The Witcher 3 - Visuals

[Psycroptoxic]

Watched all the latest vids, still don't see the impressive interior litghitng TW2 had:

I'm sorry, but when Geralt enters an interior in the latest vids, lighting seems flat. I dont see the kind of atmosphere we had in TW2. Maybe I just prefer the environment design , the lighting, but something is missing in TW3.

I recall a dev saying in an interview that the interior lighting will suffer due to there being only singular lighting preset (because of no separation by loading) with values accomodating for the exteriors.

Anyway, the interiors DO look excellent when lit by the outside light during the day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKSArQauGo#t=34m15s

 

[ReptilePZ]

few devs obfuscate so much. Just show your shit. Show what you got.

We have hours of High/Ultra (no hairworks) gameplay on the web available, as well as daily updates with screenshots on the same settings. How is that not showing your shit, slim? Come on, man

As for interior lighting, some looks really good (Vizima throne room, White Orchard inn, Oxenfurt interiors, etc.) while other interiors look okay. Anyway, I don't really expect interiors to look amazing all the time - TW3 is massive when compared to TW2, so not every place can be tweaked so the lighting is juuuuust right, and even then, TW2 had plenty of sections when interiors were just okay, not mind-blowingly atmospheric. For instance, I don't see anything special in that second screenshot you've linked.

 

[tahirahmed]

Hmm just out of curiosity.... these two images.... have completely different lightning conditions.... why are you comparing those two? (Serious question... maybe I'm looking at wrong things...)

Interiors don't look atmospheric to you ?

I want to explore these areas just for the sake of atmosphere alone. The lighting seems off because of the screenshots taken from videos, lighting always gets flat in video compression, real rendered screenshots look much better like the TW2 screenshots you posted.

 

[web-head91]

We have hours of High/Ultra (no hairworks) gameplay on the web available, as well as daily updates with screenshots on the same settings. How is that not showing your shit, slim? Come on, man

As for interior lighting, some looks really good (Vizima throne room, White Orchard inn, Oxenfurt interiors, etc.) while other interiors look okay. Anyway, I don't really expect interiors to look amazing all the time - TW3 is massive when compared to TW2, so not every place can be tweaked so the lighting is juuuuust right, and even then, TW2 had plenty of sections when interiors were just okay, not mind-blowingly atmospheric. For instance, I don't see anything special in that second screenshot you've linked.

agreed. i think what the witcher games do best in terms of visual is the atomosphere, and from what we saw, it's breath taking in my humble opinion, especially the interior of inns. makes you wanna play gwent, have idle chatter with a few fellows, and have a drink. ^^

also, is it me or is the game footage released so far is starting to look more and more closer to the SOD trailer ? :hmm:

 

[Aes Sídhe]

How is that not showing your shit, slim?

I think the point is the lack of clarity around the releases which clearly only serves to feed the hysteria manipulated by trolls. Maybe I don't see all the angles to this situation but I often wonder why devs don't just produce a text output of all the settings applied to a video, and I imagine this wall of text could not only support solid discussion but also deter the more mercenary with information overload.

That won't help those to blind to see a games inevitably going to change during development. Imagine actually saying "I want the game from midway through development, I must experience promised visuals in that exact place from the first teaser video, don't care about the completed massive world, optimisation and gameplay issues, satisfy my irrational need for permanence in perpetuity for all promo pixels!".

 

[ReptilePZ]

I think the point is the lack of clarity around the releases which clearly only serves to feed the hysteria manipulated by trolls. Maybe I don't see all the angles to this situation but I often wonder why devs don't just produce a text output of all the settings applied to a video, and I imagine this wall of text could not only support solid discussion but also deter the more mercenary with information overload.

I don't think there's been a lack in clarity. The YouTubers have told us exactly what settings the game was running on, as well as what system they were using and the performance they were getting.

When people have asked what settings the screenshots are on, Marcin has always answered. There was one slip-up, when they mistakenly said it was Xbox, when those were PC screenshots, but they immediately corrected their mistake and apologised for the misunderstanding.

As for why we don't get exact settings, I imagine there are many behind-the-scenes PR reasons. But probably the biggest reason is that fans asking for more exact data represent a very tiny part of the people interested in TW. The vast majority looks at those screenshots, goes: "Yep, that's a Witcher 3 screenshot, alright", and moves on. There's no actual demand for any more detailed information than what we're getting. People keep forgetting, it seems, that the largest part of the audience is the silent one.

 

[Mezziaz]

also, is it me or is the game footage released so far is starting to look more and more closer to the SOD trailer ? :hmm:

You are not alone. SoD quality actually seems plausable now from the latest footage and screenshots we have seen.

 

[amfibiya89]

Litle history of Witcher 3 visual development from my point of view.

Lets start from beginning. CDProject began building Witcher 3 before the new consoles release. So it means they developed this game first only for PC. And i remember that they told that we only guessed the spesifications of new consoles when we build Witcher 3. So in beginning may be they guessed that consoles will be more powerfull that their actual power. (It was same with The Division too. Anonim dev said that we already cancelled SSR and reduced the particles of explosion to match the quality of consoles) So i think they began building VGX trailer looking game. And when consoles were announced Team had to change some things to be able to run game on consoles.

Then i remember that in interview - http://goo.gl/QqwUaJ- DEV said that

because of size and density, we are already close to maxing out the equipment.Of course, if we find more workforce in boxes, we will surely use it to make the game even better.

And after that one site said that

According to Gametech, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a very demanding title; a title that a single GTX 780Ti struggles to run when higher levels of AA are enabled. As the Russian gaming website noted, the PC version runs currently with all its bells and whistles enabled (plus 8xMSAA) with 35-45fps on a GTX 780Ti at 1080p. Naturally, a single 780Ti is able to hit the 60fps sweet spot in its current form provided MSAA is lowered.

This is normal. May be they did not optimize it yet. But what is interesting in that site they said

Moreover, it is said that the PS4 version will run at 900p/30fps while the Xbox One version will run at 720p/30fps. What’s also interesting is that the console versions of the game will meet the minimum graphics settings of the PC version. Gametech claimed that The Witcher 3 on consoles will look similar to The Witcher 2.

Now they said that minimum graphics of witcher 3 is looks similar to witcher 2. So imagine what ultra graphics looked like then? At least in that build. I can't imagine.
Is the game in ultra setting looks 3 or 4 time better than Witcher 2. To be honest, of course it is better than Witcher 2. But not that big.

Then in another interview DEV said:

And how will the PC ultra compare to consoles?

You will be able to find some small differences like Nvidia Hairworks for example but they are very demanding graphically so you must have a strong machine.

Now again, In 2014 Witcher 3 consoles graphics were the same with low setting PC. And DEV already said that they were almost at limit of consoles power. Then How in earth the consoles are almost identical with ultra setting of PC now and we can only see little differences between consoles and PC on ultra now??? If the answer is optimization then DEV's already said that optimization impact all 3 platform at same time. So when consoles were optimized PC was optimized too. So from that we can understand that Team optimized the game, made the room for more power and only improved the consoles graphics to match the PC or Downgraded the PC to match the consoles. There is no another explanation for that. I think DEV's improved the consoles and did not touch to PC. Because they already said that there is no downgrade.

Or the site which said that consoles was minimum setting of PC lied.


Then every time when we said that LOD is bad, grass is bad, trees are 2d in distance, we only heard that it is not the ultra setting. And we already improved the quality of visuals of game. And then Gamestar said that we played game in ultra and it was way better than January footage which was on high setting. But what is interesting again for me that Team did not show us the ultra setting and they said that we will see it when game launch and it will be "splash to our face".
Now splash to our face. Because we did not trust the team and cried that game downgraded. So Team want to say "Get this Ultra setting and shut up". But now we see the ultra setting. To be honest i cant see the difference even between the January build which was on high setting and this build on ultra setting.

But from words, there must be the double improvement. First Improvement the overall quality from January builds to youtubers', second from high to splash to our face quality ultra.

So my last word is: Game still looks good(May have been even better). I wright this post not for visuals quality of game but the confusion coming from interviews and words while game was developing

Again THX you for this game, you really worked hard. And we always will find reason to blame you

 

[ReptilePZ]

Any confusion here is due to misinterpretation of words. And a lot of assumptions.

For instance, you're taking the word of a Russian gaming site that's claiming to have access to the information they've provided, without any other site making those claims and without providing any reliable sources or proof for their claims. I remember when that article was posted and I believe I recall that the consensus was that it was complete bollocks. Like I said, it was the only site making some very specific claims, with no reliable evidence to support them and, unsurprisingly, we see that those unsupported claims have proven to be incorrect. It's not CDPR's fault that you've chosen to believe that particular source of information.

You then take Gamestar's claim that the game on Ultra looks different than the January footage, giving that claim a certain meaning that you would like there to be, while ignoring what the details of the articles were - the difference was character facial details, foliage density and hairworks. So, naturally, those are the differences we've seen in Ultra footage when compared to the January build.

And then you go on to make assumptions about how the game is being optimised, what a vague expression used by a dev on the spot such as "a slap to your face" should mean etc.

I don't want to go into a debate about VGX vs. current build. I've posted some actual comparisons of "identical" scenes, I've talked about what I think about some other comparisons being made, I've discussed the idea about the game looking identical to early footage and what WIP means in general, and I'm not about to repeat myself.

 

[SpeedRunner101]

You are not alone. SoD quality actually seems plausable now from the latest footage and screenshots we have seen.

I agree.

 

[tahirahmed]

@amfibiya89

Your post makes a lot of sense. IMHO the mistake that CDPR did, they showed us the game quality when it was in experimental stage, we can't say that those initial screenshots were the final state of the quality at that time (very unlikely). They were using higher amount of destruction effects, different lighting, foliage quality etc.

Folks here told me that they adjusted the quality of foliage in order to bring more dynamic nature to it, first it was static or had partial animation and now it's fully dynamic and reacts to weather conditions, movement etc so maybe at that time they didn't planned that dynamic nature and then found that it's too demanding even for a PC and had to tone it down, same goes for destruction etc. I don't call it a downgrade to be honest but rather a practical approach to make the game balanced. They can't just cater people who have R9 295X2, 980 SLI or Titan X, they have to think about wider audience.

At this point we can say why don't they include these things in some super ultra preset and let it call a preset for future hardware but lets be honest that Ubersampling in TW2 is still a difficult to touch feature even for high end cards today so we same PC gamers will blame them for making an unoptimized game that can't be maxed out on current high end hardware or will regard the game as a tech demo like original Crysis.

I had my doubts about downgrade but I have subsided them, I can't imagine how much pressure they must have faced while developing this game. First cater the audience which is their biggest support (PC) and then welcome the new audience (Consoles), the PR from console manufactures, claims of downgrade from PC etc. It's like hell so I as a fan of their games don't want to put more pressure on them.

And I also cannot deny the fact that the game looks more and more impressive as it comes close to release, I am happy that I am a PC gamer and I have the freedom to do whatever I want, If my hardware can handle it then I can apply SweetFX/ENB, Mods, DSR/VSR, more AA etc to improve the game. I don't want to ask for anything else

 

[SpeedRunner101]

deleted

 

[ReptilePZ]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but is the water one of the things they said were incomplete in this preview build? Am I the only one who thinks it looks strange? Not trying to cause anger, just curious. Just looking for a proper term to describe it.


Like..something about it..there are reflections in it..but light doesn't seem to really bounce off the surface, it looks opaque.

Hmm, I believe that they said they were still working on some water effects when the January footage was released, and you can actually see some changes being made since then, most noticeably how the water surface reacts to Geralt. I don't recall anything being said about the water effects still being worked on in the YT preview build, though. Technically, it wasn't the latest build, so any detail could be considered as incomplete, but you know what I mean - they haven't gone out of their way to say that the build's water effects in particular are incomplete.

I'm not quite sure I understand what looks off, though. Graphically, the water's one of the highlights so far, imo.

 

[amfibiya89]

It's not CDPR's fault that you've chosen to believe that particular source of information. .

I have already written this. "Or the site which said that consoles was minimum setting of PC lied." I did not know if this was lie or real. That's why i wright this post and said it is confusion. So anyway. THX you for your explanation about that Russian site.

the difference was character facial details, foliage density and hairworks.

I did not say anything about what exact part was improved. I said that Gamerstar said there is an improvement and i do not see any improvoment from January build.May be somebody can show me this. And i watched exact same scenes from youtuber's videos which was same with January footage where Geralt talked about Yennefer with Commander in soldiers camp.

I paid attention to faces and i did not noticed any improvoment or may be there was some changes. But it does not look like an improvoment of ultra setting. It is change between builds. And brick wall texture was still Flat

And about HAIRWORK , Hair of Geralt was actually not improved but downgraded. But about Griffin yes. Griffin hair was improved. But WTF i need Griffin's hair's improvomet if i will not see the same amazing hair of Geralt which was in January build. I will not see the hair of GRIFFIN in whole game. I will see Geralts hair. And i said it many times and send the video comparison with new hairwork and January hairwork.

And about Grass i can't tell anything because i need to see the uncompressed grass first.

So is there any difference setting between January and new build because of slap in our face quality ultra. Hmmmmm... I did not notice. Or there is few and probably not slap in my face. And Geralt's amazing hair is gone.

OOOHHHH.SORRY. I forgot. ACTUALLY THERE WAS IMPROVEMENT. ONLY ONE I NOTICED. THE SHADOWS DO NOT APPEAR IN 1 M FRONT OF US.

But again, if we are talking about slap in our Face quality ultra it must really slap in our face. Do you know what? Only one time in my life i wanted somebody slaped in my face and this was CDProject. But they did not do it.LOL

EDIT:

how the water surface reacts to Geralt.

Whater surface reacted to Geralt in January build too.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sil3QCDJACU#t=10m11s

 

[ReptilePZ]

I have already written this. "Or the site which said that consoles was minimum setting of PC lied." I did not know if this was lie or real. That's why i wright this post and said it is confusion. So anyway. THX you for your explanation about that Russian site.

The point is your entire argument was built upon the assumption that the information is correct. You mentioning "unless they lied" doesn't change that.

I did not say anything about what exact part was improved. I said that Gamerstar said there is an improvement and i do not see any improvoment from January build.May be somebody can show me this. And i watched exact same scenes from youtuber's videos which was same with January footage where Geralt talked about Yennefer with Commander in soldiers camp.

I paid attention to faces and i did not noticed any improvoment or may be there was some changes. But it does not look like an improvoment of ultra setting. It is change between builds. And brick wall texture was still Flat

And about HAIRWORK , Hair of Geralt was actually not improved but downgraded. But about Griffin yes. Griffin hair was improved. But WTF i need Griffin's hair's improvomet if i will not see the same amazing hair of Geralt which was in January build. I will not see the hair of GRIFFIN in whole game. I will see Geralts hair. And i said it many times and send the video comparison with new hairwork and January hairwork.

And about Grass i can't tell anything because i need to see the uncompressed grass first.

So is there any difference setting between January and new build because of slap in our face quality ultra. Hmmmmm... I did not notice. Or there is few and probably not slap in my face. And Geralt's amazing hair is gone.

OOOHHHH.SORRY. I forgot. ACTUALLY THERE WAS IMPROVEMENT. ONLY ONE I NOTICED. THE SHADOWS DO NOT APPEAR IN 1 M FRONT OF US.

But again, if we are talking about slap in our Face quality ultra it must really slap in our face. Do you know what? Only one time in my life i wanted somebody slaped in my face and this was CDProject. But they did not do it.LOL

Hairworks in the YT builds wasn't enabled. Gopher himself said so, it was simply too taxing, so I don't know how you're making hairworks comparisons. CDPR have their own hair tech, which is what you're seeing. You can see Hairworks on Geralt and his horse on nvidia's tech video that was posted a few days ago.

As for the rest, again, you're saying what you expected to see between High and Ultra because Gamestar said there would be differences, but the thing is they already said what the major differences are and they are not what you seem to want. As for the slap to the face quote, I don't know how to analyse that, as it has no technical merit. What is a "slap to the face" to Damien may not be a "slap to the face" to you. Like I said, any confusion here is due to your own assumptions.

Whater surface reacted to Geralt in January build too.
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sil3QCDJACU#t=10m11s

I never said the water surface did not react to Geralt at all, just that there are some differences you can notice between the January build and the YT preview build in how it reacts to him.

 

[Scheuk]

The water has no reflections, and the draw distance is abysmal though.

 

[ReptilePZ]

The water has no reflections,

Yes, it does.

and the draw distance is abysmal though.

Obviously, I can't say that it doesn't appear abysmal to you. What I can say is that I can't think of (m)any other open world RPGs with better draw distance than what we've seen, which is why I can't understand how one could call the draw distance "abysmal".

Now, it is quite clear this is a flamebait comment, so, as a moderator, I must warn you that if you wish to continue posting on this forum, you should rethink your posting habits.

 

[SpeedRunner101]

Yes, it does.



Obviously, I can't say that it doesn't appear abysmal to you. What I can say is that I can't think of (m)any other open world RPGs with better draw distance than what we've seen, which is why I can't understand how one could call the draw distance "abysmal".

GTA5 and Dying Light

 

[ReptilePZ]

GTA5 and Dying Light

I did not realise GTA and Dying Light were open world RPGs.

 

[Scholdarr.452]

I did not realise GTA and Dying Light were open world RPGs.

How does the genre matter for the draw distance? From a technologically viewpoint that only cares about visuals and draw distance, open world is open world, no matter the genre...