If you’re a fan of Battlefield 3 and like learning about new graphics technologies, you’ll probably enjoy this five part talk by Johan Andersson, the lead rendering architect at Dice. He’s the fellow directly responsible for a lot of the amazing visuals that are a hallmark of the Battlefield series, and he talks about many of the improvements that he and his team made when creating the Frostbite 2 engine. I really enjoy how much depth Johan describes all of the techniques in, but even if that isn’t your bag, you’ll probably enjoy seeing the visuals broken down into their base components.
Johan presented all of this at the GeForce LAN 6 event on an actual US military vessel, the USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier. Despite the nauseatingly patriotic vibe, the techniques and technologies that Johan and his team at Dice created are exceptionally awesome. Johan’s talk focuses on five graphics components: objects, lighting, effects, terrain, and post-processing. He talks at length about how important a solid lighting model is, and for those of you that have played the game or seen the trailers I’ve posted, I’m sure you’ll agree that the lighting is far and beyond what we see in any other game on the market. One of the more interesting sections of the talk was with regards to how lighting actually affects the particle effects, such as smoke, dust, and dirt from explosions. In Frostbite 2, some particle effects, like smoke and flying debris, are not only affected by ambient lighting conditions but they’re also illuminated by other particle effects like muzzle flashes and explosions. As an example, a building casting a shadow would actually darken the smoke sitting in that shadow. Both of these effects look amazing in motion.
The entire talk is rather lengthy, but if you have the time, I highly recommend it. Below you’ll find all five parts, and you can either watch them at once, or in pieces. All of them are interesting in their own right and detail the five graphics components I mentioned earlier.
Shiny PC Graphics in Battlefield 3
