graphics team at PD is to keep on implementing stuff like this and pushing the boundaries of the ps3.
 
Now the true question. Will this apply to the standard models? 80% of the game. Or only the premiums? 20% of the game.

I know they are going to be called standards and premiums but we already officially know the standards have not been converted to premiums. So they WILL still be there. If this cant be applied to the standard cars then it really is only being used on a very small portion of the game.

I do agree that photo travel will indeed be incredible but hopefully it is also used in the rest of the game. Which leads to another question. Is this only going to be available in photo travel?
 
carracerptp
It won't help shadows (shadows are "textures" not vertex coloring) . But it will make the cars look "smoother". That is it, we are not going to get more than that from the PS3. Here is a good article on tessellation.

http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter07.html
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Shadows can be vertex based, I think.

I'm no expert, but I distinctly recall playing Silent Hill 2 via an emulator (or maybe it was the PC version, I don't remember), and the shadows for the main character were glitching and appeared almost like a wireframe projected onto the ground.
 
Lain
Shadows can be vertex based, I think.
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GT5 and so far of what we have seen of GT6 don't use vertex shadows.

Vertex shadows don't look like wireframes but look oddly stretched.

bikingame_7.jpg


If if the shadows are evenly square then it is a "texture".
 

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