Project offset

Introduction

I recently stumbled on YouTube on several of those. demo of the engine of an as yet unknown and unannounced game codenamed “Project Offset” with comments by the authors.

I did not find posts about this project on Habré - I decided to share with a reputable audience.
I highly recommend watching in HD quality.

What I saw was a slight shock - I simply did not expect to see this in the game in the next 5-7 years. It’s not even that it looks almost photorealistic, but what features the authors offer us.

Interestingly, 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 be objective - I have not played games for three years now, but I know more or less closely with 3D graphics (at the amateur / hobby level).

First video

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



Some things seem to be pre-rendered, but the inscription “Realtime footage” flaunts in the upper left corner. Let's take the developers a word.

What we see:

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

This is nothing more than SSS (SubSurface Scattering), a very demanding shading model that imitates capillary networks under the skin when light passes. I did not expect to see this in the game - too much processing power is needed.

2:06 .
Commentator: “Everything that you see in this video is calculated in real time by our game engine. We make a first-person shooter taking place in an 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 works only 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 - blurry edges are clearly visible.

The only thing that confuses: motion blur is a multi-pass effect (a vector map of the motion (velocity map) is constructed using several frames, according to which the blur subsequently occurs - in theory), therefore, the performance drop, in theory, should be at least twice.

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

Very well. My first association was - Massive crowd simulator , widely used in the film industry.

At first glance, the scene does not contain anything outstanding - well, they’re running, well, a lot. But worth a closer look! Indeed, they are all of different heights, and move a little differently. Moreover, you can see that when one of them was frozen, jumped over it, stepping on his back!

Second video

This video is one year old and looks fabulous.



Amazingly, the detail and picture are almost at the film level. Design is 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 notice how the wind feels!
You won’t surprise anyone with the swaying of the bushes, but not the most important thing. The most important thing is a suspension in the air (if it's called that) - small white particles that obey the wind. If you look closely, you can notice the vortex flows! Moreover, explosions also create particles flying in the wind!

Third video

After the previous two, there’s nothing to add, just beautiful.

Conclusion

The developer’s site has all the videos and interviews with them, and 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 was now being played on a regular computer. The interview was 2 years ago - let's hope that they succeed.