Tessellation in BF3

[WMD]

Anyone knows what objects are tessellated? I really don't see the difference in fps or terrain detail when toggling tessellation on and off in CCC. Is it being used at all? I don't believe there won't be a significant performance drop on a 5850 which is frankly horrible in tessellation performance.

Settings at ultra

Tessellation off in CCC

Tessellation on in CCC

 

[vrait]

There isn't much if any at all. All PC development was switched to consoles half way through development to meet the deadline. This isn't the game we were promised haha. (No hate, I love BF3. Just the truth)

 

[Genx87]

Probably not too much. I havent messed around with the settings except turning off motion blur. It runs smooth and I enjoy trying not to get shot out of the sky or crashing a helicopter. The funny thing about this game. The combat is so so. But the lulz factor from the vehicle can be off the chart.

 

[WMD]

There isn't much if any at all. All PC development was switched to consoles half way through development to meet the deadline. This isn't the game we were promised haha. (No hate, I love BF3. Just the truth)

Where did you hear that? So PC isn't the lead platform?

 

[peonyu]

The flagpole looks alittle better.

 

[videogames101]

Where did you hear that? So PC isn't the lead platform?

It was, but they basically had a deadline to release all versions of the game at the same time, so they shifted focus to finishing the console versions about halfway through. Some dev stated it somewhere.

 

[RavenSEAL]

I don't think there is much, if any at all. DICE cut more than half the features they annouced.

 

[Smartazz]

Kind of a bummer for those of you with high end cards, but BF3 scales really well with midrange hardware.

 

[destrekor]

Can you actually turn it off at the driver level?

BF3 uses deferred-rendering, so most driver-level image quality settings have no effect, if not making it worse.

Not sure about tessellation though, it might not be something you can turn off if you are playing with DX11 and using a deferred render engine.

 

[WMD]

I don't think there is much, if any at all. DICE cut more than half the features they annouced.

I think there may be none at all. I just tested Heaven 2.5. The tiniest amount of tessellation (distance and factor dialed way down) drops my fps like a stone. Yet every map I test in BF3 give me the same performance with tessellation on or off.

I thought tessellation is one of the more anticipated DX11 features in the game? Isn't it wierd to advertise BF3 as a DX11 focused title but its hard to see or appreciate any tessellation. Remember when some of us complained about the flat looking sandbags? The response was always: "Its a Beta!" Still love the game though.

 

[Smartazz]

Despite the lack of tessellation, there is a lot of geometric detail, particularly on character models.

 

[WMD]

Despite the lack of tessellation, there is a lot of geometric detail, particularly on character models.

This i agree with.

I think this chart may also suggest no tessellation is used:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/Y/O/313584/original/amd%20high%202560.png

If there is any tessellation at all, the 6870 and 6950 should be about 50% faster than a 5850 and a 5870.

 

[SickBeast]

The indoor maps have some splendid examples of tesselation where it is done far more realistically and artistically than in Crysis 2.

 

[WMD]

The indoor maps have some splendid examples of tesselation where it is done far more realistically and artistically than in Crysis 2.

Really? Where? My fps is insanely high indoors. Talking about crysis 2, they have tessellation and advertised the hell out of it with amazing on/off comparison images. In BF3 we have none of those.

 

[SickBeast]

Look closely at the floors and at the walls. They are tessellated. Some of the indoor stone walls are more pronounced. Most of the tiles are done quite subtly but it is beautiful.

*edit* To say for certain that they are tessellated, I don't know. It could just be a bunch of polygons. I do like how the surfaces all have a depth, though. Some of the materials on the buildings look like they *must* be tessellated, IMO.

 

[FalseChristian]

I know BF3 requires DirectX 11 but can't you do Tesselation (TruForm) in XP and DirectX 9.0c?

 

[WMD]

I know BF3 requires DirectX 11 but can't you do Tesselation (TruForm) in XP and DirectX 9.0c?

You can stimulate detailed geometry in Dx9 by using more complex meshes but the performance will be horrible compared to Dx11 hardware tessellation. Just look at crysis 2 it will be unplayable to produce that kind of geometry detail in DX9. Though to make a GPU with good tessellation performance it tends to have more transistors and lower performance/ die area in non tessellation workloads.

 

[Red Hawk]

I think there may be none at all. I just tested Heaven 2.5. The tiniest amount of tessellation (distance and factor dialed way down) drops my fps like a stone. Yet every map I test in BF3 give me the same performance with tessellation on or off.

Tessellation doesn't necessarily need to be a huge performance drain. The character model tessellation in Deus Ex: Human Revolution barely causes my 5770 to flinch.

 

[Silverforce11]

Tessellation in BF3 only applies to terrain (according to their presentations), and only at a very distant view, it allows them to generate massive scenes which look great in the distant. An example is flying jets and looking at the horizon.

It's applied *automatically* if you run dx11 mode and its included in the terrain options. So you'd have to run the test with terrain options on low vs high.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Tessellation in BF3 only applies to terrain (according to their presentations), and only at a very distant view, it allows them to generate massive scenes which look great in the distant. An example is flying jets and looking at the horizon.

It's applied *automatically* if you run dx11 mode and its included in the terrain options. So you'd have to run the test with terrain options on low vs high.

Medium, as there is no tessellation on a DX10 cards and Terraign Detail is the only option limited to medium on DX10 cards. When I was running a GTX 295 I could set everything to Ultra but Terraign was capped to medium.

 

[WMD]

Tessellation in BF3 only applies to terrain (according to their presentations), and only at a very distant view, it allows them to generate massive scenes which look great in the distant. An example is flying jets and looking at the horizon.

It's applied *automatically* if you run dx11 mode and its included in the terrain options. So you'd have to run the test with terrain options on low vs high.

So how do I go about making on/ off comparison images to confirm the effects of this tessellation? If tessellation was used, why didn't the 6870/6950 outperform the 5850/ 5870 by a huge margin as they are supposed to?

 

[Silverforce11]

Because tessellation is not heavily used to a point where its bottlenecking the cards. They made a point on efficient usage. Just because unigine/crysis2 shows a big difference doesn't mean it happens in all games. Look at Metro and AvP.

 

[WMD]

Because tessellation is not heavily used to a point where its bottlenecking the cards. They made a point on efficient usage. Just because unigine/crysis2 shows a big difference doesn't mean it happens in all games. Look at Metro and AvP.

Turning on tessellation drops my fps by 15% in Metro 2033. Not as much as crysis 2 but noticeable effect on image and performance. So are you saying there is tessellation in BF3 but I won't be able to tell the difference in either image quality or performance?

 

[Red Hawk]

You'll only be able to tell the difference in specific situations is what he's saying.

 

[Grooveriding]

It's actually funny.

No tessellation and looks as good or better than Crysis 2, the tessellated to all hell turd.