Faster computer - crappier graphics

[Tolya]

As people who give a rat's ass know, I bought a new machine in the early 2010's. Nothing really fancy, but it allows me play all the new games at 1280x1024 (which is the highest res my old LCD can pull) at high detail. After going through my backlog of games which I was unable to run on my old machine (like AC and AC2), I realized that I might give a few games that my old machine could run and see the difference.

So, yesterday I loaded up Dragon Age: Origins. I didn't finish it the first time because I was bored and the performance was a bit crappy at some point, so I thought, what the hell, if it runs faster it might be actually a bit better.

I maxed out on settings and started a new game. And for some bizarre reason, I thought the game has really crappy graphics. Ground textures look like shit (it struck me in the woods of Ostagar) and the distant landscape... well, Oblivion looked better.

And it's not only DA:O's problem. The same thing happened in Crysis, where I immediately started noticing poor recycled Far Cry textures.

It's not like the graphics were better on my old machine. Its because I had to play at reduced settings, I always thought "hey, this game must look awesome on a better machine". Now that I have a better machine, I feel a bit cheated. It's like designers stopped bothering about building graphics from ground up, relying instead on fancy lightning effects that are available using current-gen GPU's.

I really thought at least MOST of the new games would be as gorgeous graphically as Far Cry 2 or Just Cause 2. If I had spent some serious cash on some SLI'd GPU hotrods, I would just feel cheated instead of disappointed.

[Stark]

Yeah, Zak and I noticed the FC1 textures in Crysis when we played the demo. It's pretty jarring, but art is expensive. I heard DA:O was better on PC, but it's one ugly motherfucker on 360.

[AniThyng]

Subjectively I've always felt that games optimized for high end GPU's look much worse at lower settings then the converse - might be something to do with not putting as much effort into elegance if you can just brute force your way through perhaps.

DA's texture's sucking is probably also related to the fact that it is also simultaniously released on Xbox and PS3 and thus has to account for the inferior memory on those systems.

[Resinence]

DA:O is a little better on PC yeah, it's above the "oh god ugly" threshold imo. The good news is that you arn't going to need to upgrade your PC for a few years now. Most games are made from the start with the 360 in mind which doesn't really have a lot of vram or grunt compared to even old-and-busted PC's now so you can happily play every new game at 8xAA/16xAF. Just try to ignore the textures

Also Origins is a brand new engine developed on a much smaller budget than biowares other RPG offering Mass Effect 2, if you recall mass effect 1 really didn't look like the new hotness either. And that wasn't an in house engine.

I think you should go back and play claymation-shader-world I mean oblivion if you are still using that as a benchmark though It was ugly even at release just as Fallout 3 is.

Just Cause 2 is a special case; they went back after release and added a DX10 renderer and higher res textures just for PC, there are a lot of really fancy effects in it that are not in the console release. But as I said it's a special case, most devs don't have the funding or will to do that with the market being what it is.

The reason it looks like "just more fancy lighting" is because it's easy and cheap to add more fancy post-fx the 360 would struggle with but as stark said better Art costs money.

Meh, the current baseline for graphics (the 360) does not bother me in the slightest so I'm happy with the current state of things, I haven't had to turn down a game's graphics in nearly 2 years with no PC upgrade.

[Stark]

Just Cause 2's engine is pretty flash from a scale perspective; they handle streaming and lodding a lot better than most fps games (or RPGs).

If people are going to blame DA's awful textures on consoles, why do other console games (even JC2 which does far, far more ambitious things) look so much better?

[Resinence]

Crappy engine is my guess. It's in-house, Jade Empire was pretty fugly too if you recall. Lol bioware?

[Vendetta]

Yeah, Zak and I noticed the FC1 textures in Crysis when we played the demo. It's pretty jarring, but art is expensive. I heard DA:O was better on PC, but it's one ugly motherfucker on 360.

The reason everything in Dragon Age is brown is because it's hiding it's fugly face under a brown paper bag.

[Tolya]

Crappy engine is my guess. It's in-house, Jade Empire was pretty fugly too if you recall. Lol bioware?

In turn, Mass Effect 1 and 2 are pretty sweet looking, while based on the old Unreal engine. From my prompt wiki-fu: Jade Empire and DAO are running on different engines. Im a bit perplexed at the number of engines Bioware uses.

And I wouldn't blame the engines... I mean, c'mon, all contemporary game engines could handle high res textures with decent performance? Or am I wrong? Im more inclined to think that they settle with crappy artwork because it cuts the costs of development.

Also Origins is a brand new engine developed on a much smaller budget than biowares other RPG offering Mass Effect 2, if you recall mass effect 1 really didn't look like the new hotness either. And that wasn't an in house engine.

Infinity, Odyssey, Aurora and then Eclipse, I think. Eclipse is not some *brand new* in-house creation. It was made basing on previous Bioware systems.

And from what I remember, Mass Effect 1 was really good looking. I think I need to re-run it on my new machine though...

If people are going to blame DA's awful textures on consoles, why do other console games (even JC2 which does far, far more ambitious things) look so much better?

They do? I've never heard such argument, but then again I don't really give a crap about the PC vs. consoles scene. From what I remember Bioware games (maybe apart from Mass Effect series) were never really anything special in the visual department. I wasn't blown away with NWN 2 and when I first loaded up KOTOR I felt like somebody took a step back from Jedi Outcast...

[Vendetta]

And I wouldn't blame the engines... I mean, c'mon, all contemporary game engines could handle high res textures with decent performance? Or am I wrong? Im more inclined to think that they settle with crappy artwork because it cuts the costs of development.

I think the engine has quite a lot of impact on how high detail a texture you can load without framerate going to shit. Some engines are optimised to display high resolution textures better than others.

They do?

Yeah, Dragon Age on the consoles is a really shocking job, particularly in comparison with Mass Effect 2, which was roughly contemporary but using an engine which is well optimised for the console platforms.

[General Zod]

They do? I've never heard such argument, but then again I don't really give a crap about the PC vs. consoles scene. From what I remember Bioware games (maybe apart from Mass Effect series) were never really anything special in the visual department. I wasn't blown away with NWN 2 and when I first loaded up KOTOR I felt like somebody took a step back from Jedi Outcast...

Usually it's because the games weren't optimized for PCs or the developers didn't put much effort into it (GTA 4), other times they look just as good on the console as they do on the PC (Arkham Asylum, which had extra physx stuff added for the PC afterwords.)

[Commander 598]

Usually it's because the games weren't optimized for PCs or the developers didn't put much effort into it (GTA 4),...

*groans*

[Sarevok]

My biggest complaint against high end graphics is nausea. Far Cry 2 and Crysis botg leave me unsatisfied and tired. I loved the minimalistic look in older games like Mechwarrior 2. Halo 1 on the PC was both pretty and functional. Now with modern high end graphics its hard to see shit amidst the sea of brown, grey and green. Near photorealistic graphics can be awful if not made well.

[General Zod]

My biggest complaint against high end graphics is nausea. Far Cry 2 and Crysis botg leave me unsatisfied and tired. I loved the minimalistic look in older games like Mechwarrior 2. Halo 1 on the PC was both pretty and functional. Now with modern high end graphics its hard to see shit amidst the sea of brown, grey and green. Near photorealistic graphics can be awful if not made well.

I don't think whether or not the graphics are "high-end" have anything to do with nausea. One of the few games that I've gotten mildly nauseous from was Arkham Asylum, but that was due to the strange camera angles.

[Stark]

Games like MW2 don't have 'minimalistic' graphics; they have 'fucking 'awful'' graphics.

Motion sickness is usually a headbob thing.

[Sarevok]

My biggest complaint against high end graphics is nausea. Far Cry 2 and Crysis botg leave me unsatisfied and tired. I loved the minimalistic look in older games like Mechwarrior 2. Halo 1 on the PC was both pretty and functional. Now with modern high end graphics its hard to see shit amidst the sea of brown, grey and green. Near photorealistic graphics can be awful if not made well.

I don't think whether or not the graphics are "high-end" have anything to do with nausea. One of the few games that I've gotten mildly nauseous from was Arkham Asylum, but that was due to the strange camera angles.

Maybe its the color palette. It is easier and comfortable seeing amidst different contrasting colors. Now in a game like Crysis or FC 2 you would be moving in terrain distinguished only by subtle variations in same brown or grey. If it were a real photograph the human eye would not have any problem. But the algorithms used for real time near photorealism in videogame graphics cause it to feel uncomfortable. They are trying to render in 1/30th or less of a second what should take hours or days in a modern animated movie. Maybe its a side effect of various performance cheats and shortcuts manifesting themselves.

[Stark]

Or maybe it's headbob, like everyone else? Crysis isn't particularly monochromatic anyway and if someone got nausea from Yello FC2 it'd be headbob.

[General Zod]

Maybe its the color palette. It is easier and comfortable seeing amidst different contrasting colors. Now in a game like Crysis or FC 2 you would be moving in terrain distinguished only by subtle variations in same brown or grey. If it were a real photograph the human eye would not have any problem. But the algorithms used for real time near photorealism in videogame graphics cause it to feel uncomfortable.

Sounds like nonsense to me.

They are trying to render in 1/30th or less of a second what should take hours or days in a modern animated movie. Maybe its a side effect of various performance cheats and shortcuts manifesting themselves.

. . .what the fuck are you even talking about here? Taking hours or days? Are you talking about framerates? Because 30fps and higher has been a video standard for years.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Maybe its the color palette. It is easier and comfortable seeing amidst different contrasting colors. Now in a game like Crysis or FC 2 you would be moving in terrain distinguished only by subtle variations in same brown or grey. If it were a real photograph the human eye would not have any problem. But the algorithms used for real time near photorealism in videogame graphics cause it to feel uncomfortable.

Sounds like nonsense to me.

They are trying to render in 1/30th or less of a second what should take hours or days in a modern animated movie. Maybe its a side effect of various performance cheats and shortcuts manifesting themselves.

. . .what the fuck are you even talking about here? Taking hours or days? Are you talking about framerates? Because 30fps and higher has been a video standard for years.

He's talking about framerates indirectly. To get 30 FPS, each frame has to be rendered in 1/30th of a second, whereas in a modern big-budget 3d animated film like, say, Avatar, that same single frame could take hours or days to render. That's why they use massive clusters of massively powerful processors to render the whole thing in a reasonable amount of time. Displaying an image, once created, is simple; creating it is not. Even for a best-parts-available-now PC, trying to render something to that kind of a fidelity is going to take the PC hours or days. Meanwhile, a game which needs to be played in real-time is going to want around 30 frames per second, which means it has to get something "good enough" in one-thirtieth of one second.

And he's saying that the shortcuts taken to do so produce a subtle but disturbing effect on the human eye.

[General Zod]

He's talking about framerates indirectly. To get 30 FPS, each frame has to be rendered in 1/30th of a second, whereas in a modern big-budget 3d animated film like, say, Avatar, that same single frame could take hours or days to render. That's why they use massive clusters of massively powerful processors to render the whole thing in a reasonable amount of time. Displaying an image, once created, is simple; creating it is not. Even for a best-parts-available-now PC, trying to render something to that kind of a fidelity is going to take the PC hours or days. Meanwhile, a game which needs to be played in real-time is going to want around 30 frames per second, which means it has to get something "good enough" in one-thirtieth of one second.

And he's saying that the shortcuts taken to do so produce a subtle but disturbing effect on the human eye.

Neither one of you have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Film already plays at 30fps, the amount of time it takes to create the frame is completely irrelevant to the issue of nausea.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Neither one of you have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Film already plays at 30fps, the amount of time it takes to create the frame is completely irrelevant to the issue of nausea.

You haven't a fucking clue what we're talking about. What's being said is that in the shortcuts taken necessary to render 3d in real-time are some that can prove disturbing to the viewer. You know how TV screens and computer monitors tend to have horizontal bars running up and down them when you capture them with a TV camera? You can't see that when you're watching, but the effect behind it is there, and it could potentially upset or disturb a viewer on a level they don't recognize. He's saying that the processes used to render 3d can have a more likely-to-occur effect that can nauseate or disturb some viewers.

[Stark]

A subtle but disturbing element... he invented?

Or maybe it's just headbob. Erratic head movements (much more common in tacticool titles) are going to play shit with anyone's motion sensitivity.

[ShadowDragon8685]

A subtle but disturbing element... he invented?

That he hypothesized. Why do you think games and older movies had those epilepsy warnings, even when it was something like 8-bit side-scrolling Mega Man? It's not headbob, because it was known of long before some wanker got the idea to add headbob.

[General Zod]

You haven't a fucking clue what we're talking about. What's being said is that in the shortcuts taken necessary to render 3d in real-time are some that can prove disturbing to the viewer. You know how TV screens and computer monitors tend to have horizontal bars running up and down them when you capture them with a TV camera? You can't see that when you're watching, but the effect behind it is there, and it could potentially upset or disturb a viewer on a level they don't recognize. He's saying that the processes used to render 3d can have a more likely-to-occur effect that can nauseate or disturb some viewers.

I'm saying you're full of shit, so how about providing some evidence beyond a vague theory or shutting the fuck up?

[General Zod]

A subtle but disturbing element... he invented?

That he hypothesized. Why do you think games and older movies had those epilepsy warnings, even when it was something like 8-bit side-scrolling Mega Man? It's not headbob, because it was known of long before some wanker got the idea to add headbob.

Those epilepsy warnings have to do with rapidly flashing colors. Which is nothing like what you or sarevok are talking about.

[Stark]

Headbob is related to motion sickness, not epilepsy. Sarevok is complaining of feelings of lassitude or nausea, which isn't really an epileptic fit.