What is tesselation, and what does it do for graphics?

What is tesselation and what does it do for graphics or performance, Halo Reach will employ some new crazy tesselation crap. I just want to know what it is before I bring it up in a thread. I cant find it on the interweb. Hermits or other well educated peoples help me out here.

Tesselation refers to how many polygons an object has or is displayed with. A million polygon object has a high tesselation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkI-ThRTrPY

LOL, bro I dont think consoles can do that. But if they can, Halo Reach is going to be a BEAUTIFUL game. All I know is that the engineers at bungie really know what theyre doing.

LOL, bro I dont think consoles can do that. But if they can, Halo Reach is going to be a BEAUTIFUL game. All I know is that the engineers at bungie really know what theyre doing.

Hathesulacon

LOL, bro I dont think consoles can do that. But if they can, Halo Reach is going to be a BEAUTIFUL game. All I know is that the engineers at bungie really know what theyre doing.

Hathesulacon

[QUOTE="Hathesulacon"]

LOL, bro I dont think consoles can do that. But if they can, Halo Reach is going to be a BEAUTIFUL game. All I know is that the engineers at bungie really know what theyre doing.

ZoomZoom2490

Tessalation is a main feature of the upcoming dx11 cards. Its a feature (is it a "feature"? dont know what to call it) that ATI has been trying to push for a while. It is basically a simpler way to break up larger polygons into tiny ones. Since consoles I think have at best dx10.1 capable graphic cards I would not expect too much of the tessalation in Halo Reach for example.

[QUOTE="ZoomZoom2490"][QUOTE="Hathesulacon"]

LOL, bro I dont think consoles can do that. But if they can, Halo Reach is going to be a BEAUTIFUL game. All I know is that the engineers at bungie really know what theyre doing.

Hathesulacon

Tessalation is a main feature of the upcoming dx11 cards. Its a feature (is it a "feature"? dont know what to call it) that ATI has been trying to push for a while. It is basically a simpler way to break up larger polygons into tiny ones. Since consoles I think have at best dx10.1 capable graphic cards I would not expect too much of the tessalation in Halo Reach for example.

rzepak

Consoles do not use any direct X variant. They're GPU's are based off of some DX9 computer GPU's. The consoles simply can not push out DX10 features, let alone DX11. It doesn't matter too much yet though, seeing as how DX10 was a bust and DX11 is basically DX10 with performance improvements and added tesselation support.

[QUOTE="ZoomZoom2490"][QUOTE="Hathesulacon"]

LOL, bro I dont think consoles can do that. But if they can, Halo Reach is going to be a BEAUTIFUL game. All I know is that the engineers at bungie really know what theyre doing.

Hathesulacon

Just because a game has tesselation doesn't mean it will look good. You need to know how well the tesselation is being conducted. This is like saying "game x" looks better because it has textures.

EDIT: ah sorry for the double post

Tesselation is basically a technique by which a game can scale up or down the number of polygons used in game assets. The process has been around for while but not widely used. It's supposed to be a big new feature of DX11. If done right it should reduce the effect of objects LOD pop ins etc and make the transition from a low poly object to a high much more smooth.

Well yes Halo Reach is without a doubt going to be a beautiful game. I dont think bungie or microsoft is going to screw around with their last main Halo title. And Halo 3 still has pretty graphics so why wouldnt reach? In fact a couple spots in halo WARS look pretty great.

Well yes Halo Reach is without a doubt going to be a beautiful game. I dont think bungie or microsoft is going to screw around with their last main Halo title. And Halo 3 still has pretty graphics so why wouldnt reach? In fact a couple spots in halo WARS look pretty great.

Hathesulacon

[QUOTE="Hathesulacon"]

Well yes Halo Reach is without a doubt going to be a beautiful game. I dont think bungie or microsoft is going to screw around with their last main Halo title. And Halo 3 still has pretty graphics so why wouldnt reach? In fact a couple spots in halo WARS look pretty great.

jyoung312

[QUOTE="Hathesulacon"]

Well yes Halo Reach is without a doubt going to be a beautiful game. I dont think bungie or microsoft is going to screw around with their last main Halo title. And Halo 3 still has pretty graphics so why wouldnt reach? In fact a couple spots in halo WARS look pretty great.

jyoung312

Actually, HALO 3 has some quite good graphics let down by the fact it has no AA and is run at a low screen resolution. It actually has some quite high res textures and normal mapping and HDR! Its just a shame about the sub HD resolution.

[QUOTE="jyoung312"][QUOTE="Hathesulacon"]

Well yes Halo Reach is without a doubt going to be a beautiful game. I dont think bungie or microsoft is going to screw around with their last main Halo title. And Halo 3 still has pretty graphics so why wouldnt reach? In fact a couple spots in halo WARS look pretty great.

DAZZER7

Actually, HALO 3 has some quite good graphics let down by the fact it has no AA and is run at a low screen resolution. It actually has some quite high res textures and normal mapping and HDR! Its just a shame about the sub HD resolution.