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[robotrock]

Spoiler

I try to downgrade it to SCUMM quality.

This is the coolest thing I've seen on NeoGAF

 

[TheRed]

To be honest, this is the kind of game that I would buy for the graphics and production values alone as they're both really impressive.

That is, if Assassin's Creed didn't have garbage gameplay and this game wasn't made and rushed out the door by Ubisoft.

But this game has good gameplay :/

 

[charsace]

Not touching killzone shadowfall and infamous imo.

It isn't going to touch them when it is flying right past them. This is the best looking next gen game so far. The use of PBR techniques is unmatched.

 

[Dennis]

I do not have the game so I am just going by what has been posted here......

While it looks good I don't see how it is a big "leap" over the recent other big Ubi game, Watch_Dogs







But in fairness I might change my mind if I get the game.

 

[benzy]

That neon sign is an actual light source... so it's direct lighting -- not indirect.

http://a.pomf.se/sfbgts.gif[img]

That GIF shows me nothing other than great environment lighting.[/QUOTE]

The direct lighting from the neon sign has no way of hitting the lower right door panel, it should only be illuminating the top dashboard if the game only had direct lighting. The light is bouncing off the dash and windscreen onto the lower passenger door panel.

[img]http://a.pomf.se/oiolyr.jpg

In terms of the gif, you'll be hard pressed to find that kind of realistic uniformity in lighting without GI, especially in a game that supports a full 24h time change. The devs already said it themselves their GI solution is one of the reasons why DC is 30fps.

“As we’ve got more familiar with the hardware, and also, looking at what we wanted from the game, we decided that 1080p, 30 frames per second is absolutely the best thing...
It’s allowed us to create some of the biggest tracks you will ever see in a racing game, with the most visually-dense environments, as well as a full global illumination system which allows us to make time of day, where shadows are cast, full-on reflections. It’s allowed us to push all those various areas.”

http://www.vg247.com/2014/04/30/dri...lutely-the-best-thing-for-game-says-director/

 

[Stiler]

Playing this makes me really really hope more games use this kind of lightning (Global illumination).

It just hands down beats about any other lighting I've seen in a game, it looks so much more realistic the way the light is and especially when it's coming in through a doorway or windows.

Then you have the phyiscs on clothing and hair, along with some of the best looking faces in any game I've played.

I honestly have to shake my head at ANYONE who says black flag looked "As good" or even better.

 

[III-V]

The fabric and skin look amazing. Too bad it was released too early.

 

[TheVampire]

This game looks even better with some sweetfx

 

[TheRed]

I do not have the game so I am just going by what has been posted here......

While it looks good I don't see how it is a big "leap" over the recent other big Ubi game, Watch_Dogs







But in fairness I might change my mind if I get the game.

I really enjoyed Watch Dogs and it's graphics on PC but it seems flat and plain in comparison now. Great reflections on rainy nights is something Unity doesn't offer though.

 

[ttech10]

It looks great, but you need one monster of a PC to play it like that, and even then it's not at 60fps.
I still feel like the game is a visual mess on other aspects like pop-in and LOD distance.

Also, is it true that there is no day-night cycle in this game? I know that they can make the game look much better if they remove that, but I still feel like having a day-night cycle just makes the visuals much more compelling.

The most impressive thing for me is still the amount of work that was put into the details of this game when it comes to the visuals. Big props to the artists.

It's there but not automatic, which I actually like the sound of. I don't think you can do it in missions, but there's an option to select different times of day (I think day, night, dusk and dawn... saw it on a video, at least day and night are there).

 

[Gaffercake]

This game looks even better with some sweetfx

This time anomoly was visually stunning

 

[woen]

This time anomoly was visually stunning

I'd love to see a full AC game set in this time period, in France or in London

 

[kitschbeam]

Yeah, the graphics really blows me away.

 

[HeelPower]

probably the most realistically handsome male character in games so far.

 

[Portugeezer]

This game looks even better with some sweetfx

God damn, the PC version looks absolutely stunning.

 

[TetraGenesis]

Not on consoles

It's been so visually disappointing on PS4. It doesn't just look "not good". In my opinion (and my roommates), it just straight up looks pretty bad or really rough.

 

[Shredderi]

All these screens really drive in how crazy good this game looks. It's a crying shame that it's marred by technical difficulties. The art is really amazing too. Ubisoft has some really good artists on their payroll. Since we can pretty much trust Ubisoft to deliver one big AC game per year, I'm already thinking about how good their next game will look. Maybe it would be pretty much like now but a different time period. Paris is simply gorgeous though so maybe it wouldn't be that bad to get another game in this time period. I'm really feeling the return to a big city. It's the reason why I'm even interested in a new AC game.

 

[jet1911]

probably the most realistically handsome male character in games so far.

The material shader is so fucking good.

 

[BFIB]

It saddens me that Dennis does not have this. I was hoping to see his magic touch on this.

 

[Bebpo]

Game is beautiful. It's a shame that it suffered from the poor optimization. The visuals were completely overshadowed by all the problems. Running the game at 1080p 60fps has me actually enjoying the game at least. Shame it can't be said across the board for everyone. Only draw back in the visuals is the bad draw distance at times. Textures don't load at a certain distance and then sometimes they do.

Here are my screenshots.

How are you getting such a good black level/contrast? I'm running 4k, everything maxed, 8x MSAA and it doesn't look anywhere near your shots in clarity. Do you change settings for brightness/black level/contrast in the Nvidia Config files? Or are you editing the photos after?

Steam-shot compression aside, here's how my game looks at the absolute most maxed possible on PC (getting like 9fps on a GTX980):

It's nowhere near as clean as your shots, and even compression aside in motion 4k downsampled to 1080p with 8x MSAA and max settings still looks closer to these shots than your shots. Just wondering how can I change my settings to get image quality like you are getting.

 

[EroticSushi]

How are you getting such a good black level/contrast? I'm running 4k, everything maxed, 8x MSAA and it doesn't look anywhere near your shots in clarity. Do you change settings for brightness/black level/contrast in the Nvidia Config files? Or are you editing the photos after?

Steam-shot compression aside, here's how my game looks at the absolute most maxed possible on PC (getting like 9fps on a GTX980):

It's nowhere near as clean as your shots, and even compression aside in motion 4k downsampled to 1080p with 8x MSAA and max settings still looks closer to these shots than your shots. Just wondering how can I change my settings to get image quality like you are getting.

I'm not doing anything special. Screenshots were taken @ 3200 x 1800 w/ Everything Maxed, FXAA. They were taken through Fraps and then uploaded through Flickr so that image quality isn't ruined.

 

[DOWN]

Sad that the game is getting overshadowed by its console issues. It's creatively the best yet in the franchise.

 

[Evo X]

It's nowhere near as clean as your shots, and even compression aside in motion 4k downsampled to 1080p with 8x MSAA and max settings still looks closer to these shots than your shots. Just wondering how can I change my settings to get image quality like you are getting.

Don't use MSAA. Downsampling + FXAA provides the best IQ in this game.

 

[jim2point0]

Couple things....

LOD destroys the visuals for me. It's about 20 meters out for some things. Grass rendering distance is about 10 meters. If you're running around an area with a lot of grass, it looks like there's a circle of grass that just follows you. This engine has always had shitty LOD. I get the feeling there's something flawed with the texture swapping that's rooted deep within this engine.... because there's no reason you should see the same LOD issues in AC1 as you do in ACU.

Grass rendering distance:

Building LOD

A lot of people are posting cut scene shots... and I'll admit that they look impressive. But they're very tightly controlled situations. When you have scripted scenes like that where the camera is controlled, you can use hand-placed point lights to punch up the visuals. Arno is also more detailed in cut scenes than he is during gameplay. All of those cut scene lights disappear once gameplay resumes, and the scene looks a lot more dull afterwards. So... yeah, I'm not nearly as impressed with cut scenes. Making the game look good when you have complete control over the camera is much more difficult.

Anyways... enough complaining. Some people posted some of my shots, but I'll repeat a few.

Subsurface scattering in the hood - amazing

NPCs also look like kinda bad...

Don't use MSAA. Downsampling + FXAA provides the best IQ in this game.

No. Downsampling + SMAA provides the best IQ. FXAA ruins image quality. It's better at lower resolutions though because it reduces temporal aliasing (shimmering), but it does so at the cost of blurriness, which is the enemy of image quality.

 

[Crossing Eden]

"Character models look last gen"

My personal favorite is, "the game doesn't look any better than AC4."

Elise from AC:Unity

compared to Anne Bonny from AC4.

Unity is a true next gen title graphically.

 

[TheRed]

Witnessed a random guillotine execution and was appropriately brutal. 10/10 would watch again. Now I understand why people got so much entertainment from it those back then.

 

[WheelHoss1]

Thank you OP for creating this thread. I couldn't agree more. This game blows me away and keeps giving the more time I put in.

It really grabbed me when I got to the

Spoiler

prison

. I've never seen an indoors environment with such lighting. And then the

Spoiler

escape from the prison

! Man, what unbelievable transitions from indoor to outdoor environments. This is what Xbone/PS4 gaming was supposed to be about.

I'm honestly speechless, and the negativity is hard for me to fathom. I just got to Paris, and I have no desire to do anything but roam around and see this beauty on display. The animations, the differences in time of day, the subtle touches in the behavior of the city folk and the attention paid to environmental details—these are all truly breathtaking and not to be missed. If you're on the fence, take the plunge. You won't regret it.

 

[Self_Destructive]

Couple things....

LOD destroys the visuals for me. It's about 20 meters out for some things. Grass rendering distance is about 10 meters. If you're running around an area with a lot of grass, it looks like there's a circle of grass that just follows you. This engine has always had shitty LOD. I get the feeling there's something flawed with the texture swapping that's rooted deep within this engine.... because there's no reason you should see the same LOD issues in AC1 as you do in ACU.

Grass rendering distance:


Building LOD


A lot of people are posting cut scene shots... and I'll admit that they look impressive. But they're very tightly controlled situations. When you have scripted scenes like that where the camera is controlled, you can use hand-placed point lights to punch up the visuals. Arno is also more detailed in cut scenes than he is during gameplay. All of those cut scene lights disappear once gameplay resumes, and the scene looks a lot more dull afterwards. So... yeah, I'm not nearly as impressed with cut scenes. Making the game look good when you have complete control over the camera is much more difficult.

Anyways... enough complaining. Some people posted some of my shots, but I'll repeat a few.

Subsurface scattering in the hood - amazing




NPCs also look like kinda bad...



No. Downsampling + SMAA provides the best IQ. FXAA ruins image quality. It's better at lower resolutions though because it reduces temporal aliasing (shimmering), but it does so at the cost of blurriness, which is the enemy of image quality.

Jim, is it possible for anyone to get this free-cam tool? If so, where do I go?

 

[vesvci]

Wow, all these good-looking screenshots are from the PC version, right? Looks good. Maybe I'll have a gaming PC next year for this game.

 

[jim2point0]

Jim, is it possible for anyone to get this free-cam tool? If so, where do I go?

Oy. TLR version after the quote.

Unity uses some pretty annoying cheat-prevention. Likely to keep people from giving themselves money, thus circumventing the microtransactions. This also effects the ability to do things like... a free camera.

Someone created a script that bypasses all of the cheat detection scanners. I was then able to hack the FOV and camera... but there is a problem. This game locks onto Arno no matter where you move the camera, so you can't fly it around and point it where you like. That's why my screenshots kinda suck. The only thing I can do is fix the camera in place (basically disabling all movement). I can then move Arno out of the shot, or move him somewhere else in the shot. But the camera remains static until I restore the game's camera.

But that's not the only issue. Using the cheat prevention bypass causes a lot more crashes. Very random crashes. Mostly when going into the menu or accessing the map. And the further you are in the game, the more crashes you'll have. The guy that created the scanner was only 2% into the game. The further you are, the more cheat detection scanners are used. So... the camera is almost unusable if you're 10% into the game.

As a result, I've discontinued any work on it. I've already patched my game to 1.2, which means I can't use it anymore (the bypass is only for version 1.1).

TL;DR - No, you can't get a working free camera right now. Maybe later on down the road if someone creates a more stable way to remove the cheat prevention and can come up with a way to disable the auto-centering camera.

 

[wanderingprostheyltite]

This game really makes me want to upgrade my gpu. Gameplay isn't the greatest but loving the new animations, looks a lot more fluid than past games in the series.

 

[Self_Destructive]

Oy. TLR version after the quote.



TL;DR - No, you can't get a working free camera right now. Maybe later on down the road if someone creates a more stable way to remove the cheat prevention and can come up with a way to disable the auto-centering camera.

Damn, alright, thank's for the response.

 

[ref]

Not sure how people can say the character models don't look good...

Personally, I think they are some of the best ever seen in video games period. They look fantastic.

I haven't seen them in motion, but in screenshots they look incredible. The lighting in particular is just sublime.

 

[jim2point0]

Not sure how people can say the character models don't look good...

Personally, I think they are some of the best ever seen in video games period. They look fantastic.

I haven't seen them in motion, but in screenshots they look incredible. The lighting in particular is just sublime.

People are talking about character models outside of the cut scenes. They don't look bad. Just... not great. Faces really lack detail\expression.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

The direct lighting from the neon sign has no way of hitting the lower right door panel, it should only be illuminating the top dashboard if the game only had direct lighting. The light is bouncing off the dash and windscreen onto the lower passenger door panel.

That is inconsistent. It should also illuminate the bottom floor too. But I'll give you that.

In terms of the gif, you'll be hard pressed to find that kind of realistic uniformity in lighting without GI, especially in a game that supports a full 24h time change. The devs already said it themselves their GI solution is one of the reasons why DC is 30fps.

That's cool. I still think AC:U looks better and has more going on.

 

[Dennis]

OK, these three posted above are in fact very impressive and makes me sad not to have the game.

I encourage all to look at them in detail. Click on them and look at them in full resolution. The detail is lost when image is shrunk to fit the screen.

 

[ref]

People are talking about character models outside of the cut scenes. They don't look bad. Just... not great. Faces really lack detail\expression.

Oh, fair enough. I thought we were talking about the cutscene models, they look insane.

 

[LukasTaves]

Yeah, bugs and performance issues aside this is the most impressive looking next gen yet, imo.

The first game that I feel that surpasses Ryse in that regard too.

 

[-GOUKI-]

Unity is a true next gen title graphically.

This is ridiculously good looking. Anyone have a comparison with how this scene looks on PS4 in comparison?

 

[RedSwirl]

I do not have the game so I am just going by what has been posted here......

While it looks good I don't see how it is a big "leap" over the recent other big Ubi game, Watch_Dogs







But in fairness I might change my mind if I get the game.

To me, Watch_Dogs looks like a really souped-up last-gen game. To me its level of detail still has its roots in PS3 and 360 games, and it's just had a lot more advanced lighting and shadows bolted onto it. Not to mention the size of its world, number of NPCs, and number of interiors compared to Unity. Maybe ENB GTA IV would be a good comparison? Unity on the other hand to me looks like its character models, world size, crowds, and probably even lighting are a step up. Watch_Dogs is a very good-looking cross-gen game. Unity looks like something that really is only possible on new hardware.

As for the character models in cut scenes, to me they look very much like video game characters. They don't look realistic at all, but they do have an extremely impressive level of detail.

 

[Final Verdict]

Dat 25Gigs of lighting data.

 

[sjay1994]

Despite my issues with the game, I have to agree.

Unity is probably the most next gen thing I have played.

 

[Octavia]

Alright, props to them. I really haven't been keen on the graphics because it looks cartoony for whatever reason to me. Either it's the characters or just everything having such a high ambient light amount, but this is easily the best graphical scene I have ever seen out of a video game. Besides a few imperfections, it looks real. Especially in the shrunken size.

Take out the objective marker and I'd say it was someones light HDR camera experiment in Europe somewhere.

 

[DarthWalden]

I haven't played the final retail version of this game but I always thought it would as really nice looking based on screenshots and videos.

Glad I'm not alone.

 

[Rwinterhalter]

Yeah, I meant to ask this question.

Was the GI real time or not? If it isn't, that's not impressive.

No, half of the game data is pre-baked lighting. 25 gigs worth.

It's still pretty damned impressive.

 

[Rogue_Ledr]

Damn! Those PC shots above are friggin incredible.

How does the PS4 compare?

Can we get comparison side-by-side pics?

 

[JordanN]

That is inconsistent. It should also illuminate the bottom floor too. But I'll give you that.

This is just a guess but wouldn't the law of conservation have something to do with this? Light loses its potential the farther it travels (especially since it has to travel through glass before reaching the car interior).

So I expect the floor to receive less illumination (unless there's another red sign filling in).

 

[jim2point0]

The grass rendering "leap" we've been waiting for.

 

[Hastati]

Wow. This game is truly breathtaking. Sadly I don't think my 780M can handle it, nor can my brain handle the microtransaction bullshit.

I hope they reuse this setting and a lot of their beautiful assets in the next games, and tidy up the bugs and bullshit. Their team responsible for the architectural recreation and lighting deserves an award

 

[LightofRohan]

As an artist in the industry, this game is one of the most fantastic artistic achievement in this medium. It's absolutely incredible. You have no idea how much witchcraft is used to achieve this... The amount of varied npc's on screen at once with unique animations, dynamic interaction and material/texture variety is insane. Having so many interiors with such dense and rich setdressing even matching some linear titles makes my head spin.

Walking down the slummy areas at night surrounded by npc's all completely distinct and unique has been a dream of mine since I started doing game art.

The performance/ui/gameplay however... Not so much. But it gets an absolute pass to me for achieving such an incredible masterpiece in realtime art.