Weekend Workshop

[00:00:00]Good morning, Leed Works engineers.

[00:00:01]Today we have another exciting episode of Weekend Workshop. We're going to review last week's uh progress of the development of LeadWorks game engine.

[00:00:08]We're getting ready for the release of version 5.1, and we'll talk about some uh upcoming uh stuff we have for you planned in the future. Now, uh when 5.0 uh released, I was a little bit surprised at how many people uh I heard from who were using uh very old hardware with it, like GeForce 900 cards and such. And I finally I had kind of looked at the Steam uh hardware survey results um like kind of informally, but I actually went through last week and added everything up by hand and put it all into an Excel spreadsheet. I'll have a uh I'll have a link in the video in the comments below in the description uh so you can download it yourself if you want. But basically, I separated uh GPUs into three categories. Uh there's the new high-end, which I consider to be like a GeForce 3070 or above. Um and then there's the new mid-range, which is all of the GeForce 2000 series because the 2080 isn't that much faster than a 1080. Um, and then anything that ends with 50 or 60. Um, as well as the AMD uh equivalent equivalents [clears throat] to that, which would be like the um the RX 5000 series. And then Intel, I just put all ARC uh GPUs into that category, which there's not that many of them actually.

[00:01:36]Um, and then there's the old category, and this is like GeForce 10 level or lower. Um, the AMD equivalent to that would be the RX500 series. And then I just put all of Intel integrated graphics in this category.

[00:01:53]And this the when I sorted uh all the results on the Steam hardware survey uh by these categories, the results were pretty surprising.

[00:02:03]So you have the new high-end which is 3070s, 3080s, 4070s, 4080s, 5070s, 5080s and AMD equivalents. That's only 26% of users have that those capabilities. So I think of these as like people who have ray tracing cards that can actually do ray tracing because you know just because your card has ray tracing cores it doesn't mean you can actually do ray tracing at at a good frame rate without massive upscaling. And then the new mid-range this is 43% I believe. Um, this is people who they upgraded, but they upgraded to like a 50, a card that ends in like 50 or 60. So, it's not actually much faster than a 1080. So, is it I mean, if you were coming from like a 1060, yeah, it's a it's an upgrade.

[00:02:58]But, if you were coming from a 1080, then it just got marginally faster. Um, and then we have this new category here, which is old GPUs. This is new. This is not something we've really seen in the past. Uh, more people, it appears that more people are using, this is 31%. So, more people are using 10-year-old GPUs.

[00:03:20]These are active Steam users in the last month. Uh, more people are doing this than actually have a new high-end card.

[00:03:30]That's crazy. This is not something we've seen in the past. I mean in 2015 you did not see a third of users with cards from 2005. You definitely did not.

[00:03:41]And this is not this is not just the low end because this includes the low end.

[00:03:46]This is the ancient end. This is people who have just stopped buying computers altogether and they probably never will again.

[00:03:57]So new high-end that's 26 that's only 26% of the market. The new mid-range is 43% of the market. And the 10-year-old hardware, just people who just never upgraded, that's 31% of the market.

[00:04:15]So, some conclusions based on this is, you know, first, more players are using 10-year-old cards than high-end GPUs.

[00:04:23]uh Moore's law is no more because new mid-range hardware isn't much faster than a t a 1080 Ti. Um so those people who did upgrade to um the mid-range, was it really an upgrade or is this just pretty close to a 1080 Ti performance?

[00:04:45]Um, so that means that 75% of the market has performance worse than or only slightly better than a 1080 Ti. So in other words, for 75% of the market of Steam users, the last 10 years of hardware upgrades never happened.

[00:05:11]Here's a 1080 uh compared to a 5060. You can see this is getting 71 frames per second versus 82 frames per second. Uh it's a little bit better, but I mean this is like five generations later. Um so it's I mean it's like 8% better.

[00:05:33]And you know 3060s and 4060s I expect would perform quite a bit worse than the 5060. So yeah, I mean 75% of the market is operating at about GeForce 1080 level hardware in terms of power. I mean the newer cards they have, you know, capability other capabilities that you know a 10 series does not have. But um that's pretty significant.

[00:06:01]So uh LeadWorks 5.1 is aimed at solving uh this problem with lower system requirements. Uh it supports uh Intel the Intel Haswell architecture for integrated graphics going back to 2013.

[00:06:16]The AMD HD7000 series going back to 2012. That's the HD7000, not the RX7000.

[00:06:25]And then the Nvidia GeForce 400 series.

[00:06:28]I haven't gotten my hands on one of these cards yet, but it should work. Um that's supported. And those were first released in 2010.

[00:06:37]So that's the major change that lead works 5.1 uh makes that it it solves this problem uh primarily by implementing a deferred uh deferred lighting instead of a clustered forward plus renderer. We launched 5.0 with a clustered forward plus renderer which is what uh ID software uses. Uh but I found uh after working with both approaches for for a while, I found that deferred lighting I feel it provides better performance when you're using a lot of decals and a lot of lights and I think it's better it has better compatibility with older hardware. And then um I implemented a clip map based uh solution which is similar to what Battlefield 6 or what's the current one? Is it Battlefield 6? I think it is. Um, uh, it's a clip map, uh, terrain rendering, which, uh, that's very, very efficient to render because basically you're pre-rendering all the terrain around the player. So, they just have to look do like a single texture lookup, um, for each spot on the terrain basically, um, instead of what we were doing with bindless textures. So, bindless textures are no longer a requirement. uh so that lowers the hardware uh system requirements because it's necessary because I mean this is the reality of the you know what this is the the hardware players are actually using.

[00:08:06]Okay. So um going forward I'll talk now about uh last week's uh development uh just the stuff that I did last week.

[00:08:16]Uh here's a uh space uh simulation I'm working on. These are the um these are called tall lunar towers and these are uh going to be built on the moon and they're uh they have two purposes. One is for uh you can mount solar panels on them. So that's how you can get um you can get power on the moon because it's very expensive to ship a lot of batteries there. And you can also uh put they can also be used for radio communication. Now the reason you have to build a tower for this because a lot of the areas that NASA is interested in are the uh are these big craters on the south pole of the moon. U they're so deep that they never see the sunlight. And so in order to get in if if you want solar power then you have to build uh very very tall towers uh and then you put your solar panels on that and then that's how you can get power going down into that into that crater that's in eternal darkness.

[00:09:23]Um so this these are very very cool. Um, the reason they're interested in uh in in these locations in particular is because they have water in the form of ice in them. There's a ton of ice, well, more than a ton. There's a lot of tons of ice on the moon, and that's uh very useful.

[00:09:48]Uh here's a screenshot of a here's a scene that I put together. I just threw this together in order to uh demonstrate um the alpha 2 coverage. I just wanted something that shows really sharp uh vegetation. And then I threw this uh this Joshua tree into the scene which really like ties it together. And it works really well too because it's got a lot of it's got a very lot of very sharp uh features to it. So it looks good with anti-aliasing.

[00:10:18]Um, but this scene is available in the download system. Like you can get it right in the editor. If you just click on on the environments category, then you can download this scene right away.

[00:10:30]Uh, this scene I added um just to show the transparent reflections. You can see it on the floor here as well as uh coming off the walls. Um, you just need to have screen space reflection enabled and you also have to have uh trans the transparent reflection setting enabled for this to show up. And that's in uh if you go to the tools menu and then you click on the options menu uh item to bring up the options editor uh those those options will be available in the video settings.

[00:11:05]Speaking of the video sends, did you update the uh the learn page with the new parameters?

[00:11:12]>> What's the learn page?

[00:11:14]>> The um like the documentation.

[00:11:18]>> What are the new parameters?

[00:11:20]>> So we discussed that we the um let me let me double check here. There was you you updated a setting.

[00:11:30]One moment find it.

[00:11:35]One moment.

[00:11:50]>> Oh, it was uh set SSR you updated.

[00:11:54]>> Oh, okay. So, the screen space reflection uh parameters. Um, I'll I'll check on that. I also need to update I need to update it in the template because there's like before it was just a checkbox and now there's like there's a bunch of settings. I just categorized it into like low, medium, and high. Uh, but there's a bunch of settings you have control over like the number of steps, the size of each step, the uh the uh resolution of the screen. I think I think just I think I think for the uh template you should just copy and paste what the editor does.

[00:12:31]>> Yeah, that's what I was planning on doing. I'll just have it like low, medium, high, and then if you if you're really anybody who's really curious about the details can look into the code. Um I also have this scene uh available for you. This is just I created this to demonstrate uh the optical density in the in the transparency. Although 5.1 uses a deferred renderer, uh the transparency actually got like way better in gets in 5.1. Um so you can see this actually has four of these little guys frozen in this block of ice. And um like the ones closer to you are are more visible and then as they get further away from you they become less visible because um light is taken away as it travels through this medium. That's what the optical density uh factor does. Um so so yeah like transparency in in 5.1 just looks fantastic even though it's a deferred render. It just it I I actually spent like a full month uh just programming transparency.

[00:13:40]Uh for 5.2 I have um the major feature is going to be uh global illumination system that combines with the uh dynamic lighting. Um and uh you can see here you uh you can see color bleeding uh working for the first time. I've already started this. I just went ahead and started working on it even though it's not going to be released until 5.2 is. But you can see color bleeding here. Also here, this has a little bit of an orange tint to it.

[00:14:08]You can see it more down here, too. Um, I've gotten this about as far as I can without uh starting to make changes to the renderer because I have to I have to add a separate um a separate emission channel into the um into the GBuffer because this has to be more precise than than what we're doing right now. Um this is this just shows the sky uh diffuse reflection.

[00:14:34]Um the sky uh diffuse color is being reflected in this shot. No other shadows or anything, no lighting. This is just demonstrating the uh sky diffuse reflection, which looks very nice.

[00:14:51]We also have the summer games tournament still going on. Um and this has been extended.

[00:14:57]Uh it's going to end August 3rd. So, Monday, August 3rd at 12:00 a.m. Um that's when it stops. So, in other words, Sunday, August se 2nd is your last day. Um, and I just extended that because um, the launch of 5.1 is going to be going on uh, the week before that.

[00:15:16]So, it just made sense to uh, basically more user activity means more visibility on Steam. So, it made sense to to do that.

[00:15:28]If you have an old GPU and you're not doing anything with it and it's just sitting in a drawer and you want to send it to me, I will use it for testing. I received an AMD 570 by from Moist Beef and actually was able to solve a problem that only occurred on that card. Um, thanks to him, uh, I received an AMD 7750 and a Vega 56, which is huge. It's a brick. It's AMD's workstation card. Um, I received that from an anonymous donor.

[00:16:06]Thank you very much. Um, I'm looking for a GeForce 960 GTX, a GeForce 480, or anything in the 400 series really. Um, those are from 2010 and they should still work uh with LeadWorks 5.1. uh any old CPUs with integrated graphics because and really I've got about 10 GPUs now and all of them in some very specific circumstances all of them behave slightly different in very special circumstances. Um so at this point I'm really looking for any old GPUs that I don't already have.

[00:16:46]again like we know that 75 well we know about a third of Steam users have at least 10year-old GPUs and they're never going to upgrade. So it makes sense to test all of this old stuff because I want to make sure that your games and my game can run fast and correctly on everyone's computer. So, um yeah, let me if you have an old GPU you'd like to donate, probably only if you're like in the US or Canada because the shipping would be uh pretty expensive otherwise. Um but feel free to reach out to me. I've already received uh several uh several old cards for testing and they're being put to to good use.

[00:17:30]Uh before we continue, I want to give a shout out to everyone on uh Steam who's recently given us a thumbs up since the 5.0 release.

[00:17:42][cough] Let me get ready for this. This includes [sighs] [gasps] almost ready Primar Roose, Aztec Shaman, Nanto, Priito, Nigek 999, Hunter Brute, Two Cats, Yellen, Communist, Safado, Reap Blue, Mapache 3D, Tani, Noxa, Ka 401, Alvier, Arkinstone, Garlic Waffle, 979, Matarin, Dumage, Durbo, Slick 29, Large Tomatoes, Arteria, Drez, Vchick, Hop to It Ed Milson 55, James W. Harden Deg Ulys's fart bottom or Dixon Mas Lawrence Mr. Tonga Plen and Monkey Frog.

[00:18:22][gasps] [laughter] I'm going to have to work on my lung capacity. I I don't know like if this list gets much So if you uh [laughter] if you add your review on Steam, I will read your view. I will read your name.

[00:18:42]in this list every week if you want me to. If you don't want me to, just let me know and I and I'll remove your your name. But if you want me to, I will read your name. And as you can tell, I'm almost we're almost to the point where I'm running out of breath. I did that all in one breath, but I think I'm going to have to do like some lung capacity exercises next week because if this list gets much longer, uh it's going to it's going to get more and more funny. So, if you want to uh like Steam reviews really really help us out. Um like our uh our review score since the release of 5.0 is is quite high. It's probably somewhere in the 90s. Uh but we have a lot of you [clears throat] know the the application has been there for 10 years. So, and it was basically a different product. So, we have a lot of um we have a lot of uh uh old reviews that are sort of pulling the average down. So, I'd like to get a lot of new reviews that reflect the current state of the application. Uh, so if you could give us a thumbs up on Steam, uh, I'd really appreciate it. And, uh, we'll see how we'll see how long this list can get before I before I have to use two breaths.

[00:20:00]So, uh, yeah. Um, Blood Works uh, 5.1.

[00:20:04]It's scheduled for release. uh the 27th, I believe.

[00:20:09]Yeah. Uh Monday the 27th.

[00:20:13]So, we've got a we've got a week between now and then. Um nice leather jacket. I tend to I have I have a leather jacket, but I I tend to prefer brown leather actually. I think it looks very nice.

[00:20:32]I'm like the uh Yeah. You know, Steve Jobs has the uh turtleneck. Jensen Wong has the has the black leather jacket. I think I'm gonna make the brown leather jacket my thing.

[00:21:02]All right. Uh, do we have any questions?

[00:21:12]Let's take a look at the screenshots.

[00:21:20]Dumage is cooking something up.

[00:21:23]He says this is Oh my goodness. I know what that is. Okay, this is going to be terrifying.

[00:21:33]He says this is going to be sort of a retro style.

[00:21:50]That's a cool cool screenshot.

[00:21:58]Yeah, you can see the um the light bounce here. Like you can see a little bit of purple on the ground here.

[00:22:04]And then with no light bounce or just this is just with a single bounce. So since the purple is not in direct lighting, it doesn't uh emit any lighting in the first bounce and so there's no purple on the ground. So you can see what a difference um that just looks so much more natural. So that that's going to be in 5.2 testing project.

[00:22:44]That looks cool.

[00:22:57]puzzle game.

[00:23:06]Well, I mean, [sighs] you know, the the most important thing is to just release something. That's the whole point of the tournament uh the the tournaments, the game tournaments. You release something, you get a prize.

[00:23:22]Um, a game that actually gets released is is better than a theoretical game that looks beautiful and never gets released.

[00:23:36]What is this, Gary's Mod?

[00:23:44]I have some pants that look like that.

[00:23:47]I don't think I have any shoes like that anymore.

[00:23:50]Oh, he's got that Lead Works hoodie almost.

[00:24:01]Yeah, as long as it comes out before GTA 6. Well, actually before August 3rd.

[00:24:10]I feel I want to see like this person I want to see this character as a rag doll like getting shot out of a cannon or something.

[00:24:28]That'd be cool.

[00:24:36]Like goat simulator kind of stuff.

[00:24:43]Make him jump the Grand Canyon in a shopping cart.

[00:25:03]Okay. Uh so if there are no other questions, uh we'll wrap this up. Uh thank you very much for joining. Um and uh 5.1 will be released uh July 27th.

[00:25:18]Yeah.

[00:25:19]And we'll have the uh the game tournament going on all that that last week right here.

[00:25:28]So, I look forward to seeing your projects. You've got a little bit more time and uh 5.1 will be out soon and then 5.2 is uh coming on its heels as quickly as possible because I really want to get I want to get the uh the global low illumination feature out.

[00:25:45]That's really useful. And we