AC Unity PC tech trailer

[Freddy1765]

Yes, but it seems that discussion is based on textures/shadows as they appear in the video linked to previously in this thread. The fact is we have no reliable way of telling how the game will look to the end-user on his or her own hardware, and until we do there is no sense in debating the issue.

 

[Enigmoid]

I don't get you. I see a lot of detail in that pic, and it's a YouTube video pic so it's definitely not representative of the actual quality.

Besides, a game as massive as this is bound to have some bad textures. Nothing new about that..

He is the main character. I don't expect bad textures on him period.

 

[Dankk]

I have no personal experience with AC3, but AC IV which was done by Ubisoft Kiev ran very well on my system. Constant 60 FPS basically..

If your PC is capable of running ACIV at a constant 60FPS, then you definitely must have one hell of a gaming PC that's powerful enough to "cut through" the game's awful optimization. I wonder what kind of performance you would be seeing if you turned off Vsync and looked at raw frames. Chances are you're barely staying above 60, not much higher than that.

All of the most recent Assassin's Creed games have been a technical disaster on PC, I imagine Unity is going to be the same.

 

[Carfax83]

If your PC is capable of running ACIV at a constant 60FPS, then you definitely must have one hell of a gaming PC that's powerful enough to "cut through" the game's awful optimization. I wonder what kind of performance you would be seeing if you turned off Vsync and looked at raw frames. Chances are you're barely staying above 60, not much higher than that.

All of the most recent Assassin's Creed games have been a technical disaster on PC, I imagine Unity is going to be the same.

Rig in sig. Also AC IV has a frame rate lock at 63, so even if V-sync is disabled, you won't be able to go above that. A lot of people complained that AC IV was CPU bound, but it wasn't on my rig. The renderer was single threaded though, so overclocking the CPU was necessary to get the highest level of performance..

AC Unity on the other hand will have a multithreaded renderer though so dispatching draw calls to the GPU should be much faster.

 

[Dankk]

AC Unity on the other hand will have a multithreaded renderer though so dispatching draw calls to the GPU should be much faster.

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[Fire&Blood]

[images redacted]

Sorry, no. This is a technical forum.
-- stahlhart

 

[Carfax83]

Those are PS4 screenshots, not Xbox One. They have Neogaf in a frenzy, basically Watch Dogs "downgradeaton" all over again.

Personally, I just think they are bad screenshots. It's obvious they've been compressed to hell and back..

 

[Fire&Blood]

Those are PS4 screenshots, not Xbox One. They have Neogaf in a frenzy, basically Watch Dogs "downgradeaton" all over again.

Personally, I just think they are bad screenshots. It's obvious they've been compressed to hell and back..

Ahhh, i saw a whole bunch on imgur. Make sense if they are from the same source.
http://imgur.com/a/Kfagt

 

[boozzer]

Ahhh, i saw a whole bunch on imgur. Make sense if they are from the same source.
http://imgur.com/a/Kfagt

so basically ubi is demanding cars with racecar engines to run on their 20 mile per hour limit lanes.

buy it when it is 5 or 10 dollars people.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

I'm pretty sure AC4 on PS4/Xbone had better IQ then that.

 

[Dankk]

If those are console screenshots, then it looks like they've been upscaled. The images are 1080p but Ubisoft confirmed that both console versions of the game are only running at 900p. Somewhat explains why they look kind of crappy.

 

[Carfax83]

Ahhh, i saw a whole bunch on imgur. Make sense if they are from the same source.
http://imgur.com/a/Kfagt

Yeah the screenshots are using the PS4's share mode for the screenshot, which compresses the image considerably. Then it was compressed again from uploading the images to the hosting website imgur.

Plus, the image's blur comes from it being upscaled to 1080p. Upscaling causes blur.. Native 900p and 1080p are practically indistinguishable, but upscaled 900p is definitely inferior to native 1080p..

So basically, the console versions are screwed. The PC version will be the best by far! :biggrin:

 

[chimaxi83]

Yeah the screenshots are using the PS4's share mode for the screenshot, which compresses the image considerably. Then it was compressed again from uploading the images to the hosting website imgur.

Plus, the image's blur comes from it being upscaled to 1080p. Upscaling causes blur.. Native 900p and 1080p are practically indistinguishable, but upscaled 900p is definitely inferior to native 1080p..

So basically, the console versions are screwed. The PC version will be the best by far!

Meanwhile, console gamers couldn't care less about 180 missing rows of pixels, is they even know what that means.

 

[monstercameron]

wow it looks like some screen space aa like fxaa. Looks de-aliased but decently blurred. Doesnt seem to be blur caused by upscaling.

 

[Fire&Blood]

The shadows went to Mordor:

 

[Carfax83]

The shadows went to Mordor:

Sun is down, so thats why there aren't any shadows in that pic..

Anyway, the game doesn't ship for 11 days. It's possible that these early bird players are playing the game in a pre-launch state, and that a massive day one patch will rectify these IQ issues.

For all we know, the game's internal output may currently be set to something lower than 900p, until Ubisoft finishes optimizing it and releases a patch.

 

[Carfax83]

wow it looks like some screen space aa like fxaa. Looks de-aliased but decently blurred. Doesnt seem to be blur caused by upscaling.

Before the pic was removed, I could still see aliasing..

 

[Fire&Blood]

Before the pic was removed, I could still see aliasing..

It was justified as I went overboard with the comment, shouldn't have posted the gif to begin with. Here is just the image:

Anyway, the game doesn't ship for 11 days. It's possible that these early bird players are playing the game in a pre-launch state, and that a massive day one patch will rectify these IQ issues.

For all we know, the game's internal output may currently be set to something lower than 900p, until Ubisoft finishes optimizing it and releases a patch.

Indeed. Giant Bomb's Adam Shepherd writes:

"We recently got hands-on with the game at its first UK outing at London's MCM Expo, and one thing that was immediately apparent when we started playing was how surprisingly rough the game looked. ...
In its current state, Assassin's Creed: Unity is a buggy, frustrating, barely playable mess of a game, and unless some very serious tweaking and polishing happens between now and the game's North American release date of November 11, this title is going to be about as well received as a shit in a birthday cake." (Assassin's Creed Unity, Xbox One)

This wasn't absolutely confirmed to be an actual Ubi dev at the time but "the dev" stated they would be willing to provide further proof of their position/job if needed, but the Bombcast guys felt comfortable enough reading it on air after cross checking the claims made with another developer:

"I'm happy to enlighten you guys because way too much bullshit about 1080p making a difference is being thrown around. If the game is as pretty and fun as ours will be, who cares? Getting this game to 900p was a BITCH. The game is so huge in terms of rendering that it took months to get it to 720p at 30fps. The game was 9fps 9 months ago. We only achieved 900p at 30fps weeks ago. The PS4 couldn't handle 1080p 30fps for our game, whatever people, or Sony and Microsoft say. Yes, we have a deal with Microsoft, and yes we don't want people fighting over it, but with all the recent concessions from Microsoft, backing out of CPU reservations not once, but twice, you're talking about a 1 or 2 fps difference between the two consoles. So yes, locking the framerate is a conscious decision to keep people bullshiting, but that doesn't seem to have worked in the end. Even if Ubi has deals, the dev team members are proud, and want the best performance out of every console out there. What's hard is not getting the game to render at this point, it's making everything else in the game work at the same level of performance we designed from the start for the graphics. By the amount of content and NPCs in the game, from someone who witnessed optimization for lots of Ubisoft games in the past, this is crazily optimized for such a young generation of consoles. This really is about to define a next gen like no other game before. Mordor has next gen system and gameplay, but not graphics like Unity does. The proof comes in that game being cross gen. Our producer (Vincent) saying we're bound with AI by the CPU is right, but not entirely. Consider this, they started this game so early for next gen, MS and Sony wanted to push graphics first, so that's what we did. I believe 50% of the CPU is dedicated to helping the rendering by processing pre-packaged information, and in our case, much like Unreal 4, baked global illumination lighting. The result is amazing graphically, the depth of field and lighting effects are beyond anything you've seen on the market, and even may surpass Infamous and others. Because of this I think the build is a full 50gigs, filling the bluray to the edge, and nearly half of that is lighting data."

Source is here:http://www.giantbomb.com/podcasts/

 

[Dankk]

It was justified as I went overboard with the comment, shouldn't have posted the gif to begin with.

I'm glad I saved that gif. That was hilarious.

The shadows went to Mordor:

And this is one of the reasons why AC:U looks good, but not great. They still have a long way to go. There's so much trailer footage I've watched where there's simply a general lack of shadows, even on the main character himself. It makes the whole game look "flat".

Compare that to, say, The Witcher 3, where everything feels so much more detailed and nuanced, largely as a result of proper shadowing.

 

[escrow4]

If your PC is capable of running ACIV at a constant 60FPS, then you definitely must have one hell of a gaming PC that's powerful enough to "cut through" the game's awful optimization. I wonder what kind of performance you would be seeing if you turned off Vsync and looked at raw frames. Chances are you're barely staying above 60, not much higher than that.

All of the most recent Assassin's Creed games have been a technical disaster on PC, I imagine Unity is going to be the same.

Nope. Non K 4770 (3.7GHz to 3.8GHz in game) and a 780Ti Ghz were enough to max the game at a solid 60FPS at 1200p with AA disabled and shadows turned down a notch. Can't remember if Vysnc was on or off. Very smooth. Optimization aside this will always play better on PC simply because you can throw more hardware at it.

 

[Rakehellion]

I watched the video. It's pretty hard to tell the difference between having these fancy GPU features ON and OFF.

 

[Hauk]

Nope. Non K 4770 (3.7GHz to 3.8GHz in game) and a 780Ti Ghz were enough to max the game at a solid 60FPS at 1200p with AA disabled and shadows turned down a notch. Can't remember if Vysnc was on or off. Very smooth. Optimization aside this will always play better on PC simply because you can throw more hardware at it.

Pretty much same here, oc'd my cpu and 780Ti for solid 60fps with FXAA enabled. moved to MSAA with a 2nd 780Ti

 

[Carfax83]

Amazing draw distance and density:

 

[Carfax83]

And this is one of the reasons why AC:U looks good, but not great. They still have a long way to go. There's so much trailer footage I've watched where there's simply a general lack of shadows, even on the main character himself. It makes the whole game look "flat".

I wouldn't say there's a lack of shadows. The game definitely has dynamic shadows. It's just that the Sun has gone down.

I think there's a lack of AO more than anything else in that pic. The AO is extremely subtle. Glad we PC gamers have HBAO+ instead, which is excellent AO and makes a big difference in terms of adding depth.

Compare that to, say, The Witcher 3, where everything feels so much more detailed and nuanced, largely as a result of proper shadowing.

Look at that gif I posted and tell me that the Witcher 3 is more detailed. Seriously.. I love the Witcher 3 as much as anyone else, and it's my most anticipated game. But I have to give credit where credit is due.

Ubisoft's Paris is far larger, has greater scale, more density and detail than the Witcher 3's Novigrad..

 

[RussianSensation]

Rig in sig. Also AC IV has a frame rate lock at 63, so even if V-sync is disabled, you won't be able to go above that. A lot of people complained that AC IV was CPU bound, but it wasn't on my rig. The renderer was single threaded though, so overclocking the CPU was necessary to get the highest level of performance..

AC Unity on the other hand will have a multithreaded renderer though so dispatching draw calls to the GPU should be much faster.

At the time ACIV came out, there was no 970 SLI. You had GTX770 SLI. ACIV doesn't run at 60 fps constant in that game on 770 SLI at 1440P with SMAA, nevermind MSAA.

AC IV needed 780 SLI to run at 60 fps minimum at 1080p. If you overclocked your 770s, you might have gotten 60 fps minimums at 1080P.

While for 1440/1600p, a gamer needed 780Ti SLI to maintain 60 fps constant, with 780 SLI dropping to 50 easily.

CPU utilization was pretty mediocre I'd say. A 2008 Core i7 920 2.8Ghz got 51 fps average but a 4770K only managed 60, with 53 minimums! Basically it was impossible to maintain 60 fps minimums without an overclocked i5/i7. Not only that, with HT the game performed worse.

And this is one of the reasons why AC:U looks good, but not great. They still have a long way to go. There's so much trailer footage I've watched where there's simply a general lack of shadows, even on the main character himself. It makes the whole game look "flat".

Compare that to, say, The Witcher 3, where everything feels so much more detailed and nuanced, largely as a result of proper shadowing.

I've been saying this from the first trailer I ever saw months ago. Unless this game has an entire shadows and lighting model overhaul, it will simply look unrealistic forever since the characters stick out as if they are overimposed on some pre-rendered background scene ala early Resident Evil games on consoles.

Look at this scene:

How can you have books under the table casting shadow on the floor but the table's legs not casting shadows on the floor? The same thing with the chair on the front right hand side. It's essentially 'floating' on the ground.

In this picture you essentially have a 'floating' chariot in the far top left. It doesn't look like the models are casting dynamic natural shadows. I don't know what's up with their game engine.

vs. Complexity and detail in Witcher 3

Ubisoft failed at actually making the NPCs/characters feel integrated into the background scene. When you look at pictures of Witcher 3, the characters and the rest of the world are flowing with each other.

And TXAA, wow a failure it continues to be. Essentially all those details and high rez textures the artists worked on is wiped out by this filter.

Ubisoft's claims that AC Unity represents next generation graphics is not convincing to me at all.