The passage of time in Red Dead Redemption

Few times as in this case we have found ourselves in front of such a perfect fusion between art and game engine. At the time when Red Dead Redemption has demonstrated its absolute superiority in sales for this summer and with a DLC arriving announced just a few days ago, Digital Foundry embarks on a project useful to demonstrate and pay tribute to the beauty of the world created by Rockstar San Diego, through the enormous aesthetic impact of a time-lapse, or a video in which the passage of time is accelerated to allow us to observe the landscapes in all their chromatic depth.

Although built on the foundations of RAGE like GTA IV, with all the contact points that derive from it, it is clear that Red Dead Redemption distances itself both technically and artistically from its predecessor: the attention to detail lavished in painting a wasteland in the wild west is nothing short of phenomenal as well as the glimpses offered to the player. There is a clear impression that the game world really extends to infinity especially when compared to the borders perpetually enveloped by the mists of GTA IV when we go to look at great distances.

Anyway, similar to GTA IV there is the use of lights and shadows, which add a lot to the final effect and that our time-lapse manages to highlight precisely, showing the almost maniacal care lavished in this aspect. The whole scene is realistically illuminated by the primary light source (the sun) which passes through what appear to be two different layers of three-dimensional modeled clouds and supported by a larger but inanimate rotating layer. The light filters in a realistic way through each of these elements, reaching the ground with a truly unique realism.

in Addition, the illumination reaches a further level of depth thanks to the use of the blur that increases as you move towards the background, this effect is also influenced by the time of the day. The scenes themselves are set to benefit from dynamic shadows, designed with the highest quality, in the whole then supported further by the ambient occlusion that is applied throughout the environment.

The water is reproduced very faithfully to the point that it reflects in an impeccable manner throughout the district with much of the shadows that pass us over the head. The animation itself is fairly basic (no more than a couple of normal maps), but the transition between the liquid and the ground looks absolutely perfect, closing thus the circle. The feeling experienced in the collection can not be defined just breathtaking.

Assemble this video required... patience. A full cycle of 24 hours in the world of the game requires approximately 1 hour of real time, but you have to capture many times the same scene, to be sure you have faithfully recorded the crucial moments: the sunrise and the sunset.

Given that a minute of video in HD get to weigh up to 1GB, we chose to capture only one frame per second, dramatically reducing the space and making the CPU of the workstation could be used for other things at the same time. We took a total of 49 full cycles, and selecting then the 39 in our opinion, the best to compose the ultimate. The captured images were accelerated up to 120 frames per second to give the sense of time acceleration of time-lapse photography.

be Able to find a game without a HUD (Head-Up Display, ndR) is not the easiest thing in the world but Red Dead Redemption has made us all more simple, since that has an "afk" automatic. Just leave the conrtroller idle for a few minutes that the game goes automatically in overview mode. Help is not indifferent, even if we would have preferred the possibility to choose ourselves the shots.

The general impression is that the "panoramic mode" was not designed as just one of the many additional features but, above all, to be able to show the power of the game engine, the title of Rockstar San Diego. The distances are absolutely vast, but also the shadowmap quality while during the game, the system of the LOD dynamic (Level of Detail, ndR) enters the scene to increase the usability.

The version can be found here embeddata of our time-lapse is very beautiful, but never like the original version at 720p60, which is located in our hard disk. For the purpose, we have created a master version, encodata with the h264 and can be viewed via a PS3, Xbox 360 and PC (you must have installed the required codec). The whole thing was mirrored elsewhere for you to download.

here is a short list of other time-lapse in the collection Digital Foundry:

Crackdown Fallout 3 Burnout Paradise: Big Surf Island Grand Theft Auto IV, Assassin's Creed II