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Martin Griffiths

@Griff_ • 8,735 subscribers

#NoMansSky Engine Programmer. Owner of #TrickyPixels who re-mastered #JourneyPS4. Platform lead on #ProjectCars and EA’s Harry Potter games. BAFTA member

Shorts

I really loved a shader that was posted last month by Yohei Nishitsuji .. so I thought I’d see how it looked in our engine behind the #NoMansSky starfield! Probably not something we could use, but very pretty and a fun hour getting it working!

I really loved a shader that was posted last month by Yohei Nishitsuji .. so I thought I’d see how it looked in our engine behind the #NoMansSky starfield! Probably not something we could use, but very pretty and a fun hour getting it working!

31,872 görüntüleme

As a graphics engine coder I think when you look at a flickering bug like this one in the video below it’s not immediately obvious what is going on. The key here is observation - to study this flickering/bugged render carefully - what do we see? Firstly for me it was very obvious that nearly all of the scene shadows were flashing on and off - but (but!) there was a secondary issue where some buildings and parts of the sky were also flashing purple. Hmmmm. Interesting. I initially thought then this might be two separate bugs - but because the sky purple element could only based on full screen post fx and not 3D rendering I looked at this first with a few GPU captures to step through all our post processing to find the rendering stage which made these pixels turn purple: When I did this I found the colour 3D texture LUT grading that makes our different biomes have unique colour palettes was going very wrong - colours near 0 or 1 were wrapping and making the purple elements that we see in the said sky and base parts. The only way this could happen was if the texture was corrupt (which it was not) or if the 3D texture sampling was wrapping and not clamped as intended. That was the Eureka moment - because if the post fx had the wrong texture sampler then the disappearing shadows which also require an exact texture sampler for comparing depth might be also wrong because of the same kind of texture sampling issue! So with this idea that the engine was using the wrong texture samplers, but only in very high draw call scenes like the big base here I the looked at some engine limits and found the bug very quickly - a circular dx12 descriptor buffer for samplers running out over multiple frames, reusing the wrong data for new scenes inflight. Hence the flickering, as the GPU randomly got wrong samplers for some post textures or shadow depth. Easy to fix with triple limits for future expansion and also adding an assert/debug spam in case this limit is ever reached again - QA testers would see this message and report if they ever saw a flicker with this style of bug. My bug and my bad from 2017 porting NMS to DX12 without foreseeing how massively complex bases and our game would grow.

As a graphics engine coder I think when you look at a flickering bug like this one in the video below it’s not immediately obvious what is going on. The key here is observation - to study this flickering/bugged render carefully - what do we see? Firstly for me it was very obvious that nearly all of the scene shadows were flashing on and off - but (but!) there was a secondary issue where some buildings and parts of the sky were also flashing purple. Hmmmm. Interesting. I initially thought then this might be two separate bugs - but because the sky purple element could only based on full screen post fx and not 3D rendering I looked at this first with a few GPU captures to step through all our post processing to find the rendering stage which made these pixels turn purple: When I did this I found the colour 3D texture LUT grading that makes our different biomes have unique colour palettes was going very wrong - colours near 0 or 1 were wrapping and making the purple elements that we see in the said sky and base parts. The only way this could happen was if the texture was corrupt (which it was not) or if the 3D texture sampling was wrapping and not clamped as intended. That was the Eureka moment - because if the post fx had the wrong texture sampler then the disappearing shadows which also require an exact texture sampler for comparing depth might be also wrong because of the same kind of texture sampling issue! So with this idea that the engine was using the wrong texture samplers, but only in very high draw call scenes like the big base here I the looked at some engine limits and found the bug very quickly - a circular dx12 descriptor buffer for samplers running out over multiple frames, reusing the wrong data for new scenes inflight. Hence the flickering, as the GPU randomly got wrong samplers for some post textures or shadow depth. Easy to fix with triple limits for future expansion and also adding an assert/debug spam in case this limit is ever reached again - QA testers would see this message and report if they ever saw a flicker with this style of bug. My bug and my bad from 2017 porting NMS to DX12 without foreseeing how massively complex bases and our game would grow.

72,855 görüntüleme

I saw this video from Vazillia last week and was puzzled - We hadn’t noticed this quality regression with PSSR/PS5 Pro, but the bug reproduced on my dev kit, right away. 6 hours of debugging later, I worked out what went wrong and a fix made into the current 6.04 patch!

I saw this video from Vazillia last week and was puzzled - We hadn’t noticed this quality regression with PSSR/PS5 Pro, but the bug reproduced on my dev kit, right away. 6 hours of debugging later, I worked out what went wrong and a fix made into the current 6.04 patch!

14,740 görüntüleme

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"Space station update is peak" (Credit: Hursty79 on Reddit) #NoMansSky

"Space station update is peak" (Credit: Hursty79 on Reddit) #NoMansSky

Martin Griffiths

764,845 görüntüleme • 1 gün önce

“Til: if your creature is a giant land animal and you try placing it in semi deep water, you get your very own wavepool.” (Credit: Portal2player58 on Reddit) #NoMansSky

“Til: if your creature is a giant land animal and you try placing it in semi deep water, you get your very own wavepool.” (Credit: Portal2player58 on Reddit) #NoMansSky

Martin Griffiths

334,244 görüntüleme • 7 gün önce

“Hey guys, you know space has no under or above. The same with your building. Endless possibilities 😀” (Credit Reddit u/Retskaa) #NoMansSky

“Hey guys, you know space has no under or above. The same with your building. Endless possibilities 😀” (Credit Reddit u/Retskaa) #NoMansSky

Martin Griffiths

167,836 görüntüleme • 13 gün önce

“I have not played in over 9 years.. got a ps5 started a new file.. my 1st warp 1st planet and I land here.” (Credit Reddit u/Motosurf77)

“I have not played in over 9 years.. got a ps5 started a new file.. my 1st warp 1st planet and I land here.” (Credit Reddit u/Motosurf77)

Martin Griffiths

196,550 görüntüleme • 28 gün önce

In a past life at EA I worked for 8 years on the engine for the Harry Potter games - in 2006 it was a formative time because Order of the Phoenix was the first fully streamed, open world game that we'd made : from an old sd card.. the first time Harry ran around Hogwarts on PS3!

In a past life at EA I worked for 8 years on the engine for the Harry Potter games - in 2006 it was a formative time because Order of the Phoenix was the first fully streamed, open world game that we'd made : from an old sd card.. the first time Harry ran around Hogwarts on PS3!

Martin Griffiths

620,730 görüntüleme • 2 yıl önce

This is probably a bug, but quite a good looking one! Water goes a bit crazy if you beam down into it - causing quite a cool visualisation of our newer water physics.

This is probably a bug, but quite a good looking one! Water goes a bit crazy if you beam down into it - causing quite a cool visualisation of our newer water physics.

Martin Griffiths

262,846 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

I’ve seen quite a lot of debate recently about loading times and smoke and mirrors in space games - so thought I’d show you all the #NoMansSky debug camera .. a nice demo of how seamless and powerful our engine is! PS5 running here, with video from an iPhone… 3 planets in 50 seconds.

I’ve seen quite a lot of debate recently about loading times and smoke and mirrors in space games - so thought I’d show you all the #NoMansSky debug camera .. a nice demo of how seamless and powerful our engine is! PS5 running here, with video from an iPhone… 3 planets in 50 seconds.

Martin Griffiths

468,887 görüntüleme • 2 yıl önce

In the #NoMansSky Worlds Part II trailer there’s a lovely sequence with multiple ships creating water wakes as they fly - here’s the first time 5 months ago that our talent graphics coder(Tom) demonstrated a ship’s wake on a still water surface. Blown away then and even more now!

In the #NoMansSky Worlds Part II trailer there’s a lovely sequence with multiple ships creating water wakes as they fly - here’s the first time 5 months ago that our talent graphics coder(Tom) demonstrated a ship’s wake on a still water surface. Blown away then and even more now!

Martin Griffiths

194,542 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

Today. I was doing some work on improving PSVR2 in #NoMansSky and managed to get myself the double (distortion) foveated bug again! PSSR though… made it look even better than before, so I had a walk around the station..

Today. I was doing some work on improving PSVR2 in #NoMansSky and managed to get myself the double (distortion) foveated bug again! PSSR though… made it look even better than before, so I had a walk around the station..

Martin Griffiths

50,805 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

“Hello, boys! I'mmm BAAACK!” (Credit Reddit u/Vilxir) #NoMansSky

“Hello, boys! I'mmm BAAACK!” (Credit Reddit u/Vilxir) #NoMansSky

Martin Griffiths

41,988 görüntüleme • 10 ay önce

Love your demo つよし723 パイロット - I'm not sure if you saw this #NoMansSky debug camera video I made last year. Blazing between 3 planets in 50 seconds.. a nice example like yours, of how seamless and powerful our engine is! (PS5 running here, with video from an iPhone…)

Love your demo つよし723 パイロット - I'm not sure if you saw this #NoMansSky debug camera video I made last year. Blazing between 3 planets in 50 seconds.. a nice example like yours, of how seamless and powerful our engine is! (PS5 running here, with video from an iPhone…)

Martin Griffiths

17,061 görüntüleme • 3 ay önce

For people asking about the “rare graphical glitch that caused some creature models to explode”… here’s a video showing the bug - it’s one that I fixed and was caused by certain creatures with fur when rendering them as a hologram - a silly bug with the “shells” geometry shader

For people asking about the “rare graphical glitch that caused some creature models to explode”… here’s a video showing the bug - it’s one that I fixed and was caused by certain creatures with fur when rendering them as a hologram - a silly bug with the “shells” geometry shader

Martin Griffiths

54,713 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

“Y'all we got real deal rivers here.” (Credit Reddit u/WildDreamComeTrue) #NoMansSky

“Y'all we got real deal rivers here.” (Credit Reddit u/WildDreamComeTrue) #NoMansSky

Martin Griffiths

10,443 görüntüleme • 3 ay önce

At 18 years old, around about 1990/91 and just a few years into learning 3D graphics I worked with a friend, the late Jose Commins to create our first 3D world on the Atari ST. It might seem primitive and crude, but this was a foundational step for me from there to #NoMansSky

At 18 years old, around about 1990/91 and just a few years into learning 3D graphics I worked with a friend, the late Jose Commins to create our first 3D world on the Atari ST. It might seem primitive and crude, but this was a foundational step for me from there to #NoMansSky

Martin Griffiths

34,936 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

“KITTY!!!” #NoMansSky ShipBuilds. (Credit Reddit u/Str8TripNOuT)

“KITTY!!!” #NoMansSky ShipBuilds. (Credit Reddit u/Str8TripNOuT)

Martin Griffiths

18,370 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

You can see here how Elite directly influenced me - 5 years later after this club, aged 16 I wrote my first 3D code for this vector screen demo on the Atari ST. I would not have written this and would not have ended up working on #NoMansSky if Elite had not existed! #elite40

You can see here how Elite directly influenced me - 5 years later after this club, aged 16 I wrote my first 3D code for this vector screen demo on the Atari ST. I would not have written this and would not have ended up working on #NoMansSky if Elite had not existed! #elite40

Martin Griffiths

23,577 görüntüleme • 2 yıl önce

There was a fix for a very rare Switch bug that made it into patch 5.26 of #NoMansSky. This one in graphics programming is called “NaN propagation” and the reproduction case involved our Depth Of Field shaders. It was unique to Switch because this platform stabilises DOF using a temporal history to increase quality with hand-held resolution. “Not A Number” from some bad lighting values got into this history and caused the white expanding horror bug! These errors are now protected against and this bug can’t happen again.. always fun to see and track down!

There was a fix for a very rare Switch bug that made it into patch 5.26 of #NoMansSky. This one in graphics programming is called “NaN propagation” and the reproduction case involved our Depth Of Field shaders. It was unique to Switch because this platform stabilises DOF using a temporal history to increase quality with hand-held resolution. “Not A Number” from some bad lighting values got into this history and caused the white expanding horror bug! These errors are now protected against and this bug can’t happen again.. always fun to see and track down!

Martin Griffiths

19,182 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

Daha fazla içerik yok.