Silent hill 3 WTF!!!

She is in Silent Hill. How could anyone not have a "dead" and pale face there? :D
 
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It doesn't matter how realistic the models get, the animators will always fail when trying to do things like lip movement that looks realistic and matches the voice.
 
And this texturing is supposed to be good how? It's so symmetrical, totally unnatural - if you really want to analyze this beyond the exception job done subconsciously by the brain - that is, the unbiased brain. Look at the skin color under each eye, down to the very faint but visible 'dots' that are the equilaterally placed on each side of the nose. Down to the same 'mark' about an inch to each side and above the mouth.

Again, as I said, this hardly 'realism' or reminiscent of the natural world where imperfections are everywhere; the one embraced and sufficiently talked about by Perlin and others who have done extensive research into this.

The texturing is definitely not that impressive, compared to the realism in a DoomIII or Silent Hill 3 or FF:TSW.

The more colorful argument is just BS as it's clearly an artistic choice and the 'Old man' pictures are among the best examples I've ever seen of a realistic portreyal of the human face - this guy needs to move on with his life.
 
It doesn't matter how realistic the models get, the animators will always fail when trying to do things like lip movement that looks realistic and matches the voice.
I agree. Even the high profile CGI movies suffer from that in certain scenes. Still, of all the realtime cutscenes I've seen, SH3 is doing the most admirable job in facial animation.
 
Vince said:
The texturing is definitely not that impressive, compared to the realism in a DoomIII or Silent Hill 3 or FF:TSW.
NOOOOO , Vince what are you doing? Your allowing the flood gates for comments such as "but the DC is soo old and has inferior hardware" to be open, you know what PC-Engine is like.

Lazy8s said:
The SH3 models could've looked more natural by having a fuller flush all over while still keeping the saturation low and only mildly noticeable.
As for the SH3 models, they look pretty anime to me. If you find a girl that looks anything like that, i'll cut my right hand off. Stylised anime, and the reason why the they all look pale, is IMHO art direction.
 
Anime skin looks flat shaded. I think what you mean is that the skin in SH3 looks more like the comic book idea. Gritty but not 'real-world' realistic.
 
JacksBleedingEyes:
NOOOOO , Vince what are you doing? Your allowing the flood gates for comments such as "but the DC is soo old and has inferior hardware" to be open,
Um, I'd would've though what I'm about to point out goes without saying, but directly comparing a game like Silent Hill 3 or Doom III to Shenmue without considering scale is ridiculous without needing to consider the hardware they're on.

Forget Dreamcast, Xbox, and PS2... the scale of what's being put on screen in that example selection of games is completely different! A survival horror game like Silent Hill 3 has these small rooms with obscured views in every direction, and has like only a few characters on screen at max. Of course it's going to be tuned for high detail models. Are action games garbage in the technical department just because they don't sport the immediate detail levels of a one-on-one fighter?

Expect a completely different engine for Silent Hill 3 and Doom III, with completely less focus on lighting and character detail, if they were set outside in a bustling metropolis. For as much as Shenmue gets downplayed by some here, you'd think it would have been totally surpassed in what it does by lots of games. I'm not sure what games some of you have been playing, but I sure wouldn't mind someone pointing out another game(s) with significantly better visuals at its scale of detail.

Show me another game that allows up to 50 NPCs on screen simultaneously within environments with towering structures in every direction and so much diversity at every point. The only games I can think of with worlds that try a similar display scale are games like Morrowind and Enclave, and even they don't have such meticulous detailing with dozens of NPCs walking about, shopping, leaning down to examine produce, etc in environments packed with so much detail. Then you have games like State of Emergency, The Getaway, and Grand Theft Auto 3 which allow for much larger chunks of map, but I don't feel they compare favorably in the graphics department to start with.

The truth is, all machines will drop out of Silent-Hill-levels of detail once you throw the processing requirements of large scale characters and environments at it. That's not to say that Konami hasn't done a very amazing job tuning their engine for its level of detail, but the reason Shenmue gets so much mention by some is because we can see that few games have really ever provided a good challenge for it at its own level of detail after all this time.
 
The obvious question is, if SH3 is so "easy" to portray on any system, why aren´t there any games that reach the level of detail of its world? And no, those fake Shenmue face demos do not count. I´m not a programmer, but I imagine it´s very easy for a system in this generation to concentrate all of it´s power in rendering a single CG quality face, no matter how underpowered compared to PS2 it is. However, SH3 is doing it realtime.
Really, websites, fans, everyone but diehard DC fans do not recognize that even Shenmue 2 is outdated in the graphics department. Basically, all I hear when people try to show off Shenmue´s graphics is how great those demos are. Look at the real time graphics, and the images speak for themselves. Bringing up face demos doesn´t change that the in game graphics are lacking nowadays.
I´d also like to know what is really the arguement against SH3´s skin textures. They look very realistic to me, with facial imperfections, different shades of the same color being applied on the skin, even blue veins are present in a subtle matter, just like in real life. and if the claim is that her skin isn´t "rosy enough, without enough rosy spots here and there", here´s a clue: people have different skin tones.
DC nostalgics should really give it up.
 
50 NPCs on the screen at one time? MGS2.

I think you're looking back a little too fondly on Shenmue - there's shitloads of pop-in, the NPCs fade in and out constantly, the textures on the characters are generally average at best (check out Ryo's blurry jacket!!), the environments aren't that amazing, the shadows are blocky and glitchy, the lighting on the outdoor scenes is static...

The cut-scenes were fairly impressive at the time, but do not in any way hold up to today's games. Get over it. Goddamn Dreamcast fanboys, you'll be telling us Shenmue is still the hottest thing since sliced bread when the PS4 and XBox 3 come out...
 
Shenmue does a lot of things well, graphically all things considered, but the game is basically structured like a series of rooms - it just happens that those rooms contain geometry that represents outside view. Once you exit the 'room' you have to wait a good chunk of time for the next scene to load. That not only allows programmers to put a lot of detail into each of those scenes, but to also handpick the objects from the grand scene that are going to be visible on the horizon in that particular 'room'. In that sense it's not much different from the silent hill games, especially considering that SH3 promisses a lot of larger, and still very detailed environments to explore, as opposed to SH2.

Logan, those shenmue face demos are in fact also realtime, but the point is, while being rendered on the screen, there really isn't much else there. You can see upper part of their torso, some very simplistic background and that's it.
 
Can we have a pic of Mario's head you see when you start up Mario64? :oops:
 
marconelly! said:
Logan, those shenmue face demos are in fact also realtime, but the point is, while being rendered on the screen, there really isn't much else there. You can see upper part of their torso, some very simplistic background and that's it.

Well, that´s what I meant by "fake demos". It´s just that sometimes these people that like to go on and on about Shenmue on DC make me somewhat mad, as if it were the best looking game of the generation or something of the sort, while using face demos to support their claim.

Hey, looking at that SM64 screenshot, you could even say that most games do not reach the level of detail in Mario´s face, so it still competes graphically.:D
 
Obviously you have no clue as to the scope of the Shenmue engine. We are talking about the engine being held back by the DC ;)
The engine itself is above anything out there so far. I'd like to see an updated Shenmue engine running on current hardware and see someone try to best it ;)

And I'm not talking about a port :p
 
Logan Leonhart:
The obvious question is, if SH3 is so "easy" to portray on any system, why aren´t there any games that reach the level of detail of its world?
Who said SH3 was "easy" to portray!? I think its a technically outstanding game... no ifs, ands, or buts. That's why it's going to end up being one of the best-looking games of its scale when it releases.

It's also quite logical that it can't be directly compared to a game with Shenmue scale considering you'll never have dozens of NPCs walking around in open and non-obscured environments. Guess what could happen in Shenmue if you restricted it to only four or so characters on-screen max? You could devote all that geometry and processing to making each character that much more detailed. Take the game off the streets where you can see well over hundreds of meters into the distance with no environmental obscurity, and throw it into some enclosed rooms... and watch as you can increase the lighting quite significantly.
And no, those fake Shenmue face demos do not count.
Apparently you were so impressed with the following screenshot, that you thought it was part of the head demo. It's not. It's from an in-game cinema:

13.jpg

That screenshot is from in-game cinema in Shenmue - same as with those Silent Hill 3 shots (except the SH3 shots aren't real-time at all, actually - they were rendered at a much higher res than the PS2 will actually be doing and then downsampled... adds that extra kick of clarity.) Another thing about Silent Hill 3 cut-scenes (and also some cut-scenes from Shenmue II), is the letterboxing. Reduce the amount of screen to render, and you can up the graphics somewhat. Just another of the many things certain cut-scenes allow you to do.

Here's Silent Hill 3 outdoors:

sh3_039.jpg

I´m not a programmer, but I imagine it´s very easy for a system in this generation to concentrate all of it´s power in rendering a single CG quality face, no matter how underpowered compared to PS2 it is. However, SH3 is doing it realtime.
That Shenmue shot of the girl's face above is being rendered in a scene with her full character model standing at the edge of a cliff next to a forest and overlooking a long, winding river. An eagle flies through the canyon and shows that it's actually quite a vast environment with rolling hills, rocky ledges and all. Much larger and with better visibility than a survival horror game.
Really, websites, fans, everyone but diehard DC fans do not recognize that even Shenmue 2 is outdated in the graphics department.
Then surely you'll have no trouble pointing out some other games with graphics of its scale that look significantly better.

The Getaway? Nah, post some screenshots. While it does have a large world map, that's a sacrifice it makes for a plague of the "sameness" all over its world that haunts every game like that (Crazy Taxi, Grand Theft Auto, Super Runabout, Driver, etc.)
Basically, all I hear when people try to show off Shenmue´s graphics is how great those demos are. Look at the real time graphics, and the images speak for themselves. Bringing up face demos doesn´t change that the in game graphics are lacking nowadays.
The in-game graphics are amazing. You can take a screenshot from anywhere in the whole Hong Kong or Yokosuka map, and I'd be able to tell you exactly where Ryo is and which NPCs are off in the distance. Why? Because each storefront, each block, each park, and each person is fully modeled with high geometry and distinctive enough textures that's it's all easily recognizeable from each other. There storefronts each have their own signs, decorations, fully modeled doors and windows, and other distinctions... and there's rows upon rows of them mixed with parks and skyscrapers all within the same chunk of city. What other games have such a fully expressed world with such a level of detail?

Then there's tons of things that form its believable package that are so subtle most people take it for granted. Ever notice how you can talk to any character, no matter what they're doing, and they'll actually animate a response from their current position? What I mean is, if someone's bending over looking at flowers and you talk to them, they'll stay bent over but realistically turn at their waist and arch their neck up to meet your eyes when answering. Most games only have characters react from a limited set of key points of animation, because it would require a very in-depth engine to accomodate something as sophisticated as what Shenmue is doing. Dozens of characters simultaneously on-screen go about their daily routine, walking about the storefronts, shopping, opening doors, sitting down at a restuarant table, drinking tea, getting up, manuevering their way through pedestrian traffic, and all the while transitioning through each set of animations seamlessly and with no load time interruptions within an area. And that's just a small sampling. There's also the people who work in the stores, kneed the dough, take launch breaks, get on and off bikes, talk to each other, etc. that represents just a small portion of the variety of NPCs. Really... what other game does that?

There's a whole lot more that has to be tracked. Notice any one of the hundreds of characters... let them walk away from you for about fifteen minutes of real time. Now, go off and head in the direction they went. You'll find them exactly where they're supposed to be, even a half-mile across the map through several Quarters. And the game tracks hundreds of characters like that, mind you. I once left the game on pause with Ryo standing in front of the door to a general store (NPCs still pathfind and wander about while in pause) for about twenty minutes, and when I came back to the game, there was a crowd of over thirty NPCs bunched up because a line had formed outside the store. One of the main characters was on their way to another location at the time when the crowd interrupted her. I finally was able to let her through, and I eventually ran into her again several minutes later in another section of the city exactly where she should have been factoring in her interrupted progress and the dispersion of the huge crowd.

The game also does real-time lip synching, another pretty impressive feat for the time.
I´d also like to know what is really the arguement against SH3´s skin textures. They look very realistic to me, with facial imperfections, different shades of the same color being applied on the skin, even blue veins are present in a subtle matter, just like in real life. and if the claim is that her skin isn´t "rosy enough, without enough rosy spots here and there", here´s a clue: people have different skin tones.
I just think they could've used better skin surfacing textures:

sh3_041.jpg

mech:
50 NPCs on the screen at one time? MGS2.
The problem with the example of those guards is that they don't have the variations in detail levels or are enclosed within as detailed environments as you get in Shenmue. MGS2 looks alright, and the framerate makes it fairly impressive. But, the game's scale is hardly comparable here. Unless you can remind me (pics would help if you could find some) of some environments in MGS2 with as much variation and detail on-screen as say, Dobuita or the Wise Man's Quarter from the Shenmue series...
I think you're looking back a little too fondly on Shenmue - there's shitloads of pop-in,
There's no pop-in for the environment at all. I'd think you were talking about the characters, except you go on to list that as a separate criticism...
the NPCs fade in and out constantly,
True. But, in Shenmue II, this happens at their draw horizon because the game allows the partially unscripted possibility that any one from a list of hundreds of NPCs could be walking onto the screen at any time. It's obviously not going to keep hundreds of character models in RAM at all times, so they have be dynamically spooled off the disc when they wander in from a new chunk of town. However, this isn't a problem with geometry load as many would assume, for you can easily let those "fading" characters approach your view, as well as another ten if you wanted, and they wouldn't suddenly start disappearing once they were within the view horizon. Unfortunately, the draw horizon for NPCs is set too close for Ryo's running speed, so that's why they appear to fade in. But again, the engine has no problem pushing the required geometry for them once they've already been accessed off the disc.
when the at the same the textures on the characters are generally average at best (check out Ryo's blurry jacket!!),
You can't forget scale, though. What other game has so many different characters in such detailed and varied environments without turning into GTA3/Crazy-Taxi blurred textures?
the environments aren't that amazing,
Then you won't mind pointing out a game with more detailed environments which allows you to see at least a few city blocks at a time.
the shadows are blocky and glitchy,
Blocky yes. Then again, tons of characters are all getting their own shadows.

Glitchy? Remember that scene where Ryo finds Charlie at the Tatoo parlor? Remember when he walks up to the curtain and his shadow bends across the corrugated ripples perfectly? The shadows bend and deform just as well as any game.
the lighting on the outdoor scenes is static...
No. In Shenmue II, there are time control options at certain points which allow you to fast forward the hours in only a few seconds. You can clearly see the shadows bending and the lighting dynamically coloring the environment with the movement of the sun. Of course it's no Silent Hill 3, but then again this game isn't enclosed in small, little rooms.

The game does have a lot of rough visual aspects admittedly (something that happens when you try to represent environments and character counts of such scale), but I was surprised at how nice it cleans up when displayed with its 480p output. If you ever seen progressive scan, you know it has a pretty noticeable effect on image improvement, which is something your example of MGS2 at least doesn't output at. I believe MGS2 outputs at a lower res of 448i.

marconelly!:
Shenmue does a lot of things well, graphically all things considered, but the game is basically structured like a series of rooms - it just happens that those rooms contain geometry that represents outside view.
This criticism doesn't make sense in the way you mean it to. The thing that makes outside harder to render than inside is the fact that you don't have walls and ceilings almost always useful in occlusion; you have the much longer view distances. Shenmue's outdoors has these lengthy view distances. You can see well over a hundred meters down any open pathway with no fogging or environmental fade-in (as well as into the sky for vertical elevation details), so it's as outdoor in the truest sense of frame rendering as anything can be. When you look out into the distance, you're seeing that stuff, and it's being rendered. No tricks there.

What you mean to actually be criticizing is just how small each "level" actually is, and that is a quite valid point. There's no doubt that the limited area size allows Shenmue to pack in more variation of detail (as opposed to somehow upping frame-load capacity) into each section than a game like Morrowind, Jak and Daxter, or the upcoming Fable gets to do. This is because each area of Shenmue's world gets its own data set for new textures and geometry. But that applies primarily to how much variation can be used (and has the annoying drawback of load times)... not some trick that makes Shenmue's outdoor environments any less processor intensive or at all similar to the rendering scale of indoor environments.
but to also handpick the objects from the grand scene that are going to be visible on the horizon in that particular 'room'.
True. With more control over what the player will be seeing, you can "tune" things better. Still, that doesn't make it any less "outdoors" or make the rendering requirement any less. It just makes view prediction more scripted.
In that sense it's not much different from the silent hill games, especially considering that SH3 promisses a lot of larger, and still very detailed environments to explore, as opposed to SH2.
The views in Silent Hill locations are very scripted and controlled. And they're indoors, which is a big difference since it benefits from small, enclosed spaces with ceilings and walls.

The outdoor locations I've seen have view distances heavily obscured, and that is the one thing which actually makes an outdoor location similar to an indoor room. It''s not letting you look out far into huge areas, and there's not a clear view of dozens of people walking out way down the street. This is where the scale of the two games differ heavily, even in Silent Hill 3's "outdoor" environments.
Logan, those shenmue face demos are in fact also realtime, but the point is, while being rendered on the screen, there really isn't much else there. You can see upper part of their torso, some very simplistic background and that's it.
Well... the Shenhua picture there has a full character in a vast, unobscured environment.

The Xiuying shot there is from the head demo, but it has her full apartment behind her if you look closely, with detailed martial arts move-scrolls on the walls and her bed and everything. Looking at Shenhua's facial detail and comparing it to her's, it's not hard to imagine they could have easily displayed Xiuying in full if the head demo had been intended to be a room demo or something. It's not like any of the head demos ever dropped a frame or anything, no matter what you did with the zooming and lighting. So, it obviously wasn't being stressed to the max, especially seeing as how Shenhua from the in-game cut-scene looks nigh identical to the Shenhua head demo (even with the ear change, I actually think her face might look even more fleshed out in the in-game shot):

Head Demo:

11.jpg



In-Game Cut-Scene:

13.jpg
 
I believe MGS2 outputs at a lower res of 448i.
No... It outputs exactly 448i on PS2. It doesn't output 448p, though, but the game obviously does use full frame buffers (you can never see any sign of dreaded intrlace line doubling when it slows down)

This is where the scale of the two games differ heavily, even in Silent Hill 3's "outdoor" environments.
I must say I haven't see much of those, so I won't say anything about it.

The views in Silent Hill locations are very scripted and controlled. And they're indoors, which is a big difference since it benefits from small, enclosed spaces with ceilings and walls.
That is very true, but my point was that any time creators of Shenmue see any kind of slowdown, they could either delete some of the objects from the scene, or simplify the geometry for that particular scene manually, not caring about any kind of automatic LOD algorithm. In that sense, although outdoors, that game's scenes had almost as much control over what is displayed as games that render classic rooms.


Btw, when you mentioned Jak & Daxter, which I forgot about. In my opinion that game in particular is in every way more impressive than Shenmue, graphically. It looks completely different though, but the variation of detail, constant 60FPS framerate, very solid (multi)texturing with mipmapping, and insane amounts of geometry are all there, as well as very nicely done and abundant particle effects. Plus it has no visible loading pauses.
 
marconelly!:
No... It outputs exactly 448i on PS2.
That's what I meant. I said "res of 448i" to indicate the exact resolution, and used the modifier "lower" to imply that it was lower than the 480p. Sorry for the wording confusion.
Btw, when you mentioned Jak & Daxter, which I forgot about. In my opinion that game in particular is in every way more impressive than Shenmue, graphically. It looks completely different though, but the variation of detail, constant 60FPS framerate, very solid (multi)texturing with mipmapping, and insane amounts of geometry are all there, as well as very nicely done and abundant particle effects. Plus it has no visible loading pauses.
The framerate, view distances, seamless world, and geometry are all very impressive in Jak and Daxter... a well thought-out engine indeed for PS2. But you can't honestly tell me that, even with the differences to art styles, you think it surpasses Shenmue for how detail-packed specific areas are.

Think about it... The Stand Quarter in Kowloon, with all those stands adorned with individually styled canopies waving in the wind, and all those different cooking pots and trinkets covering each one. Or the tightly packed White Dynasty Quarter in Wan Chai - the one were you tear down through the row of stands during that exceptionally long QTE... throwing people into the stands, breaking them apart in real-time. Tables overturning, stuff falling off of them, debris scattering, ducks escaping, clouds of flour getting kicked into the air. Jak and Daxter's world was never textured that heavily or had such a concentration of detail like that. And neither did Ratchet and Clank for that matter.

And yeah, I understand your point that the Jak and Daxter engine went for a more cartoonish expression, but in regards to platformer graphics:
Sonic Adventure 2 DC >> Jak and Daxter PS2
 
I just don't think Sonic 2 is better looking than J&D, or has more impressive technology, it does run in progressive scan mode, but that is about the only thing it has going for it in this comparision, IMO.


True, there are places in Shenmue that are really detail packed, but J&D is no slouch either. I mean, it would be hard to argue that it doesn't have more polys on screen even though it runs at 60FPS. There are places in J&D where you can look at the whole overworld below you and it looks just jam-packed. The very beginning of the game as you walk out of the shack is one such place - just rotate the camera around, and the whole village below you fills the screen. And it's not like things repeat there. It looks very distinctive actually, with a lot of detail. Besides, rarely in J&D you can find a texture that is really low-res. Yes, the game is cartoonish so that makes people dismiss it from the beginning, but even when you zoom into things in 1st person mode, it still looks quite sharp for the most part. Also, what it lacks in extra added detail you can find in Shenmue, it makes up for in special effects that use particles, multitexturing, heat distortion etc...

Aesthetics aside, just from the pure technological point of view, I think it's doing more.

R&C is not a good example for me in this case as it has much worse texturing than J&D (but probably has even more geometry)
 
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