Red Dead Redemption 2

[Deleted member 11852]

8 years in the making, 3000 employees with a budget that devours the universe itself, yet Rockstar couldn't get HDR right, how very embarrassing and disappointing.

It seems like it was a shoe-in at towards the end of development. Isn't this the result you expect when the entirety of the visual creation process isn't targeting HDR presentation throughout? Slapping on HDR at the end feels not dissimilar to adding 3D effects to a movie in post production.

 

[Xbat]

Might be a by product of being in development so long?

 

[Sigfried1977]

Still weird. Infamous has proper HDR support, and that game is from a couple months post the PS4's launch. I doubt RDR2's development goes that far back. And besides, RDR2 isn't exactly the only game that took massively long to develop. God of War's development took an eternity. And let's not forget about Shadow of the Colossus, a game which started development on a last generation system.

 

[Malo]

Maybe their toolsets aren't capable of integrating the required changes without significant interruption for the artists? It's very surprising coming from a company that doesn't rush development, has significant cash flow and is known for pushing the boundaries of visual fidelity.

 

[ultragpu]

It seems like it was a shoe-in at towards the end of development. Isn't this the result you expect when the entirety of the visual creation process isn't targeting HDR presentation throughout? Slapping on HDR at the end feels not dissimilar to adding 3D effects to a movie in post production.

I doubt it, when remasters from last gen titles are getting better HDR than the poverty version Rockstar has brought us, you start to think it's got more to do with laziness?
Funny thing is HDR would add so much more to the visuals yet it's so amateurishly handled.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Still weird. Infamous has proper HDR support, and that game is from a couple months post the PS4's launch. I doubt RDR2's development goes that far back.

RDR2 was in development for seven years (2011).

And besides, RDR2 isn't exactly the only game that took massively long to develop. God of War's development took an eternity. And let's not forget about Shadow of the Colossus, a game which started development on a last generation system.

It's likely Sonys first party studios knew years ago that their creation toolchain for visuals should accommodate HDR because otherwise your HDR hardware has no HDR games. available until years after release.

 

[Karamazov]

100 hours a week of laziness !

 

[Jupiter]

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I doubt it, when remasters from last gen titles are getting better HDR than the poverty version Rockstar has brought us, you start to think it's got more to do with laziness?

No. I think it's a shit ton of work to take hundreds of thousands of assets created for a SDR workflow and revisit them all for HDR. Here is The Playground (Forza) and the Coalition (Gears of War) talking about HDR.

But sure, you can go with 'lazy' if you like.

One of the things with creating games with HDR support is that it isn’t just an add-on feature for a game. It normally needs addressing very early on in the process.

So fucking lazy.

 

[Xbat]

I doubt it, when remasters from last gen titles are getting better HDR

It is a quandary. I suppose with remasters things like HDR are a priority.
I suppose it just never made it into Rockstars bubble while they were crunching there butts off to finish Red Dead. It can happen, get so focused you get tunnel vision.

Dsoup's above post makes more sense.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It is a quandary. I suppose with remasters things like HDR are a priority.

And with a remaster (not a port) you're revisiting all the visual assets anyway. Red Dead Redemption II was already a year late - the first trailer released in October 2016 had a "Coming Fall 2017" fade out. The game has been especially praised for it's visuals so to consider revisiting every part of that? That's years of work.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Considering you'd have to test an HDR lighting model for all of your assets and assign new luminance ranges for every single light source, it's probably a massive undertaking to do that for a massive game like RDR2 vs some old remaster that has less materials, less lights, less cut scenes, less environmental effects (weather, time of day etc).

 

[iroboto]

Not wanting to turn this into a game versus thread, on the animation front I'm not seeing anything in RDR2 that Uncharted 4 wasn't doing better two-and-half-years ago in a control system allowed for fluid immediate changes from one action/animation to another. GDC members can check out Naughty Dog's presentation.

What RDR2 is doing that feels groundbreaking in an action game is the depth of the world and the characters who live in it. Like killing one member of a family and then you start seeing family members grieving over a grave. I'm genuinely curious if its possible to completely wipe out an entire town.



I'm assuming you've not played a modern Naughty Dog game? In RDR2 it feels like you cannot make any movement or action until the animation for the current action has completed, which can take several seconds. In Uncharted and The Last of Us, mid-action/animation you do immediately do something else and one action/animation immediately and seamlessly transitions into the new one. And yet the characters still feel 'heavy'.

Not wanting to turn this into a game versus thread
Then don't.

I'm not allowed to praise RDR2?
The animation sequenced or began while the oats were on the barrel and then adapted to catch object falling in mid-air. That's probably the toughest type of animation setup you can accommodate for.

 

[Scott_Arm]

It is disappointing that they don't have a working HDR implementation. This is exactly the game that would look amazing in HDR, as long as they could maintain their careful attention to viewing contrast.

 

[London Geezer]

Considering you'd have to test an HDR lighting model for all of your assets and assign new luminance ranges for every single light source, it's probably a massive undertaking to do that for a massive game like RDR2 vs some old remaster that has less materials, less lights, less cut scenes, less environmental effects (weather, time of day etc).

Would you though? They’d have to rework the range for sunlight. One light. Then they’d have to do the same for all different types of light (not each individual light one by one). Sure it’s more work, but I really don’t think it’s as much as you think.

 

[chris1515]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1057127455000006656

this tweet show the impressive improvement between the different Red Dead, it is great but It will be difficult to impress next generation.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Would you though? They’d have to rework the range for sunlight. One light. Then they’d have to do the same for all different types of light (not each individual light one by one). Sure it’s more work, but I really don’t think it’s as much as you think.

It really depends on their content pipeline, their lighting/materials model. Do we even know that they're using a fully physically-based rendering pipeline?

edit: fingers-crossed, I hope they implement working HDR for people that have HDR sets. Considering how impressive the scale and quality of the game is, laziness doesn't seem like a realistic barrier. It's more likely a technical barrier preventing a "simple" implementation.

 

[Karamazov]

it is great but It will be difficult to impress next generation.

Why ? Xbox One X runs this title at 4k already. So with at least twice the GPU power, a lot more CPU power, and maybe more than twice the ram at higher bandwidth, how could they fail to impress ?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Not wanting to turn this into a game versus thread
Then don't. I'm not allowed to praise RDR2?

Sure you can, I can't praise it enough. I'm only take issue with your claim of RDR2's animation as "That’s next gen" when Uncharted 4 was doing this, and more, two-and-half-years ago without fixed-animation lengthsy. Some of this dynamic animation reaction to objects was in The Last of Us. That's literally last gen

Because something is new to you, does not make it new.

 

[DrJay24]

It is disappointing that they don't have a working HDR implementation. This is exactly the game that would look amazing in HDR, as long as they could maintain their careful attention to viewing contrast.

I turned off HDR in the Xbox setting, kind of sad. Broken HDR, broken CB on the pro as I understand it. Come on R*...