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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

mrqs

Member
That is ruining on UE5, but with RT and DLSS. Chances are it will look this good on PC.
Consoles is another different matter. RT effects will have to be cut down. But at least it can use TSR to upscale the image.
This looks lower-res and uglier than before. My guess is that RTX is having a huge cost here. Looks blurry.
 


Watchu guys think?


It's clear this is still using a last-gen engine.

NXGamer made a good point that a lot of games we're seeing on PS5 right now, even the native ports/exclusives are just PS4 games with the dials cranked to the max, regardless of whether they look impressive or not. I'm speaking of course in the context of next-gen graphics fidelity.

By the time Naughty Dog's next game comes out, I suspect they've had enough time to tap into the PS5's more advanced features like Primitive Shaders, which should allow them to achieve a micro-polygon rendering system similar to what we're seeing with Nanite in UE5.
 
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alloush

Member
It's clear this is still using a last-gen engine.

NXGamer made a good point that a lot of games we're seeing on PS5 right now, even the native ports/exclusives are just PS4 games with the dials cranked to the max, regardless of whether they look impressive or not. I'm speaking of course in the context of next-gen graphics fidelity.

By the time Naughty Dog's next game comes out, I suspect they've had enough time to tap into the PS5's more advanced features like Primitive Shaders, which should allow them to achieve to a micro-polygon rendering system similar to what we're seeing with Nanite in UE5.
I totally agree. I was not moved by the trailer one bit in terms of visuals and them charging $70 for it is ridiculous honestly. I wonder when we will really start seeing next-gen visuals ala Matrix on the current gen consoles!
 

CamHostage

Member
It's clear this is still using a last-gen engine.

NXGamer made a good point that a lot of games we're seeing on PS5 right now, even the native ports/exclusives are just PS4 games with the dials cranked to the max, regardless of whether they look impressive or not. I'm speaking of course in the context of next-gen graphics fidelity.

...Which is the way it is basically every gen. Nice effects get draped on top of old engines (either cross-gen releases or games only released on the new platform,) polygon counts are pushed as far as it can be upped under normal methods, and we get nice-looking games for the first year or two that don't really change the paradigm. (We also get a few crazy experiments sometimes, using experimental tech that sometimes goes on to be popular across future games but sometimes remain anomalies and even great examples of what should have been more utilized but that wasn't the direction things went.) In the meantime, engine developers work on new tech to harness advanced hardware, hopefully to be ready by launch or in the first year or two.

So for example if you look at Killzone Shadowfall on PS4, it's an amazing-looking game even now, but it pretty much plays and operates as Killzone 4. (Killzone Mercenary, made for the lesser Vita on the KZ 2/3 engine, even brought back over some of its visual signatures.) PS4/XB1 was one of those nice cases where bleeding-edge, industry-defining tech was ready at launch and thus we get some of the best-looking games of the gen right off the bat; PBR was revolutionary in look and resourcefulness, and KZ:SF (and Ryse on Xbox) could stand strong even now as a visual technology examples of the hardware being utilized well. But when compared to Horizon, the real purpose of the brand new Decima became clear.



This gen has sucked for timing. We had a few games using the hardware for advanced technical experiments (R&C Rift Apart, to a lesser extent The Medium and maybe others,) but there's not really been a breakthrough graphical advance ready for launch. Unreal Engine 5's heart-stopping showcase also gave us maybe too-early a look at tech of the future (Epic first showed it in May of 2020, with a "playable" and amazing demo that made it seem just around the corner and surely something all the elite developers must have had access to for years and years, yet we found out later that even close partner The Coalition didn't get hands on it until that November (they were still prototyping their Alpha Point project through Oct in UE4 to have something ready to test,) and although the public had Early Access copies in May of 2021, that was a "true" Early Access build, still not fully vetted for mainstream production despite its amazing Nanite and Lumen additions. (We're still only now seeing indie and upstart studios announcing UE5 titles, games that would have been out in the second half of the first year of UE4, although people forget how slow UE4 took to finally get into mainstream games.) Then also, of course, COVID, which delayed most everything from happening by a year or more.

(BTW, instead of graphics, loading speed advancements have been this gen's "drape nice newness over old engines." And it's been as impressive as any graphics effect could be, in many opinions, but it's not the typical showcase feature gamers expect, nor is it "revolutionary" in PC gaming, despite the optimizations made that even old PCs with SSDs couldn't take advantage of. Meanwhile, physics and other cool shit you can do with this new tech unrelated to graphics is still MIA...)

What all else you can do with the hardware is still in the works. Some of it has appeared in the most recent game announcements for 2023 and beyond (I'm not really loving the complexity or ingenuity of the first wave of UE5 titles, but at least new lighting systems give everything a pretty sheen... TLoU P1 is really the worst of everything going on, with not really any advancements in tech and supposedly a rescued, rushed project after a botched attempt by a different developer.) Some really hasn't been shown in an actual product as far as what to really expect when these boxes are pushed hard. (Hopefully Nanite and Lumen and Unity's character modeling systems and all this stuff remain performative; Matrix Awakens ran okay but wasn't completely reassuring despite looking the part of a next-gen product.) And some... some might unfortunately be in our heads as far as far as what you can and can't do interactively with the state of technology as it is today.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Agreed. It has been a major disappointment so far with graphical fidelity and TLOU1 Remake is not making things any better, in fact it is making things worse. No way in hell was this game made for the PS5 I coulda sworn TLOU2 looks better!
Some parts yes. The TLOU2 engine isnt fool proof. It does not look good in some lighting conditions. There is a reason why Santa Barbara and a few Abby areas look so drab. The day time lighting simply does not work well with TLOU engine. And a big portion of TLOU Part 1 is set in day time with this yellow brown dusk lighting that simply does not look as good as the overcast seattle levels.

TLOU2 looks great in cloudy overcast conditions, absolutely incredible during rain and stunning at night with fire effects. They should've remixed some of the levels to set them during different time of day/weather conditions.
 
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alloush

Member
Some parts yes. The TLOU2 engine isnt fool proof. It does not look good in some lighting conditions. There is a reason why Santa Barbara and a few Abby areas look so drab. The day time lighting simply does not work well with TLOU engine. And a big portion of TLOU Part 1 is set in day time with this yellow brown dusk lighting that simply does not look as good as the overcast seattle levels.

TLOU2 looks great in cloudy overcast conditions, absolutely incredible during rain and stunning at night with fire effects. They should've remixed some of the levels to set them during different time of day/weather conditions.
Yeah, TLOU2 does look drab in some missions, I wonder why they have difficulty creating beautiful scenes in daytime, could it be the lighting technique they are using? The game does look gorgeous though in cloudy and overcast areas.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
It's clear this is still using a last-gen engine.

NXGamer made a good point that a lot of games we're seeing on PS5 right now, even the native ports/exclusives are just PS4 games with the dials cranked to the max, regardless of whether they look impressive or not. I'm speaking of course in the context of next-gen graphics fidelity.

By the time Naughty Dog's next game comes out, I suspect they've had enough time to tap into the PS5's more advanced features like Primitive Shaders, which should allow them to achieve a micro-polygon rendering system similar to what we're seeing with Nanite in UE5.
You really dont need mesh shaders or primitive shaders to achieve Matrix quality graphics. Or next gen graphics approaching photorealism.

These demos below are running on UE4 engines on 2018 era GPUs.





UE5 is using mesh shaders yes, but you can run the Matrix demo on any GPU. Even ones that dont support primitive or mesh shaders. It has no mesh shaders/primitive shaders requirements.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Yeah, TLOU2 does look drab in some missions, I wonder why they have difficulty creating beautiful scenes in daytime, could it be the lighting technique they are using? The game does look gorgeous though in cloudy and overcast areas.
It's mostly the dusk/dawn lighting. The orange hue looks really bad.

This is my favorite looking section from the game and looks marvelous despite being in day time. The problem is that Pittsburgh and Bill's town arent getting this time of day which makes them look drab in comparison.

 

CamHostage

Member
These demos below are running on UE4 engines on 2018 era GPUs...

I'm not a game designer, but I bet a lot of reaction from pros would be something like this...

Jj1HMBS.jpg


Some of it, I get: these demos are purposefully mocked up in a certain way, you can see the seams once you start to understand how environments are built and assets are deployed in non-interactive scenarios, once a game starts being interactive and from a gamer's perspective the cinematic illusion falls away; other times, I see people actually doing in experiments what we all hope big development teams are doing professionally, and can't help but wonder the same thing: why's it so hard for companies to do what these guys are doing in their basements?
 
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MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
It's mostly the dusk/dawn lighting. The orange hue looks really bad.

This is my favorite looking section from the game and looks marvelous despite being in day time. The problem is that Pittsburgh and Bill's town arent getting this time of day which makes them look drab in comparison.



Very good looking area but there's no denying it's a very narrow, restricted maze-like corridor. It doesn't feel like a forest environment.

This is the real deal:

 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Yep. they did. TLOU2 cutscenes look even better than U4. But I reject the notion that we cant get close to tech demos.
of course we can but we really did hit diminishing returns.
I though the same about Uncharted 2.... and look at it now.
But UC4 refuses to age lol. But that is only because we've not seen anything better yet
 
You really dont need mesh shaders or primitive shaders to achieve Matrix quality graphics. Or next gen graphics approaching photorealism.

These demos below are running on UE4 engines on 2018 era GPUs.





UE5 is using mesh shaders yes, but you can run the Matrix demo on any GPU. Even ones that dont support primitive or mesh shaders. It has no mesh shaders/primitive shaders requirements.


True, but I never said Primitive/Mesh Shaders were the only requirement, however they are a method and a very good one at that.

UE5's Nanite relies heavily on Compute Shaders which is a similar technology to Mesh/Primitive Shaders in that they all rely on using a programmable compute style approach to render graphical workloads mainly geometry. There's drawbacks to using either method, for example UE5's compute shader based solution only works well with small triangles and struggles with different kinds of objects and workloads, especially foliage and animated geometry.

Keep in mind several Playstation's studios and even third party studios which chase bleeding edge visuals in gaming will not be using UE5, even towards the end of the generation when the visuals peak, they'll certainly be relying of features such as Primitive/Mesh Shaders.
 
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MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
oh wait... they kinda hit the target maybe aside from the water and the fly.
I just replayed the game this year (remaster)

oXe5MyF.jpg

82Xv6Vb.jpg

UC4 is sexy but it's nowhere close to that initial trailer and your "screenshots" prove that". + that trailer run at 60FPS.
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
it runs at 60fps nowadays. even 120

Ehhhhhhhhhhh... yes. And when it releases on PC it will run at 240 FPS and beyond. But it was first introduced for PS4 and they tried to sell you on a dream of that kind of fidelity at 60FPS running on a hardware from 2013. Not only that they couldn't hit their fidelity target, they had to slash the framerate in half. Do you get it?
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Very good looking area but there's no denying it's a very narrow, restricted maze-like corridor. It doesn't feel like a forest environment.

This is the real deal:


Yeah, the facade breaks as soon as you leave that area and enter the 'open world'. The foliage doesnt look as good. The lighting quality takes a hit. But i love me some linear graphics. Detroit may not have had a big open world but man that game looked stunning.

P.S I think the Red Dead 2 forest area in Chapter 6 looks better than Kingdom Come.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Ehhhhhhhhhhh... yes. And when it releases on PC it will run at 240 FPS and beyond. But it was first introduced for PS4 and they tried to sell you on a dream of that kind of fidelity at 60FPS running on a hardware from 2013. Not only that they couldn't hit their fidelity target, they had to slash the framerate in half. Do you get it?
I don’t get it. They promised and mostly hit it. I was and am extremely happy with what they delivered. 30 fps or not. I don’t care.
It’s not 100% there but they didn’t know where they will get. It’s development. They didn’t cheat anyone
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
I don’t get it. They promised and mostly hit it. I was and am extremely happy with what they delivered. 30 fps or not. I don’t care.
It’s not 100% there but they didn’t know where they will get. It’s development. They didn’t cheat anyone

They didn't cheat anyone? That trailer starts with this slide. :messenger_grinning_sweat: But I'm happy that you're happy!

HjuBNGv.png
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
True, but I never said Primitive/Mesh Shaders were the only requirement, however they are a method and a very good one at that.

UE5's Nanite relies heavily on Compute Shaders which is a similar technology to Mesh/Primitive Shaders in that they all rely on using a programmable compute style approach to render graphical workloads mainly geometry. There's drawbacks to using either method, for example UE5's compute shader based solution only works well with small triangles and struggles with different kinds of objects and workloads, especially foliage and animated geometry.

Keep in mind several Playstation's studios and even third party studios which chase bleeding edge visuals in gaming will not be using UE5, even towards the end of the generation when the visuals peak, they'll certainly be relying of features such as Primitive/Mesh Shaders which wi
oh definitely. I know ND and GG will push visuals beyond what we have seen with UE5. I was just trying to point out that a big engine reboot isnt needed to achieve next gen graphics. In fact, if you look at the original TLOU2 E3 2018 footage, it looks way better than the remake supposedly built from the ground up on PS5. That demo was running on a 4.2 tflops console.
 
oh definitely. I know ND and GG will push visuals beyond what we have seen with UE5. I was just trying to point out that a big engine reboot isnt needed to achieve next gen graphics. In fact, if you look at the original TLOU2 E3 2018 footage, it looks way better than the remake supposedly built from the ground up on PS5. That demo was running on a 4.2 tflops console.
That was never achieved though, the end product never attained that level.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
They didn't cheat anyone? That trailer starts with this slide. :messenger_grinning_sweat: But I'm happy that you're happy!

HjuBNGv.png
ND has been super shady since that trailer. Before that they were very open about pre-rendering their cutscenes. IIRC, they had even shown a pic of their 3 PS3s ducktaped together that rendered the Uncharted and TLOU cutscenes at a higher fidelity than what was possible with realtime graphics.

Since then, they just keep showing demos and trailers that are not indicative of the final game. They are essentially target renders that they come very close to matching, but saying shit like captured on PS4 Pro or PS4 and then downgrading it at the end is very lame.

Sony also said the same thing about the HFW reveal trailer which featured incredible visuals that the final game simply did not come close to matching. Captured on a PS5. We all know now that it was a target render. Otherwise the downgrade would not have been necessary on the PS5.

Insomniac and Bluepoint did not have to downgrade their game from the reveal. If anything, Insomniac managed to double the resolution of RT reflections AND improve framerate from 30 to 40-50 fps. That is a dev that is putting 100% effort into exploiting next gen hardware.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
They didn't cheat anyone? That trailer starts with this slide. :messenger_grinning_sweat: But I'm happy that you're happy!

HjuBNGv.png
I never noticed a downgrade. targets change but I think they achieved that goal more or elss
It's not that much... I don't understand this fake downgrade outrage?
This game came out in 2015 and is only beaten by TLOU2... maybe Death Stranding characters
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
show me a fucking game that meets it's target.
It's not witcher 3 downgrade lol.
UC4 came out and was and still is ground breaking. so get over it ?
They said it was realtime and was captured from a PS4. They never said anything about it being a target render.

Thats the problem here. Not that it was downgraded.

Anyway, they pretty much matched it with TLOU2, in cutscenes at least.

oDErIXH.gif
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
They said it was realtime and was captured from a PS4. They never said anything about it being a target render.

Thats the problem here. Not that it was downgraded.

Anyway, they pretty much matched it with TLOU2, in cutscenes at least.

oDErIXH.gif
The game was still in dev so they overshoot. But I still think they alsmost got there.

AS for TLOU2, yeah. They pretty much got there
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
show me a fucking game that meets it's target.
It's not witcher 3 downgrade lol.
UC4 came out and was and still is ground breaking. so get over it ?

Let's apply our "logic" (fucking lol) that you can run UC4 at 120FPS these days to The Witcher 3 and voilà:




oIR6xeOffCEBa.gif
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Let's apply our "logic" (fucking lol) that you can run UC4 at 120FPS these days to The Witcher 3 and voilà:




oIR6xeOffCEBa.gif

I don't care how much fps you can run it at and how much you can mod it. That's not the point
This is a graphics thread. Running at 30fps does not make uc4 look worse.
Witcher 3 does not look better than UC4. Even modded and even if it ran 1000fps. I don't understand your point.
Even UC4 running on ps4 slim 1080p looks better....

Maybe some more uc4 4k screneshots will make you see.
And it's not even tlou2
33EvlNG.jpg

An0hdBf.jpg

ttdqgMv.jpg
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
I don't care how much fps you can run it at and how much you can mod it. That's not the point
This is a graphics thread. Running at 30fps does not make uc4 look worse.
Witcher 3 does not look better than UC4. Even modded and even if it ran 1000fps. I don't understand your point.
Even UC4 running on ps4 slim 1080p looks better....

Maybe some more uc4 4k screneshots will make you see.
And it's not even tlou2
33EvlNG.jpg

An0hdBf.jpg

ttdqgMv.jpg
Framerate is a visual element. You absolutely see the change in fluidity when playing at 60fps vs 30fps
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
This is a graphics thread. Running at 30fps does not make uc4 look worse.

Oh, sure. Let's run the game at 1 frame per second then, it will look amazing.

If you don't understand my point then you're clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed.

THEY PROMISED A 60FPS GAME RUNNING ON A PS4. THEY DELIVERED A 30FPS GAME WITH LOWER GRAPHICAL QUALITY.

Is it really that hard to understand? OK, I'm logging off. Arguing about this stuff it's the dictionary definition of a waste of time.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Framerate is a visual element. You absolutely see the change in fluidity when playing at 60fps vs 30fps
not this again...
30fps is perfectly fine with proper motion blur. I don't care for this conversation... but do you see framerate in my screenshots?!
I compared that uc4 this year and I still chose to play 4k30. It feels good and looks good.

fumy fact, I had a 240hz monitor and Doom 2016 looked the same 240fps without motion blur vs 60hz with motion blur.
That's what motion blur does. It cheats to fill in information because 30fps is not enough... while 240 is plenty.
Of course FEELING ASIDE. 240hz feels much better
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Oh, sure. Let's run the game at 1 frame per second then, it will look amazing.

If you don't understand my point then you're clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed.

THEY PROMISED A 60FPS GAME RUNNING ON A PS4. THEY DELIVERED A 30FPS GAME WITH LOWER GRAPHICAL QUALITY.

Is it really that hard to understand? OK, I'm logging off. Arguing about this stuff it's the dictionary definition of a waste of time.
don't be an ass ok? 30fps is not 1 fps. Dont hyperbole. I would much prefer this graphics at 30 than worse at 60
I think they delivered great graphics with good feeling 30fps.
They overshoot but it's not in a cheating territory.
 
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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
not this again...
30fps is perfectly fine with proper motion blur. I don't care for this conversation... but do you see framerate in my screenshots?!
I compared that uc4 this year and I still chose to play 4k30. It feels good and looks good.

fumy fact, I had a 240hz monitor and Doom 2016 looked the same 240fps without motion blur vs 60hz with motion blur.
That's what motion blur does. It cheats to fill in information because 30fps is not enough... while 240 is plenty.
Of course FEELING ASIDE. 240hz feels much better
Yeah, i agree 30fps is fine but that's not what I was saying, framerate is a visual element. I agree that above 60fps does not make to much difference for the majority of people but 60fps vs 30fps absolutely does.

But im just saying UC4 @ 60fps does look better then UC4 @ 30fps, framerate is a visual element and absolutely should be taken into consideration when talking about which game has the best visuals.
 
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rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Yeah, i agree 30fps is fine but that's not what I was saying, franerate is a visual element. I agree that above 60fps does not make to much difference for the majority of people but 60fps vs 30fps absolutely does.

But im just saying UC4 @ 60fps does look better then UC4 @ 30fps, framerate is a visual element and absolutely should be taken into consideration when talking about which gane has the best visuals.
yeah if I could play uc4 with 4k graphics at 60, I would.
But presented with the 1440p60 and 4k30, choice, I honestly think 4k30 looked better and still played good enough for me.
It's just subjective. I will play it 4k120 on pc soon I Guess
 
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