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Witcher 3 downgrade arguments in here and nowhere else
- Thread starter Jigolo
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It is their latest dev diary. Check their channel on youtube or gamersyde.
uh, dig? it's on the official Witcher youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=T1HG8Py6OPc#t=186
PLASTICA-MAN
Member
Hmm. I must have missed that when watching it. It was fast and I didn't pay attention at that time. Thanks anyway.
jacksepticeye
Member
I had forgotten how good some of the old media stuff had looked. The comparisons in this thread make me sad now
Don't get me wrong it will still look good and I will enjoy the hell out of it but it's always a case of "What could have been" when I see these things.
Don't get me wrong it will still look good and I will enjoy the hell out of it but it's always a case of "What could have been" when I see these things.
888
Member
That is pretty much the first footage I have seen of the game in motion. It looks amazing.
Oh lord.
I'm just... I'm laughing at how ridiculous this PR is. Come on, are you fucking kidding me? Oh man. They're now at Ubisoft levels of bullshit. I viewed the Watch_Dogs stream, I was there when the devs gave a similar non-answer to a simple "is it downgraded?" query.
This shit has really gotta end. Please, for the love of GOD, stop showing your games so early. And if you need the hype preorders that badly, then your game costs too much anyway and the industry is due for an implosion. Sorry but the truth hurts.
Kalamari Rimbo
Banned
This gif really makes hairworks stand out. We need more hairy beasts.
Or they keep doing it because the biggest complainers on this issue are a massive minority.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Documents/Witcher 2/Config/User.ini
Scroll down to [Rendering] and add (or edit if it's in there):
FoliageDistanceScale=4
MeshDistanceScale=4
Note: your performance in some situations will tank hard with FoliageDistanceScale=4 because my mod is completely unoptimised. If it's too much, experiment with 3 or 2. MeshDistanceScale is an added bonus that increase rendering distance for some meshes. It also defaults to 1.0 on Uber.
Otherwise check the readme with the mod, I think I mention it there.
Intheflorsh
Banned
So, like, the complete opposite philosophy they had with the Witcher 2. Well that blows.
That's too bad they're unable to be honest and forthcoming.
Wow thanks a lot XBONE.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Documents/Witcher 2/Config/User.ini
Scroll down to [Rendering] and add (or edit if it's in there):
FoliageDistanceScale=4
MeshDistanceScale=4
Note: your performance in some situations will tank hard with FoliageDistanceScale=4 because my mod is completely unoptimised. If it's too much, experiment with 3 or 2. MeshDistanceScale is an added bonus that increase rendering distance for some meshes. It also defaults to 1.0 on Uber.
Otherwise check the readme with the mod, I think I mention it there.
Thank you! Just tried this out in the forests around Flotsam, still getting 48-65fps in 4K and the distracting pop in is all but gone.
Awesome.
Sword of Destiny trailer lighting >>> 2013 screenshots. A lot of the 2013 media is flat as fuck. Where it excels is texture quality and foliage density, Nvidia effects trailer aside. Sword of Destiny trailer showed a massive improvement in lighting.
Anyway, this is what I was talking about, RE: config file tweaks. I've mentioned it a hundred times so I'll try to keep it brief, but explain what might be editable.
In TW2 foliage quality is handled by two variables: the engine, and the assets. The engine handles general draw distance, and thus scaled based on your config settings. LOD transitions unfortunately were baked into assets, meaning config tweaks didn't change LOD pop-in and the only way I could fix it was to go into the editor and tweak every asset individually.
TW3 seems to be quite similar. I suspect eliminating LOD pop-in on foliage wont be possible until the editor rolls around, then we can have a look. But general foliage draw distance might be editable.
FoliageDistanceScale= is the field, and it controls how far foliage is rendered if at the lowest LOD. In TW2 Ultra settings sat it at 1.0, scaling down. However the engine didn't cap it, so you could keep increasing it for real gains. See below.
If TW3 works similarly then this trick will increase detail over distance. The engine and middleware are weird, because of the LOD baked into assets and how it differs between assets. Note in the 1.0 show the low quality bushes render further than the low quality grass, because each asset has it's own distance variable. 4.0 irons it out, the bushes rendering further, and the low LOD grass also rendering far, filling in the gaps.
Going by shots and footage TW3 operates similar; LOD varies from asset to asset, leading to some assets rendering their low quality LOD further than others. In theory, this field should unify the two a bit, meaning distance shorelines wont just have low LOD trees, but fill the in between with low LOD grass and bushes too.
And it'll probably come at a significant performance cost too. But hey, let's see!
the two screenshots looks the same expect for the image brightness, am I blind or what?
EDIT: I'm sure I quoted a different post with different images
Chilled_Eskim01
Member
whatifgaming said:
Well there it is. It's obvious why they did it, but it still sucks...
m_shortpants
Member
Look at the ground in the distance. One is completely green (bare), the other has plants covering that spot.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Ophiuchus
Member
And the lowest denominator would be ....I really cannot believe we are getting xbox build.
Storm Chamber
Banned
It's unfortunate, but yes. People are acting as if this is some new practise. It's been like this with 99% of multiplatform games for a long long time.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
You might have been trying to quote the second batch of shots. In stills it's a bit hard to see the difference between the grass mod and standard, but it's obvious in motion. My mod basically brute forces the HQ foliage models over distance. So shrubs and bushes don't switch to the 2D billboard, but render full 3D and animated to wind as far as the eye can see. Same goes for grass; removes 2D billboards, renders full 3D.
And you can say BYE BYE to performance.
Anton Sugar
Member
IF that whatifgaming article is true, that sounds like a pretty huge paradigm shift for CDPR. They've always been a "PC is our audience and our platform" group.
Money changes everything.
m_shortpants
Member
What a shame! I just built a PC out of my hype for this...was expecting something a bit better than XB1 at 1080/60FPS.
CDPR's PR here has been Ubisoft tier. Either stop showing the damn game so early, or don't downgrade so obviously. And if that 2013 trailer was prerendered target, stop lying.
How much was the performance hit? Are we talking 2x or more?
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
The game is going to look better than Xbox One 1080/60fps if you built a new rig for it.
And the 2013 video was not a prerendered target, it was just how the game looked running on a PC at that point in development.
Bots are better than you
Banned
Maybe i don't get all the fuss about a downgrade because i'm mainly a console gamer, sans some DOTA2 and stuff, but i'm really curious why some of you act like the end of the world has come?
Will the game (regardless of any downgrade or whatever) look good? Going by the latest videos, i'd say yes. Could it be better on PC? Maybe, don't know.
Will you have fun playing the game? Well, that's a matter of personal taste, but at least the reviewers seem to have enjoyed their playthroughs. So chances are, that you will have fun. And i think that is the most important thing.
Maybe some modders push the game to infinity and beyond. The pc version does support modding, i guess?
Will the game (regardless of any downgrade or whatever) look good? Going by the latest videos, i'd say yes. Could it be better on PC? Maybe, don't know.
Will you have fun playing the game? Well, that's a matter of personal taste, but at least the reviewers seem to have enjoyed their playthroughs. So chances are, that you will have fun. And i think that is the most important thing.
Maybe some modders push the game to infinity and beyond. The pc version does support modding, i guess?
Holy crap lmao, that's literally what they're saying... Not sure how to interpret it any other way than that.All you have to do is buy it and debunk the rumors yourself.
Seems simple enough
Jesus.
Preordering and PR assuring that it isn't downgraded.
Ophiuchus
Member
I visited their studio when I was in Warsaw and had t-shirt signed by one developer.
But right now I really don't know what to say and I certainly don't want to say they were being greedy.They had their reasons.They went through very rough times.They could have released console versions later but they decided not to.And , I think, this decision was not that wise since (as stated by insider in the article) they did not know the specs of the next generation.
Maybe Microsoft rushed them to some extent, who knows.
Well at least they admitted that there was a downgrade and didn't try to sweep it under the rug.
Sucks that they decided to take out high end assets instead of making the game more scale-able by having lower end assets for consoles and weaker GPUs.
I knew there was something fishy when they said a 980 cam run this game maxed out at 1080p 60fps.
Sucks that they decided to take out high end assets instead of making the game more scale-able by having lower end assets for consoles and weaker GPUs.
I knew there was something fishy when they said a 980 cam run this game maxed out at 1080p 60fps.
m_shortpants
Member
The game is going to look better than Xbox One 1080/60fps if you built a new rig for it.
And the 2013 video was not a prerendered target, it was just how the game looked running on a PC at that point in development.
Hopefully! I'm trying to truck through the Witcher 2 but I don't know if I'll finish in time haha.
A feeling of false advertising maybe?
The fuss is that because of next gen consoles the game will never have the same powerful atmosphere it could have.
An extreme example is if Michelangelo only had black and white to paint the Sistine Chapel. Sure Michelangelo was going to make it look baller no matter what, but without color he would be hamstrung. If he later died before anyone could get him some color paints, that's it. History would never produce another Michelangelo.
Witcher 3 is the final Witcher title afaik. CDPR no longer needs to rely on a licensed IP after this, having achieved world wide fame. Therefore because of consoles people will never be able to experience the game as it was artistically intended.
Mods will likely never have the access to the engine necessary to add back in the missing elements.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Using that view from my images above.
No config tweaks / no mod = 117fps
Config tweaks / no mod = 67fps
Config tweaks / mod = 47fps
i5 @ 4.3Ghz
GTX 970
8GB RAM
Uhm, did they? I haven't read about that then eventhough I followed this thread.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
This is starting to get ridiculous.
The game will look better on PC compaired to XBO.
For one, you can render with about 10 million more pixels.
Then, Hair Works, Water Tessellation, AA/AF, Enhanced Shadows/Lighting, HBAO+, PhysX with Apex Destruction etc.
The game will look phenomenal on PC. Even if it doesn't reach Nvidia Trailer heights.
mgs2master2
Banned
Memorabilia
Member
I'm willing to give CDPR the benefit of the doubt on this one when I wouldn't with just about any other developer/publisher. Their track-record is good enough I think they've earned that. My gut feeling is when they started development of the game they may have expected next gen console hardware to be more powerful. I suppose I could be wrong & perhaps they're no different than most other devs these days when it comes to pre-release hype & bullshots. But I just don't put them in that category.
As for the game, judging by the review scores so far, whatever downgrade happened for whatever reason(s), thankfully it doesn't seem to have negatively impacted the quality of the game.
As for the game, judging by the review scores so far, whatever downgrade happened for whatever reason(s), thankfully it doesn't seem to have negatively impacted the quality of the game.
Right, but it's not Witcher 4. Obviously I'm psyched for CP2077 but it's a completely different setting.
I've played a lot of up scaled console games in my time. At the end of the day I'm still playing an Xbox port with AA/AF and tesselation.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
You aren't playing an Xbox Port...
Where did this even come from? The rumor site saying they got rid of some advanced effects because of the LCD?
While that sucks, it does not make it an Xbox Port all of the sudden. This is just silly.
By that Logic, this is an upressed Xbox 360 Port with some added effects.
Except they didn't admit it. The rumour is that an insider spilled the beans (obviously his identity is hidden), and now CDPR won't confirm or deny whether the rumour is true or not. They're basically saying they don't comment on rumours and we should all just look forward to the game releasing and being able to play it.
Also, let's not forget that they originally said there was no downgrade, so let's not pretend that they're being honest about things, and even if they did confirm the downgrades now it would have required this much backlash for them to spit it out (yet they still aren't saying anything, aside from the anonymous insider man).
Denton
Member
Yep, brutal. I tried the mod few months ago for my replay and in the end had to settle with the mod that changes grass color back to original and has zero perf. penalty, since that eliminated the worst pop-in while allowing me to keep 60fps. Your mod, as magnificent as it is, is absolutely brutal with those tweaks
Volume Based translucency
Flexible water simulation
Forward Lit soft particles
foliage density
These are things that are clearly making a big difference between 2013 trailers and what we have now.
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