GamingBolt recently caught up with Umbra Software’s COO Sampo Lappalainen and Head of Communications Jenni Ahlapuro to check how Umbra is shaping for current gen consoles, PS4 Pro, Xbox Scorpio, cloud gaming and more. Check out the entire Q&A below.

We interviewed you last year in 2013 and a lot has changed since then. We are well into the current gen console cycle and are aware of each console’s limitations. How has Umbra evolved in this period?

Sampo: These past few years we’ve spent a lot of time fine tuning the core of the product to make it work in different game genres and various types of content. Today the technology is far better for example in expansive open worlds game than what it was three years ago.

During the last year or so, we have started all new R&D on a couple of new major features that complement the current ones. So far, Umbra has been focused on finding the visible objects in a 3D environment. The new functionality will optimize these visible objects and help in determining which objects should be streamed into the memory. All these features combined make for a very powerful overall whole scene optimization that will make it possible to render environments with unparalleled scale and detail. We are very excited about this technology.

From a memory and CPU cycle point of view, how have you optimized Umbra is the last one year or so?

Sampo: Umbra is now much faster on the CPU across the board, but most importantly it now does a better job at visibility optimization — particularly in open world environments. So the biggest gains – both on the CPU and GPU – are actually on the game engine’s side. It simply has less work to do thanks to Umbra.

We have already seen Umbra’s Occlusion technique being used in a multiplatform game like Destiny. Do you think the absolute potential of your technology is reduced when it’s applied to multi-platform games, since essentially we are scaling up and down across the PS4 and Xbox One in case of a multiplatform game?

Jenni: I don’t think the actual potential is reduced, as our technology makes sure developers can get the best possible graphics and frame rates with the hardware they choose to use. Destiny was also available for last gen consoles, and although those versions didn’t look impressive compared to PS4 or Xbox One, they were pretty impressive on that specific hardware. We definitely played a key role to achieve that. That being said, obviously we want to help developers to really push the envelope and enable stunning graphics and super fast frame rates on any console.

"Umbra is now much faster on the CPU across the board, but most importantly it now does a better job at visibility optimization — particularly in open world environments. So the biggest gains – both on the CPU and GPU – are actually on the game engine’s side."

The differences in GPU ROPs between the PS4 and Xbox One are fairly public knowledge now. As someone who works very closely with these two machines, what is your take on the differences between PS4 and Xbox One GPUs?

Sampo: We don’t actually consider ourselves huge GPU experts. That said, to my understanding one of the big differences between the two GPU’s is in how they support async compute, which makes it possible to use the GPU for various compute intensive engine operations — not always related to rendering. So from the perspective of game engine design, it is a challenge to take full advantage of the compute capabilities on both platforms as you have to write custom async compute pipelines for both consoles.

In our last interview, you were fairly critical about the memory in the new consoles and it seems you were correct. PC games are already surpassing 8-12GB as recommended requirements. How do you think a. the new consoles will cope with this?

Sampo: Obviously more memory is be better, but in big picture it’s always more complicated than that. Larger memories require faster memory bandwidths, otherwise it takes a long time to fill the memory. This problem can already be seen as somewhat lengthy load times and the problem would only be worse if the memories were simply made bigger. The vendors could also install more memory bandwidth, but this adds to the cost. How much more are the big masses willing to pay? Difficult questions.

Our new product will bring remedy to this problem. It will make it possible to stream in the least accurate version of the 3D scene into the memory first, display it immediately and then keep streaming in the more detailed version of the scene on the background. This almost entirely removes the need for load screens and makes hardware upgrades cheaper and less of a hassle too as you could simply plug-in more memory without upgrading the memory bandwidth.

"Now when 4k is emerging and the iterative console generations are in the horizon, the developers might have to support all possible configurations. Old console & HD TV, new console & HD TV and new console & 4k TV. This means more work for the developers just to get all the configurations supported."

With DX12, how do you think it has affected your occlusion technique, specifically on the Xbox One?

Sampo: Our method is CPU-based, so DX12 hasn’t affected it at all. However, modern GPU’s have made us consider making it possible to execute our operation alternatively on the GPU to cater for the game engines which prefer this approach. We are doing research on this as we speak.

Last year you told us that you are working on integrating the cloud with Umbra. Since then Microsoft had showcased its potential in a demo, which can be seen here. Has there been any progression on this front or do you think streaming data, graphical assets, physics etc is simply not possible on the current console i.e. Xbox One and this is simply some sort of a pipe dream?

Sampo: Our focus on the cloud side has been on the tools side, where we have built a system for building our data very fast. Regarding the the game runtime side and cloud our focus is currently in building a system for providing and streaming 3D assets. This will make it possible to reduce load times and to build bigger and more detailed worlds.

Cloud gaming on the current generation is not a pipe dream, it’s just a matter of building the technology and tools for making it happen. Amazon is investing a lot of effort into making this happen with their Lumberyard engine. I’m really looking forward to what they are up to!

Has the slower clock speeds of the PS4 and Xbox One CPU been an issue for you guys? If yes, how did you managed to cope with it?

Sampo: Our software runs 100% on the CPU so the faster the chip, the better for us. However, we pride for being platform agnostic and light in terms of CPU cycles consumed, PS4 and Xbox One are amongst the easy platforms we work with. Embedded devices like tablets, cell phones and the Hololens push the envelope of anything that requires processor cycles quite a bit, but we are well optimized on those too.

I wanted to talk something which is out of the scope of this interview but I would like your opinion on this anyway. What are your thoughts on the so called resolution and frame rate wars between PS4 and Xbox One? Do you think that AAA developers gives priority to resolution and fps over gameplay and in a broader picture, do they even care about this debate?

Sampo: Different kinds of games set different requirements for frame rates and often developers have their own strong preference to the 30 vs 60 fps debate. I personally really like 60 fps and think that it adds a lot to the overall gaming experience. The resolution question however is a bit more complicated. In some sense, HD -> 4k can be seen as a incremental change instead of a revolutionary one in terms of graphics fidelity and still it hogs *a lot* more GPU cycles. The developers have to decide between increasing the number of pixels on the screen or adding nicer effects. These are not easy decisions and there are no right answers.

Now when 4k is emerging and the iterative console generations are in the horizon, the developers might have to support all possible configurations. Old console & HD TV, new console & HD TV and new console & 4k TV. This means more work for the developers just to get all the configurations supported.

In addition it is also a matter of what people expect from the developers. For example, if someone buys a shiny new 4k TV and the console supports that, they will assume that the game supports it too.

"More TFLOPS is naturally nice, but feature to feature comparisons are not the most fruitful discussion to have. Things like CPU speed and memory bandwidth play a huge role as well, but in the end it’s the big picture that matters."

With both Sony and Microsoft confirming iterative console products in the next year or so, how is Umbra preparing itself for the next evolution in console gaming?

Sampo: As our product is so platform agnostic, we don’t have to do much whenever a new platform emerges. This hold true with the new console generations as well. With the developers having the difficult task of supporting these new platforms, I would imagine that our assistance is more valued than ever.

Unlike the current gen, Microsoft will apparently have the upper hand with the Scorpio. The console will feature 6TFLOPs of GPU compared to the reported 4.3 TFLOPs in PS4 NEO. As a developer what is your take on that difference?

Sampo: More TFLOPS is naturally nice, but feature to feature comparisons are not the most fruitful discussion to have. Things like CPU speed and memory bandwidth play a huge role as well, but in the end it’s the big picture that matters. I think that until both consoles are on the shelf of a store, the jury is still out on which has the upper hand.

Given that Sony and Microsoft both mandate that there can be no exclusive Neo and Scorpio games, don’t you think that the Neo and Scorpio are effectively redundant, given that there is not much you can do with that excess power?

Sampo: I hope that the developers have some say on what to do with the excess power. For example, they could have a separate HD version of the game with nicer effects for the new consoles. This brings the consoles closer to PC and it seems like this is what the platform holders are going after. This is obviously more work for the developers so they aren’t necessarily all that happy if this is what happens.

I know you can’t talk about some of the games you are working on but what is next on the pipleline for Umbra Software?

Jenni: Lots of amazing games in the pipeline with old partners and new ones, unfortunately can’t really say a lot about those just yet. Be sure to stay tuned though, as we do have few surprises coming up. As mentioned earlier, we are building a new product which adds new features to the existing one. We don’t have a set release date just yet, but news should be incoming pretty soon. I can say we’ll make especially VR & AR developers very happy with the new technology, as it allows even bigger data sets run super fast on any device. Obviously game developers will benefit greatly too.

It was lovely chatting with you. Is there anything else you want to tell us before we let you go?

Jenni: We are actively hiring skilled graphics programmers to work with the very latest technology and blockbuster games, so do apply if you’re up to the challenge.

Microsoft’s original promise for the Xbox One centered very heavily on the promise of the cloud. Cloud gaming, we were promised, would be the path to the next generation of video games, it would enable games unlike anything seen before, and it would more than compensate for the Xbox One’s weakness on the specs front relative to the PS4.

But three years into this generation, cloud assisted gaming remains a pipedream. No game so far has meaningfully utilized the cloud, and even Microsoft seems to have given up on the whole rigmarole, outside of the still pending release of Crackdown 3.

A lot of this, it has been suggested, is because cloud gaming was simply unfeasible at the present moment in time. While cloud assisted gaming will definitely be widespread in some nebulous future, in the here and now, it remains impractical to achieve at the moment.

We recently got to sit down with Sampo Lappalainen, COO of Umbra. During our chat, we decided to specifically ask him about cloud gaming and Xbox One, and whether or not he thought cloud gaming on Xbox One remains an unfulfilled promise. The question came in context of him telling us in a previous interview that Umbra would were working on integrating the cloud with Umbra. Since then, Microsoft has showcased the potential of that in a demo, which can be seen here. So does cloud gaming on Xbox remain unviable? Or has there been any progress on that front?

“Our focus on the cloud side has been on the tools side, where we have built a system for building our data very fast,” Sampo said. “Regarding the the game runtime side and cloud our focus is currently in building a system for providing and streaming 3D assets. This will make it possible to reduce load times and to build bigger and more detailed worlds. Cloud gaming on the current generation is not a pipe dream, it’s just a matter of building the technology and tools for making it happen. Amazon is investing a lot of effort into making this happen with their Lumberyard engine. I’m really looking forward to what they are up to!”

Of course, the question about consumer infrastructure necessary to make cloud gaming a reality remains up in the air- but it seems that there is potential in the idea still.

The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are both consoles marked by having relatively weaker CPUs, but more powerful GPUs- to the technology enthusiast, the workings of the consoles, and especially of the CPU and GPU in these consoles, can be fascinating. Which is why when we at GamingBolt got the chance to sit down with Sampo Lappalainen, COO of Umbra, we decided to ask him for his take on the PS4 and Xbox One GPUs, and the difference.”

We don’t actually consider ourselves huge GPU experts. That said, to my understanding one of the big differences between the two GPU’s is in how they support async compute, which makes it possible to use the GPU for various compute intensive engine operations — not always related to rendering,” Lappalainen said.”So from the perspective of game engine design, it is a challenge to take full advantage of the compute capabilities on both platforms as you have to write custom async compute pipelines for both consoles.”

He also talked about the CPU, noting that while a stronger CPU is always preferable, optimizing your software more than makes up for any CPU deficiencies that may otherwise exist. “Our software runs 100% on the CPU so the faster the chip, the better for us,” he admitted. “However, we pride for being platform agnostic and light in terms of CPU cycles consumed, PS4 and Xbox One are amongst the easy platforms we work with. Embedded devices like tablets, cell phones and the Hololens push the envelope of anything that requires processor cycles quite a bit, but we are well optimized on those too.”

It sounds like with proper software optimization, any platform specific quirks can be smoothed out, leading to a very efficient and streamlined development pipeline. In today’s era of multiplatform and platform agnostic development, things like that probably go a long way for most third party and perhaps even first party developers.

There has been a lot of debate regarding what works better for video games. Should developers prefer better frame rate over resolution or should they prefer pixels over smooth gameplay? These questions have given rise to the so called resolution and frame rate wars between PS4 and Xbox One. We recently raised this question in our interview with Umbra COO Sampo Lappalainen and according to him there is no right or wrong while selecting better frame rate over pixels and vice versa.

“Different kinds of games set different requirements for frame rates and often developers have their own strong preference to the 30 vs 60 fps debate. I personally really like 60 fps and think that it adds a lot to the overall gaming experience. The resolution question however is a bit more complicated. In some sense, HD -> 4k can be seen as a incremental change instead of a revolutionary one in terms of graphics fidelity and still it hogs *a lot* more GPU cycles. The developers have to decide between increasing the number of pixels on the screen or adding nicer effects. These are not easy decisions and there are no right answers,” he stated to GamingBolt.

He also stated that upcoming iterative consoles like the PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio will in fact increase the work load of developers given that they now need to take care of multiple resolutions for a single game.

“Now when 4k is emerging and the iterative console generations are in the horizon, the developers might have to support all possible configurations. Old console & HD TV, new console & HD TV and new console & 4k TV. This means more work for the developers just to get all the configurations supported. In addition it is also a matter of what people expect from the developers. For example, if someone buys a shiny new 4k TV and the console supports that, they will assume that the game supports it too,” he further added.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments section below.

The PS4 NEO and the Xbox One Scorpio do promise a new paradigm of console gaming and console game development- but there is the little problem that for all the extra power that these upgraded new consoles may have, there can be no games to properly utilize them. Microsoft and Sony have both, after all, mandated that there can be no exclusive Xbox One Scorpio and PS4 NEO games.

Doesn’t that, in a sense, make these new consoles a bit redundant? When GamingBolt had a chance to sit down with Umbra COO Sampo Lappalainen, we decided to ask him this very question, to pick his brain on the matter.

“I hope that the developers have some say on what to do with the excess power,” he said. “For example, they could have a separate HD version of the game with nicer effects for the new consoles. This brings the consoles closer to PC and it seems like this is what the platform holders are going after. This is obviously more work for the developers so they aren’t necessarily all that happy if this is what happens.”

At the current moment in time, it doesn’t seem like something like this will come to pass, however- right now, it seems as though Sony and Microsoft are both prioritizing not alienating the millions of customers who purchased the standard PS4 and Xbox One not even three years ago. Still, one has to hope that both companies realize the wisdom in having exclusives for these new systems- there’s not much point to them otherwise.

The Xbox One Scorpio turns the table on the PlayStation 4 in a lot of ways, but perhaps the most important way it does so, especially in terms of bragging rights, is that it will be more powerful than the PS4 NEO- negating the power advantage PlayStation has held over Xbox all generation.

When we got the chance to sit down and have a chat with Sampo Lappalainen, COO of Umbra, we asked him for his take on the upcoming Scorpio (6 TFLOPS), and its power advantage over the PS4 NEO (reportedly 4.3 TFLOPS). His response? There is more to power than just TFLOPs, and a console’s true advantage is in which one sells to customers better.

“More TFLOPs is naturally nice, but feature to feature comparisons are not the most fruitful discussion to have,”Lappalainen said. “Things like CPU speed and memory bandwidth play a huge role as well, but in the end it’s the big picture that matters. I think that until both consoles are on the shelf of a store, the jury is still out on which has the upper hand.”

That said, he also believes that Umbra is well positioned for the new consoles. “As our product is so platform agnostic, we don’t have to do much whenever a new platform emerges. This hold true with the new console generations as well. With the developers having the difficult task of supporting these new platforms, I would imagine that our assistance is more valued than ever.”

I think that on the whole, he is right- there is more to a console comparison than just one parameter like TFLOPs. However it is also true that the Scorpio will end up the more powerful console, after all.

Final Fantasy 15 promises to be a gorgeous looking game- that’s par for the course for the series, though, of course. Even Final Fantasy 13, which has long been considered to be the black sheep of the series, got one thing right, and that was just how gorgeous it managed to look.

Final Fantasy 15 will be similarly pretty, and one reason for that will be Square Enix working with Umbra to enhance the graphics of the game. Umbra specialize in creating an optimized database from 3D data, making the process of rendering 3D graphics more efficient. The technology has been used in some of the biggest games of this generation, including Destiny, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and the upcoming Quantum Break.

Of course, most of those other games use third party middleware solutions, unlike Final Fantasy 15, which has been developed on proprietary Square Enix tech- so it remains to be seen just how well Umbra will work here. But hey, the game looks amazing, so it probably all turned out well.

Final Fantasy 15 will launch this year on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

You might not know it, but Umbra is a major component of most popular video games that you play. It is a graphical rendering middleware, that is built into Unity, and is supported as a plug in in Unreal Engine 4, and it has already been used in some games you are probably already deeply familiar with, such as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Destiny, and the upcoming The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

A new version for the technology has been announced today, which should promise even more significant leaps and improvements in game graphics. The new version comes with the Umbra Cloud, which can perform graphical computations and calculations remotely, with the Umbra runtime then processing the data from the cloud as if it were running locally- bringing the potential of the cloud with the convenience of local rendering.

Jani Joki, Director of Engineering at Futuremark, said, “With Umbra Cloud, we have access to a cost-effective and extremely scalable computation infrastructure with zero setup effort. It has accelerated our work-flow as we develop our next generation of 3DMark benchmark tests.”

Umbra Cloud will be made available to all existing customers (the developers, you don’t need to worry about it), and it should help streamline their game development process a lot, especially for online titles.

Call of Duty games aren’t usually anything special, graphically speaking, but this year’s Advanced Warfare, which was helmed by Sledgehammer Games, and was the first game in the franchise built with the new consoles’ hardware as a target, is a pretty darn pretty game. It’s still not going to win any awards for being the best looking game on the market, or anything, but it does look pretty damn good, with some especially good character models and particle effects.

Well, if you’ve at all marveled at the graphics of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, you have Umbra Software to thank, in part, as they announced today that their software was licensed and used in the game, and enhanced its graphics to the level that we see them now.

This is not the first time that Umbra and Activision have partnered up- indeed, many of Activision’s previous games have utilized Umbra’s technology, although Advanced Warfare is definitely the prettiest game of the bunch.

Advanced Warfare launched on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and PC a week ago to general critical and commercial success.

A lot of new technologies were showcased at this year’s GDC. From ray tracing tech to new APIs, the event was the best in years. But if I have to point out one game developer who are pushing video game graphics to an all together different level, then it has to be CDProjekt. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt looks absolutely phenomenal and it wouldn’t have been possible without Umbra 3, a software that specializes in providing occlusion culling solutions to video game developers.

During GDC, Przemyslaw Czatrowski, Engine Programmer at CD Projekt RED and Jasin Bushnaief, Lead Programmer at Umbra Software gave almost an hour long presentation about Umbra 3. You can check out the entire presentation here or see a small snippet above.The video shows how CDProjekt have integrated Umbra 3 into their game engine, RedEngine 3, which has resulted into reduced memory usage and query times.

To know more about Umbra, you can check out our interview with them. Besides The Witcher 3, other games like Destiny and Killzone Shadow Fall have utilized Umbra.

Let us know your thoughts about Umbra in the comments section below.