The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition

[NecroLord]

Is Triss black now?

Nah, she is a redhead.
A mild tempered redhead, a rather interesting break from the stereotype of redheaded women being feisty...

 

[AwesomeButton]

Did they fix the Steam overlay yet? I'd like to see what kind of frame rate I'm getting, but Steam's FPS counter won't show and neither will FRAPS.

First, try setting the game to fullscreen exclusive and see if it works. For me, it works with DX11, but not with DX12. There's still no hotfix. If you don't have an RT card, just play with DX11, it looks better anyway.

If you have an AMD card, just press Ctrl+Shift+O in game, you get this cool overlay with all kinds of information:

Looking at the brightly lit square and how no light seems to penetrate inside the stalls, and even NPCs' faces when they are not facing towards the sun, I wonder what was the whole point in adding RT, apart from PR.

 

[ferratilis]

That screenshot is from the DX11, non-RT version.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The non-next gen still looks better imo.

 

[JDR13]

Did they fix the Steam overlay yet? I'd like to see what kind of frame rate I'm getting, but Steam's FPS counter won't show and neither will FRAPS.

First, try setting the game to fullscreen exclusive and see if it works. For me, it works with DX11, but not with DX12. There's still no hotfix. If you don't have an RT card, just play with DX11, it looks better anyway.

If you have an AMD card, just press Ctrl+Shift+O in game, you get this cool overlay with all kinds of information:

Nvidia card here.

Not sure how it could look better in DX11. I don't think changing the API changes the graphics. It should look the same.

 

[ferratilis]

It should look the same.

It should, but I have a lot of problems with DX 12 that are not present at all with DX11: shadow flickering, some distant objects looking weird, lower fps etc. It could be due to AMD drivers, but DX11 looks and runs better.

 

[Stavrophore]

So in the process of polishing the turd, instead of polishing it, they smeared it? I guess the "GOTY, uber final edition" will need some patches before making it playable.

 

[Falksi]

So in the process of polishing the turd, instead of polishing it, they smeared it? I guess the "GOTY, uber final edition" will need some patches before making it playable.

It's because of the CDPR staff. No one can fail to polish shit like Polish shit.

 

[Frozen]

It because they dumped all the competent people for woke women.

This disaster only proves they are incapable of making another game if they fucked up something so simple as this.

Go fem programmers, go broke.

 

[good fucking shit happen]

It because they dumped all the competent people for woke women.

Nah mane they went public. EVERYTHING that goes public property is shit, private property > everything else. Publicly traded companies are one fucking step too far towards communism and that be why they could make fucking cream of the crop games before that and now they gotta bundle amateur mods with their shitted up game for the rerelease.

 

[Gerrard]

It's more like the competent people dumped them when they saw the company turning into rainbow shit.

 

[AwesomeButton]

How many fem programmers do they have? BTW the Baron questline was mostly created by a women. As far as I know she doesn't work at CDPR any more though.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Here is a view from a rooftop at Crow's Perch, the time is around 5:30 in the morning. Pre-Next-Gen, 1.32, "Classic" version, whatever you like to call it. The related installed mods are:

Enhanced Texture 2
Uber LOD - Trees and Vegetation (use the max LOD version for vegetation no matter the distance)
The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project
Increased Draw Distance

If someone could get to the same spot and post a picture from the Next-Gen version, I'd be curious to see how much better it is. RT and non-RT will be best.

 

[ferratilis]

I don't have an RT card, so here's the non-RT version. I tried to match the weather, but that's impossible, because they changed the skyboxes an added some new weathers. Max settings, no mods, "next gen" version.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The sun seems to be higher in your screenshot, however the trees' shadows are falling at the same angle in both screenshots, so the time of day is the same I guess.

The drawing distance and LOD seem to be the same.

The shading on the trees, and the intensity and color of the sunlight seem to be the main differences. And the clouds of course, but we knew the clouds are upgraded from the promotional info.

BTW, I'm using the default values for Increased Draw Distance, so in theory I could increase it past the next-gen distances on the non-next gen game

 

[Frozen]

Lol next gen looks like shit compared to that modded pic.
Best "mod" I ever had or need for this game was using my old (now dead) LG TV because it had great picture quality.
All these "mods" are just preset visual tweaks, even "next gen" didn't change anything if it did it's for the worse. And it will cost you -30 fps so you can see a reflection in a tinny pond maybe if you really look for it.

 

[razvedchiki]

doesnt increased LOD mod destroy your fps?i loose 10-15 when i use it.

 

[vortex]

How's the gameplay different in Nextgen edition?

 

[racofer]

Here is a view from a rooftop at Crow's Perch, the time is around 5:30 in the morning. Pre-Next-Gen, 1.32, "Classic" version, whatever you like to call it. The related installed mods are:

Enhanced Texture 2
Uber LOD - Trees and Vegetation (use the max LOD version for vegetation no matter the distance)
The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project
Increased Draw Distance

If someone could get to the same spot and post a picture from the Next-Gen version, I'd be curious to see how much better it is. RT and non-RT will be best.

I'm trying to, but there's a fucking thunderstorm right now.

Testing some console commands to change the weather to see if I can get it somewhat close to yours.

Edit: This is as close as I could get it. It seems you've changed your FOV, so that also changes perspective a bit, and the time of the day is between 4am and 5am to match the sun's position:

 

[AwesomeButton]

doesnt increased LOD mod destroy your fps?i loose 10-15 when i use it.

Riding around Velen, which is where LOD matters most, it's still ok for me. I'll do some testing to tell you what's the average, but it hasn't struck me as unresponsive. Definetly above 45 fps.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm trying to, but there's a fucking thunderstorm right now.

What is the AA here? Since it's 1080 I doubt you are upscaling the picture, so the smudgyness must be antialiasing, right?

 

[Gargaune]

The non-next gen still looks better imo.

The lighting and shadow effects are obviously better in the new RT screenshots, but I think it runs into issues with the colour grading. TW3's art direction is superb but it was purpose built for its tech, once you throw a completely new lighting model at it, it's gonna lose some of that image composition. Not entirely dissimilar to how throwing ultra-sharp high-res texture mods at an old game can produce dissonant effects overall.

Your screen comparison with ferratilis kinda illustrates this - the new version is certainly "better", but it doesn't quite capture the mood of the original. Plus you can barely make out Geralt beyond a dark shape, that seems to be a running issue with these nascent RT implementations.

Edit: Actually, I might be a bit rash, what racofer posted is pretty close...

 

[racofer]

I'm trying to, but there's a fucking thunderstorm right now.

What is the AA here? Since it's 1080 I doubt you are upscaling the picture, so the smudgyness must be antialiasing, right?

Yes, it's due to AA. Running on DX12, Ultra quality (hair works and RT turned off):

TAA

DLSS

I can't notice any difference, especially in motion, so DLSS it's for me since my GPU usage drops to a measly 30% and it runs smooth at capped 75fps (my monitor's refresh rate).

 

[AwesomeButton]

Edit: This is as close as I could get it. It seems you've changed your FOV, so that also changes perspective a bit, and the time of the day is between 4am and 5am to match the sun's position:

That screenshot is spot on, great. I haven't changed my fov, unless some mod has done that, but I doubt it, it wasn't mentioned anywhere in mod descriptions.

 

[racofer]

Besides, the reasons I actually want to run the next gen update instead of the classic version are:

1. I don't have to fiddle with mods; All that I could want is already baked in;
2. I really wanted some of the fixes;
3. I play sign builds almost exclusively, and this time around the game doesn't crap out when doing a lot of Igni explosions.

Back in the GOTY version CTDs would happen quite frequently at the late game when blowing stuff up with Igni. I could 100% reproduce it at the hanse base in Mont Crane Castle, where there are a lot of enemies when they call reinforcements. Just throw some Igni and as soon as a lot of enemies started to explode, the game would guaranteed crash.

This next-gen version fixed that entirely.