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3DFX Motion Blur In Action

Posted by Hemos on from the looking-pretty dept.

Mr.Tweak writes: "TweakTown has some "exclusive" pictures of 3DFX's new Motion Blur effects on a 3DFX Voodoo5 in Quake 3 Arena @ 1280x980, 4X FSAA and oh boy - it looks absolutely sensational and so futuristic! According to 3DFX, together the Voodoo5 5000's support of the FXT1(tm) and DXTC(TM) texture compression and textures as large as 2048 texels x 2048 texels, the T-Buffer(TM) can render 3d landscapes with unparalleled realism and with an impressive cinematic style which is Motion Blur. Their article quickly explains Motion Blur and has lots of pictures of the new feature which is currently unreleased by 3DFX, or should we now say nVidiaFX?"

27 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Look at the FPS by toofast · · Score: 3

    oh haha I thought it was 6 with motion blur on it...

  2. Gah! by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 4
    The effect is _still_ being demoed at _ten_ times the time duration it should be, just to make it obvious. If they don't get a clue they'll never figure out how to make it worth a damn- though frankly we're not likely ever to see this in the market now that nVidia controls the technology- I think they are going to suppress it and sue anyone else who tries to compete with them using the idea.

    All they needed to do was use the T-Buffer in line with the way they use FSAA, and keep the last rendered frame to average with the current one. It'd only look (worse than) those awful screenshots at rotten framerates like 9fps, but as you went above 30fps it would start looking just like unblurred rendering _except_ that fast-moving detailed textures would be _softened_ dynamically. Combining that with 2X FSAA would be a fantastic effect with a great deal of 'you are thereness', but NOOOOO... can't these people check with other professionals other than just computer programmers? Ask any cinematographer if that's a normal cinematic level of photographic motion blur :P they'll look at you like you are _insane_. Almost nothing moves through the frame enough to produce _that_ much blur.

    1. Re:Gah! by sammy+baby · · Score: 2

      Motion blur effects in video games, whether done through hardware or software (see old versions of Motorhead for the PC platform) are always exaggerated, mostly for the same reason that every game that came out in 1997 looked like it took place in a disco - because colored lighting had just become a common effect in games and no one had learned to use it with restraint. Maybe they will eventually. Keep your fingers crossed.

      I'm a little surprised by the tone of your post, though. It seems like you're saying that the technology here sucks (or at least, the applicaiton thereof), but you predict that nVidia will sit on it. Maybe they will, but I suspect that since they own the patent now, they'll include it on future boards.

      Interestingly, I think that this is one refinement that is going to see very little acceptance among people who are serious about winning. If you're really trying to up your frag count, you don't mind higher frame rates, or higher resolutions, or better texture management, but a feature that blurs details of the scene - that sounds like a really bad idea. That's why I stopped using motion blur in Motorhead, actually: what good is a feature that prevents you from being able to clearly identify an object you're about to crash into?

    2. Re:Gah! by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2
      Well, let me ask you:

      In 1/60th of a second, can you tell if 'Thresh' is turning towards you or away from you?

      Given _good_ motion blur (i.e. absolutely minimal) this is going to mean an additional type of motion cue. You're talking about FPSes (apart from Motorhead, evidently) and FPSes are the one place where you most care whether the gun barrel is swinging toward you or moving parallel to you. You don't want to take too many frames to figure this out. Motion blur is an additional movement cue that accentuates the perception of motion visually- for instance that gun barrel- moving parallel to you it's going to have a tiny softening. If it suddenly turns toward you, it foreshortens and key details stop moving relative to you and will become clearer. These are subliminal details but perfectly legitimate- except that the sort of 'motion blur' you're seeing currently is miserably inadequate at rendering any such cues because it's 10X too diffuse and wastes way too much framerate.

      Yes, I do think nVidia will sit on it. Call it fiduciary duty- why spend the money to implement this properly when you can just sue anybody to stop them from using it to compete with you?

  3. NVidia had an interesting way of doing motion blur by Temporal · · Score: 2
    Basically, any vertex which faces backwards from the direction of movement is transformed by the previous frame's matrix. Then, you put in some alpha blending and you've got motion blur. NVidia has a demo of this on their page, and it looks great in action. It actually looks like a blur rather than four transparent images of an object. And it doesn't require four complete rendering passes, either.

    The one problem is that it requires alpha blending on moving object, which means that you have to sort the objects by z-distance before rendering. Not too hard to do if you take a few shortcuts, but doing it perfectly can be very difficult depending on the situation.

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  4. Exclusive? I Think Not. by citizenc · · Score: 5
    Interesting.. when says 'exclusive' he really means 'nobody else bothered to download the demo, which is freely available ALL OVER THE INTERNET'

    From FilePlanet:
    This is the early release of the stand alone Q3Test that does not require the game to play. The difference is 3dfx Interactive's motion blur technology implimented into the game. Those using Voodoo 3 and up based video cards will see a cool motion blur from 3dfx Interactive's T-buffer being used. It requires the use of 4sample Rotated-Grid Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing. This is not a patch but a stand alone demo of the early Quake 3 Test.
    Download the demo here.

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    CitizenC
  5. Re:Look at the FPS by Xevion · · Score: 2
    The reason the framerates are so low is because the screenshots are taken with 4x FSAA on. If FSAA were off the numbers would be more like 40-50fps. I would imagine that the motion blur would have a framerate hit, but it is not going to drop it to 1/4 what it should be in the first place.

    Also, not only were they running Quake 3 with 4x FSAA on, they were doing it in 1280x960. The poor Voodoo5 is heavily strained when running in that resolution anyway, and then the load is increased some more by the motion blur, and quadrupled through the FSAA, you are going to see crappy framerates.

    --
    Only those who dream can grasp reality.
  6. Re:Uhm, ok?! by garcia · · Score: 2

    yeah considering that most people use high speed film to eliminate motion blur...

    the fact that while playing a game you would want to see that is ridiculous. I do NOT think it is cool looking, I find it horribly annoying.

    Then again, I don't play Q3 for the simple fact that the lag does not "feel" like lag, seeing my lag wouldn't work too well I don't think ;-)

  7. OT, but info concerning tweaktown by m00t · · Score: 2

    (we put the weak in tweaktown...)

    Tweaktown threatening lawsuits because they weren't linked by a site from Detonate.net
    and an email sent out by tweaktown and posted on detonate.net that prompted the reply above

    Makes for some humorous reading ;)

  8. Re:Uhm, ok?! by Eil · · Score: 2


    I kinda thought the same thing, but the words that sprang into my head weren't as harsh as yours. :P
    To me, it just looks like an excuse for 3Dfx to put the buzzword "Mothion Blur" bullet on the back of their box.

    For starters, I for one would not appreciate trying to aim my railgun at 6 models, trying to figure out which one is going to score me a frag.

    Secondly, it's just not that impressive. Whoopee, the Voodoo 5 can render several time-lapsed translucent models of a character! I'm positive my GeForce could do that just as easily without having special support for it in hardware.

    I would say maybe that's the reason 3Dfx didn't end up supporting it. It just isn't interesting or useful enough to justify. Slashdot must be having an incredibly slow day.

  9. Ahem by thegrommit · · Score: 2

    You can actually witness this yourself if you have Q3: http://www.3dpulpit.com/Q3Arena/3dfx/index.html

  10. tweaktown? by plone · · Score: 5

    Isn't it odd that the submitter of the story is also the owner of the website where the page is hosted? It seems to me as if it is a quick attempt to generate some banner ad revenue. Especially since screenshots of this sort have been around since the initial introduction of the T-buffer.

  11. Re:fps??? wtf??? by Richy_T · · Score: 2
    Motion blur will allow you to get away with lower framerates to a degree. After all, it does what your eyes do which is time average over a number of frames.

    I do agree that 9fps is pretty shitty. I figure you'd need to be talking 20 at the extreme lowest before you're any better off than just pumping out the framerates that are available today

    Rich

  12. Re:Interreting, but... by MikeTheYak · · Score: 5
    Motion blur is antialiasing. Instead of in the spatial domain, as most people think of antialiasing, it's done in the time domain. A blurry monitor doesn't recreate the effect any more than a blurry monitor improves image quality by antialiasing edges of polygons.

    Like the antialiasing that gets rid of jaggies, it can occasionally be a bad thing, but in general it's a good thing. At 9 fps, it's a bad thing; it's like rendering a picture at 1/4 resolution for the sake of removing jaggies. However, as hardware gets faster, and motion blur at 30fps becomes possible, it does improve the user experience. You don't really see the blurring, but the movement becomes smoother.

    Is it really beneficial? Consider this. People start complaining about frame rates when they drop below 40fps or so for a first-person shooter (which I won't abbreviate to a TLA for obvious reasons). Movies, including the CG parts, are played at only 24fps, yet the motion looks smoother. This is because cameras naturally add motion blur (because of a finite shutter speed), and the folks who add CG elements take great pains to include motion blur effects.

  13. Look at the FPS by toofast · · Score: 2

    I coldn't help but notice, on the screenshots, the FPS... 8-10 fps. That's totally unplayable. Some people consider 30fps unplayable. Besides, I like to have precise aim on my opponents. The blur would just confuse me when I appear to have 25 ennemies lobbing a few rockets around my head.

  14. Why they took them at 9fps by TheKodiak · · Score: 2

    Here's why it would actually make sense to take the "screenshots" when the game was running at 9fps - notice that the blur looks awful? That's because it's aggregating frames that are .1s apart. So you get ass. But it proves that the "screenshot" is running motion blur. If it were running at an acceptable frame rate, it wouldn't be so noticable - better gameplay, worse "screenshot".

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    -=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
  15. Uhm, ok?! by iCEBaLM · · Score: 2

    Does anyone else think this visual effect "feature" is cheezy, cartoonish, and overall really stupid looking? Looking at it makes me think of really bad cartoons. Maybe it'd actually be better playing the game than seeing stills...

    -- iCEBaLM

  16. It's *so* futuristic! by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 2

    By the year 2000, we'll all have flying cars, video phones, and -- as shown in the Bugs Bunny cartoon from circa 1945 -- hunting rifles that shoot lightning bolts.

    Just what is considered "futuristic" looking nowadays? When you look at old comic books, etc, it's bright, gleeming stainless steel and glass. Nowadays, it seems like gray, dark, dank Bladerunner-style is "futuristic". Probably says something about society. :)

    On the other hand, Star Trek-style futurism looks like a Doctor's waiting room, with a few extra technological features.


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    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  17. Re:Reality by British · · Score: 2

    I remember seeing motion blur sometimes while playing Carmageddon 2, but it was very intermittent. It was weird seeing it go blurry for a second, and then back to normal when the opponent car got closer to you.

    Really, why are the screen shots that of a camera taking pictures of a monitor? How do you expect to see anything clearly, especially with this "motion blur" he's talking about? Pretty bad article.

  18. Slow FPS by mjh · · Score: 2

    The most interesting thing that I see in these pictures is that they mention the frame rate. The pics that I see have 8 FPS, 19 FPS, and 12 FPS respectively.

    That's effectively unplayable.

    --
    Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
  19. Re:Stop wanting ugly graphics dammit! by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2

    I'm afraid you're not going to get it. Even given that 3dfx have been demoing wildly overblown versions of this effect to make it more obvious (a _good_ motion blur would be maybe three very faintly overlaid images- no big streaky effects but _textures_ and _edges_ would soften in the direction of motion, which would not require anywhere near that much performance hit), why should nVidia ever let this see daylight when they can simply sue anyone else in the industry who ever attempts to bring it to the market? You're not going to get it. It's more profitable for nVidia to keep anyone else from getting it and not bother to come out with it themselves. Software patents at work for you again.

  20. Classic example... by Gendou · · Score: 2
    ...of why 3dfx did not survive. Look at this. Is it true innovation? Does it serve to improve gameplay without sacrificing other important performance aspects?

    The "motion blur" in these scenes is not actually motion blur... it's the same thing as pixel memory (remember those old phosphorous screens and my favorite xscreensaver). It buffers the previous frame then additively disolves it overtop of the new frame. (You can't even call it bluring.) It's poor and if you'll notice, is it really worth losing 40-50 frames/sec?

    It's technology hype. Sure, it's kind of neato, but it's used where it doesn't apply (notice the walls get blurred? wtf?) and it only serves to muddy up the images. You wouldn't even *need* a Voodoo chipset to do this if you were willing to sacrifice enough video memory. Think about it. Gimp does this same effect real time too. :-)

    NVIDIA's approach, is however, a bit more in the right direction. It uses a real blur, and maintains frame rate. I highly suggest that you check out http://www.nvidia.com/Marketing/Developer/DevRel.n sf/pages/64A26BA3A82A992188256993007AC623 if you want the real deal.

  21. This is unnatural.. by CBoy · · Score: 5

    I prefer the NATURAL motion blur induced by a few good beers. :-)

  22. Uh huh... by Snowfox · · Score: 5

    So this &ltfingerquote&gt motion blur technology &lt/fingerquote&gt involves a kind of smearing technique? Kind of like you'd get from taking photos of monitors?

  23. ooo ooonh oooh by vaginux · · Score: 2


    recap: 9-12 fps screenshots of a special effects hack on a poorly engineered product from a now defunct company.

    sign me up for more!

    :::

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    :::
    Vaginux.
    "eat me".
  24. Re:fps??? wtf??? by PovRayMan · · Score: 2

    frame rate is probably the most important thing to me in gaming. That's why I bought a 3d Prophet2 GeForce2 GTS 64mb video card over the Voodoo5 5500. I gave 3dfx a chance with the Voodoo3 2000 PCI. Worst thing I ever did.

    By the way, sfindley. 3dfx doesn't make absolutly shitty stuff, sure some sucks, but you konw why they were getting 9 fps? BECAUSE FSAA WAS CRANKED TO 4X AND THEY WERE RUNNING 1280x980! FSAA at 4x should be running at 640x480. With that they would probably be getting 30-40fps with the motion blur. I can't be certain with that, but it's a good guess considering the Voodoo5 is king of FSAA (as far as I remember from articles in the past).

    I wonder what will happen to the next batch of GeForce2 cards (Maybe GeForce3 next) now that Nvidia has 3dfx. Hopefully superier FSAA and motion blur. We can only speculate right now.

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    Check out my blackbox styles
  25. Blur? This is new?? by seanmeister · · Score: 5
    I've had these blur effects ever since the original Doom was released!

    Oh wait, those are fingerprints on my monitor...

    Sean