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Displacement mapping next gen?

PanopticBlue

PanopticBlue

Member
Can Xbox 360 do it? What about PS3? We've already seen plenty of parrallax mapping in 360 games, and it is impressive, but displacement mapping would be awesome. Any chance these machines can do it?

I noticed on wikipedia, there was some mention of Nintendo getting a patent for some kind of displacement mapping. Could this be Revolution's secret weapon?
 
aren't water animations done using displacement mapping? it's basically a texture meant to adjust the frequency of a polygonal surface.
 
I'm praying Nintendo found a way to utilize displacement mapping in an efficient way, but I somehohw doubt it will ever come to be.

believe
 
Different kinds of off-set mapping will rule next-gen. Hopefully the urge to accentuate the mapps with that nasty specular will go away. Plastics ftl.
 
If I'm not mistaken, displacement mapping consists of a shader that increases the altitude of polygons based on their initial surface. If that's the case, current gens consoles could do it too.
 
I only have 2 questions:

Have they been used yet, if so where?

Are they fucking shiny?
 
Have i seen displacement mapping used in games... yea it's there at someplaces... BUT..

Games, havn't even started really use displacement mapping... ideally, all normal maps on characters and stuff would be displacment maps... but were not at that point yet in games... or pc power..


And for your 2nd question... are they shiny... Normal maps, arn't shinny.. They only look shiny in games because they are not being used properly...
 
TRU said:
Have i seen displacement mapping used in games... yea it's there at someplaces... BUT..

Games, havn't even started really use displacement mapping... ideally, all normal maps on characters and stuff would be displacment maps... but were not at that point yet in games... or pc power..
Click to expand...


weta used displacement maps for the carven trolls in lord of the rings.
 
gokou20 said:
Here are the nintendo displacement mapping patent, if anyone can explain them be my guest. but i think the second on shows its use with less cpu strain.
Click to expand...

Aren't patents reason enough to believe it won't be implemented?
 
Isnt the whole point of normal mapping supposed to be that if you do it right you dont need displacement mapping?
 
Cool! I have one sitting here on my dressing table! I've had it for over 20 years!

p10100167yn.jpg
 
Umm yeah, I think a lot you posting in here don't even know what you are talking about.


Normal mapping


Parallax mapping


Displacement mapping


Read up.

Displacement mapping could be very impressive if used properly, I don't think any game yet has used it. Some developers were gushing about how pretty thier parallax mapping was in 360 games, if some dev were using displacement maps in-game, they would definitely let you know about it.
 
Yes, essentially, displacement maping is the new hotness, though I dunno any game that will make use of it in the near future.

I just don't get why would Nintendo put a patent up if their hardware couldn't do it in the near future. Doesn't make sense.
 
The Bookerman said:
Yes, essentially, displacement maping is the new hotness, though I dunno any game that will make use of it in the near future.
Click to expand...
I doubt we'll see it in use until the VERY end of this new gen...and even then...only in a very limited way. I'd actually like to see parallax mapping be used often this following gen...it's an effect I feel that has a lot of life in it, should it be used properly.


Also, normal mapping isn't shiny. That's the specular mapping that's almost alwas used with normal mapping.

Parallax mapping gives the illusion of depth, displacement mapping actually creates it
 
Wakune said:
I doubt we'll see it in use until the VERY end of this new gen...and even then...only in a very limited way. I'd actually like to see parallax mapping be used often this following gen...it's an effect I feel that has a lot of life in it, should it be used properly.
Click to expand...


Several 360 games are already chock full of parallax mapping, it is quite impressive.


wyzdom said:
There's displacement mapping in King Kong 360
Click to expand...

Are you sure about this? As in, you've played the game yourself and have seen it firsthand?
 
Displacement mapping is a waste of resources...thats why we have Normal mapping. You need an extremely high res mesh for it to work. You need millions of polys for it look passable, because the map actually moves vertices around. It's a big hit on performance with negligible results. Most modelers use Diplacement maps as a tool for modeling high-res models that later will be turned in normal maps.
 
WTF you doofies. Displacement Mapping is actual modification of the geometry via textures.

This is exactly what you don't want to do if you want your realtime engine to run faster. Displacement mapping is more useful to modellers and in pre-rendered production where it can be used as a short cut to making a more detailed models than shortcuts in rendering time.

If you can fake something via bump mapping or parallax mapping, then you'd never want to subject your hardware to do displacement mapping, even if it's relatively fast at it. It's an unnecessary performance sapper for any realtime 3D engine.

Some of you kids should stay away from unfamiliar 3D terminology...
 
Damn, did you have to be so mean about it? :lol

I laugh everytime i see a site report that the Revolution might have Displacement mapping.
 
Doc Holliday said:
Damn, did you have to be so mean about it? :lol

I laugh everytime i see a site report that the Revolution might have Displacement mapping.
Click to expand...


Well, it's not like this is the first time more level headed folks have told these loons this... Every fucking full moon I swear...
 
PanopticBlue said:
Several 360 games are already chock full of parallax mapping, it is quite impressive.




Are you sure about this? As in, you've played the game yourself and have seen it firsthand?
Click to expand...


Sure as in "i was a dev tester for the game and the chief prog told me" ;)
 
Shogmaster said:
WTF you doofies. Displacement Mapping is actual modification of the geometry via textures.

This is exactly what you don't want to do if you want your realtime engine to run faster. Displacement mapping is more useful to modellers and in pre-rendered production where it can be used as a short cut to making a more detailed models than shortcuts in rendering time
Click to expand...
Using parallax (or normal, of course) mapping, the Illusion of depth disappears when the object is observed from the more extreme angles. That's where the displacement (or probably preferably) offset mapping comes in handy.

Anyways, I suspected disp. mapping had some limited use in some newer PC and Xbox 360 games, and looks like I was right to suspect that.
 
Marconelly said:
Using parallax (or normal, of course) mapping, the Illusion of depth disappears when the object is observed from the more extreme angles. That's where the displacement (or probably preferably) offset mapping comes in handy.

Anyways, I suspected disp. mapping had some limited use in some newer PC and Xbox 360 games, and looks like I was right to suspect that.
Click to expand...

I don't think X360 nor the PS3 has enough geometry power to shit away on displacement mapping when all it does is save time from modeling out a proper LOD geometry surface with normal/parallex mapping in production. Eventually geometry processing power in consoles will be at a point where it's more beneficial to save developmemnt time on modeling by utilizing displacement mapping over taking time to model out the detail, but I don't think we are anywhere near that yet.

I will take the loss of depth illusion at extreme angles over devs getting lazy in dev cycle by using displacement mapping to create assets which would make the realtime engine unnecessarily slower.
 
Most people aren't understanding what displacement mapping is...... It most likely has been used in MANY games...... Most likely however it's only been used for terrain....

Here is how it works.... A displacement map effects the vertices of an object based on how dark or light it is at a specific point on the map...... So if it's black it will be at one limit and if it's white it will be at the opposite...... And everything else is in between..... These limits can also obviously be set by the user as well as the type of displacement.....

This is perfect for terrain work as otherwise it would take a lot of effort to get the levels right........ Obviously it's not too good an idea on most things however if you want it to run in real time as it creates a lot of details..... Most of which only look good with a very high poly count....... Although it does depend on the results you want to obtain......

As for the revolution using it........ People who read that patent tend to make it sound like they think the displacement mapping is litterally happening in real time..... This is not true.. The displacement mapping is done in the actual modelling stage and once this is done the model could be collapsed meaning the mapping is effectively dissolved.... At this point it's down to the ability of the console to support the model just like any other model. So, in otherwords it wouldn't be down to the console to be able to support a more efficient way of using displacement.... It would be done well before.... They could have for example found a way to use displacement mapping effectively with a lower polygon count.... :-/

mountainrender.jpg


Mountainrange.jpg


This is an example of displacement mapping I did for a piece of coursework.... I didn't actually end up using it, but, it's good for demonstrating what displacement is good for. :) Oh and ermmm this wouldn't be suitable for a game. =P
 
Shogmaster said:
I don't think X360 nor the PS3 has enough geometry power to shit away on displacement mapping when all it does is save time from modeling out a proper LOD geometry surface with normal/parallex mapping in production. Eventually geometry processing power in consoles will be at a point where it's more beneficial to save developmemnt time on modeling by utilizing displacement mapping over taking time to model out the detail, but I don't think we are anywhere near that yet.
Click to expand...
Agreed
 
It is possible to do a real time displacement map for a game. The only thing that matters is how dense the mesh is that is being displaced. For the best accuracy you would need 2 triangles per pixel of the texture being used to displace.

So a 256x256 res texture would require a mesh of 131072 polygons. That is more polys than most static geometry in any given loaded level will have to use in next gen graphics.
 
Warm Machine said:
It is possible to do a real time displacement map for a game. The only thing that matters is how dense the mesh is that is being displaced. For the best accuracy you would need 2 triangles per pixel of the texture being used to displace.

So a 256x256 res texture would require a mesh of 131072 polygons. That is more polys than most static geometry in any given loaded level will have to use in next gen graphics.
Click to expand...

And above all, there just is no need to do it in realtime. Realtime normal mapping would theoreticaly only be neccesary if there was a change in geometry. And even if this would happen, I think better techniques can be used to render that.
 
PjotrStroganov said:
And above all, there just is no need to do it in realtime. Realtime normal mapping would theoreticaly only be neccesary if there was a change in geometry. And even if this would happen, I think better techniques can be used to render that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can see it if there was a need to deform a mesh with a animated texture or UV animation. Something like text moving through a mesh grid rising and lowering the points. The effect could look cool but you can get similar and cheaper results by doing the same animation and just using Parallax or Relief mapping. Just have to make sure the polygon that it is being applied to isn't parallel to the camera plane.
 
It is possible that people are getting confused with Height Mapping as well. Height mapping is a method for building terrain that is very fast on the rendering, easy on the collision, and extremely efficient with memory. Far Cry, Mercenaries, Pariah, and almost any other game with undulating terrain uses it for their environments. The limitation is that the terrain may not have tunnels or overhangs unless they are placed in there with a seperate piece of geometry.
 
F.E.A.R. uses displacement mapping, does it not?

I think the only instance it's used is when you blast the walls - thus exposing their interior.

EDIT: Nevermind, it uses parallax mapping.
 
whats the cost of parallax mapping?

It must take lots of pixel shader ops and multiple textures to pull off a brick wall with 'bumps'. Alternatively you can model the bumps in with relatively simple shaders but more geometry.

Whats the tradeoff? Is it possible that its quicker to draw the polygons?
 
Parallax mapping is fairly cheap. Only real overhead is having another texture for storing height. Its just one extra step ontop of normal mapping. You take the view vector, bring it into tangent space just like with the light vector for normal mapping. That gets passed to the pixel shader where the texture coordinates for the normal map and the color texture are shifted based on the view vector and the value in the height map and BAM you got parallax mapping.

Heres my little article explaing how it works in detail.
http://rizzawan.mine.nu/programming/parallaxMapping.php


edit: And yea Displacement Mapping hasn't been used too much. It needs Vertex Shader model 3.0 to be implemented real time. It can be useful when creating waves.wakes in water or something dynamic like that. You would create a height map every frame representing the wave and then the water geometry would use that texture to displace the verts. Hard part is creating the math in creating such a texture. Its not too bad though. Theres a neat nvidia demo for it.
 
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