UE4 performed better on Nvidia for sure, but the engine was very slow to begin with on all GPUs. It was good for developers as it allowed much cheaper development but in terms of visuals and performance it was not good for the consumer. Sony Bend and The Coalition rewrote most or all of the rendering code IIRC to get the visuals and performance they did. It’s crazy that Epic still hasn’t threaded the engine.
Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2023] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]
- Thread starter BRiT
- Start date
- Status
DavidGraham
Veteran
The engine was officially unveiled in 2014, the first truly impressive game to carry over it's visuals was the Remake of The Vanishing of Ethen Carter in 2015 with impressive results. Then there was Epic's wonderfully crafted Paragon in 2016, which probably reached the peak of the engine quickly and before anyone else. Gears of Wars 4 was next in 2016 too, with amazing visuals that stand the test of time to this day.
In 2017, the engine reached it's second peak visually, with titles such as ARK Survival Evolved, Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, What Remains of Edith Finch and Tekken 7. The standouts in 2018 were Conan Exiles and Sea of Thieves.
2019 was a resurgence of the engine, with the advent of ray tracing, but Gears 5, Jedi Fallen Order, Ace Combat 7, The Outer Worlds and the amazing Draugen all delivered the goods. The stand out for me personally was Draugen.
In 2020, the engine got a fresh coat of painting after the release of several ray traced titles. After that, the engine reached it's final peak in titles such as Days Gone, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Bright Memory Infinite, Icarus, The Callisto Protocol, Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor covering the 2021 to 2023 period.
Last edited:
This list is absurd TBH. A bunch of very visually mediocre games that also perform poorly.
Why is it absurd, its somebodies list, its their criteria. Based on your response I just know they are crap, but I have no idea what a good game is, visually and in performance, according to your criteria.
Fallen order, What remains of Edith finch, sea of thieves, the outer worlds, ace combat 7, ark survival evolved, bright memory infinite, hogwarts legacy….. these are games that I’ve played and they’re definitely average looking. The callisto protocol has awful performance but its visuals are slightly above average.
DavidGraham
Veteran
I never compared UE4 to other titles, I am comparing it against itself. These games are the highlights of UE4 visually.
Last edited:
I kind of like the look of UE4 aesthetically speaking. It has the right mix of visual fidelity but also still looks "video gamey". I thought Jedi games looked good and I was watching footage of Mortal Kombat 1 and guessed it was using UE4 and sure enough it is.
I wouldn't be bothered if devs continued to use it this gen.
I wouldn't be bothered if devs continued to use it this gen.
Your eyes seem to work fundamentally different than mine do, that's about all I can say here.
So UE4 was responsible for a ton of average-looking last gen games and UE5 will be responsible for a lot of average-looking next gen games. I fail to see a problem with such reality. Maybe a few will take the engine, fork it and/or customize it to produce something really special.
However, UE5 is meant to be a widely used engine, it only needs to be competent in terms of performance and easy for devs to integrate and use.
However, UE5 is meant to be a widely used engine, it only needs to be competent in terms of performance and easy for devs to integrate and use.
Fair enough, I thought you were saying they were top tier visual titles that use UE4.
There is some truth to that statement. There are more ways to optimize the pixel shading pipeline on Nvidia hardware besides just making use of Hi-Z, exclusive special graphics state (MSAA,VRS, etc.), or delta colour compression as on AMD hardware. The other pixel shading execution speedups on Nvidia hardware include binding constant buffers to make use of the hardware's special constant memory, taking advantage of the pixel shader's swizzling/tiling memory access patterns, and avoiding shared memory. There's probably some other more arcane optimization too ...
What can I say, I’m not easily impressed by mediocrity.
SedentaryJourney
Regular
Days Gone was an early 2019 title. Aside from Ace Combat 7, it released earlier than all the 2019 titles you listed.
That's not how I'd characterize the situation, but ok. I'd say this drastically distorts what 'mediocre' is supposed to mean. Or you're using some 2023 lens to judge games from years ago and how they looked when they actually came out, which is how we should judge these things.
Nope, I thought they looked mediocre at the time. Using Jedi Fallen order as an example, it took me 4 tries to beat the game. I could never get past the opening levels just due to how bad i thought it looked and the bad animation... I eventually got past it and found that other areas of the game were better, but the animation was still bad. Just like the visuals, the whole game was completely and utterly mediocre. The graphics/animation would score a 6/10 for me and I'm being generous.
I mean, you're getting even worse here now, going from saying the game looked mediocre to saying it looked outright 'bad'? So bad that you couldn't even continue with the game? I just cant take this seriously, sorry. It was a really nice looking game and suggesting otherwise just makes me not trust what you have to say on anything in this area.
I have no idea how you manage to enjoy video games at all if you're literally unable to progress unless it's like the most elite of elite games in terms of visual presentation.
I understand people having their own opinions and all, but this just feels like you saying outlandish things in order to win an argument.
Last edited:
Did you play the game on the consoles and did you play past the intro level? If you did either of those things, i don't know how you can call it "elite" in terms of visual presentation. Nothing about it was elite. When you can combine it with the unsteady performance, its hard to see how it can it can be considered elite.... Maybe my experience is soured by my dislike of the game but, I did not find the games graphical package(visuals + art direction + performance) to be anything special.
- Status
Similar threads
