You're right, an article involving an interview with Adam Badowski is not FUD. What is FUD, however, is your claim that he in any way explicitly states that there has been "forced parity" (i.e. they brought down PC graphics to match consoles) or that "all the efforts were put into the console versions". There is simply no proof of that but if you strongly believe otherwise, feel free to quote the article from the thread you were directed to. You will not find any.
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You're right, an article involving an interview with Adam Badowski is not FUD. What is FUD, however, is your claim that he in any way explicitly states that there has been "forced parity" (i.e. they brought down PC graphics to match consoles) or that "all the efforts were put into the console versions". There is simply no proof of that but if you strongly believe otherwise, feel free to quote the article from the thread you were directed to. You will not find any.
While I agree that the new consoles are excellent bang for the buck and excel in several areas, I'm not so sure that those necessarily translate into a better experience than a decently equipped mid range PC..
Take Dying Light for instance. The draw distance for the PS4 is lower than the lowest draw distance setting on PC. Also, with Dragon Age Inquisition, the draw distance for the PC version and LoD is much better than what you find on the consoles. Frostbite 3 is absolutely amazing on a gaming PC!
On PCs, we have much more powerful CPUs than what is found in the consoles, and they are able to mitigate a lot of the overhead associated with Windows and DirectX; particularly on NVidia hardware.. The consoles by comparison have very weak CPUs, but due to their much lower API they can still push out 20,000 draw calls or so per frame if I recall. Here's a picture of DX11 getting almost 50,000 draw calls per frame at 30 FPS, whereas DX12 is getting over 73,000 draw calls at 120 FPS and still rising in Futuremark's upcoming API overhead benchmark.
As for memory management, consoles have a huge advantage I agree, but PCs can still easily keep up and even surpass them by utilizing large and very fast caches and VRAM, which reduce the overhead associated with having discrete memory pools.
(all screenshots were taken from the uncompressed latest gameplay video, with no editing whatsoever)
http://imgur.com/a/qSYfu
http://imgur.com/a/qSYfu
Looking at those screenshots just goes to show that games always look better in motion. The compressed jpeg screenshots just washes out the detail and the colors and makes everything look much worse than the actual video.
The only time screenshots equal live footage or look better, is if they have been doctored with extreme levels of downsampling and other effects..
"Unification" by definition caters to the lowest common denominator, forcing console-tier assets on the PC version.
And assuming that Adam Badowski wasn't lying, he stated that the game is exactly the same apart from some small differences.
This would mean there's very little optimization (work) on the PC version.
I think you've also highlighted something else that seems to get missed a lot. Those were, as you point out, jpegs, not "uncompressed gameplay".
@the_kyrox, you've already been asked twice - if you want to discuss that article, please use the thread on it, as there's already an extensive discussion on the topic, and it may help you to clarify some of the points you're making.
I don't want to discuss the article, as it's direct and concise, leaving very little to the imagination. I'm discussing the possible downgrade using the article as a reliable source, just like other people are using other articles and footage and not being directed to specific threads about said articles and footage.
Uh, the screenshots were from the uncompressed video (2.95gb). They may look a bit washed out, but that aside I still fail to see anything downgraded. The vegetation is not missing, water tesselation is the same, lighting didn't suffer as you saw multiple moods in both interior and exterior, textures don't look any more low res than the previous material, and so on.
The problem here is that games aren't optimized for PCs. That's a fact. I can give you many examples.
One of the best examples is Skyrim and TESVAL fix which boosted this game by 20 frames. This is later included in official PC patch.
So community has optimized this game, not developers.
Devs are forced to optimize games for consoles cause these are closed systems. You have what you have.
PC is open system, and policy of many devs is - by better hardware if you want better performance. For example well known multi-platform problem is mouse lag which wouldn't exist if game was properly optimized for PC. There are many leftovers, many shitty ports.
And Mantle will not help if your game simply isn't optimized. It's just buzzword. These 3-4 frames which Mantle give you can be achieved through standard driver optimization. That Mantle or similar API will be some kind of revolution is a myth. That consoles are more powerful is another myth - devs just give them much more attention.
Games are more complex, and we have 3 platforms. This means much more work for devs.
Lets just hope that TW3 will have more attention.
Uhuh. Meanwhile, in the real world: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-w1bUYfm9Lfo/VMl8V0rH-ZI/AAAAAAAAF3I/nFvcZznRUlY/s580/dying-lod.gif
While yes, consoles do generally have better access to their components (like mantle or DX12, supposedly) they still cannot match a 5 year old gtx480 under clocked to the max, as far as raw power is concerned.
Well, what did Adam actually say? He said that there won't be better textures and models on PC at release because they apparently don't have the manpower and time to do better ones just for PC on time. That's indeed sad since a lot of other developers (even the always crucified Ubisoft) offered better textures on PC if you have the respective hardware, like Shadow of Morder, AC Unity or Dragon Age Inquisition.
But that has obviously nothing to do with a downgrade, simply because there never existed better assets only for PC in the first place. If there existed better assets there would be no reason to not use them and there would be no reason for Adam to claim that they don't have time to create better ones. So there might be no "update" here (textures and models) but there is also clearly no "downgrade".
What Adam also clearly stated was that in an huge open world game with different regions with different color palettes, different weather conditions, different hand made environments, , different vegetation, different daytimes and so on you cannot simply compare two different scenes and make any graphical claims on that comparison. Just because one scene seem to offer "worse lighting" for example doesn't automatically mean that there is any downgrade on purpose going on. It's probably the very same graphical version, just under different conditions mentioned above. And then you can even alter the same graphical version with simple tools like bloom, blur, color changing, sharpness enhancements and so on. That's what many people do for their PC games with for example tools like SweetFX or just by using different ingame settings. For example, in the SOD trailer the sharpness was really exteme, maybe two extreme (just look at the vegetation) while in the latest gameplay vid some blur was visible. Again, that isn't an indication for a possible downgrade, it's just a difference in settings and scenes.
So, nothing what Adam said is any indication for a possible downgrade. The mods pointed you to another thread if you want to talk about the topic whether PC should have better assets than the console version and that's totally understandable imo.
Skyrim's lack of optimization wasn't even something the developers needed to do by hand, they literally forgot to tick certain boxes in the compiler options before building. I can't get my head around that level of incompetence.
:rly?:
Taking a compressed screenshot (.jpg) or using a picture hoster which compresses it from an uncompressed Video, isn't really a good way to show the quality.
Nonethless it looks great.
Which does not indicate a downgrade.
Which does not indicate a downgrade.
Which does not indicate a downgrade.
As has been said multiple times, if you wish to discuss the article (the contents of which do not indicate a downgrade) then head to the appropriate thread. There is no way I can possibly make myself clearer.
Ok, so .jpg is compressed. Didn't know that.
Though, .bmp doesn't seem to make the image that much crisper, despite 10 times the size.
Guess the video's to blame. It (14:22min) is the same size as the Elder Blood trailer (1:24min).
Edit: hey, did the forum just edit my bmp into a jpeg.
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Developing a game for a closed platform involves testing assets and checking if they're low enough, and downgrading them if they're not, so one could argue that the PC version is being downgraded due to the development being focused on the console version.
I've used this thread because it has become a "graphical issues" general, after seeing how different threads which addressed these issues have been closed and directed here, and it seems that developers are actively addressing questions and clarifying issues on it.
Don't worry, if I don't get a clarification here I'll make a new thread to discuss whether TW3 is going to be a poorly optimized console port or not.
Yes .jpg do compress the picture, so it'd be best to avoid if you want to make a high quality picture.
.bmp are overkill, the best compromise is .png.
use abload, flickr or picpar as a hoster.
Well the consoles at the moment are comparable with a mid range pc. So this 'downgrade' was inevitable. At some point you have to make a choice in how far you want to push your textures and models. And since CDPR is a company who needs money, they still have to ship a X amount of copies of the game to make a profit, which means making the game available to be played by people with lower specs pc's (lower then absolute monster pc's). And since they are then not pushing the limits of todays pc's anymore it is easier to develop for consoles.
Now I don't know a lot about game development, I want to. So I don't claim that what I'm saying is correct. But it seems to me that when you are developing for multiple systems and those systems are reasonable comparable (performance wise, I don't mean the back-end), at this time I think they are. Then why shouldn't they share models and assets between systems, it saves a lot of time and money. And they might release a HD texture pack on pc at a later date.
So there can't be any talk of downgrade when there aren't any better assets made or available.
You want the game that was shown during the SoD trailer? You will get it, we already saw how a different time of day or weather effects the scene you see.
And let's be honest here, TW3 is the best looking open world game out there. Especially for consoles. For pc the heavy modded Skyrim might beat it but the modded version is unstable and quite difficult to get.
Now I don't know a lot about game development, I want to. So I don't claim that what I'm saying is correct. But it seems to me that when you are developing for multiple systems and those systems are reasonable comparable (performance wise, I don't mean the back-end), at this time I think they are. Then why shouldn't they share models and assets between systems, it saves a lot of time and money. And they might release a HD texture pack on pc at a later date.
So there can't be any talk of downgrade when there aren't any better assets made or available.
You want the game that was shown during the SoD trailer? You will get it, we already saw how a different time of day or weather effects the scene you see.
And let's be honest here, TW3 is the best looking open world game out there. Especially for consoles. For pc the heavy modded Skyrim might beat it but the modded version is unstable and quite difficult to get.
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The thread that keeps on giving.
However I am still mixed between the colour pallet. Its beautiful without a doubt.... But maybe too beautiful at times, I saw this gem a while ago
http://gfycat.com/LameKaleidoscopicHeron
If that had the textures from the actual game and a little better lighting etc..........Wow
pcmr
But unlike TW1, TW2/3 actually have daylight instead of an almost always present overcast.
F*** it... Just remembered the swamp scene. Oh well.
I should shut up now, I'm just confusing myself
However I am still mixed between the colour pallet. Its beautiful without a doubt.... But maybe too beautiful at times, I saw this gem a while ago
http://gfycat.com/LameKaleidoscopicHeron
If that had the textures from the actual game and a little better lighting etc..........Wow
pcmr
But unlike TW1, TW2/3 actually have daylight instead of an almost always present overcast.
F*** it... Just remembered the swamp scene. Oh well.
I should shut up now, I'm just confusing myself
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Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but according to my understanding models and textures are initially created with superior quality and then scaled down to several levels commonly labeled low,medium,high and ultra. Consloles tend to use high level meshes and textures, leaving ultra for PC. The interviews imply that there are no ultra quality assets available in the game which would not only be disappointing but also rather uncommon.
Hopefully this is BS along with some other PR claims we've heard recently.
Hopefully this is BS along with some other PR claims we've heard recently.
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