Witcher 3 Graphics

[uthvag]

@essenthy I watched your second video with cutscene lighting. I think this is really amazing. If you spend time for make this mod playable and fix the problems this will be more amazing. But can you make a comparison video with default and cutscene lighting . There is screenshots comparison. But I want to see this in action. And I think there are many people who want it.

For those who did not watch second video

[video=youtube;j5MX-9yYZ3w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5MX-9yYZ3w[/video]

beautiful! is this combined with any sweetfx profile?

and performance hit?

 

[asdf444]

The video description says no reshade / sweet ...

---------- Updated at 08:22 AM ----------

For those who ask about a more grim universe i did that...

 

[carsomnyr]

I saw it on a couple tech threads. I dont really use the ultra cause of fps drops (Porlly doesnt like my 2 gb vram). If i would make a guess about the effect it would be more performence wise rather than seing more in game.Might be wrong though as i said i can only give you a guess.Asking this in Pc tech section probably can get you better replies than mine.

 

[barneyblister]

For myself and my hardware etc, since the 1.04 patch the difference between 'high' and 'ultra' textures is ... the dreaded shimmer.

I'm referring to the 'texturemipbias' thing, which I've had a lot of trouble with: resetting the ini value to '0' hasn't worked for me (even with 'read-only' properties for the file) because (I now realise) when I've gone back into the game I've been putting the slider for that feature back up to 'ultra' (as it always goes to 'low' as others have observed ...)

So ... after some experimentation, I've discovered that if I set the texture slider to 'high', I keep a good deal of the supposed graphical enhancements of 1.04 (i.e. foliage looks a little 'fuller') without the flipping 'shimmering' quality.
Oddly, I can also apply post-processing 'sharpening' and still not suffer from this effect.

my 2.5c anyway.

 

[the_eternal_fire]

When I hear these sort of things I cringe. I can bet how much you want that or you didn't try more than 1 or 2 or you are just telling a blatant lie. There are FX presets for all tastes, those that make the game more dark, those that make it more vivid, those that don't tailor the colors at all and just remove the opaqueness in vanilla + add improving effects, so it is literally impossible that you cannot find a FX that looks better than vanilla (because vanilla can be improved as it is right now).

If you like the color scheme of vanilla simply get a preset that doesn't change that scheme and only improves on it by adding a little contrast (to remove the opaqueness) and add other subtle effects to improve the image (as SMAA). There are many of them, starting from the one of doktor1. Also my E3 profile doesn't alter the color scheme of vanilla but just simulates an improvement on the lightning (fake, naturally).

those reshade and sweetfx preset improve upon one specific weather lightning condition while at the same time they ruin another weather lightning condition. for instance, if I apply a desaturation filter to lower the extreme colors a bit during a specific weather condition, it also desaturated other parts, even those who dont need tweaking, in the game as well. Which screws up the balance. This wouldnt be a problem if there wouldnt be so many different weather conditions.
smaa is nothing more than a tool to get ride of bad antialising, which can also be achieved by nvidia's antialising tools and drs, that why I dont use smaa. Other effects like bloom and ambiet lightning are also only personal prefrences. In my opinion they make the game look worse. In conclusion, reshade and sweetfx dont make the graphics better, they only tweak the graphic style to your own liking

---------- Updated at 08:31 AM ----------

@essenthy I watched your second video with cutscene lighting. I think this is really amazing. If you spend time for make this mod playable and fix the problems this will be more amazing. But can you make a comparison video with default and cutscene lighting . There is screenshots comparison. But I want to see this in action. And I think there are many people who want it.

For those who did not watch second video

[video=youtube;j5MX-9yYZ3w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5MX-9yYZ3w[/video]

this is how I would like to make my game look like, something that cannot be achieve by some color correction filter

 

[Sharpy47]

The difference is almost non existant indeed and I have been playing on Ultra for quite some time. I guess if you have mid range PC better switch back to High textures for extra fps boost.

 

[mcpartyson]

There is no difference. It's been stated that it increases the amount of vram used to load the textures...I think it's BS. All the graphics options barely make a difference. Anways, Vram consumption is pretty low in this game maybe because of a bad port.

 

[agatsuma]

The video description says no reshade / sweet ...

---------- Updated at 08:22 AM ----------

For those who ask about a more grim universe i did that...

And? What is the point of posting screenshots without download link for the pressets?

 

[Kimonimo]

@Witcherman, Ditto. And what does that tell you? An 8-year old game looking better at times than the new one that's supposedly cutting-edge and all that BS.

http://polygamia.pl/Polygamia/51,96455,17905381.html?i=5 This is a link to the comparison of some of the scenes from the Sword Of Destiny trailer with the retail game. I haven't seen those anywhere yet. Jesus Effing Christ (((

My goodness! What the HELL has CDPR done!?

They totally wrecked a beautiful piece of art this game was! INCOMPREHENSIBLE!

 

[Zat0ichi]

I'm 10 pages adrift in this thread.

Looks like the cutscene lighting is a thing. (all the sweetfx and reshade stuff leaves me cold)

any other news?

 

[Liuhu77]

I too was expecting a clear difference. Maybe later on we get more tesselation and whatnot on ultra settings. If CDPR decides to work on that + performance.

Have to say, this game looks absolutely fantastic. Details are stunning and every house has different interiors. Not to mention the wind and the atmosphere in all different locations.. fields, forests, swamps.. etc.

 

[Septerra_Core]

We all know what actually happened to those poor Ultra textures :/

 

[amfibiya89]

The video description says no reshade / sweet ...

---------- Updated at 08:22 AM ----------

For those who ask about a more grim universe i did that...

Sorry but now it looks like modded oblivion game. Bloom is everywhere.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y203/dspso/oblivion/Wendelbek2.jpg

PS: What is a tag for image view not link?

 

[vesemas228]

@essenthy I watched your second video with cutscene lighting. I think this is really amazing. If you spend time for make this mod playable and fix the problems this will be more amazing. But can you make a comparison video with default and cutscene lighting . There is screenshots comparison. But I want to see this in action. And I think there are many people who want it.

For those who did not watch second video

[video=youtube;j5MX-9yYZ3w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5MX-9yYZ3w[/video]

I can't watch this. Its too nice. Had they released with this... Really the current gen consoles can't run this?

The only thing that can explain why we got world of warcraft was they had to downgrade TOO MUCH to support one of the stupid consoles. They nerfed it so hard that instead of a sense of real it was much more a cartoon so they had to change the entire direction to match. What else could the reason be to actually change the visual direction of the game so much?

The detail on geralt model is such a contrast.. if you stand beside shrubs it looks like they're 2 different games. Too much downgrade.

 

[Zat0ichi]

My goodness! What the HELL has CDPR done!?

They totally wrecked a beautiful piece of art this game was! INCOMPREHENSIBLE!

It is comprehensible. We all kind of know why.

Looking at all those comparison shots again I can see another thing that explains the drastic look and feel difference.
This game was jam packed with Nvidia tech. TXAA is a cheap AA solution that is criticised for its whole sale blurring of everything.
SO
There is that sharpening filter that is reported to make your eyes bleed if used for too long at too high a level.
But if you mix that with lots of nvidia fogs and stuff, as well as cheap AA the image needs the sharpening boost.

Immersion always seems to be about smoke and mirrors. (two very GPU intensive things is gaming but I digress)
If you stop the player being able to take in every thing all the time then you can cheat on details. But if you flatten the world then every flaw and cheat is laid bare.

One thing none of us can be sure of is the power needed to use all the missing stuff, even if well optimised. I'm beginning to see the work needed to optimise all of it.
For sake of argument lets say the volumetric fog is a gpu hog. Can it be incrementally applied or is it an on/off effect.
Some one with a 750ti wants to play the game and is struggling for 30fps at 720p. They turn the fog off and its a game breaker the game looks horrid even with everything else on high
Something as pivotal to the atmosphere then needs to be some how scaled to look right across the whole map. That's a lot of work.

Rip it out and use something else was the only answer.

A game that looks perfect at Ultra settings needs to be incrementally adjustable. With an RPG those increments are a lot of work.
eg
Low - runs on laptop at 24fps
med - 560ti @ 720p
high - console
ultra - 970 @ 1080p 30fps

Optimising 20 graphics sliders for those 4 scenarios across such a large piece of work.

You can't just have console and ultra with sliders.

This conclusion makes me think there really is no chance at all, ever, of seeing CDPR get the 35min build out.

 

[vesemas228]

They look pretty much the same?
I just notice a better frame rate with High textures, just not sure what I'll be missing if I don't use Ultra..
Can someone please point where the difference is?

---------- Updated at 08:09 AM ----------

PS! This is not a complaint post, I'm just wondering..

CDPR being awesome introduced some mip bias setting, and its hardwired to the texture quality. If you change it in the ini file, it automatically sets the texture detail in game, and if you change the texture detail back in game it updates the mip bias setting you hand edited.

I havent done an inspection on the actual images before this setting, but today at least that will be a difference.

---------- Updated at 09:23 AM ----------

@Witcherman, Ditto. And what does that tell you? An 8-year old game looking better at times than the new one that's supposedly cutting-edge and all that BS.

http://polygamia.pl/Polygamia/51,96455,17905381.html?i=5 This is a link to the comparison of some of the scenes from the Sword Of Destiny trailer with the retail game. I haven't seen those anywhere yet. Jesus Effing Christ (((

I wouldn't have touched sweetfx if the lighting had been like the top screenshots there. The environment detail is more than the best we have today so i'm not upset about that. The poor lighting is just why?!?!

I also have a really hard time understanding why we on pc can't have it back. Its just lights.. this isn't reworking a million in game assets, its a config change. Why not!?!?!

---------- Updated at 09:26 AM ----------

But I guess CDPR's marketing department realised how much "gamers" love color and stuff and they wanted to appeal to the lowest common denominator last minute. I have no idea why else they'd do this, considering the game didn't start looking like this until late 2014/early 2015, I think.

Yeah this boggles the mind. Why? Maybe they showed people and some nanny folk went, ahh thats too evil it wont fit in our padded wall society change?

Either that or they literally made the decision to keep platform parity at all costs. Even the simple stuff thats already built into the game and just disabled we can't have because xbox. Right.

 

[insomnia_jt]

Setting MipMapBias to -1 makes textures sharper. Look at grass textures or leaves and general foliage. They look a lot sharper. Geralt's starting armor gets really sharp too.
Ofc at 1080p it starts to shimmer. But at higher resolutions things starting to clear up.
With low MipMapBias you wont need the in-game high radius sharpening.

 

[May17th]

What do you think looks best? HairWorks ON or OFF?

So what do you think looks best? It is the matter of taste and not facts so I ask.

Sorry colors was weird on this last image but I use WitcherSense for taking a closer look.

 

[Kimonimo]

So what do you think looks best? It is the matter of taste and not facts so I ask.

Sorry colors was weird on this last image but I use WitcherSense for taking a closer look.

LOL look at those buildings, and look at Geralt. The game looks 10 years old.

 

[Amioran]

those reshade and sweetfx preset improve upon one specific weather lightning condition while at the same time they ruin another weather lightning condition. for instance, if I apply a desaturation filter to lower the extreme colors a bit during a specific weather condition, it also desaturated other parts, even those who dont need tweaking, in the game as well. Which screws up the balance. This wouldnt be a problem if there wouldnt be so many different weather conditions.

OMG, it's NOT trueeeee (not in absolute terms)!!!! What you say happens only if the colors are changed, but not all presets change/desaturate colors (and even then if the preset is done well the author should test it in various conditions to see that the color change is uniform under all circumstances). There are some presets that don't touch colors/saturation at all so how in the hell can happen what you say on those instances? You can even do a preset by yourself and not change colors and just tweak a little other things if you want to. Reshade doesn't nothing automatically (i.,e. it doesn't automatically change colors).

You continue to insist something that's factually wrong just because you tried a couple of presets that changed the colors/saturation from vanilla and you didn't like the effect on certain scenarios. Not all presets do this, not all presets alter the color scheme of vanilla (some do some others don't, it depends). For example a preset like E3FX dramatically changes colors (adding a blue filter all over the scene), while my E3 preset don't change colors at all, so the scenes are exactly the same as in vanilla (the only thing changed is contrast and other little things to simulate a different lightning).

You have this notion that just because you use SweetFX colors change. It is not so. You can either add a filter yourself that does nothing more than add SMAA if you want to, without touching anything else (the image will be exactly the same as vanilla only with less jagged edges, nothing more and nothing less). SweetFX is not equal to "change colors", at all.