notuptome2004 Posted April 2, 2009 Share Posted April 2, 2009 http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,680340/...cs/News/?page=1 Quotes from the interview : PCGH: It is no secret that the Xbox 360 and even the PS3 is a suitable platform for a multi threaded engine. Is the engine of Ghostbusters: The Video Game heavily optimized for multithreading? If yes, why is a multithreaded engine the ideal base technology for a game like yours? Joe Kreiner: The Infernal Engine is fully optimized for multithreading/multiple CPU environments. This allows us to eek out additional performance from the consoles, giving our titles enhanced realism like the highly destructible environments in Ghostbusters. This also future proofs the Infernal Engine into the next wave of hardware, as it is likely they will include many more CPUs, and puts us in a unique position over our competition. PCGH: You announced that your game will be developed for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Will the engine then be a pure cross-platform product or will there be an optimized version for the PC? If there is a special built for the PC what technical feature can't be realized with the console version or in other words are there any features the PC is the ideal platform to develop for? PCGH: How many cores are supported? What different tasks can be or are split up into different threads and what is the expected performance gain resulting from two respectively four or even more (8) cores? Mark Randel: Ghostbusters will use up to 8 hardware threads accordingly. With the ability to crank up the rendering to use 100% of all the available rendering hardware, multicore support was a must to include in the Infernal Engine. For example, 6 threads can be used for game simulation, one for rendering, and one for sound. We worked in depth with both Intel and AMD to optimize for their latest CPUs. Mark Randel: The PC will most definitely be an optimized version. For example, if you have a fast SLI/Crossfire rig, you can turn on per pixel screen space ambient occlusion. The game will perform up to 64 raytraces per pixel on the screen to increase the detail level. That is something you cannot do on the current consoles. Plus you can increase shadow map resolution and use super high resolution textures if you have the memory! PCGH: Having a closer look at the release PC Screenshots it becomes clear that a very detailed visual presentation seems to have played an important role while developing Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Do you leverage very modern rendering techniques like Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Soft Shadows, HDR, a lighting model with Deferred Shading, Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Shader Model 4.0 or post effects like Tone Mapping, Depth of Field or Motion Blur? If yes can you please give examples how this modern rendering techniques are utilized in Ghostbusters: The Video Game? Mark Randel: All versions use modern techniques and more - you'll see lots of parallax mapping, even on the PS3. Dynamic soft shadows, HDR, tone mapping, radiosity lighting, and other techniques will be used. Ghostbusters uses over 4900 unique rendering materials that could not be achieved or handled with the current "buzz" of deferred shading. Only the low overhead rendering techniques inside of the Infernal Engine can support this diverse set of material fidelity. For example, the advanced skin and hair shading of the Ghostbusters characters could not be done with deferred rendering due to the use of translucency. Now that is just some important snippets their is alot more on SLI and crossfire support Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yusuf M. Veteran Posted April 2, 2009 Veteran Share Posted April 2, 2009 I figured it was common knowledge that PC games look better than their console variants. Anyway, the Infernal engine seems great but it's still a DX9-based engine. I'm sure they could achieve even better effects and performance improvements with DX10/10.1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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