The game tests
Game Test 1
Game Test 1 returns to the Proxycon scene first shown in 3DMark03. You see space pirates trying, and succeeding, to enter some kind of facility, using heavy weapons. All the geometry in the scene self shadow, using PSMs as outlined on the previous page. There's high dynamic range lighting everywhere, high resolution textures, high geometry counts, normal mapped bump mapping on a bunch of objects, Blinn-Phong approximation on a bunch of materials (the lighting equation) and directional and point lights (2 dir, 6 point, animated point lights at the end of the test).The bullet fire from the main character's massive gun sets off the particle renderer, as shell casings, bullets and other fragments are sprayed everywhere, the particle system taking care of their movement and scene duration. It looks awesome, as you'll see when you download and run it yourself.
Click for a 1600x1200 uncompressed version (2MB+) rendered using NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra and the PS3.0/VS3.0 path, with 4AA and 16AF
Game Test 2
Game Test 2 is somewhat similar to Game Test 4 in 3DMark03, in that it features a flying creature that the camera follows through its world. Instead of a butterfly, this time it's a firefly, that flies through vegetation, trees and tree trunks, in a night scene where the moon generates the ambient light (also a directional light, casting shadows) and the firefly the point, shadow-casting light. It's rendered using high dynamic range lighting, the trees are massively geometry-heavy and the up-close detail is rendered using normal-mapped bump-mapping. There's also real-time light scattering by (particle I assume) fog. Again, it's very very pretty.As discussed before, the firefly casts shadows using a small dimension cube map, with the light direction masked, and the moon casts shadows using the 2Kx2K large dimension depth map.
Click for a 1600x1200 uncompressed version (2MB+) rendered using NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra and the PS3.0/VS3.0 path, with 4AA and 16AF
Game Test 3
The final game test is of a powered airship, sailing over a flooded canyon gorge, before being attacked by a large creature that swims in the water below. The sun casts the only shadows, and it's the only light source. It's directional, so they use a 2Kx2K depth map for the PSM. The main canyon wall uses two colour maps, two depth maps and diffuse shading for the surface effect. The water shader is very complex, using six render passes to get light refraction, reflection, surface ripples and surface deformation using a Fresnel noise function.There's also depth fog underneath the water surface, to make deep objects appear further away, using a high resolution floating point buffer format. The depth map from the sun is used twice. Once mapped onto the far surfaces, once mapped onto close objects, for more shadow detail. It's the most pixel shader limited test of the three.
Again, it's very pretty in places, although the shader or textures used to render the skin of the beast, left my girlfriend to comment, "that looks like a big wooden log, with arms". I agree that it's the worst looking part of the entire test, looking best under the highly impressive water shader, rather than when it's out of the water, attempting to eat the airship. You'll soon see what I mean, put more coal in your modem.
Click for a 1600x1200 uncompressed version (2MB+) rendered using NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra and the PS3.0/VS3.0 path, with 4AA and 16AF
