4K Checkerboard in Battlefield 1 and Mass Effect

Talk by Graham Wihlidal (Frostbite Labs) at GDC 2017.

Checkerboard rendering is a relatively new technique, popularized recently by the introduction of the PlayStation 4 Pro. Many modern game engines are adding support for it right now, and in this talk, Graham will present an in-depth look at the new implementation in Frostbite, which is used in shipping titles like ‘Battlefield 1′ and ‘Mass Effect Andromeda’. Despite being conceptually simple, checkerboard rendering requires a deep integration into the post-processing chain, in particular temporal anti-aliasing, dynamic resolution scaling, and poses various challenges to existing effects. This presentation will cover the basics of checkerboard rendering, explain the impact on a game engine that powers a wide range of titles, and provide a detailed look at how the current implementation in Frostbite works, including topics like object id, alpha unrolling, gradient adjust, and a highly efficient depth resolve.

Intended Takeaway
Attendees will learn about checkerboard rendering, and how to implement it. This presentation will showcase an efficient checkerboard implementation on the PlayStation 4 Pro, as well as highlight the pitfalls and gotchas learned during the development process.