Quality/Performance Issues in Assassin's Creed: Unity [WCCF]

[Carfax83]

Most interesting part of that link is the related link below:

AC Unity devs suggest game industry is abandoning 60fps standard




With folks like this working on this game, it's no wonder it's turned out to be a technical and graphical disaster.

That's an old comment made before the game even launched, and it was directed at consoles and not at PC. I actually agree with him that it's better to target 30 FPS than 60 FPS on consoles because 60 FPS is very difficult to attain without overly compromising detail and quality.

On PC it's not an issue, because it's an open platform that advances very quickly..

What I don't agree with is the reason cited, about 30 FPS being more "cinematic." That's seems like it's just a placating gesture to console gamers to temper the sting of basically saying that the current gen consoles just aren't powerful enough to do 60 FPS in demanding titles.

 

[Keysplayr]

I already said no it does not.Are you reading the thread?

I'm giving your posts as much consideration as you are mine.
For some strange reason you have me down as saying the game has no issues. I think I have said it's bug ridden about ten times already, yet you seem to think I said it is fine. I said it looks fantastic. Breathtaking detail. But many bugs that Ubisoft is being highly pressured to fix.

 

[Grooveriding]

That's an old comment made before the game even launched, and it was directed at consoles and not at PC.

I see no mention of this ideology being platform specific, they did mention the 30fps on PS4, but he goes on to say the 'industry' and even delves into some bifurcation on game genres, as if any genre is better at 30fps.

Source on this not being the case ?

 

[escrow4]

The game does look better actually playing it then static screenshots but I do agree the NPCs are low poly, the pop in is irritating and the lighting could be better, but pushing through a crowd of hundreds then engaging in swordplay while that crowd literally falls apart is amazing. Then you can run into and under buildings dodging dozens more NPCs. Contrast to Black Flag, the number of NPCs in one island could be packed into a single building here. I'm moving on for now to Inquisition but I'll pick this back up after, it isn't THAT bad.

 

[f1sherman]

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/assas...e-optimization-coming-possibly-in-next-patch/

Ubisoft revealed today that it is currently testing some performance optimizations for Assassin’s Creed: Unity.

-Streamlining some technical aspects of navigation:
We’ve fixed a number of edge cases with our detection system to smooth certain behaviors during parkour. We’ve fixed a few objects which were improperly tagged to smooth navigation.
-Improving task scheduling: We’ve tuned the way the computing tasks are prioritized and parallelized by the processor cores to improve framerate in certain edge cases.
-Tweaking performance for Reach High Points: We’ve optimized the reach high points, during the camera swooping sequence to improve framerate a little bit.

Our biggest gripes with Assassin’s Creed: Unity PC this far are:
a) random annoying stutters that can be fixed by restarting a machine and b) the awfully aggressive LOD values that are being used for characters (and objects).

Here is hoping that Ubisoft will further tweak these on the PC, though it seems unlikely given the fact that the game – even in its current form – stresses a lot of PC systems.
And imagine what will happen when the promised PC update adds DX11 GeometryWorks Tessellation.

 

[Keysplayr]

Good to see it is being worked on. Some of these bugs were real bad though, and no way could have been overlooked by the devs. They released this game knowing full well about the many serious flaws in the behavior of the game. Should not have been released.

 

[Cerb]

Good to see it is being worked on. Some of these bugs were real bad though, and no way could have been overlooked by the devs. They released this game knowing full well about the many serious flaws in the behavior of the game. Should not have been released.

But, it needed to be out before the holiday shopping season was over with, and they can always patch it later, after the devs are allowed a couple hours of sleep a day.

 

[Grooveriding]

So is that why you're complaining so loudly? You believe this title is being defended by Nvidia gameworks proponents dont you? I think RS also alluded, no, straight out said that nvidia fans were defending it.

That is what is cringe worthy.

No idea what this nonsense is. These are your words not mine, unless you can point out where anything like that was said ? I think your mixed up on your end here, unless you can point out where this was said ?

I'm not creating screenshots, youtube videos and long defense posts in earnest. Though many of us are using the offered screenshots and youtube videos to show how badly broken this game is with its poor visuals and ridiculous performance demands, so they've been helpful to that end. No effort exerted and not invested one way or the other Just pointing out the reality echoed in reviews and this thread for the most part.

 

[f1sherman]

God-rays
Remember that awful gimmick? Not gimmick any more.

Physically based shading and rendering allows for truly realistic lightning because it works via physical model, instead of traditional artist representation

Yes, AC:U uses physically based shading and rendering. Look it up I did not know that myself
I guess that's why lightning look more like CGI/ray-tracing than gaming graphics.

 

[f1sherman]

Good thing we have the Internet where you can download raw footage of 1GB+ and play it back in FullHD on your computer. You can argue all day long that the video compression has some impact (but this is true for all gaming footage and wasn't an excuse for Crysis 1 or Crysis 3 or Metro LL or Witcher 2), but you can't hide that Unity is a console port at its roots and in the video all those things I talked about above can be seen:

http://www.computerbase.de/2014-11/assassins-creed-unity-grafikvergleich-pc-und-ps4/

And?? Whats wrong with it.

In every dialogue there needs to be some common ground. But I can't find this with you.
Because you talk about broken lightning model and broken shadows.
And I simply have no-idea what you are referring to.
I've never seen more realistic or better looking ingame lighting/shadows implementation.

 

[cbrunny]

AMD 14.11.2 is out. Anyone give it a try yet?

 

[96Firebird]

Whoever said this game has bad lighting needs to get their eyes checked...

 

[tential]

No idea what this nonsense is. These are your words not mine, unless you can point out where anything like that was said ? I think your mixed up on your end here, unless you can point out where this was said ?

I'm not creating screenshots, youtube videos and long defense posts in earnest. Though many of us are using the offered screenshots and youtube videos to show how badly broken this game is with its poor visuals and ridiculous performance demands, so they've been helpful to that end. No effort exerted and not invested one way or the other Just pointing out the reality echoed in reviews and this thread for the most part.

I've even gotten Private Messages from "defenders" of this game in this thread.

Yet we're the ones who are sad.

 

[RussianSensation]

The low-res textures, non-existent shadows and atrocious lighting are just things Ubi is going to rewrite in a massive patch fix. This thread has been one of the most cringe worthy in a while. A couple posters fighting the tide of scathing reviews and abysmal visuals by getting put to work by anyone recognizing the fail of this game in producing screenshots, long-winded posts and youtube videos that sink the ship of fail this game sailed in on even further.

Don't you know that if a game has 5000 NPCs and it's large, then all is forgiven? Tomorrow some indie developer will make a Pac Man game with 10,000 NPCs and 1000 levels, so it'll be the best looking game in the world and huge!!!

It'll take Unity 3-4 years to make an AC game as good looking as Ryse/Crysis 3.

http://static1.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1525/15257558/2688409-3837020693-Ryse-.jpg
http://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/entry_photo_images/10454176/Crytek_Ryse_Son_of_Rome_Oswald_Screenshot.jpg
http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/30/2573836-screenshot0051.jpg

And?? Whats wrong with it.

In every dialogue there needs to be some common ground. But I can't find this with you.
Because you talk about broken lightning model and broken shadows.
And I simply have no-idea what you are referring to.
I've never seen more realistic or better looking ingame lighting/shadows implementation.

Crysis 3, Metro LL, Ryse - all better by a lot too.

Sorry, I can't help you. You obviously don't understand what good shadows/lighting and good graphics are. For starters real time dynamic lighting / global illumination model > pre-baked global illumination. That's just the basics. The top developers all confirm in the interview below that pre-baked lighting is a cost-cutting model due to lack of sufficient GPU power. AC Unity little in the way of real world interactive shadows or dynamic global lighting model. Nearly everything is pre-baked -- aka fake. That's why in so many parts of the game the character models and NPCs and furniture and buildings cast incorrect or no shadows at all since it was never coded. Since the model isn't there for real time dynamic interactive bounce lighting, it's impossible to make shadows out of thin air in Unity and for light sources to look realistic.

http://www.gamespot.com/videos/reality-check-real-time-global-illumination-what-i/2300-6422212/

There are 100s of screenshots online of Unity that all show poor textures, broken shadow/lighting model (floating objects, NPCs, etc.) and low polygon objects/characters, poor LOD in draw distance, etc. EVERYWHERE. You are lucky you can't see all of these issues because for me the game is avg. and in some places ugly because I can see these issues.

I've even gotten Private Messages from "defenders" of this game in this thread.

There were millions of people who thought Uncharted games and TLoU and Gears of War were the best looking games of last generation (aka console gamers). There were all wrong. Crysis 3 and Metro LL beat those games easily. What happens is a lot of people who like a particular genre/franchise become invested in that franchise and they can't project their opinions without any bias by judging the technical merits of a game only. Even if I enjoyed Rise of Nations and Starcraft 2 10x more than Crysis 3, it doesn't mean that Crysis 3 doesn't blow those games into another galaxy when it comes to graphics.

Some of the posters in this thread defending Unity thought that Ryse was an OK game at best. What do you expect? The level of polygons and LOD/graphics in each character in the cut scene of Ryse/Crysis 3 is probably as much as 30 NPCs in Unity put together.

The armor alone in Ryse on a soldier is more detailed than any full character in Unity.

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04...er-character-and-the-final-85000-on-xbox-one/

 

[f1sherman]

It'll take Unity 3-4 years to make an AC game as good looking as Ryse/Crysis 3.
[/IMG]

Nature is easy. You just splash few pixels and here - thats the leaf, here this is bark, this is stone... or something. Nature is beautiful by itself.

OTOH man made objects, shops, buildings, windows, faithful model of 18 century Paris, Notre Dam - that is hard, Dam hard
Not to mention all this tends to pixel crawl like hell.
Faces are hard too, same like everything else that we come in contact and compare on everyday basis.

BTW that's a nice looking Skyrim mod. It's no Unity, but very eye pleasing

 

[tential]

Fisherman, are those your screens you posted from your own rig in post #259?

If so, mind taking 1-2 more with the HUD showing?

 

[f1sherman]

nope
found them on neogaf. much enthusiasm there about AC:U.
user taken screenies.

 

[papapapapapapapababy]

only ass cred i liked was black flag, is this pos port even good, aka FUN to play?

 

[tential]

nope
found them on neogaf. much enthusiasm there about AC:U.
user taken screenies.

Maybe they're using SweetFX to help
http://www.gamespot.com/assassins-c...-in-assassin-s-creed-unity-gameplay-31693210/

I first learned of SweetFX from neogaf (or maybe guru3d's) screenshot threads. So maybe that's why we're not seeing the same quality of screens from Keysplayr and Escrow.
Only reason I can think of because the screens I see on neogaf look nothing like the screens posted here.

 

[RussianSensation]

I guess that's why lightning look more like CGI/ray-tracing than gaming graphics.

How about you link real world /real time gameplay screenshots from the PC. It's like why don't I start linking pre-rendered cut scenes from COD:AW on the PC to tell you that's how the game looks like in real gameplay? :whiste:

Fine, both can play that game. Witcher 3 coming out Feb 2015 is Next-next gen then compared to your next-Unity. Time wrap, 6 months = a generation in graphics or admit that Unity is a current gen game only.

Fisherman, are those your screens you posted from your own rig in post #259?
If so, mind taking 1-2 more with the HUD showing?

The Unity screenshots he linked are from the special extended game version which only Maxwell users get. Word is it's going to be re-mastered for PS5 in 2020.

http://www.hdwallsource.com/awesome-assassins-creed-unity-wallpaper-40773.html

The rest of us got the downgraded AMD-powered console version.

 

[f1sherman]

I doubt it's SweetFX. They're capable screenshots, that bunch...but not that good.
Although images are downsampled from 3200x1800

@RussianSensation
my wish is that Witcher 3 looks at least as good technically as AC:U (my bet is it won't), and yet it performs like Witcher 2
it should be better looking though, because of more magic/nature scenery

 

[tential]

I doubt it's SweetFX. They're capable screenshots, that bunch...but not that good.
Although images are downsampled from 3200x1800

So isn't that kind of the point we've all been making about these "amazing screens" that are posted?

That they aren't indicative of real game experience? You can't actually play at 3200x1800. That's the point I've been trying to make but was bashed continuously by carfax and told that these are "gameplay screenshots"

Not defending the performance but I actually think this game looks as good as Crysis 3 at times.

http://i.picpar.com/6Rhb.png
http://i.picpar.com/8Rhb.png
http://i.picpar.com/9Rhb.png

^ some screens I took. Also, remember that Unity is open world. For the most part, Crysis 3 is a linear shooter and has nowhere near the amount of AI processing going on.

The game runs fine here at 3440x1440 on a single 980. I'm locked at 30 FPS, rarely dips below that. I would like to have 60 but 30 doesn't ruin the experience in this kind of game for me. It runs a lot better than Watch_Dogs which had very severe stuttering issues.

This user is the CLOSEST you can get to that quality on our forum. As you can see he runs cloes to that resolution on a single card and is at 30 FPS. Also, again look at his system cost... it's close to $3000 if I'm not mistaken. Taking $3000 system to hit that quality level... I mean that's not really relevant to the MAJORITY of users even in this thread let alone majority of users purchasing AC Unity on PC.

This has been my point all along, hitting this level of quality takes an absurd rig.

Give them 1 more year in development, and 1 more year of PC Graphics cards getting better and this game might have actually been more feasible for a lot more people to hit closer to that level of quality.

 

[f1sherman]

When posting those 3 pics, I was making a point about god-rays, lightning and shadows.

Downsampling does make the image better looking, but even if taken at 19x10 those pics would have not lost much, and certainly not in those 3 aspects.

 

[tential]

When posting those 3 pics, I was making a point about god-rays, lightning and shadows.

Downsampling does make the image better looking, but even if taken at 19x10 those pics would have not lost much, and certainly not in those 3 aspects.

Ya I understand that I was just saying in general.
And if that's the case, and downsampling doesn't add that much, what dosen't keysplayr's video look like that?

Because none of the screenshots keysplayr or escrow have posted look anything like those 3 pics and they're at 19x12

 

[RussianSensation]

Nature is easy. You just splash few pixels and here - thats the leaf, here this is bark, this is stone... or something. Nature is beautiful by itself.

OTOH man made objects, shops, buildings, windows, faithful model of 18 century Paris, Notre Dam - that is hard, Dam hard
Not to mention all this tends to pixel crawl like hell.
Faces are hard too, same like everything else that we come in contact and compare on everyday basis.

BTW that's a nice looking Skyrim mod. It's no Unity, but very eye pleasing

I am not denying that architecture is more difficult at times. That doens't mean I am going to give a game a handicap because it tried to do something far beyond the capabilities of today's hardware and ended up with average art assets. It's very very difficult to create real world water simulation on the PC. So if someone decided to make a next gen Wave Race jet ski racing game on the PC, even if it's the best looking game of that genre, it doesn't mean it stacks up graphically overall because we just don't have the graphics power right now to make realistic looking water for the entire jet ski game. So overall, it would be the best looking Jet Ski game but still look crap.

I mean according to your theory then racing games cannot possibly be good looking because it's a lot "easier" to create an amazing looking car than 30 NPCs on screen. Ok, so? Graphics are graphics. Realism is key. If you can't produce 2-5 realistic NPCs, don't bother with 30-100 until the hardware power is there to make 30 realistic NPCs. Otherwise your game will look ugly as hell.

What looks more realistic to you?

This:

or the crappy screenshot Grooverriding quoted?

It's a lot more realistic to have few highly detailed NPCs on screen than hundreds of PS3 looking NPCs. Same with buildings, trees, etc. If you can't produce high quality assets, focus on details, physics, AI, gameplay. The developers of Unity had a good vision but it's impossible to make 300 NPCs look great on the PC in 2014.

Project CARS looks incredible with just 1 car on screen. Why? Because the focus is on the details. Less is MORE.

http://thekoalition.com/images/2014/10/project-cars-wii-u.jpg

Just because you had great ambitions of shading an entire Paris with thousands of people, it doesn't mean at all that you will succeed. The fact that Ubisoft inserted 5000 NPCs means nothing since nearly every one of those is a low polygon object. The end result is like adding 1000 bots into UT2004 and claiming that it looks better than Crysis 3. Realistic graphics don't work that way. If you want to make an amazing looking game like CDPR or Crytek do, you must understand the limits you are working with and optimize accordingly. Ubisoft's team failed to take the graphics power of modern tech into account when trying to implement their idea. Unity is a game that should have been released in 5-7 years and then it would have looked great.