And you see right here is the issue, coming from a stance of tech that this is all wrapped up in then RaD have proven that they are certainly first class.
They are doing great stuff, i think anyone can point that out. But hyperbolic statements of "da best," get in the way all the time. This likewise happens in uncharted threads.
They have soft body physics running in the game with what looks to be procedural destruction on limbs,body,Single mesh to mesh transformation of characters in the Lycan's.
Let's wait to actually see what "soft body physics" actually means. Unfortunately, beyond some hypish fanboy stuff and rumor mongering (shinobi should be ashamed how often he is guilty of doing this), the devs have never outlined this technical feature. For all we know this could be the exact same stuff technically as "meat cube" in gears of War 2: which is not impressive technically.
The lycan trasnformation is definitely cool, but real time mesh changing isn't exactly new.
They have dynamic physics for objects and characters, hair and cloth including weight and weather affected. And this is all whilst pushing bleeding edge real-time visuals that perfectly hit the target that they set out from since day one of being as close to Pre-rendered CGI than any other game. Keeping you hooked from start to end with no jarring disconnects from visuals.
I can applaud their artisitic direction and keeping everything realtime. In fact, I do.
BTW, whilst artiscally awesome, secondary motion for clothe, hair, etc... is not
at all new in games.
If we take the company that you and KR hold aloft Crytec as an example then just the start of Crysis 3 (and this is on PC) has a big enough jar from the Pre-rendered Movie that the game starts with which has far more PP effects present than in the actual game visuals you start with. Here RaD have closed that to nothing as everything is consistent throughout.
1. I find the company of Crytek to be quite shit actually (their engine is great though).
2.
http://www.loneclone.de/projects/crysis-3-intro-jailbreak/
My job was to stage the Crysis 3 Jailbreak intro cinematic & supervise overall execution on all shots and assets needed. Everything was rendered in the actual game build, no compositing or color grading was done to the final image.
You are factually wrong. Much like Ryse, that video is just pre-rendered because Crytek are incompetent these days (console focus). Not because it is unachievable in real time.
Stopping with the "but the Art syle does it" comments are bull and come across as the salt they are most likely delivered from. As far as a Technological stance goes if we ignore all of the above that many games have in isolation but not all in one, but simply take the Lighting and PBR in this game then it is without question the most accurate and impressive iteration yet seen along with such a superb blend of shader work on each object,character and scene. IMOP this is the start and benchmark of how games should look in terms of a CGI like aim and that includes any platform you choose.
PBR is full of a whole host of features for a variety of materials (proper relfections, linear lighting, light atenuation factors, area lights, etc...). So while this games clothe representation is beyond fantastic, it is lacking in other areas as will become evident upon release. For example (something I wanted to avoid talking about for spoiler reasons and to keep this thread clean of crap like this, but your post forces some response):
Because this game doesnt use SSR to mask specular (instead it uses cubemaps and those interesting capsules for character reflections), you see specular bleeding quite often on objects. This is heavily evident in a lot of sections in the leaked footage. It is the same problem the AC: Unity has.
Spoiler image below where you can specular light leaking due to no SSR:
http://abload.de/img/capture7buoh.png
On the other hand, those reflection capsules for characters have some cool side effects... like being able to see your "character's darkened reflection" while off camera or whilst facing objects.
