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The most technically-advanced game for each year

Decent list but no Elite?

But how on earth can Unity be on it, the game was a technical mess at launch that didn't get fixed within 2014. It can and does look stunning but I'd put both Driveclub and Forza Horizon 2 above it as they are both flawless in performance and look exceptional when hitting their high notes and are doing a lot more, DC wins it in terms of technical achievement (though if network issues are counted then it can't be included) for the focus of the engine trying to get the broad spectrum of conditions and atmospheres rather than trying to be as close to a target render whilst getting the amount of detail they do. I'd have loved to have seen it on PC with some real grunt behind it though to sort out its shortfalls.
 
Decent list but no Elite?

But how on earth can Unity be on it, the game was a technical mess at launch that didn't get fixed within 2014. It can and does look stunning but I'd put both Driveclub and Forza Horizon 2 above it as they are both flawless in performance and look exceptional when hitting their high notes and are doing a lot more, DC wins it in terms of technical achievement (though if network issues are counted then it can't be included) for the focus of the engine trying to get the broad spectrum of conditions and atmospheres rather than trying to be as close to a target render whilst getting the amount of detail they do. I'd have loved to have seen it on PC with some real grunt behind it though to sort out its shortfalls.

Unity was bugs galore, but it was hugely advanced for the time. Thousands of NPCs on screen at a time, an extremely ambitious animation system, etc., and with all the graphical bells and whistles you could expect. All at 60fps 1080p or more. And in an open world with interiors, sewers, etc. It's legitimately staggering.

Driveclub doesn't do most of that, and still can't break 30fps. The reality is that games tied to comparatively weak hardware (consoles) aren't going to be winning.
 

Stiler

Member
~ Doug Church, Ultima Underworld 2 project lead. (He's talking about UU, but SS uses an improved version of that engine)

"2.5D" usually describes games that are literally 2D but use scaling tricks to look 3D (Wolfenstein 3D), or games that do some Z-axis calculations but in an extremely limited capacity (Doom). System Shock (and UU) are neither, they take place in fully 3D environments with a heavy emphasis on the Z-axis and populate the environment with 3D models.
]


I apologize then, from what I had read/heard it was a 2.5d game because of its use of tilemaps, my bad.

Even if Daytona didn't exist, in 1993 DOOM was released and that was, technologically and commercially, a more notable PC game than Myst.

Anyway, i disagree with some of the choices in the thread, i would give 1999 to Shenmue instead of Outcast and 2001 to Rogue Leader instead of Castle Wolfenstein (that was just a Quake 3 engine game, that engine was already old by then).


Myst was the highest selling pc game of the 90's, it sold over twice as much as doom (Its sequel, Riven, outsold Doom as well).

It single handily made CD-Roms viable and got people to buy them in droves, pushing cd-roms from a niche thing (a few games did use them before Myst) to being a mainstream thing. Without Myst we'd probably have been stuck with floppies for quite some time with a lot of games after it.

On top of this it did something that few other games did, it appealed to the mainstream/casual gamers. Even huge mainstream media that didn't normally cover games like like Rolling Stone/NYT were raving about it.

I'm not denying Doom had an impact on the industry, but it wasn't as huge of an impact as Myst did in terms of driving technology forward or commercial success.
 
gears of war for sure over oblivion.

I had oblivion for my top of the line PC and it was not as impressive as GOW for the 360.

pretty much console oblivion and PC oblivion are very similar,. The engine itself was not the greatest . The lighting wasn't particularly great. Greats of War should win here, it's for sure a bigger technical marvel than oblivion.
 
So what would you guys say is the most impressive game for 2016, any predictions for 2017?

I would've said Andromeda back in December, but now... just nope lol
 
So what would you guys say is the most impressive game for 2016, any predictions for 2017?

I would've said Andromeda back in December, but now... just nope lol

I would go Metal Gear Solid V for 2015 and Uncharted 4 for 2016.

2017 will be a toss-up between three racing games - Project CARS 2 for PC, Gran Turismo 7 for PS4 Pro, and Forza Motorsport 7 on Scorpio. They're all going to look fantastic for sure, though I'm tempted to say the race will be won based on VR chops.
 

FrankWza

Member
We need bigger screens for the modern games OP.
Crysis 3
irp94bg12H131.png


AC:Unity
16123526521_656f5a5b07_o.png


Also I think Ryse won an award for it's technical prowess before the pc version came out.

Damn...i


The fact that it's 60fps is actually the main factor that'll hinder it. Not to mention cross gen. Due to the framerate they can't put in as many technical and graphical bells and whistles as other games as well as also having to be scaleable with last gen consoles. Compared to say, Batman Arkham Knight, which will undoubtedly be 30fps, and AC Victory, which might look even better than Unity. Great thread btw OP, that's dedication.
Damn i didn't kknow untiy looked that good. Impressive.
 

ReaperXL7

Member
I mean, if the criteria isn't based on visuals then 97 should probably go to Ultima Online

Ultima_Online_cover.jpg


It was the first graphical game to really pull off what has become MMORPGs. It was the first game to allow thousands of players to all play together in a single connected world. It was also one of the first games to truely pull off player driven emergent gameplay.

I suspect this more "My favorite game or game I really liked" should win the year it came out though.
 
I don't think graphically advanced is synonomous with technically advanced and in that respect I think it's a prettty poor list.

Pushing the boundaries of the hardware the furthest is just a matter of loading the highest resolution textures and then letting people see if they can run it. It isn't an especially remarkable achievement.

Games like Rfactor and iracing push physics similation to their limits, with great graphics to boot, but no mention here. Just mainstream titles with decent visuals.
 
Wow, SEGA really dominated from the mid-80s to the mid-90s in arcade graphics.
Old comment but so true. A lot of sprite stuff from that era holds up better today br sega were truly the trailblazers for 3d when it came to the mid and early 90s. The stuff they were doing was so far ahead of the console market and anything their competitors were doing.
 

Setsuna

Member
I would go Metal Gear Solid V for 2015 and Uncharted 4 for 2016.

2017 will be a toss-up between three racing games - Project CARS 2 for PC, Gran Turismo 7 for PS4 Pro, and Forza Motorsport 7 on Scorpio. They're all going to look fantastic for sure, though In tempted to say the race will be won based on VR chops.

in a year with The Witcher 3, Assassins Creed Syndicate and Battlefront. You choose Metal gear solid 5, a game that uses assets and effects sparingly doesn't have an AA, or SSReflections?
 

KrakaJak

Neo Member
There's a huge genre omission here:

Not a single large MUD or MMO appears on this list?

Ultima Online, Everquest, World of Warcraft, Eve Online etc. all reconcile 10s of thousands of players taking millions of actions every moment. It requires not just the hardware sitting under your desk, but full on facilities of server hardware to execute effectively.
 
in a year with The Witcher 3, Assassins Creed Syndicate and Battlefront. You choose Metal gear solid 5, a game that uses assets and effects sparingly doesn't have an AA, or SSReflections?

The Witcher 3 struggled to hit 30 fps on consoles, while Metal Gear Solid V hit a full 1080p at 60fps on PS4 (900p on Xbox One). For an open-world game that still looks good (as Metal Gear Solid V does), that is absolutely incredible.
 

valkyre

Member
Baffled how nobody has mentioned Horizon in this thread...

After more than 130 hours this game still throws my jaw on the floor... there is nothing quite like it, its an astonishing technical accomplishment. Its an open world game with crazy detail, incredible lighting, huge draw distance, amazing IQ, flawless performance and immense geometry. Most of the time it really looks like CGI and it comes from the insides of a PS4...

There is simply no contest. Monumental technical achievement.
 
Baffled how nobody has mentioned Horizon in this thread...

After more than 130 hours this game still throws my jaw on the floor... there is nothing quite like it, its an astonishing technical accomplishment. Its an open world game with crazy detail, incredible lighting, huge draw distance, amazing IQ, flawless performance and immense geometry. Most of the time it really looks like CGI and it comes from the insides of a PS4...

There is simply no contest. Monumental technical achievement.

Could it possibly be because the thread was made in 2015?

A puzzle, to be sure.
 
Crysis - Crytek took open world design to new heights.
More like it took linear shooter design to new heights with semi open maps. It's still a 1 map per level/mission type of game and several of those level are extremely linear. It's not an open world game.

Also, lol old thread bump.
 
in a year with The Witcher 3, Assassins Creed Syndicate and Battlefront. You choose Metal gear solid 5, a game that uses assets and effects sparingly doesn't have an AA, or SSReflections?


Doesn't MGSV use basic FXAA? There are SSR in the PS4 version, I've seen them in an indoor section, but the PC version uses it in more locations I believe.
 
Baffled how nobody has mentioned Horizon in this thread...

After more than 130 hours this game still throws my jaw on the floor... there is nothing quite like it, its an astonishing technical accomplishment. Its an open world game with crazy detail, incredible lighting, huge draw distance, amazing IQ, flawless performance and immense geometry. Most of the time it really looks like CGI and it comes from the insides of a PS4...

There is simply no contest. Monumental technical achievement.

?!

Thread is two years old and 2017 isn't over yet...
 

valkyre

Member
Could it possibly be because the thread was made in 2015?

A puzzle, to be sure.

Thread is from the year 2015 but its title doesnt specify the year 2015 as discussion and a lot of people mentioned games from all eras. Also, thread was bumped yesterday with quite a lot of new and fresh posts.

So yeah, it kinda is a puzzle.
 
I apologize then, from what I had read/heard it was a 2.5d game because of its use of tilemaps, my bad.

I get where they're coming from; they're saying that since the tilemap format prevents full exploitation of the Z-axis (specifically, you can't have any "arbitrary" architecture), it can't count as "real 3D."

There's maybe an argument to be had there, but I think that it's mostly irrelevant when we're comparing it to Descent, which didn't actually have any arbitrary architecture (or even ramps) anyways and just used cubes. I also question whether SS's engine was actually incapable of arbitrary architecture, since there are plenty of polygonal objects that aren't restricted to tiles.

Thread is from the year 2015 but its title doesnt specify the year 2015 as discussion and a lot of people mentioned games from all eras. Also, thread was bumped yesterday with quite a lot of new and fresh posts.

So yeah, it kinda is a puzzle.

Horizon has been mentioned numerous times since this thread was bumped. So then the puzzle becomes why the guy didn't actually check the thread before complaining that nobody mentioned it.
 

Makai

Member
So did consumer electronics catch up with arcades, or did we stop investing in arcades? Could we make dedicated hardware that beat gaming PCs? I'm assuming nah because they'd need custom chips, which cost billions to develop.
 
Shouldn't Donkey Kong Country belong somewhere?


Not really. Donkey Kong Country was the first game to be rendered using SGI workstations, which was pretty impressive back in the day, especially given the cost of those machines.

It wasn't the first game to use CG pre rendered graphics for sprites or cutscenes, it was just the first to make use of expensive workstations. SGI workstations became kinda popular in the mid 90's with game developers, Square-Soft used them to create pre-rendered environments, and so did Capcom for the Resident Evil games. The N64 required SGI workstations as development kits.


~ Doug Church, Ultima Underworld 2 project lead. (He's talking about UU, but SS uses an improved version of that engine)

"2.5D" usually describes games that are literally 2D but use scaling tricks to look 3D (Wolfenstein 3D), or games that do some Z-axis calculations but in an extremely limited capacity (Doom). System Shock (and UU) are neither, they take place in fully 3D environments with a heavy emphasis on the Z-axis and populate the environment with 3D models.

utssfloor81.jpg

The Build engine (used in Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior)simply just faked screen tilting by stretching and deforming the screen. Doom and Rise of the Triad (Wolf 3D engine) used the same trick. But yeah, System Shock used a fully polygon 3D engine.

When John Carmack developed the engine for Wolf 3D (Or perhaps Catacomb 3-D?) he avoided uses polygons because he didn't want to deal with texture warping and shaky vertices. The original Wolf 3D avoided those issues by going with a raycast engine. Doom was a lot more advance with it's sector based engine and allowed for more diverse environments, but it was still limited by its z-axis. I think Carmack waited until he could get a polygon engine that didn't "fall apart" and warp, the quake engine had a very solid look to it even in software rendering, because of the perspective correction and I guess sub pixel rendering type stuff. The Quake engine introduced some cool things like shadow maps and brought OpenGL to the PC platform. ID Software didn't invent OpenGL, it was limited to workstations, but Carmack was the one to bring it over to the IBM PC with MiniGL. It helped lead to the formation of the Khronos group.

But Looking Glass Studios went the opposite direction and used completely polygon engines. They were the first to do textured maps in a game with Ultima Underworld.
 
2007:
crysis
world in conflict

2011:
battlefield 3

2013:
shadowfall
ryse

2014:
driveclub
unity

2015:
the order
battlefront

2016:
uncharted 4
doom

2017:
horizon
 
So did consumer electronics catch up with arcades, or did we stop investing in arcades? Could we make dedicated hardware that beat gaming PCs? I'm assuming nah because they'd need custom chips, which cost billions to develop.

I think they hit a junction point. Sega stopped making expensive arcade hardware with the Dreamcast. They retired Model 3 in favor of the Naomi hardware, which was especially just the Dreamcast with more video RAM. It was the first time (well, OK the Neo-Geo did this first, but only because it was the arcade board) the home ports were equal to their arcade counter parts.

Yeah, developers could make some awesome high-end arcade hardware, but when you take into power usage (these machines would be running 24/7) and heat thermal dynamics, it really just doesn't make sense to make anything beyond mid level PC hardware.
 
I'm surprised at the lack of BattleBlock Theater, when the Steam version has:

  • Stunning 1000000000p Graphics
  • High resolution super texture technology that modern human eyeballs can't even see
  • Frame rates of up to 21000fps
  • State of the art ragdoll physics
  • Particle explosion future systems
  • Advanced manipulation engine
  • Mind-blowingly realistic hair simulation
  • Oculus Rift support for up to 5 simultaneous . . . Oculuses [PENDING]
  • Video card mega graphic throttling with RAM proccessing
  • Sound effects
 

nkarafo

Member
People who look for games like Ocarina of Time and DCK:

This isn't about the most technically advanced games on the consoles you owned. It's about the most technically advanced games that were released each year generally. OOT was impressive for the N64 but in 1998 things like the Model 3, the Dreamcast and Voodoo 2 did exist. As for DKC, it was released in 1994, do you really think it's a more technologically advanced game than Daytona USA or Virtua Fighter 2 on the arcades?
 

DOWN

Banned
I think this list is kinda nutty. Sony has easily taken the crown a few years. And I would argue GTA V was the biggest tech feat of 2013.

There's been multiple threads comparing most advanced games in which Sony's games have blown people away over their unbelievably strong and consistent presentation in the nature of straight up tech demos from PS3 and PS4.
 

KKRT00

Member
2017:
horizon
This year is Star Citizen year. Both Alpha 3.0 and Squadron 42 will be out.

----
And I would argue GTA V was the biggest tech feat of 2013.
2013 is a year of Crysis 3.

There's been multiple threads comparing most advanced games in which Sony's games have blown people away over their unbelievably strong and consistent presentation in the nature of straight up tech demos from PS3 and PS4.
Most of Sony titles are juggernauts in combining great art with very good tech, but it does not make them the most advanced in tech.
 
This year is Star Citizen year. Both Alpha 3.0 and Squadron 42 will be out.

----

2013 is a year of Crysis 3.


Most of Sony titles are juggernauts in combining great art with very good tech, but it does not make them the most advanced in tech.

i have my doubts
 

KKRT00

Member
Because they promised it last year and basically all tech required for S42 is done, its content creation phase and polish.
 

Setsuna

Member
Doesn't MGSV use basic FXAA? There are SSR in the PS4 version, I've seen them in an indoor section, but the PC version uses it in more locations I believe.

Ground Zeroes has it. Metal Gear Solid 5 does not.

The Witcher 3 struggled to hit 30 fps on consoles, while Metal Gear Solid V hit a full 1080p at 60fps on PS4 (900p on Xbox One). For an open-world game that still looks good (as Metal Gear Solid V does), that is absolutely incredible.

Metal Gear solid 5 does not hit those performance levels because of Voodoo optimization. It does it because it's not doing as much as many other games.
 
Ground Zeroes has it. Metal Gear Solid 5 does not.



Metal Gear solid 5 does not hit those performance levels because of Voodoo optimization. It does it because it's not doing as much as many other games.

Witcher 3 aa isnt any better than fxaa nor does it use ssr. Syndicate is also laughable. Neither of those choices are any better than mgs 5
 

Snefer

Member
This year is Star Citizen year. Both Alpha 3.0 and Squadron 42 will be out.

----

2013 is a year of Crysis 3.


Most of Sony titles are juggernauts in combining great art with very good tech, but it does not make them the most advanced in tech.

Just because Crysis 3 had an expensive renderer doesnt mean its the most technically advanced game. GTA 5 do so many things on an engineering and content level that its hard to grasp the complexity of it even for people that work in the industry.
 

dcx4610

Member
As someone who was born in the 70's I remember playing Outrun when it came out and thinking how real it looked! Imagine showing someone in the 80's Driveclub, there head would explode, it's amazing how far gaming has come.

Graphics don't even feel like graphics to me anymore. If you showed someone Driveclub, it feels like just a simulation or recreation of reality rather than graphics if that makes sense. I think we are getting numb to visuals now for this reason. It's just real life now and no art involved.
 
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