"There's a range of new technologies added to the Naughty Dog engine in The Last of Us, but, surprisingly, relatively few of them are related to the rendering fundamentals. Resolution remains unchanged at standard 720p, while a very similar post-process anti-aliasing solution to Uncharted 3's also appears to be in evidence - it seems to have some issues with high-contrast and/or long edges, but generally it works well in what we've seen of The Last of Us so far."
"There's a range of new technologies added to the Naughty Dog engine in The Last of Us, but, surprisingly, relatively few of them are related to the rendering fundamentals. Resolution remains unchanged at standard 720p, while a very similar post-process anti-aliasing solution to Uncharted 3's also appears to be in evidence - it seems to have some issues with high-contrast and/or long edges, but generally it works well in what we've seen of The Last of Us so far."
"From a rendering perspective, The Last of Us shares plenty of DNA with Uncharted 3, but enhancements to lighting and real-time shadowing are a class apart."
"The developer has already done some great work in this area, specifically with the global illumination technology that we first saw in Uncharted 2. In The Last of Us, indirect lighting - the way that light bounces from surface to surface - has received new emphasis.
Most of this will be pre-calculated offline and baked into the environments (real-time global illumination to any great degree will require next-gen graphics tech - it's the centrepiece of Unreal Engine 4) but where The Last of Us has attracted interest from Naughty Dog's rivals is in the quality of its real-time shadows. Objects and characters are beautifully lit and shaded, perfectly sitting within the environments. The jagged low-resolution dynamic shadows from Uncharted have been replaced with a far smoother effect that seems to be using multiple penumbra. Ambient occlusion, serving to add depth to the environments in the nooks and crannies, is a touch heavy in places (especially when characters move close to surfaces) but it generally looks a class apart - reminding us a little of the excellent work done by Sucker Punch for inFamous 2."
"It's an entirely consistent, locked 30 frames per second, with absolutely no hiccups in frame-rate whatsoever. Testament to Naughty Dog's mastery of the PlayStation 3? Perhaps. Alternatively, the firm may well have rendered the gameplay footage offline, as it did when an Uncharted 3 gameplay video running at 60 frames per second escaped into the wild. We always wondered how Naughty Dog achieved that, and the answer may well reside within a tweet from co-president Christophe Balestra, revealing the lashed-up "render farm" of eight networked PlayStation 3 debugging stations, used principally for generating cut-scene footage. There's no reason why the same set-up couldn't generate the 60Hz Uncharted 3 feed or this new gameplay footage from The Last of Us. In the case of the latter, the game will still be in development and this procedure would show the game at its very best."
"The latter element in particular is outstanding: Joel and Ellie have a multitude of canned motion captures stored on the Blu-ray disc, with the game constantly evaluating surrounding geometry in order to produce the most appropriate context-driven animation. It's the best solution for the most realistic effect - procedurally generated motion is the natural evolution, as we've seen from first-gen efforts like FIFA's Impact Engine, but Naughty Dog's solution produces the more convincing effect. As a result, there's a genuine sense that these are living, breathing characters, interacting incidentally with their surroundings in a believable manner. The emphasis on realism extends to combat: whether you're taking damage or dishing it out, the location-based animation is brutally realistic to the point where the effect can be genuinely disconcerting."
Full Article
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-tech-analysis-the-last-of-us
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