Witcher 3 Graphics

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@luc0s Your replies really messed up there, try reformatting.

her's a more accurate version, PC ultra, i tweaked the ini files but i dont think it has any influences on geralt signes effects

Could you make a .webm instead? Or a smaller .gif? The bitrate completely butchers whatever that's supposed to portray :). I don't have my aard upgraded so I can't do it myself.
 
It sold a lot more than this, Steam spy says it has 3 million owners and I know many people bought it from GOG. I think CDPR said The Witcher series sold 5+ million too and you know most of those were the second game.

Both TW1 and TW2 together sold 8 million copies. How many of those are TW1 sales and how many of those are TW2 sales I don't know. If I had to guess it's probably around 5 million for TW2 and 3 million for TW1, but that is just my guess based on the limited data we have.
 
Both TW1 and TW2 together sold 8 million copies. How many of those are TW1 sales and how many of those are TW2 sales I don't know. If I had to guess it's probably around 5 million for TW2 and 3 million for TW1, but that is just my guess based on the limited data we have.

Yeah I must've read the numbers wrong, the point is the Witcher 3 is projected to sell 7 million copies and that was just based on preorders I think it will get 10. It's because of the consoles, simple as that. They have a much higher user base than high end PC gamers.
 
I think you're missing something. The right sentence should be:

The reason the downgrade happened is because they couldn't implement those same graphics for the final game in consoles.
Then the reason why the downgrade happened on PCs is because the investors demanded parity. And it is totally their right since who would pay for console graphics instead of the Next Gen Nvidia Gameworks and other stuff?

This is the most rational explanation could anyone give I think.

Not parity.
Resources.

[opinion]Small dev cannot produce 2 separate games.They are wedded to a multiplatform release. Getting it to work on consoles was a massive job for them. Not enough resources to then completely bug fix another version of the game. Unrealistic for them to create and bug fix/optimise the PC game in all its sexiness then do it all over again when they port the whole thing to console with its graphical guts ripped out.
Conclusion
Make it work on console then port it back to PC.
As I've said before, that moment when they finally realised consoles are waaay behind mid level PCs must have been a nightmare.
"oh wow is that 100 fps! No that's a 10"
[/opinion]
 
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Yaay more tinfoil hat conspiracy nuttery! :D

You do realize CDPR is an independent company and their investors are people outside of the games industry who couldn't care less about parity, right? Oh you didn't? Well, now you know.

So I hope you now realize how insane your baseless conspiracy theory sounds.


Oh, Sony and Microsoft are people outside gaming industry. Oh I didn't know, Oh well, now I know.

Thank you for all your kind expressions.
Thank you for being so constructive.
Have a great day, and keep attacking people who's logical explanations you cannot handle. You have the mods on your side. *another crazy conspiracy theory*
 
Not parity.
Resources.

[opinion]Small dev cannot produce 2 separate games. Getting it to work on consoles was a massive job for them. Not enough resources to then completely bug fix another version of the game. Unrealistic for them to create and bug fix/optimise the PC game in all its sexiness then do it all over again when the port the whole thing to console with its graphical guts ripped out.
Conclusion
Make it work on console then port it back to PC.
As I've said before, that moment when they finally realised consoles are waaay behind mid level PCs must have been a nightmare.
"oh wow is that 100 fps! No that's a 10"
[/opinion]
I recall them saying it was literally running at 7 fps but that may have been some other developer heh. In any case I don't agree with your opinion here, if it were like this I'd imagine CDPR would simply tell us so but they told us quite the opposite. I think it was parity.
 
Not parity.
Resources.

[opinion]Small dev cannot produce 2 separate games. Getting it to work on consoles was a massive job for them. Not enough resources to then completely bug fix another version of the game. Unrealistic for them to create and bug fix/optimise the PC game in all its sexiness then do it all over again when they port the whole thing to console with its graphical guts ripped out.
Conclusion
Make it work on console then port it back to PC.
As I've said before, that moment when they finally realised consoles are waaay behind mid level PCs must have been a nightmare.
"oh wow is that 100 fps! No that's a 10"
[/opinion]

This is the answer that is probably closest to the truth @Septerra_Core. They ported the PC version from consoles and slapped on hairworks. The consoles don't have any Nvidia features, hopefully they will be added back in the future once all this stuff settles down.

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I recall them saying it was literally running at 7 fps but that may have been some other developer heh. In any case I don't agree with your opinion here, if it were like this I'd imagine CDPR would simply tell us so but they told us quite the opposite. I think it was parity.

The whole parity thing is utter nonsense how can you not see that? Why would they want to purposely gimp the PC version? They gimped it because they had to, and for performance reasons. They optimized the console version and then ported that same exact version over to PC and added hairworks it's that simple. No foul play from Microsoft and Sony. You honestly think they were like "You better not make the PC version look better or we'll drop funding!" Give me a break! Microsoft and Sony don't give a flying F*** what PC games looks like! They don't care PC gamers literally have ZERO effect on console sales, never have never will.

FYI they did tell us, they said that The Witcher was created with consoles as the number one platform "The Witcher 3 wouldn't exist without consoles"
 
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You say this with nothing to back it up while stating contradictory statements. You say the consoles have a 750 in them but a 750 is more powerful than both of them which are using much older and weaker GPUs, a 750 on PC runs this game(and most others) better than them to boot. Both systems have odd ram configurations developers constantly speak about having troubles with in the porting process, they are -not- the same. The PS4 doesn't even use DirectX.

What statements are contradictory?

No, a PC with a GTX 750 doesn't run TW3 better than a PS4.

Here is a performance analysis of The Witcher 3 on PS4 and the Witcher 3 on a PC with an Intel i3-4130 + a GTX 750 Ti, which is similar to what the PS4 has: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGf4SVWEw2g

I did make a mistake though. The PS4 doesn't run on a GTX 750, it run's on an AMD 7870, which has almost equal performance as the GTX 750.

The only thing "odd" about the RAM of the PS4 is the fact they use DDR5 RAM instead of DDR3, which is typically only used for graphics cards. What they did for the PS4 is upgrade the AMD 7870 with extra DDR5 RAM which is shared by the GPU and CPU. On a technical level this is indeed different than a PC, but on a virtual level it's exactly the same.

The fact that the PS4 uses OpenGL means developing for the PS4 is virtually the same as developing for a PC. The architecture is no different, just the API. Which brings me to my next point.

Who cares the PS4 doesn't have DirectX? It's just an API. The PS4 uses OpenGL instead, which is just as good as DirectX, in some cases even better.
 
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I recall them saying it was literally running at 7 fps but that may have been some other developer heh. In any case I don't agree with your opinion here, if it were like this I'd imagine CDPR would simply tell us so but they told us quite the opposite. I think it was parity.

I think them not telling us was MS&Sony PR department.
CDPR did what they had to do to get their product to market and the PR bullies said keep quiet about it.
When millions of $'s are in play with an international product I think there is pressure.

Not parity, big business.

@luc0s & Witcher man GET A ROOM
 
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Not parity.
Resources.

[opinion]Small dev cannot produce 2 separate games.They are wedded to a multiplatform release. Getting it to work on consoles was a massive job for them. Not enough resources to then completely bug fix another version of the game. Unrealistic for them to create and bug fix/optimise the PC game in all its sexiness then do it all over again when they port the whole thing to console with its graphical guts ripped out.
Conclusion
Make it work on console then port it back to PC.
As I've said before, that moment when they finally realised consoles are waaay behind mid level PCs must have been a nightmare.
"oh wow is that 100 fps! No that's a 10"
[/opinion]

To add to this: The Witcher 3 is the first multi-platform game CDPR has ever developed. Going multi-platform was a completely new experience for them. If you see what they managed to pull off with TW3 in the restricted time and restricted resources they had I can say I have nothing but respect for CDPR.

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Oh, Sony and Microsoft are people outside gaming industry. Oh I didn't know, Oh well, now I know.

Thank you for all your kind expressions.
Thank you for being so constructive.
Have a great day, and keep attacking people who's logical explanations you cannot handle. You have the mods on your side. *another crazy conspiracy theory*

Sony and Microsoft aren't CD Projekt RED investors. CD Projekt RED is owned by 2 people and they invest their own money into CDPR.

---------- Updated at 09:42 PM ----------

@luc0s
what do you think of the post i wrote on the 103 page (http://forums.cdprojektred.com/threads/36987-Witcher-3-Graphics/page103)
just curious, considering you've got some knowledge on making games ^^

Sorry I didn't see your post.

What you say might very well be true. I cannot say for certain as I haven't had the change to take an in-depth look at any of the Red Engines.

However I do think TW3 is better optimized than TW2. Many people couldn't run TW2 at launch, even the people with the latest hardware had issues, while I see very few people claiming they can't run TW3. In fact even my friends with older hardware tell me how well their system can run the game.

Nvidia Hairworks is shit though and Nvidia should feel ashamed of themselves.

I also think CDPR should take a look at how the shadows are being rendered and try to optimize that. Right now there is little difference between shadows on 'low' and shadows on 'ultra', yet shadows on 'ultra' takes a huge performance hit, which is the reason why I put the shadows on 'high' in my game (everything else on 'ultra').
 
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I must admit it's incredible how many things they downgraded in so little time, and how much they sold out, how much they blatantly lied about the changes, and how much they blamed compression/build/patches/bugs. It must some kind of a new PR record.

They can't product 2 separate games? Very easy. Make the best possible game for PC. Then downgrade it for consoles. Reduce everything until it runs at 20-25 fps. Or make it for PC only. It will be a much better game. I could enumerate a couple of thousand examples of what happens when a series goes from PC to multiplatform, but I don't think that is needed.

PC only games are better. End of the story. History shows this once, and again and again, but for some reason some people ignore this and listen to the people who already lied several times.

I have as much respect for them as I have for other companies who suddenly start to only make cellphone games.
 
I'm starting to see why these threads get closed, it just ends up a bunch of people repeating themselves heh, I already explained this yesterday. Well here goes.

Why would they want to purposely gimp the PC version?
Couple scenarios we can go though.
1. So statements like this weren't a lie https://twitter.com/MilezZx/status/592968395122974720 I couldn't find an official one but CDPR said this a LOT in January with many mentions of parity.
2. Game wasn't optimized.
3. They just hate PC.
4. It cost too much to develop.

Now my response to those scenarios.

1. This is the most likely thing to me, they wanted all platforms to feel good about buying the game, in other words they wanted console money. Maybe selling PC as the strongest point would have encouraged people to build a PC and get it cheaper or free on that platform? That could have been there thinking but who knows. We do know that this is the way they acted and that parity was on the forefront of their minds all of this year. There are lots of articles and interviews with CDPR just like that tweet.
2. I say, and saw, that they already developed the things removed(there's a laundry list of effects and assets) and planned to release it, that was their official statement prior to release. "This is the PC version you'll be playing, here it is running in real-time". This demo looked pretty much identical to the game we have now(including performance) but the textures and many effects were toned down, changed, or removed entirely. Focusing on textures alone there was no optimization to be had there, this is PC and textures aren't anything to render. The optimization argument also falls victim to the aspiration of future-proofing your game, this is something CDPR has done in the past, even bragged about doing. It's a great selling point and discarding it is bizarre at best.
3. I don't think so!
4. Again, they had developed it already. Maybe the entire game wasn't spiced up but a lot of things they removed(textures, improved geralt, lens effects, etc) are things that once you make they are made. You can argue that fog was removed because it didn't suit some areas or that the water was removed because maybe it had some sort of viscosity slider they had to pay someone to tweak for every puddle(???) but there is no argument that can justify to me the removal of better textures for Novigrad. Even if they only textured one-of-four sides of every house we all would have been happy with that inconsistency, it would still look better than what we have now!

Maybe I missed something but I those are all the tinfoil scenarios I've got. I suppose some might say Microsoft or Sony paid them or someone high up in the company to butcher the game and maybe that's true but I dunno I can't see that happening.

Microsoft and Sony don't give a flying F*** what PC games looks like! They don't care PC gamers literally have ZERO effect on console sales, never have never will.
This has probably nothing to do with TW3 or CDPR but PC games do have a huge impact on sales for console games, it's not like you can only choose one system to game on. If you have a PC you'll probably get FPS games for it which affects console sales, right? Either way downgrades still happen in the industry for unbeknown reasons, like the Watch_Dogs thing where most of the E3 graphics were still in the final game but hidden. That was driven by parity obviously but why was it? Who knows.

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The fact that the PS4 uses OpenGL
lol.
Many people couldn't run TW2 at launch,
http://www.techspot.com/review/405-the-witcher-2-performance/page5.html
I ran it at 60fps with a couple settings off.

I might still point out where you're wrong but putting effort into explaining how wrong you are will never lead anywhere. You try too hard to contradict common knowledge.
 
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I must admit it's incredible how many things they downgraded in so little time, and how much they sold out, how much they blatantly lied about the changes, and how much they blamed compression/build/patches/bugs. It must some kind of a new PR record.

They can't product 2 separate games? Very easy. Make the best possible game for PC. Then downgrade it for consoles. Reduce everything until it runs at 20-25 fps. Or make it for PC only. It will be a much better game. I could enumerate a couple of thousand examples of what happens when a series goes from PC to multiplatform, but I don't think that is needed.

PC only games are better. End of the story. History shows this once, and again and again, but for some reason some people ignore this and listen to the people who already lied several times.

I have as much respect for them as I have for other companies who suddenly start to only make cellphone games.

If you want a game to be PC only , go find a company that makes PC only games, very few AAA studios do these days.

It was well-established long before the 'downgrade' that Witcher 3 was going to be multiplatform.
 
If you want a game to be PC only , go find a company that makes PC only games, very few AAA studios do these days.

It was well-established long before the 'downgrade' that Witcher 3 was going to be multiplatform.


That's like saying rank protects you from an ass whooping in the military, sorry not the case. Just because it's multi platform is not a valid excuse for lack luster PC version and all the down grades.
 
That's like saying rank protects you from an ass whooping in the military, sorry not the case. Just because it's multi platform is not a valid excuse for lack luster PC version and all the down grades.

I never said it did , but the person I quoted stated that the game should be PC Only when its well established long ago this game was going to be multiplatform.

Wanting a game to be PC only is just silly , very few AAA studios will make PC only games.
 
The fact that the PS4 uses OpenGL means developing for the PS4 is virtually the same as developing for a PC. The architecture is no different, just the API. Which brings me to my next point.

Who cares the PS4 doesn't have DirectX? It's just an API. The PS4 uses OpenGL instead, which is just as good as DirectX, in some cases even better.

Reminds me of the good old days before any of the api's had won, and carmack publically said he wouldn't touch directx until they made it like opengl.. which they did. Fast forward.. 15+ years and im not sure if that's the case now but a fond memory still. At the time though i thought whatever.. glide was all the rage and hardware acceleration was a mod.

Yeah also for reference.. i find this a bit moopy as i own a kepler card, but the 980 (2000 cores) hits the same performance as a 780ti (2800 cores) with a small clockspeed bump.. so.. yeah consoles are consoles.

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I had plans to mod this game for years thinking it would be the moddable and graphical paradise of my dreams...

Question, how is it not already? I think we're discussing morals here, because CDPR were the chosen ones (and critically probably booked preorders and sales without question on this rep), they consoled out, lost their rep and should have known better. They really should have known better because the mainstreamers they just pulled in are going to want a witcher 4... and 5 the year after.. and they aint doing witcher 4.

As far as the game itself goes.. i've kinda refused to progress the story until i've gotten though the novels on audiobook.. and figured while i'm listening to those will just walk around the world the witcher 3 looking at stuff.

- Its a pretty hot looking game today already.
- If you don't think so you need to run a sweefx profile eg http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/preset/3742/ sorry.
- If you don't think so, you need to run a physically larger monitor 27 inches +
- If you don't think so, you need to upgrade your graphics card to 970/980 performance (i managed to get an average of ~45 fps at 2560x1600 no hairworks hbao on everything else on, sweetfx, and am very happy.... on a kepler 780ti.

... Yes there is a bit of a looming problem.. as in if i -wasn't- listening to an audiobook and using w3 as a glorified screensaver (.. oh the glory) there's actually not much to do except look in the world. But that's not a graphics problem.

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Wow, the city image looks like lego when compared to SoD trailer. This is really disappointing...
It's like they went back a whole generation.

No is doesn't. Is there a noclip cheat? Go fly to the same camera angle.. walk around novigrad its the ~same.

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@luc0s
*sigh* indeed, every post you make is filled with incorrect information.

1. The console architecture is not at all like PC, the porting process is not much easier than it was last-gen and still costs a lot of money unless you're using UE4 or another established engine Most devs worth talking about don't do that.
2. "Ultra settings" isn't a necessary benchmark to discuss, if you lower your foliage one setting you gain a ton of frames and lose barely any quality, let alone minor .ini tweaks that also improve your frame rate a lot. You can get ultra-esque settings with Hairworks at 60fps with a single 980 but this is a bad thing, that means the game isn't future proofed if we can cap it already. What a drag.
3. Graphical settings exist for the low-end users. We've also said this to you for the millionth time, so please stop this already.

Also what about five to ten years ago? It hasn't changed in that window but developers spend more money on marketing than they did in the past. That's by far the main reason game budgets have increased. Next you should realize there are more people working on games now but they come out a lot bigger and faster as a consequence, it evens out in the end. Neither of these things are related to what any of us are talking about though yet you brought it up anyway. It doesn't enforce your statement either.

That guy is right and even CDPR agrees, the game is a multiplatform "looks great on all platforms" game aka a console port. It's not a PC game ported down like it was advertised as.

No he's right. Ps4's and boxes are basically pc's. I think some laptops use similar chips. The main differences between last generation and this the processor is not some non x86 power pc.. its x86,.. just like our pc's. The graphics of course were and are exactly the same.

Yes.. turning down foliage distance is common sense. Anyone who doesn't drop this is a console player in disguise.. its not like we're talking about 120 fps vs 80 vps.. we're not at 60 yet, so tweaking is required, and if you had the brains to change this setting, theres no way in hell you would keep ultra.

Yes. I hate CDPR for point 3. Instead of giving us a new ceiling they gave us a lower range. And they gave xboners gwent cards. I hate cdpr so much :)

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Do you honestly think that with tweaking ini files you can make the game look better AND make the game run smoother?

Usually this depends on the game, for the w3.. not really.. where were are at now (see your fave sweetfx profile screenshots, not the take you were given garbage).. the only thing that can bump the quality is replacement of ingame assets.. we need a skyrim flora and fauna mod and w3 would be exactly where we want it. There's nothing wrong with the lighting.. just stop, actually stop and think about it for a sec. Game we're currently playing + sweetfx. Okay, whats missing? Just replacing the really bad trees grass and shrubs. Which also happen to be everywhere.

Actually.. we need buffed npc's as well.. basically an upgrade from the w3 npc's to the lod of the witcher 2 npc's and we're sorted.

.... NO?

CDPR sucks. That's the topic. If you're complaining about the graphics its terribly obvious you're not using sweetfx because stops really quick once you get that on.
 
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