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_mevildan on 15 June 2009
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Before I start bashing the article, let me say that I think both GT5 and Forza 3 look great. Which is better? Hard to say right now.

Now, I read the posted article. This is mostly rubbish. It's articles like these that make me hate the internet sometimes. Well, It doesn't start off well by using "verticle" instead of vertical.

This guy is going on about lighting and a umbra and penumbra. This goof obviously doesn't know too much about graphic rendering. For one thing, decent "true" umbra/penumbra representation requires higher shadow resolution than I think most console games can afford.

Most games using shadow mapping are simply using uniform point sampling on the shadow maps to produce a soft shadow effect. There is no "umbra/penumbra" option you can turn on magically.

From the article:
"Xbox 360 uses its built-in DirectX feature along with ATI GPU Chipset to produce all these important aspects perfectly. On the other hand PS3 does not possess any of these qualities therefore resulting in artificial/poor or wrong shadow detail.".

What is he referring to here? Does Xenos support Fetch4? Are they using variance shadow maps (which is not really a hardware specific thing)? From what I have read Xenos doesn't have Fetch4 (or Gather4). I am not saying it can't produce good shadows. It definately can.

As for the PS3, I know the RSX includes Nvidia's hardware PCF implementation, so rendering nice soft shadows is no problem for the PS3 either.

As for the images themselves. I agree that on those London shots, something is a bit off. It's simply that the people aren't being affected by architectural shadows. I noticed this in Prologue as well. I am sure they will address this before release. It's not some PS3 limitation. It's an implementation problem. The person who wrote this article needs to just go and play Assassin's Creed on PS3 and he will see very well done shadowing.

Both Forza 3 and GT5 will be top games with awesome graphics. Don't read nonsense articles like this.