Holy Jesus, Allah, Zeus, Jupiter, Amun, Assur, Huangdi, and all the other major dieties I might have missed, but...
I finally had the time and inclination to try Crysis 2 with the DX11 + high res texture patch and OMG. Tesselation of world and scenery geometry is even more beautiful and immersive than I expected.
It was exceedingly jarring whenever I ran into a patch of ground or saw a wall that didn't have tesselation.
This has easily displaced Battlefield 3 as the best looking game implementing Dx11 I have seen thus far. However, Battlefield 3 still has much better distant terrain rendering from what I remember playing it at a friend's house (especially those gorgeous mountains in the background).
But for things near and dear and upclose Crysis 2 in Ultra with Dx11 takes the cake. OMFG the tesselation at least in the very first level I'm running through right now is drool inducingly gorgeous. I sat and stared in awe in the first area where APC tracks were dug deep into the ground and dirt was raise up representing the grooves in the tires of vehicle.
Watching the light and shadow play over tesselated geometry just gave me goosebumps. This is the future of graphics. I'm going to rip somehow's heart out and make them swallow it if either of the next gen consoles from MS and Sony don't feature capable tesselation hardware. Yes, Davros I realize those are consoles, but the more hardware with good tesselation capabilities the more likely we'll see games on PC with good use of the feature.
My god, I'm still relatively speechless at how incredibly immersive it is in Crysis 2. I'm not sure I can go back to any other game on PC now without feeling like the whole world is flat and uninteresting.
Wow... Just wow. This is what I was hoping for when tesselation was made an official part of DirectX. Need more...NEED MORE.
Oh and thank you AMD for allowing me to cap the tesselation factor through CCC.
I'm not sure my poor 5870 could handle full tesselation in Crysis 2 with their rather head scratching decision to highly tesselate FLAT surfaces. It already struggles a bit at ultra settings.
If anything is making me seriously consider a 7970, this is it.
Regards,
SB