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2012 High-Res PC Screenshot Thread of Don't Use Imgur

Lime

Member
Are the facial animations in Alan Wake still as atrocious in the PC version as the ones I saw in the 360 one?

I'm pleased that Remedy released the title on PC anyhow, even if it's full of paltry writing, tacky characters, and a crazy amount of narrative exposition on its mechanics/objectives.
 

Haunted

Member
Star Trek Online makes for great screenshots.

Alan Wake looks kinda low poly.

edit: that last shot is nice and moody. Reminds me of Skyrim. Of course, in Skyrim I can actually fucking go there and everywhere instead of it being a pretty background fenced off by invisible walls and contrived barriers. :p
 

derFeef

Member
Star Trek Online makes for great screenshots.

Alan Wake looks kinda low poly.

edit: that last shot is nice and moody. Reminds me of Skyrim. Of course, in Skyrim I can actually fucking go there instead of it being a pretty background. :p

But I can't fight the darkness with my flashlight. 1:0 Alan wake :)
 
Alan Wake

all in game settings maxed.

alanwake2012-02-1616-upjcn.png

alanwake2012-02-1617-1ck4c.png


loving the IQ in this :)
 

inky

Member
Well those are looking pretty good to me, tho it doesn't seem liked they improved much of the textures, but I'd have to see it in motion. The one thing that wowed me about AW, even as a pretty low res 360 game, was the atmosphere created by the lighting effects and other small details like the trees swinging to the wind and the audio. No tearing this time around is the icing on the cake.
 

Lime

Member
Wait, I completely forgot! There isn't any HUD any longer in Alan Wake? Or is it toggable? If it is, it almost makes the game worth re-purchasing next Steam sale. The obtrusive ruined much of my potential immersion when playing it on the 360.
 
Earlier today I was just going to wait for a Steam sale for Alan Wake but with the Green Man Gaming 33% off deal and the screenshots made it impossible to resist. 6 more minutes!
 

IoCaster

Member
Decided to replay Dragon Age: Origins

dao-4.png


dao-1.png


I've gotten a strange bug in Ostagar though. I can't get to Alistair because I keep getting warped to the camp gate near where the injured soldiers are laying down. It's really weird since I get confronted by the gate guard telling me the camp is closed to me every time. I tried to walk over to the vendor as well and still get warped to the same gate guard. I'm scratching my head here because that never happened before and I played the hell out of this game when it came out.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
The blur on FXAA is so overblown around here. If you're running the newest build of it, it's hardly noticeable.
 

dr_rus

Member
The FXAA blur isn't noticable unless you're investigating side by side screens. And if you need the performance FXAA is better.
Well, I've noticed it in the screenshots above, haven't I? I've also noticed it right away in ME3 demo.
FXAA is a good way to get some AA when there are no other options. In Alan Wake you have MSAA (which can't be turned off at all) and you can enable transparency MSAA aka "forced alpha to coverage" in driver controls (which costs 0 in performance). That'd give you much better results than FXAA.

The blur on FXAA is so overblown around here. If you're running the newest build of it, it's hardly noticeable.
The blur is the blur, it either exist or doesn't. I prefer when it doesn't exist.
All current FXAA builds have basically the same blurriness but they can be tuned to either less blur (and worse AA) or more blur (and better AA). If we're talking about the in-game FXAA then it's up to developer to do this tuning. In any case FXAA = full scene blur at the moment. This may change with 4.0 version but that's not out yet.
 

NBtoaster

Member
Well, I've noticed it in the screenshots above, haven't I? I've also noticed it right away in ME3 demo.
FXAA is a good way to get some AA when there are no other options. In Alan Wake you have MSAA (which can't be turned off at all) and you can enable transparency MSAA aka "forced alpha to coverage" in driver controls (which costs 0 in performance). That'd give you much better results than FXAA.

Care to point out a shot of Alan Wake that has obvious blur from FXAA?
The game uses alpha to coverage to render trees already, that cant be turned off.
 

Durante

Member
Can someone quickly explain the pros and cons of FXAA and MSAA, i take it there better to use than just normal AA???
There is no such thing as "normal" AA.

There are 3 basic categories of methods for doing "AA" these days, and combinations of these:
  • SSAA (Super sampling AA) -- this results in the highest picture quality, with the highest performance hit. Operates by rendering the whole image multiple times with slight offsets and summing up these so-called subsamples for each resulting pixel. Subcategories are defined by the layout of the subpixels within the pixel. OG (ordered grid) SSAA is equivalent to rendering at a higher resolution and downsampling, and has lower edge quality. RG (rotated grid) and SG (sparse grid) SSAA use smarter subpixel layouts.
  • MSAA (Multi-sampling AA) -- this is the most common form of AA, and the one most often accelerated in hardware. Operates similarly to SSAA, but only renders multiple samples for edge pixels, thus resulting in lower costs. Mostly uses a sparse grid pattern on modern hardware. Disadvantages: does not improve texture/shader/transparency aliasing since it only operates on edges. Alpha-to-coverage (sometimes called "transparency MSAA") is a method for making MSAA cover transparency as well.
  • Post-processing AA -- this is a relatively recent development, where a finished, aliased buffer is taken and an algorithm is used that tries to minimize aliasing artifacts in it. Not really true anti-aliasing, more of a selective blurring/edge reconstruction method. There are many different implementations, some operate purely on a color buffer while others take Z data into account. This impacts quality as well as undesired blur. Common algorithms are MLAA and FXAA. Disadvantages: undesired blurring of detail, cannot deal with sub-pixel aliasing, unstable picture in motion (flickering). Advantages: relatively low, fixed cost. Can be performed on SPEs on the PS3.

HTH.
 
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