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S2HD Render Engine Test

Discussion in 'Sonic 2 HD (Archive)' started by LOst, Apr 5, 2009.

Which render would you like the S2HD engine to be primary developed with?

  1. R1

    0 vote(s)
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  2. R2

    0 vote(s)
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  3. R3

    0 vote(s)
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  4. R4

    0 vote(s)
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  5. R5

    0 vote(s)
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  1. Lizam

    Lizam

    Lizam Member
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    Mario & Sonic: Worlds Clash
    SystemInformation:

    Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
    Intel Duo Core E4600 @ 2.40GHz
    RAM 2GB
    VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT



    On 16 Player bridge demo (Window Mode):

    R1: 59/60fps RAM 464,096
    R2: 58/60fps RAM 122,260
    R3: 58/60fps RAM 121,936
    R4: 58/60fps RAM 122,396
    R5: 59/60fps RAM 119,792 - 127,992 (kept jumping around)


    Screen shots:
    R1
    R2
    R3
    R4
    R5


    There graphical differences between each one were looked so minor (or I just can't notice it) to me that they all looked fine. But if I had to choose one, I would go with R5.


    Edit: Uploaded higher res images.
     
  2. Opengl can do everything that direct3d can do. and it is cross platform.
    Just look at counterstrike source running under wine in directx9 mode. it's exactly the same as it would be in windows. and all wine does is convert the calls from direct3d into opengl
     
  3. LOst

    LOst

    Tech Member
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    Best test so far! First it is nVidia! And it is on Windows Vista! But best of all, they all rendered the same pixel perfect result! Awesome really Some of those renders are really working differently, and getting to test these on different hardware and get the same result is a big breakthrough for S2HD!


    Common knowledge really. But when it comes to vertex and texture coordinates, Microsoft (Direct3D) has really done a perfect job defining them to render exactly the same on completely different hardware. That's why Direct3D is the main choice for me, but also because Direct3D can skip 3D all together but still use the 3D accelerated hardware to draw 2D.
    OpenGL is more about the simple API than the result on screen. If you care about drawing a 3D box, that can be done in OpenGL much easier than in Direct3D. But if you care how the 3D box will look like, in pixels, on screen, then there is no help whatsoever.

    Sonic 2 HD is all about the result on screen, unless the second poll's second answer wins (I really don't hope so, for the artists' sake).
    What the artists drew is what should be displayed on screen, that's what I think. This will not rule out OpenGL support though <- Very important to remember. Sonic 2 HD will be cross platform in the end.
     
  4. belink

    belink

    Member
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    Hi LOst.

    Thanks for giving us the opportunity to choose the renderer instead of choosing for us. Here are my results:

    Intel C2D E6400 @ 2.13ghz
    Nvidia 8800GT OC
    2GB RAM
    Windows XP SP2

    All results on Open Stage. Click the render name for screenshot.

    R1: 495,620 K
    R2: 114,524 K
    R3: 114,388 K
    R4: 114,172 K
    R5: 118,554 K (for some reason R5 wouldn't run in fullscreen mode for whatever reason; it forced itself into Windowed Mode and Alt+Enter did nothing)

    All of them had stable FPS: none dropped below 56 except when a Steam Community logo popped up, which resulted in drops to ~30fps.
     
  5. Shanesan

    Shanesan

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    Alright. Downloaded the new code. Ran R5, using Crossover Games, first in Windowed Mode.
    The stuff in brackets is the title of the window giving errors.

    Error: [Error] No Compatible Pixel Format Discriptor! ( OK )
    Error: [Error] Couldn't Initialize Direct3D. ( OK )

    Ran R5, using Crossover Games, in "Full-Screen" mode now. It doesn't seem to go into full screen...
    Error: [Error] No Compatible Pixel Format Discriptor! ( OK )
    Error: [Main Error] Couldn't Initialize Direct3D. ( OK )

    Let me know if there's anything I can do.


    EDIT: As instructed privately :)
     
  6. Gambit

    Gambit

    Sonic 2 HD Staff - Level Artist Member
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    Sonic 2 HD
    Well I get about 20-30 FPS for all five of them. :\ My computer is kinda crap, though. I need to save up for a new one.

    1.90 GHz dual core processor, some shitty integrated video card and 2 gigs of RAM, that ends up being like 1661 MB because of the graphics card feeding off it. Oh, and I'm on Vista.

    Also, did someone take one of my ring frames and color it silver in Photoshop and throw it in for that moving platform? Those rings look familiar....
     
  7. Conan Kudo

    Conan Kudo

    「真実はいつも一つ!」工藤新一 Member
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    Doesn't the result on the screen have to do with how well Direct3D's shader support vs OpenGL's is? If that is the case, then why not use a shader compiler/optimizer with OpenGL? The main ones I can think off the top of my head are OpenCL/Gallium3D/LLVM, Cg, and GLSL.

    If I recall correctly, OpenCL is supported by both AMD and nVIDIA, Gallium3D + LLVM does work on Windows and Linux and is supposed to get an OpenCL front end compiler too, while Mac OS X's Core frameworks support OpenCL already. Cg is proprietary by nVIDIA, and does work on AMD cards, but as it is proprietary, it is a problem to deal with on Linux systems currently. Granted there is an open source Cg compiler, but without supporting libraries, what is it going to do? GLSL is obviously supported on Windows and Mac OS X. GLSL is planned for support when the Gallium3D framework is completed enough that it can replace the current Mesa driver model. Additionally, because of the invasiveness of the nVIDIA proprietary Linux driver, I believe it does support GLSL.

    I don't know if they are true, but I have heard people shudder at working with GLSL. I don't really know why, but then again, I don't write programs.

    It would be nice if S2HD could use OpenCL, but I doubt it would happen. Cg would probably be the preferred choice since it works with both D3D and OGL.
     
  8. Lizam

    Lizam

    Lizam Member
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    Mario & Sonic: Worlds Clash
    I'm glad I could help ^^
     
  9. LOst

    LOst

    Tech Member
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    Your help so far is at this moment the best help for us! There are still a few graphics cards out there that we don't know how the different renders will produce on. But nVidia (Geforce) and ATI (Radeon) are the two mainstream 3D cards out there, and those have been tested. Intel, Matrox, SIS, S3, VIA. Hopefully people with those cards can give us screenshots as well.
    Even if people get low fps with some unknown (well, some brand I haven't said, because we need to know the name of the card) graphics cards, it is key to show a screenshot of the DISCLAINER screen (full with the window and everything).

    If anyone wonders what I'm doing with the DISCLAIMER screen:
    The original texture uses 2 colors only, black and yellow. No antialiasing. So a print screen loaded in MS Paint is all that is needed for me, and I use the fill bucket tool to change the color of those two colors, to see if the render has added some bad stuff to the original image. Having the window in the screenshot is important because even if the texture is pixel perfect, the render might have added 1 pixel offset in either direction, and that is bad. I say "might" because I have never seen it, yet.

    That stuff is cool and all, but it is very rare that people will notice such render defects with the naked eye in the end. The more I check, the better the result will be, even if it might fail on some hardware, sometime in the future.
    Quality for Sonic 2 HD is everything to me. I am not that worry over perfomance. Even with a boost up to full HD 1080p, it should take more RAM, possibly less RAM! And I have also seen that many people here get better results on non-window-scaled rendering, so that option will be available as well.
    And for people like Hivebrain, ther will be options for rendering the game half size (720p). Window scaling has noting to do with rendering, and is a CPU thing. it is nice for people like me who has a super graphics card.
    Anyway I hope this info will help some of you to undertstand how we deal with these renders.
     
  10. That is very good to hear


    On another note I'm using ubuntu jaunty, wine 1.1.18, nvidia gs8400 and R1 is the only one where I don't have any problems. in R2, R3, R4 the swing does not render, you can still jump on it but can't see it. R5 does not even work (SetProcessDPIAware error)
     
  11. I'm also getting that error and I use the same graphics chipset as you. I assume the problem is related to the fact that our built in GPUs are unnoticeable?
     
  12. GerbilSoft

    GerbilSoft

    RickRotate'd. Administrator
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    Will the Linux version be open-source? That would make it easier for various distro maintainers to package it for their respective distributions.
     
  13. TmEE

    TmEE

    Master of OPL3-SA2/3 Tech Member
    1,726
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    Estonia, Rapla City
    T-04YBSC-A !
    Test machine is a Socket370 Tualatin Celeron @ 1400MHz, with 640MBytes of PC133 and ATI Radeon 9200se with 128MB of DDR running windows 98SE 4.10.2222A with KernelEx 0.3.61 installed.
    Using a machine thats lower than recommended is best way to determine something as any improvement will show up immediately.

    R1:
    http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/1876835/R1.png
    Runs quite okay, makes nice use of CPU, starts up immediately, uses RAM nicely.

    R2:
    http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/1876835/R2.png
    Frame rate is poorer, CPU is nicely used, starts up immediately. RAM use is nice.

    R3:
    http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/1876835/R3.png
    Frame rate is still poor, RAM is used less, still starts up fast, CPU use is nice.

    R4:
    http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/1876835/R4.png
    very very long loading times, but very good performance, uses CPU rather lightly, loks good enough but not as good as previous 3. RAM is nicely put into use.

    R5:
    http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/1876835/R5.png
    very very very long loading times, but slightly better performance than R4, uses CPU rather more lightly, looks good enough, though not as good as R1, R2 and R3. RAM is nicely put into use.


    R4 or R5 would be my pick if it weren't for the loading times, R1 stands out from the rest for the high performance to loading time ratio.... R1 that looks "bad" like R4 or R5 would be ideal IMO.
     
  14. Conan Kudo

    Conan Kudo

    「真実はいつも一つ!」工藤新一 Member
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    I actually hadn't thought of asking that. Thanks GerbilSoft :)

    If it is, I will be willing to package RPMs and generic Linux installers for it. :(
     
  15. Conan Kudo

    Conan Kudo

    「真実はいつも一つ!」工藤新一 Member
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    This Demo freezes up Xorg in all of the renders...

    Computer: Skuld (Laptop - Sony VAIO)

    Intel X3000 IGP 192MB RAM shared

    System RAM: 2GB

    Fedora 10

    Wine version: 1.1.18
     
  16. Hi all.
    I did the CPU and Ram test, here is my verdict:

    R1
    Ram usage ~200mb above resting
    CPU - 79%
    Looks - very good but occasional frame drop, disclaimer refused to budge until I moved the window (only happened the 1st time)

    R2
    Ram - same
    CPU - spikes when complex interactions with swinging platform are made, as high as 98% usage
    Looks - same except the disclaimer screen problem seems fixed now

    R3
    Ram - higher amount used
    CPU - stays higher for longer
    Looks - more frames dropped than 1 & 2

    R4
    Ram - same
    CPU - high when interacting with swinging platform (97%)
    Looks - regular frame skipping

    R5
    Ram - not much more ram usage than R4
    CPU - 100% usage
    Looks - still drops frames regularly, resolution did not fit in my window

    I voted R1 for best performance, lowest ram and CPU usage.

    My setup:

    AMD 1.6GHz Turion Mobile, Windows XP Pro x64 Edition, ATI x700 64MB VRam, 1GB System Ram

    I used the "open 4x size" level for all tests.
     
  17. RingoKoi

    RingoKoi

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    getting to know palette and music hacking
    R5, It was the fastest that ran for me, I didn't notice any graphical differences

    CPU:2.93 GHZ

    Ram: 512 MB

    Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS

    OS: Windows XP

    Direct X: 9
     
  18. Hodgy

    Hodgy

    Member
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    Games programming :)
    PC Specs:
    Q6600 @ 3.0Ghz
    4GB DDR2 PC6400
    ATI HD4850
    vista home premium
    screen: 1360x768

    Due to my screen resolution I cant comment on the graphics (they all look the same at this resolution)

    R1: FPS 60/60 CPU 24% RAM 528,688 K
    R2: FPS 60/60 CPU 25% RAM 171,924 K
    R3: FPS 60/60 CPU 24% RAM 172,322 K (crashed graphics driver)
    R4: FPS 60/60 CPU 25% RAM 173,012 K (crashed graphics driver)
    R5: FPS 60/60 CPU 25% RAM 172,496 K

    R3 and R4 both crashed the ATI graphics driver but vist recovered from it and continues to play the game.

    I would recommend R2 Because it didnt have any issues it also still supported scaling and used the least amount of RAM. I wont vote in the pole as I cant see the graphics so I cant make a valid point.

    I REALLY don't want R5 to be used, because it limits it's userbase, peopel that don't have a high resolution monitor wont be able to play it properly :/ It might look the best but it isnt the most suitable.
     
  19. Lurker

    Lurker

    sleep Member
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    Same computer running Win XP / Vista/ Win 7 beta 7000

    Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz (2 CPU)
    4GB RAM (3.4GB on XP and Win 7 because of 32bit)
    Ati Radeon HD 3800 512 MB
    and Realtek HD Audio(everything sounded fine)
    50% means that CPU 1 ran at 100%

    R1 XP
    R2 XP
    R3 XP
    R4 XP
    R5 XP

    r1 Winxp 441,8 mb around 20% CPU
    r2 Winxp 108,5 mb around 20% CPU
    r3 Winxp 108,5 mb around 20% CPU
    r4 Winxp 103,4 mb around 20% CPU
    r5 Winxp 175,8 mb 50% CPU (started lagging every time it ran in the background and that's annoying because S2HD wants to run in front of Task Manager even when I have it as "Always On Top")

    R1 Vista
    R2 Vista
    R3 Vista
    R4 Vista
    R5 Vista

    r1 Vista 528,5 mb around 50% CPU
    r2 Vista 175,5 mb around 50% CPU
    r3 Vista 175,5 mb around 50% CPU
    r4 Vista 175,9 mb around 40% CPU
    r5 Vista 187,2 mb around 50% CPU

    R1 Win 7
    R2 Win 7
    R3 Win 7
    R4 Win 7
    R5 Win 7

    Win 7 looks slightly different, dunno why
    r1 Win 7 463,4 mb around 50% CPU
    r2 Win 7 178,9 mb around 50% CPU
    r3 Win 7 178,8 mb around 50% CPU
    r4 Win 7 179,3 mb around 50% CPU
    r5 Win 7 173,7 mb around 50% CPU

    Hope this will be of any help.

    EDIT: Everything ran at 60fps
     
  20. Sintendo

    Sintendo

    Member
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    Specs:
    Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHz (Northwood)
    1GB RAM DDR
    nVidia GeForce 7800 GS 256MB (AGP8x)
    Microsoft Windows XP SP3

    All tests were run in Window Mode (1280x1024) and checked during the bridge 16 character demo
    R1 - MEM: 446.612K
    FPS: 56-60
    CPU: Usually 18-26%, occasionally rises to 30-45%
    R2 - MEM: 445.488K
    FPS: Usually 48-52, occasional ups (54-59, never reached 60) and downs (40-46)
    CPU: Usually 61-73%, occasional ups (74-81%) and downs (45-59%)
    R3 - MEM: 445.348K
    FPS: Changes constantly (47-56)
    CPU: Usually 61-73%, occasional ups (75-80%) and downs (48-54%)
    R4 - MEM: 445.396K
    FPS: Usually 48-54, occasional ups (56-60) and downs (36-46)
    CPU: Usually 48-56%, occasional highs of 58-66% (doesn't seem to fluctuate nearly as much as the others?)
    R5 - MEM: 110.724K
    FPS: 60, dropped once to 59
    CPU: Usually 93-100%, dropped once to 83%

    Based on these results, I'd go with R5. It uses a lot of CPU (I guess it does the scaling on the CPU in R5?), but very stable and smooth speeds and low memory utilization make up for that.
     
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