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[GoaThief]

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.

I do enjoy how any new game that pushes rigs in a more traditional manner rather than the odd situation we've had for the last few years, is now regarded as unoptimised.

Anyway, considering that these effects add bugs such as flickering lights I'd say logic dictates that is the reason why they're unavailable. It's getting a bit like a conspiracy theory in here.

 

[xXBaconXx]

Ubisoft is incredibly stupid. Nothing can be ruled out.

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.

I can't find a single good reason why they would purposefully downgrade the game only for platform parity. And if that were the case, doesn't it seem weird that they made videos bragging about how pretty the PC version were with features like HBAO+ and TXAA? Not to mention that they actually put time and resources in to implementing extra graphical features in to a game that they were actively trying to make uglier.

My uneducated guess is that it simply isn't practical to have several different versions of the game, and that the PC version simply followed suit when the game had to be adjusted for consoles.

Another thing is that most of the features in this mod either weren't in the game to begin with, are buggy as hell, or are still in the game. The headlight shadows, for example, weren't in the E3 trailer and are very buggy. Bokeh DoF is still in the game, and the new rain is buggy.

 

[AkuMifune]

I do enjoy how any new game that pushes rigs in a more traditional manner rather than the odd situation we've had for the last few years, is now regarded as unoptimised.

Anyway, considering that these effects add bugs such as flickering lights I'd say logic dictates that is the reason why they're unavailable. It's getting a bit like a conspiracy theory in here.

If your PC meets the recommended requirements of the game and it still stutters during general gameplay, then it's unoptimized. Further, if gamers themselves can (and are) fixing these issues relatively quickly then there's no reason the devs couldn't either, aside from lack of time or budget.

It's not conspiracy to say Ubi likes to make money and doesn't prioritize PC development.

 

[JohnGrimm]

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.

:/

Delete your gamerprofile.xml. Watch Dogs will generate a new one on launch (be sure to set your options again).

 

[GoaThief]

If your PC meets the recommended requirements of the game and it still stutters during general gameplay, then it's unoptimized.

Recommended doesn't mean it will play flawlessly at 60fps with everything maxed out at a high resolution.

That said, it could well be a bug too. Doesn't mean it's unoptimised.

There are far too many variables on PCs, this is one of the major problems developers face.

 

[Sini]

Time for a fan made HD texture pack

Textures aren't everything.
I'd say that higher quality textures are the last thing WD would need for reaching E3 fidelity.

 

[danwarb]

Recommended doesn't mean it will play flawlessly at 60fps with everything maxed out at a high resolution.

That said, it could well be a bug too. Doesn't mean it's unoptimised.

There are far too many variables on PCs, this is one of the major problems developers face.

A bug that hobbles performance on PC or causes the game to stutter is not optimal.

 

[Hellshingu]

I can't find a single good reason why they would purposefully downgrade the game only for platform parity. And if that were the case, doesn't it seem weird that they made videos bragging about how pretty the PC version were with features like HBAO+ and TXAA? Not to mention that they actually put time and resources in to implementing extra graphical features in to a game that they were actively trying to make uglier.

My uneducated guess is that it simply isn't practical to have several different versions of the game, and that the PC version simply followed suit when the game had to be adjusted for consoles.

Another thing is that most of the features in this mod either weren't in the game to begin with, are buggy as hell, or are still in the game. The headlight shadows, for example, weren't in the E3 trailer and are very buggy. Bokeh DoF is still in the game, and the new rain is buggy.

The only reason I think they put out videos highlighting things like HBAO+ and TXAA is due to deals with Nvidia to push cards. Also if they didn't have any extra little features such as those and just did a bare bones console port, most PC gamers would be even more mad and they could lose out on a potential 1 million+ in sales numbers because of consumer backlash.

If adding little small PC specific features that don't necessarily take too much manpower to implement to get a return of 1 million+ sales I don't see why they wouldn't do that. After all they are a business and more sales = more money. The time and manpower investment on their end is more than worth it.

 

[commedieu]

This is all sad an unfortunate. All of this.

Just make a good product for PC folks, despite the quality. Everyone knows a PC will trump a console. Console owners are aware, and are PC owners. Who is this person publishers want to protect from seeing the game on a $1500+ machine dedicated to producing the best it can from an overclocked, supercooled sli'd machine..?

Shits just irritating. I remember back in the day, the PC would have better features. You'd just have to settle without them. Sort of like the BLood in the SNES mortal combat.

 

[Xyber]

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.

Ultra textures in normally unplayable for me, with this I just get some minor stuttering. But it's still better than my normal settings without the mod.

I use a 2GB 680.

 

[s_mirage]

TWho is this person publishers want to protect from seeing the game on a $1500+ machine dedicated to producing the best it can from an overclocked, supercooled sli'd machine..?

If anyone is being shielded it's perhaps not the users but Sony and Microsoft's marketing departments. It makes it harder to spin your product as the latest and greatest if it's crushed by PC hardware from day one. That hasn't really happened to a newly launched console before to the extent that it has for this generation.

Personally, I'm not sure I buy into the parity explanation, but on the other hand I'm not sure I buy into the "they just couldn't get it to work on time" explanation either. That leaves one other explanation that I can think of: the effects were never intended to be in the final game. They were just intended to sell the game at E3. That would be despicable of Ubi but it makes as much sense as any other explanation.

 

[Marmac]

No worries and thanks for the explanation. So my question to you is this. Would it be better to force aa settings in the nvidia control panel to get better performance? What's better? Software enabled aa or hardware enabled? Sorry for my ignorance...still lots to learn here.

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.

 

[Devildoll]

There is this continued denial of a downgrade https://mobile.twitter.com/UbiTessa/status/478622295662297088
But I get the impression this person doesn't know of this mod or where it has come from

Doesn't matter if she knows about the mod or not, the question is if the game has been downgraded, and she denies it repeatedly.

 

[Lord_Balkan]

No worries and thanks for the explanation. So my question to you is this. Would it be better to force aa settings in the nvidia control panel to get better performance? What's better? Software enabled aa or hardware enabled? Sorry for my ignorance...still lots to learn here.

No difference, they are both hardware AA.

 

[Skyzard]

It's pretty good but not there yet imo. Posted a vid in the PC performance thread but will make some better ones. Some of the shadows, explosions and amount of foliage not up to e3 snuff

...the effects are getting there thanks to the modders though they do have issues. UBI best not disable anything.

 

[Windom Earle]

There is this continued denial of a downgrade https://mobile.twitter.com/UbiTessa/status/478622295662297088
But I get the impression this person doesn't know of this mod or where it has come from

This girl is posting a whole lot of private stuff on her company Twitter. Very unprofessional.

 

[base shagohod]

Just want to notice this post to you:

Amazing, thanks!
I'll try it out later tonight.

 

[BenouKat]

Sooooo for those who have a "decent" graphic cards : My I5-2500k and 560Ti 2GO (aka "i'm barely the recommended config come on man please run" config) gave this with and without mod, everything on ultra, except textures and AA (temporalSMAA), 30FPS, mod is the last one available on the gru3d forum :

Day without and with mod :

Night without and with mod :

Rainy night without and with mod :

I didn't feel the game very différent during rainy night, DOF is cool but still too much present and still too close to me, and bloom is overkill.
But during day and night without rain, I feel a real and nice overall improvment, game looks nice.

Overall, my performance doesn't change, I tried ultra texture : It works one time, and gives me good performance, but small freezes. After playing a bit, I decide to go back to high textures. Ultra is fine but the freezes gives a bad feeling with the game.

 

[Phreakuency]

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.

I also own both and stand by my comment. Many people who also own both agree.

Watch Dogs looks great when downsampled and in certain carefully placed scenes. Infamous always looks great, baked lighting or not.

 

[Delt31]

I also own both and stand by my comment. Many people who also own both agree.

Watch Dogs looks great when downsampled and in certain carefully placed scenes. Infamous always looks great, baked lighting or not.

many people also think infamous is an amazing game ; )

Seriously though - we just have diff opinions. It sounded like your comparison was universally agreed upon which it def is not.

 

[Nzyme32]

This girl is posting a whole lot of private stuff on her company Twitter. Very unprofessional.

Pretty sure it's actually the other way round.

 

[Devildoll]

Pretty sure it's actually the other way round.

huh?

 

[Garcia]

huh?

I suppose (?) he meant it's highly unprofessional of Ubisoft (not herself) to have people like that managing the company Twitter account.

 

[HoodWinked]

I didn't feel the game very différent during rainy night, DOF is cool but still too much present and still too close to me, and bloom is overkill.
But during day and night without rain, I feel a real and nice overall improvment, game looks nice.

Overall, my performance doesn't change, I tried ultra texture : It works one time, and gives me good performance, but small freezes. After playing a bit, I decide to go back to high textures. Ultra is fine but the freezes gives a bad feeling with the game.

very nice post and pics to back up the claim i think people just want to pile on honestly the left does look better in most cases. i like rgb seperation. i feel like you're going to find screen shots in both settings that will make one or the other look better. bokeh looks nice in screenshots i mean its why its used in photography but i dunno about during actual play.

 

[BenouKat]

very nice post and pics to back up the claim i think people just want to pile on honestly the left does look better in most cases. i like rgb seperation. i feel like you're going to find screen shots in both settings that will make one or the other look better. bokeh looks nice in screenshots i mean its why its used in photography but i dunno about during actual play.

Yup in these screenshot it almost feels like without mod is better than with mod but in game its better with the mod, definitly. But not THAT better for my config.

Rgb separation is from sweet fx. This one is a bit strong though, I choose an other one for the rainy night screenshots.

I look forward update of the mod cause its really cool, even if DOF and bloom arent perfect for play

 

[Hawkian]

I suppose (?) he meant it's highly unprofessional of Ubisoft (not herself) to have people like that managing the company Twitter account.

is that really what that was supposed to have meant?

 

[Xanathus]

No idea if it's been mentioned but there's a big bug when using this patch where the credits at the end of the game won't show up but the scenes showing the aftermath will play, but this results in the credits never ending.

 

[Haunted]

Shots like this have me tempted. That's great natural overcast lighting and the raindrops on the water seem like a cool effect.


But then you have other shots posted in this thread and it looks real bad (with or without mod).

 

[TangibleDream]

it will never do because people is already predetermined to see the game with different eyes, even if it ended up looking better most people will say it looks worse, is just the way people brains are wired

That's not true. The game did, in fact, look better. Evidence courtesy of RetroStu:

Now if you show me a picture/video with mods that look as good as this, then we can talk.

The game simply doesn't look like the reveal, and never will. It's not the people, it's the game.

 

[jim2point0]

Shots like this have me tempted. That's great natural overcast lighting and the raindrops on the water seem like a cool effect.


But then you have other shots posted in this thread and it looks real bad (with or without mod).

Well I tend to only post shots that look good And I'm also controlling the time of day so I could get the lighting on the water in that shot just right. But overcast weather in this game does tend to look good.

Some day shots

ACTION POSE

 

[squidyj]

I'm pretty sure it does more than that.

please demonstrate. I'm finding it very hard to find any evidence of changes, very little beyond DOF looks different in direct comparison shots.

At this point I'm willing to call most of this thread a study in the placebo effect.

 

[Skyzard]

http://a.pomf.se/ydmslo.webm

http://a.pomf.se/shisbi.webm

 

[Chhem]

my only question is how did they make the game look that good, were they using graphics cards two or three generations ahead of whats out now. Especially when that footage is from 2012 and they were probably working on it the previous couple of years. If that were the case shouldn't they have used at the minimum top graphics cards at the time.

 

[Haines]

This is a good example of why I avoid most of ubi games. What a joke

 

[JudgmentJay]

please demonstrate. I'm finding it very hard to find any evidence of changes, very little beyond DOF looks different in direct comparison shots.

At this point I'm willing to call most of this thread a study in the placebo effect.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4833259&postcount=18

 

[Settin]

Shots like this have me tempted. That's great natural overcast lighting and the raindrops on the water seem like a cool effect.


But then you have other shots posted in this thread and it looks real bad (with or without mod).

The game is like that with or without mods. Some areas just plain look better than others.

 

[Betta Lines]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4833259&postcount=18

That isn't the mod! And different times of day, pointless.

 

[Seanspeed]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4833259&postcount=18

Tiny little 360p images uploaded from Imgur is next-to-useless in showcasing the full impact of any changes.

 

[Sax Russel]

The mod does change a few effects and make them nicer, yes, but in most non-night/rain screens people are fawning over the only real change vs vanilla is some heavy DoF that magically makes things omgsonextgen. Or the shots jim just posted, while looking great, would look the same without the mod anyway. Benou's just have SweetFX with every setting (even CA?!) cranked up to 11 cause that's the proper way to use SweetFX for most people =P

And either way it's a far cry from E3 2012 levels.

 

[Faith]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/ulhjlypvcwp9j7l

 

[JudgmentJay]

That isn't the mod! And different times of day, pointless.

I assumed that the mod was adding actual dynamic lighting, but if it is just different times of day I agree, that's a very silly comparison.

 

[Morphine_OD]

The mod does change a few effects and make them nicer, yes, but in most non-night/rain screens people are fawning over the only real change vs vanilla is some heavy DoF that magically makes things omgsonextgen. Or the shots jim just posted, while looking great, would look the same without the mod anyway. Benou's just have SweetFX with every setting (even CA?!) cranked up to 11 cause that's the proper way to use SweetFX for most people =P

And either way it's a far cry from E3 2012 levels.

Actually I'm fawning about higher rain density/quality, raindrops lighting, increased bloom and headlight shadows. All that makes the game look omgsonextgen.

 

[arcoN]

Ive Made a Compairison of the e3 footage and the v.7b mod.
i tried to made them a) sync as possible b) same time and duration and c) same movement! Enjoy

E3:

v.7b:

and a WebM: (not the e3 - but showing the mod)

http://a.pomf.se/unarqc.webm

 

[jim2point0]

http://a.pomf.se/ydmslo.webm

http://a.pomf.se/shisbi.webm

Ooooo. Perty. That 2nd one looked like a lot of fun.

 

[Serandur]

my only question is how did they make the game look that good, were they using graphics cards two or three generations ahead of whats out now. Especially when that footage is from 2012 and they were probably working on it the previous couple of years. If that were the case shouldn't they have used at the minimum top graphics cards at the time.

You would be surprised just how powerful existing (and even 2012) GPUs are. A single 680/7970 back then (and still now) would have been a beast, let alone a multi-GPU machine and current 780/290 cards are truly "next-gen" monsters (they individually dwarf both console GPUs combined). Any issues people are facing with even the current form of retail Watch Dogs aren't due to a lack of rendering power in the slightest, just a typical Ubisoft critical error with asset streaming causing stuttering/hanging. What we saw in the E3 2012 demo is very much possible on current technology. Maybe not with all the demanding AA/resolutions bells and whistles at a constant 60 FPS mind you, but very much possible in a current game with scalability for lower-end hardware.

 

[scoobidoo112]

and a WebM: (not the e3 - but showing the mod)

http://a.pomf.se/unarqc.webm

Every time you turn the camera towards the lights of the cars:

 

[Eyothrie]

so are the stuttering/performance improvements actually real? That's all I really care about

 

[Netherscourge]

Ive Made a Compairison of the e3 footage and the v.7b mod.
i tried to made them a) sync as possible b) same time and duration and c) same movement! Enjoy

E3:

v.7b:

and a WebM: (not the e3 - but showing the mod)

http://a.pomf.se/unarqc.webm

The E3 version still looks better, IMO.

Which makes me wonder if there are more "hidden gems" in those configuration settings to unlock?

 

[Muppet of a Man]

Ive Made a Compairison of the e3 footage and the v.7b mod.
i tried to made them a) sync as possible b) same time and duration and c) same movement! Enjoy

E3:

v.7b:

and a WebM: (not the e3 - but showing the mod)

http://a.pomf.se/unarqc.webm

Yeah, not even in the same league in terms of lighting and geometry; e3 vertical slice has even the mod bested.

 

[Rodney McKay]

That light bloom looks pretty rough IMO. That original E3 footage looked so good, goddamn!