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[Betta Lines]

Maybe cause it would make the framerate tank even more?

But you can activate it at any time, either by pulling out your phone or aiming with a weapon. There is no sudden performance drop when you do this (and you can imagine that scenes where you have your gun aimed are going to be some of the most intensive in terms of action on screen, so if it was a problem they wouldn't have enabled it for that).

Parallax in retail version:

Just a normal map. There is no parallax.

 

[cripterion]

But you can activate it at any time, either by pulling out your phone or aiming with a weapon. There is no sudden performance drop when you do this (and you can imagine that scenes where you have your gun aimed are going to be some of the most intensive in terms of action on screen, so if it was a problem they wouldn't have enabled it for that).

Just a normal map. There is no parallax.

Hmm well I don't know what to tell ya. Morin has been feeding us bullshit for a while so I doubt we would get a clear answer from UBI.
At best I expect a patch to improve general performance. And maybe added eye candy that will put back peformance to undesirable levels (like the addition of physx in AC4).

 

[CyberPunked]

Look at the ground. This is what it was like early 2013:

It's not much, but it add a lot
[EDIT] Here's an actual comparison:
Before(Tesselation)

After(Tesselation removed)

 

[cripterion]

Look at the ground. This is what it was like early 2013:

It's not much, but it add a lot

His hair didn't look like handpasted sausages too, looked like proper hair. The face of the protagonist is the biggest drowngrade ever.

Some faces are actually decent like the hacker girl, other are abysmal and look like they come from another game, in another era.

 

[Axial]

I am also getting this when I exit the game, is there a solution for this yet?

Had the same error yesterday, I fixed it by deleting the 'GamerProfile.xml' file to reset all the game settings.

 

[Dennis]

Look at the ground. This is what it was like early 2013:

It's not much, but it add a lot
[EDIT] Here's an actual comparison:
Before(Tesselation)

After(Tesselation removed)

Top picture was never in-game. That is clearly a bullshot that is more Photoshop than Watch_Dogs

 

[Dictator93]

Top picture was never in-game. That is clearly a bullshot that is more Photoshop than Watch_Dogs

His second pictures shows that the POM/tesselation displacement mapping (whatever it is) was in game at some point. They just took it out.

Parallax in retail version:

that is not parallax. At all. Just a normal map with extra specular due to rain.

 

[Sleeping Lesson]

The tessellation effect in the top one is completely possible, though, and it's a damn shame they don't give us the option to use it. The flat texture of the retail game looks downright awful by comparison.

 

[Reishiki]

Pretty sure these crashes will clear up when Ubi fixes the Uplay servers. Shame I can't try the multiplayer, it looks kinda fun.

 

[VE3TRO]

So I'll probably pick the game up in a few months for PC but how well should it run on these specs.

i7 3930K @ 4.80GHz, 32GB DDR3 @ 1866MHz, Asus GTX 680 TOPII OC'd x 2 SLI

 

[Dennis]

Regarding tessellation and/or POM, perhaps it is because it is a cross-gen game.

But of course, there is no real excuse to include it as an option for PC.

Perhaps Ubi is afraid to have the PC version look too superior because it would take the shine off the console versions.

 

[Cuban Legend]

Here is an example of some stuttering (albeit small but it does get MUCH worse during general gameplay as I am sure many of you know) using a GTX 690 OC'd and 3970x OC'd at 4.6Ghz and 32GB with SSD.

The settings are shown at the beginning of the video.

http://a.pomf.se/eighxg.webm - 8 seconds inyou can see a small stutter (These stutters happen regardless of SLI or non SLI and also even on medium settings and lower AA and lower shadows, using Vsync and x16 AF forced via Nvidia control panel the Vsync has helped the stuttering slightly but not by much, could just be placebo)


http://a.pomf.se/mlnmqo.webm - Same again, this time driving, see if you can spot the stutters.

WTF GAF. What have we come to.

I see the stutters, but the game is running at a full 60fps in these shots? the stutter is BARELY noticable. how can you not be happy with that? If my game ran like that I'd be THE KING OF THE WORLD.

Most of us with older hardware have FREEZES like that for a whole second at a time while it loads assets. holyshit, if this is what EVERYONE is complaining about I understand why, but seriously, you need to learn to accept it, IT"S NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD BE, trust me.

 

[riflen]

Regarding tessellation and/or POM, perhaps it is because it is a cross-gen game.

But of course, there is no real excuse to include it as an option for PC.

Perhaps Ubi is afraid to have the PC version look too superior because it would take the shine off the console versions.

Never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Do the problems in implementing Parallax Occlusion Mapping together with Anisotropic Filtering have a known solution nowadays?

 

[mephixto]

Started playing yesterday, I only notice stuttering when driving nothing unplayable but I hoper they fix.

My Specs

i7 3930K @ 4.5 GHz
16 GB RAM
2x Nvidia 680 SLI 2GB
Corsair 240 GB SSD (the game is not installed on the system SSD)
Windows 8.1 (Page file disabled)

Game Settings:

Textures: High
Shadows: High
Reflextions: Utra
Motion Blur: ON
Frame Buffer: 3
Vsync: Off
AA: SMAA
Shader: High
Res: 1920x1080
LoD: Ultra
DoF: On
AO: HBAO +

FPS: between 40 and 80 most of the time at 60fps.

 

[Dennis]

Never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Do the problems in implementing Parallax Occlusion Mapping together with Anisotropic Filtering have a known solution nowadays?

lol but they haven't included AF either....

 

[finalflame]

WTF GAF. What have we come to.

I see the stutters, but the game is running at a full 60fps in these shots? the stutter is BARELY noticable. how can you not be happy with that? If my game ran like that I'd be THE KING OF THE WORLD.

Most of us with older hardware have FREEZES like that for a whole second at a time while it loads assets. holyshit, if this is what EVERYONE is complaining about I understand why, but seriously, you need to learn to accept it, IT"S NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD BE, trust me.

Stutters are not as apparent in a video as they are when playing the game/making direct input. It's one thing to look for a stutter in a video, it's a whole other story to be controlling the game and dealing with stutters.

Not only that, but to me the biggest issue is this game does not LOOK the part of what it performs like. The game should either a) perform a lot better, or b) look a lot better. The stuttering is a real problem and needs Ubi's attention/to be fixed. There's no excuse. People with Tri-SLi Titans are having these issues.

Anyhow..I seem to have minimized stuttering as much as possible on my system/specs. Part of what seems to have helped is pumping my VRAM frequency way up. I took it from an already overclock 7400 to 8000mhz.

This seems to have improved stuttering, along with enabling the -disablepagefilecheck flag and using LargePageUtil. I don't know if the LargePageUtil really matters much, but at least the stutters are less frequent now. I think I noticed a marked difference with increasing the VRAM frequency, though.

Running the game at:

2560x1440 @ 100hz
Textures High
All Ultra
HBAO + High
DoF Disabled
Motion Blur Disabled
Temporal SMAAa
VSync OFF
Max Buffered Frames 1

With:

i5 4670K @ 4.2Ghz (watercooled)
16gb DDR3-1600
780 Ti @ 1250/8000mhz (watercooled)
2x256gb Samsung EVO in RAID0
Windows 7

Fraps benchmark reports:

Min: 52 Max: 77 Avg: 65.667

Frame rate isn't the problem here; it's the stuttering that is killing it for me.

I am still hopeful for a patch.

 

[b0bbyJ03]

have you guys been adding AF in the nvidia control panel? did it make a big difference?

 

[bee]

Do the problems in implementing Parallax Occlusion Mapping together with Anisotropic Filtering have a known solution nowadays?

worked all the way back in crysis with the pom/af mod

 

[Xyber]

have you guys been adding AF in the nvidia control panel? did it make a big difference?

Yes, the difference is pretty big. Textures doesn't look like shit 3 meters in front of you.

 

[Wounded]

Game is barely playable for mean on anything above low. Dips to low 20s otherwise.

Anyone have any idea why?

My specs are

2 7970's Crossfired
i7 950 3.7ghz
12GB RAM
Windows 8.1
Newest Beta Drivers from AMD

 

[Vuze]

Well, let's hope for the best (sorry if late, haven't seen this being posted)

(Graphics Technical Director on Watch Dogs)

 

[Timu]

why is GPU usage so low in this game ? mine doesnt go over 55% at all, hovers between 44-55%

That's strange, usually between 70s-90s for me.

 

[Parhelion69]

why is GPU usage so low in this game ? mine doesnt go over 55% at all, hovers between 44-55%

I think it's because of vsync. Your GPU isn't capable of reaching 60 fps most of the time (as is the case with many of us ), so goes to 30 fps, and is iddle while waiting for the next screen refresh.

Also, you CPU may be limiting your GPU.
Could you give us your specs?

 

[Skyzard]

Shame about no tessellation on PC.

Also, give us some bike riders ubi!

This looks really good. What preset are you using?

http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/preset/1686/

Link was working yesterday, let me upload the files:

http://www22.zippyshare.com/v/85011867/file.html

Few hours played, some stutter, mostly while driving, not too bad from what I've seen so far. Running mostly smooth.

Windows 7
2600K (4.5ghz)
780 3GB (1150 core/6.5ghz memory)
8GB RAM (1333mhz)
1920x1200

Getting mostly 50-60fps with ultra everything, hbao and shaders high, DoF on, motion blur off (preference), temporal smaa.

This looks great, no sweetfx? If so, please can you hook us up with a link.

 

[Conezays]

Well, let's hope for the best (sorry if late, haven't seen this being posted)

(Graphics Technical Director on Watch Dogs)

Awesome, hope we get it soon. I've gotten the game to be fairly playable with the shortcut fix, and making most settings medium or High on 1080P. Resolution is fairly consistent now, but still not ideal.

 

[Skyzard]

Yes it is. Well Ultra was pretty choppy but not nearly as bad as this morning. May have something to do with adding the disablepagefile line to the shortcut target. I just dropped textures down to High, but left everything else on Ultra and it was even smoother. Still choppy here and there but better. Was getting between 50-60fps with High Textures, SMAA, Ultra settings, and SLI. Still want to play around some more. Now I need to find out why my wired 360 controller spazzes out at times and doesn't allow me to properly control Aiden.

We're getting there though!

Happened to me too. Seemed to coincide with using Shadowplay, but I'm not 100% sure of that

I got this problem too, I don't use shadowplay.

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

Anyone know why I can't change the texture level? it's greyed out at ultra but my FPS is real low while set to that even if everything else is set to low i can't get higher than 50FPS with it dropping to about 30 or lower in the streets driving

My rig is an i53570k
AMD HD7950 3GB
12GB RAM
Windows 8.1

I thought ultra would have worked ok on my rig but guess not

 

[renegade_dewitt]

Well, let's hope for the best (sorry if late, haven't seen this being posted)

(Graphics Technical Director on Watch Dogs)

Sweet! Good to see that Ubisoft is listening to its PC users and taking the necessary action.

 

[Dave_6]

Anyone know why I can't change the texture level? it's greyed out at ultra but my FPS is real low while set to that even if everything else is set to low i can't get higher than 50FPS with it dropping to about 30 or lower in the streets driving

My rig is an i53570k
AMD HD7950 3GB
12GB RAM
Windows 8.1

I thought ultra would have worked ok on my rig but guess not

You can only change the Textures at the main menu, not once you're in-game.

 

[cripterion]

Guys, no worries, we can all get this if we really need to run it, all ultra settings with no stutter :

http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00167675.html

Smokey, you know what to do

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

You can only change the Textures at the main menu, not once you're in-game.

Ah I didn't realize that, bugger!

Even with it on high still only getting about 30FPS

 

[parabolee]

Ok so I have spent over 6 HOURS playing around with different settings to try and get this game to run well.

The game runs pretty great at max everything and 2X TXAA (pretty solid 45-60 fps), but the stuttering while driving renders it unplayable.

I have tried setting EVERYTHING to the lowest setting (AA and Vsync off) and running the game at 800x600, SAME STUTTERING!

The ONLY thing that makes a difference is setting the textures to the lowest setting (Medium)! After that all the stuttering is gone, but game looks like crap. So no question this is where the issue is.

Oh well at least it's playable.

And I have a 4GB graphics card to I should be able to use Ultra textures without a problem!

PATCH IT UBISOFT! UNACCEPTABLE!

How could they have shipped a game in this condition!

My specs -

i5-3570K (Overclocked to 4.2 Ghz)
GTX 770 4GB
16GB RAM
500GB Samsung SSD

Exact same result on an identical system with 2 x GTX 680's in SLI

 

[Dave_6]

I hope the patch fixes my crashing/freeze issue...

 

[Buburibon]

Guys, no worries, we can all get this if we really need to run it, all ultra settings with no stutter :

http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00167675.html

Smokey, you know what to do

I know you're koking, but unfortunately not even that would solve the problem. After all, it has only 6GB of VRAM per GPU. ;-)

 

[kencey]

How to downsample this game with amd card? Tried gedosato, doesnt work

 

[Betta Lines]

This looks great, no sweetfx? If so, please can you hook us up with a link.

It looks great because he's done the DOF trick (pulling up the phone and taking a screenshot just before the blown-out highlights).

 

[Objectively Bad Opinion]

How to downsample this game with amd card? Tried gedosato, doesnt work

Enable supersampling in the config file.

 

[Skyzard]

It looks great because he's done the DOF trick (pulling up the phone and taking a screenshot just before the blown-out highlights).

Ah right, it was weird that he said he had disabled DOF from personal preference

 

[razgriz417]

Well, let's hope for the best (sorry if late, haven't seen this being posted)

(Graphics Technical Director on Watch Dogs)

good, my game was hitching up (mainly while driving) at every other traffic light, could not outrun cops cause it was so bad. Here's hoping its soon and not a month after release...

 

[Betta Lines]

Ah right, it was weird that he said he had disabled DOF from personal preference

I believe he's turned motion blur off - you need to keep DOF on in order to take screens like that.

 

[Scrabble]

Is 2 frame vsycnc supposed to half my refresh rate, capping my framerate to 30? Because it seems to be capping it at 20 instead, and I get really bad performance. I've stuck with 1 frame, and since it's double buffered anyway, my fps never changes from 30 unless I'm looking at the sky.

 

[cripterion]

Well, let's hope for the best (sorry if late, haven't seen this being posted)

(Graphics Technical Director on Watch Dogs)

Perhaps a global pc beta would have helped, Ubisoft

 

[Skyzard]

I believe he's turned motion blur off - you need to keep DOF on in order to take screens like that.

Poor reading on my part, this makes more sense now, thanks.

Is 2 frame vsycnc supposed to half my refresh rate, capping my framerate to 30? Because it seems to be capping it at 20 instead, and I get really bad performance. I've stuck with 1 frame, and since it's double buffered anyway, my fps never changes from 30 unless I'm looking at the sky.

screw the in-game v-sync.

i think people who want less tearing are running it in a borderless window.

 

[scitek]

Just got a copy. My specs:

i5 2500k @4.5 GHz
2GB GTX 670
8GB RAM

I've settled on all high, except water on Ultra, and have in-game vsync on 1, with a frame buffer of 2 and DoF and Motion Blur off.

I also cchanged my refresh rate to 50Hz and am using MSI Afterburner to limit it to 50fps. No lie, I'd never tried it before, but had seen people mentioning they do it sometimes, but perfectly vsync'd 50Hz looks like 60. I doubt I'd be able to tell if put on the spot. I had no idea.

 

[CyanideFuse]

have you guys been adding AF in the nvidia control panel? did it make a big difference?

I always override application settings with 16x AF in the nVidia control panel.

I am going to switch it off tomorrow to see what the textures look like without it.

I seemed to have dodged the stuttering problem yesterday but today I haven't been so lucky. It has been causing some serious problems in chasing and escaping.

 

[parabolee]

FYI. AT least they are acknowledging they are aware of this. Now we need the games press to pressure them too!

 

[Smokey]

Smokey, you know what to do

I do have a line. Its pretty far out there, but the Titan Z is on the other side of it.

 

[StoppedInTracks]

Some 4K gameplay shots. Ultra settings + SMAA

Crazy good looking. You know what those shots remind me of? The Last of Us. We have hit TLOU level of graphics (almost... there is still a lack of debris and tiny details like rubble in the street) in an open-world game.

 

[cripterion]

I do have a line. Its pretty far out there, but the Titan Z is on the other side of it.

Haha I feel ya with this thing coming close to a whopping 3000 euros

 

[CyberPunked]

I feel like the only person on Gaf who's enjoying this.