Truth Behind Crysis 2's Tessellation (courtesy of Mystic-G)

Taken directly from the PC forums. I thought this might be interesting to some.

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Great article reviewing Crytek's work with tessellation.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/21404/1

To sum things up if you're too lazy to read it. Crysis 2's use of tessellation is extraordinarily wasteful. So much so that the most heavily tessellated objects are planks of wood, and a jersey barrier..... not exactly the kind of object that call for tessellation. This is all topped off by the fact that you have tessellated water flowing under the levels that you can't see or access but your GPU is still using up resources to render.

Of course some objects are noticeably tessellated in the right places but for the most part, Crytek did a pretty crappy job handling it in a optimal way. The proof is in the pudding.

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Link to Mystic-G's original post.

SW relevance? I suppose the reach of consolization is beyond even DX11 patches :P

Dunno if anyone watched it, but the interviews with Cevat made him seem like even he was utterly disappointed with how Crysis 2 turned out :lol:

Crysis 2 looks great but hermits just can't stop moaning can they?

It's not like they tried too hard to utilize it where it's needed the most.

Nvidia probably gave them a wishlist of features, so they can advertise and sell DX11 cards and payed them a lot of money.

You see this in a lot of games.

Dirt 2 main's DX11 feature were the waving flags.

Dunno if anyone watched it, but the interviews with Cevat made him seem like even he was utterly disappointed with how Crysis 2 turned out :lol:

ChubbyGuy40

I'm not actually sure how I feel about it. It's pretty sweet on the eyes when played at Ultra/DX11/High res/1080p that's for sure.

I've played through Crysis 1 several times yet find it hard to make myself finish the campaign in Crysis 2.

It's rather baffling because I don't consider it a bad game at all, I suppose it just lacks that "Nintendo Magic" that Crysis 1 managed to have :P

Crysis 2 looks great but hermits just can't stop moaning can they?

Harisemo

Kinda funny coming from the DF/LoT enthusiast crowd. Just read the article, it's not written by hermits with sw agendas.

[QUOTE="ChubbyGuy40"]

Dunno if anyone watched it, but the interviews with Cevat made him seem like even he was utterly disappointed with how Crysis 2 turned out :lol:

Filthybastrd

I'm not actually sure how I feel about it. It's pretty sweet on the eyes when played at Ultra/DX11/High res/1080p that's for sure.

I've played through Crysis 1 several times yet find it hard to make myself finish the campaign in Crysis 2.

It's rather baffling because I don't consider it a bad game at all, I suppose it just lacks that "Nintendo Magic" that Crysis 1 managed to have :P

I consider it a bad game. SP and MP are pretty bad and boring. Finally beat it on Post-Human and even then it was too easy. The game was a downgrade in every area from Crysis 1, and it killed off that "magic" Crysis 1 had.

The graphics in DX11 are also very underwhelming. Crysis 1 still looks way better and far, far more appealing.

[QUOTE="Filthybastrd"]

[QUOTE="ChubbyGuy40"]

Dunno if anyone watched it, but the interviews with Cevat made him seem like even he was utterly disappointed with how Crysis 2 turned out :lol:

ChubbyGuy40

I'm not actually sure how I feel about it. It's pretty sweet on the eyes when played at Ultra/DX11/High res/1080p that's for sure.

I've played through Crysis 1 several times yet find it hard to make myself finish the campaign in Crysis 2.

It's rather baffling because I don't consider it a bad game at all, I suppose it just lacks that "Nintendo Magic" that Crysis 1 managed to have :P

I consider it a bad game. SP and MP are pretty bad and boring. Finally beat it on Post-Human and even then it was too easy. The game was a downgrade in every area from Crysis 1, and it killed off that "magic" Crysis 1 had.

The graphics in DX11 are also very underwhelming. Crysis 1 still looks way better and far, far more appealing.

Sssshhhhhhh! I'm trying hard to let Crysis 1 go man!

I promised myself I'd never post another montage :?

Tessellation is overrated, it gives textures a slightly more bumpy look to them at a performance cost... It's just not worth it, Hawx has videos of it on and off.

Reason why? Look at meh sig

Tessellation is overrated, it gives textures a slightly more bumpy look to them at a performance cost... It's just not worth it, Hawx has videos of it on and off.

JohnF111

Because one game did tessellation badly, the tech is overrated?

[QUOTE="JohnF111"]

Tessellation is overrated, it gives textures a slightly more bumpy look to them at a performance cost... It's just not worth it, Hawx has videos of it on and off.

ChubbyGuy40

Because one game did tessellation badly, the tech is overrated?

[QUOTE="ChubbyGuy40"]

[QUOTE="JohnF111"]

Tessellation is overrated, it gives textures a slightly more bumpy look to them at a performance cost... It's just not worth it, Hawx has videos of it on and off.

JohnF111

Because one game did tessellation badly, the tech is overrated?

Tessellation is overrated, it gives textures a slightly more bumpy look to them at a performance cost... It's just not worth it, Hawkx has videos of it on and off.

JohnF111

[QUOTE="JohnF111"][QUOTE="ChubbyGuy40"]

Because one game did tessellation badly, the tech is overrated?

ferret-gamer

Tessellation is overrated, it gives textures a slightly more bumpy look to them at a performance cost... It's just not worth it, Hawx has videos of it on and off.

JohnF111

The article from the OP is about using it wastefully though. Crysis 2 may have utilized it inefficiently, but we've been saying all along that games need to be built from the ground up with it in mind, you can't just patch it in later.

That being said, the "slightly increased bumpiness" in Crysis 2 makes for a huge difference overall, at least for me. I find the quality noticably better than what PoM can achieve and it's absence, even if subtle, still makes the game seem less impressive, even immersive.

I expect a debate such as this is in the vein of "30 VS 60 fps" and "720p VS 1080p" and I believe the answer goes something like this:

Upgrading might not impress you all that much initially but it's impossible to unsee.

Personally I have a hard time with my min fps going below 30, regardless of the average and fx Crysis 2 looks better at 1080p, low (uhm, "High") than it does at 720p, ultra (this is "very high").

Edit: Can't say about the performance dip... My laptop obviously can't max it at high framerates but my SLI 460's can while V-synced.

That means 50 fps stable with dips to 30 here and there. Crysis 1 and 2 does'nt V-sync to 60 for some reason. Might be related to the fact that I'm european and PAL standards in some obscure way.

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"][QUOTE="JohnF111"] Its overrated in general, posting in here just shows that two games have supposedly done it badly by your logic, i posted an example but the tech itself is rubbish, it just makes slightly improves the look of textures at a performance hit and not a very good improvement, if using it in a mountain range is "doing it badly" then i'd like to see a good example.JohnF111

Because that is not at all what tessellation is. Tessellation is dynamic subdivision of meshes. Displacement mapping like you see in HAWX, is actually making the mountain range geometry more detailed, the same with Crysis 2.

And displacement mapping isn't all that tessellation is either. You can use it to smooth meshes, make your charater model more realistic, have a tire or barrel more smooth.

And you can also use it to have a seamless LOD system, no more sudden changes in models as you approach them, tessellation can have them smoothly switch.

It's experience thru errors guys ;]

[QUOTE="JohnF111"]

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"] You might want to do a bit of research on what tessellation is before saying the tech is overrated. Your posts imply you don't actually know anything about it.ferret-gamer

DX 11 hardware has dedicated tessellators. As long as the tessellaiton is used to good effect and optimized there should be NO performance loss.

Of cours,e most games don't do it right, or to great effect, sadly.

But to say it's a gimmick or pointless or doesn't make a difference is a little ridiculous.

It's the only time when finally, floors and walls aren't flat textures, but actually incorporate geometry. That's a big game changer right there. Heck, we're in 2011, and we still see a ton fo square looking arches and wheels. Tessellation finally gives us fully round objects a decade after the fact.

IF used right, on places where it matters, and is optimized it can really make a game feel organic, realistic, next gen.

there is no true Directx11 game

not yet anyway

[QUOTE="JohnF111"]

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"] You might want to do a bit of research on what tessellation is before saying the tech is overrated. Your posts imply you don't actually know anything about it.ferret-gamer

Because that is not at all what tessellation is. Tessellation is dynamic subdivision of meshes. Displacement mapping like you see in HAWX, is actually making the mountain range geometry more detailed, the same with Crysis 2.

And displacement mapping isn't all that tessellation is either. You can use it to smooth meshes, make your charater model more realistic, have a tire or barrel more smooth.

And you can also use it to have a seamless LOD system, no more sudden changes in models as you approach them, tessellation can have them smoothly switch.

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"][QUOTE="JohnF111"] I know what it is, it's not worth it the performance dip, that is all i'm saying.

JohnF111

Well it sounds to me that you don't know what it is, all the demonstrations i've seen show me either a mountain with it off, and a slider that increases the triangulation used on the object and when it's processed you see the mountain magically appear more textured on screen, i've read about it and seen it in action it's not hard to grasp. It improves textures using GPU power by a hardly noticeable amount.JohnF111

I'll attest to the bolded part at least but probably in reverse of your intended meaning ;)

It improves "texture quality" and perception of depth by using GPU power, with a hardly noticable performance impact.

I expect you find it a high cost for a low gain because of your rig. It barely has an impact on my stationary rig in any game I've played.

Tessellation has nothing to do with texture quality, it is a geometry effect.http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

ferret-gamer

While not directly, I supose he means in regards to brick walls in Crysis 2, for example.

Edit: Personally, I find tesselation a much needed focus. After PoM and now Tesselation, flat textures really stick out when I look at games. It's litterally one of the main reasons why I'm nearly never impressed by graphics anymore *cough Gears Cough*.

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"][QUOTE="JohnF111"] I know what it is, it's not worth it the performance dip, that is all i'm saying.

JohnF111

I'm pretty sure tessellation has to do with increasing triangle count to pull off depthand smoothness on objects.

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"]

[ Tessellation has nothing to do with texture quality, it is a geometry effect.http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

Filthybastrd

While not directly, I supose he means in regards to brick walls in Crysis 2, for example.

Brick walls aren't tessellated. It's using POM.

[QUOTE="Filthybastrd"]

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"]

[ Tessellation has nothing to do with texture quality, it is a geometry effect.http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

ChubbyGuy40

While not directly, I supose he means in regards to brick walls in Crysis 2, for example.

Brick walls aren't tessellated. It's using POM.

Brick walls aren't tessellated. It's using POM.

ChubbyGuy40

You entirely sure about that? I must have messed with settings in some way while setting it up on my laptop then. I could have sworn I experienced significant differences between dx11 and prepatch.

I might need to not pull examples out of my ass ;)

depends on the wall, but most of the brick walls are tessellated, even though they could have used POM and no one would have noticed the difference.ferret-gamer

Thanks, you saved me the trouble of wasting an hour on loading Crysis 2 several times.

depends on the wall, but most of the brick walls are tessellated, even though they could have used POM and no one would have noticed the difference.ferret-gamer

Bah you're right.It was mainly the ground and brick pathways they used POM for.

[QUOTE="JohnF111"][QUOTE="ferret-gamer"] Really? I don't think you do. " it just makes slightly improves the look of textures at a performance hit " "it gives textures a slightly more bumpy look to them at a performance cost..." Because that is not at all what tessellation is.ferret-gamer

[QUOTE="ferret-gamer"]

[QUOTE="JohnF111"] Well it sounds to me that you don't know what it is, all the demonstrations i've seen show me either a mountain with it off, and a slider that increases the triangulation used on the object and when it's processed you see the mountain magically appear more textured on screen, i've read about it and seen it in action it's not hard to grasp. It improves textures using GPU power by a hardly noticeable amount.raskullibur

It's also changes pavement from being completely flat to having actual depth :?

It increases the complexity of geometry in a variety of ways. I'm unsure how you can not notice that.

I think crysis 2 was ok, just a good game, nothing amazing but at least is well optimized unlike Crysis 1.

Still not a cappy optimised game like the first. That game is a joke.

Still not a cappy optimised game like the first. That game is a joke.

millerlight89

What about Crysis 1 was so horribly optimized? It made heavy use of shadows, physics and scale of active rendering.

Still runs pretty damn well for what it calculates beneath the hood. I have'nt actually seen Crysis 2 render similar maps but between the two campaigns, there's a lot more going on in Crysis 1.

Kinda funny coming from the DF/LoT enthusiast crowd. Just read the article, it's not written by hermits with sw agendas.

Filthybastrd

Tessellation is overrated, it gives textures a slightly more bumpy look to them at a performance cost... It's just not worth it, Hawx has videos of it on and off.

JohnF111

What about Crysis 1 was so horribly optimized? It made heavy use of shadows, physics and scale of active rendering.

Still runs pretty damn well for what it calculates beneath the hood. I have'nt actually seen Crysis 2 render similar maps but between the two campaigns, there's a lot more going on in Crysis 1.

Filthybastrd

[QUOTE="Filthybastrd"]

What about Crysis 1 was so horribly optimized? It made heavy use of shadows, physics and scale of active rendering.

Still runs pretty damn well for what it calculates beneath the hood. I have'nt actually seen Crysis 2 render similar maps but between the two campaigns, there's a lot more going on in Crysis 1.

millerlight89

[QUOTE="millerlight89"]

[QUOTE="Filthybastrd"]

What about Crysis 1 was so horribly optimized? It made heavy use of shadows, physics and scale of active rendering.

Still runs pretty damn well for what it calculates beneath the hood. I have'nt actually seen Crysis 2 render similar maps but between the two campaigns, there's a lot more going on in Crysis 1.

savagetwinkie

[QUOTE="savagetwinkie"][QUOTE="millerlight89"] It uses 50% of each of my Gpus. It is a terribly optimised game and that is all there is to it.

millerlight89

[QUOTE="millerlight89"]

[QUOTE="savagetwinkie"] if its using less and doing so much, that means the opposite, its optimized very very well.savagetwinkie

It uses 50% of each of my Gpus. It is a terribly optimised game and that is all there is to it.

millerlight89

Add some AA then. I play Crysis 1 with 16xAA from the ingame setup and force some SSAA from the Nvidia control panel while Disabling EdgeAA in the CFG.

The game makes heavy use of shadows and physics, both of which are CPU dependant, as far as I'm aware.

One should obviously not ignore statistical component utilization but one also has to consider practical application.

I have no idea which kind of rig you're using but my I7 - 920 (3.6 GHz), 6 DD3 (1400 MHz) and SLI GTX460s (800 MHz core with locked shaders and 1800 MHz mem) deliver great performance for what I receive.

If you're GPU is underutilized, you should try taxxing it more. Are you running with a custom CFG?

I don't think you are quite understanding it yourself. When i had a gtx 280, it couldn't run crysis smoothly maxed out, but was only having 70% GPU usage, so having problems running smoothly, while not taking advantage of all the power the GPU has = optimization problems.ferret-gamer

Suppose I'm repeating myself but Crysis 1 is very harsh on the CPU and a custom CFG is advisable. Playing with a GTX285 was a 20 fps experience for me.

It's not unoptimized, it's just from 2007 and GPU usage is'nt an ultimate indicator. Miller says he only achieved 50%, that indicates a bottleneck somewhere in the system.

Edit: I'm not trying to be condescending because I'm quite certain that, at least you Ferret, is a lot more knowledgable than I am, but low GPU utilization can easily be a matter of bottlenecking.

[QUOTE="savagetwinkie"][QUOTE="millerlight89"] You really don't seem to understand. The game uses 50% of my gpus, it should be taking advantage of both a lot more. That does not mean it is optimised. My goodness, where do some of you come up with this **** :?

ferret-gamer

Interesting comment from the original tread:

So I was playing Crysis 2 today because I never got around to replaying it with the DX11 patch, and I think I know why the concrete barriers are tessellated to hell and back. They're destructible objects in the game, so I think the reason Crytek tessellated them so heavily was so that if/when they get shot up the torn off parts of the barrier are also tessellated. As for the water under the land, I'm almost certain that's due to the way the level builder in Cryengine works. Anyone who tried to build a custom level in Cryengine 2 can tell you that the map always starts off as nothing but a vast swath of ocean. You can add land, but the water is always still underneath the land. Since the water was never really too intensive on the hardware (especially in prepatched Crysis 2) Crytek probably never gave this a second thought. Then when they tessellated the water in the DX11 patch they probably forgot that the water is still being rendered everywhere in the game and thus didn't realize the massive performance hit they introduced. As for everything else, I would chalk it up to Crytek being Crytek. Crytek has never been known for optimization, and considering how lazy their dev team was with Crysis 2 I really wouldn't be surprised if they did things like fail to roll back tessellation based on distance simply because their goal was only to give PC gamers the pretty game they wanted, not make it run well. It's pretty obvious that Crytek wasn't really being too detail-oriented with the tessellation job when you look at the bricks in the game. A lot of them have some pretty severe distortion (ie waves) as a result of the half-assed mapping job Crytek did. While it wouldn't necessarily surprise me if nVidia did purposefully sabotage the game for AMD users (both companies have been known to do this in the past), considering Crytek's track record it also wouldn't surprise me if nVidia had nothing to do with this and it was entirely Crytek's fault.gameguy6700

By the way, do remeber that most Hermits are only half system warriors. We argue with our brethren as much as we spite the dirty infidels :P

[QUOTE="ChubbyGuy40"]

Brick walls aren't tessellated. It's using POM.

Filthybastrd

You entirely sure about that? I must have messed with settings in some way while setting it up on my laptop then. I could have sworn I experienced significant differences between dx11 and prepatch.

I might need to not pull examples out of my ass ;)

depends on the wall, but most of the brick walls are tessellated, even though they could have used POM and no one would have noticed the difference.ferret-gamer

Thanks, you saved me the trouble of wasting an hour on loading Crysis 2 several times.

Wouldn't using tessellation for bricks be a bigger performance hit?

I don't think you are quite understanding it yourself. When i had a gtx 280, it couldn't run crysis smoothly maxed out, but was only having 70% GPU usage, so having problems running smoothly, while not taking advantage of all the power the GPU has = optimization problems.ferret-gamer

Wouldn't using tessellation for bricks be a bigger performance hit?

topgunmv

Crysis 2 was one of the biggest let downs this gen. The original Crysis is one of my favourite FPS games of all time. Crysis 2 on the other hand is just boring and not fun to play at all.

I've been playing Crysis for four years now and during these years Crytek couldn't come up with a replacement, what were they doing?

I managed to play through Crysis 2 once, I tried again on hardest difficulty (still too easy) but couldn't stand the thought of wasting a few hours of my life listening to all theboringness needed to pull through a second time. From time to time I still play Crysis but I have no interest in playing Crysis 2 again. Invisible walls, linear paths, crappy physics, Crytek did just the opposite of what they should have done. Improve what made the first game so great, instead they hit the delete button.

Wouldn't using tessellation for bricks be a bigger performance hit?

topgunmv

As Teuf mentions it depends. You're probably better of discussing specifics with Ferret or Teuf, my technical knowledge is significantly less in depth than theirs. The article is'nt about optimizing as much as it's about using tesselation effectively, keep that in mind.

Look to the wall of text I quoted and brought here from the PC forums. It's suggested that that needlessly tesselated water is a result of how levels are built in the Crysis 2 editor and the heavily tesselated barriers have received the extra attention for the sake of consistency when they're broken in pieces.

I find it hard to comment on performance, my SLI 460s run it V-synced at Ultra without choking much. That being said, Crysis 2 V-syncs to 50 fps for me, just like Crysis 1 does.

Performance impact or not, I'd like tesseletation where it makes a difference. In an urban enviroment, walls would be a fine place to start ;) For the sake of optimization, I believe it should be used in combination with PoM, with a healthy regard for level design, at least for now. PoM looks great in some places but often, it's just a matter of "at least not looking downright flat".

[QUOTE="topgunmv"]

Wouldn't using tessellation for bricks be a bigger performance hit?

Filthybastrd

As Teuf mentions it depends. You're probably better of discussing specifics with Ferret or Teuf, my technical knowledge is significantly less in depth than theirs. The article is'nt about optimizing as much as it's about using tesselation effectively, keep that in mind.

Look to the wall of text I quoted and brought here from the PC forums. It's suggested that that needlessly tesselated water is a result of how levels are built in the Crysis 2 editor and the heavily tesselated barriers have received the extra attention for the sake of consistency when they're broken in pieces.

I find it hard to comment on performance, my SLI 460s run it V-synced at Ultra without choking much. That being said, Crysis 2 V-syncs to 50 fps for me, just like Crysis 1 does.

Performance impact or not, I'd like tesseletation where it makes a difference. In an urban enviroment, walls would be a fine place to start ;) For the sake of optimization, I believe it should be used in combination with PoM, with a healthy regard for level design, at least for now. PoM looks great in some places but often, it's just a matter of "at least not looking downright flat".

I readed all your post and you fail in almost all.

To put some clarity to this: Various sites say as a FACT how nVidia buy performance for them and bad performance for ati by 2million dollars to crytek. We know the results. Another FACT from more sites, the games is HORRIBLE optimized, the tessellation used in most scenarios is a bad choice in design, like walls (look real using POM and uses less resource, many walls are with pom and other wit tessellation and the difference is almost unnoticeable).

But worst than that, is the water in the bottom of the game, behind the ground, the ocean continues rendering the tessellated weaves without nobody seeing them!!!, worse and stranger than that?.... the road concrete blocks, are almost rectangular, but they high tessellation in a absurd way :S, rocks the same too much tessellated.

This is for punish the ATI cards.

And man, the ground and roads have NOT tessellation, that was POM , you have something wrong on your eyes.