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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

What do you guys think of Pragmata? I think it's a top tier looking next gen game. The visuals have improved quite a bit since first trailer. Finally the poor girl has proper looking hair, lol.
Like Final Fantasy 16 the developer really stepped up the shading and material model.

However, I've been playing videogames for so many years that I have to be honest I'm a little disappointed with how long it took developers to improve these areas in videogames for retail. I can guarantee you that if old Crytek, old id Software or an Epic Games that prioritized again on the PC that quality would of already shipped in a retail videogame almost a decade ago (The Infiltrator demo was doing that in 2013).

 
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SABRE220

Member
C
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Cutscene or gameplay, I would say amazing but im pretty sure thats a cutscene.
 

SABRE220

Member
Well Avatar didnt get downgraded. Holy fucking shit.

Mind blowing.

EDIT: This is proof that if devs fucking tried and had any ambition, anything is possible. The foliage rendering is insane but that lighting omg. The final scene with the burning ship setpiece looks almost like the movie.

OK they are about to show gameplay. moment of truth. nvm captured on PS5. looks just as good. im done. i can die happy.
It looked great, but do you feel its a big upgrade over forbidden west/burning skies? I felt Avatar was less consistent in terms of assets and in terms of micro detail horizon was better even in terms of foliage horizon had more detailed foliage but had less variety and density while avatar had better draw distance and streaming tech.

Maybe its the bitrate of the stream or the artstyle.
 

CGNoire

Member
Just watched the 4k footage. I dont know about huge. There is a downgrade, yes, but I told you guys that even if there is a downgrade, it will still look next gen. Im cutting some gifs, foliage and jungle detail are still the highlight. its the sky combat sections and character models that dont look too hot.

P.S Both the cinematic trailer and gameplay video were running on the PS5. They had said that this game uses ray tracing ... ray traced foliage was being thrown around back in the day as a joke by the devs themselves. We know the PS5 and XSX cant handle RT that well so im expecting PCs to look way better. Basically a Cyberpunk quality jump.
What is Raytraced Foliage?
 

UnNamed

Banned
Holy fucking shit. Excuse my language...
BUT WOW. Ff16 is absolutely crazy looking. Straight up CGI or was parts of it prerendered?!
The 4k mode is crazy and good news - it is actually the good 30fps type with low input lag and fantatastic motion blur quality. Absolutely no oled judder at all. It is fantastic. HDR TOO. You must play this with hdr.

Like... screenshots are hdr to sdr and low quality ps5 captures but holy crap:
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And here, the mentioned motion blur. It looks so good!!! 30fps actually fucking saved. I tried performance mode but nah... 30fps looks so much better and feels alright.
nmDAzKz.jpg

Not everything is good in FFXV, for example the camera motion blur, the good but not great amount of geometry, the art style from FF Tactics/FF11/14 which is a mix between anime and real, skin shaders, hair rendering.

But the lighting model saves all and made everything CGI-like.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Not everything is good in FFXV, for example the camera motion blur, the good but not great amount of geometry, the art style from FF Tactics/FF11/14 which is a mix between anime and real, skin shaders, hair rendering.

But the lighting model saves all and made everything CGI-like.
It can look flat at some points but generaly it's very cgi looking. And not to mention the scale and particle effects. Fire spells finally look like deep down.
Camera motion blur is heavy but its high quality and saves me from judder on OLED. So it's good to have for me personally
 
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CGNoire

Member
Outlaw is open world. ;p

It is being billed as the first open world Star Wars game. I personally think avatar looks better but the flying to space grill earth in real-time and then getting into a space fight was super cool to see. Especially at this level of fidelity.


Stopped after around 45 mins. Very impressive intro. The big war scene was nuts considering its real-time. I said whoa when they switched from that to a different scene in another castle without a loading screen or fade out. They do it other times which is disappointing.

The big titan cutscenes are nits and kinda sort of explain the visuals elsewhere. They are aiming to do what other last Gen games basically stopped doing. Big epic setpieces,/war scenes. No more intimate god of war, the first ten minutes of this game shits on every setpiece in gow ragnorak.

Got to the swamp and quit for today. I need to play more to day of visuals are next Gen but so far the actual game looks like a fairly polished version of a last Gen game.
Someone in this forum claimed that the big scenes are prerendered and only the forground character is realtime overlapping a prerendered video.

Idk if true but they said it came from the devs themselves. Huge deal if true
 

CGNoire

Member
What do you guys think of Pragmata? I think it's a top tier looking next gen game. The visuals have improved quite a bit since first trailer. Finally the poor girl has proper looking hair, lol.
The enviroments seemed pretty small and low poly compared fo reveal. The hair upgrade I did notice. It was sorely needed.
 

CGNoire

Member
Come on man, we should all know PR speak by now. Thats all that was. That was nothing more than a small team at ND working with some Bend guys remastering a game.

Not a single one of their big name devs were involved with the project. Thats all you need to know.

Their new SP game will put everything else to shame.
I dont know about too shame but TLOU part 1 was definitly a limp dick attempt at next gen. No way was that there best effort.
 

H . R . 2

Member
I personally think avatar looks better but the flying to space grill earth in real-time and then getting into a space fight was super cool to see. Especially at this level of fidelity.
but wasn't that scripted? if you look closely, the game does not relinquish control to the player until the ship has already taken off and it is mid-air
so, that basically acts as a fancy loading screen with superficial/minimal player agency. Star Citizen remains unrivaled in this area

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I wish Outlaws weren't a Star Wars game. I have zero interest in the IP and the sci-fi elements there, are mostly childish and outdated
I feel like every SW game out here is trying to pander to the nostalgia-fueled whims of its fanbase without any intention to update the lore or introduce new elements to the universe.
games like this might actually save the franchise but it would have been great if we got this game as a new IP with a more realistic, grounded feel to it
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
I was way more impressed with avatar than outlaws tbh, characters and some textures were pretty meh.

The best thing in the trailer graphically is at the end when they show some other locations, that bit looked great.
 
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Edder1

Member
I was way more impressed with avatar than outlaws tbh, characters and some textures were pretty meh.

The best thing in the trailer graphically is at the emd when they show some other locations, that bit looked great.
Outlaws still has 1.5 years to cook while Avatar is coming out in 6 months. Outlaws looks incredible for a game that's so far away from release. I know there's an argument to be made for Ubisoft downgrading, but they really have been better in that regard as of late. Now the game maybe another boring Ubisoft game, but looking at graphics alone it's impressive what Ubisoft is doing here. I'm like many others am probably so impressed because we have been starved this gen when it comes to visuals, any other gen this would have been standard stuff.
 
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CGNoire

Member
there's an argument to be made for Ubisoft downgrading, but they really have been better in that regard as of late.
As others have mentioned Ubisoft always gets better during each gen until its a new gen and they need to graphically impress again then there old tricks come back out. Temper thigh expectations these people are notorious.
 

Edder1

Member
As others have mentioned Ubisoft always gets better during each gen until its a new gen and they need to graphically impress again then there old tricks come back out. Temper thigh expectations these people are notorious.
I can understand the scepticism, but really we ain't seeing anything in Avatar and Outlaws that we haven't seen in UE5 demos that were all running on consoles. The only difference is we are seeing full games this time and not just demos.
 
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Msamy

Member
so for me the most anticipated upcoming titles that have next gen graphics based on gameplay and Realtime trailers are :-
1-avatar - snow drop engine
2-star wars outlaw - snow drop engine
3-death stranding 2- Decima engine
4-fable - Forzatech engine
5-hellblade 2 - unreal engine 5
6-pragmata - RE engine
and currently i don't see any other upcoming title that come close to them in terms of graphics (also ff7 rebirth may be belonged to this list but i need to see 4k or direct feed trailer first )
 

CGNoire

Member
I can understand the scepticism, but really we ain't seeing anything in Avatar and Outlaws that we haven't seen in UE5 demos that were all running on consoles. The only difference is we are seeing full games this time and not just demos.
Yes but Its Ubisoft. Ive always blamed their vertical slices on their inadequate budgets not on their abilities to get it running on the console @ framerate.

Its the budget I doubt. Too me the most disceptive thing about a vertical slice is what it says about the their budget and thus their commitment.
 
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GymWolf

Gold Member
Btw, i
so for me the most anticipated upcoming titles that have next gen graphics based on gameplay and Realtime trailers are :-
1-avatar - snow drop engine
2-star wars outlaw - snow drop engine
3-death stranding 2- Decima engine
4-fable - Forzatech engine
5-hellblade 2 - unreal engine 5
6-pragmata - RE engine
and currently i don't see any other upcoming title that come close to them in terms of graphics (also ff7 rebirth may be belonged to this list but i need to see 4k or direct feed trailer first )
How fucking embarassing that sony doesn't have a title on that list.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
so for me the most anticipated upcoming titles that have next gen graphics based on gameplay and Realtime trailers are :-
1-avatar - snow drop engine
2-star wars outlaw - snow drop engine
3-death stranding 2- Decima engine
4-fable - Forzatech engine
5-hellblade 2 - unreal engine 5
6-pragmata - RE engine
and currently i don't see any other upcoming title that come close to them in terms of graphics (also ff7 rebirth may be belonged to this list but i need to see 4k or direct feed trailer first )
I am gonna have to see more from DS2 to put it up on any list. The baby and that french actress looked like an upgrade but Norman Reedus looked virtually identical to his PS4 model with the same exact PS4 quality hair. Gave me FF7-2 Rebirth vibes.

I would replace it with Starfield which looks absolutely insane for a game that big. Agreed on the rest of the list. Pragmata looked stunning.

WTF is going on with these explosions? redfall, Spider-Man 2 and now Avatar :messenger_tears_of_joy:

H6xnHiJ.gif
Cutbacks have to be made somewhere. You cant have everything. The problem with spiderman 2 explosions is that the rest of the game is PS4 quality so it doesnt add up.

Also, i love that the explosion physics knock back that enemy so even if the explosion graphics are shit, the stuff under the hood is impressive.
 

ChiefDada

Gold Member
WTF is going on with these explosions? redfall, Spider-Man 2 and now Avatar :messenger_tears_of_joy:

H6xnHiJ.gif

I would tell you the game is still in development and vfx shown here is not indicative of what we'll see in the final version. Just as I said with Spider-Man 2.

People like Slimy will apply selective favoritism. Since Avatar is one of the games he has deemed worthy of current gen, expect him to either provide some arbitrary excuse for this, or ignore it completely.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
The Decima Engine is Playstation tech. The poster listed upcoming games with their respective engines. Try to keep things in context.
I think Gymwolf was talking about Sony first party studios. Not Sony tech. I have no idea why you have to defend everything especially considering you are a sony fan which means you are a fan of Sony studios, not some engine they helped other third party developers build. As a Sony fan who fell in love with these studios because of their ambition to push boundries in visual fidelity, Im flabbergasted by the fact that 3 years into the gen, they are still MIA. Being outdone by Ubisoft, fucking Bethesda and Microsoft studios. This is the worst fucking timeline.
 

ChiefDada

Gold Member
I think Gymwolf was talking about Sony first party studios. Not Sony tech. I have no idea why you have to defend everything especially considering you are a sony fan which means you are a fan of Sony studios, not some engine they helped other third party developers build

I'm a fan of both their story driven games and the underlying tech that brings them to life. And to minimize DS2 useage of Decima engine as Sony simply "helping" is just as silly if I were to claim that Epic only "helped" all of those indie developers produce the visually stunning UE5 demos you love to post and boast about.

My only point in all of this is you lack consistency in your evaluation of one game's fidelity metrics in comparison with another.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Lol, told you.
Full quote.
Cutbacks have to be made somewhere. You cant have everything. The problem with spiderman 2 explosions is that the rest of the game is PS4 quality so it doesnt add up.

Surely you are capable of understanding the difference between a last gen looking game with last gen effects with last gen lighting, last gen asset quality, last gen foliage having shitty visual effects vs a next gen game with next gen lighting, next gen foliage, next gen asset quality with last gen explosions.

Whats spiderman's excuse for it? Where is their rendering budget going? Why dont they have room for better explosions?
 

GymWolf

Gold Member
I am gonna have to see more from DS2 to put it up on any list. The baby and that french actress looked like an upgrade but Norman Reedus looked virtually identical to his PS4 model with the same exact PS4 quality hair. Gave me FF7-2 Rebirth vibes.

I would replace it with Starfield which looks absolutely insane for a game that big. Agreed on the rest of the list. Pragmata looked stunning.


Cutbacks have to be made somewhere. You cant have everything. The problem with spiderman 2 explosions is that the rest of the game is PS4 quality so it doesnt add up.

Also, i love that the explosion physics knock back that enemy so even if the explosion graphics are shit, the stuff under the hood is impressive.
That animation looks precanned as hell, we had that on ps1 games.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
What is Raytraced Foliage?
It was a joke by the developers. Basically their ray traced GI allows the light to bounce through plants and correctly illuminate the ground under it. Typically you would see plants just cast shadows under the leaves, but this new system allows the them to have plants that can let some light through.

but wasn't that scripted? if you look closely, the game does not relinquish control to the player until the ship has already taken off and it is mid-air
so, that basically acts as a fancy loading screen with superficial/minimal player agency. Star Citizen remains unrivaled in this area
Its definitely scripted and very obviously a loading screen but very impressive nontheless. I dont think you can fly around the planet, but going from the ground to space in seconds with that level of graphics fidelity is very impressive. it's next gen No Mans Sky.

FF16 demo is doing some of this stuff. My jaw was dropped at the cutscene with the massive war battle that seemed to be fully realtime. you dont get to take part in the battle but the cutscene switched from that big battle to a scene inside a castle with no loading. I have never seen anything like it. i honestly thought it was a pre-rendered cutscene until another big battle started with titans and it all appeared realtime because it switched to gameplay immediately with no loading. Some areas in the flashback do the whole fade in and fade out trick to mask the loading which only helps sell just how impressive those initial scenes were.

Someone in this forum claimed that the big scenes are prerendered and only the forground character is realtime overlapping a prerendered video.

Idk if true but they said it came from the devs themselves. Huge deal if true
wait what? Is this FF16 or Star Wars outlaws?

Are they doing what I asked for a few months ago in this very thread when I posted the RE0 screenshots with pre-rendered backgrounds wondering why we dont do that anymore. If we are getting that this gen then omg.
 
Nvidia tflops are fake tflops now so hard to say. 4090 is 63 tflops but is effectively a 33 tflops card in terms of performance. Both nvidia and AMD are fudging their tflops numbers so hard to compare them to say the RTX 2080 or 5700XT in terms of tflops alone.

But in terms of performance, the 4090 is already 3x more powerful than the 2080 the PS5 trades blows with. Obviously more powerful in RT games. sadly, you will be paying 3x what you are paying for a $500 PS5 to get 3x more performance.

P.S Pretty sure nvidia will release 4080 supers this year or skip it altogether. 5080 is probably a lately 2024 release and will likely be $1,200 offering 4090 performance.
Yeah it's a shitty time to think about PC what with the performance and pricing but I had hoped we'd get 1440p/60fps options for almost every game. That video I saw yesterday of the FFXVI performance mode really shocked me as it was 1080p like IQ and going from low 50's right down to low 30's... I can only hope they optimise the fuck out of it before release but hasn't the word on this particular game been that it was finished for almost a year of polish a bit like Zelda? If true I can't see it massively improving to even getting into the VRR window which I'm lucky enough to have a VRR TV at least.

I'll hold off on PC until at least next year and maybe see what framerate full on UE5 with Nanite and Lumen come in at on PS5/SeriesX. Cheers for the info.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
It looked great, but do you feel its a big upgrade over forbidden west/burning skies? I felt Avatar was less consistent in terms of assets and in terms of micro detail horizon was better even in terms of foliage horizon had more detailed foliage but had less variety and density while avatar had better draw distance and streaming tech.

Maybe its the bitrate of the stream or the artstyle.
I think its a significant upgrade over HFW, yes. Like you said in terms of less variety and density when comparing foliage and just the jungle overall. Playing Burning Shores made me realize just how many shortcomings that game has. Poor draw distance, LOD pop-in while flying and even while on a boat was awful despite the fact flying speeds were so slow you are better off just riding a bull, the interiors have atrocious last gen lighting even by PS4 standards. Which is odd because the cauldron is all indoors and looks stunning. But caves and other science labs look awful. They set two missions indoors, one in amusement park and it was just an ugly mess.

Avatar is definitely not as consistent as I had hoped, the character models are rough to say the least. I dont care for that explosion. Some areas have bad lighting like the enemy base with weird UE3 quality brown filter, but as soon as you free the base, the world turns back green with lush foliage, insane lighting and especially light bounce, and some of the most expansive vistas ive ever seen. I would say its far more consistent than horizon which looks straight up fugly in the desert, anything indoors and has some really egregious use of fog and just blurrying of details.

Look at how they mask the details literally a few feet away. Avatar doesnt have to do that because its next gen unlike HFW and their engine is able to render more likely because they render target is probably around 1080p unlike HFW and Burning shores which still targets native 4k despite being next gen only.

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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
My only point in all of this is you lack consistency in your evaluation of one game's fidelity metrics in comparison with another.
I am sorry but I have been hailing HFW as THE best looking game of the gen for over a year now in every thread including this one while pointing out its shortcomings. I even said it looks better than Ratchet and Demon Souls.

EVERY game even the best looking games have cutbacks. RDR2's character models dont even come close to Death Stranding's but it doesnt mean RDR2 wasnt the best looking game last gen.

Avatar, Starfield, Outlaws are all stunning looking next gen game that do a vast majority of things better than 99% of the last gen games. It's fair to call out the things that look last gen, but its a bit disingenious to say that I have different standards when it comes to judging graphics when i have spent the last year pointing out flaws in my favorite graphics of this gen.

Hell, go to the first page of this very thread. The very first post is me praising TLOU2. I list parts where TLOU2 looks stunning and then show areas that look awful. Doesnt mean TLOU2 isnt an amazing looking game.
 
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This will come across as overly dramatic and hyperbolic, but I need to get it off my chest.
I feel like I’m constantly being gaslit this gen. Everyone saying that these new games and the games coming out soon are truly next-gen and spectacular and cannot possibly run at 60fps on consoles because they look so visually amazing.

But, with a couple of exceptions, I’m just not seeing it. What’s wrong with me? Have I gone mad? Lol

In the past couple of years, I’ve played all of these gorgeous looking (imo) games at 60fps:
Horizon FW
Spiderman remastered
Miles Morales
Ghost of Tsushima
Division 2
Far Cry 6
Jedi Fallen Order
AC Valhalla
Even games like AC Origins & Odyssey at 60fps can look gorgeous, and they’re huge open worlds.

And I genuinely think lots of them look better than what I’m being shown as next-gen. So my future as a console player for the rest of the gen is games at 30fps that don’t look much better than the 60fps games I’ve been playing for the last few years?

Im tired and ranting now lol
It's not just you but I'm much more balanced than some on here. For me it's an unfortunate combination of -

We were spoiled with the 2016 / 2018 releases of PS4 Pro & Xbox One X in terms of the IQ it let very nice looking AAA PS4XBO games run at like AC Odyssey, Gears 4, TLOU II and RDR 2. Some also had 60fps modes.

Next gen consoles having a 10x CPU improvement but only a 2/3x GPU improvement over the Xbox One X / PS4 Pro. As Snake says a lot of the current GPU budget is being blown on rendering far too many pixels in some cases (mainly Sony first party) while Ubisoft push the boundaries with The Order like borders to only render as many native pixels as 1080p For Star Wars. It shows.

Covid-19 and the way it took the industry almost an entire year to get their studios fully up and running at home in some cases the people working less or not being pushed as much as previous gens. We were very lucky that projects like FFVII Remake, TLOU II and Cyberpunk were in the final stretch of their development cycles in 2020 or they would have been delayed by as much as two years.

Cross gen and the impact it had on the new consoles manufacturing shortages meaning many studios made the decision to stick to or in Sony's case go back to cross gen releases after launching with exclusives.

Diminishing returns meaning the same leap in hardware specs does not mean the same improvement we see on screen. We would need at least a 10x GPU leap instead of the usual 6-8x to get the PS360 to PS4XBO visual leap. We in fact got 2/3x...
 
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alloush

Member
Just seen the trailer for Pragmata. I am happy that this game is coming along nicely. Loved the visuals from the first time I set my eyes on it when they released the first trailer back in 2020 I believe, during the PS5 unveil showcase. A lotta goodies these past 2-3 days.
 

CGNoire

Member
wait what? Is this FF16 or Star Wars outlaws?

Are they doing what I asked for a few months ago in this very thread when I posted the RE0 screenshots with pre-rendered backgrounds wondering why we dont do that anymore. If we are getting that this gen then omg.
FF16

I would be excited if it was an entire game made that way say characters at the same quality as the Highest quality characters from the Construct of the Matrix Demo against a 4k video feed with even Voxel based fluid sim effects to bute....but here I'm disappointed since shots like those where really the only parts I thought where taxing the system.
 

geary

Member
What funny is that both Avatar and Outlaws, the Ubisoft games which took everyone by surprise from graphics pov, are both produced by Massive. Is this dev finally reaching the big boys table?
 
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