Trojan
Member
Technical merit in this thread was abandoned long ago!
Witcher 3 downgrade arguments in here and nowhere else
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Technical merit in this thread was abandoned long ago!
Primethius
Banned
The older foliage looks higher quality and was much more dense then what we have now (although, it's pretty dense right now too). I'm sure that has something to do with being more computationally expensive.
I doubt it will. It's too different to argue tho. Let's not forget that witcher 3 is a huge open world game.
Latvian Hitman
Member
Darkstorne
Member
Denser grass makes ambient occlusion much more expensive. Pretty sure both have been reduced for consoles, which is why grass has taken such a visual hit. Lower quality textures are easy enough to replace, but the density and shading quality... much tougher to mod back to the earlier footage's standards.
I still think the game looks gorgeous. It's just a shame to see they haven't left the original higher quality settings as an option for PC gamers. Even if no modern PC could run it at those settings at 60fps, that would just make this game the new Crysis and become a gorgeous benchmark on top of a great game.
Dictator93
Member
Once again, I can only agree. I think the previous cinematic trailers used hand placed TODs and settings. Hence their artistry and look. All new media is procedurally placed stuff (which probably has the ability to blend colour with base terrain type).
Quoting the oft used image below. What is more dense or computationally expensive here? The diversity of the vegetation types? Other scenes from the latest TW3 media have a high amount of sprite based vegetation variety (flowers mixing with different types of grass).
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A downgrade occurs because things are computationally expensive. Everything I see about this grass looks the same to me in terms of why it would be a certain level of GPU or CPU time.
Denton
Member
Man, you weren't sarcastic ?
This kind of comparison makes zero sense, not only because the builds are years apart, but even if they weren't, it is completely different location at different type of day with different type of grass. Zero sense to compare.
Primethius
Banned
I'll link back to my Sword of Destiny captures here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=163409404&postcount=1595
The foliage in those captures is of higher quality then the foliage in the recent screenshots of Witcher 3.
As for density, everything looks much more packed in those captures too. It's pretty dense in the current builds but not quite as much as the SoD stuff.
Dictator93
Member
Thank you for that link to those screens. My main point is what people mean by "higher quality" or "downgrade". The inability to transfer the feelings into words which have a technical reasoning makes the whole argument useless.
What about them is higher quality? And similarly, is this a result of an artistic change or the result of difference by distinctively different technology?
Every argument here is prmarily avoiding an explanation as to why something is more computationally expensive, hence how it requires a downgrade. Using words like "high quality" "better lighting" "looks better" means nothing IMO.
EDIT: I dont want to pick on you koshunter. It is just the primary argumentation method in this thread and it is frankly silly for a conversation about something wholly technical (aka what a downgrade means).
Darkstorne
Member
It's actually not that mad. The engine's lighting procedure was changed after the Sword of Destiny trailer, and devs specifically said that while some parts of the game will look better for it, others will probably look worse.
Grass has taken a hit with a noticeable (if you know what you're looking for) ambient occlusion downgrade, and the sprites have been changed to appear in thicker clumps in an attempt to create the same visual density, using a lower sprite density (earlier grass textures were thinner blades and plants) which is probably contributing to why some people get a "cartoony" vibe from the new direction (thicker blades, cheaper lighting).
My theory is that alpha depth and/or resolution has been reduced.
Alternatively they decided that their AA solution left too much aliasing on the thin sprites they had before.
Theory 3 is that they didn't want to use different sprites between PC and console versions.
It should be noted that earlier (2013 era) shots had supersampling and the sharpening filter, which are much more effective at proper representations of thin textures with alpha.The 4k screens (here) show much sharper grass than the regular screenshots.
The colour grading I suspect was changed because scene colour grading might not really work well in an open world game with different lighting and TOD.
LOD detail has been tuned to be in line with the consoles, this interview here states that they didn't want to majorly fork their assets so that they would end up debugging 3 separate games.
Kenzodielocke
Banned
GoldenCrow
Member
Indeed. The consumer demands to see the product, there isn't anything consumer friendly so the developers create a vertical slice at great expense to give a preview to the overall concept that isn't accurate of the final product. I personally liked the Mass Effect example as it wasn't showing bull shots and was more indicative of the actual progress of the game at that point, it also showed that EA or at least the company hired to sell the product was listening to complaints about advertising of games but they got slated for it.
Primethius
Banned
When I say higher quality, I'm referring to their fidelity. It simply doesn't look as good as the older foliage.
Something like the foliage here seems to me as using lower quality sprites then the older stuff, which was mainly crisp and dense.
Edit: I'm not sure if I'm actually up to snuff on the technicalities as you want me to be but I stand by my assertion that the new foliage is not as good as the old foliage.
I always found The Witcher 2 to be more impressive than Battlefield 3, personally. But they are very different kinds of games with different strengths and weaknesses, so it's hard to technically compare them and declare a winner. Same goes for Crysis 2, imo. All of those games competed in my eyes, although I definitely prefered the way Crysis 2 and The Witcher 2 looked over Battlefield 3.
Dictator93
Member
Their resoultion looks rather the same to me. What do you mean by alpha depth? As in proper depth sorting?
This would entail an artistic change, correct? Or them changing how their AA (which is jsut PPAA on the majority of platforms) affects grass. Not changing a technical feature about the grass itself making it more or less expensive.
This sounds much more reasonable, but it doesnt explain what about the old vegesprites is more expensive hence needing such a change. Everythign I see about all these sprites looks like a colour and art change ontop of a post processing difference. Not the difference between say... 3d grass like in Crysis and skyrim-like vegetation.
These points seem the most likely IMO (super sampling and sharpening and the art set up for LOD). PC will have obviously a higher distance for LOD tansitions, but the way LOD is done artistically (aka what a bush looks like at LOD3 and how that LOD is processed) will be the same on all platforms. If it was PC only, bush LOD3 would be better looking.
This would mean a downgrade for PC users.
NecromorphTX
Member
i only hope the game still have this beautiful soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZhiPyqZC5A
Pocky4Th3Win
Member
Is it me or does a lot of the game look shiny/plastic like? The textures don't seem to have the right look to them, the horse really stood out for me.
Dictator93
Member
Not to pick your wording apart, but I seriously think there is a level of sharpening going on which people are mistakening for higher detail or higher quality.
For example look at this screen from the Sword of Destiny trailer:
Look at the darkened edges around each blade of grass (although it is just part of one sprite.
Now look at your screen you just posted:
Now look at a sharpened image of that screen:
What do you think or notice there in the second image in relation to the way vegetation looks? I personally think the vegetation with a sharpening filter is eerily reminiscent to this "higher quality" vegetation from previous TW3 media.
OST and character models are excellent in TW3.
Sorry, but no. Apparently CDPR also downgraded the soundtrack =(
It looks like a video game from 2014 not one from 2018 or something which the earlier stuff looked like
The only thing LOL-worthy is you thinking NeoGAF noticing some "downgrades" is going to impact the game's sales in any way whatsoever.
LOL indeed.
DarkLordMalik
Member
The newest one looks like a painted foliage. The old one looked like actual rendered foliage. The sharpened image just looks plain horrible.
CouchMaster
Member
joke? you gave me a heart attack
Expected, since CDPR implied they were aiming for parity across all platforms.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=614981
Essentially, consoles have held back the PC version and likely forced the change in assets/LOD/lighting from the 2013 trailer(s).
Dictator93
Member
What does this mean? Painted vs. rendered? what?
This is why this thread is so hard to swallow. These words have little descriptive meaning of some technical diffference which leads to something being more computationally demanding. Just gobbaldy-goop words explaining an artistic or colour pallete difference.
MatrixMan.EXE
Member
It's not a PC port.
John Bender
Banned
Yep! And a game of dice!!!!!
Spamming pics doesn't change the fact the games been downgraded lol
I fixed my post.
ArkkAngel007
Member
What is the possibility of PC patch/update after everything has settled and all the BS no longer matters with the front load sales?
That would be something.
Primethius
Banned
I thought that the sharpening filter was removed pre-Sword of Destiny trailer? With that said, I'm not sure I agree with the sharpening comparison.
Especially when shots like this:
Don't necessarily implicate any sort of sharpening but still look better then the foliage in the current footage. Especially the first shot, I think that shows a density of grass that I've yet to see in any of the current media.
It's a joke, yes. I'm sorry ^^
As opposed to 8 bit alpha, they have 4 bit alpha or even 1 bit. I'm basing this on the fact that the high lod level tree foliage looks like a solid colour. It could just be it is that way because of low resolution in general. I have no idea if different alpha depths are ever used.
The grass in this game has always been sprite based, it was never 3d, only the larger grasses and bushes. There are some very early screens, when they still used the witcher 2 renderer, where there were a few W2 style 3d grasses but those have never been seen since they transitioned to the W3 renderer.
The LOD levels are fixed by their scene culling system (Umbra 3) but the PC seems to transition at greater distances. Also from what I've seen briefly from the PS4 streams, my impression is that vegetation density (primarily grasses and tree foliage) is much greater on PC.
That suck major donkey balls for console players, since they wouldn't be receiving that kind of patch, but it's moot anyways since I doubt CDPR would release such a major overhaul like that.
They gotta start on Cyberpunk 2077 someday!
DarkLordMalik
Member
When I mean Foliage, I want to see something like this
*Screen from DriveClub.
Of course, TW 3 being an open world game doesn't have to render the best foliage, but it could have been better. I mean Skyrim Mods look pretty damn good compared to what we have in TW 3, and it is also an open world game.
I am not really sure how to explain it in technical terms, but if you go back a few pages, someone did share a representation of how the foliage in TW 3 looks and feels like. I don't know about you, but I do find it a step back from the original reveal.
Dictator93
Member
Now look at this infamous comparison image:
As it is (which is slightly unfair because one is high bit-rate and the other isnt):
vs.
Colour-shift and sharpening:
As it is (which is slightly unfair because one is high bit-rate and the other isnt):
vs.
Colour-shift and sharpening:
See the equivalent shots here:
http://www.gamersyde.com/game_images_2651_en.html
You'll see that they still have sharpening.
plasmawave
Banned
Now look at this infamous comparison image:
As it is (which is slightly unfair because one is high bit-rate and the other isnt):
vs.
Colour-shift and sharpening:
The older one still looks much better.
Nope. The one also uses flat planes. There is more vegetation, and mixed height so it isn't as visible, but it is the same.
1.21Gigawatts
Banned
To me the biggest difference is the color palette, which isn't really a downgrade since... well, I don't think greyish and bownish tones are more expensive to render then vibrant colors.
I have to say I liked the colors in the early footage better. Looked more realistic. But I think a lot is down to time of day and the area you are in. I have seens some snippets of places that look very grim and realistic.
It also seems like the sprite diversity for foliage has been reduced, but overall foliage quality and density seems to be the same. Wouldn't call that a downgrade either, but certainly a weird artistic choice.
I have to say I liked the colors in the early footage better. Looked more realistic. But I think a lot is down to time of day and the area you are in. I have seens some snippets of places that look very grim and realistic.
It also seems like the sprite diversity for foliage has been reduced, but overall foliage quality and density seems to be the same. Wouldn't call that a downgrade either, but certainly a weird artistic choice.
New evidence apparently:
Same time of day according to people who viewed the stream before you ask.
I still think it looks good! Can't wait to play!
ps4 is 480p confirmed.
clueless gamers are the worst.
Primethius
Banned
I don't see the sharpening filter in the Sword of Destiny screenshots. I can spot it in the E3 screenshots, but not the SoD stuff.
Pop
Member
New evidence apparently:
Same time of day according to people who viewed the stream before you ask.
I still think it looks good! Can't wait to play!
What is this a witch hunt?
Top is PS4, compressed to hell.
Different time of day
PC is bottom screenshot
This is beyond ridiculous now. Some of y'all must be here just to troll and probably don't give a damn about the game.
Dictator93
Member
But is the older one technically more demanding aka. requiring a downgrade to make it run at good framerates (on console)?
That is my entire point. People use the word downgrade to encapsulate TOD changes and colour palette differences... when it should only be a technical category. I am completely fine with you liking one more than the other.
Also, btw, these use the exact same technology. Just gemoetric planes with a sprite. One may be a better made sprite than the other artistically.. and placed more "painterly." But that does not make it more technically demanding and hence requiring a downgrade.
And I hate to abuse page order... but I am requoting myself:
Now look at this infamous comparison image:
As it is (which is slightly unfair because one is high bit-rate and the other isnt):
vs.
Colour-shift and sharpening:
That's what I think too. For me the shorter variety of grass is the only widespread element that looks worse. The majority of the game's visual design is intact as far as I can see.
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