Graphical Comparisons: Don't go Chasing Waterfalls or Throwing Rocks at Cars *bifurcation*

[ultragpu]

Space_Nut aka. higherARC ain't gonna change his mind anyway, his history on Era proceeds him. I think we've exhausted all comparisons and explanations at this point about rocks and it's up to him to whether accept it or not.
Anyway I'm not a rock's person more of a foliage-phile if you will. Sorry BRiT we're not diving into customized horns just yet. For currently released open world game I think Horizon ZD still holds the crown for best looking/technically impressive foliage.
The density, shading, textures, poly count and variety are second to none.

Something like Forza Horizon just can't stack up, the lawn seems really mowed in comparison with low res trees and flat shading.

 

[Clukos]

Enough about mostly stationary rocks... That is so last gen.

The modes of transportation in HZD are far less customizable than FH4. Customized horns is where its all at.

Customized horn in a robo-dino is where it's at

 

[BRiT]

Surely there's a vast difference between what is shown because of how quickly the scene can change in FH4 while it can't in HZD, right? Could the HZD engine support travel modes in excess of 240 MPH?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I've wandered into some weird thread full of rock and wood appreciation society members..

Surely there's a vast difference between what is shown because of how quickly the scene can change in FH4 while it can't in HZD, right? Could the HZD engine support travel modes in excess of 240 MPH?

The engine probably could, the I/O? Not so much. Isn't this always going to be a dilemma for level designers and graphics engineers? Cars go fast but cars can also be stationery and go very slowly. Aloy can move quite quickly on zip-lines.

 

[bgroovy]

Surely there's a vast difference between what is shown because of how quickly the scene can change in FH4 while it can't in HZD, right? Could the HZD engine support travel modes in excess of 240 MPH?

Obviously, they've made choices based on that fact in making each respective game. Only higherARC seems incapable of acknowledging that fact.

 

[JPT]

Surely there's a vast difference between what is shown because of how quickly the scene can change in FH4 while it can't in HZD, right? Could the HZD engine support travel modes in excess of 240 MPH?

I am so looking forward to dinorobot pod racing in HZD2...

 

[Karamazov]

we could talk about the sky too ! Volumetric cloud tech has become pretty common in openword games, but how much ressources does that take ?
and is it worth the cost ?
It can look stunning in timelapses, but does it really matter in gameplay ? FH4 uses some mapped "videos" of skies that blend together, the effect breaks appart a bit during timelapses, but it's more than enough for gameplay.
to me the big advantages of volumetric clouds are the light going through, with light shafts and accurante shadows accross the landscape.

 

[ultragpu]

Volumetric cloud definitely takes one of my top pick in an open world game. The world really feels more tangible, has more depth and alive when rendered. Yes, accurate shadows casting over the land and players, light beaming through, correctly occluding high altitude mountains, hills and buildings. Thunderstorm would look vastly better with more weight and 3d looking cloud deformation. This is why Driveclub and HZD give you that extra 3d feel that's impossible to recreate with 2d sky boxes like in The Witcher 3 or Forza Horizon games.

 

[vipa899]

Really gotta play HZD just for the graphics/exploring, give a damn about the story

 

[Recop]

Surely there's a vast difference between what is shown because of how quickly the scene can change in FH4 while it can't in HZD, right? Could the HZD engine support travel modes in excess of 240 MPH?

Obviously each game has its technical challenge, but i would say that overall racing games are less complex games at equal resolution. By comparison, Sea of Thieves runs at 900p on XB1 and is a third person game. Gears of War 4 is a very linear game and still failed to hit constant 1080p on XB1. Also, some of the very rare games that are able to run at 1080p/60fps this gen are racing games.

It can look stunning in timelapses, but does it really matter in gameplay ? FH4 uses some mapped "videos" of skies that blend together, the effect breaks appart a bit during timelapses, but it's more than enough for gameplay.

Yeah, you tend to see the illusion in timelapses only because those videos are accelerated. In real gameplay, it's really difficult to see the trick.

The clouds are a bit too static for my tastes in HZD though. Driveclub doesn't have the same issue.

 

[ultragpu]

You can speed up the timelaps during gameplay in DC thus having the cloud deform or move faster no?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Obviously each game has its technical challenge, but i would say that overall racing games are less complex games at equal resolution. By comparison, Sea of Thieves runs at 900p on XB1 and is a third person game. Gears of War 4 is a very linear game and still failed to hit constant 1080p on XB1. Also, some of the very rare games that are able to run at 1080p/60fps this gen are racing games.

That's not at all logical. Racing games are third-person games, just replacing the person avatar with a car, and the reason racing games 'can' run at 60 fps is because the devs choose to hit 60 fps because it's needed for the genre. It's not a case of being a racing game enables 60 fps because you're doing less. Every game, ever, is designed within the constraints the devs elect. If they choose 60 fps, they'll scale rendering to enable that.

If FH4 is managing to get as much detail and quality as other games at higher resolutions or framerates, it can't be discounted that the devs have just managed to engineer better solutions. Not using a generic middleware (Unreal Engine used for both your examples, SoT and GoW4) certainly helps with that.

 

[higherARC]

Space_Nut aka. higherARC ain't gonna change his mind anyway, his history on Era proceeds him. I think we've exhausted all comparisons and explanations at this point about rocks and it's up to him to whether accept it or not.
Anyway I'm not a rock's person more of a foliage-phile if you will. Sorry BRiT we're not diving into customized horns just yet. For currently released open world game I think Horizon ZD still holds the crown for best looking/technically impressive foliage.
The density, shading, textures, poly count and variety are second to none.

Something like Forza Horizon just can't stack up, the lawn seems really mowed in comparison with low res trees and flat shading.

Dude it's easy to see your agenda here for sony. There's no need to try to reason with you. And again your shots of FH4 are of fall. Like why? That's not the season to show foliage. Clearly a bad choice and I'm sure purposely chosen

we could talk about the sky too ! Volumetric cloud tech has become pretty common in openword games, but how much ressources does that take ?
and is it worth the cost ?
It can look stunning in timelapses, but does it really matter in gameplay ? FH4 uses some mapped "videos" of skies that blend together, the effect breaks appart a bit during timelapses, but it's more than enough for gameplay.
to me the big advantages of volumetric clouds are the light going through, with light shafts and accurante shadows accross the landscape.

Sky is a thing in hzd that is cool but can look out of place at times in certain light conditions it looks low res. FH4's solution isn't a simple effect. They've taken extremely high res cameras and also taken information of lighting at the same time. Then the devs had to create the tech to implement the information to convert into a skybox and the lighting to match. You just don't copy and paste doesnt work like that. Light bleeds through clouds and form shading coverage on the ground from each cloud.

But since we're going off rocks how about water? FH4 uses sea of theives water tech that accurately creates waves and foams up too. Then the waves crash on shore realistically running up the beach. When cars and wildlife run through water wakes are created. Hzd? water is as basic as a thin layer of transparancie that doesn't react at all and reflections don't even line up with environment like it's a simple cube map

 

[higherARC]

Water
FH4

hzd

 

[Recop]

That's not at all logical. Racing games are third-person games, just replacing the person avatar with a car, and the reason racing games 'can' run at 60 fps is because the devs choose to hit 60 fps because it's needed for the genre.

No, they don't. IA, animations, interactions, scripts, action scenes, all of these tend to be more complex in third person games. See also this post from Steve Orino : https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...at-cars-bifurcation.60921/page-2#post-2045394

Playground are definitely among the best developer in the market, but i doubt they are the only developers that can achieve on XB1 what every other developers failed to do : a very good looking game running at 1080p and moreover open world.

FH2 was already running at 1080p on XB1. At the same time, Sunset Overdrive was stuck at 900p and Insomniac doesn't use a middleware ...

There are type of games that are intrinsically less demanding : fighting games, racing games, sport games, etc.

But since we're going off rocks how about water? FH4 uses sea of theives water tech that accurately creates waves and foams up too. Then the waves crash on shore realistically running up the beach. When cars and wildlife run through water wakes are created. Hzd? water is as basic as a thin layer of transparancie that doesn't react at all and reflections don't even line up with environment like it's a simple cube map

Yeah, the water looks much better in FH4. But your gif isn't completely accurate since the water has been patched in HZD. It looks a tiny bit better now.

But you are comparing sea vs lake... i'm certain that the lakes in FH4 look less complex than the sea too.

 

[higherARC]

No, they don't. IA, animations, interactions, scripts, action scenes, all of these tend to be more complex in third person games. See also this post from Steve Orino : https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...at-cars-bifurcation.60921/page-2#post-2045394

Playground are definitely among the best developer in the market, but i doubt they are the only developers that can achieve on XB1 what every other developers failed to do : a very good looking game running at 1080p and moreover open world.

FH2 was already running at 1080p on XB1. At the same time, Sunset Overdrive was stuck at 900p and Insomniac doesn't use a middleware ...

There are type of games that are intrinsically less demanding : fighting games, racing games, sport games, etc.

Steve just said for visuals racers are front and center because they can push more visually. Either you put power into visuals or other gameplay mechanics. hzd isn't that interacted at all actually. 99% of foliage don't react all all to alloys movements, water same way, and there's not much AI around the world which seems lifeless most of the time. I'm sure you'll see what a living world looks like with rdr2

No, they don't. IA, animations, interactions, scripts, action scenes, all of these tend to be more complex in third person games. See also this post from Steve Orino : https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...at-cars-bifurcation.60921/page-2#post-2045394

Playground are definitely among the best developer in the market, but i doubt they are the only developers that can achieve on XB1 what every other developers failed to do : a very good looking game running at 1080p and moreover open world.

FH2 was already running at 1080p on XB1. At the same time, Sunset Overdrive was stuck at 900p and Insomniac doesn't use a middleware ...

There are type of games that are intrinsically less demanding : fighting games, racing games, sport games, etc.



Yeah, the water looks much better in FH4. But your gif isn't completely accurate since the water has been patched on HZD. It looks a tiny bit better now.

But you are comparing sea vs lake... i'm certain that the lakes in FH4 look less complex than the sea too.

Water in lakes are equally good as well much better than hzd. When you drive it creates wakes and water properly reflects environments. I've always seen water in hzd off I don't know why they don't implement a good ssr effect

Also the sea in hzd is the exact same way go to the edge of the map and look into the "sea" in hzd. The reflections show objects not even there

 

[Recop]

Steve just said for visuals racers are front and center because they can push more visually. Either you put power into visuals or other gameplay mechanics. hzd isn't that interacted at all actually. 99% of foliage don't react all all to alloys movements, water same way, and there's not much AI around the world which seems lifeless most of the time. I'm sure you'll see what a living world looks like with rdr2

But again, they used a part of that extra rendering power to upgrade the resolution on both Xbox machines... the XB1 will hardly compete with a PS4 at 1080p, even in a racing game.

And HZD has a real story, complex scripts, complex robots roaming through the world, etc.

The gameplay mechanics are much more complex while in FH4 you just have to drive your car and nothing else...

 

[higherARC]

But again, they used a part of that extra rendering power to upgrade the resolution on both Xbox machines... the XB1 will hardly compete with a PS4 at 1080p, even in a racing game.

And HZD has a real story, complex scripts, complex robots roaming through the world, etc.

The gameplay mechanics are much more complex while in FH4 you just have to drive your car and nothing else...

Having a story doesn't do anything technically graphically to any game. There are showcase events that has "story" type of scripts and events. Like the Halo event where pelicans fly above, banshees, etc.

 

[Ike Turner]

This thread has turned into a full blown fanboyish troll fest. Congrats... Beyond3d is no place for this crap which should stay at GAF/Era.

 

[Recop]

Also the sea in hzd is the exact same way go to the edge of the map and look into the "sea" in hzd. The reflections show objects not even there

There's no sea in HZD...

Patched water :

I've always seen water in hzd off I don't know why they don't implement a good ssr effect

To save ressources. It's obvious and i think they made the right choice since the water looks good enough to me. If you want to see real ugly water, play to God of War lol...

Having a story doesn't do anything technically graphically to any game

It usually means a lot more complex scripts and gameplay mechanics. Also, your engine has sometimes to deal with fancy cutscenes. And it's not an easy task. For instance, ROTR is native 4K on X, but not the cutscenes...