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[mrMUR_96]

I see this sentiment all the time on this board. There are plenty of Unreal Engine games that look completely different from each other. It's just that the engine is capable of delivering incredibly high quality assets, materials and close to photorealistic lighting so people just assume games look samey.

That Black Myth gif looks amazing, really want to get around to playing it, but the performance/iq is apparently still ass on PS5, so I hope there's a patch at some point. Even just a properly capped 30fps would be fine.

 

[RodriGames40]

I see this sentiment all the time on this board. There are plenty of Unreal Engine games that look completely different from each other. It's just that the engine is capable of delivering incredibly high quality assets, materials and close to photorealistic lighting so people just assume games look samey.

Man I often wonder how the fuck Callisto looked that good. I've never seen character models that geometrically dense in any videogame.

 

[SlimySnake]

That Black Myth gif looks amazing, really want to get around to playing it, but the performance/iq is apparently still ass on PS5, so I hope there's a patch at some point. Even just a properly capped 30fps would be fine.

Yep. I think Black Myth surprised me so much because it's much more than just a UE5 megascans copy pasta. They do such a great job of showcasing different biomes each with its own different lighting and art design. And they really push the cinematography in several scenes like they are a Sony first party studio or something.

Honestly, Callisto Hellblade 2 and Wukong are the first time this gen ive seen a third party studio compete with Sony when it comes to cutscenes, cinematography and sheer fidelity. everything from animations to character models and graphics are just top notch. Even massive which does everything right cant nail down the animations and character models. If anything, wukong and callisto's animations dont get enough love. Last gen, only rocksteady, kojipro and Quantic Dream came close.

 

[Kikorin]

I see this sentiment all the time on this board. There are plenty of Unreal Engine games that look completely different from each other. It's just that the engine is capable of delivering incredibly high quality assets, materials and close to photorealistic lighting so people just assume games look samey.

I think there's some "bias" in games made with the same engine that give a samey feeling. For some reason I have this feeling even watching the gif posted to show how different games made with UE 5 can be. Maybe is something related to lights, density, materials or I don't know, but I definitely understand what people means saying that.

 

[RodriGames40]

I think there's some "bias" in games made with the same engine that give a samey feeling. For some reason I have this feeling even watching the gif posted to show how different games made with UE 5 can be. Maybe is something related to lights, density, materials or I don't know, but I definitely understand what people means saying that.

UE5 is simply too good at rendering materials that behave realistically to the properties of light. This is why people once said in the film industry that all animated CG movies looked like Pixar's, once everything meets a certain level of fidelity the realistic lightning bleeds into all kinds of artstyles.

 

[Msamy]

Watching death stranding 2 recent disappointed tgs small clips, pretty sure it uses better version of decima than HFW, just hoped that hzd remaster use this version but they disappointed me, in other hand kojima did pretty good job but I need to see gameplay

 

[SlimySnake]

I think there's some "bias" in games made with the same engine that give a samey feeling. For some reason I have this feeling even watching the gif posted to show how different games made with UE 5 can be. Maybe is something related to lights, density, materials or I don't know, but I definitely understand what people means saying that.

I dont think an engine should be punished for using proper PBR materials lol

Watching death stranding 2 recent disappointed tgs small clips, pretty sure it uses better version of decima than HFW, just hoped that hzd remaster use this version but they disappointed me, in other hand kojima did pretty good job but I need to see gameplay

awful way to showcase the game. i am not feeling it at all.

 

[RodriGames40]

Also, after the recent Monolith Soft news on the red N side... Considering they're still early in R&D and literally creating a team solely for tech, I have a feeling those guys will deliver an Uncharted 4 moment soon enough, the stars are aligning.

 

[March Climber]

This is why people once said in the film industry that all animated CG movies looked like Pixar's, once everything meets a certain level of fidelity the realistic lightning bleeds into all kinds of artstyles.

This is why the first Spiderverse movie became such a pivotal film.

 

[Piggoro]

After watching the AI-filtered video game graphics made realistic (or anything that you can imagine), I started to think that we're on the verge of the new Post-Graphics Era. There still will be UE6 or even 7 and such (most likely), but the basic principles of creating a game image will completely change. This will be not an evolution but a revolution. All the things that we cared for for the last ~35 years are going to become mostly irrelevant: a number of polygons, texture resolution, shaders, and (OH MY GOD!) ray-tracing will become obsolete. This thought itself is terrifying for me as a lifelong graphics whore.
But I feel there are also reasons to be optimistic about these developments. For years interactivity, AI, and physics were mostly taking a backseat in the AAA scene. The majority of attention was given to graphics. I hope, that with the graphics arms race mostly becoming irrelevant, we can see more creative, deep, flexible, and interesting games - a proper marriage of AAA and indie.
So, weep and also rejoice my graphics prostitute brethren - our deliverance is coming (in the next 5 to 10 years tops). The paradigm shift will be super weird and mentally painful but I want to be optimistic and believe that ultimately it's for the better.
Bookmark that stuff here.

 

[Balducci30]

After watching the AI-filtered video game graphics made realistic (or anything that you can imagine), I started to think that we're on the verge of the new Post-Graphics Era. There still will be UE6 or even 7 and such (most likely), but the basic principles of creating a game image will completely change. This will be not an evolution but a revolution. All the things that we cared for for the last ~35 years are going to become mostly irrelevant: a number of polygons, texture resolution, shaders, and (OH MY GOD!) ray-tracing will become obsolete. This thought itself is terrifying for me as a lifelong graphics whore.
But I feel there are also reasons to be optimistic about these developments. For years interactivity, AI, and physics were mostly taking a backseat in the AAA scene. The majority of attention was given to graphics. I hope, that with the graphics arms race mostly becoming irrelevant, we can see more creative, deep, flexible, and interesting games - a proper marriage of AAA and indie.
So, weep and also rejoice my graphics prostitute brethren - our deliverance is coming (in the next 5 to 10 years tops). The paradigm shift will be super weird and mentally painful but I want to be optimistic and believe that ultimately it's for the better.
Bookmark that stuff here.

As a fellow graphics whore I would love to see games rendered a completely new way

 

[blastprocessor]

...

 

[blastprocessor]

Watching death stranding 2 recent disappointed tgs small clips, pretty sure it uses better version of decima than HFW, just hoped that hzd remaster use this version but they disappointed me, in other hand kojima did pretty good job but I need to see gameplay

Pretty sure Decima now has realtime GI. Motion blur looks better quality too, good for OLED screens.

 

[Piggoro]

As a fellow graphics whore I would love to see games rendered a completely new way

Same, but I'm just scared - it's hard to get out of the usual mind space.

 

[SlimySnake]

Same, but I'm just scared - it's hard to get out of the usual mind space.

most of these devs cant even put RT features in their games 4 years in, you expect them to use AI to change their entire game engines?

 

[Kikorin]

After watching the AI-filtered video game graphics made realistic (or anything that you can imagine), I started to think that we're on the verge of the new Post-Graphics Era. There still will be UE6 or even 7 and such (most likely), but the basic principles of creating a game image will completely change. This will be not an evolution but a revolution. All the things that we cared for for the last ~35 years are going to become mostly irrelevant: a number of polygons, texture resolution, shaders, and (OH MY GOD!) ray-tracing will become obsolete. This thought itself is terrifying for me as a lifelong graphics whore.
But I feel there are also reasons to be optimistic about these developments. For years interactivity, AI, and physics were mostly taking a backseat in the AAA scene. The majority of attention was given to graphics. I hope, that with the graphics arms race mostly becoming irrelevant, we can see more creative, deep, flexible, and interesting games - a proper marriage of AAA and indie.
So, weep and also rejoice my graphics prostitute brethren - our deliverance is coming (in the next 5 to 10 years tops). The paradigm shift will be super weird and mentally painful but I want to be optimistic and believe that ultimately it's for the better.
Bookmark that stuff here.

Maybe? AI is evolving so fast that everything can be at this point. But a game completely realistic and AI "enhanced" to looks like real life could have problems too. Imagine playing something like TloU 2, but that looks like real life. I mean, I love realistic response and gore in videogames, but this would be too much

 

[eNT1TY]

I am of the sentiment that many UE5 games look samey because devs have access to the same asset libraries and often just use those available assets wholesale minus scaling and grading. Take the new Halo ue5 scenes shown recently, if you were to remove the chief a lot of it would be almost indistinguishable from a random First Descendant scene if one were also to remove the descendant from the scene as well. It's not a bad thing that a small dev team has such a rich library of assets at their disposal that resources can be focused elsewhere but hand crafted in-house assets are what often give a game a unique visual signature and eventually a series a recognizable visual language and large studios should not sole rely on quixel dumps. Creativity can flourish anywhere even using unreal engine, if shit looks samey its "lazy devs" and nothing more, mostly...

 

[Piggoro]

most of these devs cant even put RT features in their games 4 years in, you expect them to use AI to change their entire game engines?

I think it'll be mostly handled on the "engine" dev company side. Like we have game developers making games on let's say UE5 but the engine itself with its impressive features, sub-engines, etc is developed and handled by Epic. So, I think in UE7/8/whatever the version will be, the "AI" sub-engine will be just a component. A component that will take more and more influence overall as the technology progresses. Obviously, everything around it will be tweakable and customizable.

 

[Msamy]

Pretty sure Decima now has realtime GI. Motion blur looks better quality too, good for OLED screens.

Also I saw some good reflections but I am not sure about whatever they are rt or not

 

[Lethal01]

Looks amazing. I'm glad that some studios realize that its a losing battle to even keep up with UE. Tons of money spent on R&D for inhouse engines and in the end, probably a shit experience for the developers themselves as you'll never get the community and help that UE has.

Epic just has to fix the goddamn stutters of their engine

I'd rather not have the people with the skill to make game engines decrease more.
I'd rather not 20 skilled teams top working on innovation just because 1 team is having good results.

 

[Lethal01]

After watching the AI-filtered video game graphics made realistic (or anything that you can imagine)
Bookmark that stuff here.

Having AI run as a filter that totally changes the look of your game its unlikely to go far much less totally change the graphical landscape.
AI is an amazing tool, but people see some good progress and expect that all the problems it has to just disappear by tossing more power/data at it.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Having AI run as a filter that totally changes the look of your game its unlikely to go far much less totally change the graphical landscape.
AI is an amazing tool, but people see some good progress and expect that all the problems it has to just disappear by tossing more power/data at it.

That’s how it works

What you see here are fans having fun with public AI. What’s behind doors probably makes Sora look like a joke already. Yearly it advances at exponential pace

Or one of Nvidia’s top researcher in AI saying that Sora was probably even trained on UE game models



Anyone not seeing it coming in next couple of years… feels like a Yahoo is fine, nothing to fear from Google early 2000’s

 

[Lethal01]

That’s how it works

What you see here are fans having fun with public AI. What’s behind doors probably makes Sora look like a joke already. Yearly it advances at exponential pace

Or one of Nvidia’s top researcher in AI saying that Sora was probably even trained on UE game models



Anyone not seeing it coming in next couple of years… feels like a Yahoo is fine, nothing to fear from Google early 2000’s

When you go behind the closed doors may face is what you will see.
Do not get tricked by people who want to advertise AI as magic.


Don't feel too bad though, I meet lots of CEO's who need us to fix their issues after they lose millions upon millions expect the magic AI to fix everything.

 

[SlimySnake]

That’s how it works

What you see here are fans having fun with public AI. What’s behind doors probably makes Sora look like a joke already. Yearly it advances at exponential pace

Or one of Nvidia’s top researcher in AI saying that Sora was probably even trained on UE game models



Anyone not seeing it coming in next couple of years… feels like a Yahoo is fine, nothing to fear from Google early 2000’s

AI may be improving rapidly but its still something that devs will need to incorporate in their engines. 99% of sony devs dont have support for RT in their engines. like 3 devs total have used mesh shaders on current gen consoles. these are built in features introduced 6-8 years ago.

even if UE6 is built on these AI features and PS6 and Xbox Next comes equipped with fancy AI accelerators, we wont see the results until 2032 at best. Just like how it took us almost 4 years to get something like hellblade 2 and black myth. and even then, it will be a fraction of the overall games released. Until dawn just shipped on UE5 and doesnt feature lumen or nanite.

Personally, I am not too big on AI because deepfake shit came out 4 years ago and i still dont have an app that lets me input sydney sweeney+margot robbie+alexis texas and generate whatever crazy shit i want to watch. the deepfake stuff is still pretty terrible despite 4 years of 'training'. even if the hardware gets there, the software side will still take 5-10 years.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

That responsibility lies upon the artists, not the engine. There are hundreds of examples of UE games that don’t look like each other. The biggest thing that stuck out in the Halo footage was the flood planet (the red fleshy scene) because it wasn’t using stock rock asset #168.

This.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

I think there's some "bias" in games made with the same engine that give a samey feeling. For some reason I have this feeling even watching the gif posted to show how different games made with UE 5 can be. Maybe is something related to lights, density, materials or I don't know, but I definitely understand what people means saying that.

I understand exactly what you mean, I wish other engines could compete with UE5…

 

[SlimySnake]

Played some Silent hill 2. Looks good, great fog, but im not getting the same hellblade 2/wukong feel. It has great lighting but im not impressed by the foliage and asset quality. The environment and assets dont have that nanite next gen feel.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

Played some Silent hill 2. Looks good, great fog, but im not getting the same hellblade 2/wukong feel. It has great lighting but im not impressed by the foliage and asset quality. The environment and assets dont have that nanite next gen feel.

Yup...it feels like a AA gams in a lot of ways ...the art style carries it

 

[CGNoire]

That uhhh… that actually looks better than what they showed of Yotei :/

Ahhhhh!...Mine Eyes!.... the downgrade from 2018 Bullshit Trailer was far worse than I expected it seems.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

That Black Myth gif looks amazing, really want to get around to playing it, but the performance/iq is apparently still ass on PS5, so I hope there's a patch at some point. Even just a properly capped 30fps would be fine.

I'm worried that Black Myth wont get a PS5 Pro patch. That should've been the first game Sony tried getting the devs to patch, considering how recent it is and how popular as well as how much it needs one. The devs got their money already and have been rather aloof when it comes to console patched. Right now it only shines in the 30 fps mode which doesn't feel stable and has some nasty ghosting (im noticing ghosting with many UE5 games btw).

I'm also concerned that Cyberpunk isn't going to get a Pro patch, maybe because of CDProjects relationship with Nvidia and because they're hard at work on multiple projects

 

[Pharaoh 117]

I think it's funny that the thing people are saying now about all UE5 games looking the same is the same thing people used to say about UE3. It's not the engine's fault.

 

[Hugare]

If your game doesnt have dynamic TOD, then just bake that lighting, ffs.

I'm playing Silent Hill 2 rn, and it looks great, but performance sucks. It uses Lumen but its totally unjustifiable. Just bake that shit. Performance would improve drastically.

Devs are lazy nowadays. "Just use FSR from 720p and call it a day". Instead of thinking on smarter ways for a better result.

 

[GymWolf]

Played some Silent hill 2. Looks good, great fog, but im not getting the same hellblade 2/wukong feel. It has great lighting but im not impressed by the foliage and asset quality. The environment and assets dont have that nanite next gen feel.

So the cherry picked pics are tricking me?

Well i'm gonna try the game myself tonight.

 

[RaduN]

I think it's funny that the thing people are saying now about all UE5 games looking the same is the same thing people used to say about UE3. It's not the engine's fault.

Was Gears of War back on 360, UE3?
If yes, then that gen had a ton of similar looking games on that engine on Xbox. Devs were kinda lazy that gen with that engine.
People were right.

 

[IDWhite]

I'm also concerned that Cyberpunk isn't going to get a Pro patch, maybe because of CDProjects relationship with Nvidia and because they're hard at work on multiple projects

Of course they are now too busy to dedicate themselves to recode the PC implemetation of RTGI, RT feflections or RT shadows to fit in the new Ps5 pro GPU architecture. Their main goal on PC was to promote the Nvidia GPU features, and by that they completely build the game around high end PC spec to showcase RT and AI image reconstruction. They have shown that they don't care much about the console versions of their games, so...

I would be very surprised to see a patch for PS5 pro that does more than implement PSSR.

 

[RodriGames40]

Played some Silent hill 2. Looks good, great fog, but im not getting the same hellblade 2/wukong feel. It has great lighting but im not impressed by the foliage and asset quality. The environment and assets dont have that nanite next gen feel.

I don't think they actually used Nanite for this tbh. DF couldn't find evidence of it.

 

[GymWolf]

Ok i can see what slimy was saying about sh2, the nanite geometry it's just not there and some of the textures are pretty meh.

Overall it look pretty good for an AA.

 

[SlimySnake]

The textures are still pretty good. I am playing on shaders maxed out. It was defaulted to medium. Thats the biggest performance hit in the game outside of Ray tracing.

It doesnt have that nanite feel to them, but the level of detail is a fairly decent step up from last gen games like Tlou2.

The lighting is the star of the show here. I broke the window in the second gif and it made the room slightly brighter. Dont think its super accurate because the effect was limited to surrounding walls and ground, but it definitely changed. Maybe this is due to dynamic GI. maybe not. who knows, but I like that the materials feel like individual objects instead of just painted on textures. they also bounce off the lighting properly even if they dont look hellblade 2 quality.

Way better than this.

 

[Jacir]

.
- The lack of a significant generational leap in order

 

[ZehDon]

If your game doesnt have dynamic TOD, then just bake that lighting, ffs.

I'm playing Silent Hill 2 rn, and it looks great, but performance sucks. It uses Lumen but its totally unjustifiable. Just bake that shit. Performance would improve drastically.

Devs are lazy nowadays. "Just use FSR from 720p and call it a day". Instead of thinking on smarter ways for a better result.

I'd love to hear the thoughts of some of the older engine developers on current game performance and image quality. They worked their asses off to make sure their games ran on potatoes and looked spectacular while doing it. Today's games chug along on our modern super computers and often look like trash while doing it. A huge amount of the relative performance loss has to be eaten by developer convenience; it's the only explanation I can see for a lot of this stuff.

 

[kevboard]

If your game doesnt have dynamic TOD, then just bake that lighting, ffs.

I'm playing Silent Hill 2 rn, and it looks great, but performance sucks. It uses Lumen but its totally unjustifiable. Just bake that shit. Performance would improve drastically.

Devs are lazy nowadays. "Just use FSR from 720p and call it a day". Instead of thinking on smarter ways for a better result.

it not only fucked up the performance, but it also looks worse in many ways.

Lumen, especially software Lumen, is extremely noisy. so you constantly have RT shimmering going on in lightly and indirectly lit areas.

the fact that SH2 doesn't have baked GI is indeed an absolute joke.

 

[Portugeezer]

I'd love to hear the thoughts of some of the older engine developers on current game performance and image quality. They worked their asses off to make sure their games ran on potatoes and looked spectacular while doing it. Today's games chug along on our modern super computers and often look like trash while doing it. A huge amount of the relative performance loss has to be eaten by developer convenience; it's the only explanation I can see for a lot of this stuff.

They'd probably do the same if everything was basically a PC, why optimise for 4 or 5 SKU's? Just tweak some .ini settings on each console version.

I'm not calling for exotic hardware (mostly due to price), but devs are definitely taking the easy route these days.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I think it's funny that the thing people are saying now about all UE5 games looking the same is the same thing people used to say about UE3. It's not the engine's fault.

That's just people being silly. Many games can look the same even if, they're on different engines. I remember when people used to say Dark Forces and Alien Trilogy run on the Doom engine and people forget how many 16-bit platform games looked like they were all running off the same engine. Sometimes the system tech specs will play a role like with how many Saturn Vs 3D fighters looked so similar despite completely different tech or just the game playstyle like with how AITD and Resident Evil looked so similar

 

[Buggy Loop]

most of these devs cant even put RT features in their games 4 years in, you expect them to use AI to change their entire game engines?

I mean if we stop at the lowest denominator, some devs can’t even implement what is the equivalent to an hex edit for ultrawide support

If the bar of graphics stopped at that, we would still be seeing Atari graphics

Thankfully, there’s smart peoples out there and it’ll take just one domino to fall where the graphics will be so insane with AI and saved so much time on artists and so on that it will be a drop mic moment. The day a genius nerd in his basement can make graphics that outclasses 700+ employee studios because of AI, someone will notice.

 

[Trilobit]

I dont think an engine should be punished for using proper PBR materials lol


awful way to showcase the game. i am not feeling it at all.

Where's you heart, man?

 

[SlimySnake]

One thing I will say about Silent Hill 2 is that despite the fancy graphics and production values, it still feels like a B game. You have this really weird ghosting around the character that creates a halo effect which hurts the graphics especially outdoors in the fog. There are weird shiny artifacts that come up every now and then when lumen reflections break. i saw this in robocop. Sometimes when you turn the camera too fast, you can see the edges of the screen display SSR artifacts. Stuttering is present and not well masked either. Most games will stutter when you enter a new area or hide it in an alley or something. here the traversal stutter would happen in the middle of the goddamn street. cant you break up your levels a bit better than that? I get that its a big semi open world area spanning 10-15 city blocks, but right in the middle of the street? Come on. A good studio would've figured out a way around this.

Then there are the hair lighting issues we saw in jedi survivor with RT off. here they dont use virtual shadow maps. second UE5 game in two months NOT using them. And it just makes it look like hes wearing a wig.

Here are a couple of really good comparisons showing just how much better the hair look with virtual shadow maps on. Epic really needs some quality control on these games. VSMs should be standard in every UE5 game.

 

[GymWolf]

The textures are still pretty good. I am playing on shaders maxed out. It was defaulted to medium. Thats the biggest performance hit in the game outside of Ray tracing.

It doesnt have that nanite feel to them, but the level of detail is a fairly decent step up from last gen games like Tlou2.

The lighting is the star of the show here. I broke the window in the second gif and it made the room slightly brighter. Dont think its super accurate because the effect was limited to surrounding walls and ground, but it definitely changed. Maybe this is due to dynamic GI. maybe not. who knows, but I like that the materials feel like individual objects instead of just painted on textures. they also bounce off the lighting properly even if they dont look hellblade 2 quality.

Way better than this.

You read my mind, while playing i was thinking that this is what a cheap tlou remake should have looked like instead of what we had.

I think the game looks pretty great tbh.

 

[mrqs]

One thing I will say about Silent Hill 2 is that despite the fancy graphics and production values, it still feels like a B game. You have this really weird ghosting around the character that creates a halo effect which hurts the graphics especially outdoors in the fog. There are weird shiny artifacts that come up every now and then when lumen reflections break. i saw this in robocop. Sometimes when you turn the camera too fast, you can see the edges of the screen display SSR artifacts. Stuttering is present and not well masked either. Most games will stutter when you enter a new area or hide it in an alley or something. here the traversal stutter would happen in the middle of the goddamn street. cant you break up your levels a bit better than that? I get that its a big semi open world area spanning 10-15 city blocks, but right in the middle of the street? Come on. A good studio would've figured out a way around this.

Then there are the hair lighting issues we saw in jedi survivor with RT off. here they dont use virtual shadow maps. second UE5 game in two months NOT using them. And it just makes it look like hes wearing a wig.

Here are a couple of really good comparisons showing just how much better the hair look with virtual shadow maps on. Epic really needs some quality control on these games. VSMs should be standard in every UE5 game.

It still boggles my mind how nanite solves geometry, lumen lighting, vsm for shadows, and now megalights. We're really reaching the peak graphics era, just need the devs to catch up. And it being broadly available, means that even indie/smaller games can look stellar. Super exciting times.

 

[Pharaoh 117]

It still boggles my mind how nanite solves geometry, lumen lighting, vsm for shadows, and now megalights. We're really reaching the peak graphics era, just need the devs to catch up. And it being broadly available, means that even indie/smaller games can look stellar. Super exciting times.

I think UE5 will really sing when there's more processing power and memory available. The current consoles are really struggling to run those features but I expect UE5 will hit the ground running next gen when there's better hardware to run those features together and with higher quality.

PS: I'm hopeful CDPR will go the extra mile with the PC version of the next Witcher game.

 

[SlimySnake]

It still boggles my mind how nanite solves geometry, lumen lighting, vsm for shadows, and now megalights. We're really reaching the peak graphics era, just need the devs to catch up. And it being broadly available, means that even indie/smaller games can look stellar. Super exciting times.

yeah, the problem is that this game is still on UE5.1 just like wukong which didnt have nanite support for foliage, had poor performance for lumen lighting, and some really bad cpu issues which im guessing are the cause of these stutters in the game.

they have improved performance so much that with UE5.5, they are now defaulting in hardware ray tracing as the main performance profile because its even more performant than software lumen in UE5.1.

Shame they didnt send their engineers to get these guys get their game built on the latest builds.