GCAP 2017: Decima Visibility in Horizon Zero Dawn

Visibility queries, i.e. quickly finding the smallest possible set of geometry required to render a given scene, are a feature of almost all game engines. They are almost always on the critical path for performance since they need simulation to be complete, and prevent rendering from starting until the results of the query are available. This makes efficient visibility data and code very important to overall game performance.

In this experience-based talk, Will Vale from Second Intention/Guerilla Tech Team goes into real problems faced and solutions his team came up with for rendering the world of Horizon Zero Dawn. Will describes the issues they faced in moving from the relatively constrained environments of the Killzone series to the open-world vista of Horizon, and how they affected their visibility system in particular.

Will talks about where the team came from, the goals for visibility in the new world, and the system built to fulfill these goals. He geos into the visibility data in detail and talks about how to take advantage of the PS4's asynchronous compute capabilities to query the millions of objects and quickly produce results for the renderer to consume.

Will sums up by talking about lessons learned in shipping the game on the current visibility system, and where they're planning to take it next.

Concepts are explained briefly throughout the talk, but a basic familiarity with GPU compute will be helpful to get the most out of this talk.

Game Connect Asia Pacific 2017: The Ripple Effect

Game Connect Asia Pacific is Australia's premiere game development conference, a part of Melbourne International Games Week. Situated in Melbourne, Australia in the October-November period, GCAP is world-renowned for its talks, networking and inclusive environment.

Video courtesy of GCAP and the Game Developers' Association of Australia.

www.gcap.com.au
www.gdaa.com.au