MLAA obsession + inFamous + personal stuff update
By Valkyr 2 Comments
MLAA, the game changer?
So recently I've been watching a lot of the Killzone 3 gameplay videos and I was wondering how can Guerrilla be making such a huge step in graphical quality taking into account Killzone 2 was already crazy. The thing is that they are now using MLAA in their in-house engine instead of Nvidia Quincunx (QAA), the effect is said to be similar to MSAA 16x in some cases and MSAA 4x in the worst with very little artifacting here and there, for example in fences. This is a huge quality increase from QAA which has the effect of MSAA 4x at the performance cost of 2x with some texture blurring. The MLAA magic is that it can be fully offload to the Cell's SPUs because it works with the screen image like a post processing effect instead of being part of the rendering pipeline, freeing a lot of work of the RSX and making almost all jaggies disappear, without the Quincunx blurring(watch some GoW III retail version or KZ 3 videos).What I've been thinking is that there is a SPU that is only used to run the XMB and the system OS, couldn't just Sony now that the ps3 has been hacked and that pirates have some version of the jailbreak device running roms let developers use this SPU to improve the quality of games?, like warning the user that the XMB will be disable while they play that kind of game and free some time to offload part of the MLAA duties to it, it could also work with every game of the ps3 library because you are using a SPU that was previously only assigned to the XMB and now it is running some form of MLAA.
The firmware update only needs to check if that old game is using MSAA, if the game has no anti-aliasing at all, you just would have to use the XMB in game and activate the use of MLAA with the warning that after doing it the XMB will not work till you turn off your ps3. With new games the use of this SPU could be added in the normal job scheduling of the game, freeing even more work of the RSX and other SPUs. It's a pity that the eighth SPU is completely locked and/or faulty in the ps3 Cell, MLAA it is believed that only uses 1/1.2 SPU raw power to work and the benefits of that resource could extend the ps3 life a lot.
We will have to wait for the release of KZ3 and Infamous 2 which are said to be using the Santa Monica implementation of this technique and see the improvement, both games are already looking way better than their last iteration in the graphics department
inFamous
I finished inFamous with good karma last sunday, the ending was amazing and left the door opened for more than one sequel, the plot which seemed crazy and had a lot of holes, was wrapped up very well leaving you a lot of questions but also making sense with the event of the first game, it's a shame that this new franchise didn't sell a lot because it is clear that at least a trilogy was planned from the beginning and SuckerPunch kinda created it's own open world sub genre. If you can buy it and play it before inFamous 2 comes out it would be a fair prize for a developer that took the risk and created a new IP and delivered a very polished game. What really bothers me is that Prototype is a piece of shit and some people picked that up instead of inFamous, it was so bad that I started playing it when it was released and it's one of the few games that went to backlog since february. If you enjoyed Prototype then inFamous is a AAA to you, Prototype was subpar.
Personal stuff
Dad's health update: He will be entering surgery on Wednesday at 12:00 am Georgetown Time, it will last between 7 and 8 hours, the duodenum and the head of the pancreas will be removed, then with some of that material they will do a biopsy to confirm it's cancer, according to the doctors he will have a "normal" life with a normal diet and has chances to live well for some years, we have to see if that statement changes after the biopsy results are done Thanks to all of those that wished me luck