Shadows in GT5

[LaBounti]

Anyway, LaBounti is only partially right. Shadows are indeed limited by memory but they are also limited by GPU processing power since the GPU has to render the shadow maps. The higher the resolution, the less jagged they will look, but the more processing power you'll need to render them and the more memory you'll need to store them.

Yes I know this but in GT5P things look much better, but thats before all the extras were added like tire marks and weather effects. Clearly its not the fault of the GPU for the shadow quality since it is basically a 7800GS with its NV70 core, and that did some good things for its time. Its more likely the the amount ram needed to run the game at 1080p and have the additions. Its amazing what they have done with the hardware.

 

[Dravonic]

Yes I know this but in GT5P things look much better, but thats before all the extras were added like tire marks and weather effects. Clearly its not the fault of the GPU for the shadow quality since it is basically a 7800GS with its NV70 core, and that did some good things for its time. Its more likely the the amount ram needed to run the game at 1080p and have the additions. Its amazing what they have done with the hardware.

I think I got what you mean now. You're saying in GT5's case the memory is the problem, not the processor. Well dunno, I think it's both. To achieve such graphics I believe the GPU is maxed out in every way, it would only make sense. I'm not convinced that just by having more memory PD could make the shadows look significantly better without a noticeable impact to frame rate. But I'm just speculating obviously.

 

[terminator363]

Quite jagged in the cockpit, I've noticed it's more jagged on cars that have curved interiors instead of straight ones....

 

[trk29]

Quite jagged in the cockpit, I've noticed it's more jagged on cars that have curved interiors instead of straight ones....

I think it is one thing we will have to live with.

 

[MGS2 Snake]

Maybe YouTube might be to blame
for the jagged edges.

 

[terminator363]

Maybe YouTube might be to blame
for the jagged edges.

??? Makes no sense

 

[trk29]

Maybe YouTube might be to blame
for the jagged edges.

If that were the case there would be no smooth lines anywhere. Everything on the screen would be jaggy.

 

[Turkey :D]

Would you have higher overall visual detail (tracks, cars, etc), or higher detailed shadows? Real-time rendered shadows aren't easy for current gen consoles to do... so I'd go with better looking cars and tracks.

 

[wakas]

Quite jagged in the cockpit, I've noticed it's more jagged on cars that have curved interiors instead of straight ones....

Thats just an anomaly, the shadows are bad, but not that bad.

I wish PD had gone for half the number of polygons for cars and may be up to 12 cars only. That should have been enough for the shadows to be better, they are just awful for replays.

 

[phosphor112]

Quite jagged in the cockpit, I've noticed it's more jagged on cars that have curved interiors instead of straight ones....

To be honest, it doesn't seem that they have all the shaders and such properly implemented on that car anyway. If you look at other cars, their shadows are a lot nicer.. but the "newer" cars we've seen have these nasty looking shadows. I think they just need to polish things up a bit.

 

[Falango]

Don't know if anyone mentioned it already, but I always felt the cars looked like they are floating on the track when they are not in direct sunlight. I don't really know how to explain this properly, but whenever the car drive underneath a building and the sunlight is blocked off, the car instantly feels like it's disconnected from the ground. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I've put in some GT5 vs. Real life pics for reference.

Now I know this can be argued differently because of the angles or because they are pictures and not videos, but in GT5 photos, doesn't it feel like the shadows under front bumper and side skirt are a bit lacking? Or at least not enough of shadow generally under the car? When I look at the bottom of the front bumper in the 2nd pic, it just doesn't feel right. Oh well...maybe it's just me. Feel free to disagree.

It's because there is no occlusion under the car, where light naturally does not collect. It's a bit tougher in games to have proper occlusion, especially in this case because the cars are moving. Occlusion maps are baked into textures in gaming, but because cars are moving, you can't bake occlusion into the track. If the cars were standing still, sure, we can do that.

The occlusion isn't a direct shadow, think of it as a really soft shadow. There's shadows under the cars in the game, just no occlusion to make it even darker. It's an easy pass for them to make, especially in Maya, it takes 2 minutes. The problem is being able to implement it with motion between the car and the surface it's on.

 

[Captain Roh]

Thanks to everyone who made educated and detailed posts. I feel as though I'm starting to understand the topic a little better.

One thing I still dont understand though is the relationship between the lighting source and the shadows themselves.

Judging by what I've read it seems to me that the shadows are actually crude approximations that are rendered to the car in relation to the light source. They arent actually being cast by the light engine but are there all of the time. Is that correct, if you understand my meaning?

I also agree that the PS3 isnt particularly well endowed in the memory department. I cant count the number of times the PS3s browser has crapped out on me for no particular reason. Though I thought Sony had a reason for only giving it such a slight amount.

It interests me to hear when developers mention tag lines like 'we're pushing the PS3 to its limit'. For me that sounds far too early in the consoles life span to be true. What was the point in developing such a complicated architechture when an xbox, developed for exponentially less and there for sold much cheaper does almost the same job? I'm inclined to take the tag line with a pinch of salt, as I believe what developers are really trying to say is 'we're reaching the limits of our capability to develop on the PS3'. After all, if it was down to memory alone, how come GOW3, Uncharted2, Killzone2 and GTP for example all run perfectly well, while my browser cant even play 2 megavideo files simultaneously?

Is it possible that the PS3 does have untapped potential, but developers arent tapping it because they are still stuck in the mindset of last generations development thinking. Or was the idea behind the PS3's complicated inards sound in theory, but when it comes to practice a little too complicated?

Either way it seems Polyphony Digital could of done no more to make better the resolution of their shadows. Instead they're actually waiting on the next generation of console to get to where they want to be with the game.

It literally astounds me how far ahead in thinking Kaz and his team are. It seems every single game they created would be better suited to the next generation at the time. I only wish they could understand the PS3 a little better before writing GT5 off as meant to be for the PS4. Although maybe they really did reach the limit, and so I dont really see the point of GT6 for the PS3. Hopefully they continue to develop with PS4 in mind, and save for then to make sure its as perfect as Kaz would hope

 

[Griffith500]

Lighting in a game is a complex thing. It used to be that the textures (or geometry, before the days of textures) contained the lighting information "pre-baked". Sometimes this was fixed, sometimes special tricks were exploited to achieve some pretty cool effects. It was all down to the artist, directly.

Anyway, fast-forward to the current era and lighting is pretty much the same:
You light the entire geometry with a certain level of "ambient" light (since if only direct lighting were used, the amount of geometry in total shadow would just look ridiculous) and then layer the direct (and other) light sources on top of that. The artist is responsible for tuning these relative components.

Ambient occlusion techniques seek to add extra shade where the geometry would be receiving less than the "ambient" light level - this is usually pre-baked, but there are several ways to do it on-the-fly, with varying performance and quality. It seems this is what is happening with the cars in GT5, or rather, what is not happening. It used to be (up to GT5, even) that blob-shadows were used in conjunction with the car-shaped ones to simulate this effect, but I imagine projected light sources (i.e. headlights) might make this look a bit odd.

There are other lighting regimes which handle ambient light levels more intelligently and can also allow for more realistic looking lighting for the scenery and objects within it.
It seems that for photomode, PD are using [WIKIPEDIA]image-based lighting[/WIKIPEDIA], where the geometry (particularly the car) is actually lit, per pixel, by it's surroundings, rather than a collection of direct sources. Whether this is done for races is another matter.

Anyway, here's a nice summary of a typical approach to shadowing in games. The shadows here are "baked" into maps applied to the geometry, but it's possible to run this sort of thing in realtime (CryEngine 3, anyone?)

Actually, that blog has a lot of interesting articles; some partially relevant examples:
Image based lighting.
"Composite" lighting breakdown.
How to cast shadows onto scenery (properly...)
Crucially, I can't find anything on self-shadowing...

It's important to remember that Overgrowth is a completely different game to GT5, so the compromises cited in those articles may be total fallacy for a racing game like GT5.

 

[IVKillerVI]

Or maybe, just maybe its because that is the E3 build that they have at best buy.
The demo doesn't even have skid marks in it, so its obviously not complete.

 

[Beat the Beat]

The cars do have a soft ambient shadow map underneath them, it's just not very visible in those pictures, maybe not dark enough.
Really it should extend outwards from the car instead of just being directly underneath it, GT3 and 4 mimicked how the surrounding ambient shadows mix with direct shadows by having the shadow slightly fade out away from the car.

I don't think they use image based lighting in photomode any more than they already do in game, but they create specular/diffuse environment maps using the full detail of the surroundings instead of heavily optimised ones. There is still a main shadow-casting light source seperate from that lighting.

 

[MadduckUK]

looks pretty dynamic to me

 

[Beat the Beat]

Sorry for the poor quality but this should explain why I think the tree shadows are prebaked at a fixed angle, unlike the cars which react to the changing sun position.

 

[LaBounti]

I think I got what you mean now. You're saying in GT5's case the memory is the problem, not the processor. Well dunno, I think it's both. To achieve such graphics I believe the GPU is maxed out in every way, it would only make sense. I'm not convinced that just by having more memory PD could make the shadows look significantly better without a noticeable impact to frame rate. But I'm just speculating obviously.

The GPU isn't maxed out. Theoretically to be maxed out means it would be running at its maximum real world (practical)capabilities. They have reached the real world limits of 1080p60 (with 16 car weather effect slowdown), not the real world limits of the GPU. Even with all the GPU power in the world without the needed ram the shadow and texture resolution will suffer.

 

[Beat the Beat]

Come to think of it has there ever been non blocky shadows seen in Le Mans?

I wonder if they're trying something a bit different for the tracks which support a 24 hours race, although if they made the sun rise on the same side it sets they could get away with not moving the tree shadows around.

This is an extreme example from the Horsepower trailer, and probably more to do with it being a helicopter shot from a long distance away.

Edit: Looks like the Peugot 908 build had high res cockpit shadows.

 

[m00ndancer]

As LaBounti says: No it's not the GPU, besides you have a few other multipurpose cores that might not be fully loaded anyway. So in my opinoin there is no problems with the computing power in the PS3 regardless of task, but it boils down to a RAM issue.
Hopefully it's just an optimisation issue. And if you can use a few brebaked shadows on static objects it fine for me. Look at GT4 and Nords. As far as I know, that track is even stream loaded from the DVD on the fly as well.

 

[Stonemonkey]

Don't know if anyone mentioned it already, but I always felt the cars looked like they are floating on the track when they are not in direct sunlight. I don't really know how to explain this properly, but whenever the car drive underneath a building and the sunlight is blocked off, the car instantly feels like it's disconnected from the ground. .....

Shadows are a very powerful visual cue the brain uses to interpret a scene and how objects are positioned relative to each other and also gives a better effect of everything belonging in a scene instead of looking like an object as an image pasted on. Without shadows or in your case when everything is in shadow you lose all that, realtime computer graphics still have a long way to go and as lighting and shading improve then the problem you're seeing will resolve.

 

[maximus0743]

I think it is important to remember that all the pitchers shown in this thread is from demos and other early versions of the game, and that no one have seen the finale version yet.

Personally I thing that the shadows in the finale version of GT5 will meet the standards of the rest for the graphics, I mean would a perfectionist like Kaz. allow GT5 to have such a big and easy to spot flaw?

 

[mykem]

I think they look fine. 👍. This isn't shadow simulator 2010.

Great answer (no sarcasm). I love it when people have their priorities in placed. Personally, prefer shadows over none and if it's anything like GT5P, it's more than enough.

 

[Captain Roh]

Great answer (no sarcasm). I love it when people have their priorities in placed. Personally, prefer shadows over none and if it's anything like GT5P, it's more than enough.

You and B13 both have completely missed the point of this thread. I suspect neither of you even bothered to read through the discussion because its actually quite interesting. If after you do read it and you dont have anything to contribute, opinions arent really necessary anyway as the thread is based on fact.



( at myself too for pointless posting )


Again thanks for the info so far guys, Griffiths links were especially enlightening 👍

 

[Coxis]

The only instance in which the bad shadowing bothers me, is when you see the pixelated shadows from within the cockpit view. Other than that, you hardly have time to focus on the shadows save when watching a replays, and even then it isn't that game breaking.

 

[Griffith500]

This thread isn't for the purposes of complaint, it's for learning more about what affects the appearance of shadows in games - specifically in GT5.

@ Beat the Beat: I also noticed the trees on Toscana didn't seem to alter their shadow direction, but it's hard to tell from the footage. We'd need someone to capture the transition whilst remaining stationary to be sure. And I'm aware that in photomode, there are still point / directional light sources - but there does seem to be something extra, which is why I mentioned the image-based method, which could in some applications be used in the game proper, too.

The fact that there are inconsistencies on the same circuit is perhaps indicative of non-optimised, or certainly pre-final configuration for the shadows.

EDIT: glad they helped, Captain Roh!

 

[Beat the Beat]

There will be a lot of extra things done in Photomode which improve on the look, for example it looks like they use a per pixel 'bokeh' effect for the depth of field, which looks a lot better than the real time version in replays.
My theory is they don't use a fixed ambient light value and instead use a blurred version of the reflection map but it's hard to prove when most of the surfaces are so shiny!

 

[Griffith500]

There will be a lot of extra things done in Photomode which improve on the look, for example it looks like they use a per pixel 'bokeh' effect for the depth of field, which looks a lot better than the real time version in replays.
My theory is they don't use a fixed ambient light value and instead use a blurred version of the reflection map but it's hard to prove when most of the surfaces are so shiny!

Would that not class as image (cube-map) based (ambient) lighting?
But yes, clearly there is more scope for high-quality effects in photomode. I wonder if the shadows can be beefed up there, too.

I remember a discussion about this some time ago, and it basically came down to using two separate render pipelines (one for photomode, one for racing) or somehow managing all the complexity within the one pipeline (since photomode can be accessed in the middle of a race).

 

[Beat the Beat]

Would that not class as image (cube-map) based (ambient) lighting?

Yes, it would, but that's why I said photomode isn't doing it any more than they already do in game. I could be wrong about that though, it's hard to tell to be honest.
They might also have more bitdepth to play with for reflection maps in Photomode, which could help.

 

[Griffith500]

Ah, I see. Well, I only noticed it on the photomode locations - I think, given the surroundings, it's harder to spot on the circuits. Naturally, most of the screenshots we have are probably from photomode anyway...