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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

yeah i saw some pics of ronin that look more detailed than tsushima, not super surprised after 6 years.

Tsushima had the strong art design doing the heavy lifting because graphic wise it wasn't exactly top class.

I bought Ronin after seeing all the glowing impressions in Gaf. Disappointed is an understatement. The game only looks good in the Graphics mode and yeah, only when those lighting conditions are present. In 'performance' it looks like shit. That beautiful lighting seems gone. That foliage swaying in the breeze becomes blurry and you're left with a still unstable framerate (it's playable at least) and watching your character run around with the goofiest animations ever.

The combat system is not that great either. I should've listened to Fighting Cowboy. I hope it gets better because Wo Longs combat seems similar but better and Sekiro is way better. It's not bad it's just not great.

If Ghost of Tsushima had a similar deflect/break system that game would've been amazing because it already has the cinematic visuals and is very responsive. They'll probably implement that for the sequel.

Seriously though shame on Sony and Team Ninja for the sorry state of Ronins performance. To have such poor visuals in the performance mode and not be 60 and stable is just sad. Ideally, this games Graphics mode would be at 60 and locked ...then people might actually have been happy. Where was Sony to help them out I wonder?
 

Lethal01

Member
I agree with everything you say except for Rebirth. If any game DID need to be massive and with lots of mini games it is Rebirth. I mean the scope of what they had to cover is massive so oy makes sense. I've also changed my mind about the graphics of that game. I think they look good for the scale and scope.bb

Collaborate Planet Of The Apes GIF
 

Audiophile

Gold Member
I honestly struggle with the PC-emulated version of PS3 games in higher resolutions. Just reveals all the floors and makes them look very rudimentary.

KZ2 on a ~40" 768-1080p panel with that soft Quincunx AA was a perfect balance. Seeing it or the less-attractive KZ3 (it changed it's AA to something much more crispy) in higher resolutions than originally intended just robs them of them of the magic.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I honestly struggle with the PC-emulated version of PS3 games in higher resolutions. Just reveals all the floors and makes them look very rudimentary.

KZ2 on a ~40" 768-1080p panel with that soft Quincunx AA was a perfect balance. Seeing it or the less-attractive KZ3 (it changed it's AA to something much more crispy) in higher resolutions than originally intended just robs them of them of the magic.
they look amazing in gif form and thats how i will choose to remember them until the day i die!

i actually bought uncharted 1-3 remasters on the ps4 to play on my 1080p tv but it was after i had already played a lot of really good looking next gen games like rise of tomb raider, infamous, kz2, ryse, the order and i was like yeesh. the textures without pbr materials just felt too dated. couldnt be bothered to finish any of them and uncharted 2 is one of my favorite games of all time.

now oddly enough, the gow3 remaster on ps4 fared much better. dont know why. maybe it was the fixed camera angle that let them push the visual fidelity beyond 3d free cam games like uncharted and tlou, but its aged much better. as much as i want the kz remasters, i dont think they will look as good as we remember them.
 
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JCreasy

Member
GDC 1943 UE 5 Panel recording just dropped.

Breaking News: 20-30% of the 1943 trailer is gameplay

Brian Karis is on deck.

They confirm that they're using 3Lateral for the face scans. Yes, those are the same folks supporting Hellblade 2. So, that tracks.

3Lateral ML Rigs are unsurpassed at this point. The performance capture extends the fidelity we're seeing. It makes traditional hand animation, for these particular use cases, look rigid in comparison.

 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
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I got no bad screenshots from kzsf though. that game looks phenomenal to this day, but thats a very closed off level.

the one good thing this gen has given us is great near term detail as well far off detail that even games like Horizon FW, GoT and SOTC failed to give last gen. I think only RDR2 has excellent draw distance but going back to it now you can see that it does that by sacrificing overall asset and ground level detail. Every game last gen had to make those sacrifices and while they can probably go toe to toe with DG2 in rendering detail next to the player, DG2 is just far more cohesive in lighting and rendering far out to the distance.
 

JCreasy

Member
Some more Brothers gifs. The water level is just beautiful with some gorgeous reflections and fluid simulations, but I also love the cave entrance. The lighting and asset quality in UE5 is to die for.

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For some reason I had the impression that you thought the UE 5 implementation in this was suboptimal. Might’ve mixed you up with someone else.

Now, I would like Square to develop a Parasite Eve/3rd Birthday Remake with Unreal Engine 5.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
For some reason I had the impression that you thought the UE 5 implementation in this was suboptimal. Might’ve mixed you up with someone else.

Now, I would like Square to develop a Parasite Eve/3rd Birthday Remake with Unreal Engine 5.
Yeah, cant be me. im like the only one who's singing this game's praises since it came out.

the game is very heavy on the GPU which means running it at low framerates but its not the kind of game you want running at 60 fps anyway. thats probably why it got some bad press.
 

Edder1

Member
Some more Horizon Forbidden West on PC in 4K Ultrawide, looks great!

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Why do all the NPCs have Gen Z haircuts? Smh. They seem to care way too much about fancy haircuts for people living in some apocalyptic world. I don't remember when I last touched a game with these Gen Z character lookalikes, and that's a lot of games in recent years. It's like they're all clones of each other. You could put Miles in this game and he'd be right at home with his silly haircut. Hopefully there's a mod soon to have NPCs look more normal. And btw, don't get me started on the overuse of hero lighting in that second last screenshot.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
This is a really good comparison of what RTGI adds to games. It's grounding the image with way more accurate lighting and honestly, thats what gives it such a great next gen look. remove RT and it looks last gen as fuck. This is from the new PS5 patch. On PC, someone released a mod that increased RTGI quality on PC so i will be trying that next.

vYucm5h.gif


Not all comparisons are this stark. Indoors especially dont get as big a boost, but the self shadowing on trees is consistently high quality in any scenario. i thought you needed RT shadows for that but it seems RTGI takes care of that.
 

Lethal01

Member
This is a really good comparison of what RTGI adds to games. It's grounding the image with way more accurate lighting and honestly, thats what gives it such a great next gen look. remove RT and it looks last gen as fuck. This is from the new PS5 patch. On PC, someone released a mod that increased RTGI quality on PC so i will be trying that next.

vYucm5h.gif


Not all comparisons are this stark. Indoors especially dont get as big a boost, but the self shadowing on trees is consistently high quality in any scenario. i thought you needed RT shadows for that but it seems RTGI takes care of that.

RTGI is shadows... Indirect shadows. accurate indirect light comes with accurate indirect shadows by default, we would usually just call indirect shadows, ambient occlusion
 

GymWolf

Member
This is a really good comparison of what RTGI adds to games. It's grounding the image with way more accurate lighting and honestly, thats what gives it such a great next gen look. remove RT and it looks last gen as fuck. This is from the new PS5 patch. On PC, someone released a mod that increased RTGI quality on PC so i will be trying that next.

vYucm5h.gif


Not all comparisons are this stark. Indoors especially dont get as big a boost, but the self shadowing on trees is consistently high quality in any scenario. i thought you needed RT shadows for that but it seems RTGI takes care of that.
Yeah, such a great nextgen look indeed...
 

Luipadre

Member
This is a really good comparison of what RTGI adds to games. It's grounding the image with way more accurate lighting and honestly, thats what gives it such a great next gen look. remove RT and it looks last gen as fuck. This is from the new PS5 patch. On PC, someone released a mod that increased RTGI quality on PC so i will be trying that next.

vYucm5h.gif


Not all comparisons are this stark. Indoors especially dont get as big a boost, but the self shadowing on trees is consistently high quality in any scenario. i thought you needed RT shadows for that but it seems RTGI takes care of that.

yeah i'd never play this game without RT. You get what? like 5 more fps and a much worse looking game
 

Alex11

Member
This is a really good comparison of what RTGI adds to games. It's grounding the image with way more accurate lighting and honestly, thats what gives it such a great next gen look. remove RT and it looks last gen as fuck. This is from the new PS5 patch. On PC, someone released a mod that increased RTGI quality on PC so i will be trying that next.

vYucm5h.gif


Not all comparisons are this stark. Indoors especially dont get as big a boost, but the self shadowing on trees is consistently high quality in any scenario. i thought you needed RT shadows for that but it seems RTGI takes care of that.
You mean the accurate lighting, shadows and GI that Cyberpunk does it 10x better? And I forgot how many times there was complaining about it being too dark, or that there is no difference between max raster and path tracing, lol.

This does the same thing in this gif, how and why is this any different?
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
You mean the accurate lighting, shadows and GI that Cyberpunk does it 10x better? And I forgot how many times there was complaining about it being too dark, or that there is no difference between max raster and path tracing, lol.

This does the same thing in this gif, how and why is this any different?
I wouldnt say it does it 10x better, but yes this is a great example of RT effects giving the visuals a much more grounded and realistic cg quality effect.

i posted this witcher 3 comparison last year. the self shadowing on foliage and trees makes the image look far more realistic. we are seeing a very similar effect here in DD2.

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Cyberpunk didnt have much foliage and most of the textures already have lighting baked into them so the difference isnt always this obvious. i did find one bush comparison in cyberpunk that showed off the benefits of RTGI in a very similar manner.

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It's a shame HFW's PC version didnt add any rtgi. we wouldve seen exactly how a stunning game like HFW wouldve been enhanced.

as for the cyberpunk discussion, it was mostly Ravon's contrast settings that were causing images to look that dark. i went back and did some testing and found that the lighting has the proper amount of bounce we would expect. both in non rt and rt modes. i posted my results like a couple of months ago. here is one comparison. The light illuminates the ceiling like it should, and in RTGI you get that orange/reddish hue bounce lighting missing from the non-rt version.

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Alex11

Member
I wouldnt say it does it 10x better, but yes this is a great example of RT effects giving the visuals a much more grounded and realistic cg quality effect.

i posted this witcher 3 comparison last year. the self shadowing on foliage and trees makes the image look far more realistic. we are seeing a very similar effect here in DD2.

F41BalWWgAAQBcL
F41BalTWoAAheH1
I played some Witcher too, and yeah in some areas it clearly shows its age, but the RT lighting in a relatively good amount of areas really shines and looks realistic, I was surprised.
Cyberpunk didnt have much foliage and most of the textures already have lighting baked into them so the difference isnt always this obvious. i did find one bush comparison in cyberpunk that showed off the benefits of RTGI in a very similar manner.


qdX25Ne.gif


It's a shame HFW's PC version didnt add any rtgi. we wouldve seen exactly how a stunning game like HFW wouldve been enhanced.
Yeah, it really is a shame, the light leak in some indoor areas looks awful, and the lighting in general looks really bad, and then you go outside and you look at the clouds, and Jesus Christ, it's like a different game.

I don't think people praise enough or maybe don't realize how amazing the cloud tech is in this game, maybe only Flight simulator has better clouds.
 

mrqs

Member
This is a really good comparison of what RTGI adds to games. It's grounding the image with way more accurate lighting and honestly, thats what gives it such a great next gen look. remove RT and it looks last gen as fuck. This is from the new PS5 patch. On PC, someone released a mod that increased RTGI quality on PC so i will be trying that next.

vYucm5h.gif


Not all comparisons are this stark. Indoors especially dont get as big a boost, but the self shadowing on trees is consistently high quality in any scenario. i thought you needed RT shadows for that but it seems RTGI takes care of that.

Wow that looks dope. Maybe from now on games that use next-gen pipeline will be able to achieve something like that more frequently. Awesome that the next Resident Evil is using that engine.
 
I wouldnt say it does it 10x better, but yes this is a great example of RT effects giving the visuals a much more grounded and realistic cg quality effect.

i posted this witcher 3 comparison last year. the self shadowing on foliage and trees makes the image look far more realistic. we are seeing a very similar effect here in DD2.

F41BalWWgAAQBcL
F41BalTWoAAheH1


Cyberpunk didnt have much foliage and most of the textures already have lighting baked into them so the difference isnt always this obvious. i did find one bush comparison in cyberpunk that showed off the benefits of RTGI in a very similar manner.

qdX25Ne.gif


It's a shame HFW's PC version didnt add any rtgi. we wouldve seen exactly how a stunning game like HFW wouldve been enhanced.

as for the cyberpunk discussion, it was mostly Ravon's contrast settings that were causing images to look that dark. i went back and did some testing and found that the lighting has the proper amount of bounce we would expect. both in non rt and rt modes. i posted my results like a couple of months ago. here is one comparison. The light illuminates the ceiling like it should, and in RTGI you get that orange/reddish hue bounce lighting missing from the non-rt version.

GDQ6KZGW0AA9uoM
GDQ6KZGW4AArvuX
CGI level poly count and Pathtracing = “Next Gen” CGI like visuals.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Tried the High Quality Ray tracing mode in Dragons Dogma 2. It completely killed performance for a very little visual difference. The RTGI quality ingame is set to 0.4 while the mod pushes it up to 1. I think its a good compromise for these weak consoles. Very similar to the Cyberpunk Path tracing mod that lowers the path traced rays from 2 to 1 and gain performance that way.

 

hlm666

Member
So raytracing is now becoming desirable, lol I wonder why all of a sudden people can see the improvements it brings and not talking about the usual it doesn't look different and the performance cost. Must be those new glasses from specsavers, I think they were called the Pupil Saver 5 Pro. Seems to be fixing alot of vision problems.
 

Bojji

Member
So raytracing is now becoming desirable, lol I wonder why all of a sudden people can see the improvements it brings and not talking about the usual it doesn't look different and the performance cost. Must be those new glasses from specsavers, I think they were called the Pupil Saver 5 Pro. Seems to be fixing alot of vision problems.

If you don't see difference between raster and PT or raster vs RTGI you need to check your eyes.

Most games have some stupid rt shadows and or/reflection (that can produce dramatic difference depending on where game takes palce, if it's a building with a lot of reflective surfaces like Control difference is massive but if it's a desert? Not so much).

RTGI on the other hand can change entire lighting in the game, for example I'm playing final fantasy vii rebirth right now and in many places lighting is completely wrong and look last gen. For some reason developers didn't bake global illumination in most places despite game not having dynamic time of day.

With RTGI this game would look completely different.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
If you don't see difference between raster and PT or raster vs RTGI you need to check your eyes.
But it doesnt make a big difference at times. Put on Path tracing Alan Wake and tell me if it makes a big difference. i have posted countless cyberpunk comparisons with RTGI and even Path tracing and the difference is virtually impossible. unless you can find comparisons during time of day changes when the devs couldnt bake in the appropriate time of day settings. Similar to what you are seeing in FF7 where the bakes are simply poor. That game goes from looking next gen to PS3 era lighting in literally a single level. RTGI would indeed help in FF7 Rebirth. It's weird that Star Wars Jedi Survivor added it to their UE4 game but Square Enix didnt.

RTGI seems to be most effective in games set in the wilderness. Another place where ive seen it make a big impact is in volumetric effects. Typically games have their own volumetric lighting settings, but I can see RTGI helping out in Dragons Dogma 2 especially at night time.

I would say use RT reflections in games set in urban environments like spiderman 2 and cyberpunk. And leave RTGI and shadows for Horizon FW, Witcher 3, Dragons Dogma and Avatar. On consoles at least. On pc they should let us choose anything. i have no idea why DD2 doesnt have rt shadows on PC. Their regular shadows are insanely expensive, and i know from cyberpunk that turning on shadows is very cheap after you've turned on at least one rt effect. really bizarre.

So raytracing is now becoming desirable, lol I wonder why all of a sudden people can see the improvements it brings and not talking about the usual it doesn't look different and the performance cost. Must be those new glasses from specsavers, I think they were called the Pupil Saver 5 Pro. Seems to be fixing alot of vision problems.
what happened here?? people are seeing the difference now because we finally have a good implementation of it where its easy to see it. RE8 Village was the first RE Engine game with RTGI and it was barely noticeable there. Ive been playing RTGI games since 2019 starting from Metro and it was hilariously bad until the fixed it 2 years later with more rays and better bounce lighting.

RTGI implementations have continued to get better in the last 6 years or so since RTX cards first came out. to say its all of a sudden and connecting it to the PS5 pro leaks is incredibly stupid. Especially when the PS fanbase was sold on Lumen 4 years ago when the first UE5 demo came out. And again when Matrix showed hardware accelerated Lumen which is basically ray traced GI. I guess the real reason for 1943's amazing reception isnt devs finally properly utilizing UE5, but their blind love for everything black panther.
 
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Bojji

Member
But it doesnt make a big difference at times. Put on Path tracing Alan Wake and tell me if it makes a big difference. i have posted countless cyberpunk comparisons with RTGI and even Path tracing and the difference is virtually impossible. unless you can find comparisons during time of day changes when the devs couldnt bake in the appropriate time of day settings. Similar to what you are seeing in FF7 where the bakes are simply poor. That game goes from looking next gen to PS3 era lighting in literally a single level. RTGI would indeed help in FF7 Rebirth. It's weird that Star Wars Jedi Survivor added it to their UE4 game but Square Enix didnt.

RTGI seems to be most effective in games set in the wilderness. Another place where ive seen it make a big impact is in volumetric effects. Typically games have their own volumetric lighting settings, but I can see RTGI helping out in Dragons Dogma 2 especially at night time.

I would say use RT reflections in games set in urban environments like spiderman 2 and cyberpunk. And leave RTGI and shadows for Horizon FW, Witcher 3, Dragons Dogma and Avatar. On consoles at least. On pc they should let us choose anything. i have no idea why DD2 doesnt have rt shadows on PC. Their regular shadows are insanely expensive, and i know from cyberpunk that turning on shadows is very cheap after you've turned on at least one rt effect. really bizarre.

Alan Wake "PT" is piss poor, it only applies to some things and it's running over that normal raster GI they are using, it's not like CP at all where they change lighting system completely.

Cyberpunk can have MASSIVE differences, depending on what time of day is and how much light is in location:

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Tell me you don't see differences here ^
 

yamaci17

Member
Alan Wake "PT" is piss poor, it only applies to some things and it's running over that normal raster GI they are using, it's not like CP at all where they change lighting system completely.

Cyberpunk can have MASSIVE differences, depending on what time of day is and how much light is in location:



Tell me you don't see differences here ^
virtually impossible. can't see em. have you by any chance shared some john cena pictures?

DAE there's a barely a difference? can't see any at all


see, everything is baked already, no differences

as if they can bake everything that will be indirectly lit in millions of different ways of light angles ;) And of course that wouldn't be worth of having in a city full of vertical structures that would create thousands of varied indirectly lit places that would never get proper lighting treatment with rasterization. but what do I know
 
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Bojji

Member
virtually impossible. can't see em. have you by any chance shared some john cena pictures?

DAE there's a barely a difference? can't see any at all


see, everything is baked already, no differences

as if they can bake everything that will be indirectly lit in millions of different ways of light angles ;) And of course that wouldn't be worth of having in a city full of vertical structures that would create thousands of varied indirectly lit places that would never get proper lighting treatment with rasterization. but what do I know

Yeah there are moments where there is almost no difference (under direct sunlight for example or in some night scenes) but in many scenes game transforms from "last gen" lighting to "next gen"/CG level of lighting quality.

For games like AW2 good prebaked lighting with some form of raster GI for characters and dynamic objects is enough, game has highly controlled environments. But open world game with dynamic time of day is a complete different story...
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Alan Wake "PT" is piss poor, it only applies to some things and it's running over that normal raster GI they are using, it's not like CP at all where they change lighting system completely.

Cyberpunk can have MASSIVE differences, depending on what time of day is and how much light is in location:

lKKxlJk.png
zOntuyX.png
IIbkrVW.png
e5NMdLk.jpeg
qRwERTH.jpeg
Wkt4ZJ9.jpeg
ixhLld1.png
9dp8CAe.png
zI48Woo.png


Tell me you don't see differences here ^
yeah, like i said i have done dozens of comparisons on this. It is very situational and it mostly only occurs when there is a time of day gap in bakes.

there is a reason why so many people were down on RTGI because people like me would turn it on and off and not see a difference 99% of the time. Its not a conspiracy theory against RTGI, it was just really hard to see. Alan Wake 2 is a great example because their bakes are fantastic very comparable to PT lighting and their volumetric lighting handles the dynamic lighting elements.

Just like the graphics this generation, this thread is dead.
cant expect too much from japanese devs when it comes to graphics and they have been the only ones to release games this year.

things will change at E3 when the big hitters from the west finally show up and later this year when games like star wars, ass creed and dragon age launch.
 

Edder1

Member
cant expect too much from japanese devs when it comes to graphics and they have been the only ones to release games this year.

things will change at E3 when the big hitters from the west finally show up and later this year when games like star wars, ass creed and dragon age launch.
Of the three games you mentioned I'm only mostly positive that Assassin's Creed won't be delayed (a game that is yet to be announced, lol). This year is still mainly filled with cross gen games or games only for current gen system but that are built on last gen tech. We are in fourth year of this generation and yet we are still waiting for a killer app that will blow us all away visually, something we got at the beginning of last gen with Killzone Shadow Fall and a few months later with Infamous Second Son.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Of the three games you mentioned I'm only mostly positive that Assassin's Creed won't be delayed (a game that is yet to be announced, lol). This year is still mainly filled with cross gen games or games only for current gen system but that are built on last gen tech. We are in fourth year of this generation and yet we are still waiting for a killer app that will blow us all away visually, something we got at the beginning of last gen with Killzone Shadow Fall and a few months later with Infamous Second Son.
I think we got our KZSF moment last year with Avatar.

But this year, we have Hellblade 2 coming out next month. We will have black myth in august or july i cant remember. Stalker 2 is a UE5 title and should look amazing. Warhammer Space Marine 2 already looks amazing.

Even FF7 Rebirth can look amazing at times in cutscenes where they use high fidelity lighting, character models and hero lighting. i am legit fooled into thinking im watching CG and then it cuts to gameplay where the lighting falls apart and character models go back to looking last gen.

DD2 has also given me a lot of really cool next gen moments but i had to accept the last gen rocks and overall asset quality.

Whats funny is that last year we had several games using nanite and had some excellent asset quality but we dismissed them because they didnt have great lighting or that kzsf style impact. i see something like remnant 2 come and go with little fanfare and im like why? it used nanite better than any other game so far this gen. same thing happened with star wars which wasnt even using nanite but pushed some excellent asset quality.

i guess what im saying is that you just have to look for next gen in these games. i agree that its not in your face like it was with kzsf, the order, ryse, ac unity and infamous second son, but some of these UE4 and UE5 games are doing things we simply didnt see last gen.
 
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