The Witcher 3 - Visuals

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It is hard to tell if the vegetation assets are the same as the older footage from 2013 and VGX had a sharpening filter in place and different lighting. I believe they did change it but it's hard to prove.

One thing however that is clear is that the vegetation used to respond a lot better to light. This can be seen all over the 35 minute demo





Notice how easy it is to make out each individual strand of grass as some appear dark green and others light green (almost white). In later footage they make it seem like the grass is lower resolution as there is less colour variation making all the strands of grass blend in to each other making them harder to separate. I'm noticing they are slowly bringing this back in the 4K donwsampled PC sceeenshots we have been receiving lately but it's still not up to the same level as it to were in the 35 minute demo.

You're actually right, it does look exactly like the same grass we see nowadays in recent footage but I guess the lightning is what makes it look extremely pale and low res causing our eyes to bleed and just look outright terrible... Hopefully it's something that can easily be fixed somehow :S
 
good god that foliage is damned ugly, the lighting and color is ridiculous.

These aren't NEW screens are they?

They are not screenshots at all. They are stills from the latest, very badly compressed, bad quality trailer on YT.

Also I still don't get this enthusiasm about foliage. I'm an old rpg fan, and this is quite new to me: I didn't know that there are people out there who play rpgs for the looks of carrots and cabbages. I can't make myself stop smiling from the thought.
 
If consoles didn't exist, we wouldn't be having Witcher 3. Seems some people are unaware about the state of their own platform - the most common PC GPU for the past 2-3 years has been the GTX660 or the GTX760, and the AMD 7870 core(which the consoles use) surpasses the 660 and is close behind the 760. So explain to me again how the game would look better on a worse baseline?

"Facts" are proven, this clearly isn't.

It really depends on how you count, for the first pc can overclock but that is not my point, i have 2 computers, 1 with a 980 and 1 with intel intergrated graphics 2000, statisticians would coun't both computers and put me below average. So really what is normal is really up to how you count.

Also

post-process AA
Please tell the guys to stop using that, it looks so fucking ugly.
 
They are not screenshots at all. They are stills from the latest, very badly compressed, bad quality trailer on YT.

Also I still don't get this enthusiasm about foliage. I'm an old rpg fan, and this is quite new to me: I didn't know that there are people out there who play rpgs for the looks of carrots and cabbages. I can't make myself stop smiling from the thought.

Sorry but some people actually have something called standards, especially when you've been shown something that looks amazing only to turn around and look like almost something different entirely.
 
It's all right, Peace man, but come on! Grass...really?

It isn't just grass, its nearly all the foliage other than trees, and in this game that's what you're looking at literally everywhere so you shouldn't be so casual about it looking sub-par. Especially when they had assets that looked better than this to begin with.
 
Of course but we live in the age of deferred rendering. Each and every engine has it's own G-Buffer(Rendering Pipeline) so you cannot make any fair comparisions. Those things stood true when we were still doing Forward rendering but if each engine has a fully customized Pipeline, this affects EVERYTHING, even the smallest of things and post-process stuff like Ambient Occlusion or AA.

You're also comparing an RPG with a ridiculous amount of things - running scripts, quests, AI etc etc to Vanishing which is a completely different kind of game.
At this point I really don't know Sid.

If I was told that CDPR would not deliver the best they can on PC a few weeks ago, then I would have just laughed and assured the person that it is impossible.
But after hearing Konrad say that there is no real difference between PC and consoles and we aimed for parity, I am fearful that CDPR did not even try to make the game look as good as they can on PC because they were aiming for parity in the first place.

Visuals are not the most important thing for me personally as far as Witcher games go, but I must admit that I understand the concerns of our friends here.
 
Damn I just watched the 35 min gameplay video, good old one.
Funny how we first complained about footage not looking like VGX, now we complain it doesn't even look like the 35 min video which was on high... high!
I wanted to make sure and yeah it seems like the exact same grass, reacting better to lightning I guess, the art itself looks less cartoony let's say it like that and the foliage still was affected a lot by stepping on it/moving near it/wind so I can't come up with a good reason why it became so much worse looking...
Perhaps an overlook? Devs play this game for hours every day, they got used to it so they just don't notice anything wrong... perhaps they overlooked it for this reason?
 
I agree with the analysis - the biggest thing that's changed between the 35-minute gameplay and the more recent material is the way foliage reacts to lighting and, probably, the lighting system as a whole. It feels like the game has taken a big step backwards visually just because of this.

My plea to the REDs, if any are reading this, is to find some way of bringing back the old lighting or something much more closely resembling it. I don't care if it will only run on completely beastly rigs, I don't care if it can't be achieved on consoles, I don't care if you have to add it as an option in a patch - but please bring it back. The way the game looks now is a shadow of its former glory, and it's all because of the way lighting works now. Everything feels flatter, much less realistic or visually appealing, and the foliage especially now looks as though it's almost Photoshopped or painted in.

I will be very sad if we never get to play a Witcher 3 that lives up to the 35-minute demo's visuals. I don't care about VGX or even Sword of Destiny anymore - I just sincerely hope we can get something like the 35-minute gameplay again.

I say this not only speaking as a fan of the series ever since the first game who wants the best experience possible - I also say this because I imagine that the REDs want their game to be at its best. I don't see why anyone at CD Projekt would feel comfortable releasing the game with such a drastic step back in visuals and not fixing it - I sincerely hope they're able to.
 
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I was disappointed by the downgrade in the 35min demo but it still looked really good, and was happy if I was going to get those gfx with the final release. But looks like we won't even get that, this is a pitiful goddamn shame.
 
I agree with the analysis - the biggest thing that's changed between the 35-minute gameplay and the more recent material is the way foliage reacts to lighting and, probably, the lighting system as a whole. It feels like the game has taken a big step backwards visually just because of this.

My plea to the REDs, if any are reading this, is to find some way of bringing back the old lighting or something much more closely resembling it. I don't care if it will only run on completely beastly rigs, I don't care if it can't be achieved on consoles, I don't care if you have to add it as an option in a patch - but please bring it back. The way the game looks now is a shadow of its former glory, and it's all because of the way lighting works now. Everything feels flatter, much less realistic or visually appealing, and the foliage especially now looks as though it's almost Photoshopped or painted in.

I will be very sad if we never get to play a Witcher 3 that lives up to the 35-minute demo's visuals. I don't care about VGX or even Sword of Destiny anymore - I just sincerely hope we can get something like the 35-minute gameplay again.

I say this not only speaking as a fan of the series ever since the first game who wants the best experience possible - I also say this because I imagine that the REDs want their game to be at its best. I don't see why anyone at CD Projekt would feel comfortable releasing the game with such a drastic step back in visuals and not fixing it - I sincerely hope they're able to.

Couldn't have said it better myself... Exactly how I feel!

Something in the light just makes the grass look so bad it just gets painful to look at after a few minutes, and that's from videos! (I have watched the uncompressed ones, don't worry), I haven't even started the game and it is huge and full of that same grass everywhere... A fix must be made!
 

Lighting is terrible, way too damn bright even for moonlight, and the light on those trees in the distance makes them look incredibly low-res. Draw-distance is totally F'd in this shot with that blue-glow near the ground when the sky above seems much darker. That's bizarre looking, not in a good way.

That's damned ugly. I can get skyrim to look literally 3x better than this with mods at 60fps.
 
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Visuals are not the most important thing for me personally as far as Witcher games go, but I must admit that I understand the concerns of our friends here.
I understand their concerns(within reason), I'm just arguing the statement you made, nothing more.
 
You now what....I would be happy if they would say "Guys, we have to downgrade the PC version because it is a multiplatform game, we have to deal with less powerful consoles and we have run out of money, so we can't provide a good enough visual experience on PC". I would be ok with that, no problem. Because it would be an honest explanation.

But when you say "Ultra will be a slap in the face", "VGX/SOD are reproducible on ultra settings", "There is no downgrade, just Youtube compression". Well, then I'm pissed off, but just because those are bullshits and you are kidding me. That's it.
 
I still think that the game is stunning. I will play it for the story anyway so this is not really a problem for me. This game will be still revolutionary if not because of the visuals then it will be the storytelling and the quests, and in an RPG should be the most important thing.
 
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