Saturday, January 31, 2009

Naughty Dog, Realtime Graphics, and Comparisons Part 2! : Particle effects, lighting, secondary character models and AA, oh my!

Part 2 of the comparison is now here! My apologies for the delay. For those who have not seen my previous comparison (Part 1) you should go check it out. As promised this comparison examines lighting, AA, particle effects, secondary and enemy models. For those interested I have a public gallery of images that were used in my comparison. Currently there are over 230 images and I will be adding more images soon. Also as requested by popular demand in emails. I will do an Uncharted 2 and Gears of War comparison when Naughty Dog's next game releases. Thanks for all of those who emailed.


*Click on the images for the original full resolution 720p image*

Secondary and Enemy Character Models



Sully
Random Pirate

Navarro
Eddy Raja


Random Locust Soldier



Kantus




Cole

Baird

Giant Lake Monster




Inside the monster






Lighting













I noticed in Gears 2 that there was some strange things going on with the lighting. For example in the next two captures below it would appear that the light from the glowing plants isn't real light but, perhaps some kind of strange cloud or blue blur?



In this part of the under ground cave level there were some cases of the blue cloud disappearing when I approached the plants.

In this shot it seems the lighting has no effect on the character model.



Here is one example of the best lighting I was able to capture on Dom.








Particle Effects












I noticed in Gears 2 that many of particle effects such as flames, smoke, and torches are 2 dimensional. This is very noticeable in the sunken city of Lima areas.


Click here to see the video















Anti Aliasing

Since doing the previous comparison I was informed that the blurring was how Gears 2 handles aliasing, so I decided to see how uncharted matches up in covering aliasing.