Probably will but I hope it won't be too hard on him or cause him to give up even if this is a pretty severe setback but I could understand a longer timeout period or hiatus and I don't know how things will go for the actual project now due to the full on suspension and permanent ban.

Originally posted by GPUnity:

Uhh, guys Kal is kinda gone
https://imgur.com/a/hvoGWRp

I think I mentioned it a bit and I believe Aemony also had been saying for some time to Kaldaien and on how he really shouldn't have used multiple accounts in public like that, even that first one was made to circumvent a ban and was used on various forums when it should have been a private or developer only thing.

That was always a issue although I expected the alternate accounts to be given warns or restrictions much faster though I suppose the various recent bans made for more strict actions now after the existing suspension and what should have been more severe restrictions which as a result of having alt accounts were in a way circumvented or bypassed.


EDIT: Or actually just avoid the public community forums and discussions, first few bans and especially the problems around I think Nier Automata and Assassin's Creed Origins showed there were problems and Kaldaien could also get temperamental at times.

Unfortunate for continued development or activity overall though, pretty serious restriction as well and bypassing and more severe action as a result.


Not sure what it means and Kaldaien can't really clear it up or discuss it outside I suppose email or something like Discord. (Really should have had something like that instead for discussion purposes.)



EDIT: At least I assume Kaldaien ended up using this other account for public forum discussion which with a pending suspension it really should have been clear it was a very bad idea to do so. I'd hope at least.

Wonder if there's a thing from developers to get started on D3D12_2 immediately too and just ditch all these older hardware and GPU's with 12_0 or 12_1 compatibility all over the place in what is supported and how.

Plus Vulkan 1.3 I assume and new standards here and leveraging the new GPU hardware and functionality and another baseline of requirements.


Thought that SSE 4 pushback was bad? Pretty sure this one is going to be a real fun one particularly early on as the 12_2 criteria means Windows 10 1909 or later (2004 ideally I believe.) plus outside of the enthusiast segment it's going to take a while for the player base and target audience to actually change over to new hardware either full systems or just the GPU.

So it's not happening anytime soon, even with the PC version less of a immediate priority I doubt many larger developers are able or allowed to outright drop support for earlier unless there's no other way for the game or game engine to work so for the first few years I assume we'll have the usual and it scales up to use some new stuff and eventually it'll be the baseline but it will take time.



EDIT: Ah and some new posts as I was typing all that up.

Guess there's a fair few different AO techniques these days, older modes like HBAO or even HBAO+ have been set aside for game engine specific solutions or more performant though a bit worse implementations.

AMD had a HDAO type mode too but it wasn't used much and I'm fairly certain HBAO+ outdid it once NVIDIA made that update on HBAO available.


Ubisoft has some HBCC and Unity I think has a couple of different ones, AMD actually came back with their shader suite and adapted Intels ambient occlusion tech to GCN/RDNA but also changed the name a bit much as adaptive screen space ambient occlusion has a nice little shortened title already in ASSAO. :P



EDIT: Guess the same is true for shadows too AMD's soft shadow solution I forgot it's name entirely and then NVIDIA had PCSS, PCSS+ and HFTS improving on HFTS but requiring newer hardware.

Voxel tech too but I don't know if that saw implementation in anything much (Final Fantasy 15 and some tech demos?) before ray tracing sorta started being a replacement for ambient occlusion and shadow tech.


Going beyond screen space and even the VX / voxel tech limitations although again requiring the hardware for it.

Plus I have no idea if NVIDIA RTX and AMD's whatever will coexist or compete for the next-gen, going to be a bit rough I suppose until some unified standard is available.

Seems Vulkan is trying to do just that (Khronos type extensions using NVIDIA ones as a basis I think it was?) and then D3D12 has DXR as a layer but it doesn't quite do on it's own thus NVIDIA and RTX and AMD and whatever they'll go with unless Microsoft makes further work on D3D12 ray tracing and we get some standardization for it.
(Or a way to translate vendor variants if that's even possible because custom tech and copyrights and what not.)




EDIT: Effectively new hardware and tech and moving beyond current limitations especially the screen space one good as it is for performance it has it's shortcomings and they're starting to be a hindrance although there are clever workarounds such as temporal information via past frames although in turn you might notice ghosting or artifacts.
(Think Battlefield had some issues around this with newer engines and water reflections from memory as a example of this.)

Division also relies heavily on reflective surfaces and resolves it by mixing high quality cube maps with dynamic probes and screen space where required, not perfectly but it pulls it off well enough to where it works reasonable well most of the time. :)

Yeah indirect shadows through ambient occlusion is still mostly limited by being screen space and self shadowing has to trade performance and overall visual quality although cascade shadow mapping and techniques around that has allowed for games to mimic near infinite shadow range even if the last cascade group out in the distance is very simplified.

Shadows on elements such as vegetation and grass in particular tends to be one of the first to go due to performance and as seen in some of the earlier Call of Duty games trying to resolve transparency / alpha to coverage and the layers here to avoid flickering or such gets incredibly expensive although clipping and "z-fighting" is another long standing issue in many open world games.

Reverse depth buffers and other methods tried to reduce it too but there's always a performance trade-off and with improved hardware it might be resolvable or at least much better masked.


Something I like the new Anvil Engine in Assassin's Creed and the two newest Ghost Recon franchise games for is how well it manages to mask some of this and overall LOD transitions despite having actually a very aggressive level of detail and culling distance of just a short distance from the camera position (Normally the player position.) although as seen in SpecialK there are limits such as a hefty number of overall draw calls and the engines outright need for a hexa or octa core CPU and a higher-end one at that too both efficient and speedy.


Though that D3D12 layer might be a hindrance and going back to D3D11 for the PC ports of at least Odyssey and Origins, Breakpoint now with Vulkan bodes well for future Anvil engine games at least.

Self shadowing I suppose and techniques from the early days with multiple rough shadow layers on top of one another (Riddick, Oblivion) and then transitions to shadow filtering techniques and cascading to give the illusion of long-distance shadows and maintain up close details but it could still be better.

One of the good techniques for ray tracing for what NVIDIA is leveraging but I don't think it's been nearly as popular as the one for reflective surfaces although I can imagine it's less of a immediate visual difference and also being more costly in terms of overall performance and GPU demands.

Think it was shadows -> reflections - GI in terms of complication for the implementation wherever I read that but I can definitively see the shadow system taking a bigger toll on the GPU although less than trying to overhaul the global illumination tech.


As to Infinite some comment said it looked like Halo with LEGO which sounded a bit overly critical to the games art style and look but then the Steam store has a image that actually kinda fits that description of the game.

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/1240440/ss_cdc09b109aeefafcd44a2281c5e49b08bfe6ce38.1920x1080.jpg?t=1595603868


Hair then, well I don't know a good solution other than brute force and trying to mask and mimic with a optimized performance friendly take on this as outside of the main character it'd be too complex and costly to implement full physics or systems like TressFX / PureHair or variants in full detail.

Though I did like what Mankind Divided attempted with more characters getting better hair that isn't just a clump of polygons or a couple of 2D planes textures with transparency added.


Mafia 3 even managed to get some semi-decent Afro type hairstyles going particularly for Faster Baby but with less physically interaction though still a impressive accomplishment.



And thunderstorm, guess I'm cutting this here, ha ha!


EDIT: That was a strangely short storm, guess it kinda blew right past due to the windy weather. :D

I suppose movies and CGI are getting really close but for real time video games I'm not so sure, I'm pretty picky though when it comes to graphics so quite a few things do stand out although I don't expect photo-realistic graphics to happen anytime soon either and for a lot of others it probably feels like we're already getting really close.


I was more impressed by Yakuza 0's graphics than Yakuza Kiwami 2 for example since the various lighting and shader improvements are really uneven in some scenes and the last-gen side characters look completely out of place next to the current-gen high detail main characters to a far greater degree.
(As as ide note facial textures being flat on some characters and detailed like pores and what not on important ones really stands out in games, again I'm pretty picky and notice it easily ha ha.)

Dragon Engine itself has a lot of neat advantages though, assuming they ever port Judgement over that'll be apparent once they show they've smoothed out some of the early flaws and the I assume lower production budget for Kiwami 2 compared to that or even Yakuza 6 though when/if that gets ported it'll also have some regressions the newer games did not. :D
(Yakuza 3 is going to be rough far as I'm hearing too.)



Speaking of animations finger movement and many shortcuts also stands out but how many will actually notice the fingers get longer or shorter unless it's comically broken like how some games do to cover for oversized weapon models.
(Another pet peeve but also part of game design, it's enough for the HUD to be comically oversized and cover 50% of the screen if you do need first person firearms don't make them cover the remaining bit, Crysis compared to it's sequels for a example of that ha ha.)


EDIT: I suppose it also depends on how one perceives this uncanny valley designation, to me it's more of a break in immersion and uneven design or mismatch of artistic style.

Clashing of style and graphics a bit perhaps but also the usual such as animations and physics but when character models look like they're from two entirely separate hardware generations or there's a significant difference in detail for main characters compared to side ones it tends to stand out although again it's a minor thing but to me it's very noticeable.

Cloth clipping and hair physics but even I can't be that picky, clipping happens and the physics and cost for getting cloth working perfectly is very complicated and for hair it's a performance cost plus clipping and animations and not having it blow up in cutscenes or during framerate dips and all kinds of constraints and potential issues.



EDIT: Suppose if you want to be super picky a human isn't completely even either there's a few flaws or similar elements though I usually don't complain too much about it especially depending on the art style or design after all.

JRPG fan also so smooth characters and a near complete lack of finer detail in many of the games and somebody needs to figure out how to grow facial hair before their senior years...which is about 25 -30 by some design law apparently. :D
(And stop making the eyes bigger every gen there has to be a limit somewhere for that.)



EDIT: On that note Xenoblade Chronicles 2 must be some interesting clash of designs as you had all these collaboration design "Blade" characters even if the games artists then made the 3D work from the submitted designs.

And though it's cheating a bit Final Fantasy V or VI on PC/mobile and what it did to the character art and portraits which really stands out far as clashing elements and designs go.
(The smoothing of the sprite work overall is another issue although somehow the monster art got better it's kinda interesting if a bit of a mess ha ha.)




EDIT: "This belongs here." or "This fits." or "This works."

And a move to more photo realistic visuals and new hardware allowing even more improvement on animation work, better motion capture and texture scanning techniques and advanced shaders and the whole science around natural lighting and shadows and overall more "cinematic" or maybe realistic visual quality. (NOT the chromatic aberration effect! :P )

Leading to more comparisons against real life and getting closer and closer both overall world detail but also character detail if we're mostly comparing characters.


From what I hear Last of Us 2 is doing incredible well here and Rockstar as usual spends a ton of time on their games so GTA V was already very good and then Red Dead 2 took it even further.

Even with ray tracing (Reflective properties and fine shadow details and lighting improvements.) and advanced motion capture techniques it's not quite there yet but it'll be very interesting to see what's going to happen now with the next generation of hardware.


Although things went pretty well with this one even as the PS4 and XBO got a bit aged. :)
(There's the Pro and One versions but to my knowledge devs are only allowed to scale up to utilize these they can't design games without support for the base models.)

Come along way though from 2D to early 3D block characters to plastic textures and early normal mapping attempts and obvious texture splits and seams or blocky models and clear differences between side characters and main characters although that's still a bit of a thing.

RE Engine relying a lot on photo scanning and digital actors and tech too so if it's presented as being very realistic even if a bit stylized anything that "breaks" this by being a bit off or glitching also stands out more and is more immediate apparent.


To me RE7 had that every time the moldy ones appeared like here's these goofy video game thingies unlike the Baker family looking like mostly normal humans.
(RE2R and later improved on the waxiness and sheen thing going on.)



EDIT: Though I do find the lower poly character models kinda charming and good in their own way, also incredibly impressive to see games on the PSX attempt finer animations and details on systems with hardware limitations.

Vagrant Story is ridiculous in it's attention to detail like this although it's a bit less so as the game goes on but still holds up.


PS2 had several games focusing on higher-detail character models with say the Silent Hill 2 and 3 games as some examples of noticeable quality and attention to trying to mimic actual characters like small animations during cutscenes.



EDIT: And the voice acting but that's improved as well. :D

It's good but it's still very video game like and with various aesthetics and designs.
Shading and such gives characters a bit of a waxy sheen and getting finer animations like the eyes or mouth right must be a huge ordeal although I was incredibly impressed by what Yakuza 0 managed with these details and the ever present fade or obscure the camera so we don't have to animate the liquid in the glass. :D


Far as RE2R goes it had a incredibly well made ... hamburger ... for the intro sequence with the trucker and unlike Battlefield Hardline it's also part animated.

Plus unlike Hardline it's not uncanny for being next to a bunch of 2d cigarette buts and a variety of condoms ...



EDIT: Err how to try and explain, sometimes the characters just have this sheeny or waxy look to them and while animations and physics continue to improve there's room for improvement.

Cloth and hair physics in particular but then physics bugs and whoops and wardrobe major malfunctions and all kinds of glitches. :D

Shader wise there's subtle stuff like sub-surface but also lip and particularly eye reflections and animations range from muscular to skeletal to fine motor functions in the facial area and avoiding repeat animations and such.


Stretching of polygons and texture surfaces and clipping will probably continue to be a problem too plus a mix of resources and time and also potentially performance savings for animations and physics interactions.

Part of the manifest file is encrypted as I recall so maybe it's due to that, don't know if the game can be preloaded yet though or this wouldn't apply.

EDIT: Nope, no preload yet.


EDIT: Or trying to fetch data from Steam but not having the permission yet as the game is unreleased, interesting if that shows up as some VAC type notification instead of failing to fetch the app manifest or depot stuff outright.
(And then on preload part of this will be in a encrypted state.)