Interactive Wind and Vegetation in 'God of War'

[@ACuriousTanuki]

My god, this is amazing. The industry-standard "wobble" approach to wind interaction is so tired and outdated, and this dynamic system is such an incredible leap forward. The results look so lively and believable! Really hope to see this approach continue to be developed and refined, and propagated outward to others. So much awesome detail in this. Easily could have been 3 or 4 separate talks to deep-dive each section, but really glad this collective overview is in place. Excellent work!

[@vassilidario8029]

Dude is just sipping from his carton of heavy whipping cream, what a lad

[@apictureoffunction]

Pretty sure that's just milk

[@jesustyronechrist2330]

I LOVE when a game really incorporates wind as a core part of the art and atmosphere. Something like Dying Light or Witcher 3 are really enchanced by the strong wind, the trees bending and pollen flying around. It enchaces the immersion so much that it's like I can smell the air, feel the wind on my face, even if the game is played in 3rd person. But it truly is the next evolution for that wind to be much more dynamic, so that player's action will reverberade with the wind affected objects.

[@hntr5495]

Ghost of Tsushima does it really well even if a little over the top.

[@noahstevens3060]

When I took screenshots of the Witcher 3 they never looked nearly as good because the movement of the environment was such a crucial aspect of the overall look and feel of the game.

[@amunra1743]

There are games that do that better than you named. Go and play Ghost of Tsushima, you see that thats on an other level....

[@StarContract]

Such a great explanation. The world responsiveness in this game is another huge plus

[@andmefikri7555]

After watching both the wind and vegetation system for Ghost of Tsushima and God of War, it is interesting to see the contrast in term of technical approaches each took.

[@marcinkrzeszowiec1538]

24:40 mind blow. Need to check this out asap. looks like an amazing noise approach applicable to many things

[@lucbloom]

And the prize for “Presentation with the most jokes that didn’t land” goes to: …but that’s just because there was so much intense depth to discuss :-) Loved it!

[@rikutoivanen]

I know! Hurts my heart. 😭 Seems such a nice guy. He just need more experience.

[@gamingbtc]

I thought the jokes were funny.

[@hypejuice1321]

Brilliant GDC talk for a brilliant game. cant wait to see how these systems transfer and improve to ragnarok

[@Cangaca777]

I hope that everything they had to left out in GoW4 gets implemented in Ragnarok (also with the more powerful PS5 hardware! this game will be truly something).

[@IPpainting]

@@Cangaca777 I believe Ragnarok is also coming to PS4 so i hope they have the time/budget to work on both performance targets without sacrificing full functionality for PS5

[@Blag_Cog]

Really good video. Was super easy to follow and the visual representations contextualized everything really well. I don't think there is a game out there with better grass than this. It looks SO good.

[@aadipie]

ive been watching so many god of war gdc talks lately. great stuff

[@cvelasco88]

Master class, really appreciated

[@niks660097]

Battlefield 4 from 2014 had dynamic wind simulation and source 2 already has a dynamic wind system, which requires almost zero work from artist, i've seen magnus effect in test world on round objects without setting any parameters but the only flaw is they are cpu based, thus limiting objects, best thing about this is its a complete GPU accelerated system..

[@stevebob240]

Excited to see what Sony studios will be able to do with PS5.

[@badradish2116]

22:49 paused to consider the ramifications of using a simple parabola to simulate the curve over the length of the tree vs an exponential curve. was curious if you chose exponential because it more closely resembled bend upon bend, and also if something simpler like a parabola would satisfice.

[@paris_mars]

Dude, wow. That was awesome.

[@ryozaki96]

Only yesterday did I appreciate the grass and wind mechanics, when I was playing casually practicing "Agile Strike" and the whole grass reacted to the punch.. it was a satisfying sight

[@Mahdi.Kareem]

Very needed conference, good job guys and keep it up.

[@drujbanu]

I'm no developer but shit interesting as hell. If only I studied more

[@ThomasChen-ur2gt]

last ragdoll part is genius

[@badradish2116]

25:10 im so surprised you use a linear fall off with your octaves. i understand that its already logarithmic, but still, i would assume a bell curve was necessary. apparently not! im shocked and mildly excited to tinker with this concept.

[@antoinesellier8980]

Superbe travail sur les éléments qui crée du réalisme

[@toastedperfection2488]

My man makes wind more complex than any game I've ever made lmao. Really interesting!

[@badradish2116]

20:08 wouldnt the lack of 100% correction introduce bias in the stretchiness along the axii? like isnt that a huge problem?? i spose if you add only a vector that already factors this in, then youd be safe. hmmmm.

[@yasinduneth]

Love this

[@badradish2116]

because spring momentum is the derivative of trigonometric function is phased by one quarter, we just lerp toward the sinosidal motion to dial in the delay... BUT ONLY ON THE DECREASE. yeah thats totally exactly what i wouldve done and i know exactly what youre talking about. X'D

[@jacobchrist999]

Amazing talk!

[@maltmalt352]

I would love to see a similar video, but on Ghost of Tsushima instead. The wind in that game is much more visible and even a part of the gameplay.

[@7guitarlover]

This is soooo awesome !!!

[@marshal487]

Thank You😊

[@badradish2116]

"this is my first game, so i might over explain some game dev stuff" this crops up at around 24:20 when he over explains fractal perlin. im SHOCKED that their industry doesnt use fractal perlin more often. of all the things i expected him to over explain, this was not it!

[@mmcc2852]

great talk!! so interesting, This guy should be named of of Log

[@peremoyaserra2749]

They went through so much trouble to fix issues when scrolling through a finite texture in order to loop seamlessly and avoid rotation affecting relative positions of samplers. Why couldn't they just generate some procedural fractal noise and scroll through that? It's kinda cheap, doesen't consume any memory and because you have an infinite noise space to scroll through (not really, position should be reset eventually to avoid floating point precision issues), the only problems they would have left would be the relative position because of scroll direction thing and the scale mixing.

[@tollertyp7230]

There is a wind system in the game?😯

[@cerebralm]

Chew bubblegum and kick grass. XD And bubblegum is outside the scope of this presentation. :P

[@sweettangoTIMMY]

This along with Horizon's vegetation presentation (kzbin.info/www/bejne/rZLZn36Qg7iMp7c) show how photorealistic these games are... Sony is in great hands!

[@davidpinto-fernandez7132]

So, once this game come out on 2026 on PC, this feature is going to be off on my PC, cool.

[@sausagerollbap528]

Vegetation gives me wind

[@badradish2116]

19:48 the jokes write themselves

[@antmax]

That's great, and I am really enjoying the game. But... a lot of the large foliage definitely isn't interactive and many areas of the levels wall you in, even when it looks like you should be able to jump up there. Large leaf rubber plants being an example. Still an awesome game. Being almost 50 and a somewhat jaded ex game developer, I really appreciate this kind of tech. I really like how despite being an awesome looking and playing game, Unlike say COD, GOW doesn't have that big a footprint either. Horizon Zero Dawn was the same.

[@ahmetardaedogan6697]

İs Gow conferences unendless

[@jonathanmalka9998]

my brain.exe has stopped

[@timsonss]

they basically use vertex colors on some of their meshes and the wind is driven by a fractal noise with log binning. In turn this wind (noise) can stretch, dampen the meshes based on the vertex data. For card clusters, instead of manually putting two textures onto perpendicular planes, they have opted for a procedural approach, where the best cluster gets to be on the plane.

[@Peter94bul]

All of this is nice, but in reality the trees in the pc version are goimg vrazy all over the place with their unnatural movement. Actually everything that is affected by wind is like that including the fur on clothes.

[@tomatosteve3444]

He sounds just like Robert Downey Jr.

[@MrSamulai]

"Vegetation", not vegetarian. C'mon, you got it right in the title...

[@olegvegan]

thanks, MrNeverHadATypoInHisLife

[@gabrieljcs11]

Nah, they developed a new calories system in the game as well where Kratos follows a strict vegetarian diet and intermittent fasting.

[@MrSamulai]

@@olegvegan You're welcome, Mr2Chad4Spellcheck

[@Ahsmic]

I fell asleep but it's OK thought cause noises and wind is something I use all the time in my projects

[@mikemuponda1781]

The techniques described are frankly amazing however I feel they are a bit wasted on this title. It doesn't add much imo because this game was hardly immersive (systems wise..decent story) to start with, I mean walk up to an edge or rock and the world's collision boxes crudely remind you how rigid the invisible walls are in this game. When you take it for what it is ..a very "gamey" game that reminds you it's just a simple point A - B game relatively speaking, it was very enjoyable in that sense. However, when you make it into this immersive world with systems to make you feel plugged in, frankly I am puzzled. All games will always be gamey to an extent of course because technical reasons & uncanny valley.. A sim of real life would probably be boring as a game however there's a threshold & balance where a game does just enough to feel "immersive enough". Immersion in games to me means making the best choices & smart decisions what systems to include/exclude in a way that the experience still feels complete. Immersion is like Jenga..one false move and the whole thing false apart. RDR2 or Breath of the wild are a perfect balance at that despite not being perfect. What I am saying is god of war to me feels like giving super Mario insane hair physics when your character can't even jump without a prompt LOL. Interactive wind or vegetation absolutely does nothing to my impression of what this game is. What god of war is to me, it's a very rigid game with gorgeous 4k skins on top. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that until we start pretending it's this immersive systematic world because the moment you try to treat it as such it shatters in your face in spectacular fashion. There are different kinds of immersion, this game just ins't the kind of immersion it is being purported to be. I rest my case.

[@xPXGx]

I agree with your key point. As incredible as this tech is, I feel it's wasted on this game. Mind you, I think God of War 2018 is the best Playstation game ever made. I platinum'd the game too, when it first came out. It's a masterpiece and an artistic and technical achievement. However, this insanely nuanced wind tech would be better suited to a game with, say, wind/ air based mechanics and puzzles. A kin to your example, this is like putting realistic, deciduous tree simulation in a game like Sonic Frontiers. Every leaf is a unique, 3D object that can be crumpled, torn and decomposed. Some bonkers shit like that. But why in a Sonic game, and not a game that utilizes weather, climate and changing seasons? It's impressive, but besides being a massive flex that 99.9% of players will never see, what's the point?

[@framebyframegames]

Remember when WIND WAKER did this in 2002?

[@amunra1743]

Your delusional. The Windwaker was nothing like this....not even close..

[@framebyframegames]

@@amunra1743 Multi-Directional. Interactive. Graduated intensity. It's the precursor to this in many ways and better than many modern games. The game had cloth physics too. Tessellated water planes. A tech marvel in many ways when it dropped in 2002 in Japan.

[@DroolRockworm]

F this guy honestly and this talk. Why is like handsome clean cut vanilla knock off Jason Statham giving talks in this stuff? It’s just a weird vibe man. Like bro you can slay wtf u doing here leave it to us losers you don’t need to be here. It’s cringe

[@HenryTownsmyth]

lol, they wasted the time on something so minute and I don't even remember where's grass in the entire game. I just finished it 2 days ago. It also exposes how their camera is so awful. They chased a "cinema" trend of one shot camera and ruined a "game" after that. They should have indeed pulled the camera back like other third person games and even more for combat.