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[Mr Moose]

Horizon what? Forza Horizon 5? Horizon Forbidden West? Every inch of these games worlds was touched and polished by human's hand.

GPU-Based Procedural Placement in Horizon Zero Dawn - Guerrilla Games

Jaap van Muijden describes the GPU based procedural placement system that dynamically creates the world of Horizon Zero Dawn around the player.

www.guerrilla-games.com

GPU-based procedural placement in Horizon Zero Dawn

Jaap van Muijden describes the GPU based procedural placement system that dynamically creates the world of Horizon Zero Dawn around the player. Not limited to just rocks and trees, the procedural system assembles fully-fledged environments while the player walks through them, complete with...

www.neogaf.com

 

[MidGenRefresh]

GPU-Based Procedural Placement in Horizon Zero Dawn - Guerrilla Games

Jaap van Muijden describes the GPU based procedural placement system that dynamically creates the world of Horizon Zero Dawn around the player.

www.guerrilla-games.com

GPU-based procedural placement in Horizon Zero Dawn

Jaap van Muijden describes the GPU based procedural placement system that dynamically creates the world of Horizon Zero Dawn around the player. Not limited to just rocks and trees, the procedural system assembles fully-fledged environments while the player walks through them, complete with...

www.neogaf.com

So they generated all of their landscapes using procedural and nobody went afterwards to polish the living shit out of the game world?

 

[Mr Moose]

So they generated all of their landscapes using procedural and nobody went afterwards to polish the living shit out of the game world?

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Yeah, so this is an artist painting / sculpting a limited game world. Can't really fairly compare it to a game 1000+ planets, many with multiple biomes. Horizon is mighty impressive, regardless.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Man, you reminded me that I sill haven't played new DLC for Forbidden West. This year is so packed!

 

[Denton]

I am quite unsatisfied with the washed out blacks of Starfield on my panny plasma (which has amazing blacks in games that are competently made) so I tested "Natural LUT" mod that replaces the lookup tables. However, it is a mixed bag too. Some scenes look significantly better, others look worse. My search continues. Here are few comparisons. If anyone found ideal way to have great color grading while getting proper blacks in SDR, let me know.

Vanilla (terrible!):

mod (so much better!):

And then ship interior, opposite result

vanilla (great!):

mod (washed out):

New Atlantis looks a bit better with the mod, I am really not a fan of the green piss filter.

vanilla:

mod:

But then I am on Mars exterior, and vanilla looks better:

mod:

 

[Xcell Miguel]

I am quite unsatisfied with the washed out blacks of Starfield on my panny plasma (which has amazing blacks in games that are competently made) so I tested "Natural LUT" mod that replaces the lookup tables. However, it is a mixed bag too. Some scenes look significantly better, others look worse. My search continues. Here are few comparisons. If anyone found ideal way to have great color grading while getting proper blacks in SDR, let me know.

There are so many LUTs mods now, I tried a few and I think those look the best (better contrasts and deeper blacks) while keeping the color grading :
- SGS's LUTs (Luma 50 version, Luma 100 is too colored)
- Reduced LUTs (50 Contrast and 75 Contrast are quite good

For NaturaLUT, did you try the enhanced version too ?

Note : you can change the LUTs on the fly when the game is running. For the game to load the new LUTs files you have to load a save in another area (that use a different LUT) so it unloads the current one and load the new one. Then you can load the area you were in and see how the new LUT change the image.
I use 4 saves in different areas to compare LUTs and chose the best one, it's faster than reloading the game.
If you like some but not others, you can mix the LUTs files as they are mostly named after locations.

 

[Denton]

For NaturaLUT, did you try the enhanced version too ?

Just the standard one for now, I will try the others, thanks.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Any examples with flora and fauna?

Animals aren't in (except some critters in sand caves). Like many things in Star Citizen, the persistence of the MMO side is slowing everything to a crawl. Probably the citizencon this year will blow out the single player according to rumours though, so that should make everything simpler.

But fauna in Starfield ain't procedurally generated, not like No man's sky.

City wise, nothing has beaten this in procedural tech.




Don't get me wrong, I'm liking what i am playing with Starfield, it looks quite nice imho, but with all the segmentations of the map and loadings, for the mysterious price it takes on hardware to render, I'm puzzled.

But this could be the reason why, not so optimized Todd

 

[SlimySnake]

Horizon.

Nah, you are confusing using procedural generation tools with procedurally generated environments that are built on the fly. GG used those tools to procedurally generate levels which they then touched up and shipped with the game on disc. Starfield and No Mans sky let their tools build out the worlds on the fly as you load into them from assets that are shipped on disc. there are probably some templates out there like say returnal and remnant 2 which are then manipulated or procedurally altered as you drop into a planet, but trust me, they did not ship 1000 planets on disc. they shipped assets that are rearranged and built together.

Some of the worlds where the story takes you look much better than the other worlds because the devs likely hand curated them a la horizon, but they cant do that with every world. of course, the trees in question are handcrafted and made to look like that. you can say horizon's trees look better and you'd be right but those trees in starfield are designed by the artists to look like that. they look way better in motion than they do in screenshots as that video i linked above shows.

This one is from a story mission.

 

[Thaedolus]

Nah, the game’s loading is cpu bound and that cpu sucks.

The first load into the game is 25 seconds on my PC. 7.5 gbps ssd with an 5.0 ghz Intel cpu. Alex is getting faster loading because his cpu is even faster than mine.

Fast traveling is faster on my pc and on Xbox because it’s not doing that initial load.

It’s about 5 seconds on mine when hitting continue from the title screen…I did just upgrade to a 13700k but I don’t remember it being much longer on my 7700k w/ an M.1

 

[SlimySnake]

Its because the engine is from 2006 only with ducktaped features, you will never get good results

Literally every engine nowadays is like that though. ND built their uncharted engine from scratch in 2005 and by 2006 had to throw all of it away because it was awful. After that they decided NEVER to start from scratch again. its in an interview somewhere. so they are reusing their engine as well to this day making adjustments and enhancements.

technically ue5 is built on top of that 2006 era UE3 that produced the first Gears of war. I can promise you GG is still using that same killzone 2 engine from the ps3 era.

I think bethesda has done a great job upgrading some aspects of their engines, and its produced some striking visuals in most levels. The problem is that the game relies upon procedurally generated levels for its outdoor planet exploration and that combined with dynamic time of day can produce some very BAD visuals. But their handcrafted interiors have stunning lighting, asset quality and physics.

Those zoomed in screenshots dont represent the actual quality of the game.

 

[SlimySnake]

It’s about 5 seconds on mine when hitting continue from the title screen…I did just upgrade to a 13700k but I don’t remember it being much longer on my 7700k w/ an M.1

i didnt remember it being that long either but it could be due to the mods i have installed now that i didnt last week.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

That level doesn’t hold up to inspection but it looks good overall in motion. Even the trees. Maybe the xsx settings are too low but on PC it looks fine.

The trees look awful. The lighting in New Atlantis is awful. This is the premier city in the game and it just does nothing for me at all.

Cyberpunk is so much better in this regard. There's nothing next-gen about Starfield. Those promo landscape scenes were all massive bullshots

The interiors look good - but it's copy pasta everywhere.

 

[Kataploom]

Literally every engine nowadays is like that though. ND built their uncharted engine from scratch in 2005 and by 2006 had to throw all of it away because it was awful. After that they decided NEVER to start from scratch again. its in an interview somewhere. so they are reusing their engine as well to this day making adjustments and enhancements.

technically ue5 is built on top of that 2006 era UE3 that produced the first Gears of war. I can promise you GG is still using that same killzone 2 engine from the ps3 era.

I think bethesda has done a great job upgrading some aspects of their engines, and its produced some striking visuals in most levels. The problem is that the game relies upon procedurally generated levels for its outdoor planet exploration and that combined with dynamic time of day can produce some very BAD visuals. But their handcrafted interiors have stunning lighting, asset quality and physics.

Those zoomed in screenshots dont represent the actual quality of the game.

I agree, I downloaded it just to do benchmark in my PC and it looks amazing in interiors. Game is clearly not for me though, but it still kills way better in person than in videos

 

[Bo_Hazem]

DF got their hands forced for this comparison (XBX vs PC) after so many callouts. That looks nasty.

 

[DJ12]

Whoops, forgot I clicked on it from the link above lol

anyway, looks like some performance is coming from the "not Bethesda" crowd already.

 

[KormaChameleon]

Whoops, forgot I clicked on it from the link above lol

anyway, looks like some performance is coming from the "not Bethesda" crowd already.

As I am understanding, Bethesda has made a pigs ear of the API?

 

[Gaiff]

Literally every engine nowadays is like that though. ND built their uncharted engine from scratch in 2005 and by 2006 had to throw all of it away because it was awful. After that they decided NEVER to start from scratch again. its in an interview somewhere. so they are reusing their engine as well to this day making adjustments and enhancements.

technically ue5 is built on top of that 2006 era UE3 that produced the first Gears of war. I can promise you GG is still using that same killzone 2 engine from the ps3 era.

I think bethesda has done a great job upgrading some aspects of their engines, and its produced some striking visuals in most levels. The problem is that the game relies upon procedurally generated levels for its outdoor planet exploration and that combined with dynamic time of day can produce some very BAD visuals. But their handcrafted interiors have stunning lighting, asset quality and physics.

Those zoomed in screenshots dont represent the actual quality of the game.

This game can look really good at times but the fact that it uses like 4GB of VRAM at SX settings/1440p is just frustrating. This means there's a ton of unused VRAM that could probably go into higher quality textures that this game desperately needs at times.

 

[RoadHazard]

At least the map wont be divided in to multiple cells.

Hopefully we get 1 gainst map with tons of rpg quest line.

Maybe not the map, but there still won't be seamless interiors etc I'm sure.

 

[feynoob]

Maybe not the map, but there still won't be seamless interiors etc I'm sure.

There will be limitations with objects.
Bethesda have them all on different cells.

 

[SlimySnake]

This game can look really good at times but the fact that it uses like 4GB of VRAM at SX settings/1440p is just frustrating. This means there's a ton of unused VRAM that could probably go into higher quality textures that this game desperately needs at times.

Even maxed out, it uses 5-6GB max. This game was clearly designed around series S specs. Xbox Series X has 5GB more vram than the series s does for games.

This is basically the first game we've seen that is next gen only from MS first party that has been held back by the series s. And sadly, its also held back the PC versions.

 

[SlimySnake]

The trees look awful. The lighting in New Atlantis is awful. This is the premier city in the game and it just does nothing for me at all.

Cyberpunk is so much better in this regard. There's nothing next-gen about Starfield. Those promo landscape scenes were all massive bullshots

The interiors look good - but it's copy pasta everywhere.

The downgrade on the planets sucks but the game looks phenomenal indoors and on hand crafted towns. Neon City and Akila City both look fantastic.

Keep playing, you only see interiors repeated in side quests. most faction and main quests use new areas and they all look fantastic and a clear leap over interiors in ANY other game ive seen last including TLOU2 and Cyberpunk. I honestly dont know how you can look at those gifs i posted above and say its copy pasta or has nothing next gen about it. the lighting stands out immediately as next gen. the asset quality too.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

The downgrade on the planets sucks but the game looks phenomenal indoors and on hand crafted towns. Neon City and Akila City both look fantastic.

Keep playing, you only see interiors repeated in side quests. most faction and main quests use new areas and they all look fantastic and a clear leap over interiors in ANY other game ive seen last including TLOU2 and Cyberpunk. I honestly dont know how you can look at those gifs i posted above and say its copy pasta or has nothing next gen about it. the lighting stands out immediately as next gen. the asset quality too.

Akila doesn't look that good to me either. I haven't gotten to Neon yet

Interiors as I say look good, in a sterile kind of way. There's something flat about the lighting, but it still looks good aesthetically. Other last gen/cross-gen titles do interiors just as well. It looks good, but it's not like "next gen only" good.

 

[SKYF@ll]

The downgrade on the planets sucks but the game looks phenomenal indoors and on hand crafted towns. Neon City and Akila City both look fantastic.

Keep playing, you only see interiors repeated in side quests. most faction and main quests use new areas and they all look fantastic and a clear leap over interiors in ANY other game ive seen last including TLOU2 and Cyberpunk. I honestly dont know how you can look at those gifs i posted above and say its copy pasta or has nothing next gen about it. the lighting stands out immediately as next gen. the asset quality too.

I think indoors and outer space are beautiful.
On the other hand, the plants and character models don't seem to have evolved since the PS3 generation.

 

[Xcell Miguel]

When a game uses more than 8 GB of VRAM and has average to good quality textures people complain, I get it.
But now when Starfield uses less than 8 GB and has very high detail textures they complain too... I don't get it.

I play in 4K with 85% resolution and DLSS, it uses about 7-8 GB on my 4090 and textures looks very detailed and sharp (and I'm not using any sharpen filter), only a few textures are not as sharp as most of them (mostly some clothes and foliage up close), but I'm often zooming on things as everything is super detailed.

I'm surprised by how low the VRAM usage is for how decent texture quality is.

 

[artsi]

New Atlantis trees are funny because they are not only ugly, but you can walk on top of them.

They're literally Super Mario trees.

 

[eNT1TY]

After a week with the game i am disappointed in the visuals, they are serviceable mostly, underwhelming often and occasionally great. The game has among the worst npcs and vegetation i have seen in the past 4 years out any AAA title; even main npcs and companions look worse than secondary or random villagers in say FFXVI or HFW (those aren't better games than Starfield but they look a hell of a lot better in those 2 aspects). Indoors the game fares better than outdoors but that isn't saying much. It exceeds lightly to moderately modded FO4 and not much more. Habitats/Ship interiors look clean and sharp but upon close inspection most objects are low geometry with most of the perceived minor details merely being normal maps, they are a tier above something like Alien Isolation with higher clutter object density; old hat visuals presented nicely still look good though.

 

[chromatic9]

Reminds me of AC Unity on how good and bad it can look.

More details, geometry and AO needs more loading and CPU calculations and it's already pushing loading on console. Some nice headroom for PC modders though.

 

[SlimySnake]

When a game uses more than 8 GB of VRAM and has average to good quality textures people complain, I get it.
But now when Starfield uses less than 8 GB and has very high detail textures they complain too... I don't get it.

I play in 4K with 85% resolution and DLSS, it uses about 7-8 GB on my 4090 and textures looks very detailed and sharp (and I'm not using any sharpen filter), only a few textures are not as sharp as most of them (mostly some clothes and foliage up close), but I'm often zooming on things as everything is super detailed.

I'm surprised by how low the VRAM usage is for how decent texture quality is.

Nah, the problem is that the game did not look like this just two months ago. At least the outdoors areas. the textures were way better in the e3 trailer, there was better geometry and no fog holding back the draw distance. if the game was doing all of that at 5 gb then no one would care.

Right now, even on your 24 GB 4090, 16-17 gb are going unused. this is a next gen only game that was designed around xsx specs which has 13.5 gb of vram available for both gpu and cpu tasks, and yet just 5gb of it is being used. we can look at other games this gen, cross gen games that push texture and lod quality on the xsx while downgrading this stuff on the xss, but we are not seeing that here. meaning the xsx isnt being pushed either.

 

[SlimySnake]

Akila doesn't look that good to me either. I haven't gotten to Neon yet

Interiors as I say look good, in a sterile kind of way. There's something flat about the lighting, but it still looks good aesthetically. Other last gen/cross-gen titles do interiors just as well. It looks good, but it's not like "next gen only" good.

Akila can go from looking mediocre to amazing in different time of day. It's the level of detail that really stands out during day time lighting conditions.

I couldnt disagree with you more on the lighting. maybe the xsx version you are playing is using worse lighting or something leading it to feeling flat, but on PC, the lighting has great volumetrics in indoor areas.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Akila can go from looking mediocre to amazing in different time of day. It's the level of detail that really stands out during day time lighting conditions.

I couldnt disagree with you more on the lighting. maybe the xsx version you are playing is using worse lighting or something leading it to feeling flat, but on PC, the lighting has great volumetrics in indoor areas.

Don't get me wrong - the game looks visually pleasing part of the time. But even the highs it does have I wouldn't place higher than the best of the cross-gen efforts thus far.

The inconsistency is a real issue though, the NPCs, many of the cities, and the open world environments can look very sub par. The lighting in particular of places in New Atlantis just looks terrible. It's almost as if separate art teams worked on these areas.

 

[SlimySnake]

Don't get me wrong - the game looks visually pleasing part of the time. But even the highs it does have I wouldn't place higher than the best of the cross-gen efforts thus far.

The inconsistency is a real issue though, the NPCs, many of the cities, and the open world environments can look very sub par. The lighting in particular of places in New Atlantis just looks terrible. It's almost as if separate art teams worked on these areas.

The inconsistency really hurts, but i think its pretty consistent in interiors. its the outdoor areas that fail to be consistent, especially the cities which look really flat at night which is weird because their realtime GI system along with their fancy volumetric systems should produce stunning lighting at any time of day, especially at night time. i legit think GTA5 looks better at night than some of these cities at night. of course, Neon City looks amazing at all times and its night time there all the time so who knows whats going on. maybe it was done by separate teams.

I think indoors and outer space are beautiful.
On the other hand, the plants and character models don't seem to have evolved since the PS3 generation.

Is this on PC? just took some screenshot and while i couldnt find the same exact areas, i think your game is missing shadows which is whats causing the foliage to look so bad. Id say the foliage is on par with PS4 quality. nothing next gen but definitely not as bad as your screenshots show.

NPCs look better too including sarah, but they are very ugly even on PC. Its mostly the eyes which are too big and crazy looking, but it also seems like they went out of their way to make NPCs ugly. everyone is either obese or inbred looking. These are the prettiest NPCs i could find lmao.

If you are playing on PC, id recommend changing some settings to high. ive heard it said that the game doesnt look very good on medium even if DF and other PC outlets are saying it doesnt make a difference. i have most of my settings set to high.

If you're on xbox, is this series s or series x version?

 

[Trogdor1123]

Playing on series s right now. Just got to the lodge but there is a “fast travel directly from the missions menu” at the top centre of the screen and it won’t go away. I’ve tried fast travel but it doesn’t change anything. Anyone have an idea? Or is it a bug? I tried restarting the game and the stupid box even shows up on the menu

 

[SKYF@ll]

The inconsistency really hurts, but i think its pretty consistent in interiors. its the outdoor areas that fail to be consistent, especially the cities which look really flat at night which is weird because their realtime GI system along with their fancy volumetric systems should produce stunning lighting at any time of day, especially at night time. i legit think GTA5 looks better at night than some of these cities at night. of course, Neon City looks amazing at all times and its night time there all the time so who knows whats going on. maybe it was done by separate teams.


Is this on PC? just took some screenshot and while i couldnt find the same exact areas, i think your game is missing shadows which is whats causing the foliage to look so bad. Id say the foliage is on par with PS4 quality. nothing next gen but definitely not as bad as your screenshots show.

NPCs look better too including sarah, but they are very ugly even on PC. Its mostly the eyes which are too big and crazy looking, but it also seems like they went out of their way to make NPCs ugly. everyone is either obese or inbred looking. These are the prettiest NPCs i could find lmao.

If you are playing on PC, id recommend changing some settings to high. ive heard it said that the game doesnt look very good on medium even if DF and other PC outlets are saying it doesnt make a difference. i have most of my settings set to high.

If you're on xbox, is this series s or series x version?

All my images are from the Xbox Series X version.
Your PC version looks really nice and is completely different.

 

[CGNoire]

i think DF may need to upgrade their PCs

Lets not be that way...Im sure there PC's are Commerically Accurate.

 

[CGNoire]

how do i turn off hyperthreading, geez. will it break windows to make this run faster

You change it in your Bios settings when booting. Just put a text reminder on your desktop to remember to turn it back on.

I had to do this to get RE3make to stop stuttering.

 

[Denton]

Your PC version looks really nice and is completely different.

Don't worry, PC version maxed out can look ugly as fuck too, the game is wildly, wildly inconsistent

 

[Panajev2001a]

The inconsistency really hurts, but i think its pretty consistent in interiors. its the outdoor areas that fail to be consistent, especially the cities which look really flat at night which is weird because their realtime GI system along with their fancy volumetric systems should produce stunning lighting at any time of day, especially at night time. i legit think GTA5 looks better at night than some of these cities at night. of course, Neon City looks amazing at all times and its night time there all the time so who knows whats going on. maybe it was done by separate teams.


Is this on PC? just took some screenshot and while i couldnt find the same exact areas, i think your game is missing shadows which is whats causing the foliage to look so bad. Id say the foliage is on par with PS4 quality. nothing next gen but definitely not as bad as your screenshots show.

NPCs look better too including sarah, but they are very ugly even on PC. Its mostly the eyes which are too big and crazy looking, but it also seems like they went out of their way to make NPCs ugly. everyone is either obese or inbred looking. These are the prettiest NPCs i could find lmao.

If you are playing on PC, id recommend changing some settings to high. ive heard it said that the game doesnt look very good on medium even if DF and other PC outlets are saying it doesnt make a difference. i have most of my settings set to high.

If you're on xbox, is this series s or series x version?

Shadows on High make a Huge difference on PC (going by Steam Deck settings). Low is really bad meaning it has glitches and looks very flat, Medium is much better, but yeah does miss some shadows on characters and objects…
Problem is that High is too performance taxing (Bethesda’s could maybe have a Medium+ settings that adds more shadows in a limited range near the camera maybe?)…

 

[RoadHazard]

New Atlantis trees are funny because they are not only ugly, but you can walk on top of them.

They're literally Super Mario trees.

Wow, I've literally never thought of those SMB platforms as trees until just now. Maybe because they don't look like trees. But still, TIL.