Upcoming graphical powerhouses

[cmdrdredd]

GTA5 looked pretty reasonable on my cousins PS3, it should push what pc graphics can do.Will end up running like a dog i am sure if GTA4 is anything to go by.

GTA4 was ported by a 3rd party. GTA5 is not...It also uses the same engine as Max Payne which ran just about flawlessly for me.

 

[Carfax83]

GTA4 runs great, not sure what you are talking about. It has better graphics than Watch Dogs, runs better, and is a 7 year older game.

Rockstar > Ubisoft

Sorry but that's nuts. Watch Dogs' visual fidelity is much greater than GTA IV. Watch Dogs uses things like character and environmental tessellation, global illumination, soft shadows, simulated effects etcetera.. The only area where GTA IV could be better is in driving mechanics and vehicle damage, and that's because Watch Dogs doesn't focus on driving the way that GTA IV does..

 

[Carfax83]

So this poll is a two dog race so far it seems. I'm kinda surprised that no one has voted for AC Unity. I guess I'm the only one impressed by the game's stunning vistas, lifelike scale, amazing density and groundbreaking crowd generation technology.. The character tech is also very impressive, with the PC and NPCs having very realistic faces and animations..

 

[finbarqs]

Star Citizen is going into 4k territory, how many others on that list can say the same?

If it's made for Windows, it doesn't matter what "K" it has. If it uses DirectX, it'll support whatever resolution your monitor throws at it. 10k even.

 

[BrightCandle]

While Star Citizen might very well use a lot of graphical horse power, I am not yet convinced it looks all that good. Its got a very dark gritty aesthetic and space games generally don't really look all that impressive. I can't really understand why the current alpha runs as bad as it does, its graphics don't really justify the current performance levels. It also has the potential to go horribly wrong since its based on Crytek's engine, with that company going under that could very well impact Star Citizen's graphics due to support disappearing.

 

[finbarqs]

that's why Ryse: Son of Rome looked so good! It used Cry Engine 4! So does Star Citizen!

 

[ImpulsE69]

The explanations have already been given, you are just being difficult.

Star Citizen: being developed for PC. This means, what you see now, is at a minimum what you will get at release graphically. It doesn't by any means it will be the best of the bunch, but expectations are high that it will be (of your list).

Witcher 3: These guys have a good track record, so people have more faith in what they will bring to the table

The rest are being developed mainly for consoles. That isn't to say they will look bad, but history has shown that it doesn't matter that they are 'created' on a PC, the final product is not always represented in the hype videos/screenshots. It would be different if it was once (Aliens:CM anyone), but it happens often. This will be based largely on how good they get at coding the new consoles. The main point is that in most cases THIS will be the version the PC will get, not something different.

Let's also keep in mind art direction. That plays a big part in how a game is perceived graphically.

Now, having said that, this is probably what we will see, over and over in the near future since the latest crop of consoles are so close in architecture:

1. Games released on all 3 platforms within days/weeks of each other
2. All 3 versions will look very similar (because they don't want anyone having a better experience than someone else..and yes this has been said).
3. 6-12 months later a PC HD extreme version will come out for a large portion of the original cost that only adds a fraction of what could have been done, and as usual modders will do the rest to make it look like it should have.

I do think performance wise, games will run better on PC now once they get passed making things compatible with 360/PS3.

All speculation mind you.

 

[futurefields]

GTA4 ran like crap at release. That's just a fact there. It also doesn't compare to Watch Dogs in graphics at all.

Sure it does. GTA4 has better lighting, shadows, and physics.

 

[skipsneeky2]

GTA4 was ported by a 3rd party. GTA5 is not...It also uses the same engine as Max Payne which ran just about flawlessly for me.

I do have a feeling despite my earlier post that the port will be pretty smooth, these new consoles are as close to pc as any console could be so i would be shocked if the port ended up being garbage.

Something tells me this port could be one of the types to take advantage of 6 core chips and more then 2gb of vram, GTA4 pushed pass the 1100mb mark at 1080p with high settings and back then at release you had a 1gb gtx280/285 or a 5870 to run the game on.

I swapped my gtx280 for a gtx295 when it debuted and remember GTA4 running worst, had no idea that perhaps the settings i ran honestly choked cause a gtx295 effectively had 896mb to work with lol.

 

[Morgoth780]

That's kind of a half truth. Whilst Star Citizen is the only pure PC game on that list, many of the others have the PC as the lead development platform.

I mean, are we going to start calling games like the Witcher 3 which is being made by a strong PC centric developer consolized? That would not only be silly, it would also be a lie..

Witcher 2's UI was really consolized. Graphics and performance not so much, but the UI is extremely consolized.

 

[MistaFreeze]

What about Doom? I don't see that as an option but surely ID would try to push some limits of the PC with that. At least I hope so.. I love Doom!

 

[chimaxi83]

What about Doom? I don't see that as an option but surely ID would try to push some limits of the PC with that. At least I hope so.. I love Doom!

Like they did with Rage? Lol id.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Sure it does. GTA4 has better lighting, shadows, and physics.

No it doesn't not even close. Unless you mod the game, it's no contest at all. What a stupid thing to say. You are just letting your hatred of a specific publisher or developer get in the way of actual thought.

You think this

Looks better than this?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Like they did with Rage? Lol id.

Some of what that game engine did was revolutionary. They just weren't able to apply ultra high resolution textures to objects up close because of memory concerns with the megatextures. The vistas and such were pretty damn fine looking though, technical issues with the rendering aside.

 

[Zenoth]

Meh, graphical powerhouses...

It's surely visually pleasing, but I can't wait for "A.I. powerhouses".

I've been playing Skyrim recently and it cruelly reminds me that A.I. in most games are about as advanced in "intelligence" as cockroaches. It's funny at times, however. I mean Skyrim wouldn't be Skyrim if firing an arrow in stealth mode at a bandit's forehead wouldn't result in said bandit to loudly ask "Is anyone there?". And Skyrim wouldn't be Skyrim if a bandit wouldn't just resume as if nothing happened on its paroling schedule after merely stopping three seconds at comrade's corpse, exclaiming "I will find whoever did this...".

Yeah... but anyway, The Witcher 3 looks pretty good and Star Citizen as well. I wouldn't really count FarCry 4 in there but that's subjective (what isn't). As far as actual graphics are concerned there's a few things that to this day seem to be very resources-heavy, or simply very difficult to program and animate as well. Namely water in general (especially waves and water animations on shorelines), water particles (droplets, etcs), fire (dynamic), smoke (volumetric) and wet surfaces depending on the texture of said surface. As far as water goes the Crysis games had it good enough, it's also pretty good in BF3 and BF4, and quite decent in FarCry 2 and 3 (and surely 4). When it comes to fire I do like the effects in FarCry 2 and 3 (especially fire propagation). I mean there's a few games here and there that have good graphics in general, but more often than not very specific graphics aspects / elements just seem too generic or isn't well animated.

I still remember seeing the water animations for the first time in Wave Race 64, blew my mind away, and the surprising part is that even after all those years it STILL holds its ground well enough to this day. And, no, I'm not saying that it looks better in Wave Race 64 than in BF4. I'm saying that considering the number of years and hardware generations that went by it seems that it indeed took that much time to "just have that increase" in that period of time. When, in comparison, other graphical effects had plenty of advances during the same period of time.

Anyway, when I think of "graphics" in a game I think of more than merely polygons count and photo realistic super-mega-revenge-of-doom-and-desolation-alpha-omega holy mother of mercy edition textures resolutions.

 

[futurefields]

No it doesn't not even close. Unless you mod the game, it's no contest at all. What a stupid thing to say. You are just letting your hatred of a specific publisher or developer get in the way of actual thought.

You think this

Looks better than this?

what an idiotic comparison. you are comparing 4k screenshot of the most picturesque aspect of Watch Dogs to a shitty quality screenshot of GTA4.

and even still the only thing Watch Dogs has in it's favor is higher res textures and better anti-aliasing. neither of which I factor into graphics because anti-aliasing can always be injected in and textures are largely a product of the year the game was produced. what's more important is object modeling and interaction and LOD stability. which Watch Dogs sucks hard at.

i dont use any screenshots to judge graphics. GTA looks much better in motion because it has way better physics interactions between objects, thus tying the world together in a more realistic manner than Watch Dogs could ever hope to with it's low grade physics engine.

 

[Raduque]

The fact that the game is PC only and targeted towards gaming spec machines means there will be no downgrading!

Yay! That means it will run at 1fps at minimum settings and lowest resolution on my system.

 

[alcoholbob]

I'm betting Dragon Age Inquisition will be hard to run...their Edmonton Group has a habit of not optimizing their games very well xD.

 

[chimaxi83]

what an idiotic comparison. you are comparing 4k screenshot of the most picturesque aspect of Watch Dogs to a shitty quality screenshot of GTA4.

and even still the only thing Watch Dogs has in it's favor is higher res textures and better anti-aliasing. neither of which I factor into graphics because anti-aliasing can always be injected in and textures are largely a product of the year the game was produced. what's more important is object modeling and interaction and LOD stability. which Watch Dogs sucks hard at.

i dont use any screenshots to judge graphics. GTA looks much better in motion because it has way better physics interactions between objects, thus tying the world together in a more realistic manner than Watch Dogs could ever hope to with it's low grade physics engine.

Sorry but the worst GTA fanboy on this forum isn't a reliable source of objective comparisons

 

[cmdrdredd]

what an idiotic comparison. you are comparing 4k screenshot of the most picturesque aspect of Watch Dogs to a shitty quality screenshot of GTA4.

and even still the only thing Watch Dogs has in it's favor is higher res textures and better anti-aliasing. neither of which I factor into graphics because anti-aliasing can always be injected in and textures are largely a product of the year the game was produced. what's more important is object modeling and interaction and LOD stability. which Watch Dogs sucks hard at.

i dont use any screenshots to judge graphics. GTA looks much better in motion because it has way better physics interactions between objects, thus tying the world together in a more realistic manner than Watch Dogs could ever hope to with it's low grade physics engine.

Nope...you don't have a clue

 

[futurefields]

what a worthless response.

Watch Dogs physics, object interaction, LOD stability, dynamic shadows are all inferior to GTA4.

Watch Dogs doesn't even cast shadows from car headlights without mods smh...

 

[shortylickens]

Remember when we worried if games would actually be FUN or not?

 

[Blue_Max]

...well, regardless of which, thanks for reminding me NOT to buy a new video card until Star Citizen is playable/available.

...and the "fun or not" thing... I can sure relate. But from about the time games were moving from EGA to VGA (the XT/286/386 era) we still had to worry about system requirements.

 

[finbarqs]

watch dogs is worthless without it's "E3 Mod!"

 

[raasco]

So......if the games haven't been released yet, how are we supposed to know your question ?