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Watch_Dogs original graphical effects (E3 2012/13) found in game files [PC]
- Thread starter Jibbed
- Start date
You mean Ubisoft's reality of multi-platform development.
It seems you all blame consoles, parity, etc. But then there is only two ways to understand this:
- performance is altered in a good way (that's how things are presented here), then no one understand why those effects weren't in the game in the first place, etc... Performance on PCs would have been better with more polishing it would seem. But then, if performance is indeed better, why wouldn't it be better on consoles too? This is a real question.
- performance is altered in a bad way (that's not how things are presented here), then we could conclude somehow that Ubi didn't want to implement very unstable effects for 99% of their customers.
Option 2 would be less cringe worthy.
At the end of the day, this game seems to be caught between PC CPUs not being efficiently used and GPU compute barely touched on consoles. That's not a next gen game at heart.
- performance is altered in a good way (that's how things are presented here), then no one understand why those effects weren't in the game in the first place, etc... Performance on PCs would have been better with more polishing it would seem. But then, if performance is indeed better, why wouldn't it be better on consoles too? This is a real question.
- performance is altered in a bad way (that's not how things are presented here), then we could conclude somehow that Ubi didn't want to implement very unstable effects for 99% of their customers.
Option 2 would be less cringe worthy.
At the end of the day, this game seems to be caught between PC CPUs not being efficiently used and GPU compute barely touched on consoles. That's not a next gen game at heart.
Yeah, this stuff was most likely left behind to tailor and optimize the game for console. The new look got all the QA.
It fixes bugs that aren't in the console versions Alej. Console got the polish.
Krusenstern
Banned
This is unbelievable.
Holy shit, Ubi.
Holy shit, Ubi.
Prime crotch
Banned
Options that they would have to give support to, which they might not be willing to allocate time on what was an already rushed project.
FrozenXcalibur
Neo Member
Damnit, I just reached 100% a few hours ago and now I notice this thread. -_-
That explanation flies out the window when one dude in his spare time got around to fixing the stuttering issues plaguing the game since launch, reimplemented all this shit, AND improved general performance.
If Ubisoft expects PC gamers to buy their $60 products, and I'm sorry but shit guys holy fuck, then they should be assed to give even half a fuck and fix the performance problems before a customer upset with what he bought has to reverse engineer the game and do it himself.
So glad just about the only Ubi games I buy are Rayman. I'm just so sick of the way they treat PC owners especially.
Brerlappin
Member
We need more screenshots people
Some console optimization is probably responsible for the stuttering in the first place. Like the optimized for 30fps games we get.
) as soon as i get home and try that mod!Prime crotch
Banned
We'll see how it goes in the long term, the thing about these community fixes is that the onus of glitches are on the users, for some reason Ubi decided that would be better to not officially implement these features as tweakable options, and deadlines were probably the main reason for it.
Dirk Benedict
Gold Member
No, I mean all developers. Another recent example, if any were needed, is Wolfenstein. The PC build has features disabled by default and hidden from the average customer who doesn't know how to use the game's console or config files.
These features make the game look much nicer, but have bugs that probably couldn't be fixed in the time the development team had. It's an old story and one that's not really worth getting in a froth over, in my opinion.
I simply don't believe they turned all this off with only "Parity" clause at all, the effects seems to glitch and have issues, the Ultra Textures that consoles run have a POM like effect already and I think this is confusing some of the info here.
Intrigued I am so I will test this tonight on my PC and see that I get and post some detail on it..right now I am convinced this game was a rushed/many hands corporate solution cluster that no version is Optimised, the game needed another 12 months Minimum in the oven as the crunch never reached the Optimisation point IMOP!
The reimplemented stuff is neither here nor there for me, really, as has been said multiple times they were probably cut due to QA.
What chaps my ass, and I said as much in my post, is that he fixed the stuttering issues inherent and improved general performance. Now that? That's inex-fucking-cusable, no matter how anyone tries to spin it.
the cake is fake
Banned
come on, dawgs. post more screens!!!
Chû Totoro
Member
Is it possible that they let all this in the game files so they can "patch" it magically later so it don't look too soon way better than console versions?
Yeah I know what some may thinking reading my post but I really think it may be a possibility.
Do you guys know if there already had been this sort of trickery?
Yeah I know what some may thinking reading my post but I really think it may be a possibility.
Do you guys know if there already had been this sort of trickery?
He put it in as a proof of concept more than anything. I don't think he's released a version since adding it, but the next release will have the DOF farther in the distance to hide the LOD changes he's making. That, headlight shadows are supposedly fixed, and he claims he's playing with Ultra textures enabled on a single 2GB 680 and keeping a high framerate at all times.
You can supposedly also control how quickly the camera focuses on things, so maybe that could be tweaked, too.
MarshMellow96
Member
Looks like that performance patch will be coming sooner than they'd like...
to nuke these files from existence
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
That is fucking crazy! Beat it on ps4 in like 2 days.. and I already thought it looked good. But this :/
This uses the patch.dat/fat files to change things. No xml required. He's unpacking the game files, making changes, then repacking them as a patch.
Dirk Benedict
Gold Member
That makes me sick. I have friends on Steam who don't have more than 2GB's on their cards and would like to run Ultra textures. They don't even look all that great. This person is marvelous for going out of his/her way to make this happen.
God damned it, Ubi.
OK I'll test this. Better not break my game.
Because they were PC-specific optimizations?
No shit? If true, it'll be hilarious for all the 2GB vRAM fear mongering that went on.
IF true, though.
The first thing we've spoke in perf thread was XML by Kaidzait(?) and now, the user TheWorse, is working on this new dat/fat files or how do we want to call it. Both guys from guru3d (shoutout)
I am refreshing this page every minute - http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=390114&page=42
And kadzait got banned for trolling TheWorse's thread claiming he stole his work. Shit was hilarious.
FunkyLounge
Member
My 570 (!) chews through them as well. It has very little impact on performance and fixes the stuttering for me somewhat. That is the great thing about this.
Canis lupus
Member
The difference between 2012 and final release is more than just a few better effects, it's like a completely different game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_A6Z3gkXlk
It is on my rig: gtx 670/3570k/16gb ram, barely around 30-40fps in high/ultra. One of Ubi people on twitter said pc version sold 1m copies of FC3 and a press release before that had FC3 total sales at 6m. It's no secret AAA games sell a multitude more on consoles.
I think it's definitely gonna have an impact on performance because the 2012 graphics look much better, I would love to be proven wrong, I want to play the game with the original graphics.
Wasn't it a gtx680? So they prepared a demo optimizing the shit out of it for 1 single gpu.
I've got a 2GB GTX 770, will give it a whirl on Ultra settings in a few hours.
Deaf Spacker
Memb
After buying Watch_Dogs and finding out how poorly optimised it is for PC, as well as how bland it looks, I'll never buy a Ubisoft game again unless I get it cheap.
Yeah, I was reading throught the whole thread. That was kinda unbearable tbh.
Sounds good. Looking forward to hearing more performance impressions.
Uh oh.
The game uses a very surreal texture implementation. For every texture, there is a basic texture with mipmaps and a higher resolution texture without mipmaps. Lower texture quality uses the medium mip of the regular texture as max. Medium texture quality uses the regular texture and high texture quality (called ultra ingame) uses regular texture BUT blend to higher texture for close ups. Close up distance depends of screen resolution. So it's a pixel/texel ratio in the end.
The problem is that I think gpu drivers are not optimized to load in memory every texture twice. They are optimized to mess with mipmaps to avoid shimmering and to save memory. Walking or driving in watch dogs implies you need to load a new big texture every time a material is near the camera. It's not the same that showing the big mip of the texture already loaded.
In one hand, using tweaks as always loading the big mip, can fix stuttering. But you will have shimmering here and there. I'm testing now with using ultra textures with or without mips as medium textures. So the game don't mess with double number of files, with good results.
A lot of jumping to conclusions here. As a programmer myself, I'm willing to bet that these effects are not in there because there are some bugs in specific circumstances that trigger full-blown crashes, and they weren't going to have time to get them working properly, so they just got pulled while they focused on other things.
Lord Panda
The Sea is Always Right
Wow if this is true then enforcing parity for the PC version is a pretty low act.
Perhaps Ubisoft were waiting until the console versions had run their course before 'releasing' an Enhanced Edition / Director's Cut patch for PC ... sort of like what GoG does since they put their gamers first.
Perhaps Ubisoft were waiting until the console versions had run their course before 'releasing' an Enhanced Edition / Director's Cut patch for PC ... sort of like what GoG does since they put their gamers first.