I understand. I was specifically referring, however, to people like John, or Oliver.. or many of the users who voted Uncharted here, on this enthusiast forum. Some chose not to take part in this specific Thread (for a very particular reason, that's maybe easily deductible) but are still graphics enthusiasts fully aware of what lies under the hood.
Sure. I can see why a majority would consider UC4 better looking overall, even if I am disinclined to compare it with realtime. I was only addressing your call for more humility on my part.
And I'd rather not speak for others who disagree with you. There's
plenty of engagement on that already. lol
I conclude by suggesting to take a look at the comparison videos posted, and the other regarding destruction as well, to get a better idea of
some of what even technically minded people are seeing in regards to this comparison.
In this instance (amongst numerous others), yes, UC handily wins. But bear in mind that they can't possibly bake this level of quality across the entire game. This was done selectively and intentionally to establish a mood. Which is applause worthy in and of itself. A sign of great art direction. The tech itself doesn't impress me as much as the art though, if I'm being honest. Baking has existed forever at this point and there are automated tools to do all of that. ND has access to server farms to do all that offline during every build (may be even several times a week) that most devs can only dream of. It certainly looks great, no doubt about it.
If you look at the intergalactic trailer, assuming they don't have RTGI AND RT shadows, the quality of the bake is even
more incredible. Even little things like the pink sticky notepad at the bottom left of the first shot below or the green marker pens on the bottom right of the second shot bounce their color back on the wall. It's amazing how much they can cram into lightmaps, assuming all that is running in realtime and translates to the final game.
P.S. Where is the light under the bed coming from, in First Light? Why is the inside the closet fully lit, on the righ
I believe they are baking some amount of direct lighting into the environment light maps and using RTGI for indirect. So you end up with inconsistent lighting wherever software RTGI isn't sufficient to calculate light bounce (or the lack thereof) and RTAO isn't in place.
You will see the same issue manifest differently with the rugs below on the left. Lightmaps are determining lighting on the floor, while a lightmap doesn't seem to exist for the rug, resulting in inconsistent light distribution (the rug is too dark compared to the floorboards).
At this point, only PT can solve it, assuming they remove all lightmaps and let PT do all the work. It solved it in Indy and Cyberpunk, but Alan Wake still kept some of those light maps, resulting in this:
The character's leg being in the way of the light has no impact whatsoever. It's because lightmaps for the mattress are overriding what PT should naturally do. There may be reasons to intentionally keep it in (like performance optimization or bugs in PT), but that's a real possibility when PT is bolted on later in development. We will have to wait and see how that pans out for 007
