Digital Foundry Retro Discussion [2021]
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Speaking of Riddick, man I hope Vin actually commits to a new Riddick film. Thinking of marathoning the first 3, but I'd love a 4th.
This game was stunning seeing footage and images back in the day for it; really good use of light and shadows, one of the games that really flexed what OG Xbox could do performance-wise.
This game was stunning seeing footage and images back in the day for it; really good use of light and shadows, one of the games that really flexed what OG Xbox could do performance-wise.
To this day i still think Unreal championship 2: the liandry conflict is the game that stretched the OG xbox the most. This FPS/3rd person game looked beyond anything else on consoles (at the time). The amout of detail, the graphical fidelity, effects, textures, lighting.... 60fps at it with basically never a dip below that. The art and level design was top notch, and the game did DD5.1 in multiplayer. Still sounds nice today.
If you have an OG xbox try this out. This game set the og xbox on another generation (as opposed to PS2 and gamecube).
Oh, the game was fun as hell too. Unreal on a whole new level, i remember as a pc gamer wanting this so much on pc aswell.
The game just never really did all that much attention either, maybe partly due to it launched right before the 360. Quantum redshift is another example of what the og xbox could do for such a racer (wipeout ps2 never came close).
Bolded's almost exactly the main reason xD. GT6 suffered similarly when it came out because everyone was focused on the PS4 and XBO. Just bad timing for otherwise really good game releases. Hate to see it happen
I hadn't actually considered UC2 or Quantum Redshift in the running as I'd forgotten about them, but nice reminders since I get to refresh my memory. Redshift was kind of a spiritual successor to Hydro Thunder right?
I've heard this title been dropped as a hallmark of xbox graphics more than once, although, as you mentioned, not thar often. But never saw it running for real. From youtube videos, its pretty hard to tell what's so special about it.. Doom 3 or Ridick's shadows and bumpmaps everywhere are far more obvious "show-offy" visual ellements than whatever is so good about Unreal Tournament. But I can imagine there is more than meets the eyes to it, since I've played Halo CE on xbox and its super crisp detail textures as well as the normal maps are actually only noticeable when you are actually playing the game yourself... I personally tend to be more impressed by games that get the big things right (squint worthy graphics) and whatever fine detail they can muster on top of it, than those that have a lot of fine small detail everywhere, but the big picture is not as impressive. For those reasons, to me Half Life 2 is one of the pretiest xbox games, despite not being necessarely the most technically impressive. Oh, and talk about conker live and reloaded. That still seems like a 360 game in SD res today.
I think it has to be played to judge its visuals. At the same time your on point regarding D3, HL2, riddick, conker etc, those have more 'stand out' effects which also age better.
UC liandri conflict also runs 60fps while having top-notch graphics at the time. I also feel some games just dont age as well as others do. Far Cry xbox was extremely impressive considering the hardware at the time. Today i think it looks bad in places.
D3 set the hardware atop of 6th gen, so did HL2, far cry insticts, dead or alive ultimate etc. Found this link awhile ago, some intresting (and amazing demo scene stuff).
https://medium.com/predict/pushing-the-original-xbox-to-its-absolute-limit-899b01e99133
Edit: Would be something if demo scenes did exist on todays consoles like it did during the 6th generation machines. The PS2 had many intresting ones.
Yeah man, I think we are on the same page on it all. I hope someday I get to play xbox UT to see what the hype is about. I'm sure its not for nothing.
this game was always placed at the very top of the best games -graphically wise- on the original Xbox. I didnt play neither version, be it PC or original Xbox but the original Xbox was my 1st console ever which I bought during christmas 2004, and I was always curious about it 'cos it was on that list along with Rallisport Challenge 2 and the likes.
The next year I got the X360 and missed that game. Watching it nowadays even on an old PC, confirms people's thought on this game. Great technology.
Doesn't it look quite similar to Doom 3 though? -I had the game on the original Xbox and the bump mapping looks quite familiar-
It's obviously inspired by what id was doing back then, but it's important to remember id software's influence on the industry back then. If you weren't using an engine made by id, you wanted something that was going to compete graphically. There were plenty of stencil shadowed imitators out there, but Starbreeze's engine was not just pretty, but performant. Secret Service Security Breach had stencil shadows and bump mapping and beat Doom 3 to market, but also looked and ran worse.
And in a twist of fate, much of the Riddick team left Starbreeze for Machine Games and worked on id software IPs.
This was the funniest one they’ve done. Audi was on it and I’m going to give John credit for teeing up some hilarious exchanges.
Always loved shadow volumes, the subpixel movement of edges and complete lack of aliasing. (Outside obvious pixel resoution etc.)
There was also even heavier method which created quite nice umbra/penumbra.
I really wonder how this would work on modern hardware and culling methods. (Mesh shaders?, tiled deferred/forward lighting...)
http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~uffe/
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Just downloaded Riddick Dark Athena on my PC after watching that DF video. I always wanted to play Escape from Butcher Bay so once I found out it was included in Dark Athena I knew I had to find a way to buy it. Amazon had a digital download for $20, so I proceeded to purchase it. It was a bit of a bitch to get it up and running because of the DRM/Tages, but once I got that updated and ran the game in Windows XP compatibility mode everything came together. Looking forward to sinking my teeth into this game over the next month. I love the movies, especially Pitch Black, so getting to experience this game will be a delight for me.
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Am I the only one that watches the DF Retro videos and wishes they'd show some performance statistics on top end GPUs of the present? I wanna see how far the framerates can go and how high resolutions can be pushed.
I'm old school, I remember when Quake 3 was a benchmark for many years, showing how many 100s of FPS GPUs could manage to push it.
I'm old school, I remember when Quake 3 was a benchmark for many years, showing how many 100s of FPS GPUs could manage to push it.
Playing that game on Xbox when it launched was such a fantastic experience. But I am not sure how it would play today...
Wasnt already the new Doom (eternal?) running over 500/600fps on ampere hardware in one of their videos? They'd probably be hitting the limits of what fps can be shown7achieved.
I play R6 at 240+ fps..... Anyway, would be intresting yes, just for the heck of it.
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