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2017 PC Screenshot Thread
- Thread starter Stallion Free
- Start date
PlayALLtheGames
Banned
Wusup. Had to get in here on my Lenovo Y50 laptop and GTX860M while I wait for my Step-Up from EVGA (to 1080Ti).
Btw this ran like shit.
Btw this ran like shit.
It's not the same, even in the witcher things are different (at least they looked that way last time I checked). I also assumed Ansel simply got a hold of the camera view matrix and manipulated that as a freecam mod, but that doesn't seem to be the case as same-resolution shots look different / use lower quality shaders. I have no idea why they implemented it this way, but it's not ideal to say the least.
Yes I know, I wasn't talking about tiled shots, as that obviously has its limits due to how they're taken and one can't expect shaders to work there in 100% of the cases (for one, depth perspective is off)
I don't think they are. There's not a game to my knowledge which allows 100% same IQ through ansel normal res shot as with a normal game session. It might very well be this is because the 'same resolution' is simply done with the same pipeline as the tiled shot (with a tile number of '1'
) and therefore it might hit restrictions implemented by the game devs for the tiled shot (as all depth based shaders won't work in a tiled shot anyway) as it is under the hood a tiled shot. IMHO ansel should simply manipulate the camera view matrix and leave everything to the game so it renders like a normal frame.
dr_rus
Member
It's the same, in TW3 specifically there is no difference, in all other previous titles I haven't seen any difference either.
MEA though is a different matter, there is certainly some difference but it looks to be scene dependent. I took ~100 shots yesterday in three modes with one viewpoint (ingame / Ansel / Ansel superres) but haven't compared them yet.
I don't think they are. There's not a game to my knowledge which allows 100% same IQ through ansel normal res shot as with a normal game session. It might very well be this is because the 'same resolution' is simply done with the same pipeline as the tiled shot (with a tile number of '1'
IMHO ansel should simply manipulate the camera view matrix and leave everything to the game so it renders like a normal frame.
This is exactly what Ansel do - takes control over the camera in a limited sphere coordinates around the starting point. Whatever quality differences there are are completely due to game's engine reacting to such control loss and/or timestop happening. But this is an implementation detail as Ansel itself is little more than a free camera tool with several capture modes included.
Generally, I think that Ansel is a great tool for those of us who just want to take some screenshots while playing games instead of performing a job of taking screenshots. It is a very basic tool for someone who spends hours on setting up a screenshot of course and is probably irrelevant to them, not even because of quality differences (most such screenshots present quality levels unreachable in a game anyway so why would that be an issue with Ansel suddenly?) but mostly because of other limitations already mentioned here - like the inability to hide the sidebar, or unpause/pause without a camera reset, etc.
This being said, it's certainly a fact that NV still has a lot of work to do on Ansel's options and its integration quality.
perseusveil
Member
perseusveil
Member
therealminime
Member
Been playing ME1 myself after Andromeda and it has held up very respectably visually. The texture pack plus 4k/60 has allowed it to age pretty reasonably. It also helps that it still has so much goddamn style.
XgorreKrusadeX
Neo Member
That mod is amazing....Andromeda looks better but, you can´t tell 10 years separate both games.
dr_rus
Member
So some MEA Ansel investigation:
1. Going into Ansel mode in MEA straight up kills all AO right away. No idea why as it happens in any capture mode and whatever is working in-game should just as well work in a simple screen capture mode of Ansel. Can't find any other changes but this is a big one and it basically makes Ansel 100% unusable in MEA for screenshotting.
2. Doing a superresed shot, in addition to already missing HBAO, expectedly kills all SSRs (they are being swapped for what looks like rough cube maps?) but in addition to that unexpectedly introduces shadow maps rendering issues - basically some shadows just disappear in superresed shots, as if they are being clipped on a basis of regular user resolution because the engine thinks that the user won't see them as they are far away from the original resolution frustum or something.
tldr: Missing HBAO and disappearing shadows are MEA's integration issues (not really FB3's in general as far as I can remember from MEC), SSRs are missing due to nature of tiledshot.
Some comparison shots:
Regular
Ansel regular
Ansel super resolution
Regular
Ansel regular
Ansel super resolution
1. Going into Ansel mode in MEA straight up kills all AO right away. No idea why as it happens in any capture mode and whatever is working in-game should just as well work in a simple screen capture mode of Ansel. Can't find any other changes but this is a big one and it basically makes Ansel 100% unusable in MEA for screenshotting.
2. Doing a superresed shot, in addition to already missing HBAO, expectedly kills all SSRs (they are being swapped for what looks like rough cube maps?) but in addition to that unexpectedly introduces shadow maps rendering issues - basically some shadows just disappear in superresed shots, as if they are being clipped on a basis of regular user resolution because the engine thinks that the user won't see them as they are far away from the original resolution frustum or something.
tldr: Missing HBAO and disappearing shadows are MEA's integration issues (not really FB3's in general as far as I can remember from MEC), SSRs are missing due to nature of tiledshot.
Some comparison shots:
Regular
Ansel regular
Ansel super resolution
Regular
Ansel regular
Ansel super resolution
AngmarsKing701
Member
Not gonna lie, when I first saw this pic I thought of Orisa (Overwatch's new character):
jim2point0
Banned
Whoa. Big differences there with regards to AO and shadows. I've been saying that those Ansel super resolution shots were flat as hell. This illustrates why perfectly.
Holy fucking shit. That's freakish.
Not gonna lie, when I first saw this pic I thought of Orisa (Overwatch's new character):
Oh wow. There is something yes.
The AO missing likely happens due to a not available depth buffer. What makes this strange is that if Ansel just manipulates a camera struct with coords and a view matrix / quaternion, this shouldn't happen: the game would still render the scene as-is.
I couldn't get to the Ansel SDK, I had to log in. I think I still have an nvidia account from 15 years ago or so, but of course don't know password/userid anymore so don't know how the API really works (yet). I.e.: if ansel's API simply requests a pointer to coords/quaternion then it can't do much else indeed. But I don't know, it looks like it does much more than that...
Not saying you're lying tho, don't get me wrong! Your explanation is also what I was thinking but it doesn't make sense how they then botched up ansel integration that way (as it's just a pointer pass). You have access to the Ansel SDK / API docs? (as they're not public
)
dr_rus
Member
The AO missing likely happens due to a not available depth buffer. What makes this strange is that if Ansel just manipulates a camera struct with coords and a view matrix / quaternion, this shouldn't happen: the game would still render the scene as-is.
I couldn't get to the Ansel SDK, I had to log in. I think I still have an nvidia account from 15 years ago or so, but of course don't know password/userid anymore so don't know how the API really works (yet). I.e.: if ansel's API simply requests a pointer to coords/quaternion then it can't do much else indeed. But I don't know, it looks like it does much more than that...
Not saying you're lying tho, don't get me wrong! Your explanation is also what I was thinking but it doesn't make sense how they then botched up ansel integration that way (as it's just a pointer pass). You have access to the Ansel SDK / API docs? (as they're not public
Why would depth buffer disappear suddenly from a free camera mode? It looks like they are disabling AO in Ansel mode for some reason. I don't know why it would be absent otherwise as the game is pretty much render the same frame between FB3's standard no hud option and you pressing Alt-F2 to invoke Ansel.
I've linked the GDC17 presentation which basically describes how Ansel is integrated into games. It's nothing more than a camera control tool with capture engine and some "artistic" filters. It doesn't mess with game's rendering in any way.
I mean, this is what everyone has been saying since the game came out... but it's good to have some comparison shots I guess.
The game looks pretty amazing at max settings, I might spend another 100hours just doing screenshots now..
Thanks to cooly08 for reminding me the existence of this tool.
Really like these.
Hey mods.. my apologies for posting this here but I can't find any answers on how to delete one's account. Can you guys assist please and take this as an official request? I appreciate you signing me up really quickly many years ago and it's been a lot of fun posting here.
Thanks,
Nick
Thanks,
Nick
Modded Mass Effect 1 looked pretty good. I haven't played Andromeda, so I'll reserve judgement on its graphics until I do (funny animations though
Thank you for posting this image. These are my favorite armor designs in anything Mass Effect.
Yes why indeed
That's the question I have too. There's no reason to clear the depth buffer other than 'it'll hurt tile based superresolution renders' and there's no way for the engine to know whether it's a tiled render or not (as in: normal res is tile==1, super res is tile==n). But just guessing. Ok, then which part is doing the camera scaling for the tiles? As rendering to superresolution isn't something simple that's baked in in every engine: you have to manipulate the projection matrix (different from the view matrix based on the camera location/angles) and screenspace operating shader parameters. The matrices are passed as uniforms to the shaders so they can intercept those perhaps (but that too requires ansel writing into variables), but the screenspace shaders have to behave as well, which is custom code per game. Ansel can't simply manipulate those.
the presentation doesn't tell me much tho, no code. Anyway this is going off topic here and we both don't know the fine details and we both have the same questions so there's little we can do to solve the mystery
InquisitorAles
Member
Hello GAF, I'm casual screenshots creator, not using any external tools and just trying to share my gaming experience as it is. Some of my recent 2017 screens:
Nier: Automata
Nier: Automata
Far Cry: Primal
Dishonored 2
Don't have any albums or collections on other sites except Steam, if you want to see more here is a link to my steam profile. I just saw this thread few times and wanted to share my screens with you guys.
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