Looking at the Halo graphic engine**.** I stopped and wondered to test out the properties of it and how far it would go in grave detail. It failed and lacked a lot of detail like in the CryEngine 3.0 rendering lot better than the Halo engine. It is okay if you like some pixelated stuff but i want to blow some walls to pieces and be able to have nice light effects and full detail of wall art. Or some destructible equipment.I like the Reach engine don’t get me wrong but i just wished that more detail input would have been nice like water effects and shadowing and lighting plus environmental and character rendering. Like when i shoot at a persons visor with my pistol i want to start to see it cracked or something! Or one of the bullets logged in it. And when i shoot at a persons shoulder piece i want it to start to deplete like in all armor options to deplete when shot at would be nice. Like in the last mission Lone Wolf, that was really niceAnd the cinematics were really good in Halo Reach as well i really did like those. The environmental properties were alright as well i really enjoyed it in the mission the package when in the begging you seen the embers from burnt objects in the air. It was a very nice touch then. But looking at it now and looking at what everyone else is putting on the table this kinda makes Halo Look kinda bad. Halo is a good game and i know it needs to stay original but with some new advancements it would be nice. Tell me what you think
having not played crysis i cant comment on that but as for graphics of reach they were good. i was watching the halo4 panel again today and remember them saying something about destruction will be in halo4.
Halo 4 will feature a new graphics engine, as good as Crysis? I don’t know, but, I do know they have quit the engine powering the future of Halo.
Halo has a pretty unique engine. Offering players massive environments, tons of dynamic lights, lots of A.I. on screen, etc… I think 343 should definitely stick to it’s own proprietary engine rather than using a middleware engine like CryENGINE 3. Engines like the CE3, UE3, etc… are mostly built for when developers are dealing with multiple platforms. It’s easier to integrate into your system and it should provide almost exact performance across all platforms. But one of the things 343 has to it’s advantage is being a first-party studio for Microsoft.
This means they have a bigger budget, more time & resources, ability to communicate with other 1st party studios (Turn 10, Lionhead, & Rare) and Microsoft’s various other 3rd party (Epic Games, Remedy, Ruffian) heck, even communication with Bungie. 343 also has an advantage because they only have to concentrate on one platform. I guess what I’m trying to do is give you a different perspective in how 343 has an upper hand in comparison with other devs that develop on multiple platforms.
If you want me to give you some of the things 343 should do to improve the Halo engine… Well for one, I’m a water guy. Forgive me if I come off weird, but water in games has fascinated me since like the original Xbox games. From what I’ve heard, water is one of the most complex things a programmer can work on. Just getting the feel of the water like looks, how it flows, how it breaks apart when the player interacts with it. One of the things that disappointed me in Reach was it’s water. It was really flat. Didn’t really react as good as I hoped it would. Though one of the cool things about Halo’s water is the ability to go under it and actually see the sand and water below. Which really not a lot of games offer.
Anti-Aliasing wasn’t that bad of an issue, but it could definitely be touched up on. Reach used a Temporal AA technique which most of you know created that nasty ghosting effect. It would be a good idea if 343 looked at other custom AA techniques like FXAA & MLAA. FXAA is a pretty cheap technique, I don’t know how cheap compared to TAA, but from the papers, it takes up 1ms of GPU time. Gets rid of most if not all jaggies, but blurs the image slightly. The downside of this is that FXAA might get in the way of Halo 4’s intricate art detail so 343 might or might not go that way depending on cost, image-quality 343 wishes to retain, or if none of those apply and all 343 wants to do is get rid of jaggies, then FXAA is a good solution. MLAA is another solution, but runs at a bigger performance cost (2ms on GPU IIRC). In games like God of War 3, it ran BEAUTIFULLY. Absolutely NO jaggies in sight. Sub-pixel aliasing was the only problem due to the fact that post-process AA can’t handle sub-pixel information. FXAA could do sub-pixel AA, but at the cost of image-quality. MSAA might not even be an option if 343 decide to do deferred rendering again. The memory cost would just be to high.
Uh, animation is also pretty key. Kudos to Bungie for finally utilizing motion-capture for Reach. Made the characters in Reach a lot more life like. I hope 343 goes this way and makes good use of motion-capture and facial detail so that we don’t have to deal with that plastic cartoony look Halo 3 boasted.
As far as environments go, I’ll just let 343 do it’s thing. The concept art trailer seemed to be headed in a more realistic approach which to me is quite fine. They should definitely continue to build more environments like that with much more detail and greater lighting (lighting wasn’t much of a problem for Halo 3 with it’s overkill HDR, Reach on the other hand had a more flat looking lighting. So depending on how much 343 has left in performance, lighting might be improved or might stay as is).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLZSlZ1XHmk&feature=related
^^ That right there is a perfect example of amazing looking environments with just detail down to the last rock with great lighting. With the mixture of a great soundtrack, it makes me shed a tear everytime I watch it.
Okay, I typed so much even I’m getting tired… I’ll probably add more things 343 should improve on when I think of more. lol! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jLv6pR6ZSk&feature=player_embedded
Adding direct feed footage from my previous link.
^^ That right there is an example of a big graphical jump. Simply beautiful. I hope to see a visual jump from Reach to Halo 4. I have faith in you 343!
Here’s the thing about the difference between the Halo engine and the Cry engine, Halo engine is built to run on the Xbox 360 which is the oldest of the platforms, yes Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, Deus Ex HR, and Halo Reach, they’re all really wonderful looking games, but they can only go so far with graphics on the Xbox 360.
The Cry engine, Steam engine, BF3’s engine, and Deus Ex HR’s engine are all engines that run on more than one platform, which SKAinsoMniAx is trying to say is a bad thing, it’s really not, cause you got your platform that can good graphics even tho it’s old, Xbox 360, you got your platform which can really run the more graphics than the Xbox, The Play Station 3, and then you got the platform that is all ways changing and can run high end graphics that look as great as seen in Avatar, the PC. Focusing soully on the Xbox’s out dated hardware, you can only go so far.
Can they take the current Halo engine and upgrade it to run on the Xbox 360, and still look awesome, yes, but it may still have some of the same issues like in Halo 3 and Reach, low res detail.
I really wish 343i would not focus making Halo games just for the Xbox, I really wish they’d make them for both the Xbox and the PC, even if they only release for the Xbox, at lest down the line, when the next Xbox console is released, people can still pull out old Halo games made by 343i, and play them on their new Xbox, and still feel like they’re playing a new looking game.
Halo CEA’s graphics where much better than I thought physically possible about 4 years ago. Halo 4 can only get better.
The visuals will be amazing in halo 4. Ask the little bird.
> Here’s the thing about the difference between the Halo engine and the Cry engine, Halo engine is built to run on the Xbox 360 which is the oldest of the platforms, yes Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, Deus Ex HR, and Halo Reach, they’re all really wonderful looking games, but they can only go so far with graphics on the Xbox 360.
> The Cry engine, Steam engine, BF3’s engine, and Deus Ex HR’s engine are all engines that run on more than one platform, which SKAinsoMniAx is trying to say is a bad thing, it’s really not, cause you got your platform that can good graphics even tho it’s old, Xbox 360, you got your platform which can really run the more graphics than the Xbox, The Play Station 3, and then you got the platform that is all ways changing and can run high end graphics that look as great as seen in Avatar, the PC. Focusing soully on the Xbox’s out dated hardware, you can only go so far.
> Can they take the current Halo engine and upgrade it to run on the Xbox 360, and still look awesome, yes, but it may still have some of the same issues like in Halo 3 and Reach, low res detail.
>
> I really wish 343i would not focus making Halo games just for the Xbox, I really wish they’d make them for both the Xbox and the PC, even if they only release for the Xbox, at lest down the line, when the next Xbox console is released, people can still pull out old Halo games made by 343i, and play them on their new Xbox, and still feel like they’re playing a new looking game.
Well, I didn’t necessarily say that developing on multiple platforms was a bad thing. Without the intentions of starting any flamewar and what-not, let me first say that in the case of multi-platform games, developers usually have one task in mind which is to make each platform run identical in performance and graphical fidelity. There are of course cases where you would find one platform have an extra edge against the other, but the overall goal is to keep them identical as possible. Now you then have a case where you’re dealing with first-party studios, where they have say a lot more “technical freedom”. 343 as I mentioned, has a big advantage with a bigger budget, more time, more resources, and greater communication with other 1st-party devs. etc…Which leads me to say to 343 is, PLEASE take advantage of the fact that you basically have unlimited resources. Keep in mind that you’re a first-party developer that has a chance of making something visually breath-taking.
I still wonder if 343 is still using old assets from Bungie’s engine they created with Halo. With a brand new trilogy of Halo games and with Halo 4 being in development since like 2007, it would probably lead me to believe that 343 has written entirely new code for their engine. I still dream everyday of seeing in-game footage of Halo 4. It makes my mind crazy thinking of all the new things 343 have implemented so far in the development cycle. I know I’ve mentioned Uncharted 3 like a BILLION times, but to me, that is a game 343 can have inspiration off of. An amazing soundtrack with a great story backed up by B-E-Autiful graphics. If developers like Naughty Dog can make a game that can win over 200 GOTY awards, then I don’t see why 343 can’t do that too. They just have to set their mind to it. Don’t be lazy. Give it all you got.
effects and details can be nice but the amount of time to make beautiful graphics can sever the time to put quality to the gameplay. BF3 may be one of the shiniest games (the PC version atleast) but it’s buggy as hell.
> effects and details can be nice but the amount of time to make beautiful graphics can sever the time to put quality to the gameplay. BF3 may be one of the shiniest games (the PC version atleast) but it’s buggy as hell.
Post like this always remind me of the “gameplay > graphics” people. Not pointing you out, but people have to realize this is why game studios have graphics engineers. People who concentrate solely on graphics/visuals. Let the writers concentrate on story, let the designers handle missions/gameplay, and let the testers handle bugs and glitches.
> BF3 may be one of the shiniest games (the PC version atleast) but it’s buggy as hell.
Um, are you forgetting that right now you have the BF3 BETA, meaning there’s going to be bugs, Reach was like that, Crysis 2 was like that, every beta I’ve played, has been like that, and like every public beta I’ve played, the public build released is a build or two old when it’s first released to the public. All tho I do wish Dice would of released a more stable build.
> effects and details can be nice but the amount of time to make beautiful graphics can sever the time to put quality to the gameplay. BF3 may be one of the shiniest games (the PC version atleast) but it’s buggy as hell.
> Post like this always remind me of the “gameplay > graphics” people. Not pointing you out, but people have to realize this is why game studios have graphics engineers. People who concentrate solely on graphics/visuals. Let the writers concentrate on story, let the designers handle missions/gameplay, and let the testers handle bugs and glitches.
If I remember from my basic game design class, and from what I’ve seen.
the group working on a game is split up into teams.
Sound/music (some times they’re the same team, some times they’re two different teams)
Engine Programmers (These are the people who make the game run, and wright most of the code that makes the game tick)
Graphics (The guys who make all of the graphics, from models all the way up to the effects, the work closely with both the sound and Engine programmers)
Game play/story designers (the people who set up and tell the stories)
The Testers (normaly is made up of the people from other teams, or a group of people who are highered/picked for testing the game)
343i isn’t like what bungie was back in the early days when it was 4 dudes in a small room, I bet there are at lest 60 people working on Halo 4, and even if there wasn’t, I bet 343i can go out and higher some more people.
They will not use a new engine on halo 4. They will continue improving this one in terms of everything, including graphics, as they have been for 10 years.
A couple things:
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While the xbox 360 was released first, it also was rushed to market. The graphics card is actually better than the one in the ps3, but the cell processor itself is stronger than the xbox cpu. Xbox was designed to be easy to program vs the more complex/harder to program ps3. Please note this isnt to start a console war. Just to show that the console being first didnt hurt it as much as you might think.
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You really cant compare games from different genres to a degree. Uncharted and Reach or two different genres and thus their requirements are different. The question is how does reach stack up to CoDMW2, or soon to be released CodMW3 or Battlefield 3? Still though, would love to see better graphics… I remember when Donkey kong country came out for super nintendo late in its cycle. didnt know the snes was capable of the amazing graphics compared to other side scrolling platformers!
> having not played crysis i cant comment on that but as for graphics of reach they were good. i was watching the halo4 panel again today and remember them saying something about destruction will be in halo4.
CryEngine 3.0 is AMAZING… especially on PC. Take my word for it. I like Reach’s engine too but Cry Engine 3 is just awesome.