How smooth will this game be?

[Dark_AnNiaLatOr]

Speaking of smoothness, I was thinking about the graphics. They released GTA IV in 2008 when they were inexperienced with the hardware, and they produced a game that had a huge world, was smooth, and had superb graphics, including its physics engine.

 

Fast forward 5 years. GTA V is gonna be a 5 year leap of experience and efficiency in programming the best possible experience ever. Can't goddamn wait!

[Gtaghost22]

I will be happy if V ran as smooth as Red Dead Redemption. I didn't really experience any (major) FPS drops playing it on my PS3.

[TheGodDamnMaster]

will textures load smoothly, render smoothly etc etc.

Have you seen the textures? I don't think it will be a problem.

 

 

 

[Hazelnot]

A smooth 25 or 30 FPS. If they still purposefully target being filmic (as is the case so far in the series), that'll be the case. In all truth, the filmic stuff is on one side of it an awesome part of GTA, but on the other, it is also a way to deal with limitations as doing 30FPS gives them 2x as much time to draw each frame than 60fps target games have. This allows them to make a game that "can't run 60fps, but is incredibly advanced, feature complete, and large", instead of a game that runs 60fps. Because it conveniently targets film-like FPS, Rockstar has double the processing power that call of duty has (since it famously targets a strict minimum of 60fps), resulting in the big worlds and huge amount of things happening at once/being tracked at once/going on a once and stuff

 

So I think it will be 30 or 25fps again, it will be intentional, and it will be the best looking GTA yet, the only thing left for me is going to be judging the actual way it plays, and other than that, i am just looking forward to it and the info coming up and until its release =)

 

This is also something you can smack fanboys of other games with every time a game on the same hardware is touted as running better or being 60fps "unlike gta crappy 30fps" you can say "Uh, it's intentional, and on the same hardware still slows down compared to that game - that doesn't mean the game you fanboy over is any better developed, it just means it's doing less than half of what gta does"

 

And that's basically a fact as well that you can use: There is no game out yet that does even half of what GTA IV does on both a full-package/full spectrum of the package level view and in terms of how much is being done in each frame that gets drawn - GTA V is going to be hard to match by anyone, since really, no one has come even close to matching gta iv. Saints Row may have a big city, but it's all crappy normal-map damage and canned animation and nothing is really simulated that matters, not even a real time daycycle... Whereas GTA is focused very strongly on everything that is possible being realtime. While BF3 or even BF4 may do some slick and expensive post effects on top of a small (compared to gta) set of art pieces on cheap terrain system, GTA IV and now GTA V are games that don't rely on terrain systems, have euphoria, real time day/night, cinematic-quality rigging and car physics, cinematic quality real-time pedestrians, it's amazing, this series is uncontested the most advanced and truthfully pushing the hardware to its limits, this is the big daddy of gaming, nothing else is close. Even MMO games rely on terrain, small set of generic models, and very canned and optimized events and animations, even if characters do tend to be even more customizable than CJ (in some cases, CJ is way more customizable than many MMO games as well)

 

GTA needing to go 30 fps in other words, means it's doing well over 2x what other games do, and not only have rockstar made a game that goes above and beyond what most people put into each given frame of their games, they also embraced it and made an entire style of their own which takes after film in many other ways. Brilliant. You can poop on people who bash GTA, because they don't realize all they are doing is saying how "rinky dinky" the other stuff is in comparison

 

So the big boy moves slower - he's still the big boy!

 

Thought it was a great opportunity in this topic subject matter to arm the rest of my fellow rabid rockstar fans against all the uncalled for hatred this game is going to get by people who think 60 fps means anything more than "less than half of what 30 fps games are doing" once it comes out as they will be trying to rain on us enjoying it, like BF3 people can't accept that CoD players got it better from their devs as well.

What. The. f*ck?

 

They're not targeting 30 FPS, that's the best the 10-year-old processors on the consoles can do on the game.

The limiter is there just in case they can, in some areas, run smoother, as to not ruin the experience.

The problem arises when they can't get to 30 FPS and they start lagging.

[j.hunt]

cheesy vagina.

[LegitSpades]

cheesy vagina.

This guy has something figured out that the rest of us obviously don't.

[Tiglet]

Rockstar wouldn't release a game with a poor framerate, specialy GTA, I believe it will be 30FPS on Consoles.

lol, have you even played GTA4? Cause a couple of explosions and the framerate went < 20... it was f*cking terrible.

 

 

 

will still buy.

[Mainland Marauder]

I haven't bought many new games lately so I've been playing GTA IV DLCs for the first time (believe it or not) and replaying Fallout 3, all of which were released around the same time and period for this current gen, and considering the performance of both at times (especially Fallout) - this has been a bigger concern to me than will it have planes or gangs or steak or what will the protagonists like or anything else that gets talked about here regularly. The hardware was getting long in the tooth three or four years ago, and we know this is going to be bigger than anything we've seen to date.

 

Then again, I'd have never thought before SA came out that a game of its scope was possible on a PS2, and it performed as well as could be expected.

[milkmansun]

It will run smooth..

RDR have some good quality graphics. (only if they had released in PC.. it would have been made better). It ran very good.

 

When Trevor walks as the building bursts. You can see how similar this looks to RDR. and better. So do not worry.

 

 

 

[Mainland Marauder]

I haven't played RDR in awhile, but it really did go smoothly for the most part, at least as far as framerate goes. With V we'll have a lot more building models, NPC models and other objects and other things spawning in an urban environment as opposed to a desert with just a couple towns that can show in entirety within the draw distance. That said, in RDR it seemed you could see to the end of the map if it wasn't obscured by hills. More than once I've just stopped on that hill going toward Armadillo from the ranch and seeing the town, the lake and almost everything.

 

In SA for PS2, you pretty much had to be in or immediately around downtown Los Santos to see the skyscrapers loading in, though I wonder if that has to do with that smog effect that you wouldn't get in San Fierro, where you could see the skyline drawing in from as far away as Toreno's house. You should at least see the outline of the buildings in the smog from further out, in South Central etc.

[brian.]

 

They're not targeting 30 FPS, that's the best the 10-year-old processors on the consoles can do on the game.

The limiter is there just in case they can, in some areas, run smoother, as to not ruin the experience.

The problem arises when they can't get to 30 FPS and they start lagging.

 

 

No, my friend, I am not pulling your chain, not joking, it is very true. Give it some time, we are on GTAForums, I am definitely not the only person who read one of the housers explain it in an interview before, and if no one else confirms it, I am looking for it to share and show you the reasoning behind it.

 

For the record, physics run in 60FPS in GTA IV, it is just the visuals which are targeted at 30 fps. Red Dead Redemption was also targeted at 30 FPS. Here is a link to proof of that while I look for the GTA specific interview (the one I am trying to find explains exactly what I claim, this one just mentions the target of 30 fps, and it's not the only place this was mentioned either, this is just a page where the guy says "it holds true to the target 30 fps"): www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-red-dead-redemption-face-off

 

The 30 fps not only is one of many ingredients working together to look film-like, it also effectively lets them double the amount of time per frame to draw the game than they would have had they targeted something like 60fps. Giving them double the actual bottom line processing they would have. CoD needs 60fps. 90 is even better for CoD. GTA IV is really nice at nice high 30hz-vsync-disabled rates higher than 40fps, but it looks like a masterpiece of targeting a film-like result when it's running at thirty.

 

Dunno if you know, but a target is something you shoot for before you even begin working on the actual game. You target a specific frame rate, because it helps you to plan exactly how much you can and want to achieve. You do target renders, offline (non-realtime) renders that are based on what you want to see actually in-game - that is, not cg eye candy, but renders designed to show exacyly how you want it to look. You render out both images and videos. The videos match the target frame rates in this stage. This is normal game development, this is standard practice, rockstar is not the only people to target 30 fps either. Many games target 30 fps on purpose. GTA does way more with it though and gives it a reason to be. I'm serious, this is all true, it's intentional. It's the meaning of "target" in game development.

 

GTA III, VC, and SA all purposefully targeted 25 fps, not 30. Because films are really 24fps most usually, not 30 nor 29.97.

 

The old games targeted 25 as I said, and they also had strange issues possible to occur when you turned off their frame limiters.

 

The trails effect from III and VC was done to mimic the natural blur of film taken at that rate, because without it, you saw a more choppy type playback, of just straight polygons, though it looked trippy and cool too. This is still true, even on machines that can run the games 90fps without frame limiter.

 

SA had only a radial motion blur that got stronger with speed, and blur on camera rotation.

 

GTA IV had a more improved motion blur and a filter over it to look more like analog tv and 640x480 real footage. Go to youtube and watch some videos of NYC streets driving at 480p (WITHOUT full screen, or sit back like you would a tv if you use fullscreen!). And be mind blown by how brilliantly and expertly Rockstar captured that kind of digital video, let alone analog standard TV signal. It's no secret either that CGI is rendered big and scaled down to look better among film which is also scaled down, filmed at high resolutions and scaled down years and years before we watched it, to make it smoother and not 1:1 source-to-display on the screens, which would make tube style TV alias like low res games do if they didn't.

 

The target of 30 FPS is intentional in Rockstar movie-esque game development style, it is a happy side effect that it also gives them more processing time than games targeting higher rates (like more time for that nice 60fps bullet physics likes to have in order to run optimally), because it allows them to pack a lot more in then they otherwise would, but it's a design choice with frees them to do more, not a limitation which stops them from doing more. 60fps would stop them from doing LC-IV or LS-V to the level they have and are, but 30fps isn't limiting the games, it's helping them to recreate a truly film-like interactive experience. Again, this really is a fact. I will go keep googling for the interview where Rockstar says it, but hopefully my added knowledge these 2 posts on the subject will suffice for the time being till i can locate it.

 

This is all super true dude, pretty interesting how deep the design process goes in all these different aspects, huh?

 

 

Edited April 29, 2013 by brian.

[Tiglet]

Stopped reading at 'For the record, physics run in 60FPS in GTA IV, ...'

 

What kind of bs is that.

[brian.]

 

Stopped reading at 'For the record, physics run in 60FPS in GTA IV, ...'

 

What kind of bs is that.

GTA IV uses bullet physics. It runs most optimally and accurately at 60fps. In fact, multiplayer cuts it to 30fps afaik (not sure, but iirc it does) and I believe this is why when you run GTA IV at higher than 30hz to really high fps for GTA like 45 and so on, multiplayer tends to have more rubber banding on players (but that part is only my guess, based on that information of lowering demands on IV on their multiplayer to make it work, but when I -limit or whatever it is to 30, less rubber banding, you can reproduce these results). Go email or post around on bullet physics and ask them if you don't believe me, they were involved heavily in incorporated their physics engine to RAGE, and they have confirmed that it ticks at 60fps, and so have rockstar.

 

You "stopped reading" and it's also confirmed already for many games, even need for speed ticks at 60fps but targets 30fps visual playback.

 

To push everything I've written on the subject a little further, for the exact same reasons as wanting to mimic and reproduce cinema-quality in real-time video games, John Carmack of Id is on record saying he guarantees the next consoles all games will target 30fps, in order to do more, and look more film-like, since there are things 60FPS film does NOT do that 30fps does (for example, see all the fuss about how many people hated the hobbit because it was even just 48fps and felt "wrong" and complain they should have done it in normal 24).

 

I swear guys, I am not making this stuff up, many facts on all 3 of my posts, along with supporting information from My Own knowledge and study of real time techniques.

 

Did you know that some developers target "what the lens sees" while others target "what the eye sees"? Now remember how many idiots you have to have seen over the years say "lol doesn't even have a lens flare ROFL, bad gfx!", or the opposite "wtf, my eye doesn't see lens flares, all so fake" - I have seen it many times through the years. Now, as an example, those guys are all i just don't know the fact that it is all a part of design and 2 different schools of theory on how a scene should be rendered - like a lens, or like an eye.

 

There is a lot that the average gamer can't even fathom goes on behind the scenes, I'm just trying to shed some light

 

I have done an extraordinary or above average amount of study on all of this, and am involved in multiple game development projects both open source and under tight wraps (but nothing big yet).

 

I wouldn't pull your leg. Gimme some time, I'll look for the GTA article, you've seen the red dead one at least reflect on how that game matched its promised 30 fps target. And remember what we now know about targets in game dev and how early on they are decided. Programmers even mathematically calculate roughly what they are capable of long before a line of code is written. It's almost never perfectly accurate, but the games we play are built around much of this kind of preperation, ideologies on render styles, stylizations vs realisms is another polarity, as important as the lens vs eye polarity.

 

One more awesome supporting bit: Think of the thing commonly called "the paint filter" in GTA IV. The one you can turn off in PC version with the P key. That is called "Definition". Turning ON defition removes the P filter/paint effect. The filter is literally intended to take off the definition, both softening the jaggies, and making it look like a real tv show/movie. Some ramdom lurker conspiracy tard will enter this topic now and will say that "no, it's P for paint!" and before they do, lemme just say, then why is it not called paint in the options? It's there to make the game look like standard definition tv as real as possible along with all the other rendering tricks along side it, like 30 fps and motion blur which isn't good to do in 60fps, your eye does it itself that way, just like when something flies by your face super fast, in real film, the capture frame rate dictates the level of motion blur, which looks "a certain way" in cinema (and GTA mimics it very well), in making games that mimic film, you gotta add it yourself

 

I also wanna add that I think (not sure about this one, but I think) they target 30 with GTA now instead of 25 because they target a more TV look than cinema (as evidenced by what i have discovered about their current techniques), and one silly thing about that is that calling the DLC "episodes" from liberty city and considering these games are so long and often said "more like a tv season than a movie compared to other games", it kinda makes sense if they indeed did make the change. Of course, the new standards in cinema are digital and 29.97 or 30 fps, instead of analog film and 24 fps (though dont expect classic film to die too soon)

 

In a couple days we get to see the new trailers with more polish, I will be able to look at those and make base observations what they have changed or improved about their rendering theory between IV and now, and later when I own the game, I'll be able to deduce more closely. So far it looks a lot more cinema than tv with V, which I like as my preference when it comes to that (after you pick lens or eye, if you pick lens, you gotta pick TV or Cinema, Analog or Digital, etc - there are lots of levels down through what you're trying to mimic in real time cgi, it's not just "make it look real". Real has many looks, listed in my posts are a bunch of them. Just the same as deciding between stylizing your game or making it realistic. Film isn't like life outside in our eyes, TV isn't either, and TV isn't like film, cinema isn't like television, and cartoons aren't like live action, etc)

 

phew, I tired

Edited April 29, 2013 by brian.

[d3ex2]

I actually think it'll run pretty well. IV was a mess but after all it was their first open world game this generation. Red Dead Redemption was pretty smooth (at least I thought it was). Redemption was 3 years ago so I'm sure the engine is much improved and will handle V pretty good.

[reform]

I actually think it'll run pretty well. IV was a mess but after all it was their first open world game this generation. Red Dead Redemption was pretty smooth (at least I thought it was). Redemption was 3 years ago so I'm sure the engine is much improved and will handle V pretty good.

Red dead was mostly open spaces, with less densely packed pedestrians and "vehicles", and not quite as many explosions. Although I guess that the incereased draw distance in V, (although not increased spawn distance) suggests they have a little more confidence in the engine this time. I'll hope for the best but I won't be expecting miracles.

[ALeSsAnDrO]

It's said that V will render a huge draw distance, and not just the 1.5km like in GTA IV.

 

To cram in the extra detail, I suppose R* tweaked the engine and changed things like more LOD models for buildings, more occlusion (for not rendering what isn't seen) etc.

Hopefully they got rid of that horrible translucent dissolving effect that happened whenever LOD's changed. I rather have things just pop in than that half-assed visual effect.

[mitchnorton]

PC = Smooth as butter | PS3/X360 = Tolerable

[gta5freemode4eva]

I had a text message from Dan Houser and he said it would be running at 1 fps

 

It'll be fine, GTA 4 ran well enough for me and I'm sure that 5 will be the same or better.

 

It'll be smooth like a bar of silky smooth Galaxy chocolate. Mmmmmmm choooocolate

[kingbob182]

Can this game, being huge that it is, play smooth? will textures load smoothly, render smoothly etc etc. on this generation of consoles, and the huge game V will be, will it be smooth to play?

 

 

Discuss

Hard to say. Using the same techniques that were used when GTA IV came out? nope. Even that struggled in many situations.

 

But Rockstar have been pushing the limits on ps3 for a while now and they know how to better use it's resources. I don't find it hard to imagine it running smoothly. What's the PS3 output after all? 570p?

 

I think the game will look a lot like a brightened up GTA IV until the PS4 is released and we see this game at 1080p

 

[OmegaEvolution]

Im still expecting slow texture loading, especially with the high speed aircraft. And slowdown during extremely heavy action in multiplayer. Other than that i think it will run well.

[gta5freemode4eva]

^^^ Yea I mean I'm not expecting this game to be perfect but with this new huge map, new vehicles, new weapons, upgraded AI and all the other bits that are going into GTA 5, I think I'll still be happy even if there is a little lag every now and again! We're getting an awesome game here guys, no need to worry!

[nigelhere9901]

 

if not ill just wait for the PC port. real HD and 60+ Fps

or next gen consoles

>Implying the game will release on Next Gen Consoles.

 

 

Anyway, to give you an idea.

 

Test One: Game Intro

360: 31.627fps

PS3: 26.504fps

 

Test Two: Clean Getaway

360: 28.624fps

PS3: 23.989fps

 

Test Three: Final Destination

360: 35.662fps

PS3: 29.523fps

 

Test Four: Station Face-Off

360: 26.015fps

PS3: 25.803fps

 

Test Five: Rigged to Blow

360: 26.507fps

PS3: 23.781fps

 

Test Six: Ivan the Not So Terrible

360: 33.713fps

PS3: 28.313fps

Edited April 29, 2013 by nigelhere9901

[ALeSsAnDrO]

I'm guessing slow texture loading will be a bigger and more noticeable problem than fps.

Framerate takes a dip occasionally in some crowded action packed moments. Textures not loading immediately happens more frequently.

And since, apparently, V is going to have far more textures, I cant see this problem going away.

[Red Hat]

I will give the answer to this question on September 18, when i will get the game.

[Sneakerhead.]

if not ill just wait for the PC port. real HD and 60+ Fps

or next gen consoles

>Implying the game will release on Next Gen Consoles.

 

 

Anyway, to give you an idea.

 

Test One: Game Intro

360: 31.627fps

PS3: 26.504fps

 

Test Two: Clean Getaway

360: 28.624fps

PS3: 23.989fps

 

Test Three: Final Destination

360: 35.662fps

PS3: 29.523fps

 

Test Four: Station Face-Off

360: 26.015fps

PS3: 25.803fps

 

Test Five: Rigged to Blow

360: 26.507fps

PS3: 23.781fps

 

Test Six: Ivan the Not So Terrible

360: 33.713fps

PS3: 28.313fps

>Implying R* couldn't just port a better running version of the game to next-gen consoles.

 

And where the hell did you get those FPS?

[nigelhere9901]

if not ill just wait for the PC port. real HD and 60+ Fps

or next gen consoles

>Implying the game will release on Next Gen Consoles.

 

 

Anyway, to give you an idea.

 

Test One: Game Intro

360: 31.627fps

PS3: 26.504fps

 

Test Two: Clean Getaway

360: 28.624fps

PS3: 23.989fps

 

Test Three: Final Destination

360: 35.662fps

PS3: 29.523fps

 

Test Four: Station Face-Off

360: 26.015fps

PS3: 25.803fps

 

Test Five: Rigged to Blow

360: 26.507fps

PS3: 23.781fps

 

Test Six: Ivan the Not So Terrible

360: 33.713fps

PS3: 28.313fps

>Implying R* couldn't just port a better running version of the game to next-gen consoles.

 

And where the hell did you get those FPS?

>Implying any previous GTA game has been released to next gen consoles as well, making it a cross gen game.

 

From here http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/grand-th...special-article

 

If you EVER need to know which specific game runs at what frame rate on any specific gaming platform, then the answer is Digitalfoundry, they simply do the best job.

[OmegaEvolution]

Personally i would be less worried about the PS4 & Xbox Infinity versions, which are pretty much guaranteed due to the limited time the game will have on PS3 & 360, and more worried and the PC version, there was no PC version for Red Dead.

[nigelhere9901]

Personally i would be less worried about the PS4 & Xbox Infinity versions, which are pretty much guaranteed due to the limited time the game will have on PS3 & 360, and more worried and the PC version, there was no PC version for Red Dead.

People here at GTAForums have a pretty pessimist mind.

 

Why are you even comparing GTA V to Red Dead Redemption?.