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[Gonzito]

Nah, you people are just easy to please.

 

[geary]

Nah, you people are just easy to please as usual.

 

[BlownUpRich]

This looks absolutely amazing to me. I literally said wow when i first saw it.

This does look stunning I have to say.

 

[GymWolf]

Dont get me wrong, i like that small video, but more for the mountains in the background and how the video is framed, it is just the water that look nothing special to me.

Just a reminder that this is a old gen AA pirate game sea

 

[CowboyLou]

The water itself looks good but the underwater terrain, vegetation etc. are a bit lacking, a bit plain. HFW had some underwater areas that looked better iirc. Maybe it's just that underwater itself is kinda boring, but it's a video game, spice it up a little.

 

[Gonzito]

The water itself looks good but the underwater terrain, vegetation etc. are a bit lacking, a bit plain. HFW had some underwater areas that looked better iirc. Maybe it's just that underwater itself is kinda boring, but it's a video game, spice it up a little.

It must be difficult to make the underwater section super detailed because unlike other games, 90% of the map in Black Flag is water lol

 

[SlimySnake]

Dont get me wrong, i like that small video, but more for the mountains in the background and how the video is framed, it is just the water that look nothing special to me.

i LOVE the water texture. i am disappointed that its not a full blown simulation like Crimson Desert but the blue water texture is so pretty. i also love the light bounce off of Kenway's character model. he stands out and its beautiful.

Just a reminder that this is a old gen AA pirate game sea

Black Flags had some stunning waves during storms too. Im sure they've been upgraded as well.

 

[GymWolf]

i LOVE the water texture. i am disappointed that its not a full blown simulation like Crimson Desert but the blue water texture is so pretty. i also love the light bounce off of Kenway's character model. he stands out and its beautiful.

Black Flags had some stunning waves during storms too. Im sure they've been upgraded as well.

I think devs maxed out the look of water for this gen, so now i would like to see some advancement in physics, crimson at least try something...

Let's hope they did something in that regard and it is not just another nice to look water that act nothing like water.

Crimson really spoiled us.

 

[SlimySnake]

The water itself looks good but the underwater terrain, vegetation etc. are a bit lacking, a bit plain. HFW had some underwater areas that looked better iirc. Maybe it's just that underwater itself is kinda boring, but it's a video game, spice it up a little.

HFW was doing a lot of things ahead of its time. we were too harsh on it in retrospect lol.

i was watching some exodus footage of dialogue conversations and its so stilted. im like HFW created a procedural animation system for these dialogue trees 4 years ago. can someone call them up or at least try and ape it?

no one wants to implement hero lighting, very few devs have matched the water tech, character models are still industry leading for open world games. 4 years later.

 

[SlimySnake]

Well, good to see ambition is still alive at Naughty Dog.



I think they revealed the game too early and had nothing really to show for it so created a fake trailer for it.

 

[GymWolf]

Well, good to see ambition is still alive at Naughty Dog.



I think they revealed the game too early and had nothing really to show for it so created a fake trailer for it.

They are sony last hope.

 

[Bojji]

HFW was doing a lot of things ahead of its time. we were too harsh on it in retrospect lol.

i was watching some exodus footage of dialogue conversations and its so stilted. im like HFW created a procedural animation system for these dialogue trees 4 years ago. can someone call them up or at least try and ape it?

no one wants to implement hero lighting, very few devs have matched the water tech, character models are still industry leading for open world games. 4 years later.

Character models are from UE5 tech.

Personally I'm not a fan of hero lightning, it doesn't make sense when your character glows for no good reason. If game had RTGI, here lighting would break it.

 

[SlimySnake]

Why couldnt the entire game look like this lol. This looks next gen as fuck.

 

[geary]

 

[mrMUR_96]

24 GB is 20% less than 30 GB. Not 30%. At least get the math right before calling bullshit. If that's still pretty close, you might as well declare 0% is pretty close to 37.5%.

The only bottleneck on paper is going to be the CPU. And if games are less CPU bound next gen due to new programming paradigms like GPU work graphs, none of it matters. Just drop the resolution and frame rate to rock bottom, disable path tracing and use AI upscaling.

Ah, just disable path tracing. oh wait, you have no lighting now so devs are still forced to use old lighting and layer on PT additionally for the ps6. How will this not hold back the ps6.

 

[mrMUR_96]

Meanwhile guerilla gives you this

Absolute slop character design. Afroman, sjw girl and vegan pensioner.

 

[Alex11]

Why couldnt the entire game look like this lol. This looks next gen as fuck.

Wow, this looks impressive, does it look like that in gameplay?

 

[SlimySnake]

Wow, this looks impressive, does it look like that in gameplay?

Yep. Especially when the particles start flowing and i dont mean just the bullet hell. They are doing some very fancy fluid animations with some bosses like wings leaving these fancy trails and your own bullets that zoom around the map. its so pretty at 60 fps.

 

[CowboyLou]

It's funny seeing all the comments on the DF review saying things like "yet another UE5 game that only runs well with good IQ because it doesn't use the advanced features" when apparently (according to NX Gamer) it's making at least some use of Nanite and VSMs.

 

[GymWolf]

Character models are from UE5 tech.

Personally I'm not a fan of hero lightning, it doesn't make sense when your character glows for no good reason. If game had RTGI, here lighting would break it.

Horizon vegetation is still among the best.

 

[Vick]

Horizon vegetation is still among the best.

Yep.

 

[Msamy]

Truly Fuck youtube the direct feed of those small new black flag videos looks far better

 

[geary]

Horizon vegetation is still among the best.

I'll say KCD2 tops it. Cryengine is unmatched on vegetation imo.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

I was just expecting best water in the business from a freakin pirate game where water is the main course after all the praises

Especially when a 4 years old crossgen sea look like this

Yeah Horizon water looks better.

 

[viveks86]

Interesting post. Personally, I thought there's no chance in hell these are cubemaps.

Time-Stamped 4K:

Agreed. This was my original conclusion on what the game was doing, but the extent to which SSR is being applied here is making me question if there is an alternative explanation. The artifacts from SSR occlusion from moving objects puts it a step behind Cyberpunk's RT reflections. If that is indeed RT, then the conclusion is RT for static objects (instead of cube maps) and may be some moving objects (though I'm yet to spot one), and SSR for NPCs and other dynamic objects. And that's on land. While sailing, I'm yet to find a good example of RT without any SSR artifacts.

As for the ocean, there's a chance RT reflections are reserved for close distance?

Seeing the same artifacts in close distance as well. Here's the same shot of the mast on the island that is right in front of the boat. Notice the reflection change as soon as the mast occludes the structure being reflected (around the 3rd frame). Though in this case, there is some fall back, so it doesn't completely vanish.

They look just like Cyberpunk RT reflections.

I can't recall Cyberpunk with such SSR artifacting, so I'd still put it ahead.

So I'd say it's just a matter of a SSR layer on top of the RT, which is not uncommon practice.

Agreed. Quite plausible on land at least.

Well, those are great PCSS shadows no matter what. I honestly can't distinguish them from RT ones.

No doubt. Which is why I'm considering this to be a PC ultra build. The quality is a bit too good. It's not the PCSS itself that is impressive. Like you said, it has been around for a while. It's the quality of every single shadow. It's near pixel perfect.

In any case, this all bode really well for PS5 Pro version. And of course PC.

They nailed it with AC shadows already, so I agree. And now with RTGI on all modes, it's gonna look great!

Nice analysis.

RT shadows can still have pop in, it depends on BVH LOD, and entire shadows are poping in like that (with no resolution changes like with CSMs).

Though plausible, the shadows themselves are still a bit too sharp to be RT shadows. You won't get shadows like this if it were ray traced. No penumbra on so many individual leaves that should be blending into each other if ray traced, despite being distant enough from the ground. This has to be PCSS + CSMs on the best possible quality (hence my conclusion that this is potentially PC Ultra). And if they actually had RT shadows, they would have announced it as it would be a whole new feature in their engine.

Happy to be proven wrong with counter evidence or by DF, especially about the shadows. The game has already announced
RT reflections, so that's more of a grey area on the extent to which it is applied. It obviously has to be there somewhere.