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Horizon Zero Dawn Looks Unnaturally Good Because Of 'Hyper-Realism'

E

eizarus

Banned
http://kotaku.com/horizon-zero-dawn-looks-unnaturally-good-because-of-hyp-1793570455

Studio art director Jan-Bart van Beek recently explained to Kotaku that the studio spent many hours watching BBC nature documentaries, which allowed Guerrilla Games to lay out a conceptual framework for Horizon’s visuals.
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Jan-Bart van Beek said:
“It’s a quality that isn’t actually completely photorealistic,” Beek said. “It’s a form of hyper-realism that we started calling ‘BBC-realism.’ It’s all shot in perfect condition, at the perfect time of day, with exactly the right dramatic light angle, cloudscapes and weather. There is a lot of cinematic grading to add contrast, atmosphere and saturation to the screen. It’s a film process that takes weeks to find those conditions and film a 10 second snippet.”
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Jan-Bart van Beek said:
“In Horizon we wanted to give them the sense of being in a 24/7 version of BBC’s nature, where it is always at its most epic, most impressive,” Beek said. “Anything less than the best look, we would simply remove. So to some degree we indeed make it unnatural.
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Jan-Bart van Beek said:
Beek noted that, in order to nail the aesthetic, they tweaked weather transitions to be faster so that the player never sees anything below a certain level of quality. You only ever see whatever looks best. Some of these visuals, such as the human settlements, are tailor-made, but Beek estimates that about 80% of Horizon’s natural landscape is procedurally generated.
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Big up to GG, they definitely pulled it off beyond what anyone expected.
UMTZCY9.gif

niKU6h8.gif

Gifs by SunhiLegend

Watch me in a documentary if old.
 
Z

Zackat

Member
Sunhi has made some incredible gifs of this game. The screenshot thread is glorious. They did a great job.
 
S

Shredderi

Member
What does procedurally generated mean in this game? I assume all the "hard geography" is handmade and never changes but placement of trees, foliage and some select rocks are placed procedually?
 
RedAssedApe

RedAssedApe

Banned
Makes me wish I had a hdr capable TV so I could see what I'm missing. Still looks great on my 8 year old 1080p plasma tho.
 
T

Tosyn_88

Member
Yes the game is very beautiful. I was in Meridian one time and stood at the balcony, I could see very far into the distance and I even saw a tiny Thunderjaw in the distance, it was like freaking laser beams this looks good. It's the only game since Uncharted that's made me stop to look
 
F

FusedAtoms

Member
Shredderi said:
What does procedurally generated mean in this game? I assume all the "hard geography" is handmade and never changes but placement of trees, foliage and some select rocks are placed procedually?
Click to expand...
The world is hand crafted but is being generated around the player as you go through it. It's​ generated the same way Everytime . Or at least that's my understanding of it.
 
R

RedlineRonin

Member
80% of the landscape is procedurally generated.

GG should license out that secret sauce. I never would've guessed that world wasn't entirely hand crafted. The various biomes are so distinct and ornate and filled with detail.

Should just cop from Speedtree and call it Speedworld.

E:
vivekTO said:
More info here
GPU-based procedural placement in Horizon Zero Dawn
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Oh okay, so the hard geometry isn't procedural. That makes more sense.

Thanks for sharing vivek. very interesting reading.
 
G

-griffy-

Banned
Beek noted that, in order to nail the aesthetic, they tweaked weather transitions to be faster so that the player never sees anything below a certain level of quality. You only ever see whatever looks best.
Click to expand...
This probably explains why the time of day and weather transitions seem so sudden sometimes.
 
S

Shambalakan

Member
I'm playing Horizon on normal PS4 and non HDR TV and it's unbelievably beautiful. Worst thing in this game is photo mode, it doesn't let me play the game itself! :(
 
M

MCD250

Member
Always got a feeling they had deliberately worked in something like that. It's very effective. They really hit it out of the paek with rhe environmental visuals.
 
E

eizarus

Banned
Tosyn_88 said:
Yes the game is very beautiful. I was in Meridian one time and stood at the balcony, I could see very far into the distance and I even saw a tiny Thunderjaw in the distance, it was like freaking laser beams this looks good. It's the only game since Uncharted that's made me stop to look
Click to expand...
Wow. I didn't expect that. They really made it feel like a living world. Although the cities could do with a bit more hustle and bustle (but too much of that looks bad too).
 
F

franklyshankly

Member
Tosyn_88 said:
Yes the game is very beautiful. I was in Meridian one time and stood at the balcony, I could see very far into the distance and I even saw a tiny Thunderjaw in the distance, it was like freaking laser beams this looks good. It's the only game since Uncharted that's made me stop to look
Click to expand...

I had the same experience last night with a Tallneck. I was up on a ledge and saw it walking way way way out in the distance, was really awesome.
 
G

Gator86

Member
I've never felt so awed by a game world before. I spent 40 hours just wandering around the map, exploring and hunting without even doing any of the main quests or anything. Horizon is a masterpiece.
 
L

Lys Skygge

Member
The only aspect I disliked was the rapidly changing weather. I think they could have done without such a jarring effect.

Otherwise, the game looks phenomenal!
 
D

danmaku

Member
This is why art direction is super important even in games with a realistic (or in this case, hyper realistic) style. Realism doesn't mean "watch a bunch of photos and copy".
 
M

MegaManTrigger

Banned
Horizon's art style will be interesting to see in terms of how it ages over time. Many "realistic" art styles age like milk due to tech obsolescence.
 
SilentFlyer

SilentFlyer

Member
What I want them to add:

- NG+
- Random generated Corrupted Zones (more challanging).
- Really high difficulty, offering more challange (overall story).
- Reduce ThunderJaw Disk launcher ammos, it's​ really overpowered.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Photo mode is glorious and I love the ability to change the time of day. But I would really liked a way to adjust time in the game - eg slowly rewind to get that perfect moment
 
S

shadowsdarknes

Member
I've said it before and I'll say it again. GG's output with KZ2 and 3 last generation impressed me more than Naughty Dog. SSM was about tied with GOW3 for me. But I always thought Guerilla was top dog with visuals.

And I always knew GG had a lot of creativity, too. Killzone was stifling. The lore wasn't particularly lending to a lot of creativity. I'm so thrilled for this team to have put out something so critically acclaimed as many people really doubted their ability to put out something inspired and mechanically sound.
 
E

eizarus

Banned
MegaManTrigger said:
Horizon's art style will be interesting to see in terms of how it ages over time. Many "realistic" art styles age like milk due to tech obsolescence.
Click to expand...
I think it's focus on colour vibrancy will help it a bit better in that regard, but i agree that it will be interesting to see how it ages (and how the competition react in terms of visuals).
 
E

EGM1966

Member
BBC Earth documentaries continuing to do natures work.

Interesting read and I wondered that about the fast transitions: it was so deliberate I figured there had to be some design idea behind it.

Now I wish they'd asked Attenborough to lend some voice work.

Actually a mash up of his voice work over the machines just going about their business would be terrific.
 
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