Graphic downgrade

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I am not here to talk downgrade, because to me that ship has sailed. But I want to talk about something that is related to the topic. I am all about facts, and I do not like forming opinions and making decisions based on other people's opinions and speculations. I want to see the game on Ultra myself, and I want to form my own opinions based on what I saw with my own eyes.
I think the Witcher 3 will look amazing even if it does not look as good as the Sword of Destiny trailer, but I truly despise CDPR's approach to the marketing of the Witcher 3. I said a long time a go that there are grave errors in the way the game is being marketed, and I said it when everything was all good and well and Witcher was winning most anticipated game awards. The marketing initially did a really good job of creating hype and making the game a big deal, but everything was bound to come crashing down towards the end. The issue of wether the game has been downgraded or not is not plaguing these forums alone, but it has become widespread in comment sections of youtube and gaming websites such as IGN.
Some of the problems with the marketing are:
The CDPR members seemed unsure about the details of the game, and they dodged the questions by saying we don't want to spoil anything. In several instances one of the developers said something, and another developer said something totally different. They released screenshots with such astounding unparity in quality that would make even their biggest fans unsure of what to think, and yet they never cleard what platform or what settings the shots were taken from. The same goes for the gameplay footages that were released. The same confusion was present even for the gameplay that was shown at PAX, where people did not know wether it was taken from an Xbox One or a PC version of the game running at high settings. We get the answer we THINK it was PC at high settings, which is even more confusing.
This list goes on, but he final nail in the coffin for me was the GDC statement that "we are not showing the game on Ultra settings, because we want to slap the players across the face when they play the game" or in other words Wow them.
This makes zero sense. It is the most dissapointing decision especially with over 5000 posts on their own forums discussing the downgrade and some of their biggest and most loyal fans starting to doubt them. On another level it is a slap across face for us PC gamers, and I am talking a "FUCK YOU" slap. It is as if all the marketing is geared towards the consoles. We have not even seen a gameplay video with keyboard and mouse yet.
I am sorry CDPR and it hurts me to say it, but I am very dissapointed as a true fan and a PC gamer who has been with you since the release of Witcher 1.
 
Whilst the new 4K screenshot looks good, great even, the older shots where quite a bit better, they were incredible. I scratch my head at people not seeing the difference.









 
I was pretty content with the way game looks in the screenshot from Marcin. Now the few unanswered questions that remain for me are whether you get this level of detail from game itself, or the humongous resolution.
Poor textures and models can be replaced by mods, but you can't download a 600 dollar graphics card to use hardware killer AA tho.
Guess I will have to wait until I can rummage through the settings, to see what's worth to keep active and whatnot.
 
Whilst the new 4K screenshot looks good, great even, the older shots where quite a bit better, they were incredible. I scratch my head at people not seeing the difference.
What differences precisely? There's that of visual fidelity but that's to be expected with ubersampling/downsampling combined with sharpening filter. Then there's also the fact that those are 'choice' shots(beauty shots if you will) compared to any screenie taken mid-gameplay, these shots take a lot of time to set up. But asset wise it's the same.
 
The second screenshot is virtually the same as that one second swamp shot in the VGX trailer so the argument that it's all down to downsampling, ubersampling and sharpening doesn't hold true.

It's one thing to argue over screenshots, but the fact that the footage in VGX shows it exactly the same is telling. The textures, shadows and lighting are far away better then in the 4k screen.
 
What differences precisely? There's that of visual fidelity but that's to be expected with ubersampling/downsampling combined with sharpening filter. Then there's also the fact that those are 'choice' shots(beauty shots if you will) compared to any screenie taken mid-gameplay, these shots take a lot of time to set up. But asset wise it's the same.
Hey sid, can't tell you the differences exactly, I can only show you old screenshots versus new. Both would have received the same treatment before release to the public.

Like I said, game looks good to great, it used to look incredible, that's all. Hope by release it can achieve the level of fidelity we were once seeing.







 
The second screenshot is virtually the same as that one second swamp shot in the VGX trailer
Maybe because... THEY ARE THE SAME. The teaser came first, then a screenshot of that. The teaser for the VGX trailer aired on GT.TV November 22 or 23rd, then the swamp screenshot came out December 6/7th. I remember because I found it in the first place.

so the argument that it's all down to downsampling, ubersampling and sharpening doesn't hold true.
And you've come to this conclusion... how?
 
Whilst the new 4K screenshot looks good, great even, the older shots where quite a bit better, they were incredible. I scratch my head at people not seeing the difference.











The quality was and is undeniably better in previous screenshots. Period. As I've already stated elsewhere, knowing the technical limitations of these "new-gen" consoles, it was and still is highly unlikely that the graphics on those devices will be as good. It is pure naivete to think otherwise spec wise.
But I think this will be an only console users' (like me) problem, and I've dealt with it long time ago.
In all honesty, I firmly believe that on PC the graphics will be all another story, maybe slightly worse than SOD trailer, but absolutely not below Pax demo's quality.
 
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Hey sid, can't tell you the differences exactly, I can only show you old screenshots versus new. Both would have received the same treatment before release to the public.
I was referring to the 4K image vs the images in your last post.

As for the 'same treatment' I wouldn't be so certain of that. Example:

These were posted in and around E3 2013(earlier)




Look nice, yes?

There were posted Gamescom 2013(later)





I don't think I need to point out that there is no quality consistency between them, not by a long shot.

As for the screenies you posted, yes some of them have issues, like the first one, wolves don't have fur tech and Geralt's face has no lighting. But the asset quality is the same, compare the trees in the back or those wooden walls to another screenie with those, it's the same thing.
 
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Downsampling/Ubersampling would primarily affect the quality of the AA, they don't affect,lighting, shadows, AO and overall texture quality. Besides you're talking of footage at VGX that's 1080p vs 4k footage and the VGX footage looks better.

With regards to E3 2013 and Gamescom 2013, the quality is overall consistent between the screenshots and the gameplay reveal trailer. Some are better then others, but's fine.

We aren't talking about huge leaps in quality, the huge leaps do exist with regards to Witcher 3 screenshots and footage ever since E3 2014.
 
Whilst the new 4K screenshot looks good, great even, the older shots where quite a bit better, they were incredible. I scratch my head at people not seeing the difference.


The interesting thing to notice on that screenshot is that the time of day is similar to the PAX demo and all of the recent footage. It lends credence to the argument regarding the quality of assets being crushed by the time of day and the lighting condition.

Still, we'll have to wait to see how the lighting, volumetric fog and texture quality look like on Ultra. Cheers to the REDs crunching :).
 
I don't think I need to point out that there is no quality consistency between them, not by a long shot.

As for the screenies you posted, yes some of them have issues, like the first one, wolves don't have fur tech and Geralt's face has no lighting. But the asset quality is the same, compare the trees in the back or those wooden walls to another screenie with those, it's the same thing.
It's a mine field isn't it.

I agree with you, they can get it to look very close if not identical to earlier footage, it just depends on what they want to enable and max out. I'm just worried that they won't, and we'll miss out on something spectacular. The last 8 months of this games marketing hasn't done it any favors.
 
Downsampling/Ubersampling would primarily affect the quality of the AA, they don't affect,lighting, shadows, AO and overall texture quality. Besides you're talking of footage at VGX that's 1080p vs 4k footage and the VGX footage looks better.
It absolutely does affect more than just jaggies! It will sample everything so jaggies will be eliminated, AO is affected, afterall AO is post-processing not a pass before before that. That's the simple most effective trick to minimize SSAO haloing in games, works wonders in Witcher 2 as well. It also affects LOD since the bigger the sampling grid the more details are resolved on screen.

You also mentioned shadows, older screens foliage has hard black shadows while the newer ones have soft shadows, how is that a bad thing?

Actually no I'm not talking about VGX footage, I'm talking about all the screenshots posted by the person who was originally quoted, that said I don't see what VGX footage being 1080p has to do with this, if it's supersampled the result will still be 1080p.

At best I can show you an example which I *JUST* took, here's AC4
This is a normal 720p screenshot


This is a 4K Downsampled to 720p screenshot


Look at the difference in details resolved, the ground being the biggest difference, look at the AO difference, the lantern for example, look at the texture detail resolve difference on the barrel and the AO on the same. Look at the LOD difference, the windows in the middle, the lining of the house roof, the market pillars on the right.
 
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Whilst the new 4K screenshot looks good, great even, the older shots where quite a bit better, they were incredible. I scratch my head at people not seeing the difference.










I agree with you 1000%!!!! The game still does not look like those screenshots or the earlier trailers.
 
I agree with you 1000%!!!! The game still does not look like those screenshots or the earlier trailers.
You must understand that screenshots are taken just at the right moment/place/time to make the game look at his best. That's also a reason why comparing those screenshots from the gameplay demo with the official ones released is not the best way of comparing graphics imo.
 
You must understand that screenshots are taken just at the right moment/place/time to make the game look at his best. That's also a reason why comparing those screenshots from the gameplay demo with the official ones released is not the best way of comparing graphics imo.

You must understand this, fact is that the game now does not come close to the old footage no matter what excuses you can come up with. Until I see it looking close to the same I'll keep saying it has infact been downgraded.
 
i think the older screenshots are from the pc version on max settings and then after that they have been only showing console footage or pc footage with the same graphical level as the consoles.i do remember reading an article where cdred said that withcer 3 on next gen consoles will look similar to witcher 2 high or ultra settings that werre on the pc version.type in google, im sure htat article will come up and if you look closely to the screenshot above where geralt is using the igni sign, u can see the green grass is still the same as the pax video, i think there are different kind of foliage in the game and some will look better than the other or maybe there be an option for level of detail on foliage, we will know for sure when the game will release.

the only thing i have been worried about is in the sword of destiny trailer, ciris face looked so real and brilliant and in the elder blood trailer, ciris face looked like it was taken from witcher 2s engine with dx9.that was the only thing that concerned me when i first saw the elder blood trailer, because ciris face looked totally different in the two trailers.
 
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