Watch_Dogs by Ubisoft

heres some from Neogaf, water looks good, but the urban stuff:
PC shots, of course:

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The water is what I like the most.

Conan O'Brien plays the game, LOL. Watch Dogs in Clueless Gamer, PS4 version.

 
I do agree the game does not look incredible. But damn are people here being overly hard on it. Next gen version looks comparable to GTAV on its good moments lighting wise, and closer to GTAIV on its bad moments. Last gen looks more like IV most of the time (based on youtube, of course). To me it seems the biggest thing GTAV got right over this on the gfx department is their SSAO is very good, and really helps when no direct lighting is at play. WD's has a smaller radius, and is probably less geometrically corect than GTA's. Aside from that, it seems to have most rendering features as GTA, and AAA asset quality, albeit its diferent art style.
Comparing to Quake 2 or complainging about lack of GI (very genercic term) or "character self-shadowing" shows great lack of techinical knowlege.

Woah!.Dont be so pretentious Mr.Carmack, obviusly the Quake 2 comment was an exhaggeration to be ilustrative and the GI comment is as broad and generic as the lack of light in some of the screenshots i have seen at daylight.
 
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Played this on PC.

It runs well, Ultra 4XTXAA, but still doesn't really utilize my 3770 to even half it's potential.

Gameplay is fun actually, visuals however are not good, the only time the game looks decent is when the world is wet, when that happens the game shines, when it doesn't it looks bad and outdated.

The game does have secondary lighting, and GI. (L.Scofield you are right :D). It is specially noticeable during early to mid morning and interior scenes, while appearing somewhat subtle at night. The game also has PBL, this one is best observed when it rains and early times of the day, materials have distinguishable surfaces.

Still, explosions look bad, geometry is simplified a lot compared to early footage, lighting is still flat, reflections are horrible, with static reflections everywhere. Dynamic shadows are absent except for helicopter spot lights and some interior lights.

The game is inconsistent visually, mainly because they changed the lighting so much compared to early footage, which caused many graphical features to become only exposed under the right conditions, while appearing absent most of the time.

I visited the same location in the E3 2012 and 2013 footages, and matched the time of day as best as I can.

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It runs well, Ultra 4XTXAA, but still doesn't really utilize my 3770 to even half it's potential.

Gameplay is fun actually, visuals however are not good, the only time the game looks decent is when the world is wet, when that happens the game shines, when it doesn't it looks bad and outdated.

The game does have secondary lighting, and GI. (L.Scofield you are right :D). It is specially noticeable during early to mid morning and interior scenes, while appearing somewhat subtle at night. The game also has PBL, this one is best observed when it rains and early times of the day, materials have distinguishable surfaces.

Still, explosions look bad, geometry is simplified a lot compared to early footage, lighting is still flat, reflections are horrible, with static reflections everywhere. Dynamic shadows are absent except for helicopter spot lights and some interior lights.

The game is inconsistent visually, mainly because they changed the lighting so much compared to early footage, which caused many graphical features to become only exposed under the right conditions, while appearing absent most of the time.

I visited the same location in the E3 2012 and 2013 footages, and matched the time of day as best as I can.

That's TXAA indeed. Very blurry. All high frequency details are indeed destroyed, or should I say 'blended', expected and 'normal' from this AA.

I wonder now if they decided, during those last months, to implement a custom TXAA variant (similar to SMAA 1tx) on the AMD consoles?

Well at least on PC you can choose to use TXAA on a native resolution...
 
I wonder now if they decided, during those last months, to implement a custom TXAA variant (similar to SMAA 1tx) on the AMD consoles?
There is a temporal SMAA option available in the game, I tried it but didn't like as it wasn't enough to eliminate all jaggies, not like TXAA anyway.

Here are some good shots from the game for a change:
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@David : how is the game ? Does the city feel as real as G tA V? Are the activities fun?

From the gameplay vids, it seems the game has no personality. Does it feel average or above average?
 
@David : how is the game ? Does the city feel as real as G tA V? Are the activities fun?

From the gameplay vids, it seems the game has no personality. Does it feel average or above average?
What I've noticed from the gameplay vids is that many people are racing about the streets like it's GTA. Whereas the gameplay videos that Ubisoft show are on foot, letting you soak up the atmosphere. If you want to soak up the personality of a place, you don't drive through it at 60mph!

But how people play really does change the vibe of the game. If you watch the Gamespot's hour-long preview from Thursday (don't!, no really.. don't!) the game looks terrible. Whereas if you watch the IGN Live's hour-long preview from Friday, the game looks a lot more interesting. Gamespot are playing it like GTA, IGN are playing it like Watch_Dogs, hacking the environment, luring enemies, using stealth.

The core multiplayer looks great in JackFrags's stream.
 
Thanks a ton for the IGn video ! I am back in , interested and ready to pay :) ! The Gamespot video had really put me off, looked like a boring gta clone with no personality, but the IGN video shows it is its own game too, along with being a GTA clone. I am back on board ! :)
 
That's TXAA indeed. Very blurry. All high frequency details are indeed destroyed, or should I say 'blended', expected and 'normal' from this AA.

"very blurry"? What are you even comparing to to decide that? Where are the with and without shots that you're using to conclude these shots are very blurry?

You said similar things about AC4 where in fact the softening of the image was barely noticeable unless you were zoomed right into particular textures and even then we know AC4 combines TXAA with FXAA which is what produces the softening. Given they are both Ubi games and the number of AA options available in WD I'd expect the same here but in AC4's case TXAA easily provided the best image quality of all the AA options and I see no reason to expect otherwise here.
 
Thanks a ton for the IGn video ! I am back in , interested and ready to pay :) ! The Gamespot video had really put me off, looked like a boring gta clone with no personality, but the IGN video shows it is its own game too, along with being a GTA clone. I am back on board ! :)
The IGN guys genuinely seemed to be having a lot of fun. From the incident with criminal terminal cancer patient protecting the cannibal to their experimentation in trying to take down that car full of criminals. The game seems to reward experimentation and clearly has some dark humour to it.

But I think if try to play it like GTA then it will probably be a hollow, frustrating and unrewarding experience.
 
Apparently "wet streets" = "good graphics" now.

The cars aren't even reflecting, gimme a break.

To be fair, those shots do look really good, maybe they should have just set the game during the rainy season and had the roads perpetually wet lol.

Overall the game looks pretty nice, excellent in some spots, not so great in others. The downgrade from the 2012 footage is very severe though and extremely disappointing. Had it remained looking like the 2012 footage it would have been the best looking game out there bar none, as it stands, it looks good but nothing to write home about.

I do wonder what the reasoning was behind the stripping back of the graphics on the PC though. Obviously on consoles performance would have been a factor but by matching console level of graphics on the PC (plus a few probably minor Ultra enhancements) it does seem as though their was a deliberate decision there to not allow the PC build to exceed the console one by too much.

EDIT: oh yeah, the game does look pretty fun too, I may still pick it up but only after the price drops.
 
Thanks a ton for the IGn video ! I am back in , interested and ready to pay :) ! The Gamespot video had really put me off, looked like a boring gta clone with no personality, but the IGN video shows it is its own game too, along with being a GTA clone. I am back on board ! :)

Yeah IGNs video was a lot better.
I feel that the game is a lot of fun.
I still want it to run easily 60 fps on pcs though. :p

the game does look flat on that youtube video. waiting enb mods to fix the graphics :D

And that is the reason why, I want it to run smooth.
 
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