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

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They used these settings : https://www.gamersyde.com/hqstream_...con_wildlands_pc_environnements-39328_fr.html

The game is close to the max settings and vegetation quality is at max settings and it still looks quite average...

Also, in more urban environments, ISS still looks very good in fact :

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Level of Detail on "very high" instead of "Ultra" still has a lot of ore pop ups and thats the case here. Shadows and "long range shadows" are also not at the highest settings but the rest nearly is.

As far as I remember Infamous Second Son was by far the graphically best open world game until AC: Unity where one could have argued.

Speaking of Division's Snowdrop engine, loading up Mario Rabbid on the Switch the other day, I noticed it's using the Snowdrop engine. Going from Division, was certainly a big difference in the engine use lol. Not hating on anything, was just amusing seeing the contrast.

Technically I think it's the most advanced game on the Switch for graphical and picture quality features. However, performance is at 30fps and below.
 
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One thing I noticed in my short time playing God of War and then sitting and watching while my friend played it. They use a LOT of fog. And the areas without a lot of fog feature relatively simple world geometry (sea/lake) or basically are broken down into a bunch of interconnected mini-areas.

This allows them to really concentrate resources on the visible areas. For example that shot with the Turtle above the house in the glade in God of War features a very limited and simplistic scene. But that allows them to put a lot of resources into what little is actually in the scene.

That's a lot different from say an open world game with a large view distance and unrestricted views. Right now I'm watching my friend go through the 3rd area (the one after the lake/sea) and it looks great, but there's also a whole crap ton of fog hiding anything beyond a very short distance. Again, smart use of fog to allow increased detail closer to the character.

When there isn't fog, the play area has either very limited view of anything beyond a short distance (caves, fighting arenas, canyons, etc.) or an expanse of simple scenes (the sea/lake area). So far, it's been extremely rare to see a large expanse filled with lots of things (like Far Cry 5, for example).

Going through the current God of War reminds me a lot of the PS1/PS2 era where fog was used massively in games to limit viewing distance. Same thing is happening here, just with much much greater fidelity close to the character.

Perhaps things will open up later and show something really revolutionary, but at the moment I wouldn't say it is necessarily better than other games.

However, it does look really good. That said, I found HZD far more impressive due to not having to use heavy fog or a ton of interconnected mini-arenas. I do wonder if part of the reasons to choose Norse mythology in this game was due to the environments where heavy use of fog and mountains to limit scene complexity (with regard to rendering distance) is logical considering the locations.

Graphically speaking God of War is not so much open world as much as a linear corridor type of game. Gameplay wise, it's sort of open world with Metroid style revisiting of old locations.

Before people think I'm putting down GOWs graphics, I'm not. I find them very impressive and it's interesting to look at all the ways they used to accomplish it, including things they used to reduce how much needs to be rendered in order to put more into other areas.

Regards,
SB
 
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I don't have the game yet so i don't know, but you could be right. However, with the dynamic weather, the same area in HZD can be full of fog and completely clean some minutes later. It may just be an artistic choice.

Not to mention that rendering fog still costs some ressources.
 
I find the openworld games more impressive. Yeah yeah, the assets of linear games are more detailed but that's a given considering they don't have to process gigantic traversable environments with almost fully dynamic lighting.

That being said, the 'offline graphics look' of Kratos and cast, are quite gorgeous... but for me, it's the overall presentation that matters the most.
It actually looks quite gamey. The models are good but the lighting isn't up to par.
 
I think all the stuff people have posted on last few pages look impressive, and you can say that about a lot of big budget games now-a-days. As to what one "LOOKS THE BEST'EST", thats subjective, and depending on the visual style the designer is going for its comparing bananas to pork tenderloin. On the PC at least I think Wild Lands has one of the best (if not the best) looking distant LOD systems IMO, foreground is alright, but hey its an open world game where many things can happen at any point so overall, impressive. I haven't played GoW yet but as far as it looking gamey, well yeah, its a stylized game just like HZD and uncharted, etc.

But yeah, I find that word "gamey" hilarious. I mean can anyone show me an example of a game that doesn't look "gamey"? IMO Its silly critiquing games on photorealism because to me nothing and I mean nothing available looks close to photorealism because photorealism isn't economically viable in realtime, even the VFX industry still has issues getting it right. All I want is overall consistency in lighting/shading when things are in motion for realtime applications because thats about all you can do atm.
 
But yeah, I find that word "gamey" hilarious. I mean can anyone show me an example of a game that doesn't look "gamey"? IMO Its silly critiquing games on photorealism because to me nothing and I mean nothing available looks close to photorealism because photorealism isn't economically viable in realtime, even the VFX industry still has issues getting it right. All I want is overall consistency in lighting/shading when things are in motion for realtime applications because thats about all you can do atm.

Some games have more realistic visuals than others. But i would say games that look less gamey are those that are closer to CGI graphics, no matter the art style.

For instance, Ratchet and Clank doesn't look gamey to me.

I find the openworld games more impressive. Yeah yeah, the assets of linear games are more detailed but that's a given considering they don't have to process gigantic traversable environments with almost fully dynamic lighting.

Do they have to deal with this kind of thing with no loading times and no camera cuts ? :

godofwar_201804181806u3q0m.png


Maybe HZD, but i doubt that multis can match exclusives in terms of optimization. You see it everytime and this is even more apparent with the Pro/X support that is far superior in exclusive games.
 
It depends on how fast you can move. In The Division and Horizon one only moves slow and in Wildlands one can move with over 200km/h through the world. Such speeds have a much greater impact on streaming.

Wildlands world is massive this lake alone is bigger than FALLOUT 4s map and its only a small area of the map.
Wildlands_huge_lake by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr

24km distance view
Viewing_distance (6) by X-RAY-89, auf Flickr


The assets still look average...

I may sound a bit picky, but this is what we have in HZD :


Also, your claim on trees is wrong :


vs


In close range Horizon has more polys per assets. I also find the asset quality in Horizon better than in GoW.

Still the soil textures from WIldlands are good and clearly better than in AC: Origins for example. In addition it has a lot of tessellation and that already costs up to 25% performance.


But yeah, I find that word "gamey" hilarious. I mean can anyone show me an example of a game that doesn't look "gamey"? IMO Its silly critiquing games on photorealism because to me nothing and I mean nothing available looks close to photorealism because photorealism isn't economically viable in realtime, even the VFX industry still has issues getting it right. All I want is overall consistency in lighting/shading when things are in motion for realtime applications because thats about all you can do atm.

I think the AC: Origins and Watch Dogs 2 look more gamey than Wildlands or The Division. Same goes for Battlefront 2015 vs. Battlefeont 2 (2017) where the first mentioned looks more like a movie. Gamey is decided by many points like AA, lighting, material shading, tone mapping etc. When it has lots of aliasing it's always gamey for me.
 
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Gamey character model with gamey lighting.
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CGI esque model and lighting
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Beowulf CGI
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Yeah, that comparison with Beowulf just shows how distant GoW is from the offline CGI look. The lighting and shading are far behind, look quite simplistic and harsh compared to CGI. The beard in particular screams "game". Specular lighting seems to be purely analytical. Uncharted does a much better job.

Do they have to deal with this kind of thing with no loading times and no camera cuts ? :

godofwar_201804181806u3q0m.png
It's pretty much the only thing that's being rendered in that scene. Not impressive. Also, no camera cuts helps because with multiple shot cutscenes you have to plan for many different possibilites while in single shot there's only one.
 
Yeah, that comparison with Beowulf just shows how distant GoW is from the offline CGI look. The lighting and shading are far behind, look quite simplistic and harsh compared to CGI. The beard in particular screams "game". Specular lighting seems to be purely analytical. Uncharted does a much better job.


It's pretty much the only thing that's being rendered in that scene. Not impressive. Also, no camera cuts helps because with multiple shot cutscenes you have to plan for many different possibilites while in single shot there's only one.
Doesn't look far behind at all, it even does some things better like more texture detail and better muscle modeling. Sure it's still behind but it's heck of a more closer than Wildlands could ever be.
 
Doesn't look far behind at all, it even does some things better like more texture detail and better muscle modeling. Sure it's still behind but it's heck of a more closer than Wildlands could ever be.
No, it's lacking in every single way.

And of course the assets are higher fidelity than Wildlands: open world vs linear game, duh.
 
It's pretty much the only thing that's being rendered in that scene. Not impressive. Also, no camera cuts helps because with multiple shot cutscenes you have to plan for many different possibilites while in single shot there's only one.

Not impressive, yet i've never seen such a large animal ever rendered in any video game. Also, the camera moves constantly so your point is wrong.

In close range Horizon has more polys per assets. I also find the asset quality in Horizon better than in GoW.

It's everything that looks better : textures, polys, shaders, lighting. Saying that HZD has better assets only due to higher polys is simply false.

Here is an example of what i mean :

en9yob2l88ky.jpg


 
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Not impressive, yet i've never seen such a large animal ever rendered in any video game. Also, the camera moves constantly so your point is wrong.
Why does being big makes it impressive? My point is right. The camera moves in multi-shot cutscenes too. Having only one shot simplifies things and makes it easier to optimize rendering.
 
Why does being big makes it impressive?

Is this a serious question ? Could you imagine the same scale on PS1 ?

If it doesn't cause any technical challenge, then we should have already seen such big animals on much weaker hardwares.

The camera moves in multi-shot cutscenes too. Having only one shot simplifies things and makes it easier to optimize rendering.

As you can see, it's really easy :


It's probably why we already saw this process in several games...
 
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