Influences of Favorite Console Religion on Game Perception (containment thread)

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Preview event in Spain

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What is it about Naughty Dog games that unleashes hysteria over visuals.
ND employs some of the best and brightest of the industry no doubt. They've certainly earned their reputation. And I think when it comes down to it, most of us looking in (to the game industry) from the outside have this belief that perhaps they are the only studio that has the talent capable of creating these graphics when in reality
a) the answer is always a lot more complex than that
b) there are always talented people, both up and coming, or already well established that can compete with ND, and some people have an easier time accepting the general answer as opposed to looking at the overall picture of things.

It's clear they've got amazing talent there, but they've also got the best support I've seen among all studios. That's like giving your star athlete who is already among the best always having access to the best equipment whereas everyone else that has less funding doesn't get access to that special tier of gear. That's how I look at it at least.

In my opinion, ND deserves both a ton of praise and respect for their work and in such it's discouraging for me to see posts that just write off their efforts, but equally so it's discouraging to see defenders to the same to other titles.
 
ND employs some of the best and brightest of the industry no doubt. They've certainly earned their reputation. And I think when it comes down to it, most of us looking in (to the game industry) from the outside have this belief that perhaps they are the only studio that has the talent capable of creating these graphics when in reality
a) the answer is always a lot more complex than that
b) there are always talented people, both up and coming, or already well established that can compete with ND, and some people have an easier time accepting the general answer as opposed to looking at the overall picture of things.

It's clear they've got amazing talent there, but they've also got the best support I've seen among all studios. That's like giving your star athlete who is already among the best always having access to the best equipment whereas everyone else that has less funding doesn't get access to that special tier of gear. That's how I look at it at least.

In my opinion, ND deserves both a ton of praise and respect for their work and in such it's discouraging for me to see posts that just write off their efforts, but equally so it's discouraging to see defenders to the same to other titles.

I think it is on both side, there is many talented developer in the industry and Naughty Dog is one of them but other are good too.

For example I like ND work on facial animations but I think another studio like Remedy or even better 343 industries are very good too. It seems ND push a little more detail this time on this but probably next title of other studios someone will do the same things or maybe better.

After for exclusive coming on Xbox One, it is not fair to compare they work with a weaker hardware I don't think Naughty Dog would do better on Xbox One than Remedy or 343 industries...
 
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Embargo for previews is next week apparently. As for ND, it's a combination of talented people, a huge number of them (300+ for U4) and a strong technical team helping (ICE).
 
We have many videos and I was in the two UC4 MP beta...;)

But troll gonna troll.:mrgreen:
There's nothing barren about it, Halo 5 and MGSV is the very definition of outdoor barren landscape. You can clearly see tons of vegetation, wildlife and hills across the view, not to mention all rendered with volumetric lighting fogging and shadow. Also this is the nature of the African tundra, it's not a jungle, if you think UC4's engine is incapable of rendering dense geometry then you've clearly forgotten the PSX demo.

It may not be as barren as those games, but it's not "filled" to the brim with geometry either in that particular shot where your car is driving fast and you are literally traversing a much larger set than the jungle scene. I think UC4's engine is capable of rendering dense geometry fine in a limited distance (i.e. meters). I don't think it will do well with an open world though where PS4 bandwidth limitations will obviously affect how much it can draw.
 
The fact that ppl are going crazy proves the game looks stellar :LOL: ! @VFX : SSS gameplay gifs are everywhere, ear and hair displaying SSS.

First of all, hair doesn't have SSS -- it has a transmittance lobe. And in gameplay, UC4 doesn't use real hair like TR option on PC. Secondly, painting a weight map to the ears is a trick done all too many times in games. Look at The Order 1886 for the very same technique. That quality is horrendous and doesn't even come close to the ingame cutscenes (which have a much better approximation of SSS).
 
Embargo for previews is next week apparently. As for ND, it's a combination of talented people, a huge number of them (300+ for U4) and a strong technical team helping (ICE).

Last number I saw on GAF was 350 people's with contractor at end of UC4 development.

I think the most innovative rendering engine is not a for AAA, it is Dreams.
 
First of all, hair doesn't have SSS -- it has a transmittance lobe. And in gameplay, UC4 doesn't use real hair like TR option on PC. Secondly, painting a weight map to the ears is a trick done all too many times in games. Look at The Order 1886 for the very same technique. That quality is horrendous and doesn't even come close to the ingame cutscenes (which have a much better approximation of SSS).
Well real-time gfx were always about tricks and never real world calculations. I know the nerd inside me will be happy if a game does actual ray tracing for light passing through materials but I see no point in games.
I did not know u were looking at it that way. Even in Maya+nuke cg I would go for cheap tricks as much as possible if the final result looks cool. I even put fake lights everywhere in my scenes to make it look like GI bounces. It's cheaper, faster and helps in meeting deadlines. In my book if the final result looks like the intended result, then the easiest way to fake a phenomenon is the best way.

I have even been using Ambient occlusion in weird ways to fake bounced light and colour bleed :)

So, yeah, if u want to see real SSS, of course it's not there. If u want a fake trick which does the job, it's in there even for muzzle flashes.
 
First of all, hair doesn't have SSS -- it has a transmittance lobe. And in gameplay, UC4 doesn't use real hair like TR option on PC. Secondly, painting a weight map to the ears is a trick done all too many times in games. Look at The Order 1886 for the very same technique. That quality is horrendous and doesn't even come close to the ingame cutscenes (which have a much better approximation of SSS).

The SSS shader on The Order 1886 is the most expensive shader (see multiple Ready At Dawn presentation), why use it during gameplay it is a stupid idea. Do an approximation and use the rendering budget on other things...

They have limited rendering power. They need to be clever... Same things for geometry and LOD use it where it counts and think about the perceived graphics and maximise work of your art team.
 
What's irritating about some PS4 fans is that they want to somehow paint a picture that ONLY Naughty Dog can make a PS4 rival and even supersede a PC with high end graphics hardware with ANY game from ANY company that is developed for it. It even goes beyond PC to even covering every game ever put out on the next-gen consoles. It's just not true and speaks volumes to the fact that people are only interested in their particular hardware of choice using ND as a basis for argument because they make stellar games.

Naughty Dog is a incredible company. They make very good games and they have extremely talented staff. But they aren't the only talented staff around that make good games and they certainly don't have developers that can make a PS4 out-render a high end PC graphics card with 4-5X the bandwidth. Art is subjective and can't be argued, so if someone says, "UC4 looks better than any game out".. no one can refute that. However, 3D tech and features can absolutely be debated. And here is where most of these arguments fall short. Screenshots are used as a basis for argument (which is again subjective) instead of actual facts. Calling out "UC4 has tremendous detail" several meters in the distance when you don't know the context of the shot is very misleading. It makes it sound like ND has somehow extracted TitanX capabilities from a lowly 1.86TFLOP hardware. Hence the famed nickname 'Naughty Gods'. It's a tone of fanboism and shows a lack of understanding on how realtime graphics work and/or it's limitations. The comments are "loaded" with extreme bias towards ND in particular and is the reason you get so much backlash from others who aren't so biased.
 
The SSS shader on The Order 1886 is the most expensive shader (see multiple Ready At Dawn presentation), why use it during gameplay it is a stupid idea. Do an approximation and use the rendering budget on other things...

I know how SSS works and ALL the implementations in games are approximations. That's not going to get you anywhere as far as I'm concerned.

There have been SSS approximations for years now. Wolfenstein, Dying Light, Crysis 2, Ryse etc.. all have it.

If you are using painted maps to get your SSS approximation and a depth buffer, it's going to always be an approximation. Even more so during gameplay.

They have limited rendering power. They need to be clever..

Being clever is great for performance, but you get what you pay for. Oftentimes, a trained eye can see where it breaks down and causes not so good looking renders.
 
Single graphical features don't matter, you can have the best *x feature* in the industry and the image can still fall apart when viewed as a whole, what matters is the combination. What ND are good at is identifying what looks good as a whole even if they don't satisfy the graphical feature checklist in every department.

And to remind you again, realtime rendering != offline rendering.
 
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I think he has a point here, I think SSS from gameplay to cutscene is different too.

After it is normal be clever and choose what will make your game look good...
 
I know how SSS works and ALL the implementations in games are approximations. That's not going to get you anywhere as far as I'm concerned.

There have been SSS approximations for years now. Wolfenstein, Dying Light, Crysis 2, Ryse etc.. all have it.

If you are using painted maps to get your SSS approximation and a depth buffer, it's going to always be an approximation. Even more so during gameplay.



Being clever is great for performance, but you get what you pay for. Oftentimes, a trained eye can see where it breaks down and causes not so good looking renders.

That's your opinion if you compare to offline rendering and a movie like Avatar every games even Star Citizen on the next best Nvidia or AMD card looks like a pile of shit...

But it is life maybe in 30 or 40 years we will see much better quality not so far from Avatar...

The Order 1886 cutscene SSS shader is the most expensive of the game, the best is to use cheaper approximation during gameplay...

99% of the time we will see the back of the hero...
 
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