Crysis direct-feed GDC trailer: it's hot

wow that looks Nice....

oh.....my.....god.....

holy shit that is a bad ass game....could this be on the rev??? please please be on the rev haha

VERY nice...shame it is being published by EA. They will probably do something to mess up the game like they do with just about every other title they publish.

Holy God, this is what I imagined when I imagine Next-Gen man. Only to be filled with rage by the fact I only see it coming out for PC...My computer would crash and burn before it could pump that out.

heh...my pc struggled to play the HD video in real-time..don't even want to think how this would look..I'd probably have to play the thing in 800x600 on barely minimum detail...

Be sure and watch the tech demo vid too, that was here or on digg earlier a week back or so... Incredible stuff.

You know what's really messed up? Windows Vista won't allow any of us to stream HD-quality trailers like this. The signal will automatically get downgraded, all because they're worried about piracy.

"You know what's really messed up? Windows Vista won't allow any of us to stream HD-quality trailers like this. The signal will automatically get downgraded, all because they're worried about piracy."

If that's true, Chris, I guess I better jump on the current version of Windows Media Center Edition before it's too late! (Or does that downgrade HD signals, too?)

I suppose the best way to sum up my thoughts on this game are to quote the very first words that came out of my mouth...

"Holy....(pause for shock and awe)..My God DAMN!"

I say again...this engine would make BF: Vietnam worth playing.

Now Oblivion looks like snot. Thanks guys.

Uh oh, FUD ALERT!

"You know what's really messed up? Windows Vista won't allow any of us to stream HD-quality trailers like this. The signal will automatically get downgraded, all because they're worried about piracy."

Totally untrue. I'm not going to bother educating you fully on the issue, I'll link you to an article at the end. What I will say is that what you speak of is called HDCP and is meant for disc-based movies. It has nothing to do with what you download unless a company chooses to adapt it that way. The HDCP standard was developed by Intel.

If Microsoft didn't implement HDCP support in Vista then you wouldn't be able to play any HD movies. The same goes for Mac OSX, Linux, and any standalone devices; without updates they will be unable to play HD movies from a disc. What does that mean? It means Apple will implement support for the same thing Microsoft is implementing and they will do it soon. I'm not sure what Linux is going to do because AACS compatibility must be licensed.

Inform yourself and go blame the movie industry for forcing this technology on us. It is they who are choosing to sell their movies in that way. It is because of them we are forced to buy new monitors and TVs to get the full HD movie quality or use a scaled down version instead. There is just no way a downloaded trailer would just randomly become half the quality for no reason what so ever.

Article: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/hdcp-vista.ars

Nick

^^ Thanks for the info, Nick. The HD-streaming claim was a little sketchy, at least for non-encrypted videos like this, but the encoding still sucks for streaming disc-based movies (from Hollywood).

If this entire trailer is truly done in real time, then ladies and gentlemen, next-generation visuals have truly arrived. EA, I will definitely be stopping by your (sure to be massive) booth at E3 again this year to check out Crysis!
Paul Gale
1up.com

Any chance we'll see that on the PS3? I don't think the 360 could handle it with optimal settings (every PC to 360 port has suffered at least slightly on the 360). Hopefully the PS3 has more power.

OHHHH NOOOOO! I was supposed to go the E3 this year. If an next gen console puts out visuals like that, it won't be for at least another yea or two I think. That engine is incredible and shows that UE 3 is not the only tools to use to build a PC game. I believe that was in real time too. I thought Oblivion was impressive! "sheesh" talk about 15 minutes of fame....

Thank you sloopydrew for talking out your rear-end. This is in fact slated for the 360 and is actually MORE likely to appear on that console depemding on how the engine was build. AS for why PC game ports suffer on the 360, is because of the way the engine was created. Most game engines today are built around single core, Out of Order execution processors and are at least several years old by the time the actual games are releases. For perspective, Epic hasnt released a single Unreal 3.0 engine game yet the Unreal 4 engine is being worked on and nearing completion.


Anyway, if you have ever played a PC to mac port you experience similar issues because the game engine was desinged around the x86 processor that ALL windows PCs use as opposed to the MAC/APPLE which uses the Power core from IBM. Thats why the move to Intel for mac was such a HUGE deal as applications ported to macs, (mostly games) just never ran as well despite being on near identical hardware and the exact same GPU. The REASON? CODING x86 processors process code completely different from Power cores. As such the code is different, so that unless the game is WRITTEN FROM THE VERY BEGINNING TO EXECUTE on that processor, you will see a performance hit. PERIOD. This is why BC of the 360 is such an issue as the arch is completely different and needs to be emulated without crashing occasion WHICH HAS ZERO TO DO WITH THE POWER OF THE SYSTEM because regardless of "power" is a core cannot process the thread it will merely crash much faster.

Now I said all that to say this, ALL three consoles are based on the Power core which means they suffer from the same issues as MACs when they receives ports. Add in that IN ORDER EXECUTION can and will crash code specifically written for OUT OF ORDER EXECUTION and its a wonder that the game runs at all with that code. The 360 is an even more special case as its gpu processes graphics differently and given a host of new tricks to graphics engine. The problem is unless the code is specifically written for it you will see garbage as the framebuffer is not traditionally in any terms and as such failure to use it results in severe jaggies. The fact that the 360 runs oblivion as well as it does is a true testament to the boxes power if you have any idea what you are looking at. The radiant AI and real time physics dependant HEAVILY on OOOE (out of order execution) something which BOTH the 360 and PS3 lack. To compensate the 30 has tremendous integer processing abilities and branch prediction. Which ironically the Ps3 sufferes severely at (which I also suspect is the reason it wont be seen on the Ps3 as Bethesda explictly said it will appear on EVER system that can handle it ;). Anyway The Ps3s initial offering will look better than the 360s ONLY because they stuck a tradional gpu in the box, thus PCs graphics engine can transfer directly to Ps3 with minimal effort and most of the performance.

Anyway stop making assumptions and READ.
Here's a cookie enjoy it.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/hyperthreading.ars

^ I would like to submit this as REQUIRED reading for anyone who wants to comment of the power of the next gen systems.

I am looking forward to the 360 version of Crysis, I am sure all the versions will be comparable in quality, but I highly doubt this will make to the Nintendo's next gen.

I am looking forward to more information on the online multiplayer mode, hopefully it is well implemented. I think Crytek and the EA team are more than capable, I just hope they will deliver. The technology looks stunning, I can't wait to hear more details come E3.

"Any chance we'll see that on the PS3? I don't think the 360 could handle it with optimal settings (every PC to 360 port has suffered at least slightly on the 360). Hopefully the PS3 has more power."

Theres a real good chance considering I picked up a mag in a newsagent the other day that said it was coming to PS3.

It's gonna take programmers a while to get used to a multicore powerpc chip or even the more complicated Cell based chip.I don't see why the 360 or the PS3 can't handle the geometry or the textures that are displayed in the pic.
They both have similar graphics rendering power and system/graphics memory.Another year or two and PC's will be distancing themselves from these consoles in terms of what they can render but it also depends on the development teams who now take years to create the games that push the graphics envelope further.
This game will have to have great AI,physics,animation,sound,music,story and such before I'm blown away.Oblivion is a great PC/360 title that has far more than just graphics thank you very much!
In fact comparing them is a waste of time.Bethesda,your game is a triumph...

Wow, that must be one amazingly complex game engine. My PC lags just watching a *video* of it!

bandit: "Add in that IN ORDER EXECUTION can and will crash code specifically written for OUT OF ORDER EXECUTION and its a wonder that the game runs at all with that code."

This is completly false. OoO processors re-order the program code in realtime. The code is not specifically written for OOE. Take a Pentium 1 CPU that don't support dynamic execution and a PII or a newer CPU that support dynamic execution. Both can run the 1st Unreal game, but on the CPU that support dynamic execution, the code will be run with OOE. It's transparent for both the user and the programmer.

With CPUs that don't support OOE there's an important consideration. Since the CPU can't re-order the instructions it received, it's important that the compiler optimised the code so that instructions received are correctly ordered for good parallel processing. Again these optimisations are transparent to the programmer.


"The 360 is an even more special case as its gpu processes graphics differently and given a host of new tricks to graphics engine. The problem is unless the code is specifically written for it you will see garbage as the framebuffer is not traditionally in any terms and as such failure to use it results in severe jaggies. The fact that the 360 runs oblivion as well as it does is a true testament to the boxes power if you have any idea what you are looking at."

False again. 3D engine are not written at the hardware level anymore, they are written at the API and framework level. The 2 best known being Direct3D and OpenGL. An engine can be optimized for a particular type of hardware, but 90% of the code is still the same. The reason Oblivion runs so well on the 360 is because it's a DirectX game so there's was not a lot of modification to do.

The 360 GPU has a unified shader pipeline. Like the OOE CPU, it's the GPU itself that decide what pipeline will be used for pixel ops or vertex ops. It's transparent to the programmer. Same thing for the daughter-die. Nobody program at the hardware level now except OS programmers, compiler programmers and program for dedicated micro-controller. Even cellphones support JAVA now!

bandit and JPRacer,

Incredible information. I actually enjoyed reading u'r posts. Anyway, the X360 can handle the game. iWish those idiot fanboys would stop talking like they know whats up. "The x360 can't do this but the PS3 can." How the hell do they know? R they developers for both? Do they know the future potential of the consoles? iDoubt it. Nobody is intersted in reading trash like that except other fellow fanmates, so take that garbage to a dedicated PS3 site.

I agree with Black Guy, it's nice to see people with at least half a brain commenting for a while. In fact, I've been turned off from commenting on posts lately due to the enormous amounts of sheer imbeciles on this site lately. Good to know a few people out there can carry on an intelligent and informed debate - bandit might have gotten a couple of points wrong, but at least he/she bothered to TRY to understand what makes consoles/PCs/whatever "powerful." Props to both.

Yeah, I must say that it was interesting reading those two long comments by bandit and JPRacer. I get the impression that efficient parallel processing will take years to master (especially for all of the Cell's SPEs, but also for the 360's multi-core processor, to a lesser extent). Of course, there are efforts like IBM's Octopiler to help coders out with practical programming assistance, but it's not exactly being distributed widely just yet. But like any software line-up at launch, things should get better. All in good time, folks... all in good time.

IBM's Octopiler, or, why the PS3 is running late
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060225-6265.html

Very good comments from JPRacer but all I know is I am pretty happy with my X360 graphics, but if this can run on my 360 I will be ecstatic!! This looks AWESOME! People are spoiled! I remember Doom (the original) and then Quake were all the rage at the time and compared to todays graphics those old games look like dog sh%&!! Again, this looks sweet as hell!

What I'm not exactly sure of is why engine developers still have this thing about motion blur. Since 3dfx tried pulling it off in the Voodoo 5 days it simply has not looked good.

Motion blur tends to be in relation to where your vision is fixed. It works well if you are looking at one point and an object moves through your plane of vision. The problem is, the human mind is attracted to motion. When an object is moving through your plane of vision, your eyes are likely going to follow it. When that soldier ran by in the clip, I can guarantee just about everyone watching it followed the soldier along. By blurring the object in motion, all you end up seeing is a blurry guy running by, not a simulation of motion blur.

Until the engine is capable of knowing exactly where your vision is focused, then it is probably a good idea to avoid using motion blur as it tends to do a better job detracting from the experience.

Otherwise, this is one incredible looking engine. I particularly like how the environment is being pushed closer to a fully destructable model. Maybe we can see real bullet holes this time around, such as shooting a hole in a door and being able to see what is going on behind it through the hole in real time.

JPRacer, the fact that they do not have the ability it reorder realtime is a HUGE consideration. In fact for the longest time Ps3 developers couldn't even get a compiler as an effiecient on did not exist. As programmers we write sloppy code. Why? because will let the cpu sort out the dependencies for us. While a compiler will check for the dependencies it can never compare to realtime optimization. An In-order core can only match an OOOEs performance on specialized parrallel tasks even with a compiler and In-order core will only reach approxiamately half the performance of an OOOE when that code has also been run through a compiler. Basically OOOE is ALWAYS better to have. The reason both the 360 and PS3 use in-order arch is because of size, heat, and cost. OOOE cores are about 75% larger than their in-order brothers and are considerable cheaper and cooler.

On to the GPU yes I understand its written at the API level however the framebuffer which dictates the resolution and framerate is dramatically different from any GPU made today. When is the last time you have seen a cpu with 256GB bandwidth, mem controller on die, and cpu direct access to the cpu cache? Most games for the 360 there we have seen lately were designed without even considering the edram as you have to totally restructure the graphics rendering engine and how it passes into the framebuffer. While correct the only thing that allows oblivion to run at all is the API. It still treats the GPU as if it has a tradition framebuffer, thus it uses the system ram for the framebuffer which is VERY bad as it only has a 22GB bandwidth total. As for the unified shaders, this is also transparent even more so as developers will optimize their code to run in vertex or shader pipelines, however since the units are ambigious there are no stalls. If you read the link I set up imagine tradition gpus as the SP model and the ATI as the SMT model. In the diagrams there are dramatically less Idle times as the processor processes both threads simultaneously. The ATI gou works the exact same way and it does a great job.

Now why cell is a nightmare...
NO OOOE !!!! Compilers check for dependencies in code, for more complex games there are obviously more dependencies. Especially when you get to (certain types mostly interactive) realtime physics and certain times of AI processes. (not stupid traditional pathfinding.) The SPEs basically process whatever is thrown at them and the do it VERY fast and VERY stupidly. For instance the SPEs lack brancd prediction however have branch hints. the basically tak a shot in the dark as to which way the code will deviate. The 360 branch PREDICTION is much more sophiscated and more effective. Thus you have these SPEs pulling data from the same cache processing the data, gets to the end finds out its wrong and and need to reconsile it. Now imagine 7 of these little buggers executioning code incredible fast and incredible wrong. Now without OOOE support to reorder code on the fly (realtime) in an waythat actually makes sense you are stuck with little VMX units basically spitting code back and forth at each other until the PPE has a spare moment to straighten them out as its the only one with full branch prediction and decent interger performance. The spes take an 80% hit when attempting to process integer data. Why? because thats not what they were built for. The Ps3 was built to be a "B*itch*ng media hub for streaming encoding and decoding, which it is perfectly suited for. So then the question what was cell built for in complex game code which will be highly prevalent in the next gen runs poorly on this processor? It was built as a cpu/gpu replacement and likely would have succeeded in raw power had nvidia and ati not developed pixel shaders. Remember that word, That is the MOST important word in the history of graphics rendering and will change the way video games are perceived. anyway Im babbling. basically the cell could not be used for its original intentions as a highly parrellized GPU so they just seated it as the CPU as they had already developed the tech and worked on the thing for 5 years. They have to recoup those research costs somehow. Anyway. The REAL next generation of games have graphics that look like Crysis at a bare MINIMUM.

bandit I completly agree with you. The PS3 has incredible computing power but it will be very hard to keep those SPEs busy. A lot of idle time and computing power wasted.

But theory and practice don't always correlate so I'll wait to see exactly what the Cell can do with real applications.

My only problem with the Ps3 is the ability to do more graphically work and not much else. I see a ton more enemies, special effects, and other garbage, but not much in the advancement of gameplay. In physics, nor AI. Having better parrellel processing will only allow us to create alot more stupid AI characters. Now instead of 10 people shooting at you, you have 1000, but they still have problems figuring out what exactly consitutes "good" cover. Throwing more graphically effects, bigger explosions and MORE of everything except depth IS NOT what I call next generation. The three biggest titles I look forward to are the ones that actually utilize the next gen aspects of processors. Games like oblivion, test drive unlimited, prey. Those are awesome games. The first time you try to to assasinate an NPC in oblivion and they decide WITHOUT developer scripting to turn invisible and sneak out the back door and find a guard to arrest you is mind blowing. No ammount of parrellel processing in the world can give you that experience. Over 1000 miles of road in a single server with consistent online play incredible. The prey demo, Someone actually using INTERACTIVE physics such as gravity and collision in game is freaking amazing. The graphical abilities of the unreal engine are great but what is really mind blowing are the tools and hardware power behind those tools. Giving developers the ability to do crazy things like this. Huxley a FPS MMO, looks great and plays better. All these games are unique in that the world more closely resemble the one we live in. Random. Thats what makes a good game better. The ability to do more and see more than we have experienced. My prediction is that the 360 will offer good looking games of the unreal nature but incredible gameplay. Meanwhile the Ps3 games will look amzing mostly because the majority of the systems power will be focused on making more stuff, look better in the background while simulating depth. This style is perfect RPGS ironcally as those type of games tend to be on storyline rails with little deviation in the gameplay from user to user. So be it then. The reality is the PS3 will excel at what it was made to do and thats make great looking games while the 360 will excel at what ti was built to do and thats make great playing games. I know this sounds strange but there are some very technical reasons why I believe this. Mostly because the Ps3 is built around a highly parrellel structure and lends itself much better to games on "rails" Its not a bad thing, it just the style of play. I can say one thing Japan loves games on rails and will eat the Ps3 alive. They are going to get incredible looking RPGs. Yes Final Fantasy what ever will eventually look like the tech demos. (provided they were only rendering it on the Gpu, even if they werent it will only look marginally less than that)

Expanding on what's been said about optimising compilers and Out of order Execution, this seemed a little vague so I'll clear it out:

Wrong branch prediction won't *crash* a game
Different framebuffer formats won't show garbage
Shader pipeline stalls won't explode your console.

They just make the software go slower. A good optimizing compiler often does the trick, but as it was said, it should be a while until one of those is avaiable for multicore environments (such as PS3).

As for Powerfulness and Awesomeness of PS3... no one really knows what it can run or how, so it's not really smart to say "PS3 will run this better than 360". Just hold on for a month.

But what about the gameplay? Graphics are one thing, but if the game is redundant, who cares?

Bandit was right about the cell not being powerful enough to do the type of graphics possible in the next gen and Nvidia basicly bailing them out hardware wise. Now Sony has a trojan horse cpu for the "medai home" idea. Thats cool and you guys have points but when it comes down to graphics guys I'm sorry your missing the point. They have volumetric clouds! Yes this is possible because of the gpu hardware. The falling tree that gets shot down simple rag doll or geometry collision. Softshadows and real time ambient maps This is what the doom games really needed. So now if they can do volumetric clouds then they should be able to do dirty volumetric lighting indoors, you know light where you can actualy see the dust particles swirling when disturbed. Except for some of the effects discribed above the geometry can be pulled off by loading 28 different types of foliage and using instanting. I was waiting to see this. Game play wise AI just needs to be written for the different cpu , gpu combinations. Do you really believe that the Ps3 has room for "more" things? This Cpu was designed for dumb geometry... Doesn't that leave out collision ai and almost any effcts. I think the SPU are bests used as gameplay tools for the AI, Background static geometry, Sand box game play although games on true rails would rock on this system I don't think thats a good idea game play wise. Most RPGs use the sand box idea.

I just picked up substance the other day... A PS2 game. You have to ask your self why that can be done on a PS2, simple no shader engine capable of that out put. I understand that you guys (bandit, JPRacer) are arguing over the capablilties of the systems overall system set up you need to realise...

The graphics guys are right... It's as simple as the drivers for the mac versions of the gpus where not as optimized for that platform. If you really do read Ars that much look up the old Ps2's set up, the comparison of the IBM powerpc chips to the regular old x86. The Cell was a move in the right direction but the tools are not there yet. The chip design could have used a beefier SIMD or even more of them IMHO. It's a nightmare because the poeple talking about them are not tool makers, compiler coders, machine coders.

Dan is right about IBM's Octopiler. Thats what is truely needed to make the cell shine the way it was intended to shine. With a Beefier SIMD chip like say a capable destop chip the Ps3 might have been able to pull off some thing close to what our GPUs are giving us, but they would have had the same problem. They won't truely have any tools ready for a long time. The ATI and Nvidia chips where designed and focused on graphics and the way they are setting up these chips easly out does any thing a software render will do OOOE or not.

The only thing that is truely going to shoot the next gen systems in the foot is the requirement for hd type graphics which effectively is Pc turf and they are both eating out of pc card makers hands. It's not smart to be a whale(Boiler room). Thus rising prices in a war you could not possibly win. Specialized chips are the way to go period, physics, ai,graphics. etc...

Oyeah this is possible on other systems given they support the correct number of shader pipelines or a similar tech. O yeah shaders are the future!


Oyeah bandit are you sure the oblivion thing isn't scripted... I don't remember reading any thing about a learning AI routine embedded in that game. Synapses development for in game characters sort of needs it's own chip. In some way or for it's all scripted... I know you know this... It's how smart game play wise the scripting routine is that makes the game fun.

Jason is also right if the gameplay is only what we just then I sort of feel the same way... Although I can't wait for 3d modeling apps ( the big ones ) to start using tech like to preview graphics and even help speed up rendering time.