[PC] Crysis 2 - Information Thread

Nah...PC guys are bummed that Crytek promised no compromises for the PC version and then didn't use DX11/tessellation and didn't include all the advanced settings that Crysis had. Heck, the initial release had a "Press Start Button" apparently. Console ports aren't "no compromises" IMHO.

 

Well then you want raytraced reflections and I wouldn't expect that before PS5/Xbox4...

 

Tessellation on its own (without displacement) is useless, and requires two different versions of the same model on top of the displacement texture. A significant investment even if only used in just a few cases.

 

Yep, these are offline baked cube map reflections, indeed.

 

Well, reflecting a round building when the direct view is clearly rectangular is hardly a f*ck-up that can only be overcome with raytracing

 

Cube maps aren't going to provide perfect or even correct reflections either. Why do you think Transformers had record rendering times at ILM? All those shiny robots had to reflect proper environments and their own body parts, and of course each other - and cube maps just weren't enough, even though they had shaders for both raytracing and no raytracing to be able to get better performance wherever possible.

 

Is that a problem with the reflections, or a bug in the map? Not sure how reflections are placed. Seems weird that they look like they're reflecting something completely wrong.

 

Doesn't that just make it a technically good port of a game that takes it's gameplay decisions from the console? The code may not have been simply ported, but the gameplay choices have been.

 

You can either render a single cubemap per level, or lots of separate cube maps for certain regions of the level but even there the fidelity might not be enough to avoid a few strange looking reflections.
Also, transitioning between them can look silly (there was a video from COD4 MW2, the early part of the Pripyat mission where the camouflaged snipers are walking into a small house - the blending between two reflection cubemaps on the scope's lens was very easy to catch).

Or you can try to dynamically update a cubemap and render the environment of the player into it every Nth frame. But I suppose the performance penalty for that in a game like Crysis 2 would be quite significant.

 

No. It makes it a game that was designed using a cross-platform tool that tried to make life easy for artists and mappers. Whether the console versions, "dragged down" the PC version, is a matter of opinion. I'm sure some people, even PC gamers, will like the sequel more than the original.

I haven't even played it yet, so I have no idea if it's good, but I find the meltdown hysterical. So far Kyle at Hardocp is winning at losing.

 

I'll look into making the thread soon.

 

These days I cant care more but to just get some decent entertaining gameplay. Though I applause achievements made on consoles it could have been pushed further on PC. Some things are actually a step backwards like water rendering, POM + regular parallax, cloud system/shading, and more.

I think though PC guys will be pleased as higher settings do increase quality in a very noticable way especially when in motion. Shadow quality, updaterate and LODs will make for less pop-ups which IMO is horrible in most games (BFBC2 for example). LODs can also be tweaked easily by only 2 cvars to provide solid pop-up free gameplay. Wont even need a high-end PC, just a med-end PC for 'ultra extreme' @1080 (config tweak list I made).

 

Err... Half-Life 2, anyone?

I can't think of another game with a greater disconnect between first and second installments, and there's not a single instance of the game pausing for a bit of exposition.

 

That's how reflections are all over the place, they look like nearly random parts of the map rather a reasonable approximation of what they should be reflecting. It's often really distracting during gameplay.

I'd be fine turning the resolution down for reflections of a quality comparable to say HL2.

 

Nice I will have to replay Crysis with all those mods that the community released...to get over my Crysis 2 disappointment

 

That HL2 shot basically renders the scene twice, once from a flipped camera view. Doing that in Crysis 2 would once again cut performance, almost in half. Not an option IMHO.

 

Toggling the reflections in HL2 never seemed to cut the performance nearly as much as you suggest it would in Crysis 2, but even if it did it would be a nice option. I mean I'm running the game at 1080p extreme with great framerate on a GTX 470, and again would gladly half the resolution for better reflections.

 

It probably culls away some geometry from the reflection camera in HL2, but also notice the emptiness of the scene, the lack of enemies and so on. It is a far more controlled and limited environment compared to a C2 NY cityscape.

Also, if you have that much performance to burn, there's still a lot that could be done with it that would have a far more significant effect on the final image compared to more correct planar reflections (as it would only work with a single mirror plane, whereas cubemaps work on everything, including cars and characters)

 

Rendering a basic version of the scene at 1/2 res or 1/4 resolution would not cut performance almost in half.

 

And why not? PC's are 3-10x as powerful as consoles and PC gamers pay a big premium for that.

Is it really so unreasonable to expect a developer to use that power? Especially a developer who in their previous game did just that and had already promised to do so again in this game. Lets face it, they flat out lied to the PC community. In hindsight, probably just to build hype.

As for the DX9 vs DX11 thing, a quick look in the "lets get rif of the API" thread shows just how ancient DX9 is compared with DX10 and especially 11 on the PC. The performance penalties are huge compared to building the game from the ground up on DX11.

Nope, I've lost complete interest in this game now. I'm sure it looks and plays great but so do lots of games. Like them I'll pick this up when they hit batgain prices and I get around to it. It's not pushing any envelopes or breaking any barriers so for me, its' just another AAA console shooter like MW2. That's something else I'll be picking up when I get around to it.