Not 100% sure what means but it definitely alludes to official UE4 integration of NVidia’s new VXGI. I watched a little while back but on PC Perspective, they had good 'ol Tom Petersen from NVidia over there where he talks about the 980 GTX in depth. He does confirm what others mentioned that VXGI will work on Kepler and even on AMD video cards as well, however that it is optimized for Maxwell. He doesn’t talk about platform support outside of the PC space but he says UE4 is getting official integration before the year is up and a public release of the UE4 Apollo 11 demo. My guess, 4.6 launches with VXGI and Apollo 11 on the Marketplace… At least one could hope
Edit: Skip to 52:10 to hear about UE4 and how compatible VXGI is
You have my attention… I’m gonna watch the video and see but I’m not convinced that VXGI will make it into UE4 anytime soon, I guess you never know though!
Hey ! Yea, I felt the same way when it first was announced and thought it wouldn’t actually be till next year but Tom says it right at 52:10 and he mentions the release of the Apollo 11 demo after that I think.
I read the same thing while pouring over the 980 hardware specs & reviews as well, I don’t know if they mean official support or that it will be possible to integrate the library into UE4 by the end of the year, but hopefully it gets added in officially. I think the silence on Epic’s side might mean it is in development without a clear timeline for it. None of the dev’s are denying it here, but they aren’t exactly promoting it at point either. So for now it looks like it’s Nvidia’s job to promote it and Epic will implement it when they can.
I might be reading too much into , but hey, I’m pretty optimistic will become a reality, just look how many articles are out there from Nvidia & Microsoft (DX12) showcasing their new tech running on UE4. That is a lot of pressure on Epic to deliver, but also a lot of great exposure for UE4 that they will want to keep going. It ain’t easy being #1…
Absolutely, but in the least bit, like you said, even if we have to do it through NVidia, looks like we’ll get our hands on it in some fashion. If its just PC support for the initial release, I’ll be happy with that but I’m guessing they could make an implementation for Xbox One or PS4 and just dial back the resolution of their Voxel grid. But I agree that Epic has been a little quiet about it and it’s very possible they are also waiting to see if NVidia gets it integrated good enough to work well and not conflict with parts of the engine. But I definitely did a double-take when Tom said it and it has me feeling hopeful. I’m literally about to create a branch of my game and move off of static lighting and try LPV at the moment so if isn’t far off and since I just got a 980 SC, I hope I can try soon. But stay positive buddy, I think we’ll have a good GI implementation soon
Also, a lot of great stuff in that video and also about Direct VR and VR SLI… really cool stuff and can’t wait to try out VR Direct once they release driver support.
EDIT: Another thing is you are probably right that the upgrade to DX12 is creating a lot of pressure on the team and I’m sure they are having to re-write a bunch of aspects of the engine to support it. But you’re absolutely right, definitely not easy being #1 lol.
Gotcha , that makes sense. I’ll post stuff like that here in the future. Thanks.
LPV + DFAO works pretty darn good (plus the new soft shadows), in 4.5 preview they have optimized it and it runs much faster. Plus you can now get reflections in dynamic scenes without faking it! add a Movable skylight, and then you can use reflection spheres again!! The lack of reflections in dynamic light was very noticeable before 4.5, but I can assure you it now works as expected, and looks great.
I also heard that Nvidia may be using a version of UE4 on their end to implement VXGI, so that is another possible route, have them submit a pull request. Either way, exciting times ahead!
There won’t be any official integration into engine, but NVIDIa will make their own branch public for everyone with VXGI integrated and they will maintain their own integration over engine version. At best. At worst they will release their integration and “do whatever, if you want in newer version, merge it yourself”.
Depending how invasive is VXGI integration it might be integrated into main branch of engine, solely on reason to give more options. If maintenance of VXGI integration will be easy enough (on the level of LPV, or slightly higher), there there is no reason to not integrate it.
There is misunderstanding and there won’t be any integration. Personally I would think it very unlikely. Lets look at facts. Nobody cares about higher-end GameWorks features (like flameworks, GI Works etc). At elast I have yet to see single annoucment where someone is planning to use any of these features in game. Integration will happen, even if only to promote GameWorks, and in hopes that finally someone will use it.
The fact is that when you design your game around like VXGI for lighting you can’t simply disable it on lower end hardware. If you do so, you will break entire lighting for your game. And I guess that is the reason why so few people are willing to take risk about using it.
I’m currently inclined towards option number 1. But thats pure speculation, I have not seen VXGI, and I can’t speak on how hard it is to maintain across engine updates.
Half-Life 3 confirmed! On serious note. Maybe, something, will happen :D.
Nvidia did their own integration to be able to do their moon landing demo, that’s without any collaboration with Epic. I’m sure it’s something that Nvidia will support, just like many other third-party companies that offer UE4 support. The most likely scenario is that if you want it in your game you’ll have to contact Nvidia about getting it. If it’s proven to work well across both Nvidia and AMD hardware then I wouldn’t be surprised if Epic looks to integrate it, but when they’ve been asked about it it seems like they’ve hardly even thought about it. I guess for the most part it requires someone to spend the time testing.
That’s what I’m guessing. Good to hear on 4.5. I haven’t tried the preview but glad it’s more optimized. Actually, now that I’m reading it, can you elaborate about the dynamic reflections? That sounds and once I get a test scene up and running, adding the moveable skylight and reflection spheres and try that out Thanks!
Is there a thread that talks about best practices with reflection spheres and pointing out what not to do especially for performance? But between that and the new Distance Field Soft Shadows, 4.5 is going to be a huge update.
That’s a pretty solid point and didn’t consider that one. I wonder what will end up being the best approaches for handling one. Very possible it will be kind of like when Crysis 1 dropped that if you had any inkling to play that, you could only get a good enough experience with the newest high end cards. People may have to make it a conscious decision and at that point, may not make sense if there isn’t full multiplatform support in place.
Hahaha… and yes, I hope so
Haha, that was my question BTW, I just watched that again and look at the look of Mike Fricker’s face as it’s being asked.
I think there is market for PC Exclusive high-end titles. After all Crysis 1 was best of the series, sold best, and then after watering down… well we all know what had happen.
was game which succeeded solely on it’s high end graphics.
And there are people willing to pay for experience. Even if the only reason, is show those filthy console peasants, how their PC games are superior to theirs ;p.
Anyway. I think before the end of year we will have unlimited access to NVIDIa integration in their own branch. There is absolutely no reason for NVIDIa to withhold it (since it seems nobody wants to use anyway, and they have to push it somehow to public).
At worst case they will just tell when it will happen.
Guys I wouldn’t be so excited about VXGI just yet if I were you… from what I have heard the Apollo 11 demo was not exactly running at a high and stable frame rate… and let’s not forget that it was just a static scene with nearly no objects at all.
So… until I can see it working in gameplay at a reasonable frame rate, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
It could still be for other things though, like archViz.
I’ll be interested when I see it running on an AMD card at a decent rate, it’s great the 980’s and Nvidia cards are geared towards it but there is no point cutting your target market down when performance trade off in base UE4 is bad enough as it is.
It’s no good releasing games that only a small amount of people can play.
but I’m guessing they could make an implementation for Xbox One or PS4 and just dial back the resolution of their Voxel grid. But I agree that Epic has been a little quiet about it and it’s very possible they are also waiting to see if NVidia gets it integrated good enough to work well and not conflict with parts of the engine. But I definitely did a double-take when Tom said it and it has me feeling hopeful. I’m literally about to create a branch of my game and move off of static lighting and try LPV at the moment so if isn’t far off and since I just got a 980 SC, I hope I can try soon. But stay positive buddy, I think we’ll have a good GI implementation soon