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[shandy706]

2007:
crysis
world in conflict

2011:
battlefield 3

2013:
shadowfall
ryse

2014:
driveclub
unity

2015:
the order
battlefront

2016:
uncharted 4
doom

2017:
horizon

Quantum Break should be in the 2016 (and probably number 1), unless we're ignoring the "technically-advanced" part of the conversation. That game was trying to do too much for the hardware available.

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.

DC's tech is incredible and I'd put it at the top in this thread for 2014. The game looks bad in daylight races (on non-snow tracks) on a 4k TV though. Real bad.

 

[ikarinokami]

this thread is just making me realize how groundbreaking the original crisis was, in almost every single tech department, still my favorite shooter. I'm still waiting for another open world with fully destructible environments and great production values.

 

[KKRT00]

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.

What did GTA V on engineering level that was not done before? Its basically prettier GTA IV with some physics simulation downgrades.
What GTA 5 does better than Watch Dogs 2, Just Cause 3 or even AC games?
Its top of its class thats for sure, but its not groundbreaking, like for example Star Citizen is trying to be in its systemic, interconnected design.

Crysis 3 is not only the most technology feature rich game of 2013, but also managed to interconnect physics engines in a way it is still not replicated to this day and did it somehow on past gens.

 

[Dremorak]

What did GTA V on engineering level that was not done before? Its basically prettier GTA IV with some physics simulation downgrades.
What GTA 5 does better than Watch Dogs 2, Just Cause 3 or even AC games?
Its top of its class thats for sure, but its not groundbreaking, like for example Star Citizen is trying to be in its systemic, interconnected design.

Crysis 3 is not only the most technology feature rich game of 2013, but also managed to interconnect physics engines in a way it is still not replicated to this day and did it somehow on past gens.

On gaf and I think gamers in general have a hard time grasping what is a "technical achievment". The most realistic looking game is probably more of an artistic triumph than a technical one. Its far more impressive with things like what Shin'en has been doing for nintendo systems, making games that in some cases seem impossible to run at all, let alone 60fps.

 

[Snefer]

What did GTA V on engineering level that was not done before? Its basically prettier GTA IV with some physics simulation downgrades.
What GTA 5 does better than Watch Dogs 2, Just Cause 3 or even AC games?
Its top of its class thats for sure, but its not groundbreaking, like for example Star Citizen is trying to be in its systemic, interconnected design.

Crysis 3 is not only the most technology feature rich game of 2013, but also managed to interconnect physics engines in a way it is still not replicated to this day and did it somehow on past gens.

Well, its not just a "prettier GTA IV", but also just the improvements in rendering,streaming, 2d impostors etc. There are just so many things that need to happen for that game to look as good as it does. But its also something that is hard to grasp without really digging into it.

What do you mean with Crysis 3 interconnecting physics engines?

A lot of what make some game engines impressive fly under the radar for people, People go "wow looks at this dynamic whatever" and half the time its not dynamic at all, its just clever smoke and mirrors, while some of the real impressive tech work is out of sight

 

[The_Lump]

This. Thread says technically advanced. Buy just because your game is hard to run doesn't make it that advanced.

Arma 2 looks like ass compared to Killzone 2, personally.

Uncharted 2 is also quite impressive on a technological level.

Thread says Technically Advanced not Technically Beautiful. I read that as games which push hardware (and software) to it's limits. Thus, I totally agree with OP, (amazingly, almost entirely year for year!)

 

[Katori]

What did GTA V on engineering level that was not done before? Its basically prettier GTA IV with some physics simulation downgrades.
What GTA 5 does better than Watch Dogs 2, Just Cause 3 or even AC games?
Its top of its class thats for sure, but its not groundbreaking, like for example Star Citizen is trying to be in its systemic, interconnected design.

Remember, GTAV was a 360/PS3 game originally. And it was mind-blowing back then, especially things like character animation and world detail (I remember being able to read almost any visible text in the game, street signs, graffiti and the like--all on Xbox 360!), and especially considering that the world was larger than San Andreas, IV and Red Dead combined.

 

[nOoblet16]

2009 should be Uncharted 2.

It wasn't the most technically advanced overall. It was certainly up there and used the hardware to push as much as possible but even then I'd say in terms of pure tech Killzone 2 slightly edged it out that year. But Arma 2 was ahead still ahead tech wise.

Crazy, I prety much agree with almost every one of your selections (and great contenders too).

Edit: your crysis 3 screen is actually from Crysis 2.

I agree with everything as well, except 2006. That year was owned by Gears of War through and through. You can consider scale all you want but we are talking pure tech and Gears of War was miles ahead of anything around at that point.

Edit: Wow I just realised I quoted posts from 2015.

 

[KKRT00]

Well, its not just a "prettier GTA IV", but also just the improvements in rendering,streaming, 2d impostors etc. There are just so many things that need to happen for that game to look as good as it does. But its also something that is hard to grasp without really digging into it.

So, like in every newer game? :>
Optimizations of existing technology, improvements in asset creation or using newer, more optimized techniques is fundamental way of improving your engine.

What do you mean with Crysis 3 interconnecting physics engines?

Particles, vegetation and rigid physics all are affected by forces generated by wind, projectiles, other bodies or explosions, there is no other game that does it that i can think of.

---

Remember, GTAV was a 360/PS3 game originally.

So is Crysis 3 and Watch Dogs.
And i'm not saying that GTA V is bad looking, its amazing looking game, top of its class in almost every department, but its not groundbreaking.

 

[iapetus]

Thread says Technically Advanced not Technically Beautiful. I read that as games which push hardware (and software) to it's limits. Thus, I totally agree with OP, (amazingly, almost entirely year for year!)

Then you too are wrong in the head for picking a rather bland racing game over the technical (and gameplay, irrelevant as that is here) tour de force that was Elite.

 

[Cartho]

this thread is just making me realize how groundbreaking the original crisis was, in almost every single tech department, still my favorite shooter. I'm still waiting for another open world with fully destructible environments and great production values.

It's utterly ridiculous how far ahead of its time Crysis was. 2007. This game is TEN YEARS OLD.

 

[Snefer]

So, like in every newer game? :>
Optimizations of existing technology, improvements in asset creation or using newer, more optimized techniques is fundamental way of improving your engine.

No, they just do alot more than what the average developer will ever even consider, due to the massive nature of their game. Even many other open world games, like Far Cry 3 does not push the technology nearly as much.

Particles, vegetation and rigid physics all are affected by forces generated by wind, projectiles, other bodies or explosions, there is no other game that does it that i can think of.

Both particles and vegetation being affected by "wind" is commonplace, and is actually just smoke and mirrors, since its not actual physics-driven. I doubt wind was actually impacting physics objects at all times though The softbody physics were really cool though, too bad they didnt get more exposure in the game really.

 

[blastprocessor]

It's utterly ridiculous how far ahead of its time Crysis was. 2007. This game is TEN YEARS OLD.

I remember they showed early demos that were amazing but I don't remember the lighting looking anywhere near as good as this.

 

[laxu]

I remember they showed early demos that were amazing but I don't remember the lighting looking anywhere near as good as this.

That's probably a screenshot from one of the various lighting mods made for the game that make it look like the demos. With those mods the game requires a lot newer hardware than what was available at the game's release.

 

[Dictator93]

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

TW3 uses SSR on water, and its AA is definitely better than FXAA as is curtails specular aliasing on small chain links whereas FXAA does nothing there.

I agree with everything as well, except 2006. That year was owned by Gears of War through and through. You can consider scale all you want but we are talking pure tech and Gears of War was miles ahead of anything around at that point.

Edit: Wow I just realised I quoted posts from 2015.

Hahaha. These necro-bumps are always confusing

I remember they showed early demos that were amazing but I don't remember the lighting looking anywhere near as good as this.

That screen is just from a custom level from a post-release version (not a mod, though it is using the custom alpha scar model). It has blown out sky values and some blown out bloom in comparison to the default game. It does not run any worse per se (minus the amount of vegetation just being a bit higher).
Here are some original crysis pre-release screens (before they revamped the shadow filtering, added the new scar and other things):

 

[dr guildo]

[...]
2017:
horizon

Hmm, I agree, even with StarCitizen in the count. Both of them are open world and I had to take in consideration that HZD is wizard secret sauce if you think it runs like this on an OG PS4.

I have yet to see how StarCitizen deals with materials, skin shaders, polycount, texturing, topometry variety and complexity, etc...

 

[Renekton]

Seems like a very PC-centric list :/

 

[Sony]

Alan Wake, aside from being 540p, also did some great things under the hood that deserve a nod.

 

[laxu]

Remember, GTAV was a 360/PS3 game originally. And it was mind-blowing back then, especially things like character animation and world detail (I remember being able to read almost any visible text in the game, street signs, graffiti and the like--all on Xbox 360!), and especially considering that the world was larger than San Andreas, IV and Red Dead combined.

The overall level of content in GTA V is probably not much different from IV though. You can easily make as big a map you want if most of it is unpopulated. Most of the countryside in GTA V has nothing happening in it so it's big for the sake of being big, not because it results in more interesting gameplay. Rendering the level is all about the LOD and draw distances set. I hope for the next GTA game they scale it back a notch and instead concentrate on allowing you to do more things in the world.

V totally a refinement over GTA IV. GTA IV is definitely the most technically impressive game to come out in 2008 even if it ran like shit on all platforms it was released for.

 

[laxu]

Seems like a very PC-centric list :/

Which is not surprising because for a long time consoles just didn't have anywhere near the horsepower to match PCs and lots of PC games were pioneering many of the things (especially in realtime rendering) we now take for granted in games regardless of platform. I'd say only in the PS3 era we started seeing things like Uncharted 3's boat levels etc impressive set pieces that have a lot of fancy physics sims behind them.

In the last few years the most visually impressive games have been Uncharted 4 and Horizon on PS4, partly due to their technology but mostly due to their impeccable art direction.

 

[Dictator93]

I have yet to see how StarCitizen deals with materials, skin shaders, polycount, texturing, topometry variety and complexity, etc...

Human Skin Shader:

Highest tier model (tier 0):

Lowest tier model (tier 03):

Polycounts are obviously hard to say, but we do know that a number of scenes in SC, pre-shadow triangles are in the realm of 10 million or so. Ships and character model polycounts are highly dependpent upon what you are wearing, whether it is a main character, and the size of the ship

half a million or so:

to like ~45 million triangles in the case of something like the Idris (the smallest capital ship in this trailer):

Topometry variety goes all the way from barren moon:

to run-down Space Station:

To Savannah:

Textures tend to be very high res:

Environment:

Character:

 

[dr guildo]

Human Skin Shader:


Polycounts are obviously hard to say, but we do know that a number of scenes in SC, pre-shadow triangles are in the realm of 10 million or so. Ships and character model polycounts are highly dependpent upon what you are wearing, whether it is a main character, and the size of the ship




Textures tend to be very high res:

In game ?

Edit : about the skin part.

 

[Dictator93]

In game ?

Edit : about the skin part.

The top image of Liam Cunningham's character is presumably an in-editor shot given the background and the fact that the character is not in the multiplayer component of the game atm. The bottom character model is a screenshot I took in game just running around the arc corp location.

 

[dr guildo]

The top image of Liam Cunningham's character is presumably an in-editor shot given the background and the fact that the character is not in the multiplayer component of the game atm. The bottom character model is a screenshot I took in game just running around the arc corp location.

Very convincing, that is what Horizon can produce in the in-game area, I will let you judge by yourself :

 

[alexanderftw]

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.

Dense populated cities, towns, dense forests and swamps and mountains blooming with life, with a bigger map not to emntion underground caves and dungeons, more detailed characters among so many other graphical details, look worse than a barren small map filled with some outposts and some bases.

Ridiculous.

 

[klier]

2017:
horizon

Absolutely no way.

No physics; fake world. Nothing technical about that.

Also, I am Dutch and have a PS4 Prowith Horizon, so no need to start the fanboy wars.

 

[nelsonroyale]

I personally don't think Star Citizen should be counted until it is actually a game. It looks very impressive to me, but it isn't reasonably content complete by any conventional metric...It will be the most technical game released, mainly because it targets far higher specs than any console game. I personally believe devs like ND and Guerrila would output at least as, or more impressive looking games if they targeted equivalent specs...So I attribute its visuals as much or more to having no tech ceiling, then that the devs should get particular praise for delivering higher fidelity visuals than other devs. But I digress, it looks amazing, I just want to see something I would consider a game (with story elements, interconnected worlds, continuous meaty campaign, etc) rather than a demo.

To be honest, I found the trailer for Battlefront II looked more impressive to me visually than the SC tech, but I know the former were from carefully directed cutscenes, that are less representative of what it will look, and the amount of activity, during gameplay.

Absolutely no way.

No physics; fake world. Nothing technical about that.

Also, I am Dutch and have a PS4 Prowith Horizon, so no need to start the fanboy wars.

Eh these don't discount you from exhibiting fanboyism though...

 

[zoukka]

Absolutely no way.

No physics; fake world. Nothing technical about that.

Also, I am Dutch and have a PS4 Prowith Horizon, so no need to start the fanboy wars.

lmao

 

[Poimandres]

Seems like a very PC-centric list :/

Basically, arcades until the mid 90s, then PC for a good decade. More power = better tech basically.

 

[nOoblet16]

I personally thought Ryse was far more impressive than Crysis 3.

Well it was a newer game and used PBR so yes, it did lack some stuff like water caustics though.

 

[Zakalwe]

Absolutely no way.

No physics; fake world. Nothing technical about that.

Also, I am Dutch and have a PS4 Prowith Horizon, so no need to start the fanboy wars.

This is an incredible post.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

I personally don't think Star Citizen should be counted until it is actually a game. It looks very impressive to me, but it isn't reasonably content complete by any conventional metric...It will be the most technical game released, mainly because it targets far higher specs than any console game. I personally believe devs like ND and Guerrila would output at least as, or more impressive looking games if they targeted equivalent specs...So I attribute its visuals as much or more to having no tech ceiling, then that the devs should get particular praise for delivering higher fidelity visuals than other devs. But I digress, it looks amazing, I just want to see something I would consider a game (with story elements, interconnected worlds, continuous meaty campaign, etc) rather than a demo.

To be honest, I found the trailer for Battlefront II looked more impressive to me visually than the SC tech, but I know the former were from carefully directed cutscenes, that are less representative of what it will look, and the amount of activity, during gameplay.



Eh these don't discount you from exhibiting fanboyism though...

I don't think it's any more irrelevant (for lack of a better word) to discuss Star Citizen because it hasn't fully released than it is to claim Horizon is the most advanced game of 2017 when 2017 isn't even halfway through.

 

[farisr]

Absolutely no way.

No physics; fake world. Nothing technical about that.

Also, I am Dutch and have a PS4 Prowith Horizon, so no need to start the fanboy wars.

Yeah, I think a lot of game developers throughout the industry, even direct competitors would absolutely disagree with this post.

 

[icecold1983]

Absolutely no way.

No physics; fake world. Nothing technical about that.

Also, I am Dutch and have a PS4 Prowith Horizon, so no need to start the fanboy wars.

What would be your choice at this point in the year?

 

[Cartho]

I remember they showed early demos that were amazing but I don't remember the lighting looking anywhere near as good as this.

It didn't from the in game menus. There were various hidden settings which you needed to tweak the game files for which made it look like the early demos. I think they disabled them from the in game menus for launch because people rocking twin 8800 GTXs in SLI struggled to get it running well!

 

[Phediuk]

I should note that since I made this thread, research has suggested that I, Robot actually came out in 1984, so it would win that year if I did this thread again.

 

[KKRT00]

Both particles and vegetation being affected by "wind" is commonplace, and is actually just smoke and mirrors, since its not actual physics-driven. I doubt wind was actually impacting physics objects at all times though The softbody physics were really cool though, too bad they didnt get more exposure in the game really.

Of course wind is common occurrence, but its not only wind, its also bullets, explosions, even micro-explosions.
For example there is a gun in a game called K-Volt which is machine gun that fires projectiles than on impact cause micro-explosions. Every one of those explosions cause physics interactions, even with particles.
I had gif of that, but it died with minus.com ;/

No, they just do alot more than what the average developer will ever even consider, due to the massive nature of their game. Even many other open world games, like Far Cry 3 does not push the technology nearly as much.

You're not posting any examples though.

---------

It will be the most technical game released, mainly because it targets far higher specs than any console game. I personally believe devs like ND and Guerrila would output at least as, or more impressive looking games if they targeted equivalent specs...So I attribute its visuals as much or more to having no tech ceiling, then that the devs should get particular praise for delivering higher fidelity visuals than other devs. But I digress, it looks amazing, I just want to see something I would consider a game (with story elements, interconnected worlds, continuous meaty campaign, etc) rather than a demo.

But Star Citizen is not only visually impressive, it also does breakthroughs in physics, animations, content creation and LoD handling.
You also must remember that both ND and Guerrila could not match Crytek in terms of technical prowess and CIG is even more ambitious.

 

[CrazyHorse]

Is Crysis still the best looking game of all time?

 

[Snefer]

Of course wind is common occurrence, but its not only wind, its also bullets, explosions, even micro-explosions.
For example there is a gun in a game called K-Volt which is machine gun that fires projectiles than on impact cause micro-explosions. Every one of those explosions cause physics interactions, even with particles.

I would not call that groundbreaking though. Physics on particles is nothing new either, just applying it more often than in most cases.

You're not posting any examples though.

No, alot of this is stuff i dont exactly have lying around.
this is just some rather basic stuff, but still, there are three parts, a few cool nuggets in there.
http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-study/

---------

But Star Citizen is not only visually impressive, it also does breakthroughs in physics, animations, content creation and LoD handling.
You also must remember that both ND and Guerrila could not match Crytek in terms of technical prowess and CIG is even more ambitious.

I wouldnt say star citizen does breakthroughs in all those areas. Esp not content creation. They do leverage some existing workflows in more expensive ways because of their huge polygon budgets, but nothing groundbreaking though. Its cool stuff, for sure, but I wouldnt say its groundbreaking, thats a bit of a stretch. What do they do with LOD handling that is a breakthrough? (for reference i do work in games with rather technical stuff, i dont pull things completely out of my ass, only partially)

 

[Jawbreaker]

Absolutely no way.

No physics; fake world. Nothing technical about that.

Also, I am Dutch and have a PS4 Prowith Horizon, so no need to start the fanboy wars.

Hahahaha. I needed a good laugh.

 

[rashbeep]

Here are some original crysis pre-release screens (before they revamped the shadow filtering, added the new scar and other things):

I remember the vegetation (like the palm trees) looking quite a bit better than the final game too.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Is Crysis still the best looking game of all time?

It still looks great to this day and more importantly it's still one of the best shooters ever. I wish more games followed Crysis idea of what an fps can do than going the CoD route that unfortunately Crytek started taking the series with Crysis 2.

 

[nelsonroyale]

Of course wind is common occurrence, but its not only wind, its also bullets, explosions, even micro-explosions.
For example there is a gun in a game called K-Volt which is machine gun that fires projectiles than on impact cause micro-explosions. Every one of those explosions cause physics interactions, even with particles.
I had gif of that, but it died with minus.com ;/

You're not posting any examples though.

---------

But Star Citizen is not only visually impressive, it also does breakthroughs in physics, animations, content creation and LoD handling.
You also must remember that both ND and Guerrila could not match Crytek in terms of technical prowess and CIG is even more ambitious.

Eh, I disagree with that having played most of the games those three have produced.

 

[BigEmil]

Human Skin Shader:


Polycounts are obviously hard to say, but we do know that a number of scenes in SC, pre-shadow triangles are in the realm of 10 million or so. Ships and character model polycounts are highly dependpent upon what you are wearing, whether it is a main character, and the size of the ship




Textures tend to be very high res:

For such an expensive and big game for high end PC to utilise fully that hair is appalling

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Eh, I disagree with that having played most of the games those three have produced.

I mean, there's really no way to know what Crytek would have been doing by now if everything had gone well for them. Arguably their most envelop pushing phase was during Crysis 1 development with Cryengine 2, but even after that settled down, Cryengine 3 was a current gen engine that came out in 2011, and they never made a big jump since due to all sort of things like talent exodus, near bankruptcy, etc. You can see some of that talent shining on games like Doom 2016.

 

[oneils]

Human Skin Shader:


Polycounts are obviously hard to say, but we do know that a number of scenes in SC, pre-shadow triangles are in the realm of 10 million or so. Ships and character model polycounts are highly dependpent upon what you are wearing, whether it is a main character, and the size of the ship




Textures tend to be very high res:

God damn. I'm hungry for some crow. I will eat a bucket of crow to make this actually release. Looks fantastic.

 

[Magnus]

Were the Crysis games that stunning? I can't seem to even conjure up a screen from them in my head. For some reason they didn't register with me at all. Were they like, technically impressive but lacking in art/design?

 

[Grettir_the_Swole]

Dat Sega domination in the early 90s.

Beautiful.

My only dream in life is to have a room lined with SEGA arcade cabinets. The Sega Model series was incredible. The Yu Suzuki/Lockheed Martin pairing of the 90's was unstoppable.

 

[BlindJesus]

Arma 3 definitely should be ahead of the choices for 2013. I still have a hard time running it with a GTX 1070(though it is a very CPU intensive game.)

 

[NowhereFaded]

It's utterly ridiculous how far ahead of its time Crysis was. 2007. This game is TEN YEARS OLD.

Holy shit!!! Mother of all that is great!! Can't believe!!
Crisis still has amazing visuals. Even being ten years young.
Where is this generations crysis for christs sake??