Most impressive PC game graphics (in demo)

[zed]

Saw this http://www.lionhead.com/blog/2014/april/17/dynamic-global-illumination-in-fable-legends/ and the lighting looks brilliantly saturated like imfamous which I cant play since I have no ps4.
Are there any PC demo's with worlds with very impressive graphics (like the 2 I've mentioned) that I can wander(*) around in?

(*) i.e. no racing/platformer etc I want something where I can stop and smell the flowers

 

[homerdog]

That's amazing. Don't know of any games that look quite so good, although I wonder how it looks when not massively supersampled.

 

[zed]

well some of the plants in the 2nd screenshot look pretty bad, So what are the best looking semi-open world games on the PC?

 

[Malo]

A fully-modded Skyrim has no comparison.

 

[zed]

It does look good, heres a fully modded skyrim

you can see the lighting aint nowhere near this

Its lacking the vividness

 

[pjbliverpool]

you can see the lighting aint nowhere near this
Its lacking the vividness

You're reasoning for that statement eludes me. The shot you posted of Infamous was decent at best, there's certainy nothing particularly exciting going on in that particular shot, or anything that looks to me top be clearly better than the Skyrim pic you posted. Or any of these other examples for that matter:

Or this random screenshot from AC4 I took weeks ago for example is much more pleasing to my eyes:

 

[homerdog]

The Skyrim and Fable shots look equally good to my eyes, but the lighting is Fable is technically superior and 100% realtime. Looking forward to the PC version

 

[zed]

there's certainy nothing particularly exciting going on in that particular shot, or anything that looks to me top be clearly better than the Skyrim pic you posted. Or any of these other examples for that matter:

You honestly cant see the difference in quality? You love the blinding light bloom aye

 

[Cyan]

You're reasoning for that statement eludes me. The shot you posted of Infamous was decent at best, there's certainy nothing particularly exciting going on in that particular shot, or anything that looks to me top be clearly better than the Skyrim pic you posted. Or any of these other examples for that matter:

Or this random screenshot from AC4 I took weeks ago for example is much more pleasing to my eyes:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/pjbliverpool/media/AC4BFSP2014-01-2518-00-45-82.png.html

Amazing picture the one you shared. I live in a mountainous area and months ago I shared that one picture on Facebook and mentioned that it was similar to the place where I live -mountainous, grey and rainy-. Thing is... that people thought it was an actual photo of the area where I live, and got some likes and stuff.

It was hilarious. I didn't tell where it was from, but it just goes to show how real life like Skyrim can be.

I've never ever seen those atmospheric effects in a game so accurately recreated. The fog, the mist, the mountains, it just feels so real. Sometimes you wonder how they pulled that off.

 

[Malo]

I've never ever seen those atmospheric effects in a game so accurately recreated. The fog, the mist, the mountains, it just feels so real. Sometimes you wonder how they pulled that off.

There has been years of attention to detail by modders for Skyrim, not to mention some fantastic effects in the original product to expand upon.

 

[pjbliverpool]

You honestly cant see the difference in quality? You love the blinding light bloom aye

I see a big difference in the shots, but no, I don't see why you think one demonstrates better graphics than the other (given these particular shots). As I've said previously, Infamous looks a lot like the PC version of Alan Wake to me (which in itself was a beautiful game). Obviously it exceeds that game in some respects but the notion that this game is somehow head an shoulders above everything that's ever come before completely elludes me. It looks very much like a high quality last gen game with some fancy nxt gen effects tacked on top and great image quality to me.

Here's a shot from Alan Wake PC for example which to me looks just as good as the shot you posted above:

Lots more here:

http://community.remedygames.com/showthread.php?p=143484

 

[Sigfried1977]

A fully-modded Skyrim has no comparison.

Except for when anything actually starts moving. The animations in Skyrim are terrible. It makes for amazing screen-shots, though.

 

[Cyan]

There has been years of attention to detail by modders for Skyrim, not to mention some fantastic effects in the original product to expand upon.

That's where the game shines the most. Actually, the screengrab strongly reminded me of this actual photo which I took where I live during a very rainy October back in 2006 while taking the dogs for a walk -the one in the photo died that year in an unexpected incident, but I don't want to take into that-.

With this real photo in mind, it's easy to see how real the game can look. The place where the photo was taken is a football -soccer- field, so you get the idea how much it rained those days.

 

[AlNom]

Lots more here:

http://community.remedygames.com/showthread.php?p=143484

Really need to be in free-cam mode to appreciate the fog/haze during the day and the general scale of the environment.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I played Alan Wake with everything maxed out and I wouldn't put it anywhere near a properly modded Skyrim for landscapes or anything else.
Even more during gameplay motion, it's a completely different league, really.

It's not that Alan Wake's developers are worse than Skyrim's. It's just that Skyrim has had thousands of very dedicated modders working on literally everything in the game for the past 2.5 years, from lighting, shaders and post-processing filters to textures and geometry.

All in all, a modded Skyrim has had a thousand times more development time than Alan Wake. You just can't do better than that if you're working on a limitless platform like the PC.
It's not even fair to compare the two.

 

[zed]

that people thought it was an actual photo of the area where I live

ppl do that with car racing games on the console as well, thus so ..?

looking at that screenshot I see half is sky, some mountains, a few rocks and thousands of 2d billboarded plants, now billboards look OK (ignoring the shading, which looks crap) until the camera moves and then it falls apart.

Heres a typical pixar shot, this is want I want to see

I dont want to see stuff like this (Ive praised this game often on these forums)

hints its just so flat and dull

btw can we stop with the shots looking into the sun, hint - if you have to choose something thats 'washed' out / darked cause the sun overpowers all else in the shot you're on very shaky ground, its like admiting it looks crap but this is the best I could find

 

[homerdog]

At times when I come across very good looking graphics I'll screen them.

Two Worlds 2

Arma2 (ran at 17fps on my old PC lol on my new one 80+)

Here's one into the sun just for you zed

BTW I'd say that Pixar shot will be close to doable in the next 5 years sans the perfect IQ.

 

[zed]

Homerdog the problem with all those vegetation shots is its all so flat, theyre chiefly using 2d billboards for the vegetation cause its cheaper to do, when you do this the lighting cant possible be realistic

here some of my stuff from nearly 10 years ago
http://www.flipcode.com/archives/02-27-2005_veg.shtml
OK the lightings no good (this is before the days of PC HDR and shaders, GeForce2 MX200 @ ~30fps IIRC) but it feels solid cause nearly each blade of grass or leaf is a seperate polygon, like a pixar film (though they dont always do this) and because each blade is seperate you can animate more realistically unlike the above games, OK this is pretty crappy but gives you an idea of what I mean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHKc8aGho4A

 

[Rodéric]

Works fine for grass but not for bush or anything bigger I'm afraid.
But I perfectly understand your point, since all those are impostors and not geometry, you can "feel" it

There's room for improvement, however additional power usually goes into characters, buildings, vehicles and weapons, rather than vegetation...

 

[homerdog]

Homerdog the problem with all those vegetation shots is its all so flat, theyre chiefly using 2d billboards for the vegetation cause its cheaper to do, when you do this the lighting cant possible be realistic

here some of my stuff from nearly 10 years ago
http://www.flipcode.com/archives/02-27-2005_veg.shtml
OK the lightings no good (this is before the days of PC HDR and shaders, GeForce2 MX200 @ ~30fps IIRC) but it feels solid cause nearly each blade of grass or leaf is a seperate polygon, like a pixar film (though they dont always do this) and because each blade is seperate you can animate more realistically unlike the above games, OK this is pretty crappy but gives you an idea of what I mean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHKc8aGho4A

I agree. Seems we've been stuck with crappy plants for a long time.