Support NeoGAF

[Morphine_OD]

When doing anything else but aiming with a gun, you rarely can aim high enough to get the disable helicopter prompt to show up. Sometimes even while aiming, you can't get a high enough angle. It's super stupid. So yeah, as they are currently, helicopters do nothing but frustrate and make you want to have a boat ready for a quick escape instead of bothering with all the stuff they've put in the game to make these chases fun and compelling.

Getting Aiden to sit his dumb ass down in a boat is a similarly frustrating venture by the way.

Fix this shit, modders.

1. Disable a helicopter with a skill
2. Shoot it with a grenade launcher while it's out of control
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!

 

[Marmac]

Yeah I installed the mod and there's way too much DOF for my liking too but that can be turned off in the game options. Overall the mod does make all the effects look much nicer but the game does take a performance hit. I'm using two 780tis at 1440p and I still can't run the game on ultra textures/ultra settings with msaa 8x or 4x without the game stuttering like crazy. Game is unplayable with those settings so I'm stuck using ultra textures with all other settings on high with txaa 4x. Game runs nice with these settings and doesn't stutter or crash but Ubisoft needs to fix this shit so I can run everything on ultra. When I play on my tv (1080p) game is butter with everything on ultra but still can't use msaa. I guess msaa is poorly optimized.

Are there any one-to-one shots comparing how it looks with and without the patch? Preferably without the insane amounts of DOF added.

 

[Jibbed]

Removed the 'PC, who cares' text file thing from the OP.

Seems people are still completely missing the irony of me having that as the first thing anyway.

 

[Phreakuency]

Downsampling only cleans up the aliasing. The only way I know to take a downsampled shot is because it looks good @ 2560x1440 (which runs 50-60 fps for me).

I'm constantly running into scenarios where I want to take a screenshot, and that's indicative of a game that looks good (to me, of course). So I'm really enjoying it. Both playing and shooting. Though cop chases with helicopters are starting to piss me off.

Don't get me wrong, there are certain situations where you want to pause the game, up the res and take that great looking shot.

What I was saying and the reason I posted that daylight pic, is to show that this modification hasn't done much more than polishing a turd and doesn't make it look like the E3 reveal. The whole media about this needs to change it's wording, remove the E3 bit, change this thread's title to 'extra visual features' etc but don't give people the impression it's suddenly the E3 game because it's not.

Ubisoft do not deserve extra sales from (albeit a great job and I'm sure a lot of time) this mod. They need to fix the game themselves.

And as I showed...

that's the game running in absolute maximum settings, my NVidia CP maxed out, on my very, very capable gaming build (running 25fps) and it still looks like crap.

I was simply saying, the downsampling, the carefully positioned camera, the DOF and more importantly, the night setting is giving a lot of people false hope.

(edit: on the whole helicopter thing... bad design flaw, jump in the water, get a boat and game over. Fuck, even Sleeping Dogs had cops on the water)

 

[Pavaloo]

Played with this a ton last night (0.7 + fast loading DoF mod) and good lord it is a beaut. Everything looks SO much better, especially at night (I mean it's the same thing with the base game that the night looks head over heels better than day, but now night honestly looks wayyy better than before. Reflections and bloom help a lot honestly, very noticeable!). The game used to look super bland before during the daytime in specific areas, and it still does (art direction lol), but the DoF effects help to make boring scenes look a little better. Not experiencing any glitches or flickering lights or anything thus far.

Performance is noticeably much better too. The stuttering while driving is pretty much gone now. For those wondering I'm running a i7 3770k cpu and a 7950 3gb gpu, both stock speeds - running everything at max/ultra 1080p, getting at least a solid 30fps, but it definitely climbs up to the 50s/60 every now and then. Not a hit on my performance from before at all - definitely runs smoother now.

Really glad I'm only 2 chapters into the game, looking forward to playing the rest like this.

 

[Lord_Balkan]

Yeah I installed the mod and there's way too much DOF for my liking too but that can be turned off in the game options. Overall the mod does make all the effects look much nicer but the game does take a performance hit. I'm using two 780tis at 1440p and I still can't run the game on ultra textures/ultra settings with msaa 8x or 4x without the game stuttering like crazy. Game is unplayable with those settings so I'm stuck using ultra textures with all other settings on high with txaa 4x. Game runs nice with these settings and doesn't stutter or crash but Ubisoft needs to fix this shit so I can run everything on ultra. When I play on my tv (1080p) game is butter with everything on ultra but still can't use msaa. I guess msaa is poorly optimized.

Learn before you make outrageous claims

In terms of rasterization, MSAA works in a similar manner to supersampling. The coverage and occlusion tests are both performed at higher-than-normal resolution, which is typically 2x through 8x. For coverage, the hardware implements this by having N sample points within a pixel, where N is the multisample rate. These samples are known as subsamples, since they are sub-pixel samples.

...

As we saw earlier, MSAA doesn’t actually improve on supersampling in terms of rasterization complexity or memory usage.

 

[Morphine_OD]

I'm using two 780tis at 1440p and I still can't run the game on ultra textures/ultra settings with msaa 8x or 4x without the game stuttering like crazy.

 

[ymgve]

Has TheWorse said what exactly he changed to make the game perform better? I've only examined the 0.7 version of the mod, but as far as I can tell there are no new shaders or anything that would improve performance. It's mostly pumping up preset values and switching over to some higher quality textures for certain effects.

 

[AkuMifune]

I like how the IGN article is more accurate than the PC Gamer one. What a world, what a world.

I would love to pick up Watch_Dogs now, but Ubi's stance really has me put off, and I got so sick of AC4 I uninstalled it halfway through. I can't collect for the sake of padding anymore, though I did it for years before it got old.

Listening to the SuperBest Friendcast talk about the issue while I read this thread is like being trapped in a fractal.

 

[Marmac]

Sorry...still pretty new with all this pc stuff.

Learn before you make outrageous claims

 

[Windom Earle]

Its not, I have 2gb 7870 and this "mod" offers 0 improvement and only takes away FPS in the night rain now, how can it the texture streaming and LOD process is well within the core of the engine/game, the ini changes applied here are just the same effect as a tick box in a GUI and then re running the engine/game again to see.

The game was unfinished/over budget as said above and i have said before, these features look poor are unfinished and add Nothing to the game.

Bloom and DoF are present in the game just paired back to a more normal level, the shadows and rain lighting looks unfinished and glitchy and overall with the super high DoF and inyour face bloom turned off you would and cannot see a difference between this version and standard and it offers nothing on performance at all in my tests.

After playing around with it a bit more I have to agree. This mod makes things worse in most cases, the rest is placebo. I am waiting for the official patch.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

I'm only up to page 10 but i haven't seen anything so far that looks as good as this -

Maybe if people try and recreate similar scenes with the new changes.

It looks like for the retail release they downgraded the geometry, the lighting, and the physics/particle effects. So, they downgraded just about everything, even compared to what is being unlocked by this "mod".

And the DOF, while it looks pretty, looks like it makes the game unplayable (or at least not very easy to play).

At this point, I truly believe what they showed at e3 2012 was gameplay that was recorded and re-rendered offline to make it look better than it actually was.

 

[JB1981]

So what is the theory behind this downgrade? The game was downgraded purposefully for platform parity?

 

[Starviper]

So what is the theory behind this downgrade? The game was downgraded purposefully for platform parity?

Pretty much this.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

So what is the theory behind this downgrade? The game was downgraded purposefully for platform parity?

My theory is that is was not explicitly downgraded; rather, the 2012 e3 reveal was just an early vertical slice demo. Once they had the next gen platforms fully spec'd out, they realized that developing art assets to that fidelity would be a waste of time and money due to the new console's limited capabilities compared to the high-end pc market. Add to that the fact that the game is cross-generational and the economics of reusing lower fidelity art assets than those contained in the original reveal made sense.

 

[Jibbed]

It looks like for the retail release they downgraded the geometry, the lighting, and the physics/particle effects. So, they downgraded just about everything, even compared to what is being unlocked by this "mod".

And the DOF, while it looks pretty, looks like it makes the game unplayable (or at least not very easy to play).

At this point, I truly believe what they showed at e3 2012 was gameplay that was recorded and re-rendered offline to make it look better than it actually was.

Nah, more like they aimed for the stars before actually getting their hands on PS4 and XB1 devkits.

The whole thing will have been scaled back for stability and performance (for the console's sake).

 

[Muppet of a Man]

Nah, more like they aimed for the stars before actually getting their hands on PS4 and XB1 devkits.

The whole thing will have been scaled back for stability and performance (for the console's sake).

see my post above yours; I essentially just said what you said.

 

[Mengy]

It looks like for the retail release they downgraded the geometry, the lighting, and the physics/particle effects. So, they downgraded just about everything, even compared to what is being unlocked by this "mod".

Yes, both effects and geometry got downgraded. The effects can apparently be turned back on as this new mod has shown, but the geometry changes are most likely lost to the public.

So what is the theory behind this downgrade? The game was downgraded purposefully for platform parity?

If I had to make an educated guess, yes. We don't know for certain, but based on the previews from two years ago that showed a much better looking and detailed game, I'd wager that demo was running on the PC which was the "lead platform" per Ubisoft. I'm betting however that when they got the game running on other platforms, meaning consoles, that it quickly became apparent that the consoles couldn't handle it. So, rather than have many separate versions geometry and effect wise they simply downgraded all versions for the sake of development. From an efficiency and support standpoint, or rather from a business perspective, it made the most sense.

Of course from a consumer perspective it sucks ass and created a disappointing disparity between the preview game and the released game.

Could Ubisoft have kept the PC version the way they started it and simply downgraded the console versions? Absolutely. They just chose the easier path and downgraded them all to keep parity and asset control simpler.



Judging from the evidence at hand and my knowledge of game design, that's my best guess as to how this happened.

 

[jett]

After playing around with it a bit more I have to agree. This mod makes things worse in most cases, the rest is placebo. I am waiting for the official patch.

From the pictures I've seen, I agree as well. This is almost a repeat of the previous Watch Dogs PC thread where people imagined seeing secret upgrades enabled in the ini. This thread is not as bad since this mod is actually doing something, but honestly the horrible DOF aside the changes/improvements are borderline indiscernible. The game does not look like E3 2012 footage.

 

[Dave_6]

Just to clarify that I did this correctly (it seems to be working); I just unzip the rar and only put two of files into the game that I want to use right (Far camera or normal camera, etc)? I just used the 'normal camera' one.

 

[b0bbyJ03]

Is there a tutorial anywhere on how to set up these mods?

 

[SuperEpicGuy]

Now 7th most viewed post of all time on gaf. Holy crap, this may go to the top 3.

 

[Serandur]

Yes, both effects and geometry got downgraded. The effects can apparently be turned back on as this new mod has shown, but the geometry changes are most likely lost to the public.



If I had to make an educated guess, yes. We don't know for certain, but based on the previews from two years ago that showed a much better looking and detailed game, I'd wager that demo was running on the PC which was the "lead platform" per Ubisoft. I'm betting however that when they got the game running on other platforms, meaning consoles, that it quickly became apparent that the consoles couldn't handle it. So, rather than have many separate versions geometry and effect wise they simply downgraded all versions for the sake of development. From an efficiency and support standpoint, or rather from a business perspective, it made the most sense.

Of course from a consumer perspective it sucks ass and created a disappointing disparity between the preview game and the released game.

Could Ubisoft have kept the PC version the way they started it and simply downgraded the console versions? Absolutely. They just chose the easier path and downgraded them all to keep parity and asset control simpler.



Judging from the evidence at hand and my knowledge of game design, that's my best guess as to how this happened.

And so begins yet another long, painful, and stagnant console generation... only it's painful right out the gate this time.

 

[Radec]

How do you disable the DoF ?

 

[The Cowboy]

A few users say they have stuttering problems even with TheWorse modifications. So I made a quick STUTTERING TEST PATCH that uses the modifications from TheWorse too.

Just had a bit of a play around with this and its amazing at how much better it runs, now for me it is in no way playable fully (as i use a 1.5gb card), but i drove through the entire city and got zero full loading lockups like if i used standard ultra textures (which will give me 1/3 seconds of locking up).

This leads to a question, using a similar process is it possible to have the medium texture setting that lowers object complexity as well as textures, with high textures instead of medium but with the lower object complexity (or the reverse, medium textures with the high/ultra object complexity)?.

 

[MDSLKTR]

From the pictures I've seen, I agree as well. This is almost a repeat of the previous Watch Dogs PC thread where people imagined seeing secret upgrades enabled in the ini. This thread is not as bad since this mod is actually doing something, but honestly the horrible DOF aside the changes/improvements are borderline indiscernible. The game does not look like E3 2012 footage.

I'll go with this too since it's cool to hate ubi in 2014. I honestly see just a tiny bit of improvements that are hidden anyway by the absurd DOF, far far from the claims that it looks like 2012-2013 versions.

 

[Clarkus Darkus]

To be honest that e3 2012 demo was snidely done to give the impression it was realtime, When in reality it was more than likely a mixture of real time that was edited to high heaven to give the illusion all the game was going to be like that. It's the E3 " gotta get attention " trick.

 

[Windom Earle]

In the XML if you change it to ultra you're not expected to change anything in game? Does it override BC my in game settings are not showing all ultra and certain things are turned off like dof. Can you change the XML o high too or is ultra the only choice?

The XML edit is the tricky concept so if someone could focus on that it would be helpful.

I would like to have clarification on this as well. From my experience with the mod so far it does not seem to matter if I do the changes in the .xml or the game.

 

[Muppet of a Man]

Yes, both effects and geometry got downgraded. The effects can apparently be turned back on as this new mod has shown, but the geometry changes are most likely lost to the public.



If I had to make an educated guess, yes. We don't know for certain, but based on the previews from two years ago that showed a much better looking and detailed game, I'd wager that demo was running on the PC which was the "lead platform" per Ubisoft. I'm betting however that when they got the game running on other platforms, meaning consoles, that it quickly became apparent that the consoles couldn't handle it. So, rather than have many separate versions geometry and effect wise they simply downgraded all versions for the sake of development. From an efficiency and support standpoint, or rather from a business perspective, it made the most sense.

Of course from a consumer perspective it sucks ass and created a disappointing disparity between the preview game and the released game.

Could Ubisoft have kept the PC version the way they started it and simply downgraded the console versions? Absolutely. They just chose the easier path and downgraded them all to keep parity and asset control simpler.



Judging from the evidence at hand and my knowledge of game design, that's my best guess as to how this happened.

I agree with 100% of what you posted here, as I've essentially said as much in my posts. Good stuff.

I think the loss of geometry and physics-based effects is actually the worst part, as they directly impact the feel and weight of the actions taken in the game.

 

[Phreakuency]

And so begins yet another long, painful, and stagnant console generation... only it's painful right out the gate this time.

And yet a PS4 game (inFamous) looks better overall than anyone can get Watch Dogs to look on PC...

How do you disable the DoF ?

In the actual game settings...

 

[Betta Lines]

How do you disable the DoF ?

It's in the menu.

 

[Raven77]

Has Ubi made any other comment outside of the recent one where they basically said "no it wasn't downgraded"?

 

[Serandur]

And yet a PS4 game (inFamous) looks better overall than anyone can get Watch Dogs to look on PC...

And the false equivalencies remain rampant. Two games on completely different engines performing completely different calculations with differing scopes of design, rendering, and hardware targets are not at all comparable based solely on perceived visual focuses alone.

 

[Mengy]

I agree with 100% of what you posted here, as I've essentially said as much in my posts. Good stuff.

I think the loss of geometry and physics-based effects is actually the worst part, as they directly impact the feel and weight of the actions taken in the game.

Yep. We all saw the exact same thing happen with Dark Souls 2. The demo gameplay had areas that had much more detailed lighting and geometry than the release version had. Again, most likely primary development was on PC but assets got scaled back once console development started.

Us PC gamers better get used to it with regard to multiplatform games. Even the new gen consoles just can't keep up with PC's in general. Maybe once devs stop supporting last gen consoles the parity effect may get lessened.

 

[base shagohod]

I'm still getting stuttering with everything on ultra after installing the 'mod' with a gtx770/i5 2500k.

What am I doing wrong? I guess I could lower textures to high.. But at that point I might as well just keep waiting to actually play this. Lol

 

[Delt31]

And yet a PS4 game (inFamous) looks better overall than anyone can get Watch Dogs to look on PC...



In the actual game settings...

You're joking about infamous looking better right? Sorry but own both and infamous is a good looking game but watchdogs and this mod def outshine it. In fact infamous lackluster city was disappointing considering it felt like no one lived there.

 

[Lord_Balkan]

Sorry...still pretty new with all this pc stuff.

Sorry for the outburst, MSAA is the performance increase equivalent of almost increasing the resolution. It is not that it is unoptimized, it is just MSAA is basically up there with supersampling in terms of image quality.

Don't assume that if a setting doesn't run well, that it is unoptimized. Even if the graphical effect is minimal, there can be a lot of added complexity to things that only seem 'a little' better depending on the scene, like realtime reflections versus just cube mapping the environment.

 

[jim2point0]

I'm only up to page 10 but i haven't seen anything so far that looks as good as this -

Maybe if people try and recreate similar scenes with the new changes.

It will never look that good.

 

[Radec]

Got it.

Okay, so now my mini map doesn't show any icons. And my crosshair is gone.

It wasn't like that in my first try.

:/

 

[Dries]

I'm still getting stuttering with everything on ultra after installing the 'mod' with a gtx770/i5 2500k.

What am I doing wrong? I guess I could lower textures to high.. But at that point I might as well just keep waiting to actually play this. Lol

I have the same CPU and GPU as you bro and I'm also still stuttering. Even on high. Only thing to do is wait for an Ubi patch I guess.

 

[R10Neymarfan]

It will never look that good.

Time for a fan made HD texture pack?

 

[xXBaconXx]

So what is the theory behind this downgrade? The game was downgraded purposefully for platform parity?

That's what people seem to think, even though it's incredibly stupid.

 

[TheFNEffecT]

I'm still getting stuttering with everything on ultra after installing the 'mod' with a gtx770/i5 2500k.

What am I doing wrong? I guess I could lower textures to high.. But at that point I might as well just keep waiting to actually play this. Lol

Put it to high, unless your 770 has more than 2GB of VRAM? I believe putting the textures on ultra sees 3+GB of Vram usage.

 

[Goddard]

That's what people seem to think, even though it's incredibly stupid.

Ubisoft is incredibly stupid. Nothing can be ruled out.

 

[base shagohod]

I have the same CPU and GPU as you bro and I'm also still stuttering. Even on high. Only thing to do is wait for an Ubi patch I guess.

Put it to high, unless your 770 has more than 2GB of VRAM?

Bummer. Thanks guys, I'll be waiting then.

 

[King Mac of Furry Frog]

Time for a fan made HD texture pack?

It'll take a lot more than textures for it to look like that.

 

[AkuMifune]

That's what people seem to think, even though it's incredibly stupid.

If it's not that, it's because they built the game on PC, ported to consoles, then ported the console version to the PC without bothering to optimize or polish.

Either way Ubi is terrible at PC games. But don't be naive enough to think this couldn't be on purpose. They make way more money on the console versions of the game and Sony and Microsoft are incredibly important partners they'd like to keep happy.

 

[LiquidNarwhal]

Ubisoft is incredibly stupid. Nothing can be ruled out.

Nah, I think it's pretty stupid considering many past titles from Ubisoft have looked significantly better on PC than console. (IMO Watchdogs does as well even without the mod.) Why now would they bother with parity? It's widely accepted PC will always have better resolution and IQ than consoles will.

 

[Dries]

Bummer. Thanks guys, I'll be waiting then.

Just want to notice this post to you:

A few users say they have stuttering problems even with TheWorse modifications. So I made a quick STUTTERING TEST PATCH that uses the modifications from TheWorse too

https://mega.co.nz/#!aU8HECxA!IiiDbX11J2QM8RR6zFyU8bXKGjvrU6IBb049dy_QU-g


IMPORTANT - READ FIRST!
-----------------------------------------

-This is not a patch to play the game, it procuces a lot of texture aliasing
-This is a stuttering test for people that have stuttering using ultra textures
-It contains a compilation of Ultra textures without mipmaps used as High textures + TheWorse mod 0.7b


So, what's that?
A way to play with ultra textures in 2 GB and maybe less memory gpus. And a test for a possible better future patch.


How to test it:
1. Unrar the file and copy patch.dat and patch.fat into your watch dogs "data_win64" folder (make a backup if you already have a modded patch file)
2. Multigpu users, disable multigpu in your drivers (remember, this is only a test). Recommended to use Adaptative Vsync too.
3. Start the game
4. In the game options menu, select your native resolution, vsync off, max rendered frames = 2
5. Select HIGH TEXTURES!!!! (NOT ULTRA, you will see ultra textures using High texture option)
6. Players with 2 GB of VRAM, set high or medium shadows and reflections.
7. Resume game. You will see a lot of texture aliasing but the stuttering should be reduced.


Share the results. If that patch improves the stuttering for a few users, I will create textures with mipmaps for those that have more texture aliasing.

To uninstall the test patch, delete both patch.fat and patch.dat and restore your old modded patch files in case you had one mod before.

 

[ShinobiFist]

So what is the theory behind this downgrade? The game was downgraded purposefully for platform parity?

I don't believe that. I think they just wanted to release the game and not delay it again. That's what makes sense to me.