Far Cry 2 vs Far Cry 5 shameful physics, a lone exception or the trend this generation?

Most of the differences are creative or gameplay differences, there are some things GTA 4 definitely does better, and others GTA 5 definitely does better. All in all the situation is not the same as Far Cry 2 vs Far Cry 5 or Dead Rising 1 vs Dead Rising 4, those games have glaring and shocking differences in the underlying fundemebtal physics simulation itself.

I agree, my point was only about the GTA video.
 
Generally the i5 is serveral orders of magnitude faster than the Jaguars.
Just a quick reality check - you're saying the i5 runs in the region of one thousand times faster than the Jaguars? Taking several to mean 'three or more'. Or at the least, taking several to mean 'more than one', you're saying the i5 still runs 100x faster than the Jaguars?
 
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is not the RX480 more comparable with the ps4pro GPU ? In this case you have to look at the 2560x1440 fps
In that case it's still 64fps, and running at higher visual setttings which are probably more taxing on the CPU as well.

Just a quick reality check - you're saying the i5 runs in the region of one thousand times faster than the Jaguars? Taking several to mean 'three or more'. Or at the least, taking several to mean 'more than one', you're saying the i5 still runs 100x faster than the Jaguars?
Maybe I used the wrong metaphor. I meant several times (3 or more).
 
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Honestly, I don't think it's a CPU limitation, not exclusively anyway. For better or worse, today's console CPU are much more powerful than on older consoles, even as rubbish as they are..

You can definitely do good physics on a weak CPU. Look at Breath of the Wild on Switch. :yep2: When you first play it surprised you constantly by things reacting how you would expect. Then every game you play after disappointed because things don't react how they would in BoTW. :no:
 
Maybe I used the wrong metaphor. I meant several times.
Okay. 'Order of magnitude' isn't a metaphor but a measure, normally used approximately, of a power of ten. Each order of magnitude more (power) is 10x more (powerful).

Edit: It's probably used sloppily as an intensifier in modern language, in the same way 'literally' has become widespread and lost its literal meaning, so one may be hearing "orders of magnitude" misused around and equating it to 'quite a bit'.
 
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You can definitely do good physics on a weak CPU. Look at Breath of the Wild on Switch.
Draw distance and object count play a key here, BoTW has an open world that is a little light on details, draw distance is smaller (compared to FC5 for example). This should ease the load on the CPU allowing it to do solid physics. Though that doesn't prevent weaker CPUs from doing more physics, look at the Dead Rising 1 video, it obviously did more with that old CPU in the original Xbox.
Order of magnitude' isn't a metaphor but a measure, normally used approximately, of a power of ten. Each order of magnitude more (power) is 10x more (powerful).
Thanks, I learned something new today. English isn't my first language.

It's probably used sloppily as an intensifier in modern language, in the same way 'literally' has become widespread and lots its literal meaning, so one may be hearing "orders of magnitude" misused around and equating it to 'quite a bit'.
Yeah. I guess it was printed on the back of my mind with it's metaphorical meaning not the actual literal one, saw it used like that a couple of times.
 
In my opinion, physics is generally more impressive in modern games. The difirenciating factor is the scope.

Far Cry 2 beats some mordern games because its physics is much more consistent throughout the game.

For instance, I don't remember seeing explosions with as many debris and particles in last gen games.

 
For reasons very little to do with the comparison focus.
Or not. Far Cry 2 had lots of weird design decisions. Pretty tree and brush fires are development effort that could have gone elsewhere in their misguided game.

It reminds me of how Watch Dogs supposedly simulates Chicago winds. Okie dokey. What a super useful feature that was for that mess of a game.
 
I think what it comes down to is that Graphical effects are far more important in marketing a game than Physics effects. It's also more easily noticed in screenshots which are all the rage when comparing X game to Y game.

That's not the only reason, but I think it's a relatively large one. For example, in marketing which looks better in a still shot? A scene with lots of NPCs and advanced graphical effects that may use CPU time, or a scene with sparse NPCs or reduced graphical complexity but with more CPU time devoted to physics?

This is exacerbated when you have game examinations like DF or VGtech which focus almost exclusively on graphics.

IE - there's not a lot of marketing potential in having robust and impressive physics, unless it's REALLY impressive or the core gameplay loop revolves around it. And even then it's difficult to showcase in still shots, which again is how most games are compared.

You have the same problem with audio in games, AI in games, etc.

Regards,
SB
 
There's no denying that video games sell mostly based on how pretty they appear. The imagination fills in how it might be fun to play in the world those visuals display.

Sandbox physics are appealing too. At this point if there's some thing missing there I'm sure it's a design decision. It's all been done before. We're on iteration 10000000 of these games now.

Lets think back to Trespasser Jurassic Park which had lots of physics simulations running on Pentium MMX.
 
Part of it is cultural. Far Cry 2 is from that time early on ps360 gen where "gritty realism" wad all the rage. People remember thr piss filter well, but there was more to it: moody atmosphere, perpetual hdlf overcast sunsets everywhere, over realistic violence, and dynamic physics. Half Life 2 had been released recently putting physics on the radar for everyone. FC1 sold people on the more versatyle big engines such as Crytek's. And doom sold people on highly dynamic lighting. All trends seemed to point to a future highly simulated games. Program real life and the game builds itself, seemed to be the idea. Cell was tounted as the next big thing. The 360 didn't have a weak cpu either. There was a strong focus on physics back then, which now has lost some of the hype. Devs were experimenting a lot back than. And many of those experimental games floped. Remember the Splinte Cell convicion prototype that was canned? Or the Alone in the Dark Reboot? And that Euphoria driven Indiana Jones game that never saw the light of day? FC2 was not very succesful either. Even GTAIV was criticized for loosing some of the fun in its apriach to a more down to earth world. Not only did the hype on physics eventually die off, but devs got tired of trying to make them work as expected and fail so often. More directed, pragmatic solutions became popular again.
GTAV, FC3/4/5 and a couple other recent games are part of another new trend. One that is exactly the reaction to the "gritty realism" one. Games that are not trying to be realistic, but rather like a Hollywood Action Blockbuster. Like HL2 FC1 and Doom helped pave the way to that style back then, Uncharted and COD did it for this one. It's all about fun. The industry settled to more tried and true production techniches to try and restore some sanity into the extremely risky endeavor that is AAA game creation, which did bankrupt so many studios and publishers on the early ps360 days...
Sistemic worlds are not entirely dead though. But they are not coming so much on the form of procedural physics and animation, but through other elements of game design. Games are more and more open, levels more broad and experimentation-inviting. Missions have become less directed. All big titles have their share of RPG elements, and even Japanese studios who seemed to be behind the curve on this push for simulation-based open world sandbox games caught up with MGSV, FFXV and Zelda BoTW.
As culture is typically cyclical, my bet is PS5 will see a resurgence of this interest in real time physics. The stars seem to be aligning for that on the hardware side...
 
I don't watch crowbcats videos anymore. This channel is only meant to give the impression that developers become lazy etc. There are no nuances or objectivity. No value is placed on deeper discussions. Games are only shown in a negative light on one side and nothing is recognised where things have been improved. This would not fit into the profitable gamer outrage segment which currently seems to be very popular.

Of course Far Cry 2 has more physics because it was in competition with Crysis. Today there is almost no competition in this area. The only game that convinces me here is The Division where every object reacts credibly.

GTAV, FC3/4/5 and a couple other recent games are part of another new trend. One that is exactly the reaction to the "gritty realism" one. Games that are not trying to be realistic, but rather like a Hollywood Action Blockbuster.
While Far Cry 2 was serious Far Cry 3 etc. are aimed to have a trashy B-movie style
 
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Crowbcat is definetively a very cynical channel. But a very well put together one. It doesn't provide anything like a fair or balanced depiction of reality, but still an empirical slice of it, if only very selective and biased.
It can still be informative if you go into it knowing its cynical spin.
 
For better or worse, today's console CPU are much more powerful than on older consoles
the Cell CPU was more powerful than the PS4 CPU

Cell 230.4 GFLOPS
PS4 102.4 GFLOPS

not too sure about this info, I knew cell was faster but not ~2:1 I thought only ~10% or so
 
the Cell CPU was more powerful than the PS4 CPU

Cell 230.4 GFLOPS
PS4 102.4 GFLOPS

not too sure about this info, I knew cell was faster but not ~2:1 I thought only ~10% or so
Cell's theoretical performance is really high, and in some cases it really did shine. But most of the time, not so much. Even the 102 GFLOPs for PS4 is unrealistic I think. IIRC Jaguar CPUs best float performace comes from the AVX unit. 8 instructions per core per clock cycle, or maybe 16 per module per clock. Either way the math works. 8 instructions * 8 croes * 1.6GHz is 102.4 GFLOPs. I don't know enough about how AVX works but I do understand that it's SIMD and that it's unrealistic to believe that you can keep those vector units fed with enough work to consistently get 8 instructions out of them. So in that case, just like Cell I guess, since keeping those SPEs busy was also the issue getting close to theoretical max performance out of it.
 
maybe now someone runned a CPU performance test on Jaguars ?!? It would be interesting. Only to say PC cpu have less latencies because of different RAM type used...
So its anyway Apple to Oranges....
 
Of course not, that Core i5 is pushing far more fps than the Jaguars, that's why it's utilization is being pushed to the max. The jaguars are only pushing 30fps, the i5 is pushing 90fps on the RX 480. Generally the i5 is serveral orders of magnitude faster than the Jaguars.

I am starting to think it's truly the Jaguars that are holding things back, current games do a lot of GPU Compute to compensate for their lackluster performance, and several developers spoke to Digital Foundry stating that simulation complexity had to be scaled back because of the Jaguars.
If Jaguar is the bottleneck there is the option of using GPGPU for physics and GCN is designed to easily mix graphics and compute work. That possibly takes away too many precious resources from the graphics performance though. I'd honestly rather have the better physics simulation and downgraded visuals.
 
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I for one was truly greatful R* paired that annoying Euphoria stuff way the hell back in GTA5. Sure, it looked pretty neat (not always, though), but I'm assuming the constant need for running physics calculations in the background didn't exactly help with the incredibly sluggish controls the game was suffering from. Felt like there was a second's worth of delay between pushing a button and seeing any sort of change on the screen. Passing through a door should never be that hard to pull off.

If you want your phyisics driven world, play Breath of the Wild. Has everything FC2 had plus tons more, and Nintendo actually figured out how to make that stuff fun as well.
 
IIRC, wasn't Intel also rather heavily backing Far Cry 2 to promote the Core 2 Extreme? That may have also been a factor in how much in the way of resources was put into physics.
 
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