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DF: Tech Analysis: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

KKRT00

Member
Really good video, but slightly too short.
I hope that there will be more videos highlighting some of tech in greater details, but it was quite skimmed on.

Game has really high level of polish and it shows. The use of Allegorithmic's Substance really payed off and was smart move.

Its nice that they adopted Crytek's bokeh shadows from vegetation, its really neat tech.

Ps. I need to play it someday. I was thinking about buying PS4, but with 1080 around a corner its hard to justify buying it, especially when there is not many games that interest me.
 

Caayn

Member
Thanks for the article Dark.

Why are people suddenly so afraid of spoilers in a DF thread? In a tech analysis you're obviously going to use the, or at least close to, best examples you can find. Not doing that would be silly and kind of defeats the purpose of the analysis in my opinion.
 

Javin98

Banned
Yes it's possible but if there is one thing The Order did well, it was consistency across every single thing it does and commits to it completely. But yes, a lot of games do it but shouldn't the same apply to UC4 too? that some parts had 4xAF and some just don't.

Tbh ND has never put priority on AF, since none of their previous games ever did more than trilinear filtering. I know last gen consoles were weaker hardware and AF was rare, but despite that some games would have it from time to time and as such it was something that could be done if prioritised and ND didn't (that being my point). I mean ND are amazing and probably the best at console development, but this notion that UC4 is the best at every single thing it does is just not a realistic one.
Well, the AF in Uncharted 4 is certainly nothing to write home about, but it seems decent from the video. I will judge for myself when I play the game. Anyway, I agree that the notion that Uncharted 4 is best at every aspect is ridiculous. IMO, it is the best looking game out now, but it certainly cut corners in certain areas. Shadows being the biggest offender. However, ND arguably had a pretty good balance in making sacrifices and having the end result look amazing.
 

Pif

Banned
Are the in-game models actually legitimately superior to Quantum Break as the article seems to point out?
 
The game is certainly beautiful, but I'm feeling a bit of disconnect of what is shown and the description DF gives.

Specially in the IQ, there are some shots where the they say: Look at how perfect the IQ is, but there's a blurry/soft look and still some aliasing visible, and some temporal artifacts as well.

The asset quality seems a bit overstated as well, as well the lighting which can look kinda flat sometimes.

All in all it's a mighty great looking game, I just don't see how it's the very best, nor do I fell DF's screens and videos actually showcase that.
 

AlStrong

Member
What's going on here?
I don't think it's the TAA since that would only create ghosting when in motion and Drake isn't moving here.

hTHnGTS.jpg

Could be an issue with the water surface shader in front of him.
 

Daft Punk

Banned
The game is certainly beautiful, but I'm feeling a bit of disconnect of what is shown and the description DF gives.

Specially in the IQ, there are some shots where the they say: Look at how perfect the IQ is, but there's a blurry/soft look and still some aliasing visible, and some temporal artifacts as well.

The asset quality seems a bit overstated as well, as well the lighting which can look kinda flat sometimes.

All in all it's a mighty great looking game, I just don't see how it's the very best, nor do I fell DF's screens and videos actually showcase that.

Have you actually played the game yet?
 
The game is certainly beautiful, but I'm feeling a bit of disconnect of what is shown and the description DF gives.

Specially in the IQ, there are some shots where the they say: Look at how perfect the IQ is, but there's a blurry/soft look and still some aliasing visible, and some temporal artifacts as well.

The asset quality seems a bit overstated as well, as well the lighting which can look kinda flat sometimes.

All in all it's a mighty great looking game, I just don't see how it's the very best, nor do I fell DF's screens and videos actually showcase that.

Fair enough. It is not like DF is the only outlet who has expressed this opinion however. Seems near ubiquitous to me...
 
The game is certainly beautiful, but I'm feeling a bit of disconnect of what is shown and the description DF gives.

Specially in the IQ, there are some shots where the they say: Look at how perfect the IQ is, but there's a blurry/soft look and still some aliasing visible, and some temporal artifacts as well.

The asset quality seems a bit overstated as well, as well the lighting which can look kinda flat sometimes.

All in all it's a mighty great looking game, I just don't see how it's the very best, nor do I fell DF's screens and videos actually showcase that.

I've never agreed with the criticism of games looking "soft". There is a big difference between soft and blurry in the case of a game like Uncharted 4, it looks soft in the same way a CG film does. I see no problem there, and it's certainly not distractingly so.

That being said, I'm not sure I agree with this game being the best that this gen has to offer visually either. I still think the only game that has come close to approximating the experience of playing an offline rendered film is The Order. I haven't seen anything else match their materials and the game's visuals are really just virtually flawless from a rendering perspective.

It certainly should be stated that Uncharted 4 is a HELL of a lot bigger in scale and just doing a whole lot more in general. But I think in terms of pure visual fidelity, The Order has yet to be beaten in most ways.
 

nib95

Banned
I still think Laura's model is the best in gaming.

Not even close. Not if we're talking actual gameplay anyway. The cutscene model is noteably superior to the actual gameplay model. I think UC4 probably tops the list, but Quantum Break and Until Dawn are certainly up there.
 

K' Dash

Member
I'm baffled that nobody seems to be interested in applying or developing a generic version of Second Son or Uncharted 4 AA...
 

fastmower

Member
Really good video, but slightly too short.
I hope that there will be more videos highlighting some of tech in greater details, but it was quite skimmed on.

Game has really high level of polish and it shows. The use of Allegorithmic's Substance really payed off and was smart move.

Its nice that they adopted Crytek's bokeh shadows from vegetation, its really neat tech.

Ps. I need to play it someday. I was thinking about buying PS4, but with 1080 around a corner its hard to justify buying it, especially when there is not many games that interest me.
Get a cheap used one when the Neo comes out.
 
Really good video, but slightly too short.
I hope that there will be more videos highlighting some of tech in greater details, but it was quite skimmed on.

Game has really high level of polish and it shows. The use of Allegorithmic's Substance really payed off and was smart move.

Its nice that they adopted Crytek's bokeh shadows from vegetation, its really neat tech.

Ps. I need to play it someday. I was thinking about buying PS4, but with 1080 around a corner its hard to justify buying it, especially when there is not many games that interest me.

As a graphic enthusiast how can you not play this game.
 

rashbeep

Banned
The game is certainly beautiful, but I'm feeling a bit of disconnect of what is shown and the description DF gives.

Specially in the IQ, there are some shots where the they say: Look at how perfect the IQ is, but there's a blurry/soft look and still some aliasing visible, and some temporal artifacts as well.

The asset quality seems a bit overstated as well, as well the lighting which can look kinda flat sometimes.

All in all it's a mighty great looking game, I just don't see how it's the very best, nor do I fell DF's screens and videos actually showcase that.

IQ is really solid for a console game, but yea I'm not really blown away by it.
 
Buying PS4 for one game would be a bit silly. Especially if it was only to admire the graphics.

I would agree if I didn't believe it was mostly due to his bias against consoles in general. I mean I know he played RYSE to completion and enjoyed it so I know its not an issue of quality.
 

longdi

Banned
LOL that lowres shadowing...need a Neo.

In all seriousness, it sure looks great. Anyone like me, was half-expecting PS3 to render these kind of graphics back in those days after all that hype with Cell/RSX, or at least having games with this level of physics and environment interactions?
 

gamerMan

Member
There is very little doubt that this is a technical masterpiece. It's the game that every game is going to be judged by. This game blew me away. It's the closest to playing a CG. In fact, I would argue it looks even better than most CG, which is quite the achievement. Return of The Tomb Raider was certainly up there but where Uncharted blows it away is the crazy animation. Yes, the hair on Lara is better because it moves a lot more realistically, but the problem is that these techniques are only applied on Lara. All the other characters look sort of gross. In Uncharted, everything is more consistent. Even the AI isn't so dumb anymore with psychic xray vision.

Of course just like every other developer Naughty Dog had to make a lot of sacrifices to get this is realtime. But I would argue they know how to make the right type of sacrifices to keep the overall quality high. There is a lot of stuff here that is faked. Most of the dynamics are actually precalculated and played back as animation. However, the average gamer is not even going to know. Yes, shadows during gameplay are rendered at lower quality, but during the cut scenes they are some of the high quality I have seen. What an achievement.
 
I wonder if they will do a MP tech analysis and compare the differences. I swear, I just booted up MP and at a glance it's hard to see what exactly was downgraded to hit 60fps aside from resolution.
 
I wonder if they will do a MP tech analysis and compare the differences. I swear, I just booted up MP and at a glance it's hard to see what exactly was downgraded to hit 60fps aside from resolution.
If I recall from the beta, the character models look pretty bad in comparison to single player. That and 900p
 

Frozone

Member
There is very little doubt that this is a technical masterpiece. It's the game that every game is going to be judged by. This game blew me away. It's the closest to playing a CG. In fact, I would argue it looks even better than most CG, which is quite the achievement. Return of The Tomb Raider was certainly up there but where Uncharted blows it away is the crazy animation. Yes, the hair on Lara is better because it moves a lot more realistically, but the problem is that these techniques are only applied on Lara. All the other characters look sort of gross. In Uncharted, everything is more consistent. Even the AI isn't so dumb anymore with psychic xray vision.

Of course just like every other developer Naughty Dog had to make a lot of sacrifices to get this is realtime. But I would argue they know how to make the right type of sacrifices to keep the overall quality high. There is a lot of stuff here that is faked. Most of the dynamics are actually precalculated and played back as animation. However, the average gamer is not even going to know. Yes, shadows during gameplay are rendered at lower quality, but during the cut scenes they are some of the high quality I have seen. What an achievement.

Are you saying that UC4's NPC characters (i.e. the enemies, etc) look as good as Drake does in gameplay?
 
Surprised for the love for Quantum Break character models. They look very good but didn't really make much of an impression on me. I thought it was QB's special effects that really stole the show.
 
D

Deleted member 325805

Unconfirmed Member
Shame to see drops to 25 even if rare. Will you be doing a MP analyse soon? Hoping for a small improvement over beta so we can get 60 solid, even with the mystical of death down. The game really look incredible though and runs better than almost all games I've seen on your channel so I'm really looking forward to playing it tomorrow unless my postman screws me over (he's always late and sometimes I swear he just doesn't bother bringing the post at all).
 
Naughty Dog has had a reputation of putting out the most technically accomplished games on Consoles, but the gap between them and everyone else has never been this great. What they are doing borders on unbelievable.

really..? i have seen only some jeep driving footage and some sneaning section from this game and i thought it was really underwhelming, merely a small upgrade over previous Uncharteds and not a true generational leap.

i have been wrong many times before so.. can anyone link to some truly spectacular footage that lives up to all the hyperbolic praise?
 
really..? i have seen only some jeep driving footage and some sneaning section from this game and i thought it was really underwhelming, merely a small upgrade over previous Uncharteds and not a true generational leap.

i have been wrong many times before so.. can anyone link to some truly spectacular footage that lives up to all the hyperbolic praise?
lol
 
really..? i have seen only some jeep driving footage and some sneaning section from this game and i thought it was really underwhelming, merely a small upgrade over previous Uncharteds and not a true generational leap.

i have been wrong many times before so.. can anyone link to some truly spectacular footage that lives up to all the hyperbolic praise?

Shaking.My.Head.
 
really..? i have seen only some jeep driving footage and some sneaning section from this game and i thought it was really underwhelming, merely a small upgrade over previous Uncharteds and not a true generational leap.

i have been wrong many times before so.. can anyone link to some truly spectacular footage that lives up to all the hyperbolic praise?

Maybe watch the digital foundry video?
 

Dargor

Member
really..? i have seen only some jeep driving footage and some sneaning section from this game and i thought it was really underwhelming, merely a small upgrade over previous Uncharteds and not a true generational leap.

i have been wrong many times before so.. can anyone link to some truly spectacular footage that lives up to all the hyperbolic praise?

toobigtobebait.jpeg
 

Angel_DvA

Member
really..? i have seen only some jeep driving footage and some sneaning section from this game and i thought it was really underwhelming, merely a small upgrade over previous Uncharteds and not a true generational leap.

i have been wrong many times before so.. can anyone link to some truly spectacular footage that lives up to all the hyperbolic praise?

539.gif
 
If I recall from the beta, the character models look pretty bad in comparison to single player. That and 900p

I just logged into MP and ran around the map in private match. It looks noticeably worse when you look at it. The character models and textures seem much worse as is the clarity.
Foliage density and scale is another thing.
 

LostDonkey

Member
So you're saying that a decrease is shadow quality is the reason why Uncharted looks as good or is as technically proficient?

Shadows are, and always have been a huge factor in how any 3d game performs. Having them toned down to jaggy ugly artifacting levels like shown in a lot of the videos will help immensely with performance in other areas, yes.

Also not at you but in general, this game looks amazing, but the best game ever???

Battlefront alone murders this visually. Best game on console I'd agree with.
 

Caayn

Member
Does the game changes graphical settings when entering photomode causing the framerate drops? Or is the mode just not properly implemented?
 

TheOfficeMut

Unconfirmed Member
Shadows are, and always have been a huge factor in how any 3d game performs. Having them toned down to jaggy ugly artifacting levels like shown in a lot of the videos will help immensely with performance in other areas, yes.

Also not at you but in general, this game looks amazing, but the best game ever???

Battlefront alone murders this visually. Best game on console I'd agree with.

No I'm pretty sure this looks better than that and the majority of PC games, if not all that I've seen. Maybe with the exception of Star Citizen.
 
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