Kotaku: Horizon Zero Dawn Uses All Sorts Of Clever Tricks To Look Fantastic

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LordOfLore

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Every time you move the camera in Horizon Zero Dawn, the game is doing all sorts of under-the-hood calculations, loading and unloading chunks of world to ensure that it all runs properly. And that’s not even counting the robot dinosaurs.

In a new 45-minute documentary produced by the Dutch organization VRPO, the developers at Guerrilla Games give us a fascinating glimpse at how they created their post-post-apocalyptic versions of Colorado and Utah. One of my favorite parts is the GIF above, at around 18:16 in the documentary, which shows how the game is secretly rendering giant chunks of terrain on the fly as you move your camera around.

You can watch it all here. Make sure to put on English captions—some of it is in Dutch.

Although some of the documentary is fluff, it’s worth watching if you’re into Horizon Zero Dawn and want to know more about how it was made. Games like this don’t just look incredible because of ‘hyper-realism’ but because their engineers use all sorts of tricks to save memory.
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Some screenshots at the link as well.
 
Will have to watch later, but I've noticed sometimes in screenshot mode you can't move the camera. I've been wondering if that was a rendering restriction.
 
I saw this running on the weekend at insomnia60 on a sony 4k tv as big as an elephant. Suffice to say it was stunningly beautiful, my mouth hit the floor where it remained. I will buy it in the sales as huge backlog. Video tagged for later, cheers
 
The magic that goes on behind the scenes is so understated. We're playing a game and the devs have magic going on behind the scenes. I am so happy for GG and HZD job well done all respect and accolades are well deserved.
 
Considering Horizon is easily the best looking game released as of yet on any device, arguably, good on Guerilla for employing said clever tricks.
 
I've been wondering if one of the tricks is having the weather change as you make your way through a mountain pass to a new area. This way, the fog and weather shifts masks the loading of the new area in the valley below.

Makes sense and seems like it is indeed what happens when I play unless it's all coincidence.
 
Slight spoiler in the OP re the game's location. But yes, GG are masters at getting the most out of a system.
 
Sony is blessed to have companies like Guerrilla Games and Naughty Dog who are able to make the PS4's mundane hardware sing.
 
Gif Time!!
ucoln8kedwfglsrlxvm5.gif


I think This is simillar to what Witcher 3 has also Implemented, Might be wrong on that though.
 
Man, I was just thinking about how it might do this just a minute ago, haha. I kind of figured this was how the Decima Engine handles everything.

The other day, I was fighting a Thunderjaw and was rather impressed at how much space you could use to fight it. As I ran away from it and attacked a few Watchers, I guess I went *just* outside it's combat zone so that I came back, it was back at full health and the Sawtooths and Wathers I killed that were around it respawned.

Granted, I'm convinced this isn't exclusive to Horizon, but I guess I'm still a little pissed since I went through a ton of items to kill it. Nonetheless, it made me think of all the crazy under-the-hood tricks the game is doing. Same thing must be happening when riding on Machines across the map.

vivekTO said:
Gif Time!!
ucoln8kedwfglsrlxvm5.gif


I think This is simillar to what Witcher 3 has also Implemented, Might be wrong on that though.
Click to expand...

So they had to have already known how fast you can cover the terrain and how far the draw distance had to be for this to happen. Really cool stuff here!
 
Interfectum said:
Is that a big spoiler? I've not played the game yet.
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Not really, although part of the mystery of the game is figuring what happened to cause the current state of affairs and where is all this taking place. Discovering the answers to both is kind of a cool moment.
 
vivekTO said:
Gif Time!!
ucoln8kedwfglsrlxvm5.gif


I think This is simillar to what Witcher 3 has also Implemented, Might be wrong on that though.
Click to expand...

The technique is called frustum culling. It uses the camera frustum to query the world for objects that should only be rendered. Saving rendering and simulation time by skipping the rest.
 
It really is an amazing looking game. If I could have a game that looked like Horizon but played like Breath of the Wild I'd be in heaven. It'll be interesting to see what Kojima does with the engine and how it will evolve in the future.
 
Neverthelesser said:
So they had to have already known how fast you can cover the terrain and how far the draw distance had to be for this to happen. Really cool stuff here!
Click to expand...

That it why the game is locked to 30 Fps, they know their max limit and thus Stream the Assets accordingly. Guerrilla Also said this earlier that the game is built around 30 Fps or something like that, and that it is why 60 Fps is not possible on Pro as well as that would require a Beefy PC for that Tiles rendering and Assests Streaming. last part is speculation of my own.
 
dragonelite said:
The technique is called frustum culling. It uses the camera frustum to query the world for objects that should only be rendered. Saving rendering and simulation time by skipping the rest.
Click to expand...

You might be right. The Witcher 3 Used Occlusion Culling which is simillar i suppose??
 
vivekTO said:
Gif Time!!
ucoln8kedwfglsrlxvm5.gif


I think This is simillar to what Witcher 3 has also Implemented, Might be wrong on that though.
Click to expand...

Crazy stuff. I guess they can get away with it because unlike GTA and other open world games with vehicles they dont have the character moving through the levels at a quick pace.
 
Dreamgazer said:
Got spoiled about the two states.
I was asking for it lol.
Click to expand...

Same, although I'm not sure if this is actually a circumstance where I feel like I was "asking for it" - doesn't really feel like the writer is adding anything to the technical discussion of the game at hand here by divulging that info. And certainly nothing about the title of the article would suggest that info is going to be in there.
 
LifEndz said:
Not really, although part of the mystery of the game is figuring what happened to cause the current state of affairs and where is all this taking place. Discovering the answers to both is kind of a cool moment.
Click to expand...

I don't even remember the actual story ever mentioning where it takes place.
 
Vexed said:
Same, although I'm not sure if this is actually a circumstance where I feel like I was "asking for it" - doesn't really feel like the writer is really adding to the technical discussion of the game at hand here by divulging that info. And certainly nothing about the title of the article would suggest that info is going to be in there.
Click to expand...

Yup, this really should be spoiler tagged. Pretty bummed out because my friends kept telling me how cool it was when you found out where the game is set.
 
vivekTO said:
Gif Time!!
ucoln8kedwfglsrlxvm5.gif


I think This is simillar to what Witcher 3 has also Implemented, Might be wrong on that though.
Click to expand...

I'm sure they also used something like this with Crysis 1. I remember seeing a devlog about CryEngine and how everytime you look infront of an object, like a box, cargo truck, everything behind that small segment isn't rendered.

It's pretty cool.
 
The location is not a spoiler, I'm not even sure it's mentioned in the game. The things people consider spoilers these days...jeez.
 
Mutant said:
Sony is blessed to have companies like Guerrilla Games and Naughty Dog who are able to make the PS4's mundane hardware sing.
Click to expand...

Guerilla, Naughty Dog and Santa Monica you mean, the trifecta cant be complete without each other
 
Weren't there a slides from their tech presentation discussed here not long ago? How vast majority of flora is procedural generated?
 
Going thru the documentary, you won't find anything new mentioned there. It's not in any way tech oriented so they just picked some fairly common things like tree LOD and the culling thing mentioned that will look visually interesting to the average viewer.
 
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