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[soontroll]

The trailer on the Steam page is clearly labelled "E3 2013 Trailer". It's just showing the vertical slice that was used to demo the console versions.

They also mix old a new screenshots. Don't get your hopes up.

For example, they have this one that looks like the retail build:

Maybe that area is just flat looking even with the new lighting. It actually does look better than the console version of the same area.

 

[Metroid-Squadron]

They also have this one in there:

The castle in the final game has another section on its right side. They're using pre-downgrade material to promote the game.

 

[CountAntonius]

What? lol how would that even work? From are the ones making the game? How and why would Namco do that?

I'm sure he meant the developers and just said namco.

 

[Lucent]

Didn't look like what?

Didn't look nearly as dark and atmospheric. It seemed pretty bright. And I have my game brightness all the way down and my TV settings are fine. The trailer looks much better.

 

[The Lamp]

Gonna try the HDMI thing on the last page tonight.

 

[See You Next Wednesday]

Try that trick here, doesn't work, shadows are gone:

I only got to the Cathedral part in the game, but real time shadows are still in the game.
It just seems they changed the placement of a lot of it, so it specifically doesn't cast a shadow on most of the environments.

The game run at 30-40+fps on the 360 (haven't seen at noticeable drops so far in the game). This higher framerate is probably the result of that optimization.

From what I remember the reveal had a terrible framerate.

 

[soontroll]

I only got to the Cathedral part in the game, but real time shadows are still in the game.
It just seems they changed the placement of a lot of it, so it specifically doesn't cast a shadow on most of the environments.

The game run at 30-40+fps on the 360 (haven't seen at noticeable drops so far in the game). This higher framerate is probably the result of that optimization.

From what I remember the reveal had a terrible framerate.

Which reveal? All the videos had great framerate.

 

[Comfort Jones]

From what I remember the reveal had a terrible framerate.

I have literally no idea where the fuck you're getting that from. Pretty much everyone I've seen post here has said the fps seemed to never dip in the reveal.

 

[Metroid-Squadron]

I only got to the Cathedral part in the game, but real time shadows are still in the game.
It just seems they changed the placement of a lot of it, so it specifically doesn't cast a shadow on most of the environments.

You're confused. The missing shadows were lightmapped. Lighting placement is the same but the baked lighting/shadowing is much poorer than it was before.

 

[See You Next Wednesday]

Didn't look nearly as dark and atmospheric. It seemed pretty bright. And I have my game brightness all the way down and my TV settings are fine. The trailer looks much better.

The in-game brightness option WILL NOT CHANGE the black levels or contrast. Blacks will still look light & grey.
The in-game brightness only changes the shadow detail within the grey shades of black the game is displaying.

If anything after the fix, the in-game brightness cold be upped a little, because the dungeons & caves are very dark now.

 

[jacksepticeye]

Anyway, doesn't anyone with decent capture equipment own any console version of DS2? It seems ridiculous that the majority of the arguments in this thread are based on tiny gifs, screencaps from badly compressed video or off-screen photos. That's no way to conduct a reasonable analysis.

I do but it's a lot of hassle to go around looking for those spots to take the exact same angled shots or mimic the movement for a gif perfectly

Looks way better than consoles

No it doesn't, it looks almost the same except it's just 1080p. Textures are still shit

 

[HDgaming42]

Every two pages someone needs to be reminded that apparently the PS3 demo HAD the new lighting engine.

Come on GAF--someone here must have, or have access to the PS3 demo. There are people who archive TITLE UPDATES for crying out loud. No one grabbed the demo?

Is there a torrent? Can it be thrown up on the binaries? Mega?

If we could actually capture the same area from the demo vs retail in high resolution (and watch the frame rate, as frame rates appear to be subjective to some...) it would clear up a lot of the back-and-forth.

I've got a CFW PS3 I'd be willing to lend to the cause.

And as far as being a "vertical slice"--hell, if that section ran on the PS3 with lighting, why not use the vertical slice for that particular level?

 

[Lucent]

The in-game brightness option WILL NOT CHANGE the black levels or contrast. Blacks will still look light & grey.
The in-game brightness only changes the shadow detail within the grey shades of black the game is displaying.

If anything after the fix, the in-game brightness cold be upped a little, because the dungeons & caves are very dark now.

Yeah, well, my PS3 has been on full RGB (HDMI). I have no idea what I'm supposed to be messing with on my TV based on what you said.

Every two pages someone needs to be reminded that apparently the PS3 demo HAD the new lighting engine.

Come on GAF--someone here must have, or have access to the PS3 demo. There are people who archive TITLE UPDATES for crying out loud. No one grabbed the demo?

Is there a torrent? Can it be thrown up on the binaries? Mega?

If we could actually capture the same area from the demo vs retail in high resolution (and watch the frame rate, as frame rates appear to be subjective to some...) it would clear up a lot of the back-and-forth.

I've got a CFW PS3 I'd be willing to lend to the cause.

And as far as being a "vertical slice"--hell, if that section ran on the PS3 with lighting, why not use the vertical slice for that particular level?

How could normal people have access to the demo? Weren't they only available to play at shows?

 

[See You Next Wednesday]

I do but it's a lot of hassle to go around looking for those spots to take the exact same angled shots or mimic the movement for a gif perfectlyt

Just start a new game & capture the first few opening cutscene with the 3 witch that talk to you.
The game uses cinematic black bars on the top & bottom during their dialog.
By default they are grey bars.

Which reveal? All the videos had great framerate.

I have literally no idea where the fuck you're getting that from. Pretty much everyone I've seen post here has said the fps seemed to never dip in the reveal.

I'm going off memory of youtube compressed videos, haven't seen any direct 720p/1080p feed videos of the reveal.

I had enough talking, I'm going off to play the game some more.

 

[jacksepticeye]

Every two pages someone needs to be reminded that apparently the PS3 demo HAD the new lighting engine.

Come on GAF--someone here must have, or have access to the PS3 demo. There are people who archive TITLE UPDATES for crying out loud. No one grabbed the demo?

Is there a torrent? Can it be thrown up on the binaries? Mega?

If we could actually capture the same area from the demo vs retail in high resolution (and watch the frame rate, as frame rates appear to be subjective to some...) it would clear up a lot of the back-and-forth.

I've got a CFW PS3 I'd be willing to lend to the cause.

And as far as being a "vertical slice"--hell, if that section ran on the PS3 with lighting, why not use the vertical slice for that particular level?

The public didn't get the demo with the lighting from what I remember. We got the beta with it maybe but not possible to go back to that

 

[See You Next Wednesday]

Yeah, well, my PS3 has been on full RGB (HDMI). I have no idea what I'm supposed to be messing with on my TV based on what you said.



How could normal people have access to the demo? Weren't they only available to play at shows?

Yeah, not all TVs & PC monitors have options to set their HDMI black levels.
That's why the PS3 & Xbox have display options to change the reference black levels on them.
NamcoBandai is really screwing people over by this.

A work around would be to lower your TV's in-menu brightness controls (not the games) on a pure black screen (the Dark Souls title screen is a good test screen for this). Keep dropping the brightness until your TV stops lowering shades of black & doesn't go blacker at all.

This can be inaccurate & still give you an uncalibrated picture though.

 

[HDgaming42]

How could normal people have access to the demo? Weren't they only available to play at shows?

The public didn't get the demo with the lighting from what I remember. We got the beta with it maybe but not possible to go back to that

Oh, is that how it worked? I thought they did a PS+ lottery or something of the like to get limited access to the demo. Was that just for the network test?

 

[Septimius]

What you're looking for in the TV menu is something like "Black level" or "HDMI black level" or something like that. Set it to 'low', and the range should then be 5-250 or whatever it is, instead of 0-256. The problem is that you have to mismatch the PS3 and TV setting. However, I'll probably do this when playing from now on. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Lucent]

Oh, is that how it worked? I thought they did a PS+ lottery or something of the like to get limited access to the demo. Was that just for the network test?

Yeah just a 2 hour network stress test each time they did it. It's not possible to access it even if I redownloaded it. Need access to their servers or whatever.

 

[Pooya]

Try that trick here, doesn't work, shadows are gone:

I don't have this armor yet, is the fur effect on it still in the game?

 

[DarkoMaledictus]

They also have this one in there:

The castle in the final game has another section on its right side. They're using pre-downgrade material to promote the game.

If true and its not like the pc game looks this is some shady marketing!!

 

[Persona7]

There is a ton of beta footage on youtube if anyone wants to make a comparison.

 

[HDgaming42]

Yeah just a 2 hour network stress test each time they did it. It's not possible to access it even if I redownloaded it. Need access to their servers or whatever.

Thanks for clearing that up. So all of this "it ran on PS3 with lighting" is based on one or two people's recounting of demos they were shown? Hmmmmm...

And were these demos like--"here's a disc to put in your PS3, or "hey, here's a suped up dev kit in the shell of a retail PS3 that crashes out to a normal looking XMB--here's your controller"?

I am becoming increasingly skeptical that the new lighting engine ever actually ran on a real, retail PS3.

Off Topic--didn't the demo of GOW3 look better than the retail game? I can't recall what was better about it...

 

[CountAntonius]

If true and its not like the pc game looks this is some shady marketing!!

Pretty clear that there is a huge lack of communication and whoever is handling the marketing is just being messy. I don't buy that's its an actual intent to trick people because it's all just been inconsistent. the retail build is what a lot of videos in late January were showing. It already had the downgrade to lighting and nobody noticed even on Gaf. This video below was posted a month ago.
Combat preview

That seems like the retail build to me. People have also been saying the people who put together the "sizzle reels" are outsourced. So they probably spliced everything together from old builds. Doesn't mean people were mislead and don't deserve answers but I would be surprised if Namco purposely tried to mislead people.

inb4 being called an apologist.

 

[Goodacre0081]

What you're looking for in the TV menu is something like "Black level" or "HDMI black level" or something like that. Set it to 'low', and the range should then be 5-250 or whatever it is, instead of 0-256. The problem is that you have to mismatch the PS3 and TV setting. However, I'll probably do this when playing from now on. Thanks for the tip.

does this mean we have to go and do this every time we play DS2, and is the developer going to patch this eventually ?

 

[Havel]

Pretty clear that there is a huge lack of communication and whoever is handling the marketing is just being messy. I don't buy that's its an actual intent to trick people because it's all just been inconsistent. the retail build is what a lot of videos in late January were showing. It already had the downgrade to lighting and nobody noticed even on Gaf. This video below was posted a month ago.
Combat preview

That seems like the retail build to me. People have also been saying the people who put together the "sizzle reels" are outsourced. So they probably spliced everything together from old builds. Doesn't mean people were mislead and don't deserve answers but I would be surprised if Namco purposely tried to mislead people.

inb4 being called an apologist.

How is anyone supposed to know that build was downgraded, when we had nothing to compare it to, and the exact same day this video was released?

 

[Lucent]

You notice how whenever you go to the main menu the game says

Ver. 1.01
Calibrations 1.03

I wonder what they're even going to do with those.

 

[Ghazi]

You notice how whenever you go to the main menu the game says

Ver. 1.01
Calibrations 1.03

I wonder what they're even going to do with those.

Version is probably Title Update version stuff.

I honestly have a complete guess that Calibrations are things they can change over the servers, maybe enemy positions, damage and other values, maybe events like Demon Souls.

 

[CountAntonius]

How is anyone supposed to know that build was downgraded, when we had nothing to compare it to, and the exact same day this video was released?

I didn't say we were supposed to know i said we didn't notice. I just happen to think that since it was probably outsourced they used whatever footage they had up until that point.

Version is probably Title Update version stuff.

I honestly have a complete guess that Calibrations are things they can change over the servers, maybe enemy positions, damage and other values, maybe events like Demon Souls.

This is probably it. I wonder what kinda stuff they can change with calibrations. hopefully unbalanced things so we don't need to wait months for patches. There will be events as well I' wondering what kind? On the bonfire page there is an event section.


Seems there is anew interview out where they talk about world events and the PC delay.

Video

Regarding PC:

"We apologize for the delay, but we did spend time working on the PC version, making sure that we do attend to higher resolutions, higher framerates, and also keyboard mapping most controls,"

Regarding Events

“One of the main reasons why we wanted to re-visit the game server system was for that added level of role-playing in the online world, itself,” Miyazoe said. “The Covenants have been improved. The new game servers, based on the beta we had last year, we noticed that there’s a lot of online activity, a lot of players leaving blood messages, a lot of ghosts being seen.

“It obviously adds a new level to the online system itself.”

 

[The Lamp]

Every two pages someone needs to be reminded that apparently the PS3 demo HAD the new lighting engine.

Come on GAF--someone here must have, or have access to the PS3 demo. There are people who archive TITLE UPDATES for crying out loud. No one grabbed the demo?

Is there a torrent? Can it be thrown up on the binaries? Mega?

If we could actually capture the same area from the demo vs retail in high resolution (and watch the frame rate, as frame rates appear to be subjective to some...) it would clear up a lot of the back-and-forth.

I've got a CFW PS3 I'd be willing to lend to the cause.

And as far as being a "vertical slice"--hell, if that section ran on the PS3 with lighting, why not use the vertical slice for that particular level?

I had the network beta but I deleted it when the game came out. You can't play it without Namco authorizing it anyway. NA players only got to connect for a few hours.

 

[Arkanius]

I had the demo but I deleted it when the game came out. You can't play it without Namco authorizing it anyway. NA players only got to connect for a few hours.

It's because the demo was powered by the CloudTM

 

[Bedlam]

Looks way better than consoles

No. It looks exactly the same except for the resolution.

 

[The Lamp]

It's because the demo was powered by the CloudTM

And by demo, I mean the network beta. Sorry for confusing terminology.

 

[Persona7]

You notice how whenever you go to the main menu the game says

Ver. 1.01
Calibrations 1.03

I wonder what they're even going to do with those.

Version is for patches and I am pretty sure calibrations is for server side updates that can be pushed out quickly to everyone. The Armored Core games have a similar function called "regulations".

 

[Lalalandia]

And were these demos like--"here's a disc to put in your PS3, or "hey, here's a suped up dev kit in the shell of a retail PS3 that crashes out to a normal looking XMB--here's your controller"?

I am becoming increasingly skeptical that the new lighting engine ever actually ran on a real, retail PS3

Oh yes. A standard retail PS3. Not even a devkit.

I watched one of the stations crash even and they simply reset the PS3 and the disc showed up on the XMB menu and everything. You could also use the PS button.

Controlled demo but conditions but Dark10x saw the lighting on a retail PS3 in the other thread.

 

[Lucent]

Okay, so I found the setting on my TV to lower black level to low instead of Auto/High. I had to raise the in-game brightness up more than half just to get the bonfire to show a bit. It definitely seems to make a huge difference in making areas that should be dark dark, while areas that are light or lit by sconces still pretty bright. Still looks a little off. And I never noticed the cutscene bars being grey when I started so I dunno.

 

[Lalalandia]

It's because the demo was powered by the CloudTM

Dammit how did I miss this! Of course it all makes sense now, come back Don all is forgiven....

 

[Metroid-Squadron]

Thanks for clearing that up. So all of this "it ran on PS3 with lighting" is based on one or two people's recounting of demos they were shown? Hmmmmm...

And were these demos like--"here's a disc to put in your PS3, or "hey, here's a suped up dev kit in the shell of a retail PS3 that crashes out to a normal looking XMB--here's your controller"?

I am becoming increasingly skeptical that the new lighting engine ever actually ran on a real, retail PS3.

Off Topic--didn't the demo of GOW3 look better than the retail game? I can't recall what was better about it...

Here's dark10x confirmation that the TGS build (better lighting engine) was running on real PS3s:

Oh yes. A standard retail PS3. Not even a devkit.

I watched one of the stations crash even and they simply reset the PS3 and the disc showed up on the XMB menu and everything. You could also use the PS button.

The network test is a different demo. Many of us suspect that the E3/TGS demos were vertical slices of the games, developed separately from the main game, allowing them to be better optimized and polished with eye candy. The network test on the other hand was a slice of the real game, not as polished as the E3/TGS versions. The changes from the network test to the final game aren't as big compared to E3/TGS vs retail but there were some cuts too.

 

[Arkanius]

And by demo, I mean the network beta. Sorry for confusing terminology.

The Cloud is real.

Spoiler

jk

 

[Lalalandia]

Okay, so I found the setting on my TV to lower black level to low instead of Auto/High. I had to raise the in-game brightness up more than half just to get the bonfire to show a bit. It definitely seems to make a huge difference in making areas that should be dark dark, while areas that are light or lit by sconces still pretty bright. Still looks a little off. And I never noticed the cutscene bars being grey when I started so I dunno.

Those setting are crushing the blacks which is why you're getting a weird hard to balance light set up. The game is limited range, setting your PS3 and TV to Full pulls the current black from 16 to 0 and pushes white from 239 to 254, blacks get blacker whites get whiter but everything goes a bit weird in the middle. It helps perception wise because the overall game brightness is way too high but will mess up your other games that don't have the 'over bright darkness' look of DS2

 

[SlasherJPC]

Yeah, not all TVs & PC monitors have options to set their HDMI black levels.
That's why the PS3 & Xbox have display options to change the reference black levels on them.
NamcoBandai is really screwing people over by this.

A work around would be to lower your TV's in-menu brightness controls (not the games) on a pure black screen (the Dark Souls title screen is a good test screen for this). Keep dropping the brightness until your TV stops lowering shades of black & doesn't go blacker at all.

This can be inaccurate & still give you an uncalibrated picture though.

Trying this now as my tv won't let me change the hdmi and PS3 was alreayd set to full (whoops my bad) LOL

 

[S0N0S]

You aren't fixing the color space, you're breaking it. We have direct feed footage from the game and it has color values in the 0-15 and 235-255 ranges, so the game is not using limited range RGB. Ergo, you're losing information by forcing it to be interpreted in a different color space.

The difference between the various versions is clearly one of different (ambient) illumination levels, not of different color settings (or even different gamma).


Anyway, doesn't anyone with decent capture equipment own any console version of DS2? It seems ridiculous that the majority of the arguments in this thread are based on tiny gifs, screencaps from badly compressed video or off-screen photos. That's no way to conduct a reasonable analysis.

I own the game on PS3 and I have a Live Gamer HD capture card. I could do my own shots to compare with, I just need a guideline to follow to take comparison shots. Although I'm not far enough along to take shots of the late game areas, such as the dragon bridge, I can at least take shots of Forest of Fallen Giants area.

• List the screenshots you want me to recreate.
• I'll take screenshots at 3 different in-game brightness settings for each one.
• My capture card is 4:2:2, so my PS3 is set to RGB Limited, SuperWhite is On, and Deep Color is Automatic. Unsure if these are correct settings for my particular capture card, but I've had good results.
• If the above settings are incorrect for my AverMedia LGHD C985, then correct me.

 

[SlasherJPC]

Sooo... here are some STEAM videos for the pc version :

http://store.steampowered.com/app/236430/

I am having some doubts this version is any different than the console version. Hard to say from the videos, but I don't think it has the original lighting system...

This looks pretty much like the muddied console textures :

PS3 version. Did my best to get the same angle but I think the FOV isn't the same on consoles as it can be on PC perhaps. Can't do it.

 

[HDgaming42]

Controlled demo but conditions but Dark10x saw the lighting on a retail PS3 in the other thread.

Here's dark10x confirmation that the TGS build (better lighting engine) was running on real PS3s:

I guess it's more a question for dark10x, but did they see the PS3 being hooked directly to a TV? No chance of shenanigans? No PC under the table? No beast of a custom PS3 under a retail chassis?

Because if a normal PS3 could run that lighting engine--even in a "vertical slice", then that's what should have ended up in the retail product IMHO.

I get it--it doesn't work across the board? Lighting engine breaks the game elsewhere? Then swap in the eye-candy you've been selling us as PS3 footage, and drop those two levels of "non-vertical slice". The work's already done for you!

Would we have noticed if they'd simply given us the vertical slice levels, and THEN done away with the torch mechanic/lighting for the remainder of the game? One has to wonder...

 

[Stone Ocean]

PS3 version. Did my best to get the same angle but I think the FOV isn't the same on consoles as it can be on PC perhaps. Can't do it.

Ok, those alledged PC textures look much better. I really hope that ends up being the case.

 

[Alienous]

PS3 version. Did my best to get the same angle but I think the FOV isn't the same on consoles as it can be on PC perhaps. Can't do it.

Eugh.

 

[HDgaming42]

Cool--that shield looks like its made to repel drumsticks...

 

[Goodacre0081]

Okay, so I found the setting on my TV to lower black level to low instead of Auto/High. I had to raise the in-game brightness up more than half just to get the bonfire to show a bit. It definitely seems to make a huge difference in making areas that should be dark dark, while areas that are light or lit by sconces still pretty bright. Still looks a little off. And I never noticed the cutscene bars being grey when I started so I dunno.

remember to take a look at your black levels again after finishing DS. you should be able to see each gradient in this pic with the PS3/TV set to Full.

 

[Wolfe]

god every image posted just makes it more and more impossible not to be angry over this. Look at that shit! There's a fucking alligator demon in awesome fire pit in one shot! The other shot the alligator demon is in derp! The other shot is like a parody shot from some laughable trashware developer!

Not to mention that in the first shot you can clearly see at least 3 of those demons while in the retail shot we're left with 1. I didn't notice it until seeing those shots side by side but while I was playing the game I always found it strange that there was only one of those things down there. That coupled with the crappy textures and bad lighting made the whole area of that pit seem rather boring.

 

[DarkoMaledictus]

PS3 version. Did my best to get the same angle but I think the FOV isn't the same on consoles as it can be on PC perhaps. Can't do it.

Interesting man! Now the question is are those pics on steam real or just some random pics from all the different builds...