AC Unity PC tech trailer

[Grooveriding]

Apparently, not only is the game a bad port on PC; but the game runs poorly on ALL platforms.

http://www.nowgamer.com/assassins-creed-unity-framerate-is-atrocious/

http://www.dealspwn.com/assassins-creed-unity-pretty-damn-choppy-ps4-185196

TB calling for a patch for the PC version:

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sica1s

From TB:

Can't sleep and Unity is out so lemme tell you about my experience so far. I only got access to code yesterday so I'm not that far in but there's a promised Day 1 patch that by the looks of it is SORELY needed. Getting that game to run on max settings is a nightmare, it's a huge resource hog. My 2 980s barely keep up. In the small tutorial area I was looking at some nasty drops one 1 980, prior to Nvidia putting in an SLI profile.

As it stands I can JUST keep it at 60, though it has some drops below at times. The game doesn't really look like it justifies that. It has some killer popin, just like Watchdogs did, actors very obviously and inconspicuously switch between detail levels depending on your distance to them and often just appear out of nowhere and disappear at random.

Lighting is glitchy as hell and overall texture quality is poor. I will say the faces and mo-cap quality is excellent, it actually has a kiss that doesn't look like 2 robots rubbing their faces together, so there's that. The problem that I had yesterday was just the MASS of bugs. Guards spawning in from the sky, NPC actors wandering through terrain and clipping through objects, scripted sequences breaking at random and stealth seems like it's just busted.

I had a guy spot me in a stealth section, run up to me as I was standing and then "lose track" of me. I was right in front of his face, he just wandered off. Thus far the game seems like quite the step backwards. Combat feels much more sluggish than Black Flag, but I admit I have yet to unlock a lot of the weapons and gadgets, I'm not that far in. So I don't have much to say about the gameplay up to this point (its been super standard Asscreed stuff) but this Day 1 patch is sorely needed, because the game without it is a buggy mess.

Looks like another Ubisoft disaster then. The worst part is Totalbiscuit runs a 1080p 120hz screen. Dual 980s struggling at 1080p to get 60fps

This is the second game to come out with heavy use of nvidia's gameworks feature set, the first being Watch Dogs, which is a complete pig, runs like crap and looks mediocre. Now Unity looks to be a repeat. So far 2 for 2 on strike outs for gameworks games. Far Cry 4 is the next game to use heavy gameworks implementations, if it's another unoptimized terribad looking pig I'd say that's a strike out for gameworks :biggrin:

Fortunately Ubisoft seems to be the only developer taking the payout of free labour from nvidia to implement gameworks into their games. The only other upcoming game with it I know of is Witcher 3. We'll have to wait till February to see if that runs like an unoptimized dog as well and gameworks is just an inefficient resource pig, or if what we're seeing is ubisoft's incompetence.

 

[monstercameron]

how to do this with the least amount of flames as possible?

This is why vendor spcific game libraries is bad and this is why nvidia should open collaborate with other vendors in the industry. Maybe it is just a bad game engine or maybe it is just gameworks, who knows but they can't keep this up. The need for people without 980s to be able to run the game and that is the difference in philosophy behind mantle and gameworks.

Mantle frees up performance and allows the dev[gives him/her the rope] to do new things while gameworks hides all the complexity away with easy to integrate cool looking effects that only add to the render time.

 

[Pandora's Box]

Yeah on max settings at 1080P, I get the same results as TB does. Turning PCSS shadows to regular shows and turning off TXAA solves all my issues. 70-80fps.

 

[raghu78]

Nvidia needs to put in a better show with TWIMTBP and Gameworks. They are proving to be an embarassment with AC Unity following WatchDogs . On the contrary AMD is doing good with their Gaming Evolved titles like Alien Isolation, Civilization Beyond Earth and Dragon Age Inquisition and Mantle.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014..._video_card_performance_review/8#.VGJGAGes98E

"Alien: Isolation performs extremely well across a wide swath of GPUs, which many times means the graphics are subpar, but that is not the case here. This game is a showroom of DX11 efficiency; Watch Dogs eat your heart out. We haven't seen the likes of this much attention to detail using DX11 on the PC in a very long time."

"We think that Alien: Isolation is a template that other game designers should take notice of. We love the use of open technologies based on DirectCompute and the absence of proprietary technologies that make Alien: Isolation truly a great title. Team Green and game devs please take notice of this, as this is what pushes the gaming industry forward as a whole. And that is simply good for all of us."

 

[NTMBK]

"The Way It's Meant To Be Played" is apparently at 15fps.

 

[f1sherman]

Agreed about Alien and Civ and Ubi/Nvidia.
Dragon Age Inquisition otoh runs like a pig for what has to show onscreen.


More screenies:

 

[f1sherman]

Certain aspects of the game are phenomenal, faces most prominently and outdoors in high contrast scenes.
And unlike DA:I tessellation is used well... for the most part. Take a look at that chair

 

[f1sherman]

moar update

Assassin’s Creed: Unity – GeometryWorks DirectX 11 Advanced Tessellation Coming Via Upcoming PC Update

“In Unity, GeometryWorks is being used to add tessellation to roof shingles, roof tiles, cobblestones, brick roads and paths, archways, statues, architecture, and much, much more. And because this tessellation is real geometric detail, as opposed to simulated detail from bump mapping or normal mapping, tessellated detail in Unity is accurately shadowed by NVIDIA HBAO+ and NVIDIA PCSS, significantly improving image quality.”

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/assas...d-tessellation-coming-via-upcoming-pc-update/

 

[Grooveriding]

"The Way It's Meant To Be Played" is apparently at 15fps.

Seems to be the case. 15fps with next gen Xbox one visuals.

 

[monstercameron]

moar update

Assassin’s Creed: Unity – GeometryWorks DirectX 11 Advanced Tessellation Coming Via Upcoming PC Update

“In Unity, GeometryWorks is being used to add tessellation to roof shingles, roof tiles, cobblestones, brick roads and paths, archways, statues, architecture, and much, much more. And because this tessellation is real geometric detail, as opposed to simulated detail from bump mapping or normal mapping, tessellated detail in Unity is accurately shadowed by NVIDIA HBAO+ and NVIDIA PCSS, significantly improving image quality.”

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/assas...d-tessellation-coming-via-upcoming-pc-update/

great now it be a better looking slideshow! Can't wait!

 

[f1sherman]

40fps settings guide:

Full guide @Geforce.com:

Assassin's Creed Unity Graphics & Performance Guide

 

[kasakka]

how to do this with the least amount of flames as possible?

This is why vendor spcific game libraries is bad and this is why nvidia should open collaborate with other vendors in the industry. Maybe it is just a bad game engine or maybe it is just gameworks, who knows but they can't keep this up. The need for people without 980s to be able to run the game and that is the difference in philosophy behind mantle and gameworks.

Mantle frees up performance and allows the dev[gives him/her the rope] to do new things while gameworks hides all the complexity away with easy to integrate cool looking effects that only add to the render time.

By that notion Mantle is just as bad as it gives one vendor a big advantage. I think that the real issue is both Watch_Dogs and AC: Unity are developed by Ubisoft Montreal which probably means they use the same engine just modified for each game's needs and obviously technical advancements implemented. It's entirely possible that Ubisoft Montreal's engine developers are just not all that great programmers or there are management issues causing a subpar product to emerge.

I can't believe that at GeForce.com they actually recommend low textures for my GTX 770 and that's just to get 40 fps. Sure, only 2GB VRAM but that same amount has had no trouble with Shadow of Mordor or Skyrim with 2k textures for example.

 

[monstercameron]

By that notion Mantle is just as bad as it gives one vendor a big advantage. I think that the real issue is both Watch_Dogs and AC: Unity are developed by Ubisoft Montreal which probably means they use the same engine just modified for each game's needs and obviously technical advancements implemented. It's entirely possible that Ubisoft Montreal's engine developers are just not all that great programmers or there are management issues causing a subpar product to emerge.

I can't believe that at GeForce.com they actually recommend low textures for my GTX 770 and that's just to get 40 fps. Sure, only 2GB VRAM but that same amount has had no trouble with Shadow of Mordor or Skyrim with 2k textures for example.

The claims of incompetence aside, just replace the word mantle with direct 3d 12. The thoughs in my post could extend to d3d12 just as it did mantle.

 

[Grooveriding]

By that notion Mantle is just as bad as it gives one vendor a big advantage. I think that the real issue is both Watch_Dogs and AC: Unity are developed by Ubisoft Montreal which probably means they use the same engine just modified for each game's needs and obviously technical advancements implemented. It's entirely possible that Ubisoft Montreal's engine developers are just not all that great programmers or there are management issues causing a subpar product to emerge.

I can't believe that at GeForce.com they actually recommend low textures for my GTX 770 and that's just to get 40 fps. Sure, only 2GB VRAM but that same amount has had no trouble with Shadow of Mordor or Skyrim with 2k textures for example.

They use a different engine; Unity is Anvil and Watch Dogs is Disrupt. The commonality between them is gameworks. Far Cry 4 is out in a week and it also has its own engine in Dunia 2, but also has gameworks. If it's another rotten turd running at 30fps on the best card available I think it's going to be gameworks that is ruining the experience in all these games.

It would be one thing if we were seeing some next-gen visuals that blew us away, but these games don't look much better than console ports. Crysis 3 runs better than these games and looks incredible. Battlefield 4 also runs a whole lot better and looks great as well.

Will be interesting to see FC4 performance next week.

 

[RussianSensation]

40fps settings guide:

Full guide @Geforce.com:

Assassin's Creed Unity Graphics & Performance Guide

I don't know if NV is deliberately working with Ubisoft to cripple their games to run slow so that people are enticed to upgrade, if GW is a total failure from an optimization point of view or if Ubisoft is really such a horrible developer. How in the world are recommended settings for a 680 for just 40 FPS are LOW and the game looks awful? Dual 980s can barely hit 60 FPS and this isn't even a stunning 3rd person game?! NV, what are you thinking recommending using TXAA? Are game testers at NV really that ignorant that they cannot see how TXAA degrades IQ or is NV only interested in pushing gimmicky GPU selling features? Did no one from AC Unity's development team play the game from start to finish on XB1/Ps4/PC to notice all the frame rate, pop in and bug issues? I find that hard to believe. I think upper management at Unisoft knew Watch Dogs and Unity were broken and not ready but they went ahead to appease shareholders.

Too much money is now spent by these large developers on marketing and too little on developing a well optimized next generation game engine, game/bug testing and optimization. It seems the goal is get it out as fast as possible, use marketing to create crazy hype, then once the game sells millions, hype the sequel as if you will fix everything next time. Gamers keep believing these lies.

Everything I said about low quality textures, low polygon NPc models and broken shadows/lighting is true. Maybe Ubisoft thinks that stuttering in games makes it more cinematic? This game desperately needed another 6-12 months of development/testing time. I guess if gamers keep paying for Ubisoft games, Ubisoft has no reason to change how they run their gaming business. What shocks me is that console and PC gamers continue to pre-order Ubisoft games. We need to stop feeding them $ so they take game development more seriously. Ubisoft's management obviously care more about $$ from MS with XB1 bundle and $$$ for the NV bundle over delivering a ready product to gamers.

From a technical point of view, what was the point of 300-400 non-interactive NPCs if even $550 GPU hardware can't handle it well? Ubisoft wasn't thinking as they took the brute force unoptimized approach to game development.

Now I am pretty worried that GW has the potential for bringing horrible performance with GW's features enabled on all hardware in Witcher 3. As Groover mentioned different teams and game engines were responsible for Watch Dogs and Unity. In both cases, however, neither team took any advantage of GCN capabilities of XB1/PS4. That is shocking to me since these games will sell the most on consoles. What you end up with is a fundamentally unoptimized game, and then it's crippled even more by unoptimized GW features it seems.

 

[tviceman]

Ubisoft is a horrible developer. I don't think this has much to do with Nvidia, other than TXAA is both an inferior AA AND a resource HOG, and the fact that Nvidia keeps teaming up with Ubisoft (a prominently terrible developer). EOT.

 

[96Firebird]

Ubisoft is a horrible developer. I don't think this has much to do with Nvidia, other than TXAA is both an inferior AA AND a resource HOG, and the fact that Nvidia keeps teaming up with Ubisoft (a prominently terrible developer). EOT.

Oh come on, its fun reading the conspiracy theories that the tin foil hat crowd comes up with. :biggrin:

 

[dangerman1337]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=138362170#post138362170



This game seems to be a janky, rushed mess with inconsistent texture quality and doesn't even seem to be good as the reveal. Wonder if The Division won't look good as its initial reveal in E3 2013 even on the PC.

 

[Majcric]

40fps settings guide:

Full guide @Geforce.com:

Assassin's Creed Unity Graphics & Performance Guide

That graph looks off. Why is the 770 allowed such superior game settings to the 680 when the performance of these 2 cards are so similar. And if that's a 4gb 770 the 680 should have been 4gb as well for fair comparisons.

 

[escrow4]

They use a different engine; Unity is Anvil and Watch Dogs is Disrupt. The commonality between them is gameworks. Far Cry 4 is out in a week and it also has its own engine in Dunia 2, but also has gameworks. If it's another rotten turd running at 30fps on the best card available I think it's going to be gameworks that is ruining the experience in all these games.

It would be one thing if we were seeing some next-gen visuals that blew us away, but these games don't look much better than console ports. Crysis 3 runs better than these games and looks incredible. Battlefield 4 also runs a whole lot better and looks great as well.

Will be interesting to see FC4 performance next week.

Crysis 3 shouldn't have rendered all that grass on the CPU requiring a hexa core just to ease the dips out. That aside I'd agree.

 

[Gloomy]

Crysis 3 shouldn't have rendered all that grass on the CPU requiring a hexa core just to ease the dips out. That aside I'd agree.

It didn't render it on the CPU. It's the grass physics that caused those dips, not the rendering of the grass...

 

[MTDEW]

Funny quote from reddit. :biggrin:

"Some of those NPCs pop in so late you'd have to classify them as DLC."

 

[ocre]

Just an observation,
Anyone else notice that the same few people that end up being overly negative about this game (,gameworks, or pretty much anything Nvidia does) are completely polarized to overly positive right off the bat in the Dragon Age Inquisition benchmark thread?

Its not like Dragon Age is all that better. Even at a lowly 1080, you wont be anywhere near 60fps trying to max it out with a 780ti. With DAI, there is not a single card out that can run 1080 with Max detail at 60fps. Cant get there at 1080. It will take at least two cards for that. The same people who trash AC on this are in total praise in the dragon age thread.

I guess it shouldnt be surprising.

I actually am interested in both games. But seeing how demanding they are, I think i might need to upgrade my 760 for sure. And that is how i ended up looking at both these threads. I am like, WoW they are really demanding.

And it is also why i thought the complete flip flop by a few from this thread to the dragon age one was interesting. I guess just zone out the extreme views one way or the other. Cause i was/am interesting in both of these games. Very interested. But the performance requirements are concerning to me. Absolutely. I think they both look good, but that good? I mean, DA has a lot of polish. So does AC. But neither is soooo stunning that i think a 780ti should be running in the 40s at 1080.
Neither game

And it is strange that anyone would be so overly ecstatic in such a case at all.

But regardless, it is unfortunate but i do really have an interest in both of this. I will end up getting them. And.....I guess upgrading my GPU. I will be putting this 760 in my spare PC. I will do what i always do. Buy new hardware.

 

[Carfax83]

Just an observation,
Anyone else notice that the same few people that end up being overly negative about this game (,gameworks, or pretty much anything Nvidia does) are completely polarized to overly positive right off the bat in the Dragon Age Inquisition benchmark thread?

Of course. Gaming, like politics has been polarized for a long time now.

I have people trolling my AC Unity thread in the PC gaming forum, trying their best to put the game in the worst light possible by intentionally lying and posting misleading information.

For example, one poster used alpha footage to show how "messed up" the game was. And another, used console footage.....in the PC forum :|

There's just a lot of ignorance concerning game development. Games are among the most complex software that consumers can buy, and games as large and ambitious as AC Unity and Dragon Age Inquisition are bound to have problems upon launch.

They act as though the game should be completely perfect and devoid of bugs on release day.. Did they just start PC gaming yesterday or what?

I actually am interested in both games. But seeing how demanding they are, I think i might need to upgrade my 760 for sure. And that is how i ended up looking at both these threads. I am like, WoW they are really demanding.

Performance will definitely increase as patches and driver updates roll out. Nothing new about that. Most PC gaming issues can be fixed by patching. Only when you have deep fundamental problems, such as the issue with Watch Dogs and it's resource management, do we run into big problems.

I've been playing AC Unity for hours now, and although the game has it's fair share of bugs and optimization issues, I don't believe they are systemic. In fact, AC Unity runs much better on PC than it does on the consoles.

But regardless, it is unfortunate but i do really have an interest in both of this. I will end up getting them. And.....I guess upgrading my GPU. I will be putting this 760 in my spare PC. I will do what i always do. Buy new hardware.

AC Unity uses the CPU heavily as well, but it's very optimized in that regard. I get even loading across all 12 threads on my CPU, and the overall usage is 60% at street level in Paris which is very high for a hex core.

A straight quad core would be almost totally maxed out, and a quad core with hyperthreading would be around 85 to 90% utilization if I had to guess..

Game is a lot of fun though. If you like AC, then you'll love AC Unity most likely..

 

[garagisti]

great now it be a better looking slideshow! Can't wait!

Hey, this update most likely will drop more frames on AMD cards, like those certain batman cape animations, or the concrete blocks in crysis 2 etc.

I've had almost upto here with Ubisoft... i can't buy their games cheaper than a certain price point unfortunately. 0 will be a sum i'll be willing to pay for such a product, but that's not how this works. I shall once again buy this at $5-$10 on ebay, thereby hopefully depriving Ubisoft of some pennies.