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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
THANK YOOOOU

God I thought it was over that even slimysnake has been broken by dogshit next gen standards but now I have someone who also sees the light
lol this looks like a pretty good leap to me.

EuKgV24.gif
 
lol this looks like a pretty good leap to me.

EuKgV24.gif
It took me a second to discern which is which but uhhh I’m gonna go with nah still

Compare Arkham city to Arkham knight. That’s a generational leap

Compare shadow of colossus PS4 remake to demon souls PS5. That’s a leap.

This is GOW to Ragnarok. This is uncharted 2 to uncharted 3. If it were on the same generation I’d be impressed
 
Look I'm doing my best to be open minded with different opinions but c'mon man


Justin Timberlake What GIF
They took the daytime lighting model. And changed it. So it’s the same looking game. With a different lighting tint. That’s how it comes across in this gif

Now I know, it’s more technically advanced blah blah blah but purely visually on a little gif it can escape one
 
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setoman

Member
lol this looks like a pretty good leap to me.

EuKgV24.gif

Well for one that is SM1.
If we want to do this comparison then we have to use Miles Morale. Heck even the PS4 Pro version.
But I would recommend using PC version of Miles.
But what I see in your screen is improvement to lighting and addition of specular highlight.
But other than that if everything else were equal (textures, building density, added trees, etc), it would look the same.

This is why I say compare using Miles.


Nevertheless, I actually like one of the scene in SM2 and its the party wood interior building. Not that its next-gen or anything. But it matches the quality of ND4 and TLOUS2 interior. Unfortunately other interiors in the game are not up to this quality.
 
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setoman

Member
See I dont agree that you need a complete engine overhaul like going from UE4 to UE5 to get better lighting. There are plenty of UE4 demos that have better lighting than the kite demo and the other video you posted. UE4 Rebirth demo and the Australia demo have far better lighting than anything we have seen in UE5 titles.

y3zmgFK.jpg



I think what UE5 brings is dynamic GI. Stuff that they took out of UE4 back in the day. However, baked lighting in UE4 can produce some stunning results.
So I should note I'm not referring to art-viz. Because most art-viz use a god-ly amount of rays (100+) for their bakes. With no lightmap compression (which would take up alot of memory). Its why they look so good. However even then the rebirth demo wasn't actually using baked lighting which makes it even more impressive.

It was using dynamic lighting (atleast all the outside shots) and not even anything fancy, just a good skydome & skylight setup with nice post-processing. But honestly the biggest difference between this and the kite demo is just the cinematic assets, post processing and art direction.
 
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eh. Developers never make games just for PCs. last gen PC games were held back by a 1.3 tflops x1 gpu and a 1.8 tflops ps4 gpu. they targeted 900p for x1 and 1080p for the PS4. the rest of it was just used for 60 fps and higher settings. there was never crysis style built from the ground up game on pc. even cyberpunk wasted all the extra horsepower chasing Ray tracing instead of upping asset quality we see in the infiltrator screenshot.
Performance is not holding back PC games from looking like Infiltrator, it's a cost problem. Look carefully at that Infiltrator demo, things like the animations, visual effects, textures ect, that stuff takes man hours.

You can not take a Ratchet and Clank team and go develop a title with Matrix quality, it doesn't work that way. The economics for Ratchet and Clank and a title with Matrix quality is two totally different levels. By the time we get to Matrix quality I can guarantee you we will be paying more than $70 for a retail game. This is why you won't be seeing CGI whatever no time soon in retail games even if we had the hardware 15-20 years from now; You need an astronomical amount of man hours to pull off something like say one of the robots in a Transformers film from a production pov, one of those robots literally probably have more moving parts than an entire AAA animation library in a retail game.
 

alloush

Member
I don't believe the traversal speed is primarily because of technical or hardware reasons, too fast and they make the world feel really small and possibly screw up the set piece moments. If the first can handle this i'm sure insomniac could have pushed the boat out further if they wanted.


Wow this is awesome, look how fast and smooth the swinging is in that video. This is the kinda swinging I was hoping for. But yeah I am pretty sure it is a design choice not to go all out guns blazing with the traversal speeds, will make the map feel hella tiny. But something like this video would be awesome.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Performance is not holding back PC games from looking like Infiltrator, it's a cost problem. Look carefully at that Infiltrator demo, things like the animations, visual effects, textures ect, that stuff takes man hours.

You can not take a Ratchet and Clank team and go develop a title with Matrix quality, it doesn't work that way. The economics for Ratchet and Clank and a title with Matrix quality is two totally different levels. By the time we get to Matrix quality I can guarantee you we will be paying more than $70 for a retail game. This is why you won't be seeing CGI whatever no time soon in retail games even if we had the hardware 15-20 years from now; You need an astronomical amount of man hours to pull off something like say one of the robots in a Transformers film from a production pov, one of those robots literally probably have more moving parts than an entire AAA animation library in a retail game.
But Matrix was made by 80 devs in 8 months?

Your screenshot doesnt really have any animations aside from some motion capture done in mocap studio. Your screenshot looks amazing for two reasons. The asset quality and lighting. The assets can now be imported into UE5 with no need for further tweaking, lod management etc. UE5 also bought Quixel megascans and made the entire library of assets available to everyone. matrix was made with those assets. The lighting will require artists but it wont take any longer than it currently does. If anything with lumen and realtime GI, it will be far easier for devs to go and tweak it, costing fewer resources and less time overall.

Ratchet was made by a team of what 200 people? maybe 300 assuming the other 200 were working on miles. In 2 years. Matrix was made by 80 devs in 8 months. If Insomniac had access to quixel megascans, they wouldnt have to rely on their own capture of NYC from literally 2014. The problem is that they went ahead and did ratchet after Spiderman 1 instead of working on upgrading their models and assets.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Well for one that is SM1.
If we want to do this comparison then we have to use Miles Morale. Heck even the PS4 Pro version.
But I would recommend using PC version of Miles.
But what I see in your screen is improvement to lighting and addition of specular highlight.
But other than that if everything else were equal (textures, building density, added trees, etc), it would look the same.

This is why I say compare using Miles.
Nah, this is from the PC version posted by Him666 above. It has all the enhancements from the Miles game which were included in the PS5 remaster this PC port is built off of. I was watching his video and it hit me just how big of an upgrade this 720p blurry twitter capture was compared to the 4k 60 fps video of the PC version of Spiderman 1.

The day time lighting looked really bad in Spiderman 1. Even max out with RT effects on PC so its great to see them improve SOMETHING. Look I completely understand I am reaching here. I have no problems admitting that they phoned in upgrading their asset quality for buildings, but the lighting upgrade is there. Is it next gen? no, but its a decent upgrade.

Nevertheless, I actually like one of the scene in SM2 and its the party wood interior building. Not that its next-gen or anything. But it matches the quality of ND4 and TLOUS2 interior. Unfortunately other interiors in the game are not up to this quality.
I was a big fan of Spiderman's interiors especially with ray tracing. Miles set most of its story missions indoors and utilized reflections in almost every area. I know everyone here hates mirror like reflections but i loved the depth the reflections added to each scene.

FU3T6uNWAAAD_EE


Nothing ive seen of spiderman 2's interiors have impressed me but i havent watched the leaked footage so its good to hear that they look better in the final game.

It was using dynamic lighting (atleast all the outside shots) and not even anything fancy, just a good skydome & skylight setup with nice post-processing. But honestly the biggest difference between this and the kite demo is just the cinematic assets, post processing and art direction.
The rocks are just so much more detailed in the Rebirth demo. Same goes for the Australia demo which is something you can download and play on your PC. That guy used his own photos to make those assets. Looks a gen ahead of the kite demo despite being on the same engine. I think devs just need to increase the poly budgets to use higher quality assets and we can get to those UE4 rebirth, infiltrator and australia like visual fidelity. I mean even the Unity Forest of the Dead demo i linked above has way better foliage than ANY game released so far and that thing could run on a PS4 Pro. Just 2x more increase in foliage quality gets you so much more bang for the buck than 2x increase in pixel quality.

Anyway, maybe you are right and the reason why insomniac didnt use higher poly buildings was because their engine had to be upgraded and they didnt have time. Maybe their engine isnt as flexible as UE4, and obviously they dont have thousands of people working nonstop for a decade to improve UE4 like Epic did. Thats why i kinda hoped that Sony studios just ditched their own engines and either go with Decima or UE5. just focus on making games rather than upgrading each individual engine then failing and turning in a game with last gen assets despite having all the GPU horsepower in the world at their fingertips.
 
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Turk1993

GAFs #1 source for car graphic comparisons
Looks like SM2 has the best character lighting of any video game. It's even more impressive than HFW setup
Im hyped man, i don't enter SM2 threads because i don't want to get spoiled. But just seeing a small bit of footage here and there, it looked really good.
 

shamoomoo

Member
They took the daytime lighting model. And changed it. So it’s the same looking game. With a different lighting tint. That’s how it comes across in this gif

Now I know, it’s more technically advanced blah blah blah but purely visually on a little gif it can escape one
That means you noticed a difference, even if there was a difference in geometry you saw a discrepancy of the color palette.
 
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setoman

Member
Nah, this is from the PC version posted by Him666 above. It has all the enhancements from the Miles game which were included in the PS5 remaster this PC port is built off of. I was watching his video and it hit me just how big of an upgrade this 720p blurry twitter capture was compared to the 4k 60 fps video of the PC version of Spiderman 1.

The day time lighting looked really bad in Spiderman 1. Even max out with RT effects on PC so its great to see them improve SOMETHING. Look I completely understand I am reaching here. I have no problems admitting that they phoned in upgrading their asset quality for buildings, but the lighting upgrade is there. Is it next gen? no, but its a decent upgrade.
Even with remasters, the lighting stays mostly the same even when appendix features are tacked on like ray traced reflection. With the SM1 remaster they changed the TOD in some scenes a-bit but the lighting is just very very slightly better, just a tiny bit better. Heck it might be a post process over exposure setting that's causing the slight visual change. Devs usually don't re-bake the lighting with cranked up settings for a remaster.

To kind-of paint the picture how different SM1 and Miles Morale are lighting wise.
Say you have Game 1 interior rooms having an average of 10 light sources.
Then you have Game 2's interior room 2 years later having an average of 30 light sources.

When you eventually remaster Game 1, you're not gonna go into every environment and add 20 extra light sources and re-bake.

So Game 1 will never match the quality of Game 2 interiors no matter what unless you actually go and redo each environment. At that point you are closer to a remake and not a remaster.

However, the comparison in your GIF is of a different location and not the same TOD I believe. But we will see Monday when the first hour is allowed.

But I'm not saying there wasn't a noticeable lighting update. There clearly is.


I was a big fan of Spiderman's interiors especially with ray tracing. Miles set most of its story missions indoors and utilized reflections in almost every area. I know everyone here hates mirror like reflections but i loved the depth the reflections added to each scene.

FU3T6uNWAAAD_EE


Nothing ive seen of spiderman 2's interiors have impressed me but i havent watched the leaked footage so its good to hear that they look better in the final game.
Yeah the party interior is pretty nice from what i saw and characters in it were well lit. That particular scene is definitely up there with ND4 and TLOUS2 in terms of environment detail. Definitely looks significantly better than the picture above.
The rocks are just so much more detailed in the Rebirth demo. Same goes for the Australia demo which is something you can download and play on your PC. That guy used his own photos to make those assets. Looks a gen ahead of the kite demo despite being on the same engine. I think devs just need to increase the poly budgets to use higher quality assets and we can get to those UE4 rebirth, infiltrator and australia like visual fidelity. I mean even the Unity Forest of the Dead demo i linked above has way better foliage than ANY game released so far and that thing could run on a PS4 Pro. Just 2x more increase in foliage quality gets you so much more bang for the buck than 2x increase in pixel quality.
True the rebirth demo used cinematic megascan assets
Anyway, maybe you are right and the reason why insomniac didnt use higher poly buildings was because their engine had to be upgraded and they didnt have time. Maybe their engine isnt as flexible as UE4, and obviously they dont have thousands of people working nonstop for a decade to improve UE4 like Epic did. Thats why i kinda hoped that Sony studios just ditched their own engines and either go with Decima or UE5. just focus on making games rather than upgrading each individual engine then failing and turning in a game with last gen assets despite having all the GPU horsepower in the world at their fingertips.
I will say this though. The amount of people working on features that are core to UE is very small. The "thousands" are working on things that are no core to UE or are support staffs. For example automotive, virtual production, aviation, etc. Once that fortnight money started running dry they had to fire most of these people.

there were around 5-7 engineers on the Nanite team and 7-10 engineers on the Lumen team.
Not saying that's the only team that matters cause they do own companies like 3Lateral focused on character rendering.
They also have a Niagara particle team and physics chaos team that are also single digits. The point is, these huge companies (Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft, Insomniac, Naughty Dog, etc) with 500-1000+ employees could push towards matching and even exceeding Unreal's core features.
 

setoman

Member
My biggest disappointment in the leaks is just how much PS4 game art the boss match has. Instead of a next-gen level boss match, we end up with a subpar PS4 level boss match.

I expected something in the vicinity of this for the boss but sand instead of water
Its almost like the next gen physics and vfx (simulation) that we expected the NEW CPU facilitate, hasn't happened.
I don't even think the fog was using volumetric fog.


And its not like we don't have examples of it being possible.
Imagine instead of terrible looking PS4 game art in the first mission. You instead have sand simulation.
Something like this but instead of water you have sand
Devs are no longer being creative, they are just phoning it in. Its ridiculous.





EDIT: click to open up video of popcorn man
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
My biggest disappointment in the leaks is just how much PS4 game art the boss match has. Instead of a next-gen level boss match, we end up with a subpar PS4 level boss match.

I expected something in the vicinity of this for the boss but sand instead of water
Its almost like the next gen physics and vfx (simulation) that we expected the NEW CPU facilitate, hasn't happened.
I don't even think the fog was using volumetric fog.


And its not like we don't have examples of it being possible.
Imagine instead of terrible looking PS4 game art in the first mission. You instead have sand simulation.
Something like this but instead of water you have sand
Devs are no longer being creative, they are just phoning it in. Its ridiculous.





EDIT: click to open up video of popcorn man

yeah, the physics stuff has been completely phoned in by devs for almost 18 years now. its like they got their hands on the PS360 era hardware and decided graphics + open world >>>>>> interactivity, AI and destruction.

A dirty secret no one talks about is that there was a shift in the gaming world order at the start of that generation. Some developers who were famous in prior generations lost their A tier status and other developers with a more cinematic background became top tier. Not to insult ND, Bioware or KojiPro, but their success shifted the balance and all of a sudden developers who were playing around with physics, destruction, and AI had to leave it all behind to try and compete with the cinematic guys. The start of that gen had several developers pushing physics. You had Half Life 2 The Orange Box continuing the physics based gameplay of HL2. Fear revolutionized AI in 2006. Crysis revolutionized the PC space in 2007, but after Far Cry 2 and GTA4 in 2008, any semblence of physics and interactivity was left behind. AI in 2023 is still worse than AI in Fear 1. no game other than Zelda ToTK has even come close to matching the physics in Half Life 2. Rockstar threw out all physics in GTA5 and turned RDR2 into an Naughty Dog game. Its a masterpiece but its not what Rockstar used to be.

Crysis 2, and Fear 2 broke my heart. Downgraded everything from AI to physics to level design to appease these CoD gamers trying to appeal to the cinematic gamer crowd as well. of course, they werent any good at it and now those devs are gone. And all we have left are the guys who were never interested in physics, destruction, AI or any kind of interactivity aside from QTEs. Those devs are long gone. Now that the tech is finally here, no one is utilizing it because the top tier devs of today dont really want to make games like that.

I dont know if you've played ragnorak, but they shackled themselves at every turn in favor of more intimate story moments and emotional beats instead of pushing the envelope in terms of setpieces and boss fights. Their priorities are simply different now. Same goes for insomniac. They have never been a studio thats pushed boundries or even attempted any level of physics. they attracted a different kind of talent, one that wants to tell stories instead of push physics.
 

alloush

Member
yeah, the physics stuff has been completely phoned in by devs for almost 18 years now. its like they got their hands on the PS360 era hardware and decided graphics + open world >>>>>> interactivity, AI and destruction.

A dirty secret no one talks about is that there was a shift in the gaming world order at the start of that generation. Some developers who were famous in prior generations lost their A tier status and other developers with a more cinematic background became top tier. Not to insult ND, Bioware or KojiPro, but their success shifted the balance and all of a sudden developers who were playing around with physics, destruction, and AI had to leave it all behind to try and compete with the cinematic guys. The start of that gen had several developers pushing physics. You had Half Life 2 The Orange Box continuing the physics based gameplay of HL2. Fear revolutionized AI in 2006. Crysis revolutionized the PC space in 2007, but after Far Cry 2 and GTA4 in 2008, any semblence of physics and interactivity was left behind. AI in 2023 is still worse than AI in Fear 1. no game other than Zelda ToTK has even come close to matching the physics in Half Life 2. Rockstar threw out all physics in GTA5 and turned RDR2 into an Naughty Dog game. Its a masterpiece but its not what Rockstar used to be.

Crysis 2, and Fear 2 broke my heart. Downgraded everything from AI to physics to level design to appease these CoD gamers trying to appeal to the cinematic gamer crowd as well. of course, they werent any good at it and now those devs are gone. And all we have left are the guys who were never interested in physics, destruction, AI or any kind of interactivity aside from QTEs. Those devs are long gone. Now that the tech is finally here, no one is utilizing it because the top tier devs of today dont really want to make games like that.

I dont know if you've played ragnorak, but they shackled themselves at every turn in favor of more intimate story moments and emotional beats instead of pushing the envelope in terms of setpieces and boss fights. Their priorities are simply different now. Same goes for insomniac. They have never been a studio thats pushed boundries or even attempted any level of physics. they attracted a different kind of talent, one that wants to tell stories instead of push physics.
I wish I could like this post a billion times. As a guy who has been advocating for better physics, AI and animations since forever this post hit hard for me. You hit the nail on the head with this one.

I cannot recall the last time we saw any advancements in physics, AI or animations, I really can’t. What’s funny is the focus has fully shifted to graphics because graphics sell games but the irony in that is beyond laughable. The focus shifted to graphics and yet graphics have also staled and haven’t advanced the way it should of, which begs the question: what the hell do devs focus on, then? If physics, ai and animations are the least of the devs’ concerns and graphics haven’t improved at all in recent years then what the hell are they spending their time, money, resources, tech on?
 
My biggest disappointment in the leaks is just how much PS4 game art the boss match has. Instead of a next-gen level boss match, we end up with a subpar PS4 level boss match.

I expected something in the vicinity of this for the boss but sand instead of water
Its almost like the next gen physics and vfx (simulation) that we expected the NEW CPU facilitate, hasn't happened.
I don't even think the fog was using volumetric fog.


And its not like we don't have examples of it being possible.
Imagine instead of terrible looking PS4 game art in the first mission. You instead have sand simulation.
Something like this but instead of water you have sand
Devs are no longer being creative, they are just phoning it in. Its ridiculous.





EDIT: click to open up video of popcorn man

That would’ve required effort and maybe… *GASP* no 60fps! That means manchildren on social media and gaming forums and blogs say mean things about your game
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I wish I could like this post a billion times. As a guy who has been advocating for better physics, AI and animations since forever this post hit hard for me. You hit the nail on the head with this one.

I cannot recall the last time we saw any advancements in physics, AI or animations, I really can’t. What’s funny is the focus has fully shifted to graphics because graphics sell games but the irony in that is beyond laughable. The focus shifted to graphics and yet graphics have also staled and haven’t advanced the way it should of, which begs the question: what the hell do devs focus on, then? If physics, ai and animations are the least of the devs’ concerns and graphics haven’t improved at all in recent years then what the hell are they spending their time, money, resources, tech on?
Longer games i think. All the effort is put into content. 50-100 hours of content. Not boundry pushing setpiece content or boss fights. Just more of the basic combat loop repurposed into side quests and extra content. Otherwise, I honestly don’t see why games like hfw and gow ragnorak took 5 years to make.

So they are working, just on things they deem important. And physics or those simulations above are simply not a priority for them.

Everyone says graphics are what’s causing game development costs to rise and i laugh because graphics have stagnated since 2013. When i point out Matrix and other ue5 demos done by one person, people say i don’t know anything about game development but just the other day in the next Gen racing wars thread, someone posted a rain mod in a pc racing sim that looks better than drive club rain. Complete with windshield puddle physics. It was apparently done by one person. In his spare time. Meanwhile multi billion dollar companies with hundreds of devs couldn’t add it in the next gen versions of gt7 and forza. Again, priorities.

Getting this stuff in isn’t hard. It just needs people willing to do it.
 

alloush

Member
Longer games i think. All the effort is put into content. 50-100 hours of content. Not boundry pushing setpiece content or boss fights. Just more of the basic combat loop repurposed into side quests and extra content. Otherwise, I honestly don’t see why games like hfw and gow ragnorak took 5 years to make.

So they are working, just on things they deem important. And physics or those simulations above are simply not a priority for them.

Everyone says graphics are what’s causing game development costs to rise and i laugh because graphics have stagnated since 2013. When i point out Matrix and other ue5 demos done by one person, people say i don’t know anything about game development but just the other day in the next Gen racing wars thread, someone posted a rain mod in a pc racing sim that looks better than drive club rain. Complete with windshield puddle physics. It was apparently done by one person. In his spare time. Meanwhile multi billion dollar companies with hundreds of devs couldn’t add it in the next gen versions of gt7 and forza. Again, priorities.

Getting this stuff in isn’t hard. It just needs people willing to do it.
The sad state of affairs in the videogame industry!
 

ChiefDada

Gold Member
Ok I'm going to quit while I'm ahead before I end up spoiling myself. Overall I like what I see from SM2 but I was REALLY hoping Insomniac would revamp their shadow rendering after seeing what Square Enix accomplished with Final Fantasy 16. A real missed opportunity there. Man, SE deserves a lot of praise for their ingenuity; even fooled DF into thinking they were RT shadows. In a way they also proved DF wrong because those guys claimed that rasterization had reached the end of it's capabilities. This is the kind of smart solutions I want developers to utilize. This is also why I'm against the vast adoption of UE5 (or any other singular engine/technology).
 

Lethal01

Member
Ok I'm going to quit while I'm ahead before I end up spoiling myself. Overall I like what I see from SM2 but I was REALLY hoping Insomniac would revamp their shadow rendering after seeing what Square Enix accomplished with Final Fantasy 16. A real missed opportunity there. Man, SE deserves a lot of praise for their ingenuity; even fooled DF into thinking they were RT shadows. In a way they also proved DF wrong because those guys claimed that rasterization had reached the end of it's capabilities. This is the kind of smart solutions I want developers to utilize. This is also why I'm against the vast adoption of UE5 (or any other singular engine/technology).

UE5 didn't used raytracing for shadows either
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Ok I'm going to quit while I'm ahead before I end up spoiling myself. Overall I like what I see from SM2 but I was REALLY hoping Insomniac would revamp their shadow rendering after seeing what Square Enix accomplished with Final Fantasy 16. A real missed opportunity there. Man, SE deserves a lot of praise for their ingenuity; even fooled DF into thinking they were RT shadows. In a way they also proved DF wrong because those guys claimed that rasterization had reached the end of it's capabilities. This is the kind of smart solutions I want developers to utilize. This is also why I'm against the vast adoption of UE5 (or any other singular engine/technology).
Rt shadows are such a small hit to framerate that i don’t know why they didn’t add them in the quality mode. At least in cyberpunk. Reflections are far more heavier and if you already have reflections on then shadows are much cheaper than having them on on their own.

What’s wrong with spidermans shadows btw? I honestly don’t know why or if shadows make ff16 look so great, i just know it does.
 

ChiefDada

Gold Member
UE5 didn't used raytracing for shadows either

Right, I'm not saying they do. I know they use VSM. My point is, I don't think or want developers to commit to one suite of tools or tech, be it RT, VSM, Nanite, Lumen, etc. I want them to come up with creative solutions that look good and perform well enough. I think developers who have released UE5 games have all succumbed to this mentality assuming it would speed up workflow, instead it's backfired spectacularly imo. Look at Immortals of Aveum and LotF. Were the visual results and related performance worth whatever workflow efficiencies they unlocked? I don't think so.
 

ChiefDada

Gold Member
Rt shadows are such a small hit to framerate that i don’t know why they didn’t add them in the quality mode. At least in cyberpunk. Reflections are far more heavier and if you already have reflections on then shadows are much cheaper than having them on on their own.

I would've settled for 1080-1440p DRS if it meant we could have RT or FF16-like shadows quality

What’s wrong with spidermans shadows btw? I honestly don’t know why or if shadows make ff16 look so great, i just know it does.

Nothing necessarily wrong but after seeing how impactful they were in making FF16 cutscenes and setpieces the closest look to CG I've seen so far, you immediately notice what could have been. FF16 is the only game that made me stop mid-gameplay to admire the shadow quality. I didn't even do that with the RT reflections in Miles Morales.

Look at this cutscene from FF16. One of the best looking cutscenes I've ever seen. No cool shit going on whatsoever but it's the shadows that make the entire scene look so realistic. SM2 has better character models, similar if not better asset textures and yet this cutscene blows past everything I've seen so far from SM2 and it all comes down to the focus/respect for shadows.

 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Are the shadows responsible for FF16 looking so impressive here?

F0IzicDWYAAvEIp

F0Izh2jWcAE_nhQ

Fzrb5RfXwAA3jZK

F0P6fJYXsAEqMuw



or is it just the art style and lighting? Honestly, i dont get what shadows do to make games look great. the only time i saw shadows make a huge impact was in witcher 3 and cyberpunk foliage which for whatever reason lacked self shadows in non-RT modes and looked off. other games with foliage dont have that issue.

I think the art direction and cinematography are the main reasons why FF16 can look so great. the game can look very ordinary at times which is probably because the artists didnt have time to touch up those areas.
 

Lethal01

Member
Are the shadows responsible for FF16 looking so impressive here?

F0IzicDWYAAvEIp

F0Izh2jWcAE_nhQ

Fzrb5RfXwAA3jZK

F0P6fJYXsAEqMuw



or is it just the art style and lighting? Honestly, i dont get what shadows do to make games look great. the only time i saw shadows make a huge impact was in witcher 3 and cyberpunk foliage which for whatever reason lacked self shadows in non-RT modes and looked off.
Lighting is always king, althernatively you can have high enough foliage density to hide the lack of shadows a bit

other games with foliage dont have that issue.
What? that just ain't true, the lack of shadows lighting is one of the most common thing that bother me in tons of modern games tons which only have ambient occlusion.
 
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shamoomoo

Member
My biggest disappointment in the leaks is just how much PS4 game art the boss match has. Instead of a next-gen level boss match, we end up with a subpar PS4 level boss match.

I expected something in the vicinity of this for the boss but sand instead of water
Its almost like the next gen physics and vfx (simulation) that we expected the NEW CPU facilitate, hasn't happened.
I don't even think the fog was using volumetric fog.


And its not like we don't have examples of it being possible.
Imagine instead of terrible looking PS4 game art in the first mission. You instead have sand simulation.
Something like this but instead of water you have sand
Devs are no longer being creative, they are just phoning it in. Its ridiculous.





EDIT: click to open up video of popcorn man

What's the performance cost? That sounds good until your fps drops,I think that's why physX is talked about as much by Nvidia as RT/path tracing.
 

alloush

Member
It would have been half life alyx. If it was a certain other zombie game no doubt there would be dedicated threads making sure everyone new how good the animations are.

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Short Version

This is gorgeous stuff. Look at the second video, the footplanting, the inertia/momentum, the locomotion the character has weight and doesn’t feel like skating. This is what I want to see in videogames. This is from 2021? It’s about time devs focus on these things plus AI. We are right in the middle of the era of AI, the battle for AI supremacy between the big corps, we should see huge improvements made to it in the next decade.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Just tried to see how much RT shadows cost in cyberpunk 2077 and its not that much. RT shadows on by themselves are around 7% hit to performance and are down to just 4% if you turn them on in conjuction with RT reflections which have 13% hit to framerate on their own. turning on RT shadows dropped my framerate from 72 to just 69.

I know its an nvidia GPU and cyberpunk is probably the most optimized cpu performance wise game on PC atm, but i wonder if insomniac couldve included RT shadows along with RT reflections. the gpu power should be there for both rt features, maybe they are running into vram or cpu bottlenecks on consoles.

What? that just ain't true, the lack of shadows lighting is one of the most common thing that bother me in tons of modern games tons which only have ambient occlusion.
Nah, I havent see trees and foliage with such bad self shadowing that I saw in witcher 3 and in a couple of cyberpunk comparisons of bushes that were used by nvidia to show off just how big a difference rt makes in cyberpunk. Horizon, far cry, tlou2 and well every other game with foliage simply dont have that bland look of the witcher 3 trees. im sure ive posted a comparison of before and after rt in witcher 3. it wasnt an issue before the game got downgraded and was only fixed after they added ray tracing.
 

Lethal01

Member
Nah, I havent see trees and foliage with such bad self shadowing that I saw in witcher 3 and in a couple of cyberpunk comparisons of bushes that were used by nvidia to show off just how big a difference rt makes in cyberpunk. Horizon, far cry, tlou2 and well every other game with foliage simply dont have that bland look of the witcher 3 trees. im sure ive posted a comparison of before and after rt in witcher 3. it wasnt an issue before the game got downgraded and was only fixed after they added ray tracing.

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These shots have tons of foliage missing shadows, like I said, with high enough quantity of certain types of foliage it's less noticeable, but for many modern games you get no shadows, just ambient occlusion. Direct, dynamic sunlight on semi sparse foliage being the hardest to deal with. not so sparse that you literally just have to give shadows to a handful of tress and bushes though.
 
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HZD to HFW wasn't a "slight improvement".
Are you saying it was a generational leap? It was literally H1 in 4K with better skin textures that can only flex in a cutscene when they get so close to the character, a cutscene which is additionally doctored to get that seamless realistic look. The game was H1 but bigger and in 4K. Same for Ragnarok and same will be for Spiderman 2.
 

PeteBull

Member
Are you saying it was a generational leap? It was literally H1 in 4K with better skin textures that can only flex in a cutscene when they get so close to the character, a cutscene which is additionally doctored to get that seamless realistic look. The game was H1 but bigger and in 4K. Same for Ragnarok and same will be for Spiderman 2.
It was generational leap in terms of ps4 to ps5, not ps1 to ps2 generational leap, for obvious reason that ps4 to ps5 is 3x cpu and 5,5x gpu improvement(2x vram) vs close to 100x improvment ps1 to ps2, u cant expect same wow effect as we had in previous gens if hardware improvement isnt anywhere close either.
Just compare ps3 to ps5 hardware and look how big of an improvement demons souls remaster got vs its ps3 version, but thats coz ps3 to ps5 is actual big hardware difference(features too ofc)

On top of it all we got stable 1440p60 in there too vs ps3's dips into teens.
Powerful hardware allows talented devs to spread their wings.
 
It was generational leap in terms of ps4 to ps5, not ps1 to ps2 generational leap, for obvious reason that ps4 to ps5 is 3x cpu and 5,5x gpu improvement(2x vram) vs close to 100x improvment ps1 to ps2, u cant expect same wow effect as we had in previous gens if hardware improvement isnt anywhere close either.
Just compare ps3 to ps5 hardware and look how big of an improvement demons souls remaster got vs its ps3 version, but thats coz ps3 to ps5 is actual big hardware difference(features too ofc)

On top of it all we got stable 1440p60 in there too vs ps3's dips into teens.
Powerful hardware allows talented devs to spread their wings.


But it's not since it was released for the PS4 as well, so it didn't even use half of what PS5 is capable of. Its a pure cross-gen title which is why its even less impressive and more of the same instead because im pretty sure this started as a PS4 title.
 
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Are you saying it was a generational leap? It was literally H1 in 4K with better skin textures that can only flex in a cutscene when they get so close to the character, a cutscene which is additionally doctored to get that seamless realistic look. The game was H1 but bigger and in 4K. Same for Ragnarok and same will be for Spiderman 2.
Massively improved textures, pushing way more polygons, character animations specifically facial animations saw a significant leap, improved lighting and lighting setups (Aloy's hero lighting). New foliage rendering systems. New Gameplay Mechanics like flying mounts.

I'd say that's big enough to qualify for a generational leap.
 
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