The shadows are kinda borked as they flicker a lot, but I think it looks quite good overall.
Those were my first two impressions as well. The game's art quality/diversity appears to be very good and detailed and the sheer scope is impressive. The amount of little details (like steam coming out of a single window) and variety and detail in the textures is very impressive. Some shadows look excellent (especially the dynamic day cycle) but others add shimmer all over the place and are annoying. The NPCs also seem to stick out some, e.g. you go from the awesome looking water shot at the end to the guy walking over the bridge and the guy, especially his skin (like his hands) just seems very... flat. A huge jump from last gen sandbox games and very impressive. Hard to compare to next gen sandbox games because there are so few and one of them, Crackdown, is totally different artistically. But so far it is looking great--which is one of the areas the other GTA games appeared to be average at best at. If they maintain their fan pleasing gameplay (which I am not) and improve there as much as they have graphically this is surely a killer app.
The trailer is way too short, but at first glance, the renderer looks advanced for this type of game, I like the lighting effects.
The lighting did appear to be really, really good for the scope and fits the style very well.
Well, based on what I see here, I can see a nice collection of effects, complex lighting, self-shadowing (shadow maps, based on the induced aliasing and from what we heard from Rockstar Core, here at B3D), decent geometry count, nice close up details, etc...
Also, we got to consider the other free roaming games available, or shown, on X360/PS3 as the defacto standards for this genre of games.
Yeah, I think perspective on genre is a big one here. This isn't a narrow/single path linear FPS, it isn't a 2.5D game, and it isn't 2 players tennis game. It is a huge world sandbox and the technology is limited to the demands of such an implimentation. The art itself is very, very good. Btw, is there an example of self-shadowing in the video? I tried watching the end again and maybe I am too tired but I didn't really notice it (although the lighting is drab at the angle and he appears to be in a shadow himself which may preclude generating one).
But graphically it's disappointment (not better than Half-Life 2). In the gametrailers 720p trailer poor parts stand out.
Art is debatable as I have stated before, but technologically the dynamic lighting system and the fact shadows are dynamic is huge steps up. Heck, I didn't see any dynamic shadows passing through world geometry like HL2!
In my first post in this thread I wrote "not better than HL2". HL2 has HDR and open environments.
Not really. I have played a LOT of HL2 and the game is fairly linear in path as well as having quite a few load points. I think they did a good job with the design myself, but it is really clear that the game is NOT open. e.g. When travelling the cannal many objects in the distance appear "reachable" but if you no-clip it you find out that they are being cleverly disguised with world geometry with "props" showing the elevated objects (water towers, etc). This works GREAT with HL2 because the game is linear. But with GTA this would not work because players can go anywhere they want from anywhere... and they can elevate. In HL2 if you could get above the world geometry horizon it would destroy their ingenious design layouts that make the world appear much larger, and detailed, than it really is.
So no open environments and the render in HL2 is significantly less capable at lighting and shadowing.
HL2 Orange does appear to address the dynamic shadowing though and appears to have high quality overall (although still difficult to compare without a final version to look at and to see the design scope/compromises). But the HL2 renderer on the market is lacking a lot of features GTAIV is showing.
That's my thought too, I thought the graphical level in the Table Tennis game by Rockstar could be propagated to environmental details in open areas but it was apparently a misconception. Probably their 1st priority was to make the huge game complete in October this year.
#1 Priority -- Make a fun game that sells crazy fast.
#2 Priority -- Make a huge sandbox world.
Expecting Table Tennis quality characters artistically and technically is not fair. How is Rockstar supposed to render dozens of Table Tennis quality characters on a screen at a time in an open world instead of a small room? You are also talking about spreading the art assets from a confined space to tens of thousands of spaces.
But graphics have never been their premier source of interest, nor has it ever been their forte.
The Getaway (PS2) was technically superior to GTA 3 or VC, it ran better and looked better, yes, but it also played like fecal matter and was as boring as a game can be.
IMO good graphics coming from them is gravy based on their last gen efforts. I am not a fan myself, but it surely wasn't the graphics that sold GTA games! I think Bungie is under the same sort of microscope when graphics really aren't their forte. Not that they are bad, just that other things made their game great.
With multiple cores that can load and decompress things in background my expectation was a tad too high.
As far as I can tell the graphic issues are not content related -- the main issues compression would resolve. The game this big, with a day cycle, is going to need dynamic lighting and shadowing. That is always going to be a step down (or two) from precomputed solutions in regards to quality. As for art, there is only so much you can do with such a huge world. You can decompress stuff left and right but you need the time to create said content and artists capable of such.
one said:
Another reference point is its supposed huge budget, it would be far bigger than games like Dead Rising.
You say "it would" as if you know that GTAIV isn't significantly larger than Dead Rising in regards to the world size. How do you know this? Isn't it a little early to begin chastizing the budget not producing enough gameplay world and not exceeding the competition without even knowing how big it even is?
I am decidely NOT a fan of the GTA series as many here know, so I rarely would find myself in a position to considering defending it, but a lot of your criticisms appear premature or unfounded. The game surely has rough spots and issues, and the trailer left a LOT to be desired in regards to answering questions about gameplay and content, but your specific points and comparisons seem pretty hollow.
