Support NeoGAF

[James Sawyer Ford]

Did you see the video? The lighting and shadows are worse than the PS4 remake. I don't see how you're saying 'the open world looks better', the only way it looks better is in the sense that it is a bigger scope. Fidelity / visual features wise, it doesn't look better.

Compare FF16’s open areas like the grasslands and compare it to FF7R

Better lighting, textures, and overall detail

FF16 has a sort of plain look to it, although the cutscenes are fantastic

I do agree FR7R is more inconsistent, especially interiors look rushed

 

[Gaiff]

Compare FF16’s open areas like the grasslands and compare it to FF7R

Kinda falls flat when all the grass is static in Rebirth whereas XVI has dynamic foliage. That goes a long way into making it more realistic and immersive. The grass in Rebirth is just window dressing.

Better lighting, textures, and overall detail

And much much worse shadows. FF XVI's shadows are so good John even thought they were using a form of ray tracing. In Rebirth, they look blocky and low res. Shadows are omnipresent so this alone just murders the presentation. Textures are also very inconsistent as shown by Oliver whereas they consistently look at the very least decent in XVI and never look terrible. The lighting in Rebirth is also wholly inconsistent.

FF16 has a sort of plain look to it, although the cutscenes are fantastic

Well, yeah. XVI goes for a more gritty and realistic look. Rebirth is more anime-esque with a vibrant color palette and a bolder art style.

I do agree FR7R is more inconsistent, especially interiors look rushed

Which is my beef. At its best, Rebirth might look better but just from the very few clips I've seen. It often has glaring issues that stick out like a sore thumb.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Which is my beef. At its best, Rebirth might look better but just from the very few clips I've seen. It often has glaring issues that stick out like a sore thumb.

Eh, play the game first

I was shocked by how good it actually looks in many areas

 

[Mister Wolf]

Would be nice if they give the option for Screen Space Global Illumination on PC. Days Gone added it for PC. Ghostwire Tokyo uses it as well. It's already built into UE4 and can be easily turned on without messing with the original lighting.

 

[Gaiff]

Eh, play the game first

I was shocked by how good it actually looks in many areas

Guess I'll take your word for it. FF XVI looks quite a bit better to me based on what I've seen so far though.

 

[rickybooby87]

While there are rough edges, I am quite enjoying my playthrough. Firstly, I play games, not graphics (using quality mode) lol. So far, there are tons of content to fill out the world, and it's decent, this is where the majority of other games fail, past Final Fantasy's included.

 

[Schmendrick]

Oof. Looks Like a case for "wait for the pc port and then wait for the asset and lighting upgrade via mods."

 

[King Dazzar]

I thought remake looked pretty good as a last gen title just given a res/frame rate boost for PS5. And was looking forward to this because its now solely a PS5 title. And instead they've gone backwards. They fucked it up. But hats off to those who dont care and will just enjoy it regardless. Not for me though.

 

[adamsapple]

Eh, play the game first

I was shocked by how good it actually looks in many areas

I'm playing it right now, the world being populated with things is good, but one of the first things that stood out to me was how harsh and 'last-geny' the lighting in Kalm is. SSAO is also little to absent in most shaded areas. It's like how Forspoken was at launch before they patched SSAO into it.

I think FF16 was a much more visually refined game compared to this.

 

[Fbh]

Another Square game with a subpar 60fps mode despite not looking that impressive outside of cutscenes.
Hopefully they can improve it with some updates. But I've got too many games on my backlog to spend full price on a game I've got to play in 30fps for it to look decent. Already did so with FFXVI and it definitely wasn't worth it.

Visually this gen really did peak with Forbidden West. It has all been downhill from there.

 

[CrustyBritches]

I tried the demo on a 1440p monitor, so that could explain why Performance mode didn't look too bad. According to DF, Quality mode is "unnecessarily choppy" and "occasionally exhibits ghosting" just like my experience. I would play in Performance mode, but I never finished the first game, so I'll just play through that on PC and pick up the inevitable PC release in a year or so.

 

[Evolved1]

gonna pass for now

 

[Low Moral Fibre]

Ok this is where they send you to show off photo mode. 3 images from 3 angles so I haven't cherry picked a bad view. Unbelievable beauty - a real scenic spot indeed.. (is what I would say if this was a PS3 game):

Other parts that naturally look like they should be impressive spots look like this:

And textures can either fail to load or look like something from the PS2 era even in cutscenes:

 

[Bojji]

Ok this is where they send you to show off photo mode. 3 images from 3 angles so I haven't cherry picked a bad view. Unbelievable beauty - a real scenic spot indeed.. (is what I would say if this was a PS3 game):

Other parts that naturally look like they should be impressive spots look like this:

And textures can either fail to load or look like something from the PS2 era even in cutscenes:

Looks like another AAAA quality game after S&B.

 

[Porticus]

Pass as well, waiting for the steam version but I don't have hope it's gonna get much better, they are not gonna redo the lighting for sure.

Look how they raped my favorite game.

 

[Garibaldi]

The texture work is really inconsistent and the lighting in some areas beggars belief but overall the game is great. I'll grab the PC version (on double dip) and mod it to hopefully fix up the texture work somewhat.

 

[winjer]

Would be nice if they give the option for Screen Space Global Illumination on PC. Days Gone added it for PC. Ghostwire Tokyo uses it as well. It's already built into UE4 and can be easily turned on without messing with the original lighting.

Days Gone doesn't use SSGI. That is just Ambient Occlusion, to create shadows.
Days Gone uses UE 4.19. But SSGI was only added to Unreal wit UE 4.23 in beta form, and 4.24 as a stable feature.

 

[Porticus]

Days Gone uses in it's higher lighting setting the SSGI, if you played the game or simply gave a fast check online (google is your friend) you would know that.

 

[buenoblue]

I don't get the hate. Game looks legit amazing in 30fps mode.

 

[SakkanartSilentJealousy]

I play almost 10 hours and the graphics was far from being disappointed. I think the art direction makes game looks so beautiful.

 

[Bojji]

I don't get the hate. Game looks legit amazing in 30fps mode.

On screenshots, yeah.

 

[Portugeezer]

Anyone saying this game looks worse than part 1 is on some shit. It looks better, not by much though.

But it still has inconsistencies similar to part 1, especially in the flat lighting.

 

[Zathalus]

Days Gone doesn't use SSGI. That is just Ambient Occlusion, to create shadows.
Days Gone uses UE 4.19. But SSGI was only added to Unreal wit UE 4.23 in beta form, and 4.24 as a stable feature.

They added SSGI to the PC version. Pretty obvious when switching between the two highest presets.

 

[winjer]

They added SSGI to the PC version. Pretty obvious when switching between the two highest presets.

That is incorrect. The cvar for SSGI is not even registered for this game, as expected, since this game's UE4 version predates SSGI by some time.
I also dumped the full cvar list. And there is not one single line for SSGI.
The game looks great, even today. But let's not pretend it has features it never had.

EDIT: I said a mistake. This game doesnt use UE4.19. It Uses 4.11, an even older version of UE4.
So no wonder it has no support for SSGI.

 

[Bojji]

It's here:

Now, I just have to wait for 2 hours or something for this thing to install

Edit: I was going to post it in OT but here we are...

 

[Gaiff]

That is incorrect. The cvar for SSGI is not even registered for this game, as expected, since this game's UE4 version predates SSGI by some time.
I also dumped the full cvar list. And there is not one single line for SSGI.
The game looks great, even today. But let's not pretend it has features it never had.

Interesting because DF does say there is SSGI and that dropping to high replaces it with SSAO. Alex claims that and he’s usually pretty solid when it comes to knowing what graphical features a game uses.

At higher resolutions like this, the RTX 2060 gains around 15 percent performance across all scenes by dropping down to the high setting, which turns off SSGI and replaces it with SSAO - which can be an acceptable loss, perhaps.

 

[Porticus]

You don't need to hear Alex or finding cvar that no one knows about, simply use the power of your sight, can't get much better than that.

They added SSGI to the PC version. Pretty obvious when switching between the two highest presets.

But the dude clearly can't find the cvar, so you are at fault don't you think? /s

 

[winjer]

Interesting because DF does say there is SSGI and that dropping to high replaces it with SSAO. Alex claims that and he’s usually pretty solid when it comes to knowing what graphical features a game uses.

It would not be the first time that DF makes mistakes.
You can confirm by yourself that the game has no SSGI, by running the console or dumping the cvar list.

The game does have r.VPLMeshGlobalIllumination enabled.
This is GI based on Distance Fields. And was used for a time in UE4. But it's very limited.

• One bounce of diffuse GI from directional lights only
• Bounce distance limited by the skylight’s MaxOcclusionDistance
• Only static meshes can bounce lighting and occlude bounce lighting, but everything can receive
• Lots of splotchy artifacts and overocclusion / leaking. Best results can be seen in mostly outdoor environments.

I even ran the cvar on and off in game and there was no difference.
What people are probably seeing, including DF, is some form of pre braked GI. Something that UE had since UE3

 

[Bojji]

Gears 5 was first game with SSGI and it was in 2020. DG was ported in 2021 so it's possible that it has it.

 

[bbeach123]

Ok this is where they send you to show off photo mode. 3 images from 3 angles so I haven't cherry picked a bad view. Unbelievable beauty - a real scenic spot indeed.. (is what I would say if this was a PS3 game):

Other parts that naturally look like they should be impressive spots look like this:

And textures can either fail to load or look like something from the PS2 era even in cutscenes:

The game really need that volumetric fog and lgihting to hide them ugly textures .

 

[winjer]

Gears 5 was first game with SSGI and it was in 2020. DG was ported in 2021 so it's possible that it has it.

Days Gone on PC is still using Unreal Engine 4.11.1
It's not an updated version with support for SSGI.

All you have to do is check the game's exe.
And run the console to see what cvars are registered and which are enabled.
This is something that anyone with the game can confirm.

 

[DirtyBast8rd]

Meh. Wasn't planning on getting it for at least 2 years anyway. Will be a better game by then.

 

[Zathalus]

That is incorrect. The cvar for SSGI is not even registered for this game, as expected, since this game's UE4 version predates SSGI by some time.
I also dumped the full cvar list. And there is not one single line for SSGI.
The game looks great, even today. But let's not pretend it has features it never had.

EDIT: I said a mistake. This game doesnt use UE4.19. It Uses 4.11, an even older version of UE4.
So no wonder it has no support for SSGI.

The very high version of lighting looks exactly like SSGI. It has light and shadow bouncing that the PS4 version doesn't have, including some bugs with night time shadows, as well as the usual issues with occlusion. Just reporting what I can see myself. It could be a custom pipeline that is not part of regular UE4 and is custom work by the developer. A number of UE games do that.

 

[winjer]

The very high version of lighting looks exactly like SSGI. It has light and shadow bouncing that the PS4 version doesn't have, including some bugs with night time shadows, as well as the usual issues with occlusion. Just reporting what I can see myself. It could be a custom pipeline that is not part of regular UE4 and is custom work by the developer. A number of UE games do that.

Could be VPLMeshGlobalIllumination or pre-baked GI.
But you can confirm by yourself that it's not SSGI.

 

[Zathalus]

Could be VPLMeshGlobalIllumination or pre-baked GI.
But you can confirm by yourself that it's not SSGI.

Pre-baked GI wouldn't have screen space occlusion artifacts from the player would it? No idea about VPLMeshGlobalIllumination.

 

[chromatic9]

Really nice looking game at times but I'll wait for the PC version.

If I had the game right now I'd play quality mode, it's just too blurry at 60fps.

What gets me is the inconsistency in graphics and huge cost in frame rate for many newer games that have little improvements. When you see what was possible on PS4 which was essentially a ~7850 and a Jaguar CPU.

 

[SABRE220]

Ok this is where they send you to show off photo mode. 3 images from 3 angles so I haven't cherry picked a bad view. Unbelievable beauty - a real scenic spot indeed.. (is what I would say if this was a PS3 game):

Other parts that naturally look like they should be impressive spots look like this:

And textures can either fail to load or look like something from the PS2 era even in cutscenes:

Okay this shit is just pathetic they literally divided the game into three parts with the excuse of ensuring quality and polish and this is what they put out...reminds me of xenoblade chronicles X on the wiiu almost.

They arent a tiny studio even aa developers use the engine better than this. I think its clear most of the tech leaders in the studio have left shop and they are left with the forspoken lot because its sad to see SE known for graphics showcases and visual wonders on past consoles have gotten to this level. The worst part is this is their biggest IP and this is the level of quality standards they are happy with going forward.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Days Gone doesn't use SSGI. That is just Ambient Occlusion, to create shadows.
Days Gone uses UE 4.19. But SSGI was only added to Unreal wit UE 4.23 in beta form, and 4.24 as a stable feature.

A Look at Screen Space Ray Traced Global Illumination (Lighting) in Days Gone: Performance and Quality Comparisons | Hardware Times

Days Gone is one of the more polished PlayStation exclusives to come to PC. Although the game doesn’t feature full-fledged hardware-accelerated ray-tracing like Metro Exodus or Control, it does come with what’s called Screen Space Ray Traced Global Illumination. This is basically a shader-based...

www.hardwaretimes.com

Days Gone PC: a quality conversion that elevates the console experience

Sony promised us more PC conversions of their stellar first party development output and while Horizon Zero Dawn illust…

www.eurogamer.net

"The Coalition made a similar upgrade to the Xbox Series and PC versions of Gears 5, again by dipping into more recent UE4 engine updates and adding it to their existing codebase."

 

[winjer]

Pre-baked GI wouldn't have screen space occlusion artifacts from the player would it? No idea about VPLMeshGlobalIllumination.

Whatever it is, it is not Epic's SSGI.
But there are several forms of Global Illumination.

Edit:
I found what type of Global Illumination this game uses. And it's even more impressive than what some of you could ever imagine.
It's one of the earliest implementations in any game of SSRTGI.
SSGI uses only the Z-buffer and screen-space data to approximate interactions between nearby surfaces.
But SSRTGI actually traces rays within the screen space. It won't pick up surfaces outside screen-space, but it's much more accurate and realistic than SSGI.

And the cvar that controls this setting is r.Bend.Quality.Lighting
It defaults to 2. But it can be set to 3 or 4, for greater quality. But it's also heavier to use.
From 2 to 3 there is a noticeable improvement. Not so much from 3 to 4.

If anyone wants to learn more about SSRTGI, here is a paper on it.

SSRTGI: Toughest Challenge in Real-Time 3D

UNIGINE's Davyd Vidiger talked about the way Screen Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination is used to improve the image quality in real-time graphics.

80.lv

 

[Mister Wolf]

Whatever it is, it is not Epic's SSGI.
But there are several forms of Global Illumination.

Edit:
I found what type of Global Illumination this game uses. And it's even more impressive than what some of you could ever imagine.
It's one of the earliest implementations in any game of SSRTGI.
SSGI uses only the Z-buffer and screen-space data to approximate interactions between nearby surfaces.
But SSRTGI actually traces rays within the screen space. It won't pick up surfaces outside screen-space, but it's much more accurate and realistic than SSGI.

And the cvar that controls this setting is r.Bend.Quality.Lighting
It defaults to 2. But it can be set to 3 or 4, for greater quality. But it's also heavier to use.
From 2 to 3 there is a noticeable improvement. Not so much from 3 to 4.

If anyone wants to learn more about SSRTGI, here is a paper on it.

SSRTGI: Toughest Challenge in Real-Time 3D

UNIGINE's Davyd Vidiger talked about the way Screen Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination is used to improve the image quality in real-time graphics.

80.lv

This needs to be an option in the PC port of Rebirth.

 

[winjer]

This needs to be an option in the PC port of Rebirth.

This SSRTGI is probably a custom implementation from Bend Studios. UE 4.11 didn't have such feature.

But I have one question. What version of UE4 does FF VII use? Anyone with the PC version can check the game's exe?
I'm starting to think that both Intergrade and Rebirth might use a rather old version of UE4.
If it's something older than 4.19, it might explain why it doesn't use TAAU. For example.
Also, things like Ray-Tracing, DLSS, FSR2 and XeSS require UE4.26 or later. Unless, the devs want to make a custom implementation.

 

[adamsapple]

Ok this is where they send you to show off photo mode. 3 images from 3 angles so I haven't cherry picked a bad view. Unbelievable beauty - a real scenic spot indeed.. (is what I would say if this was a PS3 game):

Other parts that naturally look like they should be impressive spots look like this:

And textures can either fail to load or look like something from the PS2 era even in cutscenes:

Yeah.

I appreciate people who can look past it and enjoy the game, I'm enjoying the game itself too. But it's nothing wrong in pointing out how this looks visually underwhelming for a current-gen only game. Lots of low resolution textures, bland lighting, there's even lots of visible pop-in when traversing on the chocobo.

I hate to say it but Forspoken was more technically impressive (minus the character models and cut-scene direction etc). rofif you can have a pint on me.

 

[rofif]

Yeah.

I appreciate people who can look past it and enjoy the game, I'm enjoying the game itself too. But it's nothing wrong in pointing out how this looks visually underwhelming for a current-gen only game. Lots of low resolution textures, bland lighting, there's even lots of visible pop-in when traversing on the chocobo.

I hate to say it but Forspoken was more technically impressive (minus the character models and cut-scene direction etc). rofif you can have a pint on me.

Forspoken is technically very good. Art too. It’s just empty by design.
But rebirth is stunning so far. There is ton of density and behtiful art. Characters look amazing and cutscenes are some of best ever so far.
It lacks in ao and shadows sure. Not distracting me so far.
But the textures issue was overblown.

 

[shamoomoo]

Days Gone doesn't use SSGI. That is just Ambient Occlusion, to create shadows.
Days Gone uses UE 4.19. But SSGI was only added to Unreal wit UE 4.23 in beta form, and 4.24 as a stable feature.

Yes it does, only on the PC version.

 

[winjer]

Yes it does, only on the PC version.

Not SSGI. It's SSRTGI.

 

[Fbh]

Ok this is where they send you to show off photo mode. 3 images from 3 angles so I haven't cherry picked a bad view. Unbelievable beauty - a real scenic spot indeed.. (is what I would say if this was a PS3 game):

Other parts that naturally look like they should be impressive spots look like this:

And textures can either fail to load or look like something from the PS2 era even in cutscenes:

Was going to say something about Forbidden West but this doesn't even look particularly impressive compared to 7 years old Zero Dawn on Ps4.
Why can't they get it to run at 60fps with decent image quality?

 

[Low Moral Fibre]

Yeah.

I appreciate people who can look past it and enjoy the game, I'm enjoying the game itself too. But it's nothing wrong in pointing out how this looks visually underwhelming for a current-gen only game. Lots of low resolution textures, bland lighting, there's even lots of visible pop-in when traversing on the chocobo.

I hate to say it but Forspoken was more technically impressive (minus the character models and cut-scene direction etc). rofif you can have a pint on me.

It's a really good game and I'm enjoying it a lot.

I won't shit up the OT complaining about graphics but this style of open world (basically a static PS3 era Ubisoft style open world complete with towers to unlock and copy paste activities) doesn't justify it looking like this for those defending the so called scale of the game.

If it was a AA game then you would accept the jank but here we have:
- Pop-in
- Obvious ghosting
- Lots of low poly assets
- Lots of low res textures (mixed in with normal looking stuff so they stand out even more)
- Horrendous image quality in performance mode (seriously looks at my images and you can see the individual pixels which is mad)
- Tiny high detail shadow draw distance
- Tiny lod distance
- The most basic lighting model imaginable and no AO (some scenes look like when you had to disable shadows on PC in the 90s to get things to run and the game lost all atmosphere)
- Mad animations and camera movement when you traverse over the environment

Probably lots more but just off the top of my head.

If that doesn't bother you then great but I think the DF review could have gone way harder tbh and still been a fair analysis of what to expect.

 

[adamsapple]

- Obvious ghosting

I thought so!

I didn't want to bring it up cause I don't exactly have an LG CX display, but I've been noticing ghosting too.

They 'fixed' it with the different motion blur options in FF16 with a post-release patch. I hope they do the same here.

 

[Putonahappyface]

Definitely waiting for them to improve the look of the game or ps5 pro.

Probably for the best.

 

[Lambogenie]

My experience:

Performance mode is not as good looking, but Quality fps is just not good to actually play.

I honestly don't mind slightly blurry, I'm barely standing still to care, and in combat, given how messy/KH they've gone, who really gives a shit.

XVI lighting was nicer. But overall was a boring looking game. Doesn't matter if the rocks looked good and had better textures, it was a boring looking game.

Art direction helps VII's case. Same way XII still looked fine despite using lower poly models and what not.

That said, the ultra low textures/textures not loading are genuine problems.