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[T4keD0wN]

Are you assuming megalights is implemented if the game has a cvar for it?

That only suggests the build of unreal engine it's running on. Nothing more. Nothing less. This has to be enabled in the project setting during dev and each light source should also be set to "Allow Megalights" for it to function as such.

Wuthering Waves and FateKeeper (which is not a shipped game, technically) seem to be right. Not sure about Directive 8020

EDIT:

And it doesn't even do anything on FateKeeper?

So yeah. We got Wuther Waves, basically.

No, i check if the cvars are enabled else it indeed be in every single UE5.6 game as setting in the engine.

So enabled for project is the most important one, if that says 0 then you can always pretty much disregard the actual subsettings if the project isnt compiled with it, there's nothing to be done about it as the game doesnt have it, then theres one more key one that says if its enabled (typically allowed as you said) along with hw/sw switches, those tend to be changeable so it doesnt matter much, but you can tell if a game uses it or not at specific graphical settings, well, you also have to check the main rt project ones are enabled too. Rest are just specific configuration.

Checking for whats flagged and for overrides is something i cannot do as a user tho, which is a major problem with this.

Fatekeeper is compiled with it, you should be able to edit it through console, yeah it wont do much for the game given it's nature. 99% sure Directive has it but haven't messed around with console there to edit it as ive played it with PT, so i could very well be wrong on this one, but they didn't keep all default values there if i recall correctly, so i assume it's a on with lumen, could however be they've planned it at some point and cut it tho. (8020 was UE5.5, i am not sure what build it got pushed into UE, ill try to check how it is with it in 5.5 versions, i remember there even being an override at some point). Lets cross off 8020 for now, cuz i am not 100% certain.

 

[ChiefDada]

 

[Wishmaster92]

The only person that fully understood it at DF was Alex and he doesn't seem to be around anymore. Now the rest are likely trying to take some time to wrap their heads around the new tech. Given its performance characteristics, it's likely to get mass adoption on all UE5 games going forward. May even become the default setting for direct lights. And given the direction of travel with other game engines, like Rage, ND and Snowdrop, others are likely working on ray traced direct lighting as well. And to see all that running on base consoles at 60 is just *chef's kiss". You essentially have ray traced unlimited direct lights (megalights), ray traced indirect lights (lumen GI) and ray traced reflections (lumen reflections). The only difference between this and basic path tracing is the unified path, which requires 3x to 6x more bounces. But if RT performance next gen is 10x or above, and AI can simulate additional bounces at the fraction of the cost, like Neural Radiance Caching, PT at 60 fps is a near lock. It's the natural next step, which means the future is really bright.

If only they had a good denoiser for lumen... Without RR, I'm afraid the game is going to boil quite a bit.

Yeah I'm worried about that too. Megalights is probably another temporal graphical technique that is dependent on accumulation of frames. I just hope it's not that bad during gameplay. I'm sure halo will have a 30fps fidelity mode so I wonder if it would be more or less noticeable since it has less frames to work with? Either way this is the next big breakthrough in graphics visually.

From what I understand this is what megalights does; last gen games were only capable of around 3 shadowcasting lights in a scene, this generation let's be generous and say it went up to 10 which is probably much less. More Shadow casting lights in a scene completely tanks frame rate. Megalights introduces hundreds of shadowcasting lights in a scene, sometimes thousands. This almost feels like some offline render graphical technique. Area lights is what almost always gets downgraded in graphics when the final game releases. Tlou part 2 2018 e3 demo for sure had more area lights than the final game. Cyberpunk 2018 demo also had way more area lights than the final game, even In raytraced mode. Not that raytracing/path tracing has anything to do with the amount of area lights, you're still confined to whatever limit if you're not using megalights. Basically games can now have that tech demo look in the shipped product if they're using this.

First screen is just showing time of day is the same

 

[viveks86]

No, i check if the cvars are enabled else it indeed be in every single UE5.6 game as setting in the engine.

So enabled for project is the most important one, if that says 0 then you can always pretty much disregard the actual subsettings if the project isnt compiled with it, there's nothing to be done about it as the game doesnt have it, then theres one more key one that says if its enabled (typically allowed as you said) along with hw/sw switches, those tend to be changeable so it doesnt matter much, but you can tell if a game uses it or not at specific graphical settings, well, you also have to check the main rt project ones are enabled too. Rest are just specific configuration.

Checking for whats flagged and for overrides is something i cannot do as a user tho, which is a major problem with this.

Fatekeeper is compiled with it, you should be able to edit it through console, yeah it wont do much for the game given it's nature. 99% sure Directive has it but haven't messed around with console there to edit it as ive played it with PT, so i could very well be wrong on this one, but they didn't keep all default values there if i recall correctly, so i assume it's a on with lumen, could however be they've planned it at some point and cut it tho. (8020 was UE5.5, i am not sure what build it got pushed into UE, ill try to check how it is with it in 5.5 versions, i remember there even being an override at some point). Lets cross off 8020 for now, cuz i am not 100% certain.

It was introduced as experimental in 5.6 iirc. Production ready only in 5.8. It's likely the devs backported the feature to play around. The actual lights in the game don't behave like it is on. Wuthering Waves backported it too i think, but only after it became production ready. Agree that we should cross out 8020.

 

[viveks86]

Yeah I'm worried about that too. Megalights is probably another temporal graphical technique that is dependent on accumulation of frames. I just hope it's not that bad during gameplay. I'm sure halo will have a 30fps fidelity mode so I wonder if it would be more or less noticeable since it has less frames to work with? Either way this is the next big breakthrough in graphics visually.

From what I understand this is what megalights does; last gen games were only capable of around 3 shadowcasting lights in a scene, this generation let's be generous and say it went up to 10 which is probably much less. More Shadow casting lights in a scene completely tanks frame rate. Megalights introduces hundreds of shadowcasting lights in a scene, sometimes thousands. This almost feels like some offline render graphical technique. Area lights is what almost always gets downgraded in graphics when the final game releases. Tlou part 2 2018 e3 demo for sure had more area lights than the final game. Cyberpunk 2018 demo also had way more area lights than the final game, even In raytraced mode. Not that raytracing/path tracing has anything to do with the amount of area lights, you're still confined to whatever limit if you're not using megalights. Basically games can now have that tech demo look in the shipped product if they're using this.

That's an accurate understanding. Megalights is Epic's solution to the "many lights problem". ReSTIR DI (aka RTXDI) does the same thing. It's technically even more advanced than megalights, but more performance hungry as well. Megalights and ReSTIR DI (now a part of ReSTIR PT, which combines ReSTIR GI for indirect bounce) are essentially competing solutions to the same rendering problem that plagued realtime graphics for decades. And you are right that devs can now go wild with how many lights they can place in a scene. Every room in a skyscraper across a cityscape, for example, could be an individual shadow casting light and it wouldn't kill performance. Extend that to every vehicle on a crowded street, every street light etc.

Pretty much every engine will have something similar built in the next year or two. ReSTIR DI is opensource, so anyone can build their own variant that works well for them. It's going to make a huge difference in cutscene versus gameplay differences as well as most "reveal versus final game" downgrades over the next couple of years. What we see initially would be much closer to what we finally get because devs don't need to butcher the scene lighting to squeeze out more performance.

 

[Rheon]

A random NPC from AC Black Flag Resynced. What I noticed at first was the way her hair animated so beautifully, but then I realised her fidelity was overall surprisingly high.

(Ignore the shitty stone thing to her left )

 

[T4keD0wN]

Yeah I'm worried about that too. Megalights is probably another temporal graphical technique that is dependent on accumulation of frames.

Yes, it is. But i wouldnt worry too much about it as with reflections, with lighting the denoiser and filters in unreal do a good enough job.

I just hope it's not that bad during gameplay. I'm sure halo will have a 30fps fidelity mode so I wonder if it would be more or less noticeable since it has less frames to work with?

More you accumulate the more stable it is (less boiling and flicker) you get, but you risk ghosting, there will always be a tradeoff that lean more in one direction with this, devs cant avoid that unless they use RR which does a better job, but even that is just an improvement. The amount of accumulation is not tied to your actual framerate devs set that number themselves separately (idk how its on xbox/ps, maybe they set it for each mode)

If they accumulate 15 frames (should be very close to a realistic amount btw, but itll probably be a tiny bit less) and you get 30 fps then it retains half a second vs you getting 60fps when it covers 1/4th of history, faster is better. More frames will feel more responsive, less ghosty.

 

[SlimySnake]

Have to say that there are at least some things Yotei does right. They have a really cool fog simulation that rolls in at times and covers grass and distant mountains. There were some artifacts in the 60 fps pssr version that made it look kinda blocky, but in the 30 fps mode the fog looks really beautiful.

It takes PS4 era lighting and gives it a thicker volumetric look i saw in Silent Hill 2 and AC Shadows. Several areas deeper into the story feature insane volumetric fog everywhere. The actual assets and geometry inside some castles is pretty much ps3 era which is very disappointing.

 

[ChiefDada]

I've seen enough... Yotei shits all over Horizon for open world traversal fidelity. I didn't even remember how janky HFW mount was. Very annoying to capture for comparisons.

 

[SlimySnake]

Nassau looks so fucking good. The wooden huts and houses use planks lifted straight out of UE5. this is closest ive seen any other engine come to matching nanite. It's marvelous.

What's even more impressive is that at night time, they light the island with candles and fire, and everything around those lights gets a very realistic glow up. I am sure ive seen lamps and lights do dynamic lights before, but this feels like a cut above.

The cutscenes also look great. Not all the time, but again the lighting is just so good at times it feels like a cg movie. Had they redone the motion capture, i think it wouldve felt very close to a cg movie.

Some screenshots below. The conversion from hdr is clipping all the detail but man this cutscene looked insane.

\

Hiding the gif behind spoiler tag because its 43 MB but these textures deserve it.

Spoiler

 

[SlimySnake]

I've seen enough... Yotei shits all over Horizon for open world traversal fidelity. I didn't even remember how janky HFW mount was. Very annoying to capture for comparisons.

I also went back to HFW, and the first thing i noticed was just how small HFW feels. Notice how hill-y the game world feels in your clip. Its all up and down, all to save on draw distance. its a last gen game world through and through. When you do get longer vistas in the DLC and you get access to a boat, you see that the draw distance just doesnt hold up. constant lod pop-in and even after the lod pop-in, it feels really low LOD compared to how stunning it looks up close.

Also, the mounts feel like shit because once again, they cannot give you a wider FOV without killing performance. And these things are so huge that you need the camera pulled back. On PC, HZD allowed you to increase the FOV and it made everything feel better.

I just dont like that brown-ish lighting in Yotei. There are times of day where it does look more pleasing than HFW, but that particular time of day in your clip is just ugly. i hate it.

Both games are compromising different things. Yotei sacrifices near term detail while HFW either uses fog or hills to mask its draw distance shortcomings. Because both target a retarded native 4k pixel budget. You see something like Black Flags or AC shadows and they are able to handle both near and far detail without compromises because they target 1440p.

 

[March Climber]

Something must be wrong with my eyes because I just don't see what others see with Ubisoft game screenshots.

I felt the same way when people here were gushing over AC Shadows. Looking at it just felt like 'this is cool I guess'.

I think only recent game of theirs to really make me say wow was, very specifically, max settings Avatar which looked even better in motion.

 

[ChiefDada]

Just started Black Flag. Looks very good especially for a 2013 based remake.

 

[Gonzito]

holy shit at the improvements

 

[Negotiator101]

Just started Black Flag. Looks very good especially for a 2013 based remake.

What does that even mean? It's a remake not a remaster it should look as good as a modern day game ( the environment's do mostly) but the character models look like a higher resolution PS4 game and the animations are straight from the original. We've had plenty older games remade that don't have these problems.

 

[Cr1ptkeeper]

Something must be wrong with my eyes because I just don't see what others see with Ubisoft game screenshots.

I felt the same way when people here were gushing over AC Shadows. Looking at it just felt like 'this is cool I guess'.

I think only recent game of theirs to really make me say wow was, very specifically, max settings Avatar which looked even better in motion.

Agreed! Played Black flag yesterday on PS5 Pro on performance mode and while it looks good it didn't amaze me.
To me, UE5 games have the best graphics on console, even with some of the RT artifacts.
I think Halo will look vastly better than Black flag when it releases later this month.

 

[Gonzito]

One thing I dont like about Black Flag, (its a bit of a nitpick I know) is that shadows flicker in characters faces and hair. If it uses RT Shadows I dont understand why this is happening?

I dislike very much flickering shadows in character's faces and it happes sometimes in this game. I have to test if this happens because of upscaling although I am using DLAA so it would be weird if that's the case

The game looks amazing though, the graphics update is totally worth it

 

[Gubaldo]

Modded but amazing!!

 

[GymWolf]

A random NPC from AC Black Flag Resynced. What I noticed at first was the way her hair animated so beautifully, but then I realised her fidelity was overall surprisingly high.

(Ignore the shitty stone thing to her left )

The npcs around the streets are great, it's the faces that are a bit meh.

But the overall models are solid, i think they are a step up over shadows or maybe are just the type of clothes that look more detailed.

They are still ubisoft npcs so people talking without moving their mouth, female singing voices but they are only dudes, too sudden change of directions etc.

But they do look good.

Also, i like how zoomed in the camera is in cities so npcs look...big, sometimes with some camera angles the characters look like smurfs in some open worlds, i dont know how to explain it.

 

[GymWolf]

I've seen enough... Yotei shits all over Horizon for open world traversal fidelity. I didn't even remember how janky HFW mount was. Very annoying to capture for comparisons.

Mounts in horizon have always been shit and sushima had some of the best horse controls,not sure what this has to do with graphic but i guess yotei should get any small victory it can against the much better looking horizon

 

[GymWolf]

One thing I dont like about Black Flag, (its a bit of a nitpick I know) is that shadows flicker in characters faces and hair. If it uses RT Shadows I dont understand why this is happening?

I dislike very much flickering shadows in character's faces and it happes sometimes in this game. I have to test if this happens because of upscaling although I am using DLAA so it would be weird if that's the case

The game looks amazing though, the graphics update is totally worth it

Third pic is a bit meh, ngl.

I think the game look the best inside cities, natural assets are not as detailed as the cities imo.

 

[CGNoire]

Black flags looks ridiculous. Its funny how YouTube rewards games that push ps4 caliber lighting and detail while making actual next gen games like this look last gen. The detail in Havana is insane. Every brick, wall, and wooden texture looks like it was scanned straight into the game. The foliage is obviously very impressive like it was in shadows but the color palette of the Caribbean islands makes it look far greener and more colorful which makes it pop even more.

Overall, it's definitely better looking than shadows. Now shadows looks its best in different seasons and weather conditions so we will see how black flags holds up after a few hours.

The only thing i dislike are the screenspace artifacts on the ocean water which for some reason isn't using rt reflections. Those are limited to smaller streams and ponds. The problem is that ur ship has a lot of ropes and sails that constantly block the ocean which adds those screenspace occlusion artifacts everywhere on the ship. When you get to Havana you see a bunch of dead pirates in cages and again the cages block the ocean water which creates artifacts right next to the cages. Its very distracting.

Its cause 8k textures have too much nuanced small details now that dont look as good when smeared over by low bitrates where as high contrast over sized last gen detail survive the low bitrate alot better.

I first noticed this actually with BF3 which had alot higher res and properly scaled clothing texture on characters compared fo BC2 which used higher contrast and larger details cause of the lower resolutiin of the texture work. You tube made me feel like the texture res was worse on there costumes but once i loaded it up in person @1080p I saw why that was.

What still comes through on YT these days is polygon density, lighting, shaders, and physics.

 

[PeteBull]

Funny how DF thinks this is not a noticeable difference in GI quality. Reducing the number of rays from 1/4 to 1/16 means 1/4th the total rays to indirectly light up the scene. And if they have lower quality proxies in the BVH, coupled with more aggressive denoising, rays could miss hitting leaves and branches entirely, which means indirect shadowing wouldn't occur. Still way better than the software GI they had on AC shadows for performance mode on base and the right way to approach game lighting going forward, but still... it's VERY noticeable. Most of the tree shadow cover is gone. And most of the bounce lighting on rocks that make them glow is gone too.

Thats like switching between how chick u picked up last night in a club looks fully dolled up vs how she looks in the morning with no make up anymore, lets just say beastmode has different meaning here for ps5 perf mode

 

[GymWolf]

This exchange made me laugh out loud:

Shadows looks better. It's spellbinding.


Better than Yotei?

 

[GymWolf]

Oh shit the sequel is even funnier

Yotei looks better. Yotei also has better art direction so the cinematic quality of a lot of the scenes and vistas makes it look better too. I played both games back to back and that was the thing that immediately struck me. Just how 'weighty' and natural the beauty of Yotei was vs the very pretty but still technical feeling graphics of shadows. I always say AC games look good but they feel like dioramas to me because of how it all comes together including the physics and floatiness of the character within it, just didn't feel like real worlds lol. That's just a me take. Yotei felt like a real world to me.


The fucking game with precanned death animations and no ragdoll where enemies glue on the terrain even if half their body is hanging from a roof and that has barely any destruction whatsoever has better physics than shadows

 

[Trilobit]

It's crazy how Tsushima's intro mogged it.



I still wish we could have gotten Tsushima 2 instead.

 

[SlimySnake]

Oh shit the sequel is even funnier

Yotei looks better. Yotei also has better art direction so the cinematic quality of a lot of the scenes and vistas makes it look better too. I played both games back to back and that was the thing that immediately struck me. Just how 'weighty' and natural the beauty of Yotei was vs the very pretty but still technical feeling graphics of shadows. I always say AC games look good but they feel like dioramas to me because of how it all comes together including the physics and floatiness of the character within it, just didn't feel like real worlds lol. That's just a me take. Yotei felt like a real world to me.


The fucking game with precanned death animations and no ragdoll where enemies glue on the terrain even if half their body is hanging from a roof and that has barely any destruction whatsoever has better physics than shadows

As retarded as era is, at least they are buying and enjoying the game. Steam users are upset because the game has microtransactions and there is a bug that runs the game at 30 fps. They are now review bombing the game on steam.

This whole cancel culture bs will never leave the gaming industry. just a bunch of petulant idiots.

 

[SlimySnake]

Project Awakening finally enters full development lol.

Upgraded engine to UE5.

Development is now entering a phase where it will accelerate rapidly. The development team consists of various members, including staff who have been involved from the beginning and staff who joined after finishing development on "Granblue Fantasy Relink."

The interview also revealed that the game is being developed with the aim of achieving "hyper-photorealism" in terms of visuals. In particular, the characters have been completely remade, thanks to the upgrade of Cygames' in-house 3D scanning equipment since 2019, which has enabled the acquisition of higher-resolution data. For motion production, they are utilizing the expertise of the members who were in charge of action production on "Relink," such as the responsiveness when buttons are pressed, to create a weighty motion that gives a sense of lingering movement, befitting a photorealistic human world.

In addition, the interview covered the theme of "how to translate the real world into the game world," and revealed that the terrain is based on 13th-century Europe. It was also mentioned that the project is currently using "Unreal Engine 5" as its game engine. Furthermore, the developers expressed their strong ambition to win "Game of the Year." The article also reveals images of the game's field under development, so those interested should check out CGWORLD .

“発表から10年”Cygamesの大型オープンワールド『Project Awakening』、ついに開発が本格化。ゲームエンジンは内製から「UE5」に、狙うのは“ハイパーフォトリアル” - AUTOMATON

Cygamesは7月10日、メディアCGWORLDのインタビューを通して、『Project Awakening』の開発状況を明かした。

automaton-media.com

 

[SlimySnake]

I typically dont go against artistic intent, but i will be removing the yellow filter.

https://www.nexusmods.com/assassinscreedblackflagresynced/mods/17?tab=description

 

[viveks86]

Came across this in my feed and thought I'll watch a few minutes to say my goodbyes to ID. The new DLC might be the ugliest path traced game I have ever seen.

Just atrocious art direction. Low budget mobile game effects, hero lights even on grunts that make no sense, rubbish textures and bland as fuck environments. Maxed out and path traced on a 5090, by the way.

May be Asha made the right call. They should just hand off the engine to another studio or... even better... opensource it.

Just... utter... tasteless... shit. Couldn't watch a second more. RIP iD, even if I don't recognize you anymore.

 

[Gonzito]

I typically dont go against artistic intent, but i will be removing the yellow filter.

https://www.nexusmods.com/assassinscreedblackflagresynced/mods/17?tab=description

RenoDx does the same thing and improves HDR adding real tonemapping

I recommend you the mod better

 

[GymWolf]

Came across this in my feed and thought I'll watch a few minutes to say my goodbyes to ID. The new DLC might be the ugliest path traced game I have ever seen.

Just atrocious art direction. Low budget mobile game effects, hero lights even on grunts that make no sense, rubbish textures and bland as fuck environments. Maxed out and path traced on a 5090, by the way.

May be Asha made the right call. They should just hand off the engine to another studio or... even better... opensource it.

Just... utter... tasteless... shit. Couldn't watch a second more. RIP iD, even if I don't recognize you anymore.

The amount of people glazing this engine just because it run better than ue5 while looking 1\4 as good is so appalling...

 

[SlimySnake]

Came across this in my feed and thought I'll watch a few minutes to say my goodbyes to ID. The new DLC might be the ugliest path traced game I have ever seen.

Just atrocious art direction. Low budget mobile game effects, hero lights even on grunts that make no sense, rubbish textures and bland as fuck environments. Maxed out and path traced on a 5090, by the way.

May be Asha made the right call. They should just hand off the engine to another studio or... even better... opensource it.

Just... utter... tasteless... shit. Couldn't watch a second more. RIP iD, even if I don't recognize you anymore.

I dont think firing 150 people from a 200 person studio is a good idea even if the engine is trash. You still need artists and engineers when you switch to UE5. That studio isnt making anything more. At least not anytime soon.

Im not a big fan of Doom games post 2016, but its a fairly competent studio. If you cant afford 200 person studios that consistently produce 85 metacritic games then perhaps you shouldnt be in this business.

One thing i will say is what John Carmack alluded to in his twitter post... maybe just maybe dont take 5 years to make a standard sequel. Sony studios like Sucker Punch, Insomniac, KojiPro and GG have all done this. new IPs i understand, but a 200 person studio cant be taking that long to make games that dont sell well. 2-3 years max. keep the budget low and if the game flops like Dark Ages did then its easier to simply write it off as a one off and move on to the next game.

 

[Wishmaster92]

Came across this in my feed and thought I'll watch a few minutes to say my goodbyes to ID. The new DLC might be the ugliest path traced game I have ever seen.

Just atrocious art direction. Low budget mobile game effects, hero lights even on grunts that make no sense, rubbish textures and bland as fuck environments. Maxed out and path traced on a 5090, by the way.

May be Asha made the right call. They should just hand off the engine to another studio or... even better... opensource it.

Just... utter... tasteless... shit. Couldn't watch a second more. RIP iD, even if I don't recognize you anymore.

Holy shit! And this is with path tracing enabled? It doesn't look good at all

 

[Jack Howitzer]

Just atrocious art direction. Low budget mobile game effects, hero lights even on grunts that make no sense, rubbish textures and bland as fuck environments. Maxed out and path traced on a 5090, by the way.

Thanks mate, I instantly switching from "if it ain't path tracing I ain't gonna play this thing" to "even with path tracing I ain't gonna bother with this shit" after bumping up these screenshots . My eyes are hurting, and I can't stop feeling pretty bad for nvidia again, path tracing and 600watts geforece rtx ovens deserving so much better

 

[viveks86]

I dont think firing 150 people from a 200 person studio is a good idea even if the engine is trash. You still need artists and engineers when you switch to UE5. That studio isnt making anything more. At least not anytime soon.

I'm starting to think that was the intent. They unionized fairly recently, so this may be a work around so MS doesn't get sued for union busting. Without projects, the real talent would gradually quit and whoever remains will either stay as a support function or get absorbed into another studio.

Im not a big fan of Doom games post 2016, but its a fairly competent studio. If you cant afford 200 person studios that consistently produce 85 metacritic games then perhaps you shouldnt be in this business.

I think they have a fun gameplay loop that speaks to a lot of people and have been milking it ever since with some innovations. But the art direction just seems to get worse with every iteration imo. They were doing this 10 years ago:

Not even ray traced, obviously, but nowhere near vomit inducing. You could even argue it holds up to this day. And I'm not even cherry picking. Just random HD screenshots I found on google.

 

[Gonzito]

When there is no light source, Black Flag can look a little flat imo, there is a lack of shading in general

Shadows looked better than this tbh

 

[Represent.]

Timestamped.
YongYea was super impressed by Blood Message

This is my first time seeing the combat in full... Looks fucking awesome? Love the animations, and the cinematic presentation throughout. This is gonna be a fun one.
Im super down for a tight, linear gameplay experience. Combat looks sick

 

[SlimySnake]

When there is no light source, Black Flag can look a little flat imo, there is a lack of shading in general

Shadows looked better than this tbh

 

[viveks86]

Even the water under the cave formation on the left is "reflecting" the blue sky.

Areas like this are tricky to raytrace without PT. The first bounce from the Sun wouldn't reach the area unless it was overhead, so they should have placed artificial fill lights and let RTGI trace against it. Or place torches etc. Seems like someone forgot about lighting this scene altogether.

 

[Bojji]

A lot of shadows and AO are done in screen space for distant objects:

 

[GudOlRub]

A lot of shadows and AO are done in screen space for distant objects:

It's very noticeable while roaming around with the ship, lots of ss artifacts from distant shadows and reflections.

 

[Bojji]

It's very noticeable while roaming around with the ship, lots of ss artifacts from distant shadows and reflections.

True, I hate this shit.

Anyone remembers Remnant 2? That game had the worst screen space effects in history.

 

[SlimySnake]

True, I hate this shit.

Anyone remembers Remnant 2? That game had the worst screen space effects in history.

i stopped noticing screenspace artifacts on the boat after changing the RT preset from Standard to Extended. apparently standard doesnt include rt reflections.

 

[Bojji]

i stopped noticing screenspace artifacts on the boat after changing the RT preset from Standard to Extended. apparently standard doesnt include rt reflections.

No option like that on Pro

 

[Trilobit]

When there is no light source, Black Flag can look a little flat imo, there is a lack of shading in general

Shadows looked better than this tbh

Wow, it looks like one of those 90's prerendered CG backgrounds

 

[SlimySnake]

No option like that on Pro

pretty sure they said rt reflections are supported in the pro. maybe try the 30 fps or 40 fps modes.

 

[viveks86]

pretty sure they said rt reflections are supported in the pro. maybe try the 30 fps or 40 fps modes.

The SSR artifacts are very much there even on RT extended, if I'm not mistaken. It only becomes less obvious because you have RT as fallback for static objects with RT extended. So if you were initially on RT standard, you would not have had the fallback and it looked very noticeable. But when the distance is even larger and the object isn't in the BVH, you still get pure SSR with no fallback, even on RT extended. I believe this is the case on both Pro and PC as all the previous footage on PC with everything maxed out still had this issue.

No option like that on Pro

There is no such option on PC either. There is no pure RT only implementation for this game. It's still an RT+SSR hybrid even with RT extended, which is what the Pro has on all 3 modes

 

[Alex11]

Played a few hrs of Black Flag and I got to say for me it doesn't look better than Shadows, if anything it's a bit below, I'm not taking cut-scenes into consideration.

There are more low quality textures than in Shadows and also I don't notice the same level of complexity in buildings and stuff. The lighting is what stands out, love the bounce lighting.

Spoiler

 

[Trilobit]

Just saw this Let's Play video from inFamous First Light. It's mind-boggling that they managed to do this on a PS4. I wonder what kind of tech PS6 would need to show to impress this hard. I can't really think of a PS5 game that made me think the devs used black magic. Hopefully GTA VI blows my mind.

(4:41)