Have GG started an assault on ND's title as the Sony 1st party to beat?

In terms of tech I think they're pretty much on even ground this gen with HZD offering an overall more impressive graphical tour de force than UC4, ND had a slight edge last gen tho. Story telling, character interaction and cinematics are still in ND's favor, in fact TLOU is still by far the best in those regards at least to me. However HZD is a massive leap over anything GG has done prior and it's definitely inching closer to the mastery of ND but still not there yet. Gameplay wise HDZ has UC4 beat I have to admit, it's simply offering a lot more and being much more open, ND tho excels at set pieces but there wasn't enough in UC4. Overall GG's capacity of creating a top quality game is up there with ND now thanks to the universally aclaimed HZD although ND's effort with TLOU2 will most likely spearhead GG given their amount of experience.

 

Volumetric clouds, light, fog and particles are mostly not calculated by the CPU. Now particles are often GPU accelerated in modern engines.

If this comparison comes I can also say that a PlayStation 4 will never be able to represent such a dense open world game as Wildlands.
WIldands has a denser vegetation than anything I know and yet has many flora objects with physics. In addition there is just a little amount of Pop Ups, which is impressive concidering the many draw calls and the possibility to fly quickly. When hiking one would not see these Pop Ups.





Many trees and they still react to real-time wind. I have recorded this in UHD because of the huge compression problems in this game in videos due the dense vegetation. Unfortunately it still looks still after 720p......

Oh, and I have connected the gamepad for this video the first time in this game where I had problems flying with. ^^


This is how it Looks without heavy compression. First two are rendered at 4*UHD, pictures after are at UHD/30fps.

Spoiler

Ghost Recon Wildands 200 by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands Super-Resolution 2017.03.12 - 18.31.56.88 by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr


Ghost Recon Wildlands 100 (1) by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Wildands 400 (1) by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Wildands 400 (2) by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Wildands 400 (3) by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Wildands 400 (4) by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Wildands 400 (5) by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Despite its extreme density it still has physics and I can maintain 60fps most of the time as well.

The low interaction possibilities makes the world of the game look like a backdrop. With inFamous it was the same in the first two games. Second Son/ First Light are also somewhat "artificial" in their own way but the forces were mostly connected with the environment. Therefore the player felt more like a character inside the game world.

 

it's not because vegetation reacts to character/vehicule that it's physics based, it's pretty easy to fake with a precalculated path, even PS2 games had this, like metal gear solid 3.
But of course, any game like this will be better on a PC than a console, though your previous comparison was between switch and PS4.

 

Multiple grass types in WiIdlands also using this new tech which is more accurate:

This is not easy because it already costs much CPU performance and otherwise we would have many video games with this intercation possibilities. Like Horizon Zero Dawn.

When I lie down in some grass types and get up I see about the same shape of the game figure.

 

by the way, battlefront foliage was also pretty good, can't wait to see if it's improved in BF2 this year.

 

This NVidia grass reacts only with the tires in Wildlands:
Grass reaction by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Non Nvidia grass:
Reaction to grass, non NVidia grass by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

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Yes, I find Endor much better than any area with vegetation in Battlefield 1.

 

Is Wildlands using that tech on consoles? If not, it's irrelevant for this comparison imo (different h/w). Guerrilla wanted to create lush looking environments such as these on a $399 box:

Spoiler

If they had extensive physics interaction on such dense foliage the system simply wouldn't run at the target 30 fps. I think the compromise is very reasonable given the scope of the environments and what's on screen. I'd also prefer ray marched volumetrics like the ones used in Horizon in Wildlands rather than the turf technology, which while great, has less of an impact on the overall image quality of the game.

 

This has to be one of the most nonsensical comparisons I've seen in a while. U4, The Division and Ghost Recon don't have enemies that are a hundred foot tall where the physics of combating against other massive things is hugely impressive.

Get a Thunderjaw fighting a group of Ravagers or Tramplers and tell me the physics are not good.

 

The Division is the one that gets me, especially so because it is a game that has to be as static as possible on purpose, being a semi-mmo and all

 

In the world of The Division there are many opportunities for interaction. Many or maybe most walls can be damaged, glass disintegrates very fine etc. If you can shoot a lot of things and it reacts then it becomes very immersive. On the other Hand in Horizon the environment hardly reacts to the player.

The PlayStation 4 Pro has a higher CPU clock speed than the base PlayStation 4. More interaction possibilities would have been great.

 

Is Wildlands using that tech on consoles?

 

Have to say the vegetation in Wildlands are very low quality while being dense and all, the shading, modeling detail, variety and textures are simply not as good as those in HZD. Besides not all vegetation are static in ZD, those red tall grass are still physically affected by players, trees can be knocked down too. Personally ZD's vegetation presentation is much better overall purely from a graphical point of view, but that said I certainly would like to see them improve on the interaction aspect more next time.

 

Not only shading of vegetation but material shading in general.

Trees getting destroyed by a thunderjaw: http://imgur.com/dhhxTbg.gif
Aloy reacting to explosions: http://imgur.com/ka7c8Gu.gif
Vegetation moving: http://i.imgur.com/jfrBjlw.gif http://imgur.com/J1oqxmM.gif

 

No grass talk is complete without mentioning Crysis 3's:



And yes, it ran on last gen consoles (though the framerates weren't the best).

A more basic example of lots of interactive grass would be Kameo although I kind find a video on it (only happens when she flies, not walks lol).

 

Yes. I also love the wet effect on the rocks when it's raining, the PBR and animation on the surface are very realistic. Don't have a gif to show but you'll know what I mean if you seen it.
The gradation of the sky, distant scenes and weather sims are so life like all thanks to the use of volumetric lighting, fogs, clouds shadows and accurate PBR, I honestly never seen game world being portrayed so realistically before it reminded me of The Revenant movie.
The grass look god damn glorious as every single blade is moving.
http://i.imgur.com/niKU6h8.gif
http://i.imgur.com/Po3mcPf.gif
You just don't see that in Wildlands.

 

-higher texture resolution
-more realistic lighting
-more accurate GI (for example character does not light up aggressively orange when standing on orange rock)
-higher shadow resolution
-much higher density while player can move much faster
-much higher draw distance
-higher resolution AO
-much better displacement mapping
-player model gets wet after rain, in water or by going trough bushes
-more realistic surfaces/materials

I don't think Horizon does look as real as Wildlands.
Wildlands 200 by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

Some sun shafts at high air humidity:

 

Lighting looks very flat in the pictures you've posted so far in comparison to Horizon. And looking more "real" doesn't make it technically "better", stop moving those goal posts

Not to mention that you keep posting PC screenshots/footage and use lod as a comparison point between a Jaguar 2.1GHz cpu and whatever i7 you use in your system.

 

GI is more accurate and therefore lighting is better in general.

 

Wildlands looks good even on ps4 pro, i'll definitely play it more once i'm done with horizon.

 

No, what you are saying is that bounce lighting is better, on PC, maybe, and you haven't posted anything to back that claim.

Edit: This is how the game looks on the same h/w



The complete lack of self shadowing on foliage is really jarring by comparison, on top of that the foliage appears to be dithered as well