DownLikeBCPowder
Member
GTA was top down in the PSX gen, not Ps2.. but otherwise, carry on with fidelity obsession.
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[Digital Foundry] Are Current Generation Graphics A Bit Of A Let Down?
- Thread starter Lunatic_Gamer
- Start date
- Opinion News Analysis
GTA was top down in the PSX gen, not Ps2.. but otherwise, carry on with fidelity obsession.
Thebonehead
Gold Member
My son asked me for some help as his PC looked like the game was "walking through glue"
Turns out Windows had locked the display to 60hz.
Quick reset of that back to 165 and all was well again.
As an experiment I locked my 240hz to 60 and it didn't feel good gaming or productivity.
Mr Reasonable
Completely Unreasonable
Oh fuck off, Digital Foundry.
Hopefully this will fuel people to moan and complain enough that developers feel compelled to make a special 15fps mode that's completely unpayable but looks more detailed when digital foundry zoom in 800%.
Hopefully this will fuel people to moan and complain enough that developers feel compelled to make a special 15fps mode that's completely unpayable but looks more detailed when digital foundry zoom in 800%.
daninthemix
Member
Yep diminishing returns are real. Can't wait for the PS6 to launch with an optional magnifying glass so you can try and spot the differences. What a nothingburger that will be.
Lumpyoatmeal
Member
Meaning they have the technical knowledge to do it. However, they are not going to risk throwing the man hours needed for today’s AAA title.
No BBC=Anger
Member
Get a 5090 down to PSP form and then go from there. Could be waiting awhile though.
Xtib81
Member
Nah it's not in your head. Oled and mini led screens make it unbearable. It's not as noticeable with old screens.
FeastYoEyes
Member
There's been a lot of graphically impressive games this gen, it's just hard to tell if they run poorly. When they run great, it can be jaw dropping. Avowed, Silent Hill 2 and Demons Souls come to mind. Callisto, Talos Principle II, Outlaws... There's stuff there.
I would say RE4 Remake is but there's a lot of low poly textures for foliage that took me out of it a bit.
I would say RE4 Remake is but there's a lot of low poly textures for foliage that took me out of it a bit.
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RodriGames40
Member
Craziest thing is that even these small AA developed games are sincerely kicking some of these recent AAA titans in the ass graphically. You can tell where Wukong cut corners but the visuals in there you can see are tangibly better than everything Sony released this gen.
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64gigabyteram
Reverse groomer.
Mid gen refreshes aren't needed, and also devs need to make consessions. Both things can be true
The issue is the lack of optimization. We have more impressive looking games on hardware from 2013 and even 2006. It's clearly not the fault of the machine.
LordOfChaos
Member
What's the point of being overwhelmed when it turns into a blur fest that just feels bad at 30 in motion
60 is fine, but consoles definitely don't need to be focusing on beyond 4K 60 any time soon, we probably jumped to 4K too early when we weren't even close to photorealistic graphics at FHD
I don't really get wanting more graphics at 30 when the motion resolution is so, so much worse, personally
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I'm not seeing that, sorry.
The last couple of notable UE5 games they covered, Hellblade, Silent Hill 2, Avowed and probably many before that, their DF videos were pretty positive.
Some things like SH2 having a bum Pro release at launch wasn't exactly DF going out of their way, it was something widely recognized everywhere.
Corporal.Hicks
Member
To be honest, I was already happy with the graphics of the PS3 / x360 era, let alone PS4, but I don't mind that the graphics still keep improving. For example modern games have started to use RT. Some people still do not want RT because it kills performance (especially on consoles), but as someone who studied the rules of light I can appreciate what RT does. The difference between raster and RT is staggering in certain games, especially Cyberpunk and with the right settings RT doesn't even tank performance that much in this game on my PC. When I use DLSS and just RT shadows and reflections I actually have 1-3 fps more compared to raster ultra settings, and with TAA native I see just around 20% performance drop.
Lighting can make the difference between a flat looking game and a realistic one, and the great thing about RT is that even old games can benefit from it. I played very old games like Doom 1/2, Half Life 1 with PT and it was a very interesting new perspective even though I played these games a lot in the past. Also The Witcher 3 (one of my favourite games) looks much better with RT. I'm sure many neogafers already saw my RT comparisons from the witcher 3, so I'm not going to link them again, but the difference is staggering and I cannot imagine playing this game without RT.
Modern games have also raised the bar when it comes to asset quality. People still say PS4 era games like RDR2 or Uncharted 4 look amazing, but when you compare assets quality with modern games, there's a clear improvement.
Compare the stone in the first screenshot with Black Myth Wukong (BMW). In BMW, not only is the stone much more detailed, but the PT lighting has pixel perfect shadows that bring every bump on it's surface to life.
And Hellblade 2 is even more detailed than Black Myth Wukong. Hellblade has totally different scenery than RDR2, but look at the ground surface. In RDR2 ground surface has fairly blury texture with some POM to mask low quality textures and create illusion of depth to otherwise flat ground surface. Now, look at hellblade 2 ground surface on my screenshots. Texture quality holds up even if you zoom in the camera and instead of cheap POM (illusion of small roock detail in PS4 era games) the game render actual small rocks in uncountable numbers. I have no idea how many millions of pollygons Hellblade 2 can render, but I'm blown away.
Uncharted 4 has sharper textures than RDR2, but it also relies on POM and tesselation to create a sense of depth in otherwise flat textures. The raster lighting in Uncharted 4 also isnt very good by todays standards. Samuel Drake stand in the shadows on my screenshot, but he's well lit. That's the problem with raster lighting. You can prebake lighting for static objects but not for characters and moving objects. Uncharted 4 isnt even a sanbox game with changing Time Of Day, yet you can still clearly see limits of raster rendering.
On PC I see already a GENERATIONAL difference between the PS5 graphics and yet alone PS4 graphics. People who pretend that the there's no big difference arnt looking at the actual detail, but just at the overall scenery and art direction. Games like Uncharted 4 and RDR2 still look beautiful becasue of beautiful scenery and art directions, but assets quality and lighting is clearly dated by todays standards.
Lighting can make the difference between a flat looking game and a realistic one, and the great thing about RT is that even old games can benefit from it. I played very old games like Doom 1/2, Half Life 1 with PT and it was a very interesting new perspective even though I played these games a lot in the past. Also The Witcher 3 (one of my favourite games) looks much better with RT. I'm sure many neogafers already saw my RT comparisons from the witcher 3, so I'm not going to link them again, but the difference is staggering and I cannot imagine playing this game without RT.
Modern games have also raised the bar when it comes to asset quality. People still say PS4 era games like RDR2 or Uncharted 4 look amazing, but when you compare assets quality with modern games, there's a clear improvement.
Compare the stone in the first screenshot with Black Myth Wukong (BMW). In BMW, not only is the stone much more detailed, but the PT lighting has pixel perfect shadows that bring every bump on it's surface to life.
And Hellblade 2 is even more detailed than Black Myth Wukong. Hellblade has totally different scenery than RDR2, but look at the ground surface. In RDR2 ground surface has fairly blury texture with some POM to mask low quality textures and create illusion of depth to otherwise flat ground surface. Now, look at hellblade 2 ground surface on my screenshots. Texture quality holds up even if you zoom in the camera and instead of cheap POM (illusion of small roock detail in PS4 era games) the game render actual small rocks in uncountable numbers. I have no idea how many millions of pollygons Hellblade 2 can render, but I'm blown away.
Uncharted 4 has sharper textures than RDR2, but it also relies on POM and tesselation to create a sense of depth in otherwise flat textures. The raster lighting in Uncharted 4 also isnt very good by todays standards. Samuel Drake stand in the shadows on my screenshot, but he's well lit. That's the problem with raster lighting. You can prebake lighting for static objects but not for characters and moving objects. Uncharted 4 isnt even a sanbox game with changing Time Of Day, yet you can still clearly see limits of raster rendering.
On PC I see already a GENERATIONAL difference between the PS5 graphics and yet alone PS4 graphics. People who pretend that the there's no big difference arnt looking at the actual detail, but just at the overall scenery and art direction. Games like Uncharted 4 and RDR2 still look beautiful becasue of beautiful scenery and art directions, but assets quality and lighting is clearly dated by todays standards.
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StereoVsn
Gold Member
Yeah, 30FPS on OLED TV is just generally a terrible time all around.
Shaki12345
Member
The reason it's disappointing is that there are still people who prefer a juddery 30fps over 60fps. Games should be designed for 60 in quality mode and when possible pushed to 120 in performance mode. 30 is impossible on OLED. Gamers with old ass TV's don't understand how horrible 30 is on a modern TV. Developers don't seem to get it as well. Hopefully they get the message when people stop buying their shitty optimized games.
The newest Dontnod game is 30fps and looks like shit in motion. All 30fps games look like shit except Patience.
Pushing impossible fidelity is not the way to go. Performance first, fidelity next.
The newest Dontnod game is 30fps and looks like shit in motion. All 30fps games look like shit except Patience.
Pushing impossible fidelity is not the way to go. Performance first, fidelity next.
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SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
they were talking shit about sh2 and avowed's pc versions. they trashed every 60 fps version of every single ue5 game because it either reduces the resolution too much or doesnt hold 60 fps. hellblade 2 got a pass because the devs smartly realized that these consoles cant do 60 fps and push the same next gen visual fidelity.
you'd think DF would learn from that but no, they still choose to treat 60 fps as the defacto mode and compare them against cross gen looking games that do 60 fps at higher 1440p resolutions. yeah, no shit sherlock.
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
Hilarious when people who have never written a single line of code talk about "optimization"
More impressive games from 2013 and 2006? Any examples for the class?
DeathGuise
Member
I really want this, and it's one of the reasons why I love when companies, usually Nintendo, put together a really well-optimized game. I don't think developers are necessarily lazy, though that does happen, I think games are just so huge now that companies are driven or being told to push them out with as little polish as people will accept.
Shaki12345
Member
At the start of development you have to make a choice. Instead of 30fps as Quality Mode you can start developing the game with a 60fps Quality Mode in mind.
But that's a developer choice. Most developers want to sell a game on Image Quality instead of actual performance.
30fps should be illegal on next gen consoles.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I don't see a problem with the bolded.
If a developer wants to add a Performance Mode, consistent performance should be the target. And a separate Quality mode should meet it's own target, be it 30 or 40 etc.
I don't know if I would be praising a UE5 game just because it pushes fidelity but runs like poorly either. Eg they praised Avowed's 30 and 40 FPS modes but not the 60fps one because it isn't consistent.
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SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
these games run just fine at 30 fps. just like the games they jerked off to last gen like rdr2, uncharted 2, batman ak and death stranding.
now they judge the games for their 60 fps modes. then you have their retarded viewership ask them why graphics are so shit this gen. well, you are playing at 720p sometimes sub 720p resolutions with all the next gen effects taken out you dumb cunts.
Shaki12345
Member
They rune fine but all 30fps games look like SHIT in motion on modern TV's. ALL 30fps games.
Fuck 30fps.
kevboard
Member
Silent Hill 2 literally can't even animate the main character correctly unless you lock the tickrate of the game manually through .ini editing or by adding a launch command,
it has constant stutters, low quality Lumen for its nearly static lighting, awful performance compared to the visuals on offer, and it can't even hold 60fps on console at ridiculously low resolutions down to 864p, while the quality mode barely gets above 1200p while also not running smoothly.
and why is that? because at every step the devs took shortcuts that kill performance
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proandrad
Member
I'm fine with this.
Ainem Enamas
Member
Yea but what we really need more from the graphics
PixelatedBeast
Member
I honestly cant agree with that. Wukong doesnt look better than Demon Souls remake, GT7 or Horizon Forbidden West, which is open world. I think all of those games have more going on visually. I cant really say it looks better than God of War Ragnarok either. Unreal Engine 5 is doing alot of the heavy lifting, but you can see how most games that use that engine all have the same draw backs when the game is in motion due to the anti aliasing. Once you move it falls apart unless you have a beefy PC.
Now that you mention it, I think Wukong is proped up more for being a great looking game from China more than its actually known for doing anything on a technical level. You could buy Unreal Engine market place assets and build something that looks comparable to the terrain and environments. Im not knocking it, the game does have a certain unique look to it, but I wouldnt say it looks better than everything Sony released this gen....
The in game graphics trailer from Naughty Dogs Intergalactic already look better than everything else out. The Fable alpha gameplay trailer had good next gen graphics as well. There are plenty of good looking next gen games in development, but think the arguement about graphics being a let down boils down to some people preferring they come from non western developers instead. The problem with that is outside of Tencent, Capcom and a few others, they cant afford to or dont want to.
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RoboFu
One of the green rats
I think games look like crap today because they are trying to do too much and just end up looking the same. We need a lot more " art direction over of technology " in the bigger games.
Astrobot is a great example of having a great looking game with a great art direction, great frame rate, and a very polished look.
.
Astrobot is a great example of having a great looking game with a great art direction, great frame rate, and a very polished look.
.
GymWolf
Member
Sony greatly underdelivered and we only have one engine with actual nextgen geometry and details but it is super heavy so not good for cheap consoles or average pc users with a 1080ti, so yeah, pretty shitty gen so far other than some ue5 standouts.
Hopefully gta6 is gonna save us but there is no chance the game is gonna look 1:1 with the trailer down to every single detail.
Maybe in the next-next gen people are gonna stop crying when a console cost more than 500 dollars if they also want:
Jump in graphic
Jump in physics
60 stable fps
You can pick one or you can spend more for something that last 5 to 8 years.
Hopefully gta6 is gonna save us but there is no chance the game is gonna look 1:1 with the trailer down to every single detail.
Maybe in the next-next gen people are gonna stop crying when a console cost more than 500 dollars if they also want:
Jump in graphic
Jump in physics
60 stable fps
You can pick one or you can spend more for something that last 5 to 8 years.
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CompleteGlobalSaturation
Member
We've established 60FPS as baseline for this gen. So if we continue this + A.I. driven upscaling perhaps we'll get better visuals next gen.
UE5 feels unnecessarily demanding - though the best looking games currently out right now are UE5 games.
GymWolf
Member
The ue5 games you see now are made with unoptimized version of the engine.
I'm gonna quote my forum wife
SlimySnake
for the details on how the latest version of ue5 run.First version of decima engine had some shitty stuff that got improved by both ds and fw, it is the same with ue5.
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Cyberpunkd
Member
Pursuing incredible graphics is the main driver behind games taking years and hundreds of millions to develop, which in turn fuels the GAAS push. Let's see what gaming media has to say:
DF: Are Current Generation Graphics A Bit Of A Let Down?
Yes, because what we need is better graphics, not better stories, characters, enemy AI. It's the shiny that we need more of.
yamaci17
Member
rockstar never bullshots
it will look 1:1 just as the trailer
it will even go above that on ps5 pro and 3090+
we had the exact same discussions back when gta 5 ps3 trailer released. many of us thought it'd be impossible for ps3 to run that game with graphics they showed on the trailer. sure it wasn't a stable 30 fps but no compromises were made there. the game looked exactly like how it did in the trailer (actually character models somehow have improved in the actual version). the game literally was a leap in terms of graphics on the ps3 compared to gta 4, when gta 4 itself was a leap compared to san andreas. they literally achieved two leaps on one console somehow.
same for rdr 2 and any other of their games. rockstar is just that good. they achieved 4k native 30 fps with brilliant visuals on xbox one x (rx 580 tier hardware). that game even looks amazing on ps4 (though very blurry TAA sadly. but game has such great graphics, even when blurry it manages to look great somehow)
so it will indeed save all of us and make all other games look funny in comparison, even ue5 ones. I'm even sure it will run great and look fine on 8 GB GPUs for example (considering the will get it to run on series s. and rockstar is not the type of dev that would pack low res horrible n64 textures and call it a day. they're way above that)
Gta v definitely had moderate downgrade but that was 12 years ago
The games are definitely worse this gen than during the PS3-X360 gen, in terms of gameplay I mean.
Let's say that in 2008 when Ninja Gaiden 2 was released, I never thought that 17 years later, the best action game of the future generation would be a recycled game of NG2 but with worse gameplay and less content.
Graphics however, are great on consoles, with finally something most people thought would never happen: 95+% of the games running at 60+fps. Yeah sometimes you might need a PS5 Pro to reach that fps with decent image quality, but it's still an option.
Loading times are also fantastic!
So, performance is stellar, but gameplay is a huge let down.
Let's say that in 2008 when Ninja Gaiden 2 was released, I never thought that 17 years later, the best action game of the future generation would be a recycled game of NG2 but with worse gameplay and less content.
Graphics however, are great on consoles, with finally something most people thought would never happen: 95+% of the games running at 60+fps. Yeah sometimes you might need a PS5 Pro to reach that fps with decent image quality, but it's still an option.
Loading times are also fantastic!
So, performance is stellar, but gameplay is a huge let down.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
>No trying to downplay WukongI honestly cant agree with that. Wukong doesnt look better than Demon Souls remake, GT7 or Horizon Forbidden West, which is open world. I think all of those games have more going on visually. I cant really say it looks better than God of War Ragnarok either. Unreal Engine 5 is doing alot of the heavy lifting, but you can see how most games that use that engine all have the same draw backs when the game is in motion due to the anti aliasing. Once you move it falls apart unless you have a beefy PC.
Now that you mention it, I think Wukong is proped up more for being a great looking game from China more than its actually known for doing anything on a technical level. You could buy Unreal Engine market place assets and build something that looks comparable to the terrain and environments. Im not knocking it, the game does have a certain unique look to it, but I wouldnt say it looks better than everything Sony released this gen....
The in game graphics trailer from Naughty Dogs Intergalactic already look better than everything else out. The Fable alpha gameplay trailer had good next gen graphics as well. There are plenty of good looking next gen games in development, but think the arguement about graphics being a let down boils down to some people preferring they come from non western developers instead. The problem with that is outside of Tencent, Capcom and a few others, they cant afford to or dont want to.
>Basically calls the game an asset flip that only gets mentioned because it’s Chinese
Lol
And GT7? Are we supposed to compare the cars there to the ones in Wukong or something?
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RodriGames40
Member
It looks "tangibly better" as pushing lightning and levels of geometry that none of their games can currently touch. Ragnarok in particular is incredibly dated in comparison, there is an endgame setpiece in the game that nothing in Ragnarok even came close to replicating. Forbidden West is generationally behind in lightning and geometry just as well, though Guerrilla are certainly top tier for getting so much out of a crossgen title. Out of all these only Demon Souls comes close and even then, that was a remake where Bluepoint solely focused on updating the assets.I honestly cant agree with that. Wukong doesnt look better than Demon Souls remake, GT7 or Horizon Forbidden West, which is open world. I think all of those games have more going on visually. I cant really say it looks better than God of War Ragnarok either. Unreal Engine 5 is doing alot of the heavy lifting, but you can see how most games that use that engine all have the same draw backs when the game is in motion due to the anti aliasing. Once you move it falls apart unless you have a beefy PC.
Now that you mention it, I think Wukong is proped up more for being a great looking game from China more than its actually known for doing anything on a technical level. You could buy Unreal Engine market place assets and build something that looks comparable to the terrain and environments. Im not knocking it, the game does have a certain unique look to it, but I wouldnt say it looks better than everything Sony released this gen....
The in game graphics trailer from Naughty Dogs Intergalactic already look better than everything else out. The Fable alpha gameplay trailer had good next gen graphics as well. There are plenty of good looking next gen games in development, but think the arguement about graphics being a let down boils down to some people preferring they come from non western developers instead. The problem with that is outside of Tencent, Capcom and a few others, they cant afford to or dont want to.
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CompleteGlobalSaturation
Member
Ragnarok looks very dated because it's a PS4 title. Textures/assets don't look bad but it's very underwhelming as the game looks 99% identical to God of War 2018.
Tiago Rodrigues
Member
This gen is basically the gen where games are "catching up" to 60fps again which they stopped during the 360 / PS3 era and games were running like shit.
I still play RDR2 and that shit blows me away...i'll be fine with faster consoles / 60 fps for most games.
I still play RDR2 and that shit blows me away...i'll be fine with faster consoles / 60 fps for most games.
FoxMcChief
Gold Member
The fact that graphics are being held back because of “performance” option says it all. If more games were developed with only 30fps in mind, visuals would be pushed more.
RodriGames40
Member
There has definitely been a leap in visuals, it's immediately apparent when playing the games. Very disappointing to see that we still have trash textures and lightning in places though, even with raytracing.
Killjoy-NL
Member
The cycle is funny:
We always go from "we need better graphics" to "gameplay over graphics" to "we need better graphics" and so on...
Edit:
Anyway, Mark Cerny already stated in Road to PS5 (iirc) that this gen would see a "paradigm shift" in regards to game development and that it might mean a lesser jump in visuals for the end-user.
We always go from "we need better graphics" to "gameplay over graphics" to "we need better graphics" and so on...
Edit:
Anyway, Mark Cerny already stated in Road to PS5 (iirc) that this gen would see a "paradigm shift" in regards to game development and that it might mean a lesser jump in visuals for the end-user.
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existensmaximum
Member
Overall, huge letdown. But the quality (and amount) of games overall is a much bigger letdown than the graphics.
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Lucifers Beard
Member
There should be a video on current generation games being underwhelming in general. Outside of a few games (BG3, Elden Ring, POE2, Helldivers 2 and perhaps a couple more) I've not played anything that's had any kind of lasting impact on me or that I could say was absolutely worth the purchase. I've found myself playing through older games that I missed or replaying games that I like.
Back on topic... Maybe it's down to a lack of real talent in the industry. Some of the graphics in games do look good but I find that art styles can be a bit boring or just lacking real creativity.
Elden Ring whilst not a technical marvel has the best art design in any game I've played this generation and that to me is way more interesting to watch in motion than most games. I'd like to see studios focus more on the art rather than the technical aspects. I'd also like to see more companies use the available hardware to make games that are genuinely interesting to play.
Back on topic... Maybe it's down to a lack of real talent in the industry. Some of the graphics in games do look good but I find that art styles can be a bit boring or just lacking real creativity.
Elden Ring whilst not a technical marvel has the best art design in any game I've played this generation and that to me is way more interesting to watch in motion than most games. I'd like to see studios focus more on the art rather than the technical aspects. I'd also like to see more companies use the available hardware to make games that are genuinely interesting to play.
GymWolf
Member
I'm a pessimist by nature so i'm not gonna believe until i can play on my oled.
The game look too far and beyond what we saw on these consoles.
Also i'm pretty sure that rockstar already had to deal with downgrades with one of their games before, can't remember if it was gta4 or 5.
Like cmon, this scene in the trailer looked like real life
Or this scene
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