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[TheRed]

no your mind isn't playing tricks.. its kind of crazy that Ubisofts open world games cant compete against GTA in any category (performance, graphics, story, driving, shooting, activities, etc) after so many attempts lol

I haven't started Watch Dogs 2 but Watch Dogs 1 blew away GTA V in shooting gameplay. GTA feels terrible for shooting. I personally think the driving was good too. Everything else is right though. GTA V is a technical marvel.
From what I've seen I'm interested in the story of Watch Dogs 2, should be easy to beat GTA for me in that department.

 

[Nyteshade517]

anyone else in here that bought the Steam version of WD2 having issues with the Twitch Prime Pack and Private Eye Pack?

Twitch Hoodie just says "Not Installed" in the Premium Content menu (the Guts. Grit and Liberty & Pixel Art Packs it came with worked)

Private Eye Pack isn't even listed (not in the Premium Content menu and no items in-game)

people have said the Steam version is missing files to make the Twitch Hoodie work (ulc_twitch folder is missing that the Uplay version has)...no idea about the Private Eye Pack

 

[Akronis]

GTA 5 does alot of bullshit to achieve that 'effect'

Still manages to look and run better. That "bullshit" is called optimization lol. Reduce quality of things people won't notice to get better framerates.

 

[GavinUK86]

I'm on Uplay but I can't download the Private Eye pack either. When I click on it, the spinning "loading" icon just keeps on spinning and spinning.

 

[Maintenance]

I'm still not all that impressed with how this looks though.

.

Nah you're not crazy.

Yikes, this looks bad. Do we have any Ultra examples or AC:U is still the best looking game from Ubi this gen?

GTA 5 does alot of bullshit to achieve that 'effect'

That bullshit called "optimization". But hey, keep fighting the good fight.

 

[golem]

What CPU do you have?

3770k at 4.6. Thinking more actual cores might be advantageous

Go temporal AA and not above Ultra on the shadows. Turn off San Fran fog. Still having problems after that?

Yeah only getting low 50s high 40s with those kinds of settings.

 

[b0se]

So how's this running compared to Dishonored 2 ?

Benchmarks dont look THAT bad

 

[IMACOMPUTA]

GTA 5 does alot of bullshit to achieve that 'effect'

WTF does this even mean? If it looks and runs better... it looks and runs better. Games often use "tricks" to make things look and run better. It's awesome.

 

[Phionoxx]

Watch Dogs 2 Anti Cheat System Blocks RTSS Overlay Software

Some users have been asking as to why the RTSS overlay (e.g. the statistics overlay software for Afterburner) is not working with Watch Dogs 2. Our in-house developer Unwinder today got cracking at it. Watch Dogs uses Anti Cheat software called EasyAntiCheat, which does a bunch of gnarly things even when you are not playing on-line.

We have some good and some bad news. The good news is that RTSS (the core component of the overlay software) simply can be white-listed by EasyAntiCheat, which apparantly was in the past. The bad news is that the makers of EasyAntiCheat have not been exemplary fast with updating their white-list with the new builds of RTSS, and actually have not been updating for the past 1 maybe 2 years. Unwinder figured out the following:

The anticheat system is the reason of missing overlay and it is indeed blocking RTSS, their online FAQ claim that they support RTSS overlay, however their own list of supported overlay versions seem to be very outdated (it lists RTSS 6.2.0 and 6.3.0, newest one is about 2 years old). If their internal whitelist database is as "fresh" as that online FAQ, then they'll block any unknown RTSS versions (i.e. RTSS 6.4.0 and higher, up to current 6.6.0 beta 2). And BTW, RTSS 6.3.0, which they document as whitelisted, indeed works with Watchdogs 2, I've just verified it myself.

So right now the only solutions are:

Wait for EAC update whitelisting current versions of modern overlay applications
Use outdated RTSS 6.3.0


So until somebody at "EasyAntiCheat" updates the white-list, your only alternative is to install an old build of RTSS. Typically an email from one website does not work to get heard. Hence we'd like to request the support of you guys to email them here: https://www.easyanticheat.net/contact/ and request they white-list the latest builds of RTSS. Please point them to this news-item to get the message across so that tens of thousands of game savvy end-users can enjoy the game with a proper overlay.

Good to know! Might be a dumb question but does that mean using current version of RTSS would effectively risk being banned / blocked from the online MP because EasyAntiCheat flags you as using an unsupported application? I don't want to be inadvertently missing out on invasions or bounty hunts because of wanting an overlay.

 

[GavinUK86]

So how's this running compared to Dishonored 2 ?

Benchmarks dont look THAT bad

Night and day. This is perfectly playable. Dishonored 2 on the other hand, before the latest patch, was unbearable for many, me included.

 

[Nyteshade517]

Good to know! Might be a dumb question but does that mean using current version of RTSS would effectively risk being banned / blocked from the online MP because EasyAntiCheat flags you as using an unsupported application? I don't want to be inadvertently missing out on invasions or bounty hunts because of wanting an overlay.

that I have absolutely no idea on...I uninstalled the RTSS I had (6.5.1) and installed 6.3.0...it works in the game with no issues

 

[mercenar1e]

WTF does this even mean? If it looks and runs better... it looks and runs better. Games often use "tricks" to make things look and run better. It's awesome.

and the world is so much bigger too.

 

[GavinUK86]

and the world is so much bigger too.

and more lively and responsive.

 

[Hedonism Bot]

This game is much more geometrically complex than GTA 5 for a start. Even on PC at max settings, GTA 5 shows some of its age with the complexity of buildings and character models. It does an amazing job however of making all of the art very consistent and nothing stands out as being of lower quality than anything else.

I'm sad that there isn't a nice TAA aliasing solution that works like Fallout 4, but it still looks pretty incredible. 60fps at 3440x1440 without temporal filtering with GTX 1080 is possible if you turn off those damn screen space reflections (Everything else at ultra). The default reflections, whilst mostly fake, do a decent job whilst the screen space reflections can make some cars look horrendous and covered with aliased lines when driving through the city. Its a 25fps boost for what I consider a more appealing look.

 

[Phionoxx]

that I have absolutely no idea on...I uninstalled the RTSS I had (6.5.1) and installed 6.3.0...it works in the game with no issues

Okay I'll probably do that as well just to be safe. Can you just uninstall RTSS on its own and go back to the 6.3.0 build without messing with Afterburner at all?

 

[Nyteshade517]

Okay I'll probably do that as well just to be safe. Can you just uninstall RTSS on its own and go back to the 6.3.0 build without messing with Afterburner at all?

yeah...when you uninstall RTSS it asks if you want to keep your settings (click Yes)...then just install the other version

I'd say just don't have Afterburner running when you do that...to be safe

 

[nkarafo]

This game is much more geometrically complex than GTA 5 for a start. Even on PC at max settings, GTA 5 shows some of its age with the complexity of buildings and character models

Is it though? I'm actually asking for real because i don't have Watch Dogs 2, i'm only judging from pictures and videos so far.

I always thought geometry detail in GTA5 is phenomenal, not so much for the complexity of each individual asset but because of the quantity of said assets. There's also a lot of small details in objects, the kind of details you only notice if you look carefully or you zoom in FPS mode.

 

[MaLDo]

Ok, tested for a while. Raw performance is not bad, and temporal filtering is good enough imo. But the game have the same problem as Watch Dogs where streaming of high resolution textures can be a bottleneck for the engine. I use my own mod for WD1 to fix the problem so maybe something it's possible for WD2. Ultra textures produce some missed frames here and there, and Very high textures is a smooth experience until you cross a big bridge and so many textures are loaded at once. They really need to improve this because The Division has better texture quality and the streaming doesn't impact in the framerate.
Maybe I will try moving the game to a SSD, but this did nothing for WD1.

2880x1620 with temporal filtering ON

Temporal filtering is not bad, the problem is this game has lots of fine details and lots of metalic surfaces/poles/ropes plus the shader aliasing because sun effect over assets contours that will create distracting aliasing. This is a good example


1920x1080 MSAAx2 (no sharpen)

1920x1080 MSAAx4 (no sharpen)

1920x1080 TXAAx8 (no sharpen)

2560x1440 Temporal (no sharpen)

2880x1620 Temporal (no sharpen)

 

[Setsuna]

Still manages to look and run better. That "bullshit" is called optimization lol. Reduce quality of things people won't notice to get better framerates.

Oh so having broken shadow cascades is optimization?

Having basic LOD objects switch in from 5 feet away is good optimization?

Having every building store fronts be nothing, but basic flat images is optimization?

As far as i'm concerned that kind of optimization is meaningless

 

[terencecah]

Anyone get bad frame drops when driving?

I can't believe you can fast travel everywhere. It's kinda cheapens the driving

 

[nkarafo]

Oh so having broken shadow cascades is optimization?

Having basic LOD objects switch in from 5 feet away is good optimization?

Having every building store fronts be nothing, but basic flat images is optimization?

As far as i'm concerned that kind of optimization is meaningless

Are you talking about the PS3/360 version? PS4/XBOXone version? Or PC version?

 

[Phionoxx]

yeah...when you uninstall RTSS it asks if you want to keep your settings (click Yes)...then just install the other version

I'd say just don't have Afterburner running when you do that...to be safe

Sounds good, thanks. Will be nice to know what the utilization is like trying to stay locked at 60.

 

[icecold1983]

Oh so having broken shadow cascades is optimization?

Having basic LOD objects switch in from 5 feet away is good optimization?

Having every building store fronts be nothing, but basic flat images is optimization?

As far as i'm concerned that kind of optimization is meaningless

Cascades are broken if you use nvidias pcss. They are fine on softest

 

[Vuze]

Good post Maldo. I have it on a SSD and there's some hitching while streaming/driving fast which I also noticed with Watch Dogs.

Actually I gave it another spin and I'm pretty happy with performance on my system (4790k/1080) as long as BSODs won't become a regular occurrence. Might post some graphs and setting later.

 

[The Broker]

Ok, tested for a while. Raw performance is not bad, and temporal filtering is good enough imo. But the game have the same problem as Watch Dogs where streaming of high resolution textures can be a bottleneck for the engine. I use my own mod for WD1 to fix the problem so maybe something it's possible for WD2. Ultra textures produce some missed frames here and there, and Very high textures is a smooth experience until you cross a big bridge and so many textures are loaded at once. They really need to improve this because The Division has better texture quality and the streaming doesn't impact in the framerate.
Maybe I will try moving the game to a SSD, but this did nothing for WD1.

Thanks Maldo, nice to see you here besides Tactland jarl !!

 

[b0bbyJ03]

what the consensus on performance? My wife bought me Watch Dogs 2 for PS4 as a Christmas gift. Should I swap it our for the PC version instead?

 

[DjRalford]

Ok, after lots of testing I've gone for the following.

4790k @ 4.6ghz - 1.24vcore
R9 Nano @ 1050mhz - +40% power
16GB DDR3 1600


Resolution 3840x2160
Refresh rate 60
V-sync Sparse
Pixel density 1.0

Geometry ultra
Extra 0%
Terrain High
Vegetation High
Textur Resolution High
Texture Filtering Ultra
Shadows Very High
Headlight shadows Your Car
Water High
Reflections High
Screen space Reflections Very High
Fog Off
DoF On
Motion blur Off
Bloom on
Ambient occlusion SSBC
Temporal Filtering On
MSAAx2
SMAA


The Nano is staying at 1050mhz and not throttling, hits max temp of 76c, uses upto 3.9GB of the nanos 4GB HBM.

It actually looks pretty stunning, and after an hour of driving around causing mayhem both day and night even in city areas in the rain at night I've not had a single drop from 30 according to FRAPS.

 

[Stradnjoy]

Hey,
While the game seems like good fun i'm having a weird issue with the temporal filtering option. Whenever i turn it on i get these very weird looking edges. I have tried restarting the game, and my computer. Playing the game without the filtering seems a bit iffy on performance (1080p/FXAA and most setting on very high or high).
I'm on the newest Nvidia drivers (376,09). Windows 10, i7-6700K and GeForce 1070.
Any ideas on what is going on?

 

[Akronis]

Oh so having broken shadow cascades is optimization?

Having basic LOD objects switch in from 5 feet away is good optimization?

Having every building store fronts be nothing, but basic flat images is optimization?

As far as i'm concerned that kind of optimization is meaningless

As icecold said, only broken with PCCS.

And uhhh, yea that is what optimization is...

Over-detailing your game to the point where it runs like shit means no one notices anything other than the performance problems.

If you'd rather have a stutter fest when driving through the city over some flatter looking textures and LOD pop-in, you crazy.

 

[Maintenance]

If you'd rather have a stutter fest when driving through the city over some flatter looking textures and LOD pop-in, you crazy.

Or an ubisoft stan.

 

[sertopico]

As icecold said, only broken with PCCS.

And uhhh, yea that is what optimization is...

Over-detailing your game to the point where it runs like shit means no one notices anything other than the performance problems.

If you'd rather have a stutter fest when driving through the city over some flatter looking textures and LOD pop-in, you crazy.

That's the main issue, there are so many advanced options but nobody is able to use them because the game runs like shit otherwise.

 

[Lockjaw333]

Have we reached a consensus on temporal filtering? On or off?

 

[Diancecht]

This is an unoptimized mess. Even if I put every option to low with no AA, I can only get 70 fps in the open world and it dips to low 60s when driving around.

Crank most of them to High, turn on the filtering thing and I ge low 40s when driving.

What a shitshow.

980ti, 8gb, i76700k.

 

[Jumpman]

Hey,
While the game seems like good fun i'm having a weird issue with the temporal filtering option. Whenever i turn it on i get these very weird looking edges. I have tried restarting the game, and my computer. Playing the game without the filtering seems a bit iffy on performance (1080p/FXAA and most setting on very high or high).
I'm on the newest Nvidia drivers (376,09). Windows 10, i7-6700K and GeForce 1070.
Any ideas on what is going on?

Are you forcing anything in the Nvidia control panel? If so it could be messing things up. If not I'm out of guesses. It's certainly not supposed to look like that.

 

[DjRalford]

This is an unoptimized mess. Even if I put every option to low with no AA, I can only get 70 fps in the open world and it dips to low 60s when driving around.

Crank most of them to High, turn on the filtering thing and I ge low 40s when driving.

What a shitshow.

980ti, 8gb, i76700k.

That's why I gave up trying for a locked 50/60 at 1080p, it seems a locked 30 at 4K works better, for me on my nano anyway.

 

[SapientWolf]

This is an unoptimized mess. Even if I put every option to low with no AA, I can only get 70 fps in the open world and it dips to low 60s when driving around.

Crank most of them to High, turn on the filtering thing and I ge low 40s when driving.

What a shitshow.

980ti, 8gb, i76700k.

Probably no coincidence that Nvidia likes to demo Gsync with Ubisoft games.

 

[Jeffrey]

always wondered why there are so many settings options in modern games. Seems pointless when most barely affect framerate, and its really just 1 weird shadow thing or some nvidia exclusive thing that makes or breaks performance.

'low' and 'high' will roughly run the same for the most part unless you are really limited on vram.

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

Yeah, it makes my old 2500k at 4.5GHz cry in spots but it also makes my 1070 clocked at 2.1GHz cry as well in other spots. With RTSS broken I can't lock the frame rate where I want either and I really don't feel like downgrading it again.

 

[Vuze]

Have we reached a consensus on temporal filtering? On or off?

The only really annoying thing I noticed is ghosting of your vehicle while driving. But I'm playing on TV with some distance so I might have missed some details.

I've settled for playing at 3840x2160 (x0,72) with TF and Very High/Ultra settings to get crisp UI and decent performance. Recorded a chunk of data with presentmon while playing and put some graphs together from that using FLAC.
Maybe going a bit lower will help with frametimes but I think it's the streaming problem Maldo pointed out above.

i7 4790k @ 4,5GHz, 16GB DDR3 @ 1600 btw. Game installed on SATA SSD.

Driving around the map, doing some DeadSec missions and fighting some bad guys

 

[brau]

The only really annoying thing I noticed is ghosting of your vehicle while driving. But I'm playing on TV with some distance so I might have missed some details.

I've settled for playing at 3840x2160 (x0,72) with TF and Very High/Ultra settings to get crisp UI and decent performance. Recorded a chunk of data with presentmon while playing and put some graphs together from that using FLAC.
Maybe going a bit lower will help with frametimes but I think it's the streaming problem Maldo pointed out above.

Driving around the map, doing some DeadSec missions and fighting some bad guys

Whats your rig?

 

[Vitor711]

Considering many other benchmarks have stated a similar average of around 80 fps, I'll believe the benchmarks until I play it myself. ToD and weather could make a huge difference, especially with the SF Fog turned on.

EDIT: does default Ultra turn TXAA or MSAA on?

Ultra does not turn on any AA by default.

I'm running at native 1440p - my guess is that those benchmarks had the temporal stuff turned on or they weren't testing the opening areas. My 1080 is OC'd and runs great in any other game.

 

[LelouchZero]

So the game just bluescreened my PC after I bought the pants at the very beginning. haven't had one in ages. And since I ran it through BPM on my TV my whole display setup is borked now. Yay

10/10 would return if I hadn't been gifted the key


Steam settings are fucked too. PC gaming sometimes agh

I wonder if it's the shitty Anti Cheat solution they are using, these invasive crapwares are prone to be liable for crashes in my experience.

Bluescreen? Yeah that's not normal, unstable hardware from overclocks or overheating would do that, or even awful software that pokes around with drivers.

I'm not really sure about what Easy Anti Cheat does in the OS so I can't say that it's that.

 

[Akronis]

Ultra does not turn on any AA by default.

I'm running at native 1440p - my guess is that those benchmarks had the temporal stuff turned on or they weren't testing the opening areas. My 1080 is OC'd and runs great in any other game.

Gotcha. Seems to be just a mess all around then. Another open-world Ubi game through and through.

So the game just bluescreened my PC after I bought the pants at the very beginning. haven't had one in ages. And since I ran it through BPM on my TV my whole display setup is borked now. Yay

10/10 would return if I hadn't been gifted the key


Steam settings are fucked too. PC gaming sometimes agh

I wonder if it's the shitty Anti Cheat solution they are using, these invasive crapwares are prone to be liable for crashes in my experience.

Even funnier is that EasyAntiCheat is widely regarded as useless in most of the games it's in.

 

[Vuze]

Bluescreen? Yeah that's not normal, unstable hardware from overclocks or overheating would do that, or even awful software that pokes around with drivers.

I'm not really sure about what Easy Anti Cheat does in the OS so I can't say that it's that.

Yeah, as I said, I haven't had one in ages. I only have my CPU overclocked and that's been proven to be stable for months now in video rendering, streaming, gaming, synthetic benchmarks... so I very much doubt that was the cause. It's been running fine in a follow up session so I just hope it was a one-time thing. Game is actually fairly charming when it works

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

So the game just bluescreened my PC after I bought the pants at the very beginning. haven't had one in ages. And since I ran it through BPM on my TV my whole display setup is borked now. Yay

10/10 would return if I hadn't been gifted the key


Steam settings are fucked too. PC gaming sometimes agh

I wonder if it's the shitty Anti Cheat solution they are using, these invasive crapwares are prone to be liable for crashes in my experience.

Bluescreen? Yeah that's not normal, unstable hardware from overclocks or overheating would do that, or even awful software that pokes around with drivers and other things to causes instabilities within the OS.

I'm not really sure about what Easy Anti Cheat does in the OS so I can't say that it's that.

I mentioned it earlier but it gave me a BSOD too the the first time I started it up. Didn't get another after that but I haven't played beyond buying the pants and meeting everyone.

 

[Calabi]

I dont know what's wrong with my system but I can barely get 60fps. Constant random drops and locks to 40fps and thats with.

I5-4690k @4.3GHz
GTX1080
16GB Ram
SSD

Latest drivers.

Gpu usage fluctuates wildly as well from 50 to never above 80.

 

[LelouchZero]

Yeah, as I said, I haven't had one in ages. I only have my CPU overclocked and that's been proven to be stable for months now in video rendering, streaming, gaming, synthetic benchmarks... so I very much doubt that was the cause. It's been running fine in a follow up session so I just hope it was a one-time thing. Game is actually fairly charming.

Yeah hopefully it wont happen again, have fun!

I've had software blue-screen my PC in the past and it's really annoying that's why I also mentioned that.

I had DS3 controller drivers bluescreen my PC repeatedly and I also had a new antivirus that I installed do even worse things.

The blue-screens were so catastrophic that I had to reinstall Windows, I found it incredible that an antivirus could mess things up so much.
Fortunately I haven't had anything like that happen since.

I mentioned it earlier but it gave me a BSOD too the the first time I started it up. Didn't get another after that but I haven't played beyond buying the pants and meeting everyone.

Wow really? That is very odd. Hopefully it doesn't happen again.

 

[brau]

I dont know what's wrong with my system but I can barely get 60fps. Constant random drops and locks to 40fps and thats with.

I5-4690k @4.3GHz
GTX1080
16GB Ram
SSD

Latest drivers.

Gpu usage fluctuates wildly as well from 50 to never above 80.

So is it CPU bound? is the GPU being used to 98% of its capacity or so? It annoys me in games like Dishonored 2 when running at 1080p on highest settings i get fluctuating fps and the card is running at 50-60%.

 

[epmode]

How can I download the high resolution texture DLC? I have a Uplay copy from that Samsung promotion and I don't see a texture pack in the DLC tab.

edit: Oh, looks like the DLC is already tied to my account. It's in the Overview tab, not the DLC tab.

 

[Nyteshade517]

How can I download the high resolution texture DLC? I have a Uplay copy from that Samsung promotion and I don't see a texture pack in the DLC tab.

I think someone said click "Overview" and looked in the Owned DLC box or something...see if it;s there with an install button

edit: and you already figured it out