[Reverend]

What are your complaints about Doom3's graphics?

Please stay on topic (i.e. just your complaints about the game's graphics and nothing else).

Thank you.

[YeuEmMaiMai]

they are too dark. On a 1800xl the game runs fine but I don't like being in the dark all of the time.........

[BRiT]

Low Polygon Jaggies.

[IgnorancePersonified]

no ambient light. Something well lit will be right next to something completely and utterly dark.
Bit too "industrial" -I haven't seen a Jungle scene or simialr created so am no expert but the look is ... oily.

[wireframe]

First off, I have been playing Resurrection of Evil over and over recently and I am astonished by the fact that I did not immediately see what a great game this is. That includes great looking. Part of this, through self analysis, is due to me coming to the realization that every fault I saw before has a good reason. I can therefore forgive it and now realize that if all those nit-picks I had were corrected, we'd be looking at the most amazing and photorealistic game ever, by far. Now, onto the the parts I find fault with.

1. The precision/definition of lighting is not good enough.

Although Doom 3 uses a rather narrow band of light intensity, it seems to do so with very little attention to the subtle nature of light. The drop-offs in the dark nooks and crannies are just to sharp. You often get caught thinking you are staring into a dark endless void when it is actually an unlit wall almost touching your nose. This is bad. To get the right look you need better light attenuation and reflections. Pitch black only exists in your mind.

2. Some use of bump mapping and normal mapping is too aggressive.

It's nice that Doom 3 has all these bump maps and turning them off makes you quickly realize how sterile the game looks without them. However, some cases are so extreme that they look cartoonish and cell-shaded. Certain machinery are simple boxes with extreme bump mapping and it just looks bad. It would look really nice with proper geometry.

3. Aliasing with bump maps.

Perhaps it could have been included with the above, but I think it deserves its own bullet. While some detail bump maps look ok and do not suffer from the problem above, they do introduce aliasing. This horrible jagged macroblock looking framing is not very pleasant and really works against the otherwise tangible depth of Doom 3.

4. Non-attenuated flashlight and some cheated shadows

The flashlight is a necessary part of the game. Some (most?) people hate how they cannot have this handy tool whipped out alongside their trusty shotgun, but I think this works well and adds to the fear factor of the game. What I don't like is the "painted on" look of the flashlight itself. An attenuated light would have looked so good and if anyone was going to do it, I thought iD would be the first (Note that FEAR does this better, but the flashlight is still not attenuated correctly).

When using the flashlight you want to feel you are interacting with this game that places so much emphasis on light and dark. It is somewhat disappointing then that if you shine the flashlight on some objects, notably the portable lights/tripods found through the game, you get a clunky and unnatural square shadow (from the light fixtures themselve) projected into thin air. I think it would have been very very cool if these shadows would have been been given a longer projection distance so they could "crawl" over the map in the distance (basically, a stronger flashlight with proper attenuation and long cast shadows).

5. Some areas really deserved higher resolution textures.

While I think the whole game would benefit from higher resolution textures - what game wouldn't ? - there are some of them that draw your eye enough or are shown up close enough to warrant better definition. Prime examples are the demon warping marks (orange runic circles) and the excavated hieroglyphics/cunieform/engravings. These things have a tendency to look like CBM-64 level graphics in the middle of what otherwise has a very organic feel.

6. Weapon effects needed a new-gen look.

It was somewhat disappointing that the weapons still have invisible bullets for the most part. The warping explosions of grenades and the rocket launcher were nice, but it would have been very cool with tracer like effects and ricochets from the chaingun (a la 3DMark 05 Return to Proxycon...now that was a GUN! heh).

Note that these are still nit-picks for the most part. I hold iD in the highest regard and I expect them to deliver something new (looking, at least). There is no current game that does it all right and we must of course consider, if not attribute this to, the cost of implementation. As a concluding remark I will say that all the talk of F.E.A.R.'s graphics, having played it myself and not being very impressed, has made me realize just how good looking Doom 3 (ROE) is. As I said in the beginning, now that I have calmed down and just learned to love the bomb...the Doom, I now see the reason why it is not perfect and iD cannot be blamed. Such a game would only be slightly playable on the highest performance graphics cards. Still, it would have been nice if they had left some room to grow in to.

BTW, Tertsi has done some excellent work on modifying Doom 3/ROE & Quake 4 to use a bit more power of the more powerful cards, along with some optimizations for those cards (Nvidia). It may not be everyone's cup of tea - there may be some shiny surfaces in there - but I think many will appreciate his work and what it does to the look of the game. Learn more and grab 3mood or Quak4 here: http://www.skenegroup.net/fornvidiots/

(The NVNews forum may be the best place to get more information abou these tools, but now that Tertsi is a member here maybe he will tread through the same ground and answer our questions here. )

[_xxx_]

Low polycounts and low-res texturing would be the two biggest flaws. Level design is also awful, but I dunno if you count that into gfx category.

[phenix]

60fps cap.

I used to game at 1600X1200 75Hz vsync on or at 1280X960 85Hz. Most of the time this means 75/85fps with my X800XT PE. When I play Doom3 I had to turn vsync off (which I like a lot) to maintain 60 fps at 1600x1200. It was not a big problem since the game was so dark the tearing was not that disturbing.

I think 60fps cap is agood idea for LCD displays but non capped games is still better for old CRT displays. The game at should have given the freedom of choosing the fpscap on/off option. Or it already had?

[london-boy]

Wow, people still care enough for Doom3 to actually keep complaining about it?

Personally, i loved the look of the game. Well, the first couple of hours at least, before i uninstalled it.
They could have made it more varied.

[Geo]

I didn't think there was anything wrong with the game that deleting about 1/2 of the first 1/2 levels (and combining the best bits of those levels to the remaining ones) wouldn't cure. The 2nd 1/2 was the kind o' fun I associate with Id shooters.

As for graphics, I'd sign up to most of wireframes comments on light. If there's any light at all in the room, I should not be staring at a wall a few inches away and think there is infinite blackness forever in front of me.

[Cartoon Corpse]

too dark, and there didn't seem to be a wide variety of 'looks'. not very good outdoors either.

[digitalwanderer]

Flashlight or gun was probably my biggest bitch with the graphics. I know it might be more of a gameplay issue, but since I couldn't see when I was shooting I count it under graphics.

[Geo]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

Flashlight or gun was probably my biggest bitch with the graphics. I know it might be more of a gameplay issue, but since I couldn't see when I was shooting I count it under graphics.

I know this is OT, but I don't care. That killed my "suspension of disbelief" so bad it isn't funny. There is not a Marine in the world who wouldn't have attached his flashlight to the barrel of his gun in the first five minutes --even if he had to take off his underwear to do it.

[Crusher]

I didn't have a problem with the darkness... after I turned the brightness setting up a couple of notches. Unfortunately I didn't break down and do that until about halfway through Hell when it just became necessary to be able to move.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by geo

I know this is OT, but I don't care. That killed my "suspension of disbelief" so bad it isn't funny. There is not a Marine in the world who wouldn't have attached his flashlight to the barrel of his gun in the first five minutes --even if he had to take off his underwear to do it.

Yeah, that happened to me too. It drove me nuts for at least 20 minutes or so, then I stopped the game and downloaded the flashlight mod.

On a sidenote, I laughed out loud IRL when I turned on the flashlight in Quake4 and the trooper turned the light on his gun on....I guess they figured out it was a bad decision too.

[wireframe]

Another way of looking at it, for me, is to say what Doom 3 should have to be "perfect":

1. HDR - this game would be perfect to show the non-bloom aspects of HDR. It would be a perfect showcase of how HDR can preserve definition when something is in relative darkness and then brightly lit (flashlight for example, but I'd rather see the muzzle flash and ricochets of the chaingun brighten up the room ).

2. Attenuated light (fix that painted on flashlight. Make it a real attenuated light source)

3. Higher resolution bump maps or other solution.

I want that badly now. This would look so good. Can't wait for Doom 4 (or will it be Yet Another Return to Castle Wolfenstein ?)

PS. I think FarCry is still the best looking first person shooter, followed by Doom 3 ROE (haven't gotten Quake 4 yet).

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Too dark and too samey. You never felt like you were progressiing because almost everything looked like a dark lab level.

[Diplo]

Mine only complaint regarding graphics on a technical level (in relation to what is currently achievable) would be the low-resolution textures (though I presume this would be to accomdate all the normal maps into video memory). Generally every else is well done, on a technical level, and it runs fast. People can knock it aesthetically but it's still one of the best engines around.

[Randell]

low rez textures on walls, consoles etc. was my main beef. I expected it to be dark, I expected the good looking bump-maps on low-poly models. I didn't expect some really poor textures in places.

[Chalnoth]

My biggest problem with the game was the monster closets. It'd be cool if the monsters were continually coming from around corners, air ducts, ripping their way through walls. But closets? Come on...

[Albuquerque]

I have to agree with the previous statements around low-res textures and low dynamic range on the lighting. The low-res textures really hit me hard; the game looks spectacular from a distance, but many times I caught myself cursing the bad texture detail.

As for the lighting issues, I didn't even think of it in terms of dynamic range until Wireframe mentioned it, but I believe he's exactly right: this game represents the perfect art direction to truly show off what HDR (and not just the overhyped overblown overused light blooms) can bring to the table. Walking around in complete blackness was frankly irritating; a dimly lit hallway can still hold the "spooky evil" feeling without treating you like a blind idiot.

Most of the rest of my gripes would center around some decisions on level design and some qualms on the model mesh LOD (pointy heads to be specific).

[MasterBaiter]

Low rez textures, and low poly count on models.

[_xxx_]

While we're at it, does anyone know of some high-res textures mod?

[linthat22]

Too dark for me. I didn't get passed the first mission, had to uninstall it.

[Reverend]

Thanks to those that didn't stray from my request to stick to what I want to read.

Looks like the main complaints are that the game is too black (not "too dark", but too black! ) and the low rez textures. I think the first is a design choice (id probably just wanted the game to be really scary, and not be realistic when it comes to lighting) while the second is a performance choice (which John seems to have found a solution for his current WIP engine).

The reason I asked is because I couldn't decide if I preferred Doom3's or HL2's (especially Lost Coast's high-rez -- photorealistic? -- textures that are affected by the HDR) graphics. Both games have graphics elements that can be described as "realistic enough" although I find it hard to really pick out such elements individually because both games have such specific "graphics goals". I can bet, however, that if I asked John what elements of Doom3 he would change graphics-wise, he'd say "texture resolution, if current conditions permit it" instead of the game's blackness.

[Skrying]

To dark and the figures look like clay models (sorry if that doesnt fall under graphics).