Technical Game Engine Comparisons: non-subjective *OffTopic Cleanup Spawn*

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Jupiter

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Malo said:
Great lighting and texturing (mostly). Impressive stuff. I'll buy it when I ever get a new GPU.
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It seems that CRYENGINE games and the Far Cry developers are the only ones who get soft shadows without massively impairing performance by 25-50%. After Crysis 2 from 2011 I thought more games would come with it. Honestly, nobody wants to see those typical uniformly looking shadows anymore. Why can't any other developer do it? PCSS and HFTC look good but they reduce the performance enormously.

Good luck with the new GPU. ^^
 
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The mountain region in the north doesn't look particularly impressive imo. The views are great, but there are lots of very polygonal looking rock formations plastered with loads of warpy, blurry textures. All in all I still think Dunia, although impressive in its own right, isn't quite up there with Anvil Next. From materials to geometric detail, AC Origins is just such a phenomenal looking game. The jump from Syndicate to Origins in particular was ridiculous.
What really impresses me though is how snappy FC5 feels. It's so much more responsive than other 30fps games. Ultimately that's more important.
 
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Anvil Next isn't Anvil Next either. Widlands looks very different from AC: Origins. Wildlands reminds me more of AC: Unity and AC: Origins reminds me more of Watch Dogs 2 (Disrupt engine). Generally the engine topic is complex at Ubisoft but this is better than using one engine for everything (see Frostbite) which leads to more problems. AC: Origins looks good but I think The Division and Wildlands are much better on PC. However, the console version of Wildlands (even if the Xbox One X is much better than the PlayStation 4 pro version) is not that good and on the PC one does not want to go below ultra settings because they make a big difference visually.
 
Wildlands is very impressive by many aspects. The draw distance is incredible and there are tons of details. Unfortunately, the game often has inconsistent assets even on PC at max settings (texures and polygons). Far Cry 5 has the same problem but to a much lower extent compared to Wildlands.
 
Wildlands has pretty good textures and it needs a lot of VRAM bacause of that. I couldn't call an open world game with better textures (Final Fantasy XV with is 100GB maybe?). But I have a problem with the textures of AC: Origins which are often too low quality in my opinion (hey could use more Tesselation as well).
 
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Ok, this is my last answer because i don't want to derail the thread.

Here is a picture of Wildlands on ultra settings : https://i.imgur.com/3neTs85.png

https://www.pcgamesn.com/ghost-reco...wildlands-pc-performance-graphics-tech-review

The assets are generally inconsistent in the game. Most other open worlds have better assets.

Here is a picture of FC5 (X version) : https://cdn.gamer-network.net/2018/articles/2018-04-01-12-02/XOX_000.jpg

So, in my opinion, you can't take Wildlands as a reference as long as we speak about asset quality.

Edit : i don't know if the word "inconsistent" is appropriate. I should rather say that the assets are generally average in this game.

Other open worlds with generally good asset quality :

https://flic.kr/p/32583110184

https://i.imgur.com/lfsRtRP.jpg (beta version on ultra)

https://flic.kr/p/30166940890
 
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There's one thing I noticed about ubi's open world game is that they go for very vast draw distance with suitably dense environment but upon close inspection of asset quality they fall apart more often than not. Their character models are never great, NPCs look PS3 level, building structures, texture quality in general are pretty average. Using Far Cry 5 as example on my 1X, it looks great at a distance but not once did it manage to blow my mind graphically. I think the game also needs better art, going pure realism with Xbox One as a base is not cutting it any more, some unique art style would give it more pop I reckon.
 
I think that Horizon: Zero Dawn can only dream of a texture und tesselation quality like this (Wildlands)
PIC

Wildlands_2.jpg

Foreground
Wildlands_3.jpg

You may be right with Far Cry 5 and AC: Origins but Wildlands is a completly other level. The processing power of the Xbox One X would not even manage 30fps at 1080p with the highest graphic settings. It is also clear that a Horizon can't keep up when Wildlands which needs 14-20GB memory when a PlayStation 4 only has 5-6 GB available.

I won't add video games with an urban environment because then there would be other titles like The Division which have a good asset quality and many polygons per object. Wildlands is also extremly huge with a lot of different climates etc. that other Open Wold games like Far Cry 5 look like a small demo in comparison.

ultragpu said:
There's one thing I noticed about ubi's open world game is that they go for very vast draw distance with suitably dense environment but upon close inspection of asset quality they fall apart more often than not. Their character models are never great, NPCs look PS3 level, building structures, texture quality in general are pretty average. Using Far Cry 5 as example on my 1X, it looks great at a distance but not once did it manage to blow my mind graphically. I think the game also needs better art, going pure realism with Xbox One as a base is not cutting it any more, some unique art style would give it more pop I reckon.
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There is not one open world game from Ubisoft . They shouldn't all be put on an equal footing. For example, The Division is very different from AC: Origins. The Division made possible what I previously only expected from small games.

The NPC quality of random ones is also not so bad in every Ubisoft game as you make it.
Random.jpg
NPC_2.jpg
 
Not really I just want to point out that the Ubisoft games also differ technically. I also think the Horizon looks better than AC: Origins on PC when I ignore the 30fps. Unlike you I never said the Horizon had a average or PlayStation 3 quality in on area in general.
 
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You should also see a wireframe of those UBISoft screenshots and realise it's almost a solid colour... Which is not a good thing.
 
Not in terms of performance but visually it looks very good. Tesselation can be reduced or completely deactivated in Wildlands but I'm not doing this because it looks much worse. Soil in AC: Origins also has a flat look next to Wildlands.
 
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You went through truly great length just to agree with me here: I basically said Dunia wasn't quite up there with Anvil Next, and you basically went on an on about the greatness of Anvil Next for 2 pages :), albeit through the lense of a crying nuclear power plant which has to power your P(enis)C. ;)
Regardless, FC5 still looks pretty fucking great. And now that I'm rolling with a cat and a dog at the same time, I find it increasingly harder to hold grudges against the game. Need a third slot for that elven ranger chick with the bow, though.
 
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Jupiter said:
I think that Horizon: Zero Dawn can only dream of a texture und tesselation quality like this (Wildlands)
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Ok, small answer. Your pictures exactly prove my point : incredible draw distance, tons of details, but still the same low poly environments and the same average textures. The foliage looks average, the large rocks in your first picture are low poly, etc.

The tessellation is very impressive but the ground textures still look average. In my opinion, you took the worse example of Ubi games with Wildlands if we only consider asset quality. The division is so much better in this field.

Honestly, the difference in asset quality is so obvious to me :

https://flic.kr/p/33385201856

https://flic.kr/p/33385164196

This is what i consider to be good looking rocks :

https://flic.kr/p/32633223934

You can find very detailed ground on Horizon too :

https://flic.kr/p/32684049704

You may be right with Far Cry 5 and AC: Origins but Wildlands is a completly other level.
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Both of those games have better assets than Wildlands.

Also, Batman is insane on PC :

https://flic.kr/p/30166942100

Along with HZD and The Division, probably the most consistent assets in an open world.
 
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Horizon has little far sight and a lot of shadow and LODs pop ups, drass disappears after just 30 metres and low mid-range LODs quality. Wildands has a lake which is neearly as big as the whole map of Horizon and therefore the viewing distance is much higher.
 
Jupiter said:
Horizon has little far sight and a lot of shadow and LODs pop ups, drass disappears after just 30 metres and low mid-range LODs quality. Wildands has a lake as big as the whole map of Horizon and therefore the view is much higher.
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Wildlands is far worse in this respect, at least on console.
 
Jupiter said:
Not really I just want to point out that the Ubisoft games also differ technically. I also think the Horizon looks better than AC: Origins on PC when I ignore the 30fps. Unlike you I never said the Horizon had a average or PlayStation 3 quality in on area in general.
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The sheer texture variety, environment density, asset poly count in Horizon is unrivaled even taking into account of Wildland's tessellation. In fact the raw amount of artist created asset in Horizon easily eclipse the computer generated tessellation which looks just weird in comparison. The NPCs once again is a no contest, the PS3 comparison is no exaggeration.
PIC
http://www.game-refraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Tom-Clancy’s-Ghost-Recon®-Wildlands-Standard-Edition-3.png
 
oh we're talking about Ubi engines?
Well I don't think you're going to see the latest stuff on older franchises.
Dunia, Anvil, SnowDrop, even between the games, they can't port the game over to the newer versions of those engines. They're too customized, and the world builders and tool builders would lose too much time changing to a new engine. I agree with it. We've seen what happens when developers are forced to change, ie. See Bioware trying to transition away from their old engine NWN engine to UE, to Frostbyte.

These games are likely going to be locked to these engines, and get incrementally updated each release. With how well Ubisoft has been doing by focusing more on polish and gameplay and content (and even extending 1 years worth of extra time), it's seems to far outweigh moving to a newer/improved engine as opposed to outfitting their existing one at least from a sales perspective.

That being said, it's likely that newer IPs are going to be starting on their latest engine (snowdrop) in this case.
 
Where are the new engines? Almost every time that is said an old one was changed. Completely new were Alien: Isolations, Dooms and The Divisions for example.

ultragpu said:
The sheer texture variety, environment density, asset poly count in Horizon is unrivaled even taking into account of Wildland's tessellation. In fact the raw amount of artist created asset in Horizon easily eclipse the computer generated tessellation which looks just weird in comparison. The NPCs once again is a no contest, the PS3 comparison is no exaggeration.
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Funny screenshot with some low graphics. The characters are really mediocre but they don't play a big role because you don't get close to them anyway. Horizon should have focused on his foresight as well.

Horizon Zero Dawn by X-Nergal-X, auf Flickr
Horizon Zero Dawn by X-Nergal-X, auf Flickr

The textures of Horizon lose their quality quickly and it looks very gamey (Mass Effect: Andromeda like) in comparsion to that

Wildlands.jpg

Wildands_2.jpg

And not all rocks are looking "hot" in Horizon. The ones in the picture above (where the character stands on) are a bit low res for example.
 
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