Tesselation (DX11)

[Xplodzion]

[QUOTE=JohnEdwards;18249504]>I don't understand that DX11 has benefits to the end user[/QUOTE]

I knew you'd step in with your superiority complex ready to nitpick a post I made in the Hardware section with no actual content to back up your trolling, please - enlighten me on the benefits of DX11 for the majority of gamers who don't sit 2cm away from the screen ready to scan it for slightly rounder objects.

[Ultragamer05]

[QUOTE=Xplodzion;18251087]I knew you'd step in with your superiority complex ready to nitpick a post I made in the Hardware section with no actual content to back up your trolling, please - enlighten me on the benefits of DX11 for the majority of gamers who don't sit 2cm away from the screen ready to scan it for slightly rounder objects.[/QUOTE]Nothing. That's it. If you don't give a shit about graphics, you'd probably be fine playing on DX7.

[Adius]

[QUOTE=Xplodzion;18251087]I knew you'd step in with your superiority complex ready to nitpick a post I made in the Hardware section with no actual content to back up your trolling, please - enlighten me on the benefits of DX11 for the majority of gamers who don't sit 2cm away from the screen ready to scan it for slightly rounder objects.[/QUOTE]
The ability to make much richer scenes at much less of a performance cost. The ability to make an entire scene look much more realistic or detailed in general. Don't tell me that graphics don't matter because while they don't make an entire game they play a huge role in suspension of disbelief.

[JohnEdwards]

[QUOTE=Xplodzion;18251087]I knew you'd step in with your superiority complex ready to nitpick a post I made in the Hardware section with no actual content to back up your trolling, please - enlighten me on the benefits of DX11 for the majority of gamers who don't sit 2cm away from the screen ready to scan it for slightly rounder objects.[/QUOTE]
the reason I didn't back it up was because they are obvious
unified phyx's in gameplay, now more games can use the gpu, instead of bogging the cpu
Flexible programing, programmers don't have to get stuck in hangups over, does this need gpu or cpu only they can share
Better edges, which will help hitboxes seem more accurate
More on screen objects(hi res) can now take place without as much of a frame hit, thanks to multithread support
More realistic HDR less games with OH LOOK BROWN WORLD or YAY LET'S SHOOT KOREANS ON THE SURFACE OF THE SUN

[yngndrw]

The only noticeable difference that Tessellation brings over a good implementation of Parallax mapping is on the edges.

JohnEdwards: How will any of the DX11 features help hitbox recognition ? Hitboxes are almost always primitive shapes.

[Odellus[v2]]

[QUOTE=TheDecryptor;18251024]Yes, not like that was the point of the video or anything (That's the tessellation!)

And it's not just a visual effect (like parallax mapping), it's actually changing the model and all the other graphical effects come from that.[/QUOTE]

That's what everyone is hyped about? An "update" to parallax mapping? It really looks no different. Does the demo come with a parallax mapping setting to compare the two?

[editline]10:32PM[/editline]

[IMG]http://www.hardocp.com/images/articles/12573821526izM8p4LAl_1_6_l.png[/IMG]

No distortion? Look at that!

[editline]10:32PM[/editline]

And the maps aren't even made to look right without tessellation.

[BmB]

Even steep parallax mapping and relief mapping has severe limitations compared to simple displacement mapping. And they're more expensive. Well... now they are.

[Odellus[v2]]

Steep parallax mapping is a lot less expensive than this shit.

[editline]11:00PM[/editline]

Hey 5770 fanboys, where's your argument for the 4890 now?

[JohnEdwards]

[QUOTE=yngndrw;18251376]The only noticeable difference that Tessellation brings over a good implementation of Parallax mapping is on the edges.

JohnEdwards: How will any of the DX11 features help hitbox recognition ? Hitboxes are almost always primitive shapes.[/QUOTE]

yeah but you won't have areas when the models extend and hitboxes don't reach

[editline]11:09PM[/editline]

[QUOTE='Odellus[v2];18253389']Steep parallax mapping is a lot less expensive than this shit.

[editline]11:00PM[/editline]

Hey 5770 fanboys, where's your argument for the 4890 now?[/QUOTE]

the 4890 supports tessellation....

[Shogoll]

[QUOTE='Odellus[v2];18252841']That's what everyone is hyped about? An "update" to parallax mapping? It really looks no different. Does the demo come with a parallax mapping setting to compare the two?

[editline]10:32PM[/editline]

No distortion? Look at that!

[editline]10:32PM[/editline]

And the maps aren't even made to look right without tessellation.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE='Odellus[v2];18253389']Steep parallax mapping is a lot less expensive than this shit.

[editline]11:00PM[/editline]

Hey 5770 fanboys, where's your argument for the 4890 now?[/QUOTE]

I'm sorry I didn't realize that you were so narrow minded that your argument relies entirely on a single benchmark made by a no-name developer from Russia rather than on the actual potential of being able to dynamically tessellate and displace models in real time.

[editline]05:49AM[/editline]

If you are incapable of realizing the potential of tessellation you're quite frankly retarded.

[ChristopherB]

Tessellation seems to provide a tangible benefit in 'image quality' and, as others have said, has the potential to reduce the size/memory footprint of future games. Parallax mapping has it's limitations and I expect that the small performance benefit it offers will soon be offset by more powerful GPUs and better optimized games.

I own a GTX 260 so I can't take advantage of it, but I'm not going to start complaining and flinging feces around just because a new technology came out; I'd love to have Tessellation (and Eyefinity).

[Edthefirst]

[QUOTE='Odellus[v2];18252841']That's what everyone is hyped about? An "update" to parallax mapping? It really looks no different. Does the demo come with a parallax mapping setting to compare the two?
[/QUOTE]

It isn't simply limited to that.

[hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9p3PYOX1Vc[/hd]

I have to say, that does look pretty impressive.

[yngndrw]

[QUOTE=JohnEdwards;18253525]yeah but you won't have areas when the models extend and hitboxes don't reach[/QUOTE]
But Tessellation does not add this in either. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

[abcpea]

people are confusing tesselation with displacement mapping

[pebkac]

The problem with low framerates you get when you use tesselation in the heaven benchmark is probably caused by the small size of the triangles, not so much by the high number of them. Here's a good read about this problem: [url]http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=News&ID=228[/url]
[quote]When you look at a highly tessellated model it's generally understood that it will be vertex processing heavy. Not quite as widely understood is the fact that increasing polygon count also adds to the fragment shading cost, even if the number of pixels covered on the screen remains the same. This is because fragments are processed in quads. So whenever a polygon edge cuts through a 2x2 pixel area, that quad will be processed twice, once for both of the polygons covering it. If several polygons cut through it, it may be processed multiple times. If the fragment shader is complex, it could easily become the bottleneck instead of the vertex shader. The rasterizer may also not be able to rasterize very thin triangles very efficiently. Since only pixels that have their pixel centers covered (or any of the sample locations in case of multisampling) are shaded the quads that need processing may not be adjacent. This will in general cause the rasterizer to require additional cycles. Some rasterizers may also rasterize at fixed patterns, for instance an 4x4 square for a 16 pipe card, which further reduces the performance of thin triangles. In addition you also get overhead because of less optimal memory accesses than if everything would be fully covered and written to at once. Adding multisampling into the mix further adds to the cost of polygon edges.[/quote]

Basically, pixel shaders process pixels from each triangle separately [b]and[/b] they process pixels in 2x2 quads. When you have a triangle that covers only 1 pixel area, 4 pixels will still be processed just for that triangle.

[Zero-Point]

[QUOTE=pebkac;18258257]The problem with low framerates you get when you use tesselation in the heaven benchmark is probably caused by the small size of the triangles, not so much by the high number of them. Here's a good read about this problem: [url]http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=News&ID=228[/url]

Basically, pixel shaders process pixels from each triangle separately [b]and[/b] they process pixels in 2x2 quads. When you have a triangle that covers only 1 pixel area, 4 pixels will still be processed just for that triangle.[/QUOTE]

So basically they just gotta figure out how to optimize the code so it can "know" when there's only 1 pixel with x amount of polygons in it and calculate accordingly.

[Shogoll]

[QUOTE=Zero-Point;18258784]So basically they just gotta figure out how to optimize the code so it can "know" when there's only 1 pixel with x amount of polygons in it and calculate accordingly.[/QUOTE]

Easier said than done.

[Zero-Point]

I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually.

[BmB]

You could also not waste resources by have polygons too small to see.

[Dr Nick]

[IMG]http://i33.tinypic.com/2quu42b.jpg[/IMG]

The areas in the red are what need to be cut-down.

[LEETNOOB]

[QUOTE='Odellus[v2];18250720']No, the textures look fine. I just see overly steep parallax mapping with ridiculously contrasting shadows. Nothing to be in awe of.

[editline]07:55PM[/editline]

And it's YouTube, how high quality could it be?[/QUOTE]

DO you even know what Steep Parallax Mapping is? If it would've been Steep/Occlusion Parallax Mapping the textures would look FLAT if you would look at them from the side, and that is not how tesselation works.

[editline]03:19PM[/editline]

[QUOTE=Zero-Point;18258886]I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually.[/QUOTE]

Have you ever tried modelling? No flamery bullshit please, just say yes or no.

[pebkac]

Yeah, they definitely overused the tesselation in that demo. I guess people need to learn to properly utilise it without needlessly filling the screen with polygons that are so small you can't even see them.

The ATI Froblins demo was even worse when it comes to this. Here are some screenshots (terain is in wireframe mode in all pics):
[media][img]http://www.shrani.si/f/22/jt/27M5gwfz/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/2N/xM/3frGc4tX/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/r/rf/1qsyBn4Q/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/3x/RR/2R5ORnp1/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/3Z/Jz/13d2VQk3/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/3V/5c/3suctOsV/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/R/cJ/2wwbgark/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/24/k5/hscj7QB/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img][/media]

It runs at around 10-20FPS most of the time on a 4850.

[Odellus[v2]]

[QUOTE=JohnEdwards;18253525]yeah but you won't have areas when the models extend and hitboxes don't reach

[editline]11:09PM[/editline]

the 4890 supports tessellation....[/QUOTE]

Then why are you still recommending the 5770 over it?

[editline]10:46AM[/editline]

[QUOTE=LEETNOOB;18260359]DO you even know what Steep Parallax Mapping is? If it would've been Steep/Occlusion Parallax Mapping the textures would look FLAT if you would look at them from the side, and that is not how tesselation works.

[editline]03:19PM[/editline]

Have you ever tried modelling? No flamery bullshit please, just say yes or no.[/QUOTE]

What?

This is what steep parallax mapping is, I don't know what you're blabbering about:

[IMG]http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/games/SteepParallax/compare.jpg[/IMG]

[LEETNOOB]

[QUOTE='Odellus[v2];18260584']Then why are you still recommending the 5770 over it?

[editline]10:46AM[/editline]

What?

This is what steep parallax mapping is, I don't know what you're blabbering about:

[IMG]http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/games/SteepParallax/compare.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]

Steep/Occlusion parallax mappings will look flat if you look at them from the side. And that is not how tesselation works.

[backfoggen]

Tesselation also makes it possible to apply anti-aliasing and dynamic shadows, cause it's actually polygon based

Edit: Anti-aliasing really is necessary as you can see here: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------^

[pebkac]

[QUOTE=LEETNOOB;18260658]Steep/Occlusion parallax mappings will look flat if look at them from the side. And that is not how tesselation works.[/QUOTE]

True, with POM, a texture can occlude itself (some parts of the texture can cover other parts of the texture), but it can't occlude other geometry, the offsets will never go past the polygon edges. Tessellation subdivides polygons to create more of them, those newly created polygons can then be displaced with a displacement map. Tesselation/displacement mapping creates [b]actual geometry[/b], therefore the displacements can normally occlude other geometry.

[QUOTE=backfoggen;18260709]Tesselation also makes it possible to apply anti-aliasing and dynamic shadows, cause it's actually polygon based
[/QUOTE]

I agree, the lack of AA with POM is kind of annoying. As for shadows, self-shadowing bumpmapping techniques have existed before, but they either weren't very accurate or cheap to render.

[Downsider]

Okay;

The art for that demo was shit, let's all agree, yes? The texture mapping was way off, making obvious distortion when viewing the objects in the tessellation mode, and it didn't even look correct when used with standard bump-mapping.

But, hear me out. This tessellation technique has potential to be something amazing, however, it's something that could easily be accomplished by using different versions of the model that are LoD'd (level of detail'd) so they fade out from higher polygon renditions of the model to lower polygon versions of it.

This technique DOES waste a bit of ram, but nowadays, it's an extremely minimal amount, especially when compared to a 1024x1024 texture w/normal mapping and specular, and whatever other things you can think to apply to a texture. The ram usage in your standard LoD technique is extremely minimal.

Being able to "dynamically tessellate and displace models in real time" isn't such a big feature, really, when extremely similar results can be made by baking the tessellated models into different LoD models. Displacing them, however, will make the transition a lot smoother. But I'm fairly certain that could also be accomplished by lerping each vertex, almost like an animation in a vertex-based animation format such as MD3, if the game developer were to choose to do so.

Still, everything about ram consumption is true in this thread.. It's a bit minimal, though. Hard-drive space consumption is also true.

Parallax mapping does create a similar effect, but it looks awkward at corners.

Not only that but DX11 seems to make it a lot easier than doing what I just said, :P, so props to DX11.
Guess I'm just bitter I still have a card that doesn't support DX10 or 11.

[backfoggen]

[QUOTE=pebkac;18260787]True, with POM, a texture can occlude itself (some parts of the texture can cover other parts of the texture), but it can't occlude other geometry, the offsets will never go past the polygon edges. Tessellation subdivides polygons to create more of them, those newly created polygons can then be displaced with a displacement map. Tesselation/displacement mapping creates [b]actual geometry[/b], therefore the displacements can normally occlude other geometry.

I agree, the lack of AA with POM is kind of annoying. As for shadows, self-shadowing bumpmapping techniques have existed before, but they either weren't very accurate or cheap to render.[/QUOTE]

Self-shadowing again doesn't cast shadows onto other objects, only upon the plane itself.

[pebkac]

[QUOTE=backfoggen;18260914]Self-shadowing again doesn't cast shadows onto other objects, only upon the plane itself.[/QUOTE]

So we have another downside of parallax mapping, it actually came to my mind after i posted my previous post. I also thought of a way you could antialias parallax occlusion mapping: you'd have to supersample every texture that uses it :buddy: (a very bad idea performance-wise).

The more i think of it, the more i see how tesselation could completely replace lots of shading tricks we've been using in the past few years. It's basically the most accurate and rather simple solution to all those problems. We'll definitely use it a lot in the future, but it's still going to need a few years befrore it becomes a common practice.

[Robber]

[QUOTE=pebkac;18260376]Yeah, they definitely overused the tesselation in that demo. I guess people need to learn to properly utilise it without needlessly filling the screen with polygons that are so small you can't even see them.

The ATI Froblins demo was even worse when it comes to this. Here are some screenshots (terain is in wireframe mode in all pics):
[media][img]http://www.shrani.si/f/22/jt/27M5gwfz/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/2N/xM/3frGc4tX/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/r/rf/1qsyBn4Q/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/3x/RR/2R5ORnp1/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/3Z/Jz/13d2VQk3/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/3V/5c/3suctOsV/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/R/cJ/2wwbgark/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img] [img]http://www.shrani.si/f/24/k5/hscj7QB/froblinsd3d10-2009-11-08.png[/img][/media]

It runs at around 10-20FPS most of the time on a 4850.[/QUOTE]
I thought they only tessellated the nearest Froblins?

[B]Edit:[/B]
I just checked and we are both right. It only tessellates the Froblins within ~4m distance of the camera, but even without tessellation the Froblins many hundred meters away have stupidly high polygon counts.