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Graphics that are too good

Akratus

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm sure many relate. There's a number of very good reasons to prefer a lower level of graphical 'sophistication' and yet this goes overlooked just too often and I see people fawn over graphics even here on the codex. Take Dark Souls 3 for example. When I look at it, I'm always left thinking why it needed that level of detail, and I'm talking mainly environments here. It seems stuffed, little objects crammed into every space of every area. I much prefer the oversight I get with Dark Souls 1, and I never feel like its lacking anything, especially not a ton of performane slowing environmental clutter. But the point being that clarity and o versight and of course art style are more important than flashiness, bloom, and especially just the sheer amount of detail. I'd ask why so many hold that in such a high regard in the first place, that amount of detail, people really fawn over it with Dark Souls 3 or Skyrim modding and such but not really here on the Codex so it's not necessary to ask. But in any case it seems sometimes as though detail and graphical sophistication are conflated a lot. As though a room with no small objects lying around but good textures, in a high resolution, with decent medium sized models for walls and objects is graphically inferior to the same room with a ton of different tiny rocks and pieces of debris and corpses all with much higher polygon counts than are really necessary just so people's egos are stroked when they can run it well even though most people aren't going to build such a great pc and performance should be prioritized over these unnecessary details.

I prefer: A good artstyle, clarity, oversight, performance, readability and detail where it is important and not indiscriminate detail to let people wank over the graphics. With the level of indiscriminate detail in a ton of modern games I'm left unable to properly asses what is on the screen even. The important things need detail so that your eyes are drawn to it and yet almost all developers seem to want to put as much detail as possible *everywhere*. And really, screenspace ambient occlusion, depth of field, chromatic abberation and especially motion blur are factually absolute garbage that only a moron would defend. Thankfully turning options down sometimes helps but all too often graphics are prioritized so much that customizability and also performance are left in the dust.

it just peeves me off that all this manpower is spent on egregious bloom and retarded 'depth of field' when that time and manpower should be spent maximizing performance. John Carmack even said in a speech that making videogame graphics is quite a bit harder than rocket science, but then again it's not just graphics where games are mismanaged and full of faulty design, it's in everything.
 
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J_C

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My only problem with too much graphics is when they are overloaded with all kinds of effects which are actually detrimental to the overall quality of the graphics.
 

Urthor

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I wouldn't call the issue of an environment being cluttered and lacking an overall visual style "graphics being too good." It's cluttered bad art, that's it, go home.

Also that "level of detail" is there because they want the environment to approach realism. Which is incredibly detailed.

If your entire visual message is melding fantasy and reality so well it produces a wow factor, the clutter is meant to have a purpose when used well. You seem instead to be advocating they change their artistic goal from "blending with reality for a visual wow factor" to "offering a functional art style where the art serves the gameplay."

That's definitely a choice, but it's a choice I imagine almost no game developers actually follow, judging by the fact that most of gaming adapts story and introduces unique gameplay elements in response to whatever level is created, you create your open world first then populate it afterwards with a variety of quests that fit that art style after all.

Not to mention your concept of functional art is from the perspective of PC gamers who are looking at a screen from 2 feet away, when most GIUs are designed for console gamers at 9-12 feet, so the answer of AAA gaming to your request is a "go suck shit" in general.
 

SpoilVictor

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There is also another factor: Graphics sell. Not only to customers but also to corporate brass. When devs are presenting game to their overlords how better sell it than with pretty graphics? Because those guys don't know shit about games that is only way to get their attention other then elaborate lootbox strategy. Sequels have to look better than predecessors so it goes that way.

Thought out aesthetics apply only to indie games (which don't have budget for cutting edge graphics) or very few AAA titles ( but I have suspicion that there is also budget conservation involved).
 

Master

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This didn't seem like the best basis for a thread after I typed it but I felt like ranting and am posting it anyway.

I'm sure many relate. There's a number of very good reasons to prefer a lower level of graphical 'sophistication' and yet this goes overlooked just too often and I see people fawn over graphics even here on the codex. Take Dark Souls 3 for example. When I look at it, I'm always left thinking why it needed that level of detail, and I'm talking mainly environments here. It seems stuffed, little objects crammed into every space of every area. I much prefer the oversight I get with Dark Souls 1, and I never feel like its lacking anything, especially not a ton of performane slowing environmental clutter. But the point being that clarity and o versight and of course art style are more important than flashiness, bloom, and especially just the sheer amount of detail. I'd ask why so many hold that in such a high regard in the first place, that amount of detail, people really fawn over it with Dark Souls 3 or Skyrim modding and such but not really here on the Codex so it's not necessary to ask. But in any case it seems sometimes as though detail and graphical sophistication are conflated a lot. As though a room with no small objects lying around but good textures, in a high resolution, with decent medium sized models for walls and objects is graphically inferior to the same room with a ton of different tiny rocks and pieces of debris and corpses all with much higher polygon counts than are really necessary just so people's egos are stroked when they can run it well even though most people aren't going to build such a great pc and performance should be prioritized over these unnecessary details.

I prefer: A good artstyle, clarity, oversight, performance, readability and detail where it is important and not indiscriminate detail to let people wank over the graphics. With the level of indiscriminate detail in a ton of modern games I'm left unable to properly asses what is on the screen even. The important things need detail so that your eyes are drawn to it and yet almost all developers seem to want to put as much detail as possible *everywhere*. And really, screenspace ambient occlusion, depth of field, chromatic abberation and especially motion blur are factually absolute garbage that only a moron would defend. Thankfully turning options down sometimes helps but all too often graphics are prioritized so much that customizability and also performance are left in the dust.

it just peeves me off that all this manpower is spent on egregious bloom and retarded 'depth of field' when that time and manpower should be spent maximizing performance. John Carmack even said in a speech that making videogame graphics is quite a bit harder than rocket science, but then again it's not just graphics where games are mismanaged and full of faulty design, it's in everything.
Looking at DS screens it seems it's mostly medieval dungeons and desolate ruins so maybe too much detail goes against this. Otoh, if a game is set in late baroque or on a hi tech spaceship lots of detail probably wouldn't hurt.
 

Akratus

Self-loathing fascist drunken misogynist asshole
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I wouldn't call the issue of an environment being cluttered and lacking an overall visual style "graphics being too good." It's cluttered bad art, that's it, go home.

Also that "level of detail" is there because they want the environment to approach realism. Which is incredibly detailed.

If your entire visual message is melding fantasy and reality so well it produces a wow factor, the clutter is meant to have a purpose when used well. You seem instead to be advocating they change their artistic goal from "blending with reality for a visual wow factor" to "offering a functional art style where the art serves the gameplay."
Well I'm actually really big on art direction, I just hate the needless complexity of modern graphics and somewhat enjoy turning off all the stupid "features" in modern releases. Obviously gameplay comes first but I've even played games with meh gameplay purely for the atmosphere/art direction/setting etc.

That's definitely a choice, but it's a choice I imagine almost no game developers actually follow, judging by the fact that most of gaming adapts story and introduces unique gameplay elements in response to whatever level is created, you create your open world first then populate it afterwards with a variety of quests that fit that art style after all.

Not to mention your concept of functional art is from the perspective of PC gamers who are looking at a screen from 2 feet away, when most GIUs are designed for console gamers at 9-12 feet, so the answer of AAA gaming to your request is a "go suck shit" in general.
It is sad that the absolute continual mad dash in terms of graphics development the industry seems in is so accepted and widsepread. Even avoiding mainstream discussions on the newest releases I still hear complaints about graphics not being up to par all the time. Any developer that says fuck it and sticks with graphics that are clearly years behind even if they are better in my opinion isn't going to have their games well-received but then again as I type this I remember there's the indie scene, but there's so much more possible in the triple-a scene but there it's mostly squandered. I suppose this is why I mostly enjoy more ''medium budgeted" games such as Dark Souls 1, New Vegas, etc.
 

Gerrard

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Play everything at half resolution, problem solved.

E: or if that's not enough for you go visit LowSpecGamer
5kOfZZk.jpg
 
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flushfire

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This is the same impression I get whenever I try to get into Lords of Xulima. I personally love anything 2d, but multiple photoshop filters on everything just turn me off.
 

Tancred

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PC graphics got as good as they ever really needed to be around about 2011 IMO. The last couple times I've played 'AAA' games I've turned graphics down to medium and disabled various filters, bloom, blur, depth of field and so on - they almost always look better without the filters and I rarely notice much difference between high and medium now.

I agree that art direction and style should be much more important. Plenty of games from late 90's through to early 00's still look great because of their art direction, same can't be said for many of the games in the last decade.
 

Master

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But Crysis was from 2007.

Edit
Or you mean, people could only run it 4 years later.
 
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Dexter

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I much prefer the oversight I get with Dark Souls 1, and I never feel like its lacking anything, especially not a ton of performane slowing environmental clutter. But the point being that clarity and o versight and of course art style are more important than flashiness, bloom, and especially just the sheer amount of detail.

And really, screenspace ambient occlusion, depth of field, chromatic abberation and especially motion blur are factually absolute garbage that only a moron would defend.
Dark Souls 1 has a lot of detail in some of its textures and how parts of the levels were designed, despite being developed for consoles if you up the resolution for Supersampling and downscale. There can also be various objects depending on where you are. But clutter or "lots of objects" doesn't really have much to do with detail, it's just a choice of how to design an environment or specific room. It can also greatly profit from SSAO/HBAO despite being basically "hacked in", increasing depth and causing more realistic shadows close to the transitions between different objects, making them blend in with the scene instead of standing out and looking "cluttery":
data_2012_08_27_18_5600ocz.jpg

DATA_2012_08_25_15_32_23_78.png


As though a room with no small objects lying around but good textures, in a high resolution, with decent medium sized models for walls and objects is graphically inferior to the same room with a ton of different tiny rocks and pieces of debris and corpses all with much higher polygon counts than are really necessary just so people's egos are stroked when they can run it well even though most people aren't going to build such a great pc and performance should be prioritized over these unnecessary details.
Who says this? IMO one of the new kings in RealTime graphics (aside from good old Crysis that still looks amazing) is Kingdom Come, but it's not particularly "cluttered with lots of objects" for the most part, it just depicts nature and architecture very realistically, SSAO also makes a big difference here btw.:
kingdomcome2018-02-205qoni.jpg

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kingdomcome2018_02_20etury.jpg

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kingdomcome2018_02_20yaup2.jpg

kingdomcome2018_02_20chu25.jpg

The "good graphics" discussion based on rendering technology is very different from the one about levels with a lot of complexity and small objects/clutter, since that's mainly the role of level designers, which is also different from the one about artistic style employed e.g. Cel Shading/cartoony (Wind Waker, Mario) and you're kind of trying to mix them all together.

For instance "Next Gen" goals:



Note that even in this scene the actual amount of objects and scene complexity is rather minimal (smooth floor and relatively monotone "Sci-Fi walls" with a lot of static simple/flat light sources), but they get a lot out of it with immensely improved lighting and realistic reflections/refractions of said.
 
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Master

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If they rendered Kashyyk instead maybe I would be impressed. I guess there's not enough shiny reflective surfaces there.
 

sexbad?

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If they rendered Kashyyk instead maybe I would be impressed. I guess there's not enough shiny reflective surfaces there.
I mean, it's a tech demo for a technology whose most noticeable feature is real-time reflections. You can look a little deeper and see other raytracing demos that don't rely heavily on the feature most likely to awe people.
 

Lyric Suite

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I remember trying Battlefield 4 once when they had that free week on steam. It was mostly to see how my computer would handle the game, but i was surprised just how appalling the visuals were. The game was a colossal pile of shit in itself but what made me give up were the garbage visuals. I actually found it difficult to see what was going on at times and i just couldn't immerse myself in the scenery.

That said, i'm not sure whether it was the detail in itself. With games like Kingdom Come or Star Citizen, i don't seem to have that problem, so i guess it has more to do with graphic designers having no idea how to use their graphical tools properly.
 

Master

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If they rendered Kashyyk instead maybe I would be impressed. I guess there's not enough shiny reflective surfaces there.
I mean, it's a tech demo for a technology whose most noticeable feature is real-time reflections. You can look a little deeper and see other raytracing demos that don't rely heavily on the feature most likely to awe people.
Ok. I haven't been following graphics development for a long while. Since the games would suck anyway so what's the point. Still, reflections are cool but jungle warfare is the true test.
 

Dexter

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I remember trying Battlefield 4 once when they had that free week on steam.
Battlefield 4 was never on Steam, neither was 3. BF3 was the flagship EA title with new engine (FrostBite 2) back in 2011 containing loads of new features, upon which they tried to get other studios (Visceral Games) to annualize it and forced BioWare/PopCap/Tiburon/Visceral and various other EA studios to use it instead of Unreal since it is an in-house development that they own and aren't licensing out to third parties like Unreal/CryEngine or Unity:



It was very impressive at the time, but had issues with overabundance of Lensflare, motion blur and helmet/camera lens stains and blood, aswell as loss of camera control at times. The Multiplayer portion always plays very different in Battlefield games and is a lot cleaner though.

I remember the discussion back then with people that "didn't see a difference" between BF2/BF3: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...nt-hardware-upgrade.85670/page-2#post-2815968

bf3_2011_10_25_18_13_58_43.png

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Lyric Suite

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Battlefield 4 was never on Steam, neither was 3.

Right, it was Origin, sorry.

Those shots you posted already show some of what i'm talking about, but you have to actually see it in motion to get how bad it all really looks.
 

deama

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If only they made Gothic 3 with the Gothic 1/2 engine...
 

Freddie

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I take good art direction over mega textures and gazillion of filters any day.

While graphics appear to be good selling point, there are additional problems that comes with all that fidelity. Namely, all that detail eats RAM and all that processing stresses the GPU. Even worse is that this has to reflect to level design / maps. I recall Mass Effect 2 having some levels which were corridors alternating with levels which felt like stamps. There are other examples, like Space Hulk: Deathwing, with big maps and where some areas of maps were done very well and really added to atmosphere of the game, but it all came with terrible performance issues for many who played it, no matter of the hardware and graphics settings, because some parts weren't optimised or were buggy.

Then size of downloads. I bought Forza Morotorsport 7 few months ago and download was 100 Gigs. I'm not kidding! I have decent connection but still. What if it's RPG or Tactical game and you are on mobile connection, or even that FM7 if you have a gaming laptop? How much time spent downloading versus actually playing the game?

All that graphical fidelity then, not every game necessarily benefits from it. In racing game, say FM 7, I don't really pay much attention to it. Single player can be played any way player likes, but in MP at least, it's all about racing line, grip, speed, tuning (and in case of FM 7, a lot of ramming). There might be tree leaf textures and effects that makes that the most beautiful and realistic l ever, but I'm not paying attention and frankly, why play a racing game for that? There is photo mode for those nice screen shots.

I don't know but I can't but think that all that design doesn't come for free, then there is infrastructure cost and when something goes wrong, and more complex designs get, more likely there are to be other costs in patching the bugs. Is it really worth of all those resources.

Something funny happened me in FM 7 while driving old 911 and it pulled a wheelie (default balance and suspension of those cars is messed up in FM 7) well, that can happen. The best thing however, was that the car kept turning.

In case of FM 7 at least, all that graphical fidelity didn't helped it from becoming perhaps least selling Forza MP series game ever. It is where it is, for a good reason. Maybe developers should focus on other things in their next effort in Motorsport series.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

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Now as for actual aesthetic merit, I think PROTEUS is quite beautiful and charming:
prot1.jpg

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maxresdefault.jpg

58980f385ccacf55c72b6eb1_84

maxresdefault.jpg



It's more of an audio-visual "experience" than game. You walk around and everything you touch morphs and produces soothing ambient sound or music. Heh, I remember spending some time chasing rabbits and crabs around because they kept producing different melodies and causing sylphs to appear in the air.

It's a very relaxing game. The point is to travel through the island and find portals that take you to different areas of the island, until eventually you reach the borealis and the island changes. I know no one here is interested in anything of this sort and that everybody will shit on this but whoever tries it out (it's free) will enjoy themselves. Still pictures can't convey it's pleasing atmosphere.

 

Jokzore

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My only problem with too much graphics is when they are overloaded with all kinds of effects which are actually detrimental to the overall quality of the graphics.

I swear I've no clue wtf is happening in Guild Wars 2 PvP, its just a tornado of colors.

EDIT:
gw031.jpg

3ShfoQe.jpg

Gw2_2014-11-27_14-34-13-28.jpg
 
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schru

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Everything Viktor Antonov touches (Half Life 2, Dishonored)
Not to forget Redneck Rampage:

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