State of the Xbox Vol. 5

06.18.01

When you mention the word "research" to most people, they think of
boring homework (at least I do). At many companies, research is a
division of people who spend their days on pie-in-the-sky thinking which
may not ever see the light of day. You might think that
Microsoft Research
and the Xbox team have very little in common, since Xbox is
so focused on the great games that will be part of the Xbox launch on
November 8th. But what would happen if you took one of the brightest
research minds and unleashed him on the most powerful game console in
the world? Let's have a look...

Jed Lengyel is a Microsoft researcher who spends his time thinking about
ways to use advanced 3D graphics techniques to make things more
realistic. We're not talking about adding a few polygons to a scene,
either. When Jed thinks about reality, he attacks the hard problems
like ultra-complex surfaces of grass, leaves, fabric, fur, and fuzz.
When games try to fake a surface like these with a simple texture,
gamers know it right away. The game looks flat and artificial, which is
exactly the opposite of what Xbox is all about! Xbox is about depth and
reality, so Jed had found a perfect place to stretch his wings when he
moved in with the Xbox development team.

Jed found that with Xbox's super-fast 6.4 gigabyte per second system
memory, more RAM than any other console, and the raw horsepower of the
Xbox Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), he was able to turn ideas into
reality. You can see the effect that richly rendered surfaces have on
the realism in the above bunny. In fact, you must click the bunny and
see it up close!

"If you're in a racing game and you want to stop and walk toward a tree,
the tree should look as real close up as it did far away," says Jed.
Gamers couldn't agree more! In the below sample from the Xbox
Development Kit, you get a feel for what we're talking about. The trees
in the distance are rendered with simpler texture-based methods, while
the trees up close feature real-time rendering of individual leaves, and
even grass that is modeled such that it blows in the wind and shows
footprints...

According to Jed, "The graphics performance in the Xbox is so much
better, and there's so much more memory on the Xbox. With the vertex
shaders and the pixel shaders; we can put our code right down there next
to the metal." If you're a graphics buff, you'll want to be sure to read
about the techniques that make available to Xbox game developers at

Microsoft's Research Web site in more detail.

But hold on just a second... how exactly did we digress into this
discussion about complex rendered surfaces and advanced graphical
techniques? I thought we were going to stay focused on games between
now and Xbox launch later this year! While the theory is interesting and
the samples are cool, we all know that if it doesn't have an immediate
impact on games, it doesn't matter to Xbox.

So let's talk games. Because of the tight loop we keep with game
developers, some of these techniques have already found their way into
games. One of the best examples is Activision's

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X. They've already got utterly realistic
grass in this amped-up Xbox-only version, using these very same
graphics techniques. Check out a few brand new screenshots from TH2X!

In State of the
Xbox Vol. 2 I said that, "The surfaces of objects will be
rough or smooth like they'd be in reality. Fabric and hair will flow;
grass will blow in the wind..." in Xbox games. Here we are just over a
month later, and we can already see some of that taking shape in a
playable game. Once you've played a game that offers this level of
detail, you'll be hooked instantly and nothing else will compare.

It's always fun to watch talented minds get to run wild with power at
their disposal. That's what Xbox is all about: power to let creative
game designers do what they've always wanted to do. I hope you've
enjoyed this peek into the techniques coming from one such mind, and the
application it gets from the Xbox Development Kit in a real game like
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X. Check back soon for the next installment of
State of the Xbox. Didn't I mention a giveaway at one
point? Trust me, you won't want to miss this.

Jeff Henshaw

Executive Producer, XDK