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Forums - Gaming - Force Unleashed 2 Devs: New Tech to Achieve 60fps from 30fps

makingmusic476 on 28 August 2010

Eurogamer just posted an article with the developers of the Force Unleashed 2 discussing some technology they've created that gives 30fps gameplay the illusion of being 60fps through the interpolation of multiple frames, much like the way current 120/240hz TVs are able to artifically increase the framerate of normal 24fps video. This technology was cronstructed too late to make it into the final game, but the concept is incredibly intriguing. 

Here are some of the more interesting tidbits from the article:

Andreev and his colleagues have devised a system that gives an uncanny illusion of true 60FPS, and uses less system resources than its existing motion blur code. Swap out the blur for the frame-rate upscaler and you effectively have all the visual advantages of 60FPS for "free", as there's very little need to run full-on multi-sample motion blur if your game is already running at 60FPS.

You'd think that this technique would cause lag, but as the interpolated image is being generated using elements from the next "real" frame, it actually reduces latency. Andreev's technique is single-frame based rather than dual-frame. The latter approach would require buffering two images so has a big memory and latency overhead, while the technique Andreev used effectively interpolates on the fly using past and future rendering elements.

According to his figures, The Force Unleashed II's motion blur eats up 2.2ms of resources on Xbox 360 (give or take 0.4ms), while the five-SPU-powered PS3 version is much faster at 1.4ms (give or take 0.5ms). Compare this with the frame-rate upscaler, which runs at 1.5ms on 360, and 1.4ms on PS3 (again parallelised over five SPUs).

Here are two example videos of how this technology works:

HD Comparison Video
SD Comparison Video

And as a side note, the article mentions that the Cell-based MLAA solution pioneered by Sony Santa Monica and now seen in God of War III, LittleBigPlanet 2, and Killzone 3 is now available for all ps3 developers to implement into their games through the SDK:

...Sony's extremely impressive MLAA solution which is now available for all developers to insert into their games as part of the PS3 SDK.

This gen is awesome.



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Slimebeast on 28 August 2010

Interesting but one wonders why they haven't invented this trick a long time ago.



makingmusic476 on 28 August 2010
Slimebeast said:

Interesting but one wonders why they haven't invented this trick a long time ago.


I don't know, but this is one of the benefits of working with static hardware.  Developers have to innovate in coding in order to continue getting more out of the system.

The longer this gen lasts, the more time developers have to come up with techniques like this that improve the image quality of their games, rather then jumping head first into a new generation, relying on the sheer brute force of new hardware to make their games look better.  Most of the gains in software design made this generation should carry over to next generation as well.



joeorc on 28 August 2010

i like this:

With platform holders, publishers and developers alike hoping to get at least two to three more years out of the current gen platforms, innovation like this is hugely welcome - and equally, it's great to see game developers willing to share their techniques in forums like GDC and SIGGRAPH, leading to a commonwealth of knowledge that improves the overall standards of the games we play.

awsome post by the way.



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.