UC4: Best looking gameplay? *SPOILS*

It's been a while since I finished UC4. On overall I felt it was a nice looking game with many spectacular moments. It looks really nice when you look where the devs want you to look, but often looks quite rough and I have to take exception on the draw distance thing. Witcher 3, even on the PS4 really puts this to shame with a large margin.

All the distant objects in that picture look terrible, even the houses that are quite close (not the closest ones)

Spoiler

I paid attention to this all throughout the game. The backdrops in many instances looked like PS3 level stuff. Load up Chapter 3 and while on the deck of that recovery boat, look around and see how bad the houses and objects on the other side of the river looks like. Throughout the game it was super jarring to see very high quality details in close proximity mixed up with some really nasty objects too close to the character. This game definitely doesn't shine with regards to draw distance.

 

Witcher 3 might look better in pictures in terms of lod (i'm not even sure about that) but it doesn't compare in motion. Even on PC maxed out setting the grass lod pop-in is quite noticeable. Especially so in the console versions, from DF:



In U4 you just don't notice pop-in unless you're specifically looking for it.

Some non zoomed-in gameplay shots

 

The detail in distant objects is night and day between those two games in favour of the Witcher.

 

Yeah sure, if you exclude textures, shading, shadows etc.

 

Not sure what you mean, but Uncharted 4 very much excludes those in many distant objects.

Your pictures show scenery very close. I know Uncharted 4 looks very nice up close and very nice overall, but there are many locations where you can see far, usually places where you can't go and those places look like crap and are in stark contrast to the very high quality of the rest of the game.

 

I don't have to explain what is missing here: http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/ar.../1/PS4_000.bmp.jpg/EG11/quality/90/format/jpg

And what is not missing here in the "distant scenery": https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7446/26972378975_3922216517_o.png

Namely, shadows and material shading closer to how it looks up close. Something The Witcher 3 struggles with even on PC. In terms of asset streaming and lod management U4 is unbeaten on Ps4 even though you can still find extreme cases. And i think i know how W3 looks at it's best, played quite a bit on PC maxed out:

 

Are you sure about that? There are particular places in Uncharted 4 where you can see as far as the eye can see and I was impressed by how beautiful the scenery looked. I dont remember any scenery looking as bad as that Witcher 3 image. If it it looked that bad or worse I certainly would have noticed.
Surely the scenery closer to you looked hugely better, but certainly the long distanced scenery didnt look like crap. Otherwise I wouldnt have been able to marvel some particular sections in the game which were there to actually show case the whole scenery.

Of course the image attached show a draw distance that stretches far beyond the Withcer 3 image shown earlier.

 

Are we comparing a linear 3ps to an open world RPG here?

Big draw distance is easy if you never have to handle getting there, and if low detail backgrounds never have to manage a transition - from any direction and at any time of day - into what you're standing on.

Screenshot battles are the exploding blunderbuss of console warring.

 

Yes you are right. But the image comparison didnt start by trying to proove that Withcer 3 is a worse looking game. It was the opposite. It is quite expected that if you zoom in into an image with far distanced objects in Uncharted 4 they will not exhibit a lot of detail. Which is why the initial argument was pointless: You arent supposed to look at those far away objects with a magnifying glass anyways.
But since the comparison was expressed without evidence it was natural to expect a follow up of images to clear things up.

For whatever reasons (such as Withcer 3 being an open world game), I dont see how it can even compete against a linear game that can pull of more detail per scene since it can focus a lot more resources on specific areas.

Regardless it may be hard or silly to compare both games directly. Uncharted 4 may or may not be ultimately a much better achievemnt. It all depends how much that extra effort and steps the developers have made to achieve the result for each game. But by comparing Uncharted 4 with other linear games, and Witcher 3 with other open world games, we can get an idea of how much they have pushed the bar.
So far IMO there is no developer who has managed to pull off the amount of detail Uncharted 4 has managed in a similar kind of game.
The best comparisons currently are Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Order and Gears of War 4 and we see that although they do compete in areas, no game has offered a similar overall package.
Uncharted 4 exhibits an amount of polish I rarely experience in a game.
I never played Withcer 3 so I cant comment on that one

 

No, we are comparing what looks best, regardless of genre. Such a hard thing to grasp

Several screenshots showcasing detailed far away assets and extremely well handled lod in dense and varied environments, and i like i said, it looks even better in motion (lod specifically)

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7322/26972872895_734fd9ed93_o.png
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7269/27016313286_2fe55193ce_o.png
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7124/26910710382_83f152a816_o.png
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7489/27056517802_5626f6bd1f_o.png
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7064/26529730253_dcc83703c8_o.png
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7296/26522347934_50d3e7bf7a_o.png
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7701/26819304180_3c00c1bcb7_o.png
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7734/27678192276_fffc20dc6f_o.png
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7331/27369897632_38d2af875e_o.png

 

In motion :



TW3 ultra :

 

One of the best video i've seen so far on Uncharted 4. It also highlights the draw distance :

 

You have me beat on the hours, I only have 173h, though the last 30 or so in 4K with a large image. I believe I have a pretty good grasp on how the game looks as well. Maybe I'll take some screenshots later.

There isn't much far away detail there. Not in the way I'm talking about. You even put an indoor photo in there... The photo what I first quoted is what I'm talking about, a scenery that actually stretches far and has many unique pieces, and it looks terrible. The places with actually long draw distance and where Uncharted looks good are places where you only have simple backgrounds with mountains etc. In all these the scene complexity is quite low. And BTW. I'm not comparing what looks best as a whole, just about the draw distance and the detail level in far distance objects. Indoors and most others close scenery places, Witcher 3 can't touch Uncharted 4. I do admit though. I wasn't blown away, when I played Uncharted 4, to me it didn't really stand out from some other PS4 games I expect small scenes to look nice. Whereas Witcher 3 still on occasion provides truly spectacular views, usually with very high geometry scenes and nice atmospheric lighting, and yeah the 4k definitely helps with the details.

The photo that I quoted and zoomed in doesn't even only contain far away objects. The houses on the left are actually quite close. Maybe around 100m or less from the player. There are many scenes that look really bad in Uncharted, but yeah it's mostly in places where you are not supposed to look like I said in my first post and BTW. I don't need to zoom in on anything. My screen is so close that these just pop in immediately and I think this makes a big difference here, you guys just don't pay attention to the places they don't want you to look.


The problem I have with Uncharted is the inconsistency. It can look from very good to crap, witcher 3 looks consistent, buildings far away (far, not 100m away) actually appears like the same buildings far away instead of houses using PS2 assets. Load up that chapter 3 salvage boat mission and look around from the deck of the ship. The landscape around the river looks atrocious. There are many places in Uncharted 4 where the actual play area 3d world looks amazing, but they don't have anything left for the 3d backdrops. edit: Infamous Second Son looks a lot better in this regard. The scenes look consistent and far away details still keep their details better.

 

Before the Island some assets are inconsistent but it is not a technical problem. For example during the italian level if you see the background with the sea it is PS2 level of assets... Other level looks good...

In Madagascar some problem with rock baked GI again artist problem not a technical one...

It is a huge linear game with many different environment ...

For the Witcher 3 very good art but I hate the materials and big city are very average looking and indoor environment are horrible.

 

Wow, this guy really knows how to take pictures :

https://www.flickr.com/photos/83889674@N02/27065060165/in/album-72157668319663325/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/83889674@N02/27065325685/in/album-72157668319663325/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/83889674@N02/26997036351/in/album-72157668319663325/

Let's not forget that there is no difference between the potomode and normal gameplay

 

Uncharted isn't perfect look at the eyeball-less low quality textures on the faces of auction attendees below the balcony. It certainly could have been a little bit higher, consideringer the immaculate detail that goes into rest of the scene, though its likely not something that was overlooked, and probably more likely because of hardware limitations on PS4's memory bandwidth particularly in this scene with all these npcs that likely requires the cpu to access main memory significantly.

 

All I can say is that Uncharted 4 in HDR (and whatever higher res it churns out) on the Pro will make me wet myself on my new OLED. Which I ordered. Cause I'm an idiot and a total shopaholic.
That's new TV, Pro and PSVR all in one month.
No food until Christmas.

 

Give us an update of your impressions once you have all three.

 

This last picture is amazing in its visual fidelity.

 

Which one did you get? We had a pretty good deal on the LG 55" B6 model going on last weekend in Finland and I've already had it in my shopping cart, but while I was looking for a free shipping discount code, I talked myself out of it...