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Dragon Age 2 DX11 feature set revealed

W

WabeWalker

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 3, 2007
Messages
4,508
Further evidence that the PC is really starting to pull away.

http://translate.google.de/translat...euchtung-und-mehr/Rollenspiel-Adventure/News/

I know that some people dislike depth of field. I happen to love it. The DOF in Metro 2033 in particular was very well done.

I started off with an antagonistic feeling about this game, but I'm starting to feel now that this second title might do for me what the original didn't. I don't know... I'm starting to feel enthusiastic about this.
 
Most "Depth of field" is just faked by blurring pixels based on the depth from camera which is not really what depth of field really looks likes if you look at real photos / film.

I will say I've been programming in DX9 for the past few months and reading about all the features in DX10 and 11 makes me want to program with those so much more. DX9 feels lame in comparison. Problem is everyone needs Vista / Win7 and a card that supports it, which isn't as common as we would like :(
 
quackduck said:
Tesselation. Yes.
Click to expand...

I have to admit, I've never seen tessellation in a game that's actually been noticeable. Somebody said to me that the NPCs in Pripyat look obviously better with tessellation on - I couldn't see a lick of difference.

I'd probably say that tessellation is the most over-rated feature of the past five years, along with PhysX and ambient occlusion, although the latter is starting to become more pronounced.

I don't know, most of these features seem to get better as they age. I remember the first usage of HDR lighting - it wasn't nearly as effective as it is today. I'll bet that tessellated images five years from now will make a major difference in our games.

Then again, if tessellation is to get better, the developers have to learn how to use it, don't they - so this is a good thing that we're going to be seeing it in Dragon Age 2. I just think that the PC version is going to be way better looking than the console versions. The first game was miles better looking on the PC - this one is going to increase that gap even further.
 
Blazestorm said:
Most "Depth of field" is just faked by blurring pixels based on the depth from camera which is not really what depth of field really looks likes if you look at real photos / film.

I will say I've been programming in DX9 for the past few months and reading about all the features in DX10 and 11 makes me want to program with those so much more. DX9 feels lame in comparison. Problem is everyone needs Vista / Win7 and a card that supports it, which isn't as common as we would like :(
Click to expand...


I have a question about that and maybe you can answer it. Is there a technical reason a game is developed for an older engine or just a practical one?


For example, why can't a game be made to run with lesser quality on dx9 cards but scale all the way up to full dx11 features?

People seem to talk as if they have to choose when developing. If dx11 supports some more advanced depth of field effects why not just remove that visual effect for older hardware and turn it on when available? Is it an issue of finite dev time and resources for optimization?
 
tybert7 said:
I have a question about that and maybe you can answer it. Is there a technical reason a game is developed for an older engine or just a practical one?


For example, why can't a game be made to run with lesser quality on dx9 cards but scale all the way up to full dx11 features?

People seem to talk as if they have to choose when developing. If dx11 supports some more advanced depth of field effects why not just remove that visual effect for older hardware and turn it on when available? Is it an issue of finite dev time and resources for optimization?
Click to expand...

This is a very good question son and the answer is undoubtly, 'Yes'. Direct x10 re-designed the wheel in a manner of speaking from Direct x9 changing the rendering path in some fairly major back-end ways. So...long story short, a Directx10 game cannot be ran on a Directx9 card without the developer making a seperate version. Vice-versa is ok though. All DX10 cards can play DX9 games.

Naturally, if you want the largest possible consumer base for your game and want to minimize on development costs, you'd want to make the game for: DX9. This is only taking into account hardware though. If you wanted to take into account software, you technically need people with a DX10 card + running Windows Vista (assuming you don't know how to jailbreak XP to support Dx10, which the majority of gamers dont). You may not have heard, but, Windows Vista while in my opinion, a good upgrade over xp and a fine operating system didn't sell all that well.

As a result, the number of DX10 titles made are rather few and many people consider it a bit of a flop. DX10 games didn't show a remarkable image quality improvement over DX9 and in some cases resulted in lower frames per second. Keep in mind, consumers were further confused by the extension of DX10 into DX10.1 and there was some controversy(See: AC1) about DX10.1 features being removed when it benefited nVidia to do so in TWIMTBP games. Sure there may have been 20 DX10 titles or so over 2-3 years but there's already the same amount or more DX11 titles over 1 year and a bit. If you take those numbers into consideration, you'll realize DX11 is being adopted 2-3 times as fast as DX10 was. This might lead you to ask 'Well, what's so different about DX11 than with DX10?'.

The answer simply lies with the popularity of Windows 7 versus Windows Vista combined with both Vista and Windows 7 supporting DX10/11. In addition, with DX10, most of the major chances to the framework that made DX10 so incompatible with DX9 had already been accomplished. DX11 is backwards compatible with DX10. So if I have a DX10 card and attempt to run a DX11 game, it defaults to DX10 mode and turns off features not accessible such as tessolation, dof automatically. You can think of this as the settings appearing as greyed out in the menus or not at all.

As a result, when you make a game for DX11, every person who bought a 8xxx, 9xxx, 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx or 5xx video card from nVidia or from ATI respectively a 3xxx?, 4xxx, 5xxx, 6xxx card can run your game assuming they bought into the Windows 7 or Windows Vista craze.

In addition, you also have much more casual-friendly pricing points for DX11 cards and ESPECIALLY dx10 cards. You can literately, pick up a mid-end, early generation DX10 card for $30.00. IE a 8800GT. So even the, cheapest-gamer-on-the-block, can afford to play DX11 games for a relatively cheap amount. Consider also that Intel XMA7200? or something along those model numbers that come with NETBOOKS. NETBOOKs. NETBOOKS. Sorry, I wanted to emphasis that point and el-cheapo laptops support some DX11 features. If your or your friend's netbook can run DX11, I think its safe to start programming games in DX11 without worrying about if the customer base will be large enough.

So now, you basically have two philosophies via gaming companies:
A. Make a console port, do a direct conversation of our DX9 based console game to a DX9 based pc game.
B. Make a console port, ponder the ROI for adding DX11 features to a PC game in terms of increased sale(based of prevalience of Windows7/vista/dx10-dx11 hardware), customer satisfaction, brand loyalty with gamers and increased reputation for making visually impressive games versus the cheaper option of a DX9 direct-port. Decide upon making a DX11 based game.

More and more companies are starting to pick B. B is really the way to go for a number of reasons in my opnion and what smart companies will be doing. The first of which is that the next-generation of consoles will probably have DX11 or DX12 card included in them and DX12 sure as heck will support both tessolation and depth-of-field.

Now taking that into mind, when the Xbox 720/ps4 launches, a company who has employees in graphics engines, physics, direct-computer, etc who have 2 years of experience making DX11 game will have a noteable advantage over companies whom are making 'their first DX11 game ever!'. IE: 5rd to 6th generation DX11 games should logically be > 1st generation DX11 games.

So in essence, making DX11 games for the PC becomes an investment in better trained staff for future titles when the next generation of consoles hit. Its hard to say for certain when the next generation of consoles will hit and if its too early to start 'training staff' via making pc-games. However, the Xbox 360 and PS3 are starting to look aged. The PS3 frequently talked about their 10-year life cycle but that could very well overlap with the next console by 2-3 years and the PS3 is coming up on 5 years old. The xbox 360 coming up on its 6th year.
 
Lots of features my GTX 260 can't do. How very [H]ard.
 
Wow, this is pretty cool. Typically Bioware is not one to focus on graphics at all. Can't wait to check out the demo, I hope it has these features enabled!
 
WabeWalker said:
I have to admit, I've never seen tessellation in a game that's actually been noticeable. Somebody said to me that the NPCs in Pripyat look obviously better with tessellation on - I couldn't see a lick of difference.

I'd probably say that tessellation is the most over-rated feature of the past five years, along with PhysX and ambient occlusion, although the latter is starting to become more pronounced.
Click to expand...

You need to try out Metro 2033 and look at the details on NPC models up close -- check out their ammo pouches, etc. It's very noticeable in that game. I think it's for sale still on the thq website. I can take some screenshots tonight if you'd like.
 
All these features sound cool, but I'm still pissed off they are choosing to go mainstream and forsake the glory of the first DA. WTF is this God of War/Devil may cry bs? Oh and the emo vibe really pisses me off too :
dragon-age-2-trailer-still.jpg
 
That demo is going to be huge for this thing. I honestly haven't made up my mind how I feel about this one way or the other yet. I'll salute them for at least having the guts to put that demo out there and I wish that were the rule instead of the growing trend of exception.
 
TheToE! said:
All these features sound cool, but I'm still pissed off they are choosing to go mainstream and forsake the glory of the first DA. WTF is this God of War/Devil may cry bs? Oh and the emo vibe really pisses me off too :
dragon-age-2-trailer-still.jpg
Click to expand...

Looks like Prince of Persia - Warrior Within if you ask me, and yes the new art direction is nothing like the original DA. The original was as close to perfect old school RPG as you can get. Things have been 'jazzed up' for the masses. I can already tell, the warmth and the quaintness of the original has been lost. That is a crying shame.

As Q-BZ says the demo will be the decider
 
WabeWalker said:
I have to admit, I've never seen tessellation in a game that's actually been noticeable. Somebody said to me that the NPCs in Pripyat look obviously better with tessellation on - I couldn't see a lick of difference.

I'd probably say that tessellation is the most over-rated feature of the past five years, along with PhysX and ambient occlusion, although the latter is starting to become more pronounced.

I don't know, most of these features seem to get better as they age. I remember the first usage of HDR lighting - it wasn't nearly as effective as it is today. I'll bet that tessellated images five years from now will make a major difference in our games.

Then again, if tessellation is to get better, the developers have to learn how to use it, don't they - so this is a good thing that we're going to be seeing it in Dragon Age 2. I just think that the PC version is going to be way better looking than the console versions. The first game was miles better looking on the PC - this one is going to increase that gap even further.
Click to expand...

-Sn1PeR- said:
You need to try out Metro 2033 and look at the details on NPC models up close -- check out their ammo pouches, etc. It's very noticeable in that game. I think it's for sale still on the thq website. I can take some screenshots tonight if you'd like.
Click to expand...

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/04/05/metro_2033_directx_11_gameplay_performance_iq/6

Check out the section of screenshots under tesselation. It should give a good representation of how it smooths the geometry.

Also about the demo, I too am just glad they're putting out a demo in a time where demo's feel like a forgotten practice.
 
TheToE! said:
All these features sound cool, but I'm still pissed off they are choosing to go mainstream and forsake the glory of the first DA. WTF is this God of War/Devil may cry bs? Oh and the emo vibe really pisses me off too :
dragon-age-2-trailer-still.jpg
Click to expand...

Who cares about the emo vibe. I'll play Lady Hawke (when ever it is that I get the game). ;)
 
I'm only going to turn depth of field "on" in a game when my eyes+brain control the focus location. Until then, using it makes no sense to me.
 
tybert7 said:
I have a question about that and maybe you can answer it. Is there a technical reason a game is developed for an older engine or just a practical one?


For example, why can't a game be made to run with lesser quality on dx9 cards but scale all the way up to full dx11 features?

People seem to talk as if they have to choose when developing. If dx11 supports some more advanced depth of field effects why not just remove that visual effect for older hardware and turn it on when available? Is it an issue of finite dev time and resources for optimization?
Click to expand...

I think it's more practical, Bad Company 2 was written to run on DX9, 10, and 11... but DICE writes their own engines. And for their next iteration of their engine I think they're going DX11 only (For Battlefield 3.) But for a lot of other companies that use 3rd party engines they rely entirely on them for support.... and most are still using DX9 because nearly everyone has a DX9 capable card, and operating system (XP, Vista, or Win7)

I think it's partly because of resources/time required to write an engine that can handle all 3 forms of the API (Because they are slightly different, although 10/11 are closer to each other than with 9, but nobody really cared about 10 because it didn't seem like a huge visual improvement from 9, but from a developers standpoint they changed a lot )

I'm not a professional developer so I can't say with much insight, but I think it's pretty much because a.) they don't write their own engine or b.) they don't want to support all 3 versions for a small part of the population. DICE writes hardcore games so they can get away with requiring DX11. But when Microsoft tried to release Halo 2 for the PC as DX10 exclusive they got a lot of backlash for that, and people eventually hacked it together to run on DX9 / WinXP which I found funny.
 
DAO art sucked, I hated it, was an alright game but wasn't on the level of Mass Effect. Looking forward to seeing how 2 does.
 
Cataulin said:
You have to look really hard to see the difference for tesselation. It just makes skin look more like skin?

I see it but I can describe what it really does besides smoothing out textures more..
Click to expand...

Tessellation adds geometry... so you start with a simpler model, load it, texture it, etc. all quick operations because it's fairly simple geometry, but now that you're on the GPU you can do things much quicker. So DX10/11 can actually generate geometry on the graphics card, you can't do that in DX9.

And it does not just have to be adding to an existing 3D mesh, you can create new meshes, or remove bits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkKtY2G3FbU

That's a fairly extreme example, I haven't seen games really push it like you really could though.
 
Last edited:
I actually do have Metro 2033, and in-game, I can't see any difference at all.

When I installed my GTX 480 the first title I ran was Metro. I switched back and forth for a good half hour, and just couldn't see any changes. Tessellation may very well be the thing of the future - the tech demo is evidence of this - but right now, in the actual software we buy, it seems incredibly subtle to me, and hugely over-rated. I would go so far as to say that in 2010 it was hyped.

I like this feature set, but sometimes it's just developer-speak, and doesn't amount to anything. Anybody here remember the game Blade Runner? For months the developer boasted about the technical merits of this game to the print media. I remember reading in one magazine how the developer bragged that an engineer from Intel warned them that they were pushing the envelope too hard, and might end up physically breaking people's computers. LOL. What a load of horse manure. Blade Runner was ordinary looking, and even a little bit fuzzy.

About the demo though.

Sometimes I'll over play a demo, and that will cause me to be less excited on release day. I prefer to go in fresh, so I might just avoid the demo for this.
 
I also feel that tesselation is overrated. I have to really pay attention to even notice it and that in and of itself makes it a fail in my opinion. The difference should be night and day, where it's very apparent to the average user. Tesselation is not all that obvious. Maybe it'll improve over time, but I'm not impressed with it at all. Having said that, I will say that the Stone Giant demo makes good use of tesselation. Especially when you can hit the buttons on the keyboard and see the differences between tesellation and non-tesellation.
 
Blazestorm said:
I will say I've been programming in DX9 for the past few months and reading about all the features in DX10 and 11 makes me want to program with those so much more. DX9 feels lame in comparison. Problem is everyone needs Vista / Win7 and a card that supports it, which isn't as common as we would like :(
Click to expand...

Because there's little in the way of killer apps that make a good case for the new technology.

We've seen really nice tessellation in things like the Heaven and Stone Giant demos although deliberately over the top, we need this sort of technology to find its way into games to convince people it's upgrade time, it's just how this cycle works.

BF3 being DX11 only will go a long way to increasing the number of DX11 capable PCs, many people are going to upgrade just to play that game, just as they did when BF2 launched and was one of the first DX9 minimum specification games.
 
addictedto60fps said:
I also feel that tesselation is overrated. I have to really pay attention to even notice it and that in and of itself makes it a fail in my opinion.
Click to expand...
It's most advantageous when you want to subdivide a mesh (and displace it) and still attain very good performance and scalability. For terrain and water, tessellation is a total no-brainer: you can achieve pretty amazing visual detail, performance and scalability when you employ hardware tessellation. Adding details to character models and such — not really effective use of the technology in my opinion.

It's a good tool, but as a visual effect, it isn't very practical at this point.
 
phide said:
It's most advantageous when you want to subdivide a mesh (and displace it) and still attain very good performance and scalability. For terrain and water, tessellation is a total no-brainer: you can achieve pretty amazing visual detail, performance and scalability when you employ hardware tessellation. Adding details to character models and such — not really effective use of the technology in my opinion.

It's a good tool, but as a visual effect, it isn't very practical at this point.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've noticed that also - when adding tesselation to character models, I can barely tell the difference. Since tesseltaion is most advantageous with terrain/water, I hope to see tesselation being used towards that. :)
 
ATI tried to do tessellation with character/object models years ago with Truform, and no one was really that interested. You then come forward today and poly counts are way higher, this is likely where the let down is.

Obviously you are not going to devote the same poly count to a comparable sized piece of environment, so you get some good improvements there.
 
addictedto60fps said:
Yeah, I've noticed that also - when adding tesselation to character models, I can barely tell the difference. Since tesseltaion is most advantageous with terrain/water, I hope to see tesselation being used towards that. :)
Click to expand...

This is where tessellation is being used in Dragon Age 2, according to the linked article - on terrain.

Also, IGN has just posted new PC gameplay preview footage. My links to Utube don't seem to be working for some people, but here it is.

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=/&gl=CA#/watch?xl=xl_blazer&v=P8n_oa5xK4w
 
WabeWalker said:
Further evidence that the PC is really starting to pull away.

http://translate.google.de/translat...euchtung-und-mehr/Rollenspiel-Adventure/News/

I know that some people dislike depth of field. I happen to love it. The DOF in Metro 2033 in particular was very well done.

I started off with an antagonistic feeling about this game, but I'm starting to feel now that this second title might do for me what the original didn't. I don't know... I'm starting to feel enthusiastic about this.
Click to expand...

I am currently playing through Metro 2033. I can't believe anyone thinks that DoF looks good. I think it helps the game look better about 10% of the time and just makes a mess the remaining 90%.
 
ocellaris said:
I am currently playing through Metro 2033. I can't believe anyone thinks that DoF looks good. I think it helps the game look better about 10% of the time and just makes a mess the remaining 90%.
Click to expand...

I couldn't tell the difference between dof turned on/off in Metro, but maybe because of the fact that it killed my frame rates, so I immediately turned it off. ;)
 
addictedto60fps said:
I couldn't tell the difference between dof turned on/off in Metro, but maybe because of the fact that it killed my frame rates, so I immediately turned it off. ;)
Click to expand...

If you were playing in DX11 mode then the depth of field was enabled. Don't believe me - play in DX9 mode, and you'll see there's no depth of field. It's a very noticeable difference, especially in the tunnels. A lot of people didn't like it at all (see above), but I was knocked out by it. I also loved the DOF in Risen.

Metro's advanced DOF in DX11, on the other hand, which you enable in the settings menu, does virtually nothing, except kill your frames, as you said.

Jesus, I'm getting pumped up about DA 2 now.
 
WabeWalker said:
If you were playing in DX11 mode then the depth of field was enabled. Don't believe me - play in DX9 mode, and you'll see there's no depth of field. It's a very noticeable difference, especially in the tunnels. A lot of people didn't like it at all (see above), but I was knocked out by it. I also loved the DOF in Risen.

Metro's advanced DOF in DX11, on the other hand, which you enable in the settings menu, does virtually nothing, except kill your frames, as you said.

Jesus, I'm getting pumped up about DA 2 now.
Click to expand...

Hmm, ok, maybe I'll go fire it back up and try again.
 
WabeWalker said:
If you were playing in DX11 mode then the depth of field was enabled. Don't believe me - play in DX9 mode, and you'll see there's no depth of field. It's a very noticeable difference, especially in the tunnels. A lot of people didn't like it at all (see above), but I was knocked out by it. I also loved the DOF in Risen.

Metro's advanced DOF in DX11, on the other hand, which you enable in the settings menu, does virtually nothing, except kill your frames, as you said.

Jesus, I'm getting pumped up about DA 2 now.
Click to expand...

I think I might like the DoF in Metro 2033 if it was a bit more subtle and looked like actual camera DoF. They just went a bit overboard with it and there have been plenty of situations where I was trying to look far and everything was completely blurred to shit because something close to me was in focus. Bleh!
 
ocellaris said:
I think I might like the DoF in Metro 2033 if it was a bit more subtle and looked like actual camera DoF. They just went a bit overboard with it and there have been plenty of situations where I was trying to look far and everything was completely blurred to shit because something close to me was in focus. Bleh!
Click to expand...

If you play in DX9 the DOF is gone, and quite frankly, DOF is really the only noticeable change from DX9 to DX11.

You should play Metro in DX9 mode.
 
WabeWalker said:
Further evidence that the PC is really starting to pull away.

http://translate.google.de/translat...euchtung-und-mehr/Rollenspiel-Adventure/News/

I know that some people dislike depth of field. I happen to love it. The DOF in Metro 2033 in particular was very well done.

I started off with an antagonistic feeling about this game, but I'm starting to feel now that this second title might do for me what the original didn't. I don't know... I'm starting to feel enthusiastic about this.
Click to expand...

I don't dislike depth of field inherently, but when I'm playing a game to compete with others, it's a handicap. Turning it on in a Call of Duty game just makes everything blurry while ADS which in turn makes it more difficult to see people who aren't right in the middle of your screen. In a Dragon Age, for instance, I don't need such little advantages, so I don't hate it.
 
WabeWalker said:
This is where tessellation is being used in Dragon Age 2, according to the linked article - on terrain.

Also, IGN has just posted new PC gameplay preview footage. My links to Utube don't seem to be working for some people, but here it is.

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=/&gl=CA#/watch?xl=xl_blazer&v=P8n_oa5xK4w
Click to expand...

http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/02/07/dragon-age-2-video-preview?objectid=61075

Here is the video on IGN. The only thing I can definitively say from that video is that I am disappointed in the dumbing down of the conversation mechanics to Mass Effect level. Top one for good guy, middle one for neutral, bottom one for asshole. DAO had some really interesting conversation trees if you went with the right responses, and that's going to disappear sadly.

I can't conclude whether I like the gameplay changes or not. I can go either way, pausing and giving commands or a "flowing" combat system, so I will have to make the judgment on that. In DAO, you had to issue orders individually and carefully because the fights were often damn hard. Things like friendly fire and synergy between freezes and shatters made it interesting. I just don't see how a you can make both systems viable.
 
WabeWalker said:
A media blackout must have been lifted today, because here's any even lengthier Dragon Age 2 gameplay sequence.

My worst fears, confirmed. The animation system looks exactly like a cartoon on fast forward. Just... wow. Shockingly disappointing.

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-road-show-dragon-age-ii/17-3772/
Click to expand...

That's the 360 version, though. Not sure how much of a difference that makes.

The guy said the controls on PC are identical to Origins. Still Tactics and everything.

If the game weren't called "Dragon Age" I wonder if some people would really be that upset about it? This still could be a good game.

It's worth watching that whole video and listening.
 
That does look like shit. It's not that surprising though, having read the Bioware forums recently. Any criticisms are usually dismissed as trolling, the devs get REALLY defensive, and only focus on the posts that praise their design changes.

If their success went to their heads, they are dead to me. I will judge based on the demo.
 
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