I’m worried about Slipspace

Games Halo Infinite
1

Has 343 released any real documentation on their fancy new engine yet? I can’t really find any technical descriptions of it at all. I’d love to know more about it so I can compare it to other engines. Id released its new engine this year too, and even though they’re always a generation ahead of everyone else, it worries me that Slipspace doesn’t seem to have any features that weren’t two generations back from them.

I can tell that it’s fully deferred rendering, which is nice. Should allow much more dynamic lights.

Id love to know how reflections work. That image of the chiefs helmet is obviously not screenspace reflection, and I wonder if it’s a reflection probe or if the camera is reorienting it’s matrix during rendering.

I see in articles that LOD has been pushed back which… NO! Bad 343! Your LOD is bad and you should feel bad about it. Halos FOD has always dependent on distance not screen real estate. Which works fine… unless you zoom in. Zooming has no effect on LOD in any Halo games and it looks like absolute -Yoink-. If you zoom in on an elite from far away Ill never not see that boxy, barely textured, low poly weapon of theirs.

Im very worried about polygon counts. There is nothing in that demo that’s got any kind of high geometry density. I see heightmaps and bump aps faking it. I wanna see a wireframe render and compare it to Doom Eternal. Again, it’s hard to compare to id, but The geometry density that I see looks more like Doom 2016.

The heard behavior is interesting and has huge implications for The Flood, but I’m curious how many different dynamic objects can it handle. A horde of the same animal running around is actually fairly easy, it’s called GPU instancing, but it doesn’t work for more dynamic stuff like elites/grunts. How many dynamic creature can exist at once on screen? Again, nothing in the demo should have pushed their engine. Dead bodies tend to limit the amount of stuff they can have. That’s why most games tend to remove dead bodies (even id games) to save all that power and let more enemies spawn in, but in Halo, the bodies stick around, so will that be the bottleneck for the size of encounters?

2

> 2535425440244731;1:
> Has 343 released any real documentation on their fancy new engine yet? I can’t really find any technical descriptions of it at all. I’d love to know more about it so I can compare it to other engines. Id released its new engine this year too, and even though they’re always a generation ahead of everyone else, it worries me that Slipspace doesn’t seem to have any features that weren’t two generations back from them.
>
> I can tell that it’s fully deferred rendering, which is nice. Should allow much more dynamic lights.
>
> Id love to know how reflections work. That image of the chiefs helmet is obviously not screenspace reflection, and I wonder if it’s a reflection probe or if the camera is reorienting it’s matrix during rendering.
>
> I see in articles that LOD has been pushed back which… NO! Bad 343! Your LOD is bad and you should feel bad about it. Halos FOD has always dependent on distance not screen real estate. Which works fine… unless you zoom in. Zooming has no effect on LOD in any Halo games and it looks like absolute -Yoink-. If you zoom in on an elite from far away Ill never not see that boxy, barely textured, low poly weapon of theirs.
>
> Im very worried about polygon counts. There is nothing in that demo that’s got any kind of high geometry density. I see heightmaps and bump aps faking it. I wanna see a wireframe render and compare it to Doom Eternal. Again, it’s hard to compare to id, but The geometry density that I see looks more like Doom 2016.
>
> The heard behavior is interesting and has huge implications for The Flood, but I’m curious how many different dynamic objects can it handle. A horde of the same animal running around is actually fairly easy, it’s called GPU instancing, but it doesn’t work for more dynamic stuff like elites/grunts. How many dynamic creature can exist at once on screen? Again, nothing in the demo should have pushed their engine. Dead bodies tend to limit the amount of stuff they can have. That’s why most games tend to remove dead bodies (even id games) to save all that power and let more enemies spawn in, but in Halo, the bodies stick around, so will that be the bottleneck for the size of encounters?

Some of this is over my head, but i’ll say that this engine was likely designed with the XBSX in mind, and so they are probably waiting to reveal the slipspace specs alongside information they’ve held back for the XBSX. I wouldn’t assume that the engine is lacking any features until after the July 2020 event.

I am also excited about herd behaviors and could see being implemented with enemy AI at a much larger scale. That is, multiple squads of banished/marines moving in formation, swarms of flood that don’t just pile up, etc. I’d love to see a gamemode that bridges the gap between firefight and Halo Wars, but maybe that’s still not possible…

3

The importance of Slipspace is that it is an engine built specifically for Halo. It doesn’t have to go toe to toe with the other high end engines out there. It just has to feel like Halo. And this is just as much the way the game plays as it is graphics prowess.

And while the graphics on Halo do need to keep improving over time… I don’t think they need to be bleeding edge graphical wonders.

They still need to have the feel of Halo.

Apparently the old engine was creaking at the seams and was very difficult to produce graphic assets for. Like gouge your eyeballs out with a spoon type difficult. With the new engine it should be very easy for the developers, particularly artists, to produce new content.

And since Slipspace has been built from the ground up with Forge in mind… I can’t wait to see the quality of Forge maps. I’m always amazed by the imagination and skill that people have put into Forge / Customs over the years… and now they will have even better tools to play with.

4

As far as I know we haven’t gotten any info on slipspace. Guess we’ll just have to wait until the game is out. Maybe they’ll release more info at the July event.

5

exciting times. Halo Infinite will be quite the showcase I’m sure as MS want to demonstrate the power we’ll be getting in Series x and that means compromises for existing original xbox one owners who will at least be able to play the game

6

I just want it to run well on PC…

7

> 2533274792569152;5:
> exciting times. Halo Infinite will be quite the showcase I’m sure as MS want to demonstrate the power we’ll be getting in Series x and that means compromises for existing original xbox one owners who will at least be able to play the game

What would be awesome is if they preview it first on an Xbox One X (without saying anything) and it looks really good. After a few minutes they abruptly say “now are you guys ready to see how it looks on the Series X?”. It’s a ballsy move but could work out really well if the content is up to snuff!

8

> 2533274917301945;2:
> > 2535425440244731;1:
> > Has 343 released any real documentation on their fancy new engine yet? I can’t really find any technical descriptions of it at all. I’d love to know more about it so I can compare it to other engines. Id released its new engine this year too, and even though they’re always a generation ahead of everyone else, it worries me that Slipspace doesn’t seem to have any features that weren’t two generations back from them.
> >
> > I can tell that it’s fully deferred rendering, which is nice. Should allow much more dynamic lights.
> >
> > Id love to know how reflections work. That image of the chiefs helmet is obviously not screenspace reflection, and I wonder if it’s a reflection probe or if the camera is reorienting it’s matrix during rendering.
> >
> > I see in articles that LOD has been pushed back which… NO! Bad 343! Your LOD is bad and you should feel bad about it. Halos FOD has always dependent on distance not screen real estate. Which works fine… unless you zoom in. Zooming has no effect on LOD in any Halo games and it looks like absolute -Yoink-. If you zoom in on an elite from far away Ill never not see that boxy, barely textured, low poly weapon of theirs.
> >
> > Im very worried about polygon counts. There is nothing in that demo that’s got any kind of high geometry density. I see heightmaps and bump aps faking it. I wanna see a wireframe render and compare it to Doom Eternal. Again, it’s hard to compare to id, but The geometry density that I see looks more like Doom 2016.
> >
> > The heard behavior is interesting and has huge implications for The Flood, but I’m curious how many different dynamic objects can it handle. A horde of the same animal running around is actually fairly easy, it’s called GPU instancing, but it doesn’t work for more dynamic stuff like elites/grunts. How many dynamic creature can exist at once on screen? Again, nothing in the demo should have pushed their engine. Dead bodies tend to limit the amount of stuff they can have. That’s why most games tend to remove dead bodies (even id games) to save all that power and let more enemies spawn in, but in Halo, the bodies stick around, so will that be the bottleneck for the size of encounters?
>
> Some of this is over my head, but i’ll say that this engine was likely designed with the XBSX in mind, and so they are probably waiting to reveal the slipspace specs alongside information they’ve held back for the XBSX. I wouldn’t assume that the engine is lacking any features until after the July 2020 event.
>
> I am also excited about herd behaviors and could see being implemented with enemy AI at a much larger scale. That is, multiple squads of banished/marines moving in formation, swarms of flood that don’t just pile up, etc. I’d love to see a gamemode that bridges the gap between firefight and Halo Wars, but maybe that’s still not possible…

This is news to me. I didn’t realize Halo engines had public specs available.
As for that FPS + RTS hybrid, there are a few of those out already mostly MMO style games on PC.

Aside, Its Xbox (one word) so it would be XsX.

9

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> > > 2535425440244731;1:
> > >
>
> Aside, Its Xbox (one word) so it would be XsX.

I think the jury is still out on how to abbreviate the Xbox Series X. I haven’t seen anything official from Microsoft on the matter, but here are my two cents: Xbox has been abbreviated “XB” for years now (not just “X”), “Series” is part of the Xbox Series X title (so it should be capital, and we all agree that you need to add the second “X” to the end of the abbreviation.

I’m fine with XSX, but XsX is simply wrong, and i prefer XBSX.

10

> 2533274917301945;9:
> > 2533274818084099;8:
> > > 2533274917301945;2:
> > > > 2535425440244731;1:
> > > >
> >
> > Aside, Its Xbox (one word) so it would be XsX.
>
> I think the jury is still out on how to abbreviate the Xbox Series X. I haven’t seen anything official from Microsoft on the matter, but here are my two cents: Xbox has been abbreviated “XB” for years now (not just “X”), “Series” is part of the Xbox Series X title (so it should be capital, and we all agree that you need to add the second “X” to the end of the abbreviation.
>
> I’m fine with XSX, but XsX is simply wrong, and i prefer XBSX.

Okay, I can agree with capitalization of S but Xbox is not XB because its not X Box (I know it used to be called X-Box but they changed that a while ago)

11

> 2737009059272856;7:
> > 2533274792569152;5:
> > exciting times. Halo Infinite will be quite the showcase I’m sure as MS want to demonstrate the power we’ll be getting in Series x and that means compromises for existing original xbox one owners who will at least be able to play the game
>
> What would be awesome is if they preview it first on an Xbox One X (without saying anything) and it looks really good. After a few minutes they abruptly say “now are you guys ready to see how it looks on the Series X?”. It’s a ballsy move but could work out really well if the content is up to snuff!

yeah they might just do that

12

> 2533274818084099;10:
> > 2533274917301945;9:
> > > 2533274818084099;8:
> > > > 2533274917301945;2:
> > > > > 2535425440244731;1:
> > > > >
> > >
> > > Aside, Its Xbox (one word) so it would be XsX.
> >
> > I think the jury is still out on how to abbreviate the Xbox Series X. I haven’t seen anything official from Microsoft on the matter, but here are my two cents: Xbox has been abbreviated “XB” for years now (not just “X”), “Series” is part of the Xbox Series X title (so it should be capital, and we all agree that you need to add the second “X” to the end of the abbreviation.
> >
> > I’m fine with XSX, but XsX is simply wrong, and i prefer XBSX.
>
> Okay, I can agree with capitalization of S but Xbox is not XB because its not X Box (I know it used to be called X-Box but they changed that a while ago)

XBSX, XSX, XX… I’ve seen it all, capitalised “S” or not, and all those abbreviations work fine. Chose your poison! :upside_down_face:

13

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> > 2533274818084099;10:
> > > 2533274917301945;9:
> > > > 2533274818084099;8:
> > > > > 2533274917301945;2:
> > > > > > 2535425440244731;1:
> > > > > >
> > > >
> > > > Aside, Its Xbox (one word) so it would be XsX.
> > >
> > > I think the jury is still out on how to abbreviate the Xbox Series X. I haven’t seen anything official from Microsoft on the matter, but here are my two cents: Xbox has been abbreviated “XB” for years now (not just “X”), “Series” is part of the Xbox Series X title (so it should be capital, and we all agree that you need to add the second “X” to the end of the abbreviation.
> > >
> > > I’m fine with XSX, but XsX is simply wrong, and i prefer XBSX.
> >
> > Okay, I can agree with capitalization of S but Xbox is not XB because its not X Box (I know it used to be called X-Box but they changed that a while ago)
>
> XBSX, XSX, XX… I’ve seen it all, capitalised “S” or not, and all those abbreviations work fine. Chose your poison! :upside_down_face:

I think XBSX or XBX are objectively incorrect. (and so is the annoying Xbone). It would be the equivalent of PlayStation = PLS

Since Xbox and Play are one word, we abbreviate them to one letter: X and P respectively and get XO or X1 for Xbox One and PS for PlayStation.

14

> 2533274818084099;13:
> I think XBSX or XBX are objectively incorrect. (and so is the annoying Xbone). It would be the equivalent of PlayStation = PLS
>
> Since Xbox and Play are one word, we abbreviate them to one letter: X and P respectively and get XO or X1 for Xbox One and PS for PlayStation.

Welp, even journalists used both XO and XBO in their texts, not to mention “The One” at the beginning of the eight gen. I still have shivers! I guess they only started to drop the letter B in the short forms or used it as undercase when written out once they noticed people using the term bone like you already said. So I dunno how it can be objectively wrong to say XB…

PS imho ain’t a good comparison either, because PlayStation is a combination of two words while Xbox is the combo of a letter and a word. As such I would say both forms of abbreviation are correct, it’s more a matter of preferences. And as long as it’s understandable in the given context what does it even matter? Again, choose your poison and let people use their preferred forms as well! It’s really not a big issue! :slight_smile:

If something I hope MS ain’t gonna call project Lockhart the Series S, because obvious reasons I would say! And I really don’t care if it’s XSS or XBSS, on a marketing level that abbreviation is worse than Xbone by a landslide. Heck! Germans introduced the long s (ß) exactly because of that! Comon MS! Don’t even give us the chance, call it Series M or something! Please! :pray: …wait a sec. I just realised, I take it back! STOP!

15

> 2533274818084099;13:
> I think XBSX or XBX are objectively incorrect. (and so is the annoying Xbone). It would be the equivalent of PlayStation = PLS
>
> Since Xbox and Play are one word, we abbreviate them to one letter: X and P respectively and get XO or X1 for Xbox One and PS for PlayStation.

There is no “objectively (in)correct” here for a number of reasons. First, because there is no “objectively correct” in language: conventions are dictated how people speak. There is only standard, and nonstandard usage; usage that most people will be fine with, and usage that most people will have trouble with. If most people decide to spell, or abbreviate something a certain way, then that becomes the convention, and that’s all there is to it.

However, when it comes to the conventions regarding abbreviations, they are very loose to begin with. Initialisms—using the first letters of the words—is of course a very common way to abbreviate phrases. But there are many, many abbreviations where also the second, third, or in fact any arbitrary letter of the word is used. For example, Dr for doctor. In fact, sometimes abbreviations don’t even use the first letter of the word. Because the goal of abberviations isn’t to adhere to someone’s arbitrary personal standards of “correct”, it is to abbreviate a phrase in a way that is easy to pronounce or remember, or is fun, or catchy, or gives off a certain impression—really, whatever the person coming up with the abbreviation wants from it. The abbreviation “Xbone” (by the way, “XbOne” and “XBOne” are also equally correct; what you captialize is a stylistic choice) is used because it is easy to pronounce, unambigous, and kind of silly.

Product names don’t tend to adhere to capitalization, spelling, or punctuation conventions. Compounding words is fairly uncommon in the English language. An English teacher would disapprove of you talking about your gameconsole (and would probably regard GameConsole as a typo), yet the game industry loves their PlayStations and GameCubes which combine both nonstandard punctuation and capitalization. Then there is of course the Xbox, which Microsoft preferes over X-box, XBox, and X-Box. It is indeed no more or no less a single word than PlayStation or GameCube are, having its origins in “DirectX box” after Microsoft’s graphics API. On this note alone, objecting to XB as an abbreviation seems strange. It would be like objecting to PS on the basis that the space between the y and the S lacks the standard punctuation.

16

> 2535425440244731;1:
> Has 343 released any real documentation on their fancy new engine yet? I can’t really find any technical descriptions of it at all. I’d love to know more about it so I can compare it to other engines. Id released its new engine this year too, and even though they’re always a generation ahead of everyone else, it worries me that Slipspace doesn’t seem to have any features that weren’t two generations back from them.
>
> I can tell that it’s fully deferred rendering, which is nice. Should allow much more dynamic lights.
>
> Id love to know how reflections work. That image of the chiefs helmet is obviously not screenspace reflection, and I wonder if it’s a reflection probe or if the camera is reorienting it’s matrix during rendering.
>
> I see in articles that LOD has been pushed back which… NO! Bad 343! Your LOD is bad and you should feel bad about it. Halos FOD has always dependent on distance not screen real estate. Which works fine… unless you zoom in. Zooming has no effect on LOD in any Halo games and it looks like absolute -Yoink-. If you zoom in on an elite from far away Ill never not see that boxy, barely textured, low poly weapon of theirs.
>
> Im very worried about polygon counts. There is nothing in that demo that’s got any kind of high geometry density. I see heightmaps and bump aps faking it. I wanna see a wireframe render and compare it to Doom Eternal. Again, it’s hard to compare to id, but The geometry density that I see looks more like Doom 2016.
>
> The heard behavior is interesting and has huge implications for The Flood, but I’m curious how many different dynamic objects can it handle. A horde of the same animal running around is actually fairly easy, it’s called GPU instancing, but it doesn’t work for more dynamic stuff like elites/grunts. How many dynamic creature can exist at once on screen? Again, nothing in the demo should have pushed their engine. Dead bodies tend to limit the amount of stuff they can have. That’s why most games tend to remove dead bodies (even id games) to save all that power and let more enemies spawn in, but in Halo, the bodies stick around, so will that be the bottleneck for the size of encounters?

this just felt like a flex that you know things lol, most of the users aren’t gonna have a clue what you’re on about.

17

> 2533274825830455;15:
> > 2533274818084099;13:
> > I think XBSX or XBX are objectively incorrect. (and so is the annoying Xbone). It would be the equivalent of PlayStation = PLS
> >
> > Since Xbox and Play are one word, we abbreviate them to one letter: X and P respectively and get XO or X1 for Xbox One and PS for PlayStation.
>
> There is no “objectively (in)correct” here for a number of reasons. First, because there is no “objectively correct” in language: conventions are dictated how people speak. There is only standard, and nonstandard usage; usage that most people will be fine with, and usage that most people will have trouble with. If most people decide to spell, or abbreviate something a certain way, then that becomes the convention, and that’s all there is to it.
>
> However, when it comes to the conventions regarding abbreviations, they are very loose to begin with. Initialisms—using the first letters of the words—is of course a very common way to abbreviate phrases. But there are many, many abbreviations where also the second, third, or in fact any arbitrary letter of the word is used. For example, Dr for doctor. In fact, sometimes abbreviations don’t even use the first letter of the word. Because the goal of abberviations isn’t to adhere to someone’s arbitrary personal standards of “correct”, it is to abbreviate a phrase in a way that is easy to pronounce or remember, or is fun, or catchy, or gives off a certain impression—really, whatever the person coming up with the abbreviation wants from it. The abbreviation “Xbone” (by the way, “XbOne” and “XBOne” are also equally correct; what you captialize is a stylistic choice) is used because it is easy to pronounce, unambigous, and kind of silly.
>
> Product names don’t tend to adhere to capitalization, spelling, or punctuation conventions. Compounding words is fairly uncommon in the English language. An English teacher would disapprove of you talking about your gameconsole (and would probably regard GameConsole as a typo), yet the game industry loves their PlayStations and GameCubes which combine both nonstandard punctuation and capitalization. Then there is of course the Xbox, which Microsoft preferes over X-box, XBox, and X-Box. It is indeed no more or no less a single word than PlayStation or GameCube are, having its origins in “DirectX box” after Microsoft’s graphics API. On this note alone, objecting to XB as an abbreviation seems strange. It would be like objecting to PS on the basis that the space between the y and the S lacks the standard punctuation.

You see, language as a whole may follow this rule but when talking about names (people or brands) I am positive there are objective ways spelling and abbreviating them correctly because it would be dictated not by the language but by the brand / name owner. Mcdonanlds will always be McDonalds, PlayStation will always be playstation even if its incorrect by all the rules of English. Working with the official name of ‘Xbox One’. As a rule, names are abbreviated by the first letter of each word. USA for Unites States of America, RF for Russian Federation, UAE, IBM, etc. Using the precedent that is set, we conclude that Xbox One should be XO or stylized as X1 if we permit the exchange of words for numerals. You of course can use UNSTAM for United States of America but you’d get funny looks from people, for good reason.