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[Dubya75]

I've noticed in the DAI gameplay demos (parts 1 and 2) that were recently released, that there is a level of texture popping going on as you move through the Dragon Age world.

To explain what I mean, think of recent Bethesda RPG's where buildings and trees pop into existence as you run around due to the ugrid system they have going.

 

Now it may simply be that the game is not properly optimized yet, and that this will be ironed out. But I am a little concerned about this (had quite enough of that kind of thing already).

I have never played any games built on Frostbite, so any thoughts on this? Is it something inherent in open-world situations? I don't remember ever seeing this in any of the previous Dragon Age games?

[In Exile]

My guess is that this is a scaling issue with engines, and probably one of the ways that DA:I manages to handle cross-platform work. It's basically a way of cheating and showing greater graphical fidelity. Presumably on a strong PC you'll not really encounter this problem. 

 

This is an aspect of FB3, though. 

[Dubya75]

Ah! OK, so it is kind of how FB3 works? It is as I feared. Oh well, DAI still looks pretty awesome regardless.

As for PC performance, I am sure they demo'd the game on a pretty high spec rig, so I doubt this little problem will go away based on my PC specs 

[PsychoBlonde]

My guess is that this is a scaling issue with engines, and probably one of the ways that DA:I manages to handle cross-platform work. It's basically a way of cheating and showing greater graphical fidelity. Presumably on a strong PC you'll not really encounter this problem. 

 

This is an aspect of FB3, though. 

 

It's interesting to me that you can limit the visibility of pop-in via a very simple trick that basically no one ever uses.  Distant objects in real life appear lighter in color than closer objects.  (It's subtle, but there).  So if you make your base texture LIGHTER than the objects and textures that pop in (such as, say, grass) the point where they pop in will be basically invisible and it will just look like you were getting closer to something so you can see it better.  Almost always, the underlying texture is made DARKER than the grass/objects/etc. and the pop-in is both visible and jarring.

A friend of mine recently did an example of making grass "rise out of the ground" (instead of suddenly pop in) that was amazingly cheap resource-wise and also looked really good.

Dungeons and Dragons Online uses a system called "Distant Imposters" where distant but large objects like trees or hills are represented by a two-dimensional "Imposter" (much cheaper to render) until you get close enough for the 3D version to show.  This isn't perfect, but it allows fantastic views like:



and 


 

to be possible.

[In Exile]

Ah! OK, so it is kind of how FB3 works? It is as I feared. Oh well, DAI still looks pretty awesome regardless.

As for PC performance, I am sure they demo'd the game on a pretty high spec rig, so I doubt this little problem will go away based on my PC specs 

There is an old Bioware post that discusses it. Apparently FB3 has a limited range (in the sense that it does not render the whole region automatically) where it renders the world, outside of which there is literally nothing but nothingness waiting to arise into a 3D world as you approach it. Presumably this is tied to memory limits moreso than graphical power. 

[Dubya75]

Thanks for the explanations, guys!

[Deflagratio]

I've noticed in the DAI gameplay demos (parts 1 and 2) that were recently released, that there is a level of texture popping going on as you move through the Dragon Age world.

To explain what I mean, think of recent Bethesda RPG's where buildings and trees pop into existence as you run around due to the ugrid system they have going.

 

Now it may simply be that the game is not properly optimized yet, and that this will be ironed out. But I am a little concerned about this (had quite enough of that kind of thing already).

I have never played any games built on Frostbite, so any thoughts on this? Is it something inherent in open-world situations? I don't remember ever seeing this in any of the previous Dragon Age games?

This is just how streaming-based engines have to work. You can't load in all the detail and fidelity into memory at once, even the most powerful consumer-end PC's would struggle with that. Pop in and LoD scaling is just how you create large open areas.

 

If you have a really keen eye, you can notice they also scale animation frame rates on far targets too. That is, actors at long distance animate less frames per second than actors at close distance. This is most obvious when you see the Telescope thing being used in the early part of the demo.

This is just how streaming-based engines have to work. You can't load in all the detail and fidelity into memory at once, even the most powerful consumer-end PC's would struggle with that, relegating such games to enthusiast-class machines for such a minor improvement. Pop in and LoD scaling is just how you create large open areas within reasonable memory constraints.

 

If you have a really keen eye, you can notice they also scale animation frame rates on far targets too. That is, actors at long distance animate less frames per second than actors at close distance. This is most obvious when you see the Telescope thing being used in the early part of the demo.

 

There is an old Bioware post that discusses it. Apparently FB3 has a limited range (in the sense that it does not render the whole region automatically) where it renders the world, outside of which there is literally nothing but nothingness waiting to arise into a 3D world as you approach it. Presumably this is tied to memory limits moreso than graphical power.

 

This is the most base form of Draw Distance. Before LoD scaling was a thing, games like Morrowind did this, but hid the process with fog emulation. Another game that did this was Silent Hill, ironically the graphical weakness is indirectly praised as the "fog" created a tense atmosphere. Definitely not the first time limitation has been inspiration.