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[KKRT00]

cryteks "tech trailers" that have released alongside each crysis game are not representative of the actual game. the one you linked is sort of an exception because its mostly console footage which is somewhat representative, but the single pc scene in the beginning is well beyond anything in crysis 2.

Thats actually not true. Every single feature shown in tech trailers is in the game [except for tessellated frog]
Crysis 2 DX 11 Ultra update trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVGNWnY_GIs

Crysis 3 Tech Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWvgETOo5ek

 

[nib95]

Lovely shot, but this kinda shows a complete lack of real GI actually...

I think Driveclub's foliage has varying degrees of realism and accuracy of textures, lighting, shaders etc.

 

[benzy]

Also, for the record, the opacity of the shadow has nothing to do with GI...

It does actually.

 

[dark10x]

Graphically, maybe, but there's the small factor that Daytona is doing a lot less than Doom. IT's doing something simple in a very pretty way. Doom is doing something more complex in a slightly less pretty way. Which is the more "technically-advanced"?

I think you're completely insane here and it shows that you weren't familiar with the game at release. Daytona USA was so far beyond anything that could be done at home in 1993. It wasn't even remotely close.

Model 2 hardware was doing stuff that even 3D cards released years later couldn't match.

I think people very easily forget those achievements. The level of detail, the use of texture filtering (this was not a trivial thing), a perfect 60 fps, and the huge number of on-screen cars was mind blowing by 93 standards. Looking at PC racing games released five years after Daytona USA and we STILL weren't seeing anything close to it at that frame-rate with that many cars on screen.

The "small" factor is not a factor here. What Daytona was doing in 1993 was 100% impossible on PCs from that era. It could not be done. The hardware necessary to do it simply did not exist yet.

 

[Bornstellar]

I think Driveclub's foliage has varying degrees of realism and accuracy of textures, lighting, shaders etc.

Oh for sure, but a true GI model would show the lit portion of the gnome's red hat bouncing light onto its ear for example.

It does actually.

That's also a model where shadows are completely black sans indirect illumination. Games don't render this way.

 

[HTupolev]

Oh for sure, but a true GI model would show the lit portion of the gnome's red hat bouncing light onto its ear for example.

Depends on how high-frequency the bounce calculations are. Some models for doing environmental GI wouldn't really resolve that.

 

[nib95]

Refraction is a wonderful effect which is sadly underused in many games.

Refraction love.

What game is this screen from? Looks cool.

 

[Bornstellar]

What game is this screen from? Looks cool.

Skyrim

I'm very much anticipating NLA 2.0.

I doubt mods count in this thread though, right?

 

[KKRT00]

I am very much a Crytek-fanboy and I have worked with their engines for many years (until recently), but 2011 should honestly not belong to Crysis 2 but rather BF3.

Crysis 2's contribution to the world would, after a patch that came much later, be Screen Space Reflections, while BF3's was the measly "dirty lens" effect. Both of these would in future be used by every game seemingly. (Same as with original Crysis SSAO though it was a bit rough and the blurring could have been done better)

But I think the introduction of Frostbyte 2 with the, albeit prebaked, still very impressive Geomerics global illumination engine combined with large environments who are more or less destructable is more impressive than Crytek's attempt to jump on the console bandwagon. It also had particle shadows/particle lighting that is more advanced than the Crysis2 version.

SSDO in Crysis2 is nice, but the implementation used is imho inferior to HBAO (first seen in BF3, right?).
Tesselation and POM have been done better than in C2.
The global illumation in Crysis is really not that great, i don't think there is much denial and that's why its use in the game is really limited and most lighting is hand-made.

SSDO is slightly lower quality than HBAO, but in comparison to HBAO You have ambient occlussion for every light source and additionally shadows get color informations from the lights.

PoM and Tessellation wasnt done better in any game.
You also forgetting about the highest quality post processing, like hdr correct and per pixel Motion blur and very high quality 1/2 res Bokeh DoF.
Water Tessellation
Particles physics from explosions
Penumbra shadows from the Sun/Moon.

 

[the androgyne]

On the Wikipedia page for Daytona, it says Daytona had a lower polygon count than Virtua Racing. That smelt like bullshit to me... System 16 says Model 1 could power 180,000 polygons per second versus 300,000 for Model 2. But i guess that doesn't necessarily mean that Daytona used 300,000? Hard to say for sure if it's true or not, i can't look past the textures in Daytona to tell!

I remember the Saturn version of Virtua Fighter had to use texture mapping in places, in the absence of being able to use enough polys, and obviously VF Remix clearly made the case for textures being more important than sheer poly grunt back then.

 

[icecold1983]

Thats actually not true. Every single feature shown in tech trailers is in the game [except for tessellated frog]
Crysis 2 DX 11 Ultra update trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVGNWnY_GIs

Crysis 3 Tech Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWvgETOo5ek

wrt crysis 2, i was referring to the scene at 21 seconds of this trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOINRMfumnw

for the crysis 3 trailer, the following features were not at all representative of what crysis 3 delivered ingame. PADM, tessellated vegetation, area lights, particle lighting. they either werent there or the quality was much lower

 

[nib95]

Skyrim

Ahh, PC and modded I take it, because it certainly didn't look that good on my 360 lol.

 

[Bornstellar]

Ahh, PC and modded I take it, because it certainly didn't look that good on my 360 lol.

Modded to hell and back for sure. Modders do what Bethesdon't.

 

[KKRT00]

wrt crysis 2, i was referring to the scene at 21 seconds of this trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOINRMfumnw

for the crysis 3 trailer, the following features were not at all representative of what crysis 3 delivered ingame. PADM, tessellated vegetation, area lights, particle lighting. they either werent there or the quality was much lower

But scene from 0:21 is just showcase of light sources going through the city. Same light source tech which handles all lights in Crysis 2, i dont know what You are talking about when saying its not in C2.
Whole Central Station fight is designed to showcase it. Hell You can even open Crysis 2 SDK and add similar lights that moves through the city or change lighting conditions in any level.
This level also showed deferred lighting at its finest:
http://i.minus.com/ixgB6dz0V5d5i.gif
http://i.minus.com/iFkRz5f7EFg5D.gif

Wait what? Everything from the Crysis 3 trailer is there, except for a frog, in the same quality.

I think its time for You to prove that You have those games on Your PC and played them.

 

[icecold1983]

But scene from 0:21 is just showcase of light sources going through the city. Same light source tech which handles all lights in Crysis 2, i dont know what You are talking about when saying its not in C2.
Whole Central Station fight is designed to showcase it.

Wait what? Everything from the Crysis 3 trailer is there, except for a frog, in the same quality.

the central station fight does not look like that sequence tho. that sequence was clearly rendered offline, but pretty much all footage from crysis tech trailers is rendered offline. please provide crysis 3 screens matching the areas of the video showing off each tech item i listed. ive tried many times and ive never been able to do so. ive gone through every level enabling and disabling tessellation and never once did a single shred of vegetation change. i couldnt find any individual sparks casting their own light source. couldnt find such super high quality area lights etc. i did find that padm tree and it is of much lower precision ingame.

 

[Creaking]

Skyrim

I'm very much anticipating NLA 2.0.

I doubt mods count in this thread though, right?

All those sharp textures and then... that gamebryo hair.

 

[DigiMish]

From a technical standpoint Half-Life 2 wasn't particularly impressive outside of its facial animation system and scripting. It also did use physics in some impressive ways, but that was just a proprietary physics engine. The actual engine wasn't doing anything groundbreaking outside of that though. It was mostly smart art direction that hid the games' flaws.

It comes down to id tech 4 (Doom 3) vs source engine (Half-Life 2).

 

[KKRT00]

the central station fight does not look like that sequence tho. that sequence was clearly rendered offline, but pretty much all footage from crysis tech trailers is rendered offline. please provide crysis 3 screens matching the areas of the video showing off each tech item i listed. ive tried many times and ive never been able to do so. ive gone through every level enabling and disabling tessellation and never once did a single shred of vegetation change. i couldnt find any individual sparks casting their own light source. couldnt find such super high quality area lights etc. i did find that padm tree and it is of much lower precision ingame.

e_GI is not responsible for vegetation tessellation. Tessellation on vegetation is enabled even on Low, same goes for PoM and many other features, thats why its DX11 only game on PC.
Area lights are exactly the same, hell i've done some SDK test of them. Not only that but in Crytek's Community day they were showing them in SDK in Crysis 3 levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmCvHel7PL8

I can go on and on, but now You should be the one providing examples that they arent the same quality.

 

[MrCunningham]

It comes down to id tech 4 (Doom 3) vs source engine (Half-Life 2).

I think id Tech 4 is doing a little more on a technical level. But Source has its merits too.

 

[dark10x]

It comes down to id tech 4 (Doom 3) vs source engine (Half-Life 2).

Doom 3 engine was a better fit for 2004.

I think HL2 shouldn't be considered due to its performance problems out of the gate. Doom 3 was doing some incredible stuff AND managed to run super well on hardware from that day. It was one of the rare games that you could install and just start playing with few issues. Quite remarkable, really. HL2 was a stuttery mess out of the gate in comparison. It had some advantages over Doom 3 but its levels were smaller, lighting less advanced, and technical problems severe.

HL2 is perfectly solid now, of course, but in 2004 at release it was not in great shape. I don't think Source performance issues were due to it being "more advanced" either.

 

[iapetus]

Seriously, you should at least add Elite as a contender in 1984, and Magic Carpet in 1994.

As an outright winner by a country mile. There's nothing technically impressive about that year's 'winner'. And Pac Land as a runner up? Seriously? That just tells me someone either didn't know about Elite or couldn't believe it was released in '84.

http://bbc.godbolt.org/?disc=elite.ssd&autoboot

 

[Theognosis]

2006- Gears of War (Xbox 360) - Made by Epic the makers of Unreal 3 Engine.

2007- Crysis - Made by Crytek makers of Cryengine

2008- Crysis Warhead - Made by Crytek makers of Cryengine

2009- ARMA 2 - Made by Bohemia Interactive makers of Real Virtuality game engine

2010- Metro 2033 - Made by 4A Games makers of the 4A Engine

2011- Crysis 2 - Made by Crytek makers of Cryengine

2012- Far Cry 3 - Made by Ubisoft Montreal using a branch of the Dunia engine that had been separately developed from Cryengine for about 8 years

2013- Crysis 3 - Made by Crytek makers of Cryengine

2014- Assassin’s Creed Unity - Made by Ubisoft using the internally developed AnvilNext engine


Which of these games do you consider as merely presented on a game engine?

All of them. Game engines are truly marvels of engineering, but the games that come out of them aren't special in my opinion. I guess it can be special in instances wherein a game is released by the same team who created the engine--but it should only be for that particular year. The rest shouldn't count as they are merely rehashes of the same thing with a different skin.

And because my opinion is far from being popular, I'd give the nod to NintendoLand in 2012 for introducing 5-player asymmetric gameplay on a single console at 60fps which was something unprecedented in videogame history.

 

[Mr Ed]

After reading the OP and skimming through the pages i think the title tread should be renamed to "Here's my view on the most technically-advanced game for each year".
I have seen numerous very good suggestions like Elite, U2 and God of War 3, but OP seems unwilling to include these suggstions. Some are very well agrumented. Elite is a no-brainer. There was NOTHING like it at the time. This list is far from complete.

 

[icecold1983]

e_GI is not responsible for vegetation tessellation. Tessellation on vegetation is enabled even on Low, same goes for PoM and many other features, thats why its DX11 only game on PC.
Area lights are exactly the same, hell i've done some SDK test of them. Not only that but in Crytek's Community day they were showing them in SDK in Crysis 3 levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmCvHel7PL8

I can go on and on, but now You should be the one providing examples that they arent the same quality.

i tried using both e_tessellation and r_tessellationmaxdistance.

 

[Phediuk]

As an outright winner by a country mile. There's nothing technically impressive about that year's 'winner'. And Pac Land as a runner up? Seriously? That just tells me someone either didn't know about Elite or couldn't believe it was released in '84.

http://bbc.godbolt.org/?disc=elite.ssd&autoboot

TX-1 certainly had the best sprite scaling of any game ever made at the time, so I don't know why you're being so dismissive. I'm perfectly aware of Elite, it's an ambitious and impressive game for its time, but this thread is not about the most ambitious game, it's about which game pushes the best hardware the furthest. The tech behind even mid-tier arcade games was an order of magnitude superior to 8-bit home computers, so Elite does not belong here. This is also why I'm not including stuff like Ultima Underworld and Mario 64. Impressive games, but not in the brute-force manner used to determine the winners here. This is not meant as a slight against any of those games. If you want to make a "most ambitious game design by year" or "most innovative game by year" or "most influential game by year" thread, then go ahead, but those are irrelevant to this thread unless they're coupled with top-of-the-line hardware.

 

[KKRT00]

Of course e_tessellation, not e_GI. Still its not for vegetation.

 

[T.O.P]

This guy is obviously Microsoft biased. No Nintendo or Playstation games..

Anyway, reinstalling Crysis 2-3 as soon as my new pc gets delivered, can't wait to witness the glory :3

 

[icecold1983]

Of course e_tessellation, not e_GI. Still its not for vegetation.

so is there a command that disables the supposed vegetation tessellation?

took pics of the same PADM tree

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

^ looks like POM rather than tessellation, with that distortion towards the edge.

All of them. Game engines are truly marvels of engineering, but the games that come out of them aren't special in my opinion. I guess it can be special in instances wherein a game is released by the same team who created the engine--but it should only be for that particular year. The rest shouldn't count as they are merely rehashes of the same thing with a different skin.

And because my opinion is far from being popular, I'd give the nod to NintendoLand in 2012 for introducing 5-player asymmetric gameplay on a single console at 60fps which was something unprecedented in videogame history.

I think it is a valid opinion, but it would also apply to some of the Sega arcades that shared more than the board right?

 

[Celine]

About that...

About that what?
Argonaut was working for Nintendo at the time so I can see them influencing each other.
Mario 64 is much better than what Croc became a year after.

 

[icecold1983]

^ looks like POM rather than tessellation, with that distortion towards the edge.



I think it is a valid opinion, but it would also apply to some of the Sega arcades that shared more than the board right?

yes thats a comparison of the same PADM enabled tree ingame and from the tech trailer.

 

[Synth]

After reading the OP and skimming through the pages i think the title tread should be renamed to "Here's my view on the most technically-advanced game for each year".
I have seen numerous very good suggestions like Elite, U2 and God of War 3, but OP seems unwilling to include these suggstions. Some are very well agrumented. Elite is a no-brainer. There was NOTHING like it at the time. This list is far from complete.

Elite I can agree with... but what have been the good arguments for including God of War 3 next to Metro 2033?

Please don't say "nice AA".

 

[Yoshi]

Oh my @years 2001.2013. Glad to see Assassin's Creed Unity at least deviating from it. I however, have a small problem with the ignorance of how the game runs. Is better texture work / model detail, but a spotty framerate more advanced than a solid running game with slightly weaker models and textures? As for PC titles I think it's important to always only compare what was possible on builds that existed back then. Crysis for instance couldn't be maxed out for years, right?

I'm supremely impressed by I Robot (1983? That would have been borderline acceptable on PlayStation / Saturn early gen and actually looks cleaner than most of the games at that time because of a lack of textures...) and Winning Run. How did those games run? In particular, I Robot in 1983 has me worried about being super-unstable...

 

[Mr Ed]

TX-1 certainly had the best sprite scaling of any game ever made at the time, so I don't know why you're being so dismissive. I'm perfectly aware of Elite, it's an ambitious and impressive game for its time, but this thread is not about the most ambitious game, it's about which game pushes the best hardware the furthest. The tech behind even mid-tier arcade games was an order of magnitude superior to 8-bit home computers, so Elite does not belong here. This is also why I'm not including stuff like Ultima Underworld and Mario 64. Impressive games, but not in the brute-force manner used to determine the winners here. This is not meant as a slight against any of those games. If you want to make a "most ambitious game design by year" thread, then go ahead, but that's not what this thread is about.

You are contradicting yourself. What is it? Is it games that pushed the hardware the furthest or the games that were brute forced by hardware? Uncharted 2 and God of War 3 were technical marvels. Elite on an 8-bit is far more impressive than sprite pushing on specific hardware. Because the one due to the game, and the other is due to the hardware.

 

[Phediuk]

You are contradicting yourself. What is it? Is it games that pushed the hardware the furthest or the games that were brute forced by hardware? Uncharted 2 and God of War 3 were technical marvels. Elite on an 8-bit is far more impressive than sprite pushing on specific hardware. Because the one due to the game, and the other is due to the hardware.

No contradiction at all there. We're looking for the best hardware by year, then determining which game pushes that tech the furthest. See the first line of the OP. That's all.

 

[goonergaz]

1984. Groundbreaking true 3D free world space sim with massive galaxies to trek through, trading, piracy, missions.

Nothing comes close.

It's so much more impressive in scope, in technology, in sheer fucking ahead-of-its-timeness than any cookie-cutter sprite-based racer. Yes, wireframe is pretty hokey these days, but a full 3D space combat game back in 1984 was cutting edge, and some of the things those guys did with the hardware (changing screen resolution part way down the screen to allow high-res mode for the main view and high-colour mode for the HUD) are incredible.

I have to quote this, I mean, come on, no Elite in the OT really is a big miss

 

[D.Lo]

Great OP and discussion here!

Almost an impossible task to do fairly IMO however. Software tech is tied to hardware tech, and hardware tech is in most cases limited by costs before it can be commoditised and available to regular consumers.

Arcade and PC games are/were not bound to any realistic hardware dollar constraints. Crysis was incredible at release - if you had infinite money to have a machine to run it maxed out. And Model 1/2/3 games ran on exorbitantly costly hardware.

You could release a game today that requires a petabyte of RAM and a chip two generations away's performance to run if you want.

So ultimately in many cases it's just kind of a discussion of market realities of who has access to powerful hardware.

 

[goonergaz]

No contradiction at all there. We're looking for the best hardware by year, then determining which game pushes that tech the furthest. See the first line of the OP. That's all.

Elite pushed the technical boundaries by being a free-roam game and a 'living' universe with chain events?

 

[Phediuk]

Great OP and discussion here!

Almost an impossible task to do fairly IMO however. Software tech is tied to hardware tech, and hardware tech is in most cases limited by costs before it can be commoditised and available to regular consumers.

Arcade and PC games are/were not bound to any realistic hardware dollar constraints. Crysis was incredible at release - if you had infinite money to have a machine to run it maxed out. And Model 1/2/3 games ran on exorbitantly costly hardware.

You could release a game today that requires a petabyte of RAM and a chip two generations away's performance to run if you want.

So ultimately in many cases it's just kind of a discussion of market realities of who has access to powerful hardware.

You get the point! This thread isn't about being fair to the games pushing weaker hardware really hard. It's about games pushing the most powerful hardware. This is not a "games that were ahead of their time" thread in a game-design sense, hence why many of these games are fairly unimaginative with their design. Winning Run, for instance, a routine driving game, but the tech utterly smashed everything else that year, and it uses that tech well, so it wins. That's all that matters for this thread.

 

[Chastten]

Love how 2001 to 2013 all look nearly identical to me. Not saying they're bad choices as I haven't even played most of them but it explains quite nicely why I took a break from gaming for a large part of that decade.

 

[Mr Ed]

No contradiction at all there. We're looking for the best hardware by year, then determining which game pushes that tech the furthest. See the first line of the OP. That's all.

Ok, got it. I misread that part. Still, its one mighty leap of faith to think that the best hardware automatically pushes games technically the furthest.

 

[Phediuk]

Ok, got it. I misread that part. Still, its one mighty leap of faith to think that the best hardware automatically pushes games technically the furthest.

It's absolutely a leap of faith, and I don't pretend that this thread is anything else. And in some years, it's certainly debatable what the most powerful hardware actually is (see: 1998-2001.)

 

[iapetus]

TX-1 certainly had the best sprite scaling of any game ever made at the time, so I don't know why you're being so dismissive. I'm perfectly aware of Elite, it's an ambitious and impressive game for its time, but this thread is not about the most ambitious game, it's about which game pushes the best hardware the furthest.

Elite wasn't just ambitious. It was a technical masterpiece. It did so much more than any other game of its period, and it pushed its hardware way beyond what more powerful hardware was delivering at the time.

Impressive sprite scaling in such a limited game as TX-1 just doesn't compare to a fully fluid 3D world with the scope of Elite. That the hardware TX-1 ran on is technically more powerful just tips things further in Elite's favour - it's a technically superior game on theoretically lesser hardware.

 

[Synth]

Ok, got it. I misread that part. Still, its one mighty leap of faith to think that the best hardware automatically pushes games technically the furthest.

Well, it doesn't appear to actually be limited to the single most capable hardware (PC's could have run Gears in their sleep). I don't think Phediuk was very clear on that just now. From the examples in the OP, it's more like imagine every game each year ran on the most powerful hardware. Without the restraints, which would be the most impressive?

So something like Mario 64 on Model 3 wouldn't be considered, as it'd be very unimpressive.

 

[Phediuk]

Well, it doesn't appear to actually be limited to the single most capable hardware (PC's could have run Gears in their sleep). I don't think Phediuk was very clear on that just now. From the examples in the OP, it's more like imagine every game each year ran on the most powerful hardware. Without the restraints, which would be the most impressive?

So something like Mario 64 on Model 3 wouldn't be considered, as it'd be very unimpressive.

Got a better suggestion for 2006 than Gears? I fully admit in the OP that it's an odd choice.

 

[iapetus]

It's absolutely a leap of faith, and I don't pretend that this thread is anything else.

I think 1984 proves it wrong.

 

[ShamePain]

Some crappy examples there OP. Killzone 2 took a huge dump on Crysis when it came out, the lighting alone is a generation ahead, Uncharted 2 is no slouch either. Arma is demanding only it was badly coded and poorly optimized. Crysis 2 is another bad example, Killzone 3 raised the bar again and looked significantly better with larger levels and set pieces.

 

[eso76]

No love for 2D games ?
Like when Namco and Atari introduced the first 32bit RISC (heh) boards (Ordyne, Narc..) ?

Also, GTAV needs to be there. And tons of others too.

 

[Phediuk]

I think 1984 proves it wrong.

Elite certainly does prove the thread wrong if we're talking in metrics other than pushing the most powerful hardware. Do you really think I would have picked 12 driving games for this thread, or 13 shooters in a row, if I was concerned with innovation in game design?

 

[goonergaz]

Elite certainly does prove the thread wrong if we're talking in metrics other than pushing the most powerful hardware. Do you really think I would have picked 12 driving games for this thread, or 13 shooters in a row, if I was concerned with innovation in game design?

In it's simplest form, technically with Elite you had the largest open world game ever. You had a consistent world which 'remembered' things you did. Those were great technical achievements were they not? Let alone the fact it was in such a small file size.