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Games with the most impressive draw distance

dl77

Member
I remember at the launch of the PS2 being impressed with the draw distance in Smugglers Run. Coming from the PS1 era it was pretty impressive to be able to see places far in the distance that you could drive to.

playstation-39858-21322238768.jpg


https://youtu.be/vPQ70sVAyGc?t=3m55s
 
I was pretty amazed by Witcher 3's draw distance:


You can see Geralt's marker at the top right, and the three structures in view are Eldberg Lighthouse, Kaer Almhult and Tor Gvalch'ca at the other end of the visible map:


Then, just for fun, I found a point further away where I could get those same three structures in view as well as the headland where I took the first screenshot down at the bottom left:


Oh, and one with Crow's Perch (way off on the left) Novigrad and Oxenfurt all in view at once:

 

haveheart

Banned
Delta Force (released 1998!!!) and Novalogic's Voxel Engine were jawdropping. This was really revolutionary. Found this post:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=141010243&postcount=40

Found this screenshot:

delta_force.jpg

You can walk as far as you can see. No walls etc.

RPS even did a short Have you played... on it when Wildlands was released:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/15/delta-force-retrospective/

The game's multiplayer was awesome. You could snipe enemies from miles away by trying to hit tiny bits of voxels, basically black dots.
 

sleepnaught

Member
Delta Force (released 1998!!!) and Novalogic's Voxel Engine were jawdropping. This was really revolutionary. Found this post:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=141010243&postcount=40

Found this screenshot:

delta_force.jpg

You can walk as far as you can see. No walls etc.

RPS even did a short Have you played... on it when Wildlands was released:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/15/delta-force-retrospective/

The game's multiplayer was awesome. You could snipe enemies from miles away by trying to hit tiny bits of voxels, basically black dots.
Incredible game for its time, I still remember sniper duels from miles and miles out. My first online game ever!
 

Blackthorn

"hello?" "this is vagina"
Did that screenshot yesterday [PS4], the moment I saw Novigrad I knew I had to take it:



And here's some more:



I'm still really surprised they managed to squeeze out that much juice out of ps4 in 2015 multiplatform release, I can't begin to imagine how this must look maxed out on PC in 4K, geezus.
That's likely the very same hill! Seeing Novigrad for the first time is one of my favourite moments this gen, especially as you get closer and closer and the incredible scale of the place reveals itself.
 
Delta Force (released 1998!!!) and Novalogic's Voxel Engine were jawdropping. This was really revolutionary. Found this post:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=141010243&postcount=40

Found this screenshot:

delta_force.jpg

You can walk as far as you can see. No walls etc.

RPS even did a short Have you played... on it when Wildlands was released:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/15/delta-force-retrospective/

The game's multiplayer was awesome. You could snipe enemies from miles away by trying to hit tiny bits of voxels, basically black dots.

Wow that brings me back.. used to have weekend LAN parties with that game, until Operation Flashpoint came out.. which lasted until Battlefield 1942 came out..
 

Falchion

Member
I remember being very impressed with Just Cause 2 back in the day, you could see for miles all around from the air.
 

heringer

Member
While BotW is technically far behind a lot of games mentioned here, no other game I played brought me the same feeling of awe when looking in the horizon, including amazing games that are indeed technically better, like The Witcher 3 and Arkham Knight. I guess that says a lot about the topography and art style.

I will say Just Cause 3 gives me similar feelings too. Some beaches can look stunning in the distance.
 
Halo 3 immediately comes to my mind. It wowed me back with the reveal trailer with the skybox in the background being an actual effect in the far distance. That engine was capable of some nifty stuff. In Valhalla for example they actually have outer space being rendered above the clouds even though you'd never see it normally. Even in ODST with the crash into mombasa the whole city was actually rendered in that scene.

Granted many games pulled off crazy stuff draw distance wise as the gen went on like GTA4/5. I'm just more marveled by consoles that pull of crazy draw distance
 

NimbusD

Member
It was playing Zelda that gave me the idea for the thread as the game impressed me, I wasn't saying I think it has the best draw distence of any game ever, merely that it was a starting point to discuss games with a fantastic draw distance

Hopefully we can get back to discussing other games now :)
Shhh, you're not allowed to be impressed or even compliment Nintendo games graphically in any way. Didn't you hear the draw distance is awful, the graphics are foggy dull and faded.

For serious though I dunno, just cause 3 is pretty good. Any sort of open world PC game is pretty good as long as it's customizable through options. Impressive to me takes into account the hardware the game is running on... Which come back to botw but I dare not speak to praises for fear of retribution lol.
 
WoW Legion introduced a significant increase in draw distance. While it's not that impressive when compared to new games, for a game released in 2004 it looks pretty good.
 

Bl@de

Member
Googled an image of Arma 3 and stumbled upon a similar thread, lol.

But yeah, Arma 3.

Yeah, I think the maximum of the view distance slider was 27km. Performance with that? Lol.

And in Arma you can still target enemies at that distance. Stuff doesn't fade out like in other titles in this thread.
 

Jezan

Member
What's with the semantics bullshit by some posters in this thread? Don't be a putz and turn it into a system pissing match.

BOTW is pretty amazing for what it does on handheld hardware.

Xenoblade was the first game that really wowed me in terms of console hardware oh draw distance. X was equally as impressive.
Nah, it's some posters saying BotW because it's they FotM.

A poster said Oblivion did years ago what BotW does now and he was called out. Iirc there is a command to disable draw distance limits on PC and it was huge draw distance.

turok-dinosaur-hunter-fog-knife.jpg



are you high ?
that must explain all the fog
Way to miss the joke.
 

majik13

Member
BoTW continually amazes me with its views, more so than any other game so far. Previously was probably Xenoblade on Wii. Now does that mean best "Draw distance"? Kinda of a subjective question depending on what is actually meant.
And Ive played a lot of open world games on 360, PS3, PS4, etc. as well. Now those other games very likely have more technically superior draw distance and graphics. But Zelda, just has a certain art style, colors and lighting that really shines, plus the fact that you know, you can literally reach and interact with virtually anything you can see. Unlike the vast majority of other open world games. It also helps that it has stellar "level design" for an open world game.
But yeah there are a lot of really great looking open world games that likely have more detail and LOD than Zelda.
 

jelly

Member
Delta Force (released 1998!!!) and Novalogic's Voxel Engine were jawdropping. This was really revolutionary. Found this post:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=141010243&postcount=40

Found this screenshot:

delta_force.jpg

You can walk as far as you can see. No walls etc.

RPS even did a short Have you played... on it when Wildlands was released:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/15/delta-force-retrospective/

The game's multiplayer was awesome. You could snipe enemies from miles away by trying to hit tiny bits of voxels, basically black dots.

Loved the multiplayer in Delta Force, only time I've enjoyed sniping and running for 5 mins to knife the bastard you can't find in the voxel grass is oh so sweet. There such cool moments were you spot them just as they spot you and then you both miss because of the distance and bullet trajectory. Adjust, take the shot.
 
On mobile so can't post screens, but GTAV Remastered has pretty impressive draw distance. R* sure did a great job remastering it, but shame about the controls ;).
 
BotW is really good in giving the impression of a far draw distance. This is why it looks so fantastic most of the time, and appears to have a better draw distance than games on more powerful hardware, but sometimes these tricks don't work, than it looks less impressive. Technically this game is obviously hold back by its WiiU roots.

Sidenote, the sun movement and the sunrise/sunset, complete with morning fog and sun rays between trees or mountains are a joy to watch in BotW.
 

Noobcraft

Member
How does Elite Dangerous render surrounding systems? I know you can see (and could theoretically fly) to stars thousands of light years away.
 

fahr

Member
So, basically, the real question is, which game is being developed for the highest specifications possible?

Graphics threads are always the same. It's never about the art. It's all about the tech and how expensive it is.

The terrific draw distance in the Witcher 3 ain't so hot on an i3 with 4 gigs of RAM and a GeForce 620.
 

Sande

Member
So, basically, the real question is, which game is being developed for the highest specifications possible?
Well, no. Some games focus more on better IQ, some focus on draw distance or other stuff. It isn't simply a question of how much computing power you throw at the game, although it's obviously a huge contributor.

Graphics threads are always the same. It's never about the art. It's all about the tech and how expensive it is.
That's because art and graphics are usually considered separate things. And "Which games have the best art style / aesthetics" threads are all over the place. It's not all about graphics.
 
ARMA 3 has insane draw distance.

Bethesda games on PC, too, but the LOD is lacking without EXTREMELY performance-intensive tweaks.

Holy shit. No other game has nothing on this when it comes to draw distances. Jesus fuck you can see the godamn space station from the planet. Insane draw distance.

You can even see the moon, dude. That thing is hundreds of KM away!

I mean, shit.

You can see the stars.

Legendary draw distance.

It was playing Zelda that gave me the idea for the thread as the game impressed me, I wasn't saying I think it has the best draw distence of any game ever, merely that it was a starting point to discuss games with a fantastic draw distance
That makes sense, and I assumed that's why you posted Zelda even though it certainly wouldn't have been my pick.

oh wait, I mean

dude Zelda didn't invent draw distance
smh zleda fans
 

Spladam

Member
So, basically, the real question is, which game is being developed for the highest specifications possible?

Graphics threads are always the same. It's never about the art. It's all about the tech and how expensive it is.

The terrific draw distance in the Witcher 3 ain't so hot on an i3 with 4 gigs of RAM and a GeForce 620.

This is not necessarily true, look at the thread, there is a game from 1999. Draw distances for any given hardware are not created equal, it has much to do with the artwork and how the dev's can optimized LOD out of a given specification. Witcher 3 on it's lowest settings still looks decent and draws rather far. Just look how many people mention BotW and Xenoblade for the Wii in the thread, those were both great optimization challenges for the Developers, challenges that they managed to overcome with clever art and well optimized game code.

Hardware power is never a substitute for great software optimization. Look at what Guerrilla Games did with Horizon Zero Dawn. That's using the minuscule 1.8TFLOP GPU in the PS4. (a metric we tend to over use in the gaming world, as like I said, visuals stem more from software optimization and clever artist than it does from floating point processing). On PC there is often not that dramatic of a difference between the medium settings and the Ultra settings for a given game, especially considering the resource usage delta between those settings on many games.

Take a gander at the Horizon Zero Dawn screenshot thread and you can see what kind of visual fidelity a clever dev can pull off with an efficient art team and well optimized game code. Look at the HZD pics in this thread. Look at the picture of Oblivion above this post, that game can run on a potato.
 

HTupolev

Member
Halo 3 immediately comes to my mind. It wowed me back with the reveal trailer with the skybox in the background being an actual effect in the far distance. That engine was capable of some nifty stuff. In Valhalla for example they actually have outer space being rendered above the clouds even though you'd never see it normally.
The "outer space" background isn't really a "thing you don't see;" it's just what the skybox looks like without the atmospheric scattering effect.
 
Another nice Oblivion modded shot with extra far draw distance I liked

45749-5-1466152976.jpg

Love what modders have done with Beth's games, but you can really tell how shitty the art direction was in Oblivion at times. Like, I get that the visuals are circa 2006, but the Imperial city in that looks nigh-photoshopped in. Like there was no conscious effort on Beth's end to try and keep things like lighting and color-grading in check. I still love Oblvion but I swear at times it's aged visually worse than fucking Morrowind.
 

WaterAstro

Member
I've played BotW recently and have been really impressed with it's draw distance

So what are some other games with really impressive draw distances?

That's impressive draw distance? It's all blurry and shit.

When Uncharted 2 was shown, that hotel roof scene had crazy details even at distance.
 
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