When can we expect to see Crysis (2007) level of visuals ?

[Will Robinson]

Every time you post a grammar fairy dies.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

Every time you post a grammar fairy dies.

WoW can we keep the personal antics and opinions at bay or at leased ON TOPIC !

 

[2is]

I hate leased topics!

But I hope Crysis 3 brings some new stuff to the table. This is the first time I've had a SLI/CF capable board so I'm ready to toss in another 680 if necessary.

 

[jvroig]

This post is a general warning against thread derailment.

Gordon Freemen, 2is, Red Hawk, toyota, Will Robinson - cut it out with the BD fight and the personal discussions and jabs. Have a tea party at your respective Facebook walls, don't do it here.

I know some of you don't like a particular poster; if that is the case, then stop engaging him. Otherwise, when you complain he's derailing the thread and getting personal, you become guilty of it as well and it's an ugly mess to clean up. Give me a hand here. I can hand out infractions, but if you guys keep participating in thread derails and drama, you are effectively pushing me against the wall and making my job here harder. Just report the posts and be done with it. Don't let yourself become collateral damage.

That said: get back to the graphics discussions, or get out of the thread. It's that simple.

Also: This is a mod post. Read this, don't reply to this, don't quote this. Doing so just contributes to thread derail and noise. (The proper way to respond to a mod action is through Moderator Discussions sub-forum, not in public). Just get back to the graphics discussions.

Moderator jvroig

 

[Red Hawk]

Playing ME2 today for the first time and it's decent looking for an old Unreal engine 3 game and all plus I loved the first game and I am liking this second one as well so far 4hrs into it and never dropped below 60fps maxed out 1680x1050 I love optimized graphical engines.

Mass Effect 2 is actually pretty bad with regards to graphics. The engine is well optimized, sure, but much of the smooth performance also owes to the textures just being low resolution.

 

[PowerK]

Playing ME2 today for the first time and it's decent looking for an old Unreal engine 3 game and all plus I loved the first game and I am liking this second one as well so far 4hrs into it and never dropped below 60fps maxed out 1680x1050 I love optimized graphical engines.

I haven't played ME franchise after the first one. But I love engines (and games) from Epic Games. Unreal Engine 3 has received so many updates that I'm not sure whether to still call it 3. Hehe..

That being said, the latest game based on Unreal Engine 3 I played was (if my memory serves me correctly) Borderlands. I remember that Unreal Engine 3 being based on deferred rendering, multi-sampling AA did not work. (I guess you can always use post-process AA injector such as FXAA and/or SMAA injectors) Is this still the case with Unreal Engine 3 games in general ?

 

[Gordon Freemen]

Mass Effect 2 is actually pretty bad with regards to graphics. The engine is well optimized, sure, but much of the smooth performance also owes to the textures just being low resolution.

Ya I agree in fact in some of my other postings I kinda ragged on the unreal engine but in ME2 I find the facial animations and detail to be quite good and many people agree that ME2 is a very good looking game. I also think the art direction although somewhat flat and basic is fitting and professionally done for the ME universe.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

I haven't played ME franchise after the first one. But I love engines (and games) from Epic Games. Unreal Engine 3 has received so many updates that I'm not sure whether to still call it 3. Hehe..

That being said, the latest game based on Unreal Engine 3 I played was (if my memory serves me correctly) Borderlands. I remember that Unreal Engine 3 being based on deferred rendering, multi-sampling AA did not work. (I guess you can always use post-process AA injector such as FXAA and/or SMAA injectors) Is this still the case with Unreal Engine 3 games in general ?

I am not sure but on my Nvidia card the AA is still very apparent even @ 16x at some angles in ME2 however when I played through ME1 I did so on CF Radeon HD 4890s and the game was flawless as far as AA goes it was so very crisp & sexy.

 

[Red Hawk]

I haven't played ME franchise after the first one. But I love engines (and games) from Epic Games. Unreal Engine 3 has received so many updates that I'm not sure whether to still call it 3. Hehe..

That being said, the latest game based on Unreal Engine 3 I played was (if my memory serves me correctly) Borderlands. I remember that Unreal Engine 3 being based on deferred rendering, multi-sampling AA did not work. (I guess you can always use post-process AA injector such as FXAA and/or SMAA injectors) Is this still the case with Unreal Engine 3 games in general ?

I think the drivers have to specifically support antialiasing in each Unreal Engine 3 game, but once they do it's possible. At least, MSAA forced through the Catalyst Control Center works in UE3 games like Mass Effect and Alpha Protocol, for me.

The vast majority of Unreal Engine games don't support MSAA natively, true. The only exception I know of is the Batman Arkham series, where the developer worked closely with Nvidia to get MSAA functional. Some UE3 game developers have begun adopting post-process AA. Mass Effect 3 supports FXAA natively, for example.

 

[zubbs1]

I was very impressed with the luminous engine tech demo from E3 (Agni's Philosophy)

Anyone think square/enix will release a luminous engine pc final fantasy title that is not a mmorpg (I have zero desire to play any online multiplayer games of any genre except perhaps a coop campaign mode i.e. borderlands)

I love the single player final fantasy series (all the way back to the nintendo), but have always wanted them to showcase better graphics capable on the pc over consoles.

 

[d3fu5i0n]

I was very impressed with the luminous engine tech demo from E3 (Agni's Philosophy)

Anyone think square/enix will release a luminous engine pc final fantasy title that is not a mmorpg (I have zero desire to play any online multiplayer games of any genre except perhaps a coop campaign mode i.e. borderlands)

I love the single player final fantasy series (all the way back to the nintendo), but have always wanted them to showcase better graphics capable on the pc over consoles.

+1. My thoughts exactly.

 

[PowerK]

Gordon Freemen,

You're right. I played around with Ubersampling on vs off.

The difference is just not easily noticeable at 2560x1600.

During gameplay, I could tell whether it's on or off by frame rate counter, not by image quality.
For this, I had to disable AfterBurner framerate limiter. Otherwise, I couldn't tell the difference as framerate would be always locked at 60fps.

With off, fps usually hovers around 150~160. With Ubersampling on, it hovers around 70~80 with occasional drop below 60 (into 50s).

These are in lossless PNG. Files sizes are about 7~8MB each.

#1 Ubersampling OFF
http://i.minus.com/i5IB438Ci4idv.png

#1 Ubersampling ON
http://i.minus.com/i0Hj5uoPe5caW.png

#2 Ubersampling OFF
http://i.minus.com/iEyhpDQA4MqF2.png

#2 Ubersampling ON
http://i.minus.com/iGi9bNW4Ol9mW.png

#3 Ubersampling OFF
http://i.minus.com/iHWZewaeTJvE2.png

#3 Ubersampling ON
http://i.minus.com/iGDJLvrPFyE5P.png

While we're at it, I tried some AA comparisons with Crysis today.

No AA (This is actually with FXAA enabled in NVCP. But I could not capture a screenshot with FXAA in effect).
http://i.minus.com/ibiXNJvhOEn4FQ.png

4xMSAA
http://i.minus.com/iForQUdJ6Mycr.png

4xMSAA + 4xTrSSAA
http://i.minus.com/ibbIw5GNUK92iV.png

2xMSAA + 2xSGSSAA
http://i.minus.com/ibuTqhjdrFyrjK.png

4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA
http://i.minus.com/ibdJoipcADQbWR.png

My findings from above.
1. Dunno how to capture a screenshot with FXAA in effect.
2. Unlike TrSSAA, SGSSAA is applied to full scene. Hence, SGSSAA really complements MSAA.
3. Just impossible to see the difference between [2xMSAA + 2xSGSSAA] and [4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA] while gaming at 2560x1600 resolution. I had to magnify screenshots to tell the difference.

 

[cmdrdredd]

since FXAA happens in the shaders, there is a technical reason that I cannot explain that prevents it showing in screenshots in the usual way (fraps?).

 

[PowerK]

Revisited GTA4 (1.0.4.0) this weekend.
Toying & tweaking around with GTA4 and ENB.

I've tried iCEnhancer 1.2, 1.25, 1.35 and the latest 2.1 I think the author of iCEnahncer doesn't want to tweak GTA4 + ENB anymore. It's obvious that visual quality is going backward since 1.25 (2.1 being the worst, IMO).

Out of many ENB series mod I've tried, I like iCEnhancer 1.25 (with userays=false) and L3EVO (2012 NY) v1.2 NVidia. These two are the best quality ENBs, IMO.

With SSAA forced + everything maxed + L3EVO (or iCEnhancer) at 2560x1600, the graphics fidelity is stunning. What can I say.. I'm a graphic whore.

For multi-GPU/SLI users, nVIDIA's original SLI compatibility bits for GTA4 is "0x03400405". However, new SLI bits "0x42500045" seems to improve SLI scaling nicely. I'm seeing improved GPU utilization across all 4 GPUs.

 

[PowerK]

Re-visited DOOM 3 recently. I remember playing this very game when it was released in summer 2004 with my system back then (AMD FX-55 CPU with ATi Radeon X800XT PE).

This time with Sikkmod v1.2 with Wulfen v2.0 + monoxead texture pack. And I love visual quality.

Due to these high resolution textures (Wulfen v2.0 and monoxead), transparency SSAA is a must, IMO. Since Nvidia does not support full scene SGSSAA for OpenGL API, I have no choice but to opt for TrSSAA. (These high resolution textures even introduce moire noise without TrSSAA. TrSSAA cleans them up nicely.)

TrSSAA with "image_lodbias" (Doom3 cvar) at "-0.5" or "-1.0" produces smooth and noise free image quality resulting in improved definition.
On my Dell U3011 at 2560x1600, sometimes it looks like a moving painting.

A few screenshots.

 

[jimhsu]

Wow, this thread is pretty old.

About skyrim: the default color palette for the game is far too limited (way too much green/blue). ENB fixes up a lot.

Samples from ENB/custom DOF/SweetFX setup (with More Grasses and some other stuff):

For custom content (2nd shot), I like to finish stuff up in 4k x 4k res ... I have the texture memory, so why not.

 

[PowerK]

jimhsu, that looks amazing. :thumbsup:

 

[jimhsu]

And that's on a 6950. (Granted I get pretty low frame rates, on the order of 25. But many of these settings are toggle-able).

If the 8950/70 come at a decent price (or the 780 -- I wish), I'll upgrade to that. But not now.

 

[brandon888]

i think both Crysis and BF3 are on same level .... both look great and have some cons and pros ..... but problem is .... after crysis 1 there is no big leap ! Yes crysis 2 with DX 11 looks better but it's minor improvements ... crysis 3 looks also good but same engine as crysis 2 so agan there will be minor difference ..... we need something new and wonderful !

 

[Smartazz]

Crysis 2 with the Maldo HD mod and Far Cry 3 look better than Crysis 1. Battlefield 3 looks on par with Crysis, but runs better.

 

[Fx1]

Bring on Crysis 3

 

[PowerK]

Crysis 2 with the Maldo HD mod and Far Cry 3 look better than Crysis 1. Battlefield 3 looks on par with Crysis, but runs better.

Heh, actually, Far Cry 3 made me appreciate Crysis (2007) even more.

 

[Attic]

I hate leased topics!

But I hope Crysis 3 brings some new stuff to the table. This is the first time I've had a SLI/CF capable board so I'm ready to toss in another 680 if necessary.

/drool

2014 is the year i'm expecting to be wowed again at graphics. Witcher the last one that really floored me. Though I loved Dishonered art direction and am looking forward to BioShock Infinite. Art Direction > Graphics IMO

 

[StrangerGuy]

I'm a lot more concerned with mediocre gfx becoming less and less efficient in utilizing existing hardware than whether things once again start pushing the gfx envelope *cough* SWTOR and D3 *cough*

 

[MrK6]

Crysis was certainly a different kind of game. I went back and played it a few months ago and it still looks great. Not as amazing as it did at the time of course, but considering its age it's incredibly impressive. I think what stands out to me is the detail in the game, not just the textures and models, but also the little things like vegetation that reacts to the environment or toads hopping around. Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 both look good to me, but they're clearly a level below. Witcher 2 is probably the only game that wow'ed me graphically since Crysis. I'm having a lot of fun with Skyrim mods atm, although because of their nature the graphical improvement and fidelity can be spotty. Still, it has its moments: