Project Offset

Introduction

Recently I came across a YouTube on a few of those. the demos of the engine is still unknown and not announced game codenamed "Project Offset" with the comments of the authors.

I did not find posts about this project on Habré - I decided to share it with a respected audience.
I strongly recommend watching in HD quality.
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What I saw was an easy shock - I just did not expect to see this in the game for the next 5-7 years. The point is not even that it looks almost photorealistic, but what features the authors offer us.

It is interesting that, as far as I could find out, only three people are working on the engine - an enthusiast, and the result is so impressive.

Comments in the video in English - I will translate them, and after - I will comment on what I saw from my point of view. I do not pretend to objectivity - I have not played games for three years already, but I know it more or less closely with 3D graphics (at the level of amateur / hobby).

First video

So, the first video, the earliest, was published 2 years ago - a compilation of several game videos from the developers site in one:



Some things seem to be rendered, but in the upper left corner there is an inscription “Realtime footage”. Let's take the word for the developers.

What we see:

1: 25-1: 55 .
The dragon is climbing a rock, it looks beautiful, it looks like nothing special. BUT. Pay attention to his wings! They clearly show how the sun shines through them, tinting red.

This is nothing more than SSS (SubSurface Scattering - subsurface scattering), a very resource-intensive shading model that simulates capillary networks under the skin when light passes. I did not expect to see it in the game in any way - too much computational power is needed.

2:06 .
Commentator : “Everything you see in this video is calculated in real time by our game engine. We make a first-person shooter taking place in the epic fantasy world and calculated with cinematic quality. Every object in the world casts and accepts shadows, including the correct self-shadowing of all objects, even as complex as the character you just saw. ”

2:30
Commentator : “In this example of a particle system, each of the thousands of particles casts its own soft shadow into the scene. The engine performs motion blur as a post effect. Unlike the usual special effect, which only works in some situations, motion blur works evenly on everything. This effect is used throughout this video, so you can stop it at any time to see its work. ”

Yes, it looks very cool, especially the place where the particles are frozen - you can clearly see the blurred edges.

The only thing that confuses is: motion blur is a multipass effect (a velocity map is built over several frames, after which a blurring occurs later, in theory), hence a drop in performance should, in theory, be at least twice.

3:35 .
Commentator: “In this test there are hundreds of goblins on the screen. Each goblin is a unique character with its own set of armor, color, height, and animation variation. Such a spread adds to the overall credibility of the scene, and will create a deep and truly epic impression. ”

Very good. I had the first association - Massive crowd simulator, widely used in the film industry.

At first glance, the scene does not contain anything outstanding - well, they run, well, a lot. But it's worth a closer look! And the truth is, they are all different heights, and move a little differently. Moreover, it can be noted that when one of them was frozen, they KEYED HER through him, stepping on his back!

Second video

This video is a year, it looks fabulous.



Awesome, the detail and picture is true almost at the level of the film. Making - just a dream, beauty.

On the technical side, too, everything is cool. Destroyed realistically, physics at altitude. But this is not the coolest.

I think you noticed how the wind feels!
Nobody can surprise anyone with the walking of bushes, but not the most important thing. The most important thing is the suspension in the air (if it is so called) - small white particles that obey the wind. If you look closely, you can notice the eddy flows! Moreover, the explosions also create particles flying in the wind!

Third video

After the previous two have nothing to add, just beautiful.

Conclusion

The site developers posted all the videos and interviews with them, and even a lot of interesting things.

In one of the interviews, one of them showed a live demo (from the first video, but in real-time), and claimed that it is now running on a regular computer. The interview was 2 years ago - let's hope that they will succeed.