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[NXGamer] The Best Graphics/Technology of 2021

bargeparty

Member
I'm sorry, let me get this straight. So what you're saying is that because a game engine works as a game engine should and changes LODs based on distance to camera all of a sudden the graphics are not impressive?!? I get that you're a veteran in your field but it seems that real-time graphics are not your thing and they may never impress you. Even when real-time will look the way CGI looks now you'll still scoff at it since CGI will always be ahead due to its very nature so I still don't get what you're trying to prove here?!?

Please don't engage him.
 

Calverz

Member
I haven’t played ratchet. It sort of looked the same as the one I got free on psn? But with more particle effects??
Returnal doesn’t look that good imo. Once the action picks up the drs is quite severe.
Played re village demo and wasn’t blown away. The wolf guys looked a bit shit up close.
Forza horizon 5 looks quite similar to 4 for me.

The best looking game this gen so far is demons souls imo. But that is a remake.
 
For the record, what I said was a hyperbolic statement due to the fact that the fur at the playable camera distance indexes a very low and short curve primitive proxy (i.e. a lower LOD) and therefore making it drastically inferior to the ingame cinematics and/or forcing the camera to zoom into a wall (which NXGamer was trying to show) when pushing Ratchet against a wall and rotating the camera around to force a higher level of detail. The fur during normal gameplay is extremely short and very far away and difficult to see any details. It takes up a very small region of pixels to render the scene. This produces a light load on the GPU when rendering the fur and keeps framerates high. Couple that with an inaccurate hair shading model (shared by every other game engine) and no ambient occlusion for self-shadowing and the hair becomes unimpressive to me.

I argued that the game should have been judged on actual normal gameplay visuals and the default camera distance from the viewer and not cinematics or cutscenes (which both NXGamer and DF did). But knowing how many people are on these boards, they took my hyperbolic statement and used it to fuel their usual trolling whenever my thoughts don't align with theirs.

"I argued that the game should have been judged on actual normal gameplay visuals and the default camera distance from the viewer and not cinematics or cutscenes"

AND THE GAME WAS!
We all know that LOD exists, so fucking what?! Looks good in gameplay and even better in other moments.
You're just saying that you personally disagree, your personal opinion, that we don't agree.
 

JTCx

Member
I'm sorry, let me get this straight. So what you're saying is that because a game engine works as a game engine should and changes LODs based on distance to camera all of a sudden the graphics are not impressive?!? I get that you're a veteran in your field but it seems that real-time graphics are not your thing and they may never impress you. Even when real-time will look the way CGI looks now you'll still scoff at it since CGI will always be ahead due to its very nature so I still don't get what you're trying to prove here?!?
Its only unimpressive if its a Sony exclusive.
 

AMC124c41

Neo Member
Please don't engage him.
I don't usually post on here but I've seen his posts all over since I'm a bit of a graphics whore so I usually check out on graphics related / game engine related threads so I finally cracked and asked the question I wanted to ask, which is what's his point, his deal, the war he is waging. I'm trying to get what the point he's trying to make is, besides offline CGI looks better than real-time, because the response to that is: duuuuuuh!

You do make a good point though about he futility of me posting, there's a reason why I've been skulking these boards for years but rarely ever post...its hardly ever productive :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
I'd give it to R&C too but it has large peaks and troughs especially for such a short game. There is a ton of room for improvement going forward.

The open-ish world levels look pretty crap in general imo, this one in particular:
UUyRFtw.jpg

WNl0Air.jpg

te9lffH.jpg


There is stuff that is SSR instead of RT that really spoils the look of certain areas:
85vHOeV.jpg
mztitbt.jpg

LeHoCgX.jpg


I don't think the fur is particularly impressive (in game at least):

42apshi.jpg

aaRZeit.jpg


And there is definitely some bullshotting going on in photo-mode even if it is just boosting the res to 4k and moving out shadows:

In-game:
FqCHeXA.jpg


Photo-mode:
e90Dvlo.jpg


I do really like Forza but the AA used can really spoil things especially in the jungle scenes.
H7zZ5NY.gif
 

bargeparty

Member
I haven’t played ratchet. It sort of looked the same as the one I got free on psn? But with more particle effects??
Returnal doesn’t look that good imo. Once the action picks up the drs is quite severe.
Played re village demo and wasn’t blown away. The wolf guys looked a bit shit up close.
Forza horizon 5 looks quite similar to 4 for me.

The best looking game this gen so far is demons souls imo. But that is a remake.

Are you talking about the PS4 Ratchet? This one is miles and miles better (at least visually, gameplay improves probably as well)
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
For the record, what I said was a hyperbolic statement due to the fact that the fur at the playable camera distance indexes a very low and short curve primitive proxy (i.e. a lower LOD) and therefore making it drastically inferior to the ingame cinematics and/or forcing the camera to zoom into a wall (which NXGamer was trying to show) when pushing Ratchet against a wall and rotating the camera around to force a higher level of detail. The fur during normal gameplay is extremely short and very far away and difficult to see any details. It takes up a very small region of pixels to render the scene. This produces a light load on the GPU when rendering the fur and keeps framerates high. Couple that with an inaccurate hair shading model (shared by every other game engine) and no ambient occlusion for self-shadowing and the hair becomes unimpressive to me.

I argued that the game should have been judged on actual normal gameplay visuals and the default camera distance from the viewer and not cinematics or cutscenes (which both NXGamer and DF did). But knowing how many people are on these boards, they took my hyperbolic statement and used it to fuel their usual trolling whenever my thoughts don't align with theirs.
Be Quiet Drag Queen GIF by Jinkx and DeLa Holiday
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
You lose pixel density per object the further away it is from the camera, no need to be rendering a cgi quality model at this point - but zoom in and the top model should be instantly available and rendered within the frame budget. You don’t want to lose half your rendering time to the main character when they only take up 5% of the screen and vice versa.
Not sure if I agree. The character model in third person games is the focal point and needs to get the most love imo. Especially in games that are wasting so much of the PS5 power on rendering native 4k pixels.

I posted the Ellie shot earlier. I noticed it immediately in the trailer. I notice it in gameplay all the time. I think one of the Sony programmers mentioned how the SSD and IO will let them load textures and higher LOD models just as you turn the camera around. Well, id like to see that applied to faces so right when I turn the camera over, the best quality model is available and shown on screen.

Or at the very least, have hero lighting on at all times on the character.
 

bargeparty

Member
Not sure if I agree. The character model in third person games is the focal point and needs to get the most love imo. Especially in games that are wasting so much of the PS5 power on rendering native 4k pixels.

I posted the Ellie shot earlier. I noticed it immediately in the trailer. I notice it in gameplay all the time. I think one of the Sony programmers mentioned how the SSD and IO will let them load textures and higher LOD models just as you turn the camera around. Well, id like to see that applied to faces so right when I turn the camera over, the best quality model is available and shown on screen.

Or at the very least, have hero lighting on at all times on the character.

I thought we talked about this already?
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I'd give it to R&C too but it has large peaks and troughs especially for such a short game. There is a ton of room for improvement going forward.

The open-ish world levels look pretty crap in general imo, this one in particular:
UUyRFtw.jpg
While the second open world section looks bad, i thought the one with the flying dragon looked pretty good most of the time.

Those screens dont do it justice.

WKSSqlm.gif

6gW6Pxw.gif
 

noise36

Member
hmm its an interesting one. I finished R&C on ps5, enjoyed it and thought it looked good, but also cant shake the feeling like its being massively overrated graphically.

Lots of the game doesn't look amazing, but there are parts which are S teir, I think its probably just the high level of polish, the many tricks they use and the art style that has people rating it so highly.
 

Arioco

Member
I don't know what you're trying to show between these two.


He's trying to show that some reflections dissappear when they're off screen (among other artifacts) , which means they are in fact screen-space reflections instead of ray-traced reflections. Nothing too surprising to be honest, Miles Morales also uses SSR reflections for pools of water and it's RT implementations was the best on consoles until Ratched launched and hugely improve the resolution of the reflections (x4 IIRC, no idea how Insomniac did to increase the rays budged so dramatically).
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
Not sure if I agree. The character model in third person games is the focal point and needs to get the most love imo. Especially in games that are wasting so much of the PS5 power on rendering native 4k pixels.

Exactly. Someone gets it! The character should be a LOT closer to the view (ala Gears, HZD or God of War, etc..). They intentionally made the camera so far away from the character to save on frame budget. It's quite obvious. I can see more fur detail in the main character of Biomutant than R&C.

I posted the Ellie shot earlier. I noticed it immediately in the trailer. I notice it in gameplay all the time. I think one of the Sony programmers mentioned how the SSD and IO will let them load textures and higher LOD models just as you turn the camera around. Well, id like to see that applied to faces so right when I turn the camera over, the best quality model is available and shown on screen.

Or at the very least, have hero lighting on at all times on the character.
Yup.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
I'm sorry, let me get this straight. So what you're saying is that because a game engine works as a game engine should and changes LODs based on distance to camera all of a sudden the graphics are not impressive?!?
No. I'm saying the fur is SO far away from the viewer that there is little details to show compared to other 3rd person games where the hero character covers a LOT more screenspace. I can't possibly judge a game's details if the character is so far away that I can't see those beautiful strands of hair like I can see in the cinematics. Take a look at Black Myth and it's furred characters and see if you can tell more detail than Ratchet's character.

I get that you're a veteran in your field but it seems that real-time graphics are not your thing and they may never impress you. Even when real-time will look the way CGI looks now you'll still scoff at it since CGI will always be ahead due to its very nature so I still don't get what you're trying to prove here?!?
I do realtime graphics as well... if your only take away is that this distance is acceptable while every other 3rd person game has a much closer view of the hero character, then I don't know what to tell you. It's not about comparing it to film even though that was completely a "thing" when the game first came out ironically enough.
 
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recursive

Member
I'm curious as to what graphical updates Flight Sim got in 2021. I read about a performance upgrade but nothing about a visual update.

Edit: By graphics update I mean something similar to what happened with Metros new lighting system for example.
I played some flight sim on my XSX. Looks great from the sky but when you get to lower altitudes the illusion is really broken with low res textures and copy pasta low polygon houses and other features. It is also not a smooth framerate, numerous hitches. Personally I can't see how someone can argue this would be a contender for top graphics on console.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
hmm its an interesting one. I finished R&C on ps5, enjoyed it and thought it looked good, but also cant shake the feeling like its being massively overrated graphically.

Lots of the game doesn't look amazing, but there are parts which are S teir, I think its probably just the high level of polish, the many tricks they use and the art style that has people rating it so highly.
Oh brother. Be prepared....
 

Shmunter

Member
Exactly. Someone gets it! The character should be a LOT closer to the view (ala Gears, HZD or God of War, etc..). They intentionally made the camera so far away from the character to save on frame budget. It's quite obvious. I can see more fur detail in the main character of Biomutant than R&C.


Yup.
Design brief for R&C -

1 - Character distance to camera
2 - everything else around distance to main character

😂
 

bender

What time is it?
Exactly. Someone gets it! The character should be a LOT closer to the view (ala Gears, HZD or God of War, etc..). They intentionally made the camera so far away from the character to save on frame budget. It's quite obvious. I can see more fur detail in the main character of Biomutant than R&C.

It's almost as if the games you listed are in a different genre than R&C.

giphy.gif
 

AMC124c41

Neo Member
No. I'm saying the fur is SO far away from the viewer that there is little details to show compared to other 3rd person games where the hero character covers a LOT more screenspace. I can't possibly judge a game's details if the character is so far away that I can't see those beautiful strands of hair like I can see in the cinematics. Take a look at Black Myth and it's furred characters and see if you can tell more detail than Ratchet's character.


I do realtime graphics as well... if your only take away is that this distance is acceptable while every other 3rd person game has a much closer view of the hero character, then I don't know what to tell you. It's not about comparing it to film even though that was completely a "thing" when the game first came out ironically enough.
So, now you have an issue with the distance of the camera to the player character and decided that is cheating. Have you played this game? Having an always over the shoulder cam would ruin it. The camera is not a technical choice but a design choice and that is painfully obvious since the camera does get close if you aim your weapons and guess what the FPS does not tank.
This is pointless anyway, I have no idea why I'm posting. Best of luck with the endless arguments, I'm out.
 

Shmunter

Member
Fuck me. I hate having the main character glued to the camera. I hated the new GOW because of that. You can’t see shit playing but I guess it looks cool on screenshots. Fuck gameplay, am I right?
I’m not even going to accuse vfx of trolling. I think it’s just common stupid. Well not so common, its a whole new level..

“It’s not acceptable the distance to character while every other 3rd person game has a much closer view”. Wtf? 🤪

The cam even pulls in over the shoulder when you zoom aim using left trigger. 😂

When vfx dies, his body will be donated to science fiction.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
So, now you have an issue with the distance of the camera to the player character and decided that is cheating.
You are adding words to my mouth. I never said it was cheating but you made mention of LODs. If you have a MIP map of a 4k texture, you don't want to be seeing the 512x512 level mip all the time do you? It's ALSO a performance enhancement. Any developer would know that.

Have you played this game?
I've owned the game before yes.

Having an always over the shoulder cam would ruin it.
Those 3rd person games aren't all over the shoulder. There are many 3rd person games that have a closer view.

The camera is not a technical choice but a design choice and that is painfully obvious since the camera does get close if you aim your weapons and guess what the FPS does not tank.
I said it's a good optimization showing a smaller proxy all the time. If the fur did take up more screenspace, there is no way you can declare that no increase in ms would happen 100% of the gameloop. Unless you are the developer that made the game and have tested it.

My point still stands. You CAN'T SEE any of the details of the fur in normal camera view like you can see in the cinematics. It is MY OPINION that the fur still looks crude and unrealistic shading-wise in the cinematics and looks worse playing the game with a lower proxy LOD fur for nearly the entire game. Why is it that I have to keep repeating the same thing? It's like you guys are dissecting everything I say in order to steer away from the damn topic at hand. Get over that I don't find the fur rendering impressive. It's not that hard.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
I’m not even going to accuse vfx of trolling. I think it’s just common stupid. Well not so common, its a whole new level..

“It’s not acceptable the distance to character while every other 3rd person game has a much closer view”. Wtf? 🤪

The cam even pulls in over the shoulder when you zoom aim using left trigger. 😂

When vfx dies, his body will be donated to science fiction.
You and Me are always at odds.. You find every fiber in you to try and make me look stupid despite me knowing way more than you and I get paid for it too. You should just stick to ignoring me like I've done you.

Whatever science fiction I live in.. it sure does put me at the front lines of developing graphics for a living...:D
 

Shmunter

Member
You and Me are always at odds.. You find every fiber in you to try and make me look stupid despite me knowing way more than you and I get paid for it too. You should just stick to ignoring me like I've done you.

Whatever science fiction I live in.. it sure does put me at the front lines of developing graphics for a living...:D
The fact that you have to point out how great you are just ties a nice ribbon around it all doesn’t it.

The nonsense you say, holy moly.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Exactly. Someone gets it! The character should be a LOT closer to the view (ala Gears, HZD or God of War, etc..). They intentionally made the camera so far away from the character to save on frame budget. It's quite obvious. I can see more fur detail in the main character of Biomutant than R&C.
Well I dont know about that. I dont want every game to have the character closer to the camera. In fact on PC, I play most games at 100 FOV because I dont like cameras too close to the character. It's primarily why I recently bought Horizon on PC.

Also, they didnt make the camera far away in ratchet to save on the frame budget. They did it because thats how ratchet has always been since the PS2 era for gameplay reasons.

Here is the very first game. The camera is nearly identical.



Also, increasing the FOV on PC increases the rendering load so having the camera that far back in ratchet actually means they are rendering MORE of the world so they are actually not saving any performance. They are just prioritizing rendering the world over rendering fur.

Lastly, they weren't short on GPU resources to fit their frame budget as evident by the 40 fps mode they released after launch. The game was running at well over 40 fps at native 4k so if they wanted to, they simply couldve increased fur detail or whatever else they wanted to. I think shooting for native 4k was just a dumb thing to do. The game wouldve looked far better as a 1440p game like Demon Souls or the UE5 demo. I did not expect Insomniac to waste half of the GPU on rendering pixels instead of increasing visual fidelity.
 

Lethal01

Member
The character should be a LOT closer to the view (ala Gears, HZD or God of War, etc..).
They intentionally made the camera so far away from the character to save on frame budget. It's quite obvious.

This is dumb even for you, There are very good game design reasons for having the character further away, and since you've played the game it should be pretty clear why they would make that decision. It's not some uncommon thing that is "obviously" done to save on performance.

Tell me you can take a step back and see how ridiculous that claim is.

despite me knowing way more than you and I get paid for it too.
Whatever science fiction I live in.. it sure does put me at the front lines of developing graphics for a living

You always choose the moments when you are making the biggest fool of yourself to try to talk about how much of a veteran you are.
 
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Edgelord79

Gold Member
I’ll take a stab at it. The light emissive and physical nature of the abundant particle system is at levels not seen before.
Interesting thanks. Forgive my ignorance, but does this mean that there in essence just more shiny particles on the screen at once?
 
I was expecting something like this for current gen lol



Edit: its funny watching that back some of the environments look inferior to UE5s nanite environments. However the chracter models, tentacle,string and particle effects look a gen a head over something like returnal.

However this made in UE5, so there is still hope


I was expecting full 3D on the Sega CD back in the days :-/
 
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