Best Xbox360 Graphics - Technical

[Dominik D]

My favorite is (...) Great style (...) colorful Kameo

What's technical in your post if I may ask? After all it's "Best Xbox360 Graphics - Technical"...

Technically there is no one most advanced game - there are several titles with some cool technical juice. The way Pinatas' "skin" looks like is technically interesting. Animation in Assassin's Creed is great and transitions very well. For the most part Conan has great animation too. Latest CoD has some amazing (semi)open spaces with a lot of foliage. Some of the surface shaders in Halo 3 work great. PGR4 has stunning weather simulation. And so on, and so forth...

 

[Hazuki Ryu]

I do think Mass Effect looks better than Gears in many ways not all of them i would say they're even, but Mass Effect seems to have the edge (yes i have mass effect and gears) but they are not alone, in my opinion halo 3 though the aproach to the graphics is different and seen as worse by many i dont agree i think its just as good.

What really stands out in Mass Effect more than any other game are the character models. I think i would give the medal to ME though there are very close games like Bioshock, Halo 3, Gow, Pgr4, etc.

My favorite is Gears of War! It has amazing look. Mass Effect has nice cut-scene but for me Gears of War has much better in-game.

The Cut scene in mass effect its the same as in game, difference is u see them up close.

 

[vazel]

I can't believe people are saying COD4... There's a reason the framerate is so good.
Of the games I own Gears of War looks the best in its use of the hardware. Artistically I like Bioshock and Lost Planet better.

 

[iceberg187]

Sad to say, the third parties push the 360 more than first parties. Looking at COD4, the fact there's really no excuse for Halo 3's subpar visuals becomes all the more clear.

The only 1st party group Microsoft has I would consider technically great is Rare. The other teams, not in the least bit. So you are correct in saying that.

I forgot to mention Viva Pinata. This is a game that takes full advantage of the hardware. Love the colourful graphics, the level of AA and the detail and it also uses tesselation.

Viva Pinata started out as a PDA game, then went to Xbox, then to the 360. Banjo is going to be the first game that was built specifically for the 360. Forza 2 uses some of the toolchain that Rare uses, but from what I've been told, The R1 engine has undergone amazing revisions as is built 100% on the 360, so I expect Banjo to impress.

Gregg Mayles, lead designer at Rare, on Viva Pinata

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?pager.offset=1&cId=3148779

"Something OLD (about half of the game engine and most of the development tools that put the game together are from Ghoulies).

"Something NEW (the graphics engine has been written specifically for Viva Pinata).

"Something BORROWED (the animation system can trace its roots back to Conker's Bad Fur Day on the Nintendo 64).

"Something BLUE (the weather system 'blew' in from another team and there's also the colorful language that's been heard over the last week or two!)."

PDA Viva

Xbox Viva

 

[kyleb]

I can't believe people are saying COD4... There's a reason the framerate is so good.

I imagine people are impressed by the fedlity, as 2xAA and decent texture filtering provides for cleaner looking graphics than a lot many other console games that don't use either.

 

[Tisan]

I would say on a technical level Assassin's Creed would be the most impressive due to the amount of things going on, and the huge draw distance.

If anything, I'd say Gears of War is not that technically impressive now when you consider how few enemies are on screen at any one time, and how restricted the spaces generally are.

Both seem to have distinct optimisation problems though, with AC having some framerate hitches, and tearing. And Gears having that same old texture loading problem Unreal Engine 3 games seem to have.

As a complete package, I guess my vote would have to go to Viva Pinata. Everything seems really complete :]

 

[pipo]

Also, I like colorful Kameo. Sometimes it is very very beautiful. Really pretty.

Agreed. I hope there will be a follow up soonish...

 

[Acert93]

I imagine people are impressed by the fedlity, as 2xAA and decent texture filtering provides for cleaner looking graphics than a lot many other console games that don't use either.

Which brings things full circle. How do you define "technical"? What is better: 100 4k poly models on screen or 8 15k poly models on screen? Do high resolution (1024x1024) textures in closed areas bests the view distance in a game like GRAW? Does a game using a new technique in limited amounts best another game using a more familiar & faster technique at very high fidelity levels?

There is a balance between techniques, qualities, and quantities. Each platform may have a different balance, and may have more overhead to burn in different areas (shaders, fillrate, etc) and may require different compromises.

Ultimately the engine serves the art; there will be games with great art and just passable technology choices that give the impression that the game is pushing the technology as well as games with amazing technical choices and design but poor art that fails to demonstrate the technical accomplishment. And in this equation are the familiarity and tools to get the most out of certain techniques.

Obviously some games are clearly technically better than others--some people are just more talented, have more experience, and more resources. On the other hand there isn't a fast and hard rule that one technology is better than another, especially if a "better" technology doesn't perform fast enough to fit your visual goals.

A title not getting a lot of love here is Viva Pinata. It makes good use of the hardware, overcoming some challenges devs had (like tiling) and using little used techniques like tesselation, but didn't allow the details to bog down the art. The tech choices completely accent the games visual design which is stunning. Kameo also comes to mind as they were throwing out nice water, amazing particle systems, large draw distance, huge armies, parallax maps, DOF, and so forth and visually was very, very pretty. Rare seems to have the knowhow and tools to get a lot out of hardware. PGR4 is amazing for the combination of fidelity and techniques. Another title, to a lesser degree, is TF2 which uses a lot of subtle techniques, like rim highlights, to emphasize the amazing art. You could argue TF2 isn't pushing the hardware much, but it is getting a lot out of the hardware visually.

Sure, it may not have a lot of cool stuff under the hood. But a lot of games with cool techniques don't look even close to half as good. TF2 is making better use of their technology choices.

 

[TheChefO]

Which brings things full circle. How do you define "technical"? What is better: 100 4k poly models on screen or 8 15k poly models on screen? Do high resolution (1024x1024) textures in closed areas bests the view distance in a game like GRAW? Does a game using a new technique in limited amounts best another game using a more familiar & faster technique at very high fidelity levels?

There is a balance between techniques, qualities, and quantities. Each platform may have a different balance, and may have more overhead to burn in different areas (shaders, fillrate, etc) and may require different compromises.

Ultimately the engine serves the art; there will be games with great art and just passable technology choices that give the impression that the game is pushing the technology as well as games with amazing technical choices and design but poor art that fails to demonstrate the technical accomplishment. And in this equation are the familiarity and tools to get the most out of certain techniques.

Obviously some games are clearly technically better than others--some people are just more talented, have more experience, and more resources. On the other hand there isn't a fast and hard rule that one technology is better than another, especially if a "better" technology doesn't perform fast enough to fit your visual goals.

A title not getting a lot of love here is Viva Pinata. It makes good use of the hardware, overcoming some challenges devs had (like tiling) and using little used techniques like tesselation, but didn't allow the details to bog down the art. The tech choices completely accent the games visual design which is stunning. Kameo also comes to mind as they were throwing out nice water, amazing particle systems, large draw distance, huge armies, parallax maps, DOF, and so forth and visually was very, very pretty. Rare seems to have the knowhow and tools to get a lot out of hardware. PGR4 is amazing for the combination of fidelity and techniques. Another title, to a lesser degree, is TF2 which uses a lot of subtle techniques, like rim highlights, to emphasize the amazing art. You could argue TF2 isn't pushing the hardware much, but it is getting a lot out of the hardware visually.

Sure, it may not have a lot of cool stuff under the hood. But a lot of games with cool techniques don't look even close to half as good. TF2 is making better use of their technology choices.

Good points.

I think the ultimate point of graphics that is getting missed is how well did the devs utilize the technology and art to realize their vision for their game world.

TF2 did an amazing job in that regard and I'll put up two more that did very well in that regard as well: Trusty Bell and Naruto-RON.

Viva Pinata would have been rated higher IMO if they smoothed out the frame rate. As is though, unless the camera is stable, the FR jumps too much IMO.

Technically speaking though (OP), I don't know enough about the behind the scenes efforts to really judge the efforts behind these games, but COD4 is certainly the best looking game of it's type (not a limited sports arena) I've seen run at 60FPS.

 

[Deepblue]

Halo 3. Call me crazy, but it has better texture fidelity than CoD4 or even Gears of War in some instances, but the color pallete tends to subdue this detail unlike the harsh contrast that make the textures "pop" in Gears. It has far better lighting than almost everything out there, some of the best model work on Spartans and Elites, massive scale, and a consistently smooth frame-rate through it all.

Technically niggles - Harsh aliasing, shadows are drawn at very short distances for some objects depending on their priority (MC has his shadow drawn to a very large distance whereas marines lose their shadows at 10 meters). Also, environmental shadows are baked. I think with these issues addressed, Halo 3 would be, by far, the best looking console game around.

 

[KnicksRIP]

My personal preferences would be that Lost Planet MOVES the best (Capcom has really nailed the art of motion blur, and the enemy design/animation is stunning), Gears has the best texture quality and cutscenes, and Assassin's Creed has the best art design.

 

[Archgamer]

Mass Effect is not a worthy contender for best graphics since it suffers from technical issues.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Mass Effect is not a worthy contender for best graphics since it suffers from technical issues.

So only games which have no frame rate drops, tearing, texture pop in, texture shimmer or other graphical glitches need apply? Does that make hexic the winner by default or something?

 

[Archgamer]

So only games which have no frame rate drops, tearing, texture pop in, texture shimmer or other graphical glitches need apply? Does that make hexic the winner by default or something?

If it's not as noticable as Mass Effect then it's forgiven.

 

[vazel]

I have never been as immersed into a game as with Mass Effect and the visuals go a long way towards that as much as the gameplay and story. I showed my friend a conversation sequence and he was stunned, he even compared it to that new movie Beowulf(I'm not sure I'd go that far).

 

[AlphaWolf]

If it's not as noticable as Mass Effect then it's forgiven.

It's good we have you to pick out whats acceptable for us.

 

[PARANOiA]

Mass Effect is not a worthy contender for best graphics since it suffers from technical issues.

If it's not as noticable as Mass Effect then it's forgiven.

What an absurd comment. All games have these sorts of graphical imperfections. To claim a single game is just below the borderline for you as an absolute measure for everyone is ridiculous and self-righteous.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Gears of War - First game I think to truly show off the 360's graphics capabilities. Only complaint about it is the low shadow resolution causing tiling on the characters. Other than that, no complaints. Only smooth framerate, lack of slow down and very nice details. Thank God for normal mapping right?

Viva Pinata - The game's colorful yet extremely detailed graphics are some of the most amazing, arguably as impressive as GeoW's in my honest opinion. Too bad so many dismissed the pure fun of the game as just for kids.

Just Cause - While somewhat just outlandish yet still fun to play it was when I stole a plane near the beginning of the game, took it to about a mile high all while during a sunset, flying southwest, I took notice to the insane draw distance, the details below and all around me, the amazingly good volumetric lighting/shadowing the sunset created with the plane and islands, all why jamming to Motorhead's Dirty Love that I really felt like I had entered the next generation of console gaming. I will never forget that moment of gaming euphoria.

Call of Duty 4 - It's the level of detail used in the game all while maintaining full 60 frames per second fidelity that really impresses me about CoD4. And I do think the game has nice texturing and effects as well. <<<<Spoiler Alert>>>> Remember the scene after the nuclear explosion where your character takes his last breaths of life to see the disaster around him? Pure awesomeness.

As for other games, I can appreciate that the system is a graphical powerhouse and dream for developers. It gives them the tools to make games that impress. Sure it doesn't have the GFLOPS monster that is the Cell, but the PS3 doesn't have the Xenos now does it?

 

[Mobius1aic]

actually, Xenos is just marginally better than RSX, it's not as great a gap as you think...certainly the gap between RSX and Xenos is much smaller than Xenon and Cell.

Theoreticals don't match up to the real world results. And it seems that the overall Xenos package (with the eDRAM daughter die) seems to be better suited overall for rendering, z-buffering, AA and rendering to HD resolutions, not to mention the pure efficiency of a unified shader GPU helps out. I'll admit I'm not too well versed in GPU architecture, the rendering process and programming in general but from what I've discussed with more affluent people in the subject and what I've learned from reading here on Beyond3d.com, it seems to be the case. Then I have to take into account outside factors affecting both the PS3 and 360, like the Cell's high floating point capability (which is viable for graphical assistance if the communication bandwidth speeds are high enough), the difference in types, speed, and overall set ups of each respective system's RAM.

If you have some input, please fill me in. I'm all ears. Learning this stuff and my interests in graphics are why I'm here at Beyond3D, hopefully with willing charity from other posters, who I'm well aware many are real developers themselves.

 

[Archgamer]

What an absurd comment. All games have these sorts of graphical imperfections. To claim a single game is just below the borderline for you as an absolute measure for everyone is ridiculous and self-righteous.

People are way over their head these days. Perhaps if I had said IMO would it change the mentality for everybody else reading my post?

Oh and to answer the TC question, IMO GoW is the winner.