Scaling the Pipeline
2013-02-22 by Stefan Boberg
Conference: KulturKraft@Stockholm
High-level overview of some of the things we in have done and learned while implementing our asset pipelines for Frostbite. The talk focuses mainly on the architecture, design and implementation techniques used for some of the more core components involved in the build process.
Adaptive Hardware-accelerated Terrain Tessellation
2013-02-16 by Albert Cervin
In this master thesis report, a scheme for adaptive hardware tessellation is presented. The scheme uses an offline processing approach where a height map is analyzed in terms of curvature and the result is stored in a resource called density map. This density map is then bound as a resource to the hardware tessellation stage and used to bias the tessellation factor for a given edge. The scheme is implemented inside Frostbite 2 engine by DICE and produces good results while making the heightfield rendering more efficient.
The performance gain can be used to increase the rendering detail, allowing for better visual appearance for the terrain mesh. The scheme is currently implemented for hardware tessellation but could also be used for software terrain mesh generation. The implemention works satisfactory and produces good results with a reasonable speed.
Data-oriented Interactive Water
2012-11-30 by Joel Lennartsson
In this report, a method for simulating interactive height-field based water on a parallel architecture is presented. This simulation is designed for faster than real time applications and is highly suitable for video games on current generation home computers. Specifically, the implementation proposed in this report is targeted at the Sony PlayStation 3. This platform requires code to be both highly parallelized and data oriented in order to take advantage of the available hardware which makes it an ideal platform for evaluating parallel code.
The simulation captures the dispersive property of water and is scalable from small collections of water to large lakes. It also uses dynamic Level Of Detail to achieve constant performance while at the same time presenting high fidelity animated water to the player.
This report describes the simulation method and implementation in detail along with a performance analysis and discussion.
5 major challenges in real-time rendering
2012-08-28 by Johan Andersson
Conference: SIGGRAPH 2012
Parallel Futures of a Game Engine
2012-05-14 by Johan Andersson
Conference: Intel Dynamic Execution Environment Symposium 2009
Audio for Multiplayer & Beyond
2012-05-14 by David Möllerstedt
Conference: Develop Conference 2008 Brighton
Mixing Case Studies From Battlefield: Bad Company & Frostbite
Leanings from creating soundscapes for online multiplayer games. With experiences from the Battlefield Series with an emphasis on Battlefield: Bad Company.
Stable SSAO in Battlefield 3 with Selective Temporal Filtering
2012-03-13 by Louis Bavoil and Johan Andersson
Conference: Game Developers Conference 2012
With the highest-quality video options, Battlefield 3 renders its Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion SSAO using the Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion HBAO algorithm. For performance reasons, the HBAO is rendered in half resolution using half-resolution input depths. The HBAO is then blurred in full resolution using a depth-aware blur. The main issue with such low-resolution SSAO rendering is that it produces objectionable flickering for thin objects such as alpha-tested foliage when the camera and/or the geometry are moving. After a brief recap of the original HBAO pipeline, this talk describes a novel temporal filtering algorithm that fixed the HBAO flickering problem in Battlefield 3 with a 1-2 performance hit in 1920×1200 on PC DX10 or DX11. The talk includes algorithm and implementation details on the temporal filtering part, as well as generic optimizations for SSAO blur pixel shaders. This is a joint work between Louis Bavoil NVIDIA and Johan Andersson DICE.
Terrain in Battlefield 3: A Modern, Complete and Scalable System
2012-03-13 by Mattias Widmark
Conference: Game Developers Conference 2012
In the session from Game Developers Conference 2011, well take a complete look at the terrain system in Frostbite 2 as it was applied in Battlefield 3. The session is partitioned into three parts. We begin with the scalability aspects and discuss how consistent use of hierarchies allowed us to combine high resolutions with high view distances. We then turn towards workflow aspects and describe how we achieved full in-game realtime editing. A fair amount of time is spent describing how issues were addressed. Finally, we look at the runtime side. We describe usage of CPU, GPU and memory resources and how it was kept to a minimum. We discuss how the GPU is offloaded by caching intermediate results in a procedural virtual texture and how prioritization was done to allow for work throttling without sacrificing quality. We also go into depth about the flexible streaming system that work with both FPS and driving games.
Modular Rigging in Battlefield 3
2012-03-13 by Johan Ramström
Conference: Game Developers Conference 2012
For Battlefield 3, DICE took on its most difficult challenge so far. To raise the bar for character quality in games we developed our own deformation rig, combined it with the powerful ANT animation system used in FIFA and extensive motion capture usage. To create a believable experience we built and managed enormous amount of assets and ways of keeping these organized. The rigging process was one of the most challenging aspects of production, with the smallest change requiring an update for almost every single asset. With a modular rigging system and a flexible animation pipeline the production team could deliver on time and quality.
Realtime Interactive Water Waves
2012-02-21 by Björn Ottosson
In this master thesis report a new method for simulating waters surface waves is presented. The method is well adapted for real-time applications and has been developed with computer games in mind.
By simulating the water surface at several different resolutions simultaneously using a construction similar to Laplacian Pyramids dispersion is handled approximately resulting in a complex behavior.
The simulation is also extended with a dynamic level of detail method and phenomenological models for boundaries and high frequency waves. This method is prototyped inside the Frostbite engine developed at DICE and runs at 3 ms per time step on a single core of a Intel Xeon processor with high quality results.