Pseudo 60 FPS tech comes too late to make it into TFU 2

[Char Ell]

Saw a tweet about this article and found it of interest.

Eurogamer.net - LucasArts' 60FPS Force Unleashed II tech demo

At the recent SIGGRAPH 2010, LucasArts coder Dmitry Andreev showed off a quite remarkable tech demo based on work he carried out during the development of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. In a video demonstration running on Xbox 360, he showed the game operating at its default 30FPS, but then seemingly magically running at 60FPS - with no apparent graphical compromises aside from the removal of motion blur.

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On a general level, there's a reason why most console games operate at 30FPS as opposed to the more preferable 60: the more time a developer has to render a frame, the more complex and rich it can be. But what if a mixture of clever tech and exploitation of human perception could be used to create a 30FPS engine that looks like it's running at twice the speed?

The article has links to download sites for the actual video. Too bad that this innovation didn't make it into TFU 2 but the article states this was due to the fundamental change this would have made to the existing game design. Perhaps TFU 3 will overcome the rumors of its early demise and use this tech or maybe it will find its way into another LucasArts game.

[PastramiX]

Developers often use pixel shaders to "cover-up" any oddities. That's why all Unreal Engine 3 games use film grain, motion blur, depth of field, and a hundred other effects to compensate for UE3's lack of anti-aliasing. Mirror's Edge on the PC looks abysmally jagged and rough without motion blur and depth of field, but turn it on, and it gives the illusion of "smoothness" of MSAA.

I think they're also trying to go for the "cinematic" feel; all films play at ~30 FPS, which makes everything look natural, while not being too smooth.

[Jeff]

I'm late on this, but too bad TFU3 is canceled now I guess. Maybe it will make it into another upcoming game.