DICE's Johan Andersson Talks BF4, Frostbite, Mantle, The Future

Opinion
By Chris Angelini
published

Tom's Hardware's Editorial Director, Chris Angelini, sits down with DICE's Johan Andersson to talk about Battlefield 4, the Frostbite 3 engine, features he wants to see in next-gen hardware, developing for the Xbox One and PS4, and AMD's Mantle API.

Fully Utilizing Next-Gen Console Hardware

Chris: Right. Are you rendering it to a different resolution natively on Xbox versus PlayStation 4?

Johan: Yeah, we’re rendering essentially to a separate render target and then up-sampling that to the native 1080p and then we’re rendering the UI on top of that in 1080p, which actually helps quite a lot because there's a lot of text and small details in the UI on BF.

Chris: Got you. I know that developers took a while before they were really able to utilize PlayStation 3’s architecture. Given the composition of these next-gen consoles is it less challenging for you to fully utilize them and is there a lot of untapped potential still, or are you guys taking advantage of most of that right out of the gate?

Johan: Definitely it was a lot easier this generation and a lot quicker. I think you're going to see that on the games that we and other people launch that they actually are, for launch titles usually so early in the generation, the first title that you have they typically are not great titles, or perhaps the actual games are not that great but they look okay. Here we got off from an extremely good start I think and we've spent a lot of time working on that to make sure that we got to that point, but there is still a lot of things about next-gen consoles that we can specifically optimize and utilize. Things like I mentioned with the async compute or things with how we tweak for the CPUs or what are the exact shaders and settings that we’re using for our graphics rendering. There are still some, quite a lot of untapped potential in the consoles there that we’ll be utilizing for the upcoming games. 

Chris: Okay, cool. I know you mentioned that we were going to start getting to the point where we could talk about performance benefits of Mantle in Battlefield 4. Are we there yet or do we need to keep waiting a little bit longer? 

Johan: (Laughs) Yeah, we’re not there yet.

Chris: Okay.

Johan: It's a lot of work just putting all of the pieces together and performance is the thing you get last there. I don’t want to give any numbers that are not fully representative yet either.

Chris: Sure. 

Johan: Yeah, we’re not there yet.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
51 Comments Comment from the forums
  • anbello262
    On Page 1, the soldier, is that Joey Tribbianni? :D
    Reply
  • DanglingPointer
    I can't wait till this game is on Linux with proper fully baked FGLRX drivers and Mantle on Linux!

    Come on AMD! Bring it already!!!! SteamMachines are around the corner!
    Reply
  • vaughn2k
    Yeah, it seems like him... but I am skeptic, if he could do a bad ass soldier though.. ;)
    Reply
  • cats_Paw
    Very low quality Interview. All questions are made in a way so that Johan Andersson can promote their company and their games. There is not a single question about something meaningfull to the comunity. Its all like:
    -Your game is good in this?
    -Yes our game is good in this becouse .

    Just the phrasing and the form changes.

    At least the users in tomshardware can still offer some solid information. And later people dont understand why 80% of the readers automaticly jump to user comments before reading the full article.
    Reply
  • shaydogs
    Arrgghh, Give us more details on Mantle implementations in BF4 already!!!
    Reply
  • bemused_fred
    "Sure we did still have to do a little bit of a compromise on the solution. We're not running at the full native 1080p; we’re running a little bit lower resolution than that."

    Good lord! The PS4 can't even run Battlefield 4, a launch title, at 1080p? Where will these consoles be in 5 years time?!?!
    Reply
  • tomfreak
    12087857 said:
    "Sure we did still have to do a little bit of a compromise on the solution. We're not running at the full native 1080p; we’re running a little bit lower resolution than that."

    Good lord! The PS4 can't even run Battlefield 4, a launch title, at 1080p? Where will these consoles be in 5 years time?!?!
    Gulf town or Any 6 core Intel CPU will be the next QX9650, after 5-8years and will still be kicking ass.

    May be spending $500-600 on a CPU + a 5years warranty reliable Asus Sabertooth X79 isnt a bad investment. lol

    Reply
  • ikefu
    12087857 said:
    Good lord! The PS4 can't even run Battlefield 4, a launch title, at 1080p? Where will these consoles be in 5 years time?!?!

    Its still early in the console cycle and devs will need time to fully unlock them. With the semi heterogeneous architectures of the new consoles its going to be a steep learning curve to figure out the best ways to utilize GPU compute power. They talk about having the CPU at 95% utilization but just because its busy doesn't mean its efficient. Busy is easy to achieve, efficiency is not. There's a lot of room to grow yet.

    That plus I don't think most exclusive console gamers are really worried about 1080p (other than a random number in a vacuum that seems bigger than other random numbers). If they were truly worried about resolution they'd be on a PC. The games are still prettier than a 360/PS3 so they'll be happy in the end.

    Reply
  • cypeq
    12087857 said:
    "Sure we did still have to do a little bit of a compromise on the solution. We're not running at the full native 1080p; we’re running a little bit lower resolution than that."

    Good lord! The PS4 can't even run Battlefield 4, a launch title, at 1080p? Where will these consoles be in 5 years time?!?!

    Frostbite is probably most demanding engine out there... check if your PC can run BF4 at min. 60 FPS in high details @ 1080p. There are many that can't.
    Next gen consoles are speced like mediocre gaming PC of today. WTH you expect.
    In near future programmers will be able to squeeze bit more juice of them because of more unified and exposed hardware but that's all.
    Performance and Quality is on PC.
    Reply
  • deejaybos
    Yeah, the game looks amazing, then it crashes randomly. Then you play it a little, then it crashes. Then in single player it crashes, then during a map change it crashes, then when someone blows something up somewhere else on the map, it crashes. Guess they forgot to mention the terrible release they've had and the lack of support or acknowledgement. Unless of course you count double XP and a pistol attachment, "acknowledgement".
    Reply