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The Matrix Is Unreal

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Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you got it exactly. This is the democratization of AAA graphics. This whole city was made with just a team of 70. (Red Dead Redemption 2 had a team of 1,600.) They relied heavily on Epic’s giant library of game assets that anyone can use. They used procedural generation to mix those assets in to create the map and random procedural generation of the pedestrians. The lighting and physics system are also Unreal En…

To be honest, a team of 70 isn't going to be enough if you're going to make an actual game as big as RDR2 rather than just a tech demo. I'm not convinced until a game studio actually makes a standalone game in UE5 and reports its workflow has become better.

Workflow has improved a lot in ways that can't really be worse, e.g. projects are broken up into lots of small files now so it's a lot more compatible with version control.

Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a triumph of software, not hardware Purpose built gaming hardware has significant advantages over a typical PC. Modern consoles have SoC designs with incredible bandwidth between CPU/GPU/RAM that you simply can't have on upgradable form factors. The closest thing in the general purpose computing world are the M1 family of SoC MacBooks. UMA on the M1 in particular could be harnessed to have physics and graph…

> Modern consoles have SoC designs with incredible bandwidth between CPU/GPU/RAM that you simply can't have on upgradable form factors. So where's the PC platform with these advantages? I mean, most PC players will replace their whole system instead of upgrade individual components (anecdotal / speaking for myself). Where's the PC-like-a-console? I guess the Steam Deck will be the one to look out for. But I would als…

The PC market has found a local maxima that prevents it from getting there.

You need the CPU, GPU, motherboard, and RAM to be one product shipped by one company, but instead you've got a CPU from Intel, a GPU from AMD/Nvidia, a motherboard from the PC manufacturer, and off the shelf RAM.

"Gamers" want an Intel CPU because of the branding (although this is shifting towards AMD now), they want a particular graphics card because of branding, they may even care about the specific motherboard and/or RAM.

Apple are able to do this console-like integration and performance because their target market don't care enough about each individual component, the Mac is the product and the brand they get behind. PS5 owners aren't buying it because of the brand of CPU.

Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#194

The people trying to point out that this falls short of photorealism are missing the point. This is a tech demo aiming to show off the next generation leap unreal engine 5 is making. There’s lots to be impressed about here and this was made using a ton of procedural generation using a team of just about 70 people. Here’s a great deep dive into some of the new technologies that highlights the strengths and weaknesses…

The HN crowd's interest response has been so deadened by constant dopamine flow that they simply cannot be entertained anymore.

"Meh" is the maximum level of emotional response that can be elicited.

The invention of literal time travel, the invention of AGI, or the manufacture of a black hole as an energy source would all be met with mehs. Just a bunch of people dead inside. I still come here for the links and the 5% of comments that are insightful and not pedantic.

Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#195

The people trying to point out that this falls short of photorealism are missing the point. This is a tech demo aiming to show off the next generation leap unreal engine 5 is making. There’s lots to be impressed about here and this was made using a ton of procedural generation using a team of just about 70 people. Here’s a great deep dive into some of the new technologies that highlights the strengths and weaknesses…

70 people is rather a lot.

I don’t know, i was kind of blown away by the length of the end credits screen in call of duty. I reckon there were several thousand names listed there.

Fwiw this demo is on another level than call of duty. The world feels huge, extremely busy - there’s cars and people everywhere - and so varied.

Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#196
post #142
post #26

This writeup is unsubtle in being a puff piece. The demoed tech is very impressive! Individual stills taken from the video are pretty convincing. The motion version definitely still exhibits uncanny valley, though—lights that are too hard on flesh, tightness and sharpness where there should be softness. That I have to resort to hand-wavey descriptors is cool; they’re getting close! But crossing uncanny valley is HARD…

Speaking of motion, the motion of the characters is my biggest gripe. It feels like we are making tons of progress with lighting, textures, and faces, but characters still move with all the fluidity of a stick figure. Rotoscoping still beats the pants off CG here IMO. I wonder if CG models the vertebrae yet? Tough to motion capture, but a huge part of why humans don't move like stick figures.

I think it's more a case that in this particular tech-demo the animation was a let down. Games have progressed greatly in animation with demos such as this [1] and [2] being good examples. I'll admit course however that animation is one of the larger difficulties when crossing the uncanny valley.

1. https://youtu.be/o-QLSjSSyVk?t=1297

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i78ds3bJFDE&t=2739s

Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern consoles have SoC designs with incredible bandwidth between CPU/GPU/RAM that you simply can't have on upgradable form factors. So where's the PC platform with these advantages? I mean, most PC players will replace their whole system instead of upgrade individual components (anecdotal / speaking for myself). Where's the PC-like-a-console? I guess the Steam Deck will be the one to look out for. But I would als…

The PC market has found a local maxima that prevents it from getting there. You need the CPU, GPU, motherboard, and RAM to be one product shipped by one company, but instead you've got a CPU from Intel, a GPU from AMD/Nvidia, a motherboard from the PC manufacturer, and off the shelf RAM. "Gamers" want an Intel CPU because of the branding (although this is shifting towards AMD now), they want a particular graphics car…

I don't think it's brand loyalty on the part of end customers, it's just unlikely and difficult for a number of large vendors to coordinate on such a project. You would need motherboard, CPU and GPU designers to take a long bet on a new form factor, while also cutting their bottom line (SoCs require less components and better performance for money)

I think the speed advantage would be one welcomed by the average PC user, and if Intel aren't already colluding to make an answer to M1, they're heading towards extinction

Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#198
post #142
post #26

This writeup is unsubtle in being a puff piece. The demoed tech is very impressive! Individual stills taken from the video are pretty convincing. The motion version definitely still exhibits uncanny valley, though—lights that are too hard on flesh, tightness and sharpness where there should be softness. That I have to resort to hand-wavey descriptors is cool; they’re getting close! But crossing uncanny valley is HARD…

Speaking of motion, the motion of the characters is my biggest gripe. It feels like we are making tons of progress with lighting, textures, and faces, but characters still move with all the fluidity of a stick figure. Rotoscoping still beats the pants off CG here IMO. I wonder if CG models the vertebrae yet? Tough to motion capture, but a huge part of why humans don't move like stick figures.

There are some modern games with very impression animation, for example The Last of Us 2. That is a lot of work and the quality of animations varies a lot between games, even for AAA ones.

Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#199
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's really cool, the problem is it barely runs at 30fps and there is no way in hell it's going to run at 60fps on a console. I never had a ps4/xbone, skipped the last console cycle and stayed on PC then recently got a PS5 where every title has an option to play at 60fps. There is no way in hell the consoles are going to be able to push this fidelity at that frame rate. Let alone their promise of 120fps that has…

IMO 4k/60fps as a goal is overrated. 3k upscaled to 4k using a newer generation upscaler is not going to look much worse than native 4k, especially when viewed on a TV at a typical distance from one's couch. And 60fps, while crucial in some genres, is not altogether that important in others (particularly narrative-focused single-player titles, for which Unreal Engine is often used especially among non-major publisher…

4k maybe, but 60fps should be the minimum going forward IMO. Or at the very least a 60fps option in all games.

I think 30fps is a straight up usability issue. The only times I've ever had motion sickness or a headache from games is when the game is 30fps (though not all 30fps games gave me these issues)

I hope the performance/quality modes become standard this generation.

Re: The Matrix Is Unreal

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is the super exciting, mind blowing thing about this, this ran on the Xbox Series X/PS5! In fact, it even runs on then Xbox Series S with a small visual downgrade, which is the cheap version with 1/3 the GPU power of the Series X (at 4 tflops, it is perhaps very roughly equivalent to a GTX 1060 from 2016). This is a triumph of software, not hardware. I imagine you should be getting a lot of use still out of…

> This is a triumph of software, not hardware Purpose built gaming hardware has significant advantages over a typical PC. Modern consoles have SoC designs with incredible bandwidth between CPU/GPU/RAM that you simply can't have on upgradable form factors. The closest thing in the general purpose computing world are the M1 family of SoC MacBooks. UMA on the M1 in particular could be harnessed to have physics and graph…

Do you really need that much bandwidth between cpu and gpu? On a pc the the gpu has its own memory and the memory bandwidth of for example a 3070 is greater than the memory bandwidth of Xbox.

Would this demo not run on a pc?

I understand that pc hardware is more expensive but it was also my understanding that performance ceiling is actually much higher than consoles, especially after the next gen of pc hardware comes out after a console release.

It’s hard to tell how much more expensive a pc is because of console manufacturers’ loss leader accounting.

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