System requirments for Valve's new Source engine features

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PC Surgeon

Limp Gawd
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[H]ard|OCP front page it states improvements to the source engine, motion blur, film grain, dust ect ect. What I want to know is what do I need to experience these features full throttle. Any ideas?

Thanks.
 
I'm sure they aren't as high end in terms of hardware as you may expect but a decent setup would probably be recommended.
 
Am I the only one that thinks this new stuff from Valve looks like ASS?

Then again I haven't seen it in motion just screenshots.
 
i really don't understand why things like motion blur, focus, heatwave, stuff like that is always lauded as a huge deal that can only be done with latest hardware. My PS2 has bitchin motion blur and heatwave effects. see Jak 2 and 3 and MGS2 for starters. I always thought it was hilarious, Doom 3 all like yeah, direct x 9 cards can only do heatwaves. wtf? or how about the horrible looking way overdone heatwave in CoD2? PS2 for the win!
 
the features are still in development, so valve will probably release system requirements once they plan on releasing them. you'll probably need something around a 6800 at the very minimum, maybe even a 7800
 
meatfestival said:
Motion blur in source games won't be possible on any hardware available today.
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Seriously? So it's not happening in Perfect Dark Zero and DOA4?
 
SPARTAN VI said:
Seriously? So it's not happening in Perfect Dark Zero and DOA4?
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maybe it wont run in source, but ive seen graphics demos from 2003 that have full hdr lighting and realistic motion blur, link is below.

link
 
As Valve continues to evolve their existing Source based games, I suspect that to garner the top performance possible you'll need the following:

Windows XP 64bit edition
AMD X2 processor (although an FX will also be good, I just expect that the dual-core support in the GPU drivers and other system level tasks will provide some additional performance boost)

Existing Steam account that downloads the new 64bit versions of the Source software.

See http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=news&id=496 for more details about the new 64bit extensions recently added to Source. I'm frankly quite amazed and happy that Valve continues to fine tune, enhance and more to an already existing platform and games. As mult-core enhancements get better, it would not suprise me in the slightest that Valve goes back and fine tunes Source to support that as well.

Since Valve is marketing the Source engine for more games besides DOD, CS:S, HL2 and so on, it's not suprising that they continue to enhance the engine as they discover additional enhancements that can be implemented. Nice as we don't have to wait for HL3 to see these new technologies in action.
 
Pr3z said:
Am I the only one that thinks this new stuff from Valve looks like ASS?

Then again I haven't seen it in motion just screenshots.
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Everything except the film grain.

As far as the specs go... I'd assume that any card with Shader Model 2.0 or higher would support it. That's just speculation on my part, I'm not sure really.
 
I believe that true real time motion blur cant be implimented as fo yet but pre rendered effects and the other stuff (heat wave) and such its not real time and maybe not true motion blur. And i like the sephia effects that ive seen.
 
Pr3z said:
Am I the only one that thinks this new stuff from Valve looks like ASS?

Then again I haven't seen it in motion just screenshots.
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That's the problem, cinematic effects cannot be shown in any effective manner from a "screenshot". To really show it off, HD WMV9 video files will be required so that you can watch a live recording at the actual screen res.

Am I the only one that's amazed that Valve continues to enhance and add on to an already shipped product? They could have held all this new feature stuff (HDR and more) for another HL release that you had to purchase. As you can see from my post above they've already added 64bit support (that they'll continue to refine as shown from experience on other refinements they've implemented).

I suspect that you'll see some real eye candy coming for those that have:

SM 3.0 capable card from either nVIDIA or ATI.
Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition
64bit drivers for all hardware (dual core enhancements in nVIDIA or ATI drivers)
AMD X2 (although non dual-core won't be bad, but it won't help enhance the physics that will be offloaded to the second core "opps, did I let a cat out of the bag?")
And a Steam account (64bit editions downloaded automatically when 64bit OS is detected)

Currently we've (Queens english, I don't work for Valve) had the following added:

HDR (working even on SM 2.0 cards)
64bit extensions
soon to be released Cinematics
shhh (future physics enhancements for dual-core alla Havok engines current dual-core support in the works).

:cool: I feel that I'm getting my money's worth from Valve.
 
HighTest said:
Am I the only one that's amazed that Valve continues to enhance and add on to an already shipped product?
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I never thought of Valve that way. They keep trying to improve css and everything. The only problem I have with steam is rediculous amount of updates, i think it is a bit much already.
But it does look pretty amaizing. And yes HighTest is right most sms2.0 cards will be able to do it. Somebody said it wil lrequire a 7800....
 
PC Surgeon said:
[H]ard|OCP front page it states improvements to the source engine, motion blur, film grain, dust ect ect. What I want to know is what do I need to experience these features full throttle. Any ideas?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

The type of motion blur and depth of field Valve is working on in the Source engine using an accumulation buffer will not run in real time on current video cards, they aren't fast enough. With everything on it takes around 2 seconds to render each frame on current video cards.

The color correction and film grain however take almost no performance hit, so you'll start to see those things first. The color correction is a big one for modders and developers. Aftermath will probably use some of those effects, as will DoD Source. So basically you don't have to have any special hardware to support color correction and film grain, they aren't even using shaders to do it, it's all texture lookups.

The other effects, motion blur and depth of field will need much faster video cards.
 
Pr3z said:
Am I the only one that thinks this new stuff from Valve looks like ASS?

Then again I haven't seen it in motion just screenshots.
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It's pretty good all put together, especially when used for creating cut-scene videos or "live action" video using a game engine.
 
tornadotsunamilife said:
Why? Motion blur is already been implemented in demo's from ati on X series...
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That's a different form of Motion Blur, not as accurate and easy to program in according to Valve. No games currently use the form of motion blur and depth of field Valve is using in the Source engine.
 
It seems that valve is all about their own versions of these technologies.

HDR from the lost coast demo was done much more robustly than other implementations and I assume these new features will be more of the same. I have a feeling however that because valve insists on doing things on a per-pixel basis, we are going to see huge frame rate drops with HDR, Motion Blur and DoF enabled. I think they will be the most convincing graphically, but I think valve needs to realize that doing motion blur and film grain in the frame buffer will yield much faster results with less hardware.

It's the old Effort/Reward problem....I only hope the extra effort is worth it.
 
noobman said:
Everything except the film grain.
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There is a game from a few years ago, it's called Nosferatu, it's very low detail, and it has astounding Film Grain effects, go check it out.
 
Pr3z said:
Am I the only one that thinks this new stuff from Valve looks like ASS?
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You're not the only one. :(

Those effects could look nice if used appropriately, but all the pictures have the effect (especially motion blur, DoF and film grain) turned up too much. The effects look ugly in most of the screenshots.

Compare those to computer rendering in recent movies. Day and night, and the movies look far better even ignoring the difference in resolution.
 
motion blur has been around since quake 3 and the voodoo 6000 lol
Tbuffer?
 
motion blur works in realtime in the rthdribl demo because it's only rendering a tiny amount of triangles compared to a game. It would certainly be possible in old games like Quake 3 where it's easy to get frame rates in the hundreds.
 
My friend has motion blur already enabled by default...its a "feature" of his >25ms LCD monitor.

But as for motion blur and the processing of triangles, I wonder if a physics processing unit could be adapted to handle the workload.
 
I'd say the only thing that would really help is more GPU power, lots of it, as the only way to do it properly is rendering an accumulation of several frames for every one that is actually displayed.
 
kuyaglen said:
My friend has motion blur already enabled by default...its a "feature" of his >25ms LCD monitor.

But as for motion blur and the processing of triangles, I wonder if a physics processing unit could be adapted to handle the workload.
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You know this brings up a fantastic point...something that Anand touched on in a very simple manner with regards to scaling video signals....that is the 'L' word.

Basically, where we will be moving to a system of greater complexity extending over more system resources. The sound card, the phyx card, the GPU and CPU will all need to be syncd with eachother....from my perspective, it will be a complex task getting some of these features to work with eachother without hitches or hiccups. It would seem to me that sound/phyx/graphics and AI will all need to be completely rendered and synchronized before things like DoF and Motion Blur can be applied. That of course follows the traditional model of applying these effects in the frame buffer and not at the scene it self. It will be hard to apply motionblur to a phyx object if you do not know what the next frame looks like (becase the PPU hasn't told you yet). You could of course use the last 2 or 3 frames to dictate the motion blur but that would pretty much mimic a slow response time of an LCD....only in selective areas. Then you start to take into account the DoF and things get really hairy, because you will be applying motion blur to things that are already out of focus which may or may not be controlled be the PPU.

Sounds complex.
 
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