Support NeoGAF

[Karspankey]

.

Taking more screen and looking at the good comparison Sepultura made, I'm thinking the reason my screenshot looked so off was because of the lighting.

Edit: Oh wait, lol. Seeing that I read Sepultra's comparison wrong because his image for PS4 Pro isn't loading.

Anyways, I'm not trying to argue with anyone that the foliage doesn't look weird. That's why I mentioned that there are oddities when I put up the pic in the first place. All I was saying is that it lisn't that noticeable (to me) in motion, with the foliage constantly blowing around and such!

 

[HeelPower]

I played the game on launch back in 2015 ,and now I am completely shocked at how much cleaner and smoother it runs.

Seriously, SO glad and lucky I kept off playing hearts of stone + Blood & wine till now.

This game floored me twice this gen.Got boosebumps when I started to take in the atmosphere again.

 

[Crossing Eden]

looks like an ok patch. Checkerboard and improve IQ but the below would make it look so much better

- Draw distances and shadow quality remains the same.
- PC's Higher quality textures, higher shadow quality and Hair works are not included

Why would they include things the console is incapable of running?

 

[VlaudTheImpaler]

Taking more screen and looking at the good comparison Sepultura made, I'm thinking the reason my screenshot looked so off was because of the lighting.

I can't see his comparison because the pro pic isn't showing but I don't think the lighting has anything to do with it.

 

[Karspankey]

I can't see his comparison because the pro pic isn't showing but I don't think the lighting has anything to do with it.

Oh yeah, for sure. I edited my post as I realized I had made a mistake when looking at his post since the PS4 Pro image was missing at the time!

 

[CGwizz]

I am going to play the last bit of DLC i didnt finished, hope its steady 30 fps there.

The shit framerate on bog is a shame, since some of the best content is there, i remember i fucking hated this part when played it on release it was GARBAGE performance on bog and when there was fire, Novigrad framerate was shit at night because the fire from the torches, smoke/fog fucked framerate too that is why bog was trash.

I am just glad i dont have to go back there. Blood and Wine its the only thing left for me.

 

[adamsapple]

PC Ultra

Can you reupload the PS4 image elsewhere like abload.de ? It's not working.

 

[Sepultura]

Oh yeah, for sure. I edited my post as I realized I had made a mistake when looking at his post since the PS4 Pro image was missing at the time!

I can't see his comparison because the pro pic isn't showing but I don't think the lighting has anything to do with it.

Rehosted on Abload. The pro screenshot is taken from Digital Foundry's article.

 

[Dictator93]

Can you reupload the PS4 image elsewhere like abload.de ? It's not working.

Rehosted on Abload. The pro screenshot is taken from Digital Foundry's article.

EDIT: Reupload for a better spatial comparsion with less offset

IMO, it does not look like HBAO+ like DF mentions, rather the SSAO whose AO radius is improperly scaled with checkerbaording and the increased resolution, thus making it apply less. The Wticher 3 on PC exhibits this behaviour when you use Nvidia Ansel, when you scale up the resolution high, most of the post processing disappears (AO included) as it is tuned for a set resolution, and not upoon some other factor (like percentage of resolution or screen space or a grid).

 

[Omoiyari]

man when you start staring into the distance on ps4pro you can really tell that the game does not like the extra resolution, i think it's fair to say that the witcher 3 on consoles was not developed with 4k in mind, it almost has a skyward sword-style watercolor effect in a way lol

 

[Tyaren]

The higher resolution, which results in a much clearer picture, does unmask the low foliage LOD on consoles. Still, the game looks overall considerably better. Crisper textures and texture filtering and a less crude and intrusive AO go a long way too. The game looks best in the cities or interiors now, where there's no low res foliage in sight.

 

[cicatriz]

Fellow PC gamers at it again. Zoomed in 400%, the Pro looks considerably worse than my $780 1080.

Come on fellas.

 

[Lister]

Fellow PC gamers at it again. Zoomed in 400%, the Pro looks considerably worse than my $780 1080.

Come on fellas.

The original screenshots aren't zoomed in 400%. And they look bad.

... also 1080's are $540 not $780.

 

[cicatriz]

The original screenshots aren't zoomed in 400%. And they look bad.

According to the professionals who do this everyday, it doesn't. In fact, in a normal viewing position at its worst, it looks softer than the native presentation on PC.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Where does the 1920x2160 figure come from then?

Do you have to push this crap in every thread with CBR?

1920x2160 comes from a persistent misunderstanding of how CBR works. It's just as accurate as saying it renders a 3840x1080, only neither actually captures the way CBR works. You never lose more resolution in one dimension than the other because you are in fact rendering a full frame buffer where every other pixel samples opaque geometry and the rest are estimates based on temporal and motion data.

 

[Lister]

According to the professionals who do this everyday, it doesn't. In fact, in a normal viewing position at its worst, it looks softer than the native presentation on PC.

I'm fucking looking at the screenshots wiht my own eyes. I don't need a "professional" (professional what, screenshot spotter, what the hell are you tlaking about?) to tell me what I'm looking at.

The LOD levels are way too low for this resolution. You cna clearly see these flaws, and then the checkerboarding on top makes it look quite obvious.

 

[Lister]

1920x2160 comes from a persistent misunderstanding of how CBR works. It's just as accurate as saying it renders a 3840x1080, only neither actually captures the way CBR works. You never lose more resolution in one dimension than the other because you are in fact rendering a full frame buffer where every other pixel samples opaque geometry and the rest are estimates based on temporal and motion data.

It is strange that geomtry is exhibiting the pattern though, I would expect only post processing to do so.

But maybe I'm missing something.

 

[Inuhanyou]

so in general, a decent update, but the higher resolution makes some of the rougher edges not easily seen in 1080p stand out.

One thing i think sony effed up on with pro is having seperate modes for 1080p and 4K output. Like why would you do that? Just have one 4K option that downscales to 1080p. And if devs want to add in other graphical options, they can do that through a menu change. Its much simpler to do it how XB1X does it

 

[BuddyTheBestPuppy]

Sad about the vegetation, PS4 can't handle high res grass and trees? Another CPU issue?

 

[cicatriz]

I'm fucking looking at the screenshots wiht my own eyes. I don't need a "professional" (professional what, screenshot spotter, what the hell are you tlaking about?) to tell me what I'm looking at.

Maybe I've missed a quote, but perhaps you could show me where DF, NXGamer or VGTech ever said the PS4 Pro presentation looked bad? If any of these fidelity/graphical settings were that offensive, I find it funny that its not been brought up in any of the aforementioned analysis'.

Your PC defense force post behavior is as predictable as it is hyperbolic.

Quit making us look bad.

 

[Dictator93]

1920x2160 comes from a persistent misunderstanding of how CBR works. It's just as accurate as saying it renders a 3840x1080, only neither actually captures the way CBR works. You never lose more resolution in one dimension than the other because you are in fact rendering a full frame buffer where every other pixel samples opaque geometry and the rest are estimates based on temporal and motion data.

It is strange that geomtry is exhibiting the pattern though, I would expect only post processing to do so.
But maybe I'm missing something.

There is a reason though why saw tooth patterns typical of CBR occur parallell along the horizontal axis

Ad I understand it, itis internally 1920X2160 before temporal reconstruction in this case, so the gaps and errors induced by that exhibit in a pattern parallell with the horizontal axis which actually is “more complete“ information-wise / has “better-informed“ pixels.

 

[Lister]

Maybe I've missed a quote, but perhaps you could show me where DF, NXGamer or VGTech ever said the PS4 Pro presentation looked bad?

Your PC defense force post behavior is as predictable as it is hyperbolic.

Quit making us look bad.

Defense of what? How am I denfending PC, what am I defending it from? Sotp this bullshit system wars crap.

Jeebus man. I'm pointing out, along with SEVERAL other people here, that the LOD on the PS4 Pro + CBR highlights some flaws.

You might disagree, whatever, it's just our opinion.

I think the devs should have aimed for 1440p, and reaised the LOD a bit more. I think the final result probably would have been much better.

Of course they may have tried that and ran into some other issues.

 

[Cobalt03]

Guess it’s time for a replay

 

[Omoiyari]

Fellow PC gamers at it again. Zoomed in 400%, the Pro looks considerably worse than my $780 1080.

Come on fellas.

I specified that it was a shot of distant objects and not the whole image (and btw there is no zoom here, just a crop from the originals, this is still a native res image with 1:1 pixels on your screen), and my point more than anything was to highlight how some aspects really stick out on console in 4k because cdproject red obviously didn't account for higher resolutions during development years ago; if ps4pro and xboxonex were around back then, I'm positive that the they would have made the effort to create a more balanced image overall with those higher res in mind.
I am by no means a pc master race guy. Just pointing out things that I find interesting.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Maybe I've missed a quote, but perhaps you could show me where DF, NXGamer or VGTech ever said the PS4 Pro presentation looked bad? If any of these fidelity/graphical settings were that offensive, I find it funny that its not been brought up in any of the aforementioned analysis'.

Your PC defense force post behavior is as predictable as it is hyperbolic.

Quit making us look bad.

Now slow down and find where that first poster actually said that it looked "bad", "offensive", etc. You are projecting here.

 

[VlaudTheImpaler]

Fellow PC gamers at it again. Zoomed in 400%, the Pro looks considerably worse than my $780 1080.

Come on fellas.

My shot on the last page was not zoomed in 400%. In fact it is at a lower resolution (1440p) than the pro shot but the foliage and textures look crisper and with more detail both up close and further away no matter how you cut it (in motion or still).

Anyway, if you follow my posts I was just shocked at how bad the pro version looked compared to how I remember it being even on xbox way back when. I had just forgotten. I'm beginning to think that I suffer from Motivated Forgetting or something.

 

[DangerMouse]

Well shit, guess I’m doing a second playthrough. Those upgrades sound delicious.

Yeah, sounds like a rather nice job.

 

[cicatriz]

Now slow down and find where that first poster actually said that it looked "bad", "offensive", etc. You are projecting here.

The original screenshots aren't zoomed in 400%. And they look bad.

Literally, exactly what he said. Then he actually implied I'm telling him what he can/cannot see. I'm not disputing discrepancies, they speak for themselves. But to make a generalization that the game looks "bad" is an exaggeration, I don't see how that's up for debate.

 

[maximum360]

I wonder how the Pro version will compare to the X1X version.

I considered a second run through since I never completed all the DLC I purchased on the PS4 but that won't happen if it's a crappy update.

 

[KageMaru]

1920x2160 comes from a persistent misunderstanding of how CBR works. It's just as accurate as saying it renders a 3840x1080, only neither actually captures the way CBR works. You never lose more resolution in one dimension than the other because you are in fact rendering a full frame buffer where every other pixel samples opaque geometry and the rest are estimates based on temporal and motion data.

So the guys at DF misunderstand how CBR works? Honest question as my earlier request for a link or article was sincere as I want to learn as much as I can.

There is a reason though why saw tooth patterns typical of CBR occur parallell along the horizontal axis

Ad I understand it, itis internally 1920X2160 before temporal reconstruction in this case, so the gaps and errors induced by that exhibit in a pattern parallell with the horizontal axis which actually is “more complete“ information-wise / has “better-informed“ pixels.

This is how I understood it to work but we keep getting conflicting explanations from posters.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Literally, exactly what he said. Then he actually implied I'm telling him what he can/cannot see. I'm not disputing discrepancies, they speak for themselves. But to make a generalization that the game looks "bad" is an exaggeration, I don't see how that's up for debate.

I was talking about thedrunkenchild. You say "Quit making us look bad" to Lister, but you were the first to start it by implying thedrunkenchild had an agenda. How is that fair?

I not once mentioned thedrunkenchild, I was speaking to the history of similar posts/controversies made by Lister.

Not by name, but you said he/she was posting zoomed in screenshots to make the game look worse, and brought up the cost of hardware. This doesn't makes us look any better. It's no surprise someone would reply to that.

 

[cicatriz]

I was talking about thedrunkenchild. You say "Quit making us look bad" to Lister, but you were the first to start it by implying thedrunkenchild had an agenda. How is that fair?

I not once mentioned thedrunkenchild, I was speaking to the history of similar posts/controversies made by Lister.

 

[VlaudTheImpaler]

Literally, exactly what he said. Then he actually implied I'm telling him what he can/cannot see. I'm not disputing discrepancies, they speak for themselves. But to make a generalization that the game looks "bad" is an exaggeration, I don't see how that's up for debate.

As a step up from the ps4 version sure, they look good. But compared to the PC version... Dude, that foliage and textures and shadows... they look bad. That's what he is saying. In that sense, "bad" is not an exaggeration. It is his, and my, opinion.

Try to look at it this way. We both have rigs that allow us to crank almost every setting as high as possible barring hair works. If I was used to playing like that and all of a sudden I logged in one day there was a glitch that caused my foliage to look like that pro picture... I, and almost anyone else in that situation I would wager, would probably say it looks, bad, horrible etc. in comparison to what we normally play at.

Look, for anyone that has and is playing this on consoles this will be a good thing and you won't notice a negative most likely.

But for those coming from PC where we can have those textures and extras it is a different story. Obviously.

However, no one should be surprised that these PC vs pro comparisons are happening. I mean this is exactly what DF did in their comparison and this is what is enabling and eliciting such reactions. Are we not allowed to critique and question DF's results or do comparisons of our own? Are we not allowed to come to our own conclusions with the information we are seeing with our own eyes?

 

[spannicus]

This game at 1440p on PC looks amazing.

 

[pottuvoi]

There is a reason though why saw tooth patterns typical of CBR occur parallell along the horizontal axis

Ad I understand it, itis internally 1920X2160 before temporal reconstruction in this case, so the gaps and errors induced by that exhibit in a pattern parallell with the horizontal axis which actually is “more complete“ information-wise / has “better-informed“ pixels.

There are several different methods and buffer types games have used, but the common idea is to get half shading amount and dividing single direction of image is just easy way to explain it.

Buffer you render to can be pretty much anything from 1920X2160 with 2xMSAA to Battlefieds EQAA buffer. (And others)

With checkerboard pattern used, errors are visible in both directions.
When they are visible depends a lot on methods used to fix the issue.

Errors can be visible even when using id buffer as well. (Pretty sure that perfect shading propagation is impossible as you can have unique polygon-id on non-shaded pixel.)

 

[onQ123]

Care to share a link or article about what you claimed earlier?

You've made dubious claims before with other games, so I'd like to read up on where you're getting this info.

Also I don't recall seeing anyone making any real claims outside of 4K CBR, so I'm not sure where the mistakes were.

It's late at night & this online sketch pad didn't work as planned lol but this is as simple as I can make things
say that it was only 4 pixels instead of 8294400 & there was a shader engine for each pixel , all 4 shader engines would be sampling the depth buffer while only SE1 & SE4 would be sampling the color buffer in frame 1 then it will alternate to SE2 & SE3 that will sample color in frame 2 but there is also the ID buffer that has information that can be used to track the exact location of objects & triangles that can be used to re-sample the depth & color buffer from the frame before ( it also has data that can be used to come up with color for the pixels even before re-sampling the previous frame).

at no time will the game only be 2 pixels

 

[AbandonedTrolley]

The original screenshots aren't zoomed in 400%. And they look bad.

... also 1080's are $540 not $780.

But you can't run a PC with just a graphics card... So now add in a 4k capable CPU, motherboard,RAM and HDD.

Regardless though the PC is miles ahead when it comes to textures.

 

[ss_lemonade]

Sad about the vegetation, PS4 can't handle high res grass and trees? Another CPU issue?

Not sure what setting in PC controls that but I remember Foliage Distance being the heaviest setting for me (other than hairworks), causing noticeable framerate drops at higher settings

 

[Backfoggen]

Maybe I've missed a quote, but perhaps you could show me where DF, NXGamer or VGTech ever said the PS4 Pro presentation looked bad? If any of these fidelity/graphical settings were that offensive, I find it funny that its not been brought up in any of the aforementioned analysis'.

Your PC defense force post behavior is as predictable as it is hyperbolic.

Quit making us look bad.

Both DF and NXGamer didn’t pick up on the low res vegetation. VGTech doesn’t make a judgment anyways, just resolution or frame rate analysis. Don’t trust their word before things you actually see in full res uncompressed screenshots here.

 

[kraspkibble]

"illusion of native 4K."

lol this is what PS4 Pro + XB1X are all about. they are too weak.

nice to see some kind of upgrade though but these consoles are a joke. i wish PS5/XB2 would just hurry up so we can get proper 4K.

 

[c0de]

But you can't run a PC with just a graphics card... So now add in a 4k capable CPU, motherboard,RAM and HDD.

Regardless though the PC is miles ahead when it comes to textures.

What is a 4k capable CPU?!
I mean, apparently pro and X have CPUs that are able to drive 4k games (if that makes sense in any way) but it's hard to buy a CPU that's not leagues ahead of those, if not impossible.

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

According to the professionals who do this everyday, it doesn't. In fact, in a normal viewing position at its worst, it looks softer than the native presentation on PC.

Ignore him. There’s a small group of very dedicated PC gamers that come into every console graphics / DF thread and try to shit on XBO/PS4/PS4P/XBOX to try and justify the cost of their “rigs” to themselves. He’s one of the worst. At least Dictator knows what he’s talking about and genuinely seems interested in the tech over console vs pc wars.

I know DF zoom in 400% etc to show tech differences but that doesn’t represent the experience 99.9% of people have when playing on a console.

The game looks stunning when played from a sensible viewing distance on a nice big 4k tv. Well done to CDPR on an amazing upgrade. Maybe if they have time they can give people the choice to revert back to 1080 on the Pro since some people don’t like the lesser experience in terms of framerate in certain areas vs the incredible boost to image quality.

 

[Peterthumpa]

The game looks stunning when played from a sensible viewing distance on a nice big 4k tv.

Exactly.

I moved from Canada to Australia and had to leave my 980ti rig behind, where I could play TW3 @ 4K/30 and it was a chore to boot the game on my PS4 Pro (that I brought with me) before the update, it was just too jaggy. Now? It looks amazing, really smooth from a couch distance in my 4K set, and frankly, people here complaining that "draw distance is too low on top of the CB artifacting" or that the game still looks ugly or whatever in normal gameplay conditions, scrutinising every pixel and comparing it to PCs 4x the cost of a Pro with zoomed in images at 400% are frankly flat out lying or with serious eye problems because they're probably playing 30 cm away from their TVs. CB is so "bad" that before DF's verdict most people here were claiming a native 4K resolution.

These threads are the worst, I don't even know why I click them.

 

[onQ123]

"illusion of native 4K."

lol this is what PS4 Pro + XB1X are all about. they are too weak.

nice to see some kind of upgrade though but these consoles are a joke. i wish PS5/XB2 would just hurry up so we can get proper 4K.

Are you trolling or do you really think like this?

 

[AmFreak]

What is a 4k capable CPU?!
I mean, apparently pro and X have CPUs that are able to drive 4k games (if that makes sense in any way) but it's hard to buy a CPU that's not leagues ahead of those, if not impossible.

Pro is also supposed to be an upgrade of the ps4, so if you bought a gaming-pc at the ps4 start you don't need to buy anything, aside from a new gpu maybe.

 

[Head.spawn]

man when you start staring into the distance on ps4pro you can really tell that the game does not like the extra resolution, i think it's fair to say that the witcher 3 on consoles was not developed with 4k in mind, it almost has a skyward sword-style watercolor effect in a way lol

It kinda looks like a Bob Ross painting.

Happy trees everywhere.

 

[Lister]

It kinda looks like a Bob Ross painting.

Happy trees everywhere.

Careful, a couple of posters on here are itching to throw out the pc master race monicker at anyone who doesnt agree the games looks amazeballs on console.

 

[Inuhanyou]

"illusion of native 4K."

lol this is what PS4 Pro + XB1X are all about. they are too weak.

nice to see some kind of upgrade though but these consoles are a joke. i wish PS5/XB2 would just hurry up so we can get proper 4K.

Eh, native 4K is not going to be as prominent as you think even on the consoles after these. Using tricks like, geometry rendering, temporal injection, checkerboard rendering and such are here to stay to eke out performance from fixed HW and their implementations will only be more refined as time goes on

Both DF and NXGamer didn't pick up on the low res vegetation. VGTech doesn't make a judgment anyways, just resolution or frame rate analysis. Don't trust their word before things you actually see in full res uncompressed screenshots here.

"pick up"? I mean i'm sure they did, they just don't think its an issue in general motion.

Careful, a couple of posters on here are itching to throw out the pc master race monicker at anyone who doesnt agree the games looks amazeballs on console.

What games? I mean we're talking about witcher 3 in particular here, this isnt a console vs PC wank fest, i didn't think

 

[thelastword]

Nah. HBAO+ is actually among if not the cheapest Gameworks effect:

On a console where CPU/GPU share the same pipeline, it can be more costly....Still, your graph is showing at least a 4-5fps for HBAO+ from SSAO, so that's pretty signiifcant for a 30fps title in any case....Especially on an AMD card.

Just getting around to playing it myself and my word, does it look so beautiful. You can spot oddities, sure, when gawking at screens. When you're playing it on your TV, at your normal sitting distance, the game just straight up looks like a painting. Really happy with the patch!

I'm sorry, but the foliage looks awful, it already looked awful on ultra, but this low rez foliage is just not cutting it.

Really not impressed or wowed by this patch, something is amiss, they have a GPU that can run this 1440p 30fps locked ultra settings, they also have a GPU which can run this 4k CB ultra locked as well, but instead we're still getting some medium settings, low rez foliage, textures are not optimum and shadows not improved?

Most people feared Novigrad and it's impact on the CPU, yet that runs great with a modest CPU uplift and yet the area where we expected the most improvement.. (visuals) only gets a rez boost at mostly the same settings and it still drops frames in the bog?...A rez boost is cool, but a rez boost with better/ultrra settings is what was expected.

I'm sorry, I just can't praise CDPR as some of you guys do....If they happen to do some awesome technical work on consoles in the future, I'll be the first to jump in and congratulate them, but not this.....I can't....

 

[Head.spawn]

"pick up"? I mean i'm sure they did, they just don't think its an issue in general motion.

It's supposed to be a objective comparison though; it's a bit odd to think that this stuff that covers like 90% of map would be an afterthought on the road into throwing into a 1:1 comparison with native 4k on PC.

I mean even as far as the rendering artifacts, they're zoomed in 4x on some side of the building looking for artifacts saying it's hardly visible to the naked eye; when every tree in the game is showing said artifacts without zooming in on top of looking completely jacked in comparison.

It's just a bit weird of an omission is all I'm saying.