June 2019 - Engine Upgrade progress (screenshots & video)

[IRyanI 15]

Wouldn't it have been very obvious since the engine update is not live the lighting enhancements themselves would not be finished.

[vsb 6171]

41 minutes ago, Hypothesis said:

wouldn't call it a profit but at least they can get what ever they are investing .

 

8 minutes ago, Glaciers said:

even if every active player bought a 20 pack of joker boxes for the new glory it probably wouldn’t even pay the salary of a single dev

 

[Queen of Love 452]

i hope there will be some info with new contact mail about the map changing around  (Villanueva changing name for example).

Will the new social district restored without redhill stuff around? Redhill should have a map just for it.

 

[Kewlin 692]

Knowing this community BTW, y'all should really not be mentioning 4.0 so heavily, if at all.

[Spoiled 23]

On 6/28/2019 at 7:57 PM, ShunTara said:

Real Time Worlds / RTW visuals and graphics looks way better. Also where's the Bloom settings at Night time?

Sorry but if these are the engine upgrade on  how they planned to look, its looks bad.

This looks bad to you? 

On 6/28/2019 at 8:46 PM, CookiePuss said:

 

[porcupine_omg 115]

41 minutes ago, Spoiled said:

This looks bad to you? 

 

Yes it looks terrible, lighting and shadows don't make any sense at all and all cars have the same texture as play-doh

It's obviously far from finished

[Doom32 23]

5 hours ago, porcupine_omg said:

Yes it looks terrible, lighting and shadows don't make any sense at all and all cars have the same texture as play-doh

It's obviously far from finished

I don't recall this being a "feedback" thread


anyways, keep the images coming...
Maybe some shots by the swift area. I don't know

[Fortune Runner 796]

14 hours ago, kukki said:

It still looks terrible. Only when seeing a direct comparison to Live version, it definitely looks like an improvement.

Where is AA?

What is up with the font?

Are there plans to work on the life long issues of the game, like waterfront spawns, vehicle physics?

I'm glad to see any improvements and happy especially for people who have stuck with this game to this day, but there is a wide gap between APB that is improved enough to be more enjoyable than it is atm and APB that is fixed and finished and able to draw in new players to be successful again.

 

+ This thread seems overly focused on visuals. The main reasons and features of the upgrade is improved performance and opening of more possibilities to tweak and improve the game. The improved visuals is just a bonus.

we know that the engine is not for graphics.

what we did not know is how much it would change it regardless.

nothing wrong with being happy over an added bonus surprise

 

 the font and other  parts like lighting are not complete yet as stated in this thread.

[vsb 6171]

32 minutes ago, Doom32 said:

I don't recall this being a "feedback" thread


anyways, keep the images coming...
Maybe some shots by the swift area. I don't know

shift you fuckin goon, stop doing that

[moxxichixx 148]

Are they gonna hire more people to create content in the game like maps and weapons,etc art. Ya know... I wouldn't mind a spot ;D XD

Edited July 1, 2019 by moxxichixx

[porcupine_omg 115]

46 minutes ago, Doom32 said:

I don't recall this being a "feedback" thread


anyways, keep the images coming...
Maybe some shots by the swift area. I don't know

Did you close your eyes the past 9 pages

I think you may have dementia 

[gamergoggles 67]

2 hours ago, porcupine_omg said:

Did you close your eyes the past 9 pages

I think you may have dementia 

 

Lmao

Edited July 1, 2019 by gamergoggles

[Fortune Runner 796]

2 hours ago, moxxichixx said:

Are they gonna hire more people to create content in the game like maps and weapons,etc art. Ya know... I wouldn't mind a spot ;D XD

in my opinion it may be too soon for that since they still need to fix matchmaking and phasing and to deal with other major issues

but i do hope they do if they get the chance to.

[VanilleKeks 736]

Looks good so far. Kind Regards.

[xHenryman90x 129]

[EnriquexD 7]

Lol, this guy is very exigent.. for me it looks awesome and the performance increase is the most important, maybe he want photorealistic graphics lol 

[xGLADxPWNZx 2]

 

Your engine is not necessary at all...
PS not the photoshop, real shots from the game with the hidden interface... and it seems even not max settings in advanced apb launcher...
it is full hd, on 2k or 4k I think will be even better, but the video card does not allow with good fps (rx 480)... max 2k if tune the settings in AAL...
Will make so that it will be only worse, I am confident in it...
PS your t(o)sters do not know how to turn on smoothing? On 4k show the ladder, lol...

 

Merged.

 

sorry for edited google translate, I hope you will understand that I wanted to tell...

[Seadee 107]

49 minutes ago, xGLADxPWNZx said:

Your engine is not necessary at all...

but it is, as they did it so that they can work on the game efficiently and effectively, add multi threading as well as implement solutions for matchmaking... does advanced launcher do that? 

[xGLADxPWNZx 2]

2 minutes ago, Seadee said:

but it is, as they did it so that they can work on the game efficiently and effectively, add multi threading as well as implement solutions for matchmaking... does advanced launcher do that? 

Yes, it is necessary things... BUT

They will make so that it will be only worse, I am confident in it...

[MySodium 29]

9 minutes ago, xGLADxPWNZx said:

Yes, it is necessary things... BUT

They will make so that it will be only worse, I am confident in it...

The engine is the only hope this game has to stand up again, it's a fact, you're pretty much in denial if you think otherwise. The main objective of this engine is to give developers an easier time with coding so new content is released more easily, fixing bugs and above all give better optimization to our modern hardware. etc. The current engine of APB is a mess, it's a beta version of unreal engine scrapped and taped together, it's overly saturated with messy coding, whenever developers try to fix a minor bug, they end up breaking the whole game entirely.

If somehow LO manage to make this game perform as well or similar as e-sports titles like CSGO, Dota 2, League of Legends, etc which are fairly easy to run games on respectable hardware, then APB can AT LEAST bring back the old numbers it used to 6 years ago

[eazy-vinny 22]

Looks already really nice im counting days here!!

[LovelyJasmine 10]

On 6/21/2019 at 3:03 PM, MattScott said:

Hi everyone,

 

We are way overdue to show off screenshots, so I have decided this update is going to be a bit different.

 

To start, I’m going to give a brief update of where we are on PC and console, and then (for better or worse) I’m going to let SPCT post some screenshots that they chose from the current build. All previously shown Engine Upgrade shots were real, but they were done under highly controlled conditions. No HUDS. Fly throughs. Etc. 

 

Today's post is an attempt to lift the curtain today and give a genuine look at where we really are.

 

 

For PC, everything is now done except for migrating Unreal package content.

 

To give specifics, there are 1498 packages used in the game:

• 919 regular packages
• 537 map packages including dynamic layers to action districts for events and missions

 

So far we have converted about ~84% of them, with the following packages remaining to be completed:

• 212 regular packages
• 24 map packages

 

EDIT: Corrected after someone pointed out my bad math.

 

That leaves 249 packages to migrate, but these are all somewhat more difficult.

• Some of them wont be migrated because G1 or LO already made changes that weren't ever in 3.0. This includes reworked Financial and Waterfront textures and geometry.
• Some of the packages are for User Interfaces. These are tricky because we have a chunk of UIs in 3.5 already that have been glued up for console. And we have new UIs in 3.0 for the trading system and other areas. Anything we migrate from 3.0 will step on aspects of the 3.5 screens and work will need to be redone. I'll have a better sense of this effort once we get a little further.
• Some of the remaining packages have changes in both 3.5 and 3.0 and those will need to be hand merged. Again, I'll have a better sense of this effort once we get a little further.

 

We still have plenty of bugs and crashes that need to be fixed, but we now have all the code, systems, and server work completed.

 

 

Performance Benchmarking

 

Performance testing of the Engine Upgrade is very important. Not many people would trade better looking graphics for worse performance. In APB's case, there are currently disk-based stutters and bad support for multiple CPU or GPU cores. One of our primary goals with the Engine Upgrade is to fully utilize modern hardware.

 

DISCLAIMER: It is important to point out that the Engine Upgrade has an entirely different rendering pipeline - some good and some bad. Many players have seen what the console builds look like, and the performance on those devices is terrible. The starting point of the Engine Upgrade was these exact console versions just running on PC, so there has been a lot of work to do since we started. Unfortunately most of the work is very specialized and cannot be done by a huge team without tripping over each other. We have kept as many people dedicated to the upgrade as possible, but this work is filled with rabbit holes and pitfalls. Sometimes areas that appear simple to optimize end up using global data that touches many other areas of the code.

I want to thank @SKay for all of his hard work leading the benchmarking effort to help us gauge progress in these areas.

 

To make sure the test runs were valid, they had to be able to easily reproduceable as well as being able to give a proportionate representation of what a user might see during their time in APB. The game environments vary from claustrophobic to wide open, and the benchmarks needed to account for both. In the end, he chose a short car drive that would force the game to move quickly through as many different areas as possible under consistent conditions.

 

The main goals of the benchmark are to insure that:

• The 3.5 performance would at least reach the same speeds (on average) as LIVE
• The main issues (stutters, low 1%' and .1% frame rates) were at least looked at and/or addressed
• New visual upgrades or changes didn't affect the overall experience

 

 

The route above shows the benchmark run that was used in all cases. The test run as outlined above has open areas and enclosed areas in a single run that could be repeatedly reproduced for apples-to-apples comparisons to help identify progress with the Engine Upgrade.

 

Starting at Darryl Kent, we take a left out and stay on the road passing right of Suji. Taking the next right and keeping the City Council building to our left, we take a right at the crossroads outside of Violet Prentiss and Wilson LeBoyce, following the road as it sweeps towards Javez and passing him on the right. We hold that road and turn right when it meets the river, coming back to end in front of Darryl Kent.

 

Stats were captured with MSI Afterburner using RivaTuner Statistics Server running on Ultra settings 4K resolution.

 

Here are the benchmark results:

 

 

To explain the numbers for the graph:

• Max FPS is the highest framerate detected during the test. This in conjunction with the other metrics can determine if the game is able to push good framerates on the current hardware.
• Avg FPS is the average of all the frames that were taken during a run. This is used as a base metric to compare the other metrics in this list with.
• Min FPS is the lowest framerate detected. This is not necessarily the lowest framerate outright, rather the lowest framerate that could be normally detected through normal gameplay.
• 1% FPS is the average of the lowest 1% of frames that were taken during a run. This metric, when compared to the average, is used to determine if the PC is struggling to run the game, or if the game is struggling to drive a consistent frame rate.
• .1% FPS is the average of the lowest .1% of frames that were taken during a run. This metric is used to detect for stutters or freezes (if any)

 

NOTE: The benchmarks do not included the non Multi Threaded renderer results. The state of the renderer was bad enough when we started that it was clearly well below LIVE and not acceptable.

 

Here is a quick summary of our development timeline on the Engine Upgrade:

• May 2018, we chose to focus on infrastructure which took us a couple months to clear the cobwebs
• End of July I posted my first update on the Engine Upgrade with details around bringing on more devs for the Unification project
• November we rebuilt the Music Editor for 3.5 and the majority of external libraries had been upgraded just to get the build running
• Early February we had finally sorted out a number of crash bugs that allowed SPCT to get their first play tests on 3.5
• March we had realized how bad the renderer was and had implemented most of Multi Threaded rendering

 

And here is a walk through of the results working up from the bottom:

• The bottom shows our LIVE comparison which was taken in the March / April time frame.
• The first set of results above the bottom was from the initial Multi Threaded renderer implementation back in April. These results were very encouraging, however in-game lighting was completely broken in this build, so the results were skewed higher than any other build that had lighting working correctly.
• 806538 shows what the initial finished implementation of Multi Threaded rendering from May. This was our first good look at performance, but it revealed several areas in the renderer that needed work - mostly in the Culling and Level of Detail systems. Culling is what decides which elements on screen to render and which to ignore. Level of Detail (LOD) determines if we can show a lower resolution model based on distance.
• 809566 shows some early Culling work from late May, but the routine had severe graphical issues with objects not getting rendered properly.
• 810873 shows our current build that is rendering properly with Culling and LOD fixes. 

 

EDIT: We are not done with the lighting or post processing. I should have made that clear. We are waiting for the content packages to get migrated and then we plan on doing a fairly big pass to adjust the look and feel.

 

 

For console, we have a 2nd round of bugs to fix.

 

The initial builds did not pass QA (quality assurance). Several crash bugs were found, so we couldn’t submit to Microsoft or Sony. However many have already been fixed. XB1 is being tested internally, and it may be ready to resubmit. PS4 has a couple more crash bugs left.

 

And now onto the screenshots.

Each SPCT member is going to start by posting a single screenshot.

Feel free to request areas / content you’d like to see, but just so we don't make this thread too long I've limited them to 3 shots total.

Thanks,

Matt

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x

 

Engine Upgrade

 

What memory did you use?

[Kevkof 806]

47 minutes ago, LovelyJasmine said:

What memory did you use?

According to the specs on his twitch: 16GB DDR4 3200 Corsair Vengeance

So it's high end, but not completely overkill

[AxeTurboAgresor 268]

Respect recreating APB in 3.5

Graphics and visual game design is still flat tho, no matter of new grass and added trees here and there, or more saturated colors. Its flat. 

Iam kinda dissapointed, and Ive been mad just a few minutes ago, but Iam over it now. I expected more bcs of pictures that G1 gave us back then.

 

[WhiskeyTangoFoxX 280]

30 minutes ago, AxeTurboAgresor said:

Respect recreating APB in 3.5

Graphics and visual game design is still flat tho, no matter of new grass and added trees here and there, or more saturated colors. Its flat. 

Iam kinda dissapointed, and Ive been mad just a few minutes ago, but Iam over it now. I expected more bcs of pictures that G1 gave us back then.

 

The old pictures Reloaded showed were very obviously doctored to almost unrecognizable degrees. Ultimately this is not a recreating project, but a port. Most things, as Matt said, just get copied right over. Map is still brush based, still uses the same meshes and textures, just somethings have different colours now and we're going to receive the last of the Reloaded map edits, along with some shader changes. The primary goal of 3.5 is to have a unified code base that is less spaghetti and more manageable than whatever hot mess RTW and Reloaded left on the current version.