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NX Gamer - Top 5 Best Graphics in Games 2015

For 2016, I think I am most impressed by Horizon because how massive the world will be. The graphics we have seen in the alpha footage is insane. I don't know if they're using the KZ Shadowfall engine yet. I will be shocked if they somehow make the game look even better because I am 100% fine with these graphics we have seen so far. Of course they really have to fix the texture pop-in and framerate.

Here is unfinished gameplay giving you an idea of how massive this world is. (Not even close on how big the game is)
horizon-zero-dawn-ps4-new-siggraph-1024x576.png

Alpha footage:
Immagine-640x360.png
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
For 2016, I think I am most impressed by Horizon because how massive the world will be. The graphics we have seen in the alpha footage is insane. I don't know if they're using the KZ Shadowfall engine yet. I will be shocked if they somehow make the game look even better because I am 100% fine with these graphics we have seen so far. Of course they really have to fix the texture pop-in and framerate.

Here is unfinished gameplay giving you an idea of how massive this world is. (Not even close on how big the game is)
http://gearnuke.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/horizon-zero-dawn-ps4-new-siggraph-1024x576.png[IMG]
Alpha footage:
[IMG]http://gearnuke.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Immagine-640x360.png[IMG][/QUOTE]

GG's really good at picking tech that flatters their art well. It also helps that they have some of my favorite artists in the industry.
 

Markitron

Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
GG's really good at picking tech that flatters their art well. It also helps that they have some of my favorite artists in the industry.

If they can add a good story to the package, this could be a GOTY contender. Since they hired New Vegas's writer, I'm cautiously optimistic.
 
I imagine Guerrilla is going to adapt as much as they can from the engine into an open world setting but not everything will make the transition since there is other simulation going on like weather and time of day on a large scale. I'm not worried though, GG always delivers on a technical level. I still think Shadow Fall is one of the best looking games on the platform. I do hope the consistent texture quality carries over into Horizon. Both SF and UD have very pleasing textures, for reasons I can't quite place.
at first I thought you meant Street Fighter, lol. but anyways, yeah, Guerilla always makes top notch graphics so I'll prepare to be wowed once this game comes around.
I'll simplify before I move on. I am not impressed with the graphics of The Order. MGSV, ROTR, Arkham Knight, Battlefront look better to me. It has nothing to do with my dislike of the game or gameplay, the games I listed I also dislike.
That's all you had to say in the first place.
 

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
Guerrilla's always had this weird inconsistency with unmasked Helghast character faces looking much better than the ISA's.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
is horizon running on that engine too? Or a new one?the graphics of that game are among the best of the best these days though, so what are you getting at?

Horizon uses the Killzone:SF engine which they heavily built upon for this generation to allow for a massive open world seamlessly per video interviews, etc.

Same engine was used for UD yes, but obviously modified to fit this game type. It is turning out to be a pretty versatile engine.

http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/horiz...d_version_of_killzone_shadow_fall_engine.html

You honestly don't find these graphics impressive?

He is clearly trolling, lol. Ignore him.
 
I need to see more of Tomb Raider, but I may be leaning towards that one. Very impressive game with some pretty stunning looking environments with nice size, great variety in art direction and really nice level design.
 

Vire

Member
I need to see more of Tomb Raider, but I may be leaning towards that one. Very impressive game with some pretty stunning looking environments with nice size, great variety in art direction and really nice level design.
Tomb Raider is at times the best looking game I've ever seen, but it's not really consistent. The open areas obviously take a hit in the fidelity department and broad daylight lighting really makes the shimmering and aliasing noticeable.

That being said, the darkly lit interiors, scale of some of the environments and vistas are truly astonishing at times.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Facial animation is crazy.

Is it just me or do her lips look like they are stuck in some kind weird pouty puckering position? Like her mouth isnt as elastic or movable as it should be or something. There are certainly a lot of fantastic facially animated female characters coming up. Most of which look much more impressive to me animation wise than what I've seen from Tomb Raider thus far.

For example:


All of these look far more natural to me. Can't really put my finger on why in particular to point it out though.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Is it just me or do her lips look like they are stuck in some kind weird pouty puckering position? Like her mouth isnt as elastic or movable as it should be or something. There are certainly a lot of fantastic facially animated female characters coming up. Most of which look much more impressive to me animation wise than what I've seen from Tomb Raider thus far.

For example:



All of these look far more natural to me. Can't really put my finger on why in particular to point it out though.
Two of those are CGI. ._.
And nah, Lara looks incredibly natural. If you wanna see what it looks like when a character's face is stuck in a pouty puckering position, just look at the new model for Faith in ME:C.
I'm not a big fan of that expression.. ;-;
 
Two of those are CGI. ._.
And nah, Lara looks incredibly natural. If you wanna see what it looks like when a character's face is stuck in a pouty puckering position, just look at the new model for Faith in ME:C.

I'm not a big fan of that expression.. ;-;

i think the best facial animation is a toss up between the order and ryse. i expect u4 to take the the crown next year
 

Conduit

Banned
i think the best facial animation is a toss up between the order and ryse. i expect u4 to take the the crown next year

Yep, U4 facials are awesome. Than chin deformation. :D. Order has the awesome facials ( especially when the cut-scenes are real-time )
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
i think the best facial animation is a toss up between the order and ryse. i expect u4 to take the the crown next year
Im expecting the opposite because some of the scenes are keyframed in UC4. Personally I'd put ACU over one of the two because it really set a standard last year. Still the only game i've seen capture the nuance behind blinding rage.
 
Witcher 3 wins over Batman and Until Dawn anytime.

Also, I played the trial for Rise of the Tomb Raider and really didn't find it very impressive.

Agree with the top 2 choices, maybe Battlefront at 1st place.

Too bad Driveclub came out in 2014.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
The Order is simply heads and shoulders above anything else that's ever been done using real time visuals. Yes even in PC land (unless you're talking about some crazy high end system thing running a tech demo of some kind).

It is pre-rendered CGI cut scene quality, and a very high quality well made pre-rendered CGI cutscene at that. The framerate never EVER dips. Yeah it's 30 but with the great motion blur etc it looks like a film. It looks like I'm watching a bluray. Talking about playing The Witcher 3 in 4K or something, yeah I'm sure it looks fantastic... but it still looks like a game. If you know what I mean..? It's like The Hobbit in 48fps looks super smooth for a film, and looks quite cool because of it, but it's not the best looking film ever made because of that.

I don't think anyone thought The Order reveal trailer truly was running real time on PS4, even I was dubious and thought there must be a catch, that it's a con somehow. But nope, they actually did it. It's a stratospheric improvement in visual quality from last gen, I don't see how it can be argued. Higher quality visuals in terms of assets, lighting, artistic direction than anything on PC. Just cos PC has the brute force doesn't mean people are using it correctly.
It's slightly off topic, but the Hobbit IMAX HFR movies are the sharpest films I've ever seen in a movie theater and nothing else even comes remotely close. Framerates will affect the overall sharpness in media with a lot of camera motion.

The Order lacks visual clarity, which isn't really my cup of tea. I prefer the downsampled look at high framerates.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
And the Order managed 30fps smooth 99% of the time, and somehow looked smoother than other 30fps games (dat engine) while other games on the list had awful frame rate issues (Until Dawn). I think that makes it even more impressive.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
yeah unity is top notch too, i think the most impressive moment of that video is the eye rolling at 2:23. very believable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reByZLSncco

so good
Normally i'd provide a youtube link but All the gamersyde links are dead for some reason. The eyes and lighting in that scene are incredibly especially considering it's realtime. Like the prophet scene in Ryse.
 

nOoblet16

Member
Im expecting the opposite because some of the scenes are keyframed in UC4. Personally I'd put ACU over one of the two because it really set a standard last year. Still the only game i've seen capture the nuance behind blinding rage.

Im expecting the opposite because some of the scenes are keyframed in UC4. Personally I'd put ACU over one of the two because it really set a standard last year. Still the only game i've seen capture the nuance behind blinding rage.


UC4's facial animations will be all done by hand with no mo cap as with all ND games, while the end result will look very nice and pleasing since ND is godly at this, they are also often stylised. By the virtue of being purely hand made they can never truly match a motion captured performance which is then perfected by hand.

So far imo Ryse is the top with The Order and Tomb Raider trailing behind closely, Tomb Raider's mo cap is more advanced but from time to time it has its odd moments and Lara's model is often very clean which kind of adds up to the unrealism. Ryse on the other hand looks borderline perfect for current times. What's even more special about Ryse is that the facial animation during gameplay is very high quality and natural as well, something other games end up falling short on (especially Unity).
 
I still think the Order is all around the ugliest game I've bought in a while. Like Battlefront makes sense, the order doesn't even look good. You see battlefront and go 'wow', that never happens with the order. Unless you're saying it out of stunned disbelief in how bad the gameplay is.
 

Plum

Member
You honestly don't find these graphics impressive?

They definitely are but to be honest those screenshots don't really do it justice. They just come out looking too blurry. I'd get the game to see for myself how it looks on a decent TV without any compression but unfortunately there's no rentals in Britain and I'm not paying £18 for it on Amazon. Can the film grain be turned off?
 

tioslash

Member
I still think the Order is all around the ugliest game I've bought in a while. Like Battlefront makes sense, the order doesn't even look good. You see battlefront and go 'wow', that never happens with the order. Unless you're saying it out of stunned disbelief in how bad the gameplay is.

The ugliest game you bought in a while? Wow.


Can the film grain be turned off?

Yes. With Photo Mode you can enable/disable filters and adjust them to your preference.
 
They definitely are but to be honest those screenshots don't really do it justice. They just come out looking too blurry. I'd get the game to see for myself how it looks on a decent TV without any compression but unfortunately there's no rentals in Britain and I'm not paying £18 for it on Amazon. Can the film grain be turned off?

Yes.

Actually I can't find it either, I distinctly remember watching it though.

Damn. Never mind.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
]U[/B]C4's facial animations will be all done by hand with no mo cap as with all ND games, while the end result will look very nice and pleasing since ND is godly at this, they are also often stylised. By the virtue of being purely hand made they can never truly match a motion captured performance which is then perfected by hand.

So far imo Ryse is the top with The Order and Tomb Raider trailing behind closely, Tomb Raider's mo cap is more advanced but from time to time it has its odd moments and Lara's model is often very clean which kind of adds up to the unrealism. Ryse on the other hand looks borderline perfect for current times. What's even more special about Ryse is that the facial animation during gameplay is very high quality and natural as well, something other games end up falling short on (especially Unity).
Uhhhhh, this was disproven months ago dude.

Not to mention it would absolutely be a bad idea to keyframe every scene because the models are more realistic than any other ND game by quite a large margin, it would take forever and as we've already seen, there's a bit of an uncanny valley effect with such realistic models when they're keyframed compared to the scenes with facial capture.
 

dmshaposv

Member
I really hope ND can polish up the lip syncing in Uncharted 4.

The animation otherwise looks mindblowingly good, but the lipsyncing/facial mo cap seemed a little 'uncanny' in the recent cutscenes.

It looks more uncanny because the character models are much more realistic than the stylized look they had from UC1 - UC3 and TLOU.
 
To me, the Order is the most impressive looking game on any platform. It has a consistancy that I haven't seen on any other game this gen. Nothing really sticks out as being deficient, although obviously across the board there is room for improvement. As an overall technical feat, the Witcher or Batman is as impressive, sure. But we are talking about a linear action game versus open world. A game with the Order's visuals at either of those scales would easily surpass both visually.
 

KORNdoggy

Member
I really hope ND can polish up the lip syncing in Uncharted 4.

The animation otherwise looks mindblowingly good, but the lipsyncing/facial mo cap seemed a little 'uncanny' in the recent cutscenes.

It looks more uncanny because the character models are much more realistic than the stylized look they had from UC1 - UC3 and TLOU.

i still think they look incredibly stylized. and its one of the reasons they consistently seem to avoid that awkward uncanny valley that so many other games fall into. they still broadcast their emotions in a very exaggerated "pixar" way and they still don't look "real". with U4 i feel like i'm watching a very high budget CGi movie with Cgi characters. i don't feel like they're trying to trick me into thinking they're real. and i'm guessing it's due to the manual keyframing stage of their animation process. it adds life to the performance you rarely see in games, but it also adds style and character that stops it looking weird. it's why i still think ND are king when it comes to facial animation by quite a huge amount.

They definitely are but to be honest those screenshots don't really do it justice. They just come out looking too blurry. I'd get the game to see for myself how it looks on a decent TV without any compression but unfortunately there's no rentals in Britain and I'm not paying £18 for it on Amazon. Can the film grain be turned off?

it can be turned off...

also

http://www.boomerangrentals.co.uk/
 

Javin98

Banned
To me MGSV was the most impressive. The lighting is just so good.
I don't agree with this as I think The Order 1886 and Battlefront both look significantly better, but I do think that MGSV doesn't get enough praise for its visuals. Yes, the open world is quite barren with little to no simulations, but a few aspects are pretty incredible. Like you said, the lighting looks amazing and I'm often blown away by it. The character models also look pretty damn good despite the low polygon count. Animation is another area I find really impressive.

Unfortunately, there were so many great looking games last year that I don't think it would be appropriate for MGSV to fit into the top 5.
 

nOoblet16

Member
Uhhhhh, this was disproven months ago dude.

Not to mention it would absolutely be a bad idea to keyframe every scene because the models are more realistic than any other ND game by quite a large margin, it would take forever and as we've already seen, there's a bit of an uncanny valley effect with such realistic models when they're keyframed compared to the scenes with facial capture.

Wait what are you trying to show me in that video? That they have a camera looking at the face? Because that to me, looks not much different from what I was claiming. They will be using the capture from the face camera as a basic reference like a rotoscope and then the animators will be animating the facial movements by hand. Still, this is mostly capture data for reference frame and then they will keyframe most of it from there...not quite what games like Tomb Raider do which seem to have full motion capture and the animators then fix the oddities later.

This is the reason why the facial animations are still exaggerated, that Elena gif on this page for example is evidence of it. While it looks very convincing and nice, it is still exaggerated especially during that one instance where she moves her eyes and shakes her head.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Wait what are you trying to show me in that video? That they have a camera looking at the face? Because that to me, looks not much different from what I was claiming. They will be using the capture from the face camera as a basic reference like a rotoscope and then the animators will be animating the facial movements by hand. Still, this is mostly capture data for reference frame and then they will keyframe most of it from there...not quite what games like Tomb Raider do which seem to have full motion capture and the animators then fix the oddities later.

This is the reason why the facial animations are still exaggerated, that Elena gif on this page for example is evidence of it. While it looks very convincing and nice, it is still exaggerated especially during that one instance where she moves her eyes and shakes her head.
Uh no you can clearly see the capture points on their faces. Another picture which shows it.
Dqtoxjm.png


They're doing the more modern way where they're getting facial capture data and applying it to their models, (part of the reason why the characters look so much like the characters now look much more like their actors). They also confirmed this at PSX that they started without it and then during production started using facial capture.
 
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