Interview with F1 Game Director (Lots of Tech stuff)

[Siraris]

Geek Out: F1 Championship Edition Game Director Graeme Ankers Gives Us A Tech Talk On the PS3

As the second wave of Playstation 3 games begins to arrive in stores, one of the titles that Sony expects to show off the power of the PS3 is Studio Liverpool's F1 Championship Edition. Formula One racing isn't exactly our bag, but F1 CE has been looking dead sexy for some time now. To get some insights into what makes this title special, we conducted an e-mail interview with Graeme Ankers, F1 CE's game director. Here's what he had to say:

What was the philosophy behind developing F1 Championship Edition for Playstation 3? Which areas did you focus on to demonstrate the Playstation 3's potential, and where did you decide to hold back for future iterations?

The philosophy we adopted and the goal we set for ourselves was to deliver a true next gen experience of Formula One gaming. For us, this was all about putting the player into the cockpit of a single-seater, open-wheel race car capable of top speeds of over 220 mph and getting them to experience lightning-fast, wheel to wheel racing on some of the most famous race tracks in the world against 21 opponents in all weather conditions. The Playstation 3 has enabled us to focus on key areas such as the incredibly varied and detailed damage model, gorgeous HD graphics, lifelike AI behavior and captivating gameplay.

One of the key challenges you face when developing a game for Playstation 3 is making sure everything in the game consistently hits the high benchmarks you've set yourself. For example, it becomes very noticeable when your car looks amazing, but the spray coming off the wheels in the rain doesn't look quite right. We put a lot of effort into making sure every element of the game was of the absolute highest quality possible and it's one of the achievements we as a development team are most proud of. We have learnt an incredible amount about the Playstation 3 architecture while developing F1 Championship Edition and we are currently taking that knowledge forward into new features and technology for future games.

How difficult was it to get 22 cars on the track at that level of detail?

Actually, it was not as difficult as you might think--especially considering that just one of the Playstation 3 cars we have in F1 CE requires the same memory budget as all 22 cars combined on the PS2 version! We made some educated estimates at the start of the project about overall memory and polygonal budgets for the cars and the tracks and they all turned out to be pretty accurate. It obviously helps that we've been making F1 games since 2001. We also already had a very advanced technology platform and data pipelines for our art assets in place. So even though the new car models were incredibly detailed and much more complex, as they incorporated the advanced damage system, we got all 22 of them into the game fairly smoothly.

I remember taking the latest demo code over to Japan for Tokyo Game Show back in September and the reaction to the graphics and the damage was incredible. On the last day of the show my producer called me from the UK and told me that I had to see the latest version of the code back at our studio in Liverpool. When we arrived back, he booted up the latest version of the game which included the new car reflections in the wet track at the full framerate. It was fantastic to see all 22 cars on track with full reflections from each one on the wet track surface--that was actually one of the last main graphics features that was included in the game.

The rain effects are pretty spectacular. Without getting extremely technical, tell us what's going on underneath the hood to make that effect possible. How is it different from rain effects on the PlayStation 2?

The rain drops you see are image processing effects that utilize the hardware's extremely powerful SPU's for a physics simulation to calculate the movement of the rain droplets based on forces/velocities per pixel. What this basically means is that as you drive around in the rain, the game calculates the speed and forces on the car to move the rain drops accordingly on your visor, down to a per-raindrop level of detail. You also notice the splashes that the raindrops leave as they hit the tarmac and this is done using the landscape collision system - again, running on the SPUs - to calculate individual positions for each splash.

This effect was simply not possible on the PS2. On PS2, we had to use a plane with a rain texture in front of the screen. On Playstation 3 we accurately simulate heavy rain conditions which give us incredibly realistic results and this also directly feeds into the gameplay. You really have to think about where your car is on the track in the rain and where your opponents are, as the visibility is sometimes reduced to virtually nothing--just like what real F1 drivers have to contend with in those conditions.

Are these visual effects being shared with other Sony studios, or will they remain unique to F1 CE? Does F1 CE share any tech with other released or forthcoming first-party titles?

The Playstation 3 has created an unprecedented climate of studio cooperation within Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios. The F1 CE development team has shared technologies and experience with many internal and first-party development teams around the world, including full support from the Worldwide Studios Advanced Technology Group.

This is a trend we expect not only to continue, but to greatly expand as the Playstation 3 platform matures. The rain effects in particular and other aspects of the F1 CE game code are currently being prepared for other first-party development teams that have requested them.

Please detail how F1 CE is using the Cell processor's components, the PPU and the seven SPUs. (Example from an actual launch title: PPU for game logic; SPU 1 and 2 for shader effects; SPU 3, 4, 5 for PhysX physics simulation; SPU 6 for particle effects; SPU 7 for audio. Also SPUs 1-5 used during loading to reduce load times.)

We don't really use the concept of reserving certain SPUs for specific tasks. Instead we employ the concept of prioritized job lists that are executed by the SPUs whenever one is available. We use the SPUs for the following jobs: audio effects, particle system, physics (landscape collision, narrow phase and collision resolution), rain effects (rain droplets and rain splashes) and various render side jobs. The game logic is driven largely by the PPU. We use the SPUs together to collaborate on working through each frame that's displayed by the game. The SPUs are extremely versatile so they can be used to accelerate any in-game system.

How is F1 CE using the RSX graphics processor? Do the Cell and RSX work together on any part of the graphics pipeline, and if so, which one?

The SPUs are heavily involved in the graphics pipeline and do an enormous amount of work to eliminate inefficiency before anything arrives at the PPU and RSX. For example, the SPUs are powerful enough to decompress and check every triangle [polygon] before passing it on to the RSX. Triangles that are facing away from the player, or that are not on the screen can be 'trimmed' away by the SPUs, which hugely reduces the amount of redundant work sent to the RSX. This in turn lets the RSX get on with what it does best--drawing stuff on screen.

The SPUs can also be used to augment the RSX vertex shaders, making far more vertex-heavy tasks possible which is very useful for character animation. Additionally, the SPUs can be used to implement behavior very similar to geometry shaders--F1 CE uses them in this way to render seamless interpolated levels of detail for some scene elements. So in answer to the question "Do the Cell and RSX work together?" the answer is a resounding "Yes," and I think this is one of the real strengths of Playstation 3 that we'll see increasingly exploited by development teams going forward.

Where did the idea to use the PSP as the gamer's rear view mirror come from? Are there other uses for the PSP when playing the Playstation 3 version?

The basic idea came from the lead designer very early on in the project. There are other uses, we are still working on this code and hope to talk more about it soon.

When and why did you switch from using high-end network PCs to Playstation 3 development kits to handle your data pipeline operations?

We switched as soon as the first Playstation 3-spec data assets started coming from the artists, which was fairly early on in the project. This wasn't a moment too soon, as our PCs really started to struggle with the data, even at this early stage. Although we could move and store the files, processing them became horrendously slow--we also had more variations of the tracks than ever before, with different lighting for different times of day, which exaggerated the problem further. For example, we pre-calculate visibility information before we load the track, which involves us rendering the entire scene from virtually every possible viewpoint on the track. We originally started doing this with a small number of networked PCs running overnight, but with the Playstation 3-spec geometry we couldn't speed this up further even by adding more networked PCs.

We tried using the idle time on the programmers' and artists' PCs, but simply couldn't get them to generate robust enough results. As we were also using very complicated shader pipelines that the PCs had to emulate, everything slowed to a crawl. PCs have a bottleneck when trying to read back data from GPU memory and this can be catastrophic for parts of the build pipeline that depend on this behavior. So we took the unprecedented step of building a custom solution featuring seven Playstation 3 development kits linked together to do the calculation required, and this resolved all of our problems in this area. We were now able to generate all the visibility information required for a track in less than 20 minutes, with the added bonus that we could use the same code as the game to do the rendering!

Are there any techniques that F1 CE uses to create a sense of speed that are different from or would be impossible on the PS2?

I guess the obvious one is the motion-blur. The motion-blur on F1 CE is calculated on a per pixel basis and this would be nigh-on impossible on PS2 at any usable frame rate. Another big surprise when we moved to Playstation 3 was how much displaying the game in high definition helped the sense of speed--you can see farther, and everything looks more detailed, so when you add the motion blur, you get a very real sense of the world racing by at 220mph!

If there's one area on which you would choose to focus your development efforts for the sequel to F1 CE, what would it be and why?

There are many areas we are already focusing on for the future, but I honestly could not pick one individual component. We really are excited about what we can do in the future with our current Playstation 3 and how much further we can push it in the years to come.

Source: N'Gai Croal's Blog

[VG Aficionado]

Beat you But I should have created this thread because as I already mentioned, it really deserves it.

I love the idea of Worldwide Studios sharing their code to synergistically improve all of their studios' development, it sounds really promising. The elaborations on Cell's SPEs specific uses and Cell working closely with RSX are very interesting bits as well. A nice tech read for forumers.

By the way, Croal seems like a good journalist, if such thing exists in the gaming media.

[Siraris]

Originally Posted by VG Aficionado

Beat you But I should have created this thread because as I already mentioned, it really deserves it.

I love the idea of Worldwide Studios sharing their code to synergistically improve all of their studios' development, it sounds really promising. The elaborations on Cell's SPEs specific uses and Cell working closely with RSX are very interesting bits as well. A nice tech read for forumers.

By the way, Croal seems like a good journalist, if such thing exists in the gaming media.

hah, I tried to check but didn't see any threads. I thought it deserved it's own thread too :P

Yea, he's definitely a great journalist for the industry. Better then most, for sure. Many seem like fluff artists.

[makeitlookreal]

I like the fact he said the SPEs can work like geometry shaders.

[VideoGame mania]

nvm

[mokmok]

Originally Posted by makeitlookreal

I like the fact he said the SPEs can work like geometry shaders.

I'm sure I read on B3d that this was not practical due to bandwidth and small local SPE memory...but I may be wrong

[Nameless]

Great article, it sounds like developers can talk a little more about what the PS3 is capable of doing...

[curryking1]

Or they could just show us some FF XIII and instead of explain it, just freaking show it. Because I seriously don't care anymore about these damn tech things. I want to see results in my favourite and to become favourite games.

[Nameless]

^ That will take time my friend... I find the tech details interesting, but at the end of the day it's all about the games.

[jaxmkii]

this article reminds me of the days when we used to talk tech not sales

[rpgamer_2k5]

Originally Posted by mokmok

I'm sure I read on B3d that this was not practical due to bandwidth and small local SPE memory...but I may be wrong

I heard otherwise from elsewhere. The Cell and RSX are a fairly integrated package with the RSX being an 'extension' of the Cell. That was a pretty big debate in the past, and then died off. But with this news, it seems like those posters made an error.

It's all good for the PS3.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

Good read, I enjoy these kinds of tech articles. My knowledge is limited but I'm always able to glean some information from them just the same. Fun stuff.

Fun fact: PS3 is really powerful.

[saxdawg00]

Originally Posted by Graeme Ankers

....Triangles that are facing away from the player, or that are not on the screen can be 'trimmed' away by the SPUs, which hugely reduces the amount of redundant work sent to the RSX. This in turn lets the RSX get on with what it does best--drawing stuff on screen.

This is exactly what Julian Eggebrecht of Factor 5 stated that their graphics engine for Lair does to help them achieve native 1080p.

[Smokey]

so i have a feeling we have better Graphics to come

[Epix]

good read, +rep.

[Fats]

Originally Posted by smokey777

so i have a feeling we have better Graphics to come

Oh, that's a given man. Some of the graphical content we've seen thus far is of the scale, some truly amazing stuff, and it's only going to get much, much better.

[LaLiLuLeLo]

I think kuturagi and the engineers at sony intentionally design playstations with a learning curve for that very reason. Oh shit that's PS2?? We're saying almost 9 years after the hardware was designed and revealed.

[Siraris]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...58214&site=psm

[VG Aficionado]

Is it really that bad? I guess it's hard to innovate after releasing 10 instalments of F1 games of the same series every year *coughEAcough*, but...

At least, it's graphically great.

[Fats]

Ah, such a shame. Looks like this is going to turn out to be a stinker, but for the F1 nut, it could still warrant a purchase.