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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

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viveks86 said:
Ummmm... I beg to differ. Anytime I step out, I'm awestruck by the real time shadows, the foliage animation and volumetric cloud rendering. I spend so much time admiring the high resolution ground textures, the streaming LoD, the path tracing and the infinite anisotropic filtering until my wife thinks I've glitched out and snaps me out of it. Don't know about you guys, but outside for me is always Wowtside.
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What a terrible way to live. I prefer to constantly look for any low resolution textures or inaccurate reflections. I almost crashed my car today as I was distracted by the low quality fresnel shader rendering on a cars headlamps heading in the opposite direction.
 
SlimySnake said:
Take2's earning call is tomorrow at 4:30. If we are getting something, it will be before that.

Assuming we get a trailer or a full blowout tomorrow, I want to take a quick poll and ask what this thread thinks will top best Graphics this E3. Obviously, GTA6 will be the game to beat, but ND did top RDR2 last gen with TLOU2 albeit a couple of years later. CD project also topped RDR2 although they were effectively targeting next gen systems.

I think obviously GTA6 will top everything based on scale and detail alone, but just like with TLOU2, i think ND will top it in terms of photorealistic character models, foliage. Witcher 4, Marvel 1943 and Gears are using Nanite so they just might be able to compete with GTA6 in terms of asset quality. The Faye GOW game might stand out as well if they push setpieces. GTA6 is relatively grounded so SSM could one up them by having some epic setpieces.

Here is my prediction.
1) GTA6
2) Marvel 1943
3) Witcher 4
4) Gears E Day
5) Intergallactic
6) Far Cry 7
7) Cory's new Game
8) Tomb Raider
9) Wolverine

Lots of 2023 games should be getting a reveal this year. But I have no hope of seeing Rocksteadys new game. Hogwarts 2? EA hasnt talked at all about Star Wars Jedi 3. Those are three big AAA games using UE5. I guess we will see Final Fnatasy 7 Part 3 but it wont be using UE5.
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Don't think we'll be getting anything other than a november 19th confirmation or a delay tbh.

If they wanted to use GTA to boost the stock and hype up investors before the call they would've done it days before.
 
SlimySnake said:
Take2's earning call is tomorrow at 4:30. If we are getting something, it will be before that.

Assuming we get a trailer or a full blowout tomorrow, I want to take a quick poll and ask what this thread thinks will top best Graphics this E3. Obviously, GTA6 will be the game to beat, but ND did top RDR2 last gen with TLOU2 albeit a couple of years later. CD project also topped RDR2 although they were effectively targeting next gen systems.

I think obviously GTA6 will top everything based on scale and detail alone, but just like with TLOU2, i think ND will top it in terms of photorealistic character models, foliage. Witcher 4, Marvel 1943 and Gears are using Nanite so they just might be able to compete with GTA6 in terms of asset quality. The Faye GOW game might stand out as well if they push setpieces. GTA6 is relatively grounded so SSM could one up them by having some epic setpieces.

Here is my prediction.
1) GTA6
2) Marvel 1943
3) Witcher 4
4) Gears E Day
5) Intergallactic
6) Far Cry 7
7) Cory's new Game
8) Tomb Raider
9) Wolverine

Lots of 2023 games should be getting a reveal this year. But I have no hope of seeing Rocksteadys new game. Hogwarts 2? EA hasnt talked at all about Star Wars Jedi 3. Those are three big AAA games using UE5. I guess we will see Final Fnatasy 7 Part 3 but it wont be using UE5.
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Cory new game will top everything this generation
 
Bojji said:
And it's quite clean thanks to MSAAx2. PS5 Pro sharpening filters makes it look really good.



Spectacle in this game is better looking that in 90% of modern games (into alone). And GFX still holds up.

Ano another thing... notice how good this game looks in SDR - deep contrast and rich colors. Now, try to run any modern game in SDR mode - it looks like shit, HDR is needed to achieve good image (and even this not always works). Developers lost the ability to make good looking SDR picture, and that's the case even for games with no HDR mode (many UE5 titles), movie/tv shows industry is very similar.
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Wasnt god of war 3 using mlaa?
 
Rheon said:
Something about the FH6 visuals are so bland and lifeless. I can't put my finger on it.

How do you make a racing game based in Japan look so boring?
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It has that grayish look. When sun is lower on sky, you get nice colors and contrast. But when its higher, it gets washed out. Previous FH games had way more pop. Colors are often dull, and nighttime is way too bright. There also seem to be an issue with HDR. Fh4 and 5 had great HDR, but here, it can look as if HDR wasnt enabled. It seems to wary from scene to scene. Sometimes you get dim specular highlihts and poor contrast, and a little bit later picture suddenly gets nice and punchy.
Theres definitely something wrong with HDR output.
 
dgrdsv said:
60 fps have essentially killed all graphics advancements in this generation. Well, this or the weak ass RDNA GPUs in current consoles.
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60 fps itself isnt what held back graphics. it was 60 fps at high resolutions like 1440p on base consoles. As long as devs target 1440p 30 fps for their Quality modes, we get next gen features like RTGI/Lumen, Nanite/Virtualized Geometry, hair physics, destruction, better volumetrics etc.

PS5's OG UE5 demo was running at 1440p 30 fps being being upscaled to 4k using TSR. Bond is running at 1440p 30 fps before being upscaled via FSR. The reason why Sony games like Spiderman 2, Death Stranding 2, Ghosts of Yotei look so dated is because they run at native 4k 30 fps. Essentially wasting more than half of the GPU on drawing pixels, instead of improving effects like ray tracing, and geometry. It's why Death Stranding 2's barren landscapes look like garbage. 1440p 60 fps.

With the consoles finally going with a decent Zen 2 CPU this gen instead of that trash notebook jaguar CPU, 60 fps was always going to happen as long as devs were willing to drop resolution. We've seen devs not be shy about dropping to 720p. We've seen devs literally remove RTGI from the 60 fps modes. Hell, Star Wars Jedi Survivor was dropping to 600p before they removed RT from the 60 fps mode.

These guys have managed to offer 1080p 60 fps without removing RTGI which is pretty impressive.
 
Superposition said:
Another fantastic looking game.

It's coming as EA on June 2nd.



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Day zero.

Slimy speak about me being debbie downer but he was very dismissive with this one that look about 5x times better than black flag both graphically and fun factor:messenger_smiling:

Lets see if the graphic king title of this year is gonna change place from requiem to this one before gta6 is even out...
 
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dgrdsv said:
60 fps have essentially killed all graphics advancements in this generation. Well, this or the weak ass RDNA GPUs in current consoles.
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This is a myth. 60 fps goals would be more of a constraint for CPU bound features. Not GPU bound features. And most games are not CPU bound anyway. You can blame consoles as much as you want, but most devs still want to support old PC hardware that doesn't even have hardware RT support. It's the reason Epic is still hung up on software lumen and megalights or IOI is doing Software RT instead of hardware RT. They want their engines to scale all the way down to mobile phones, if needed. So the higher end gets lower priority in their design goals. Fewer options means fewer variations for artists and fewer issues to debug.

The only fix for this is for devs to draw a hard line and leave legacy generations behind. If hardware doesn't have RT acceleration, devs should just ignore them at this point. Hopefully, at least once next gen is out, they will get rid of baked lighting altogether, build RTGI as a baseline fallback for both current gen and handhelds and never look back. Following that, any new advancements can just be forward looking
 
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viveks86 said:
This is a myth. 60 fps goals would be more of a constraint for CPU bound features. Not GPU bound features. And most games are not CPU bound anyway. You can blame consoles as much as you want, but most devs still want to support old PC hardware that doesn't even have hardware RT support. It's the reason Epic is still hung up on software lumen and megalights or IOI is doing Software RT instead of hardware RT. They want their engines to scale all the way down to mobile phones, if needed. So the higher end gets lower priority in their design goals. Fewer options means fewer variations for artists and fewer issues to debug.

The only fix for this is for devs to draw a hard line and leave legacy generations behind. If hardware doesn't have RT acceleration, devs should just ignore them at this point. Hopefully, at least once next gen is out, they will get rid of baked lighting altogether, build RTGI as a baseline fallback for both current gen and handhelds and never look back. Following that, any new advancements can just be forward looking
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Software lumen is the lead tech because HW Lumen pre 5.6 was super CPU and GPU intensive - unoptimized.

I think Metro Exodus and ID tech games are model examples of how current gen games should look like, fuck legacy hardware with no RT support (it's 10 years old at this point).
 
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Bojji said:
Software lumen is the lead tech because HW Lumen pre 5.6 was super CPU and GPU intensive - unoptimized.
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Agreed. But why was HW lumen unoptimized compared to software lumen? Prioritization. Some devs simply want to conquer the world with broad support for everything.

And I don't see this mentality changing with Epic anytime soon. The reason they went with Megalights instead of implementing ReSTIR PT is the same thing. They want to prioritize scalability to the lowest end. If I were running Epic, I wouldn't even launch Megalights for base consoles and mobile phones. From a practical standpoint, no one will bother with it anyway. It's just some concept of world domination they have in their minds to make everything work on everything.

I think Metro Exodus and ID tech games are model examples of how current gen games should look like, fuck legacy hardware (it's 10 years old at this point).
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Agreed
 
viveks86 said:
Agreed. But why was HW lumen unoptimized compared to software lumen? Prioritization. Some devs simply want to conquer the world with broad support for everything.

And I don't see this mentality changing with Epic anytime soon. The reason they went with Megalights instead of implementing ReSTIR PT is the same thing. They want to prioritize scalability to the lowest end. If I were running Epic, I wouldn't even launch Megalights for base consoles and mobile phones. From a practical standpoint, no one will bother with it anyway. It's just some concept of world domination they have in their minds to make everything work on everything.



Agreed
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They were targeting Software Lumen for base consoles because their target was 1440p 30 fps. Which is a good target to have on modern consoles. Any lower and you start getting artifacts kevboard loves to bitch about. At least on lower settings (ive played these games at internal resolutions as low as 720p on PC and at Epic settings, i dont see any of the ghosting or bleeding.

Megalights were added in UE5.5. hardware lumen was already improved by UE5.4 thanks to several years of optimizations on both the CPU and GPU. Further improved in UE5.6 by CD Project. Now they are targeting 1080p 60 fps with hardware lumen on base PS5.

Megalights were created for a very specific purpose. The james bond devs talked about how their artists were hell bent on adding as many as 1500 light sources in one area, all dynamic, a and their GI system had to render all of those dynamic shadows in realtime. Not many games nowadays feature that many different light sources. Mostly because last gen everyone just made games in the wilderness or medieval times. But going forward as games start being set in more urban areas, you are going to need more and more light sources that need to be dynamically lit. Thats where Megalights come in. Lumen is already very expensive. now imagine Lumen having to do 1,500 lights at once. its a good forward thinking initiative by Epic.

Also, Epic has already partnered with nvidia to implement path tracing in UE5. Black Myth shipped with it. And they have already integrated the mega geometry features nvidia was touting last year into their engine.
 
viveks86 said:
The only fix for this is for devs to draw a hard line and leave legacy generations behind. If hardware doesn't have RT acceleration, devs should just ignore them at this point.
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I wish.
viveks86 said:
Agreed. But why was HW lumen unoptimized compared to software lumen? Prioritization. Some devs simply want to conquer the world with broad support for everything.

And I don't see this mentality changing with Epic anytime soon. The reason they went with Megalights instead of implementing ReSTIR PT is the same thing. They want to prioritize scalability to the lowest end.
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UE5 has pathtracing, epic just offers tech, devs are free to use whatever they want and the fact is you can offer multiple solutions for the same thing, heres Directive 8020 for example
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Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-33-06.png

Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-32-33.png

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Pathtracing, megalights, hw lumen
 
T4keD0wN said:
I wish.

UE5 has pathtracing, epic just offers tech, devs are free to use whatever they want and the fact is you can offer multiple solutions for the same thing, heres Directive 8020 for example
Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-44-09.png

Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-33-06.png

Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-32-33.png

Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-48-39.png

Pathtracing, megalights, hw lumen
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have you played it? I skipped it because im swamped with games at the moment.
 
SlimySnake said:
have you played it? I skipped it because im swamped with games at the moment.
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I played it. Path Tracing is heavier than in Cyberpunk and other games, and I didn't saw much difference in how the game looks with it.

HW RT plus maxed out settings and 1080p DLSS 4.5 base (for 4k) and game runs 60fps on 4070 Ti Super.
 
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SlimySnake said:
have you played it? I skipped it because im swamped with games at the moment.
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Yeah, ive made a few posts in its OT.

Its a bit of a mixed bag, liked the graphics, very cool enviromental aestethics imo, but i really dig sci-fi.

I hate movie bars and my photo tools only work up to ue5.5 and made it crash so didnt really take many screenshots, but it has some really nice interiors and light usage. Very corridor based level design else id be really impressed, its mostly well made technically, animations were not very good which is a shame.
 
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SlimySnake said:
60 fps itself isnt what held back graphics. it was 60 fps at high resolutions like 1440p on base consoles.
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Which means that 60 fps held back graphics. You can't have all of them, something have to give. Since there is no other GPUs in these consoles we're down to two options.

viveks86 said:
This is a myth. 60 fps goals would be more of a constraint for CPU bound features. Not GPU bound features.
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A myth is what you've said. GPU is as much important for 60 fps as CPU - if not even more important in a console scenario. The only reason why graphics look meh in 60 fps modes on modern consoles is their lack of GPU power.
 
SlimySnake said:
They were targeting Software Lumen for base consoles because their target was 1440p 30 fps. Which is a good target to have on modern consoles. Any lower and you start getting artifacts kevboard loves to bitch about. At least on lower settings (ive played these games at internal resolutions as low as 720p on PC and at Epic settings, i dont see any of the ghosting or bleeding.

Megalights were added in UE5.5. hardware lumen was already improved by UE5.4 thanks to several years of optimizations on both the CPU and GPU. Further improved in UE5.6 by CD Project. Now they are targeting 1080p 60 fps with hardware lumen on base PS5.

Megalights were created for a very specific purpose. The james bond devs talked about how their artists were hell bent on adding as many as 1500 light sources in one area, all dynamic, a and their GI system had to render all of those dynamic shadows in realtime. Not many games nowadays feature that many different light sources. Mostly because last gen everyone just made games in the wilderness or medieval times. But going forward as games start being set in more urban areas, you are going to need more and more light sources that need to be dynamically lit. Thats where Megalights come in. Lumen is already very expensive. now imagine Lumen having to do 1,500 lights at once. its a good forward thinking initiative by Epic.
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No disagreements there. I'm talking about Epic choosing megalights instead of ReSTIR. They are both aimed at solving the "many lights" problem. One scales downwards to lower end and the other scales upwards to higher end. They made a whole presentation on why they went this route at SIGGRAPH last year. Not using ReSTIR was a deliberate choice. I'm only talking about the choice. Both megalights and ReSTIR are ultimately competing solutions and lumen alone would never be able to address it. Epic would always choose the version that scales down before exploring other versions. Hence they came up with megalights.

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Also, Epic has already partnered with nvidia to implement path tracing in UE5. Black Myth shipped with it. And they have already integrated the mega geometry features nvidia was touting last year into their engine.
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Epic isn't doing that. Nvidia is. Path tracing in Wukong was done with the UE5 NvRTX branch, which is built and maintained by Nvidia. Nvidia worked directly with Game Science to build it. UE 5 is open source and that's how Nvidia is getting all their feature sets into it in a separate NVRTX branch, which is different from Epic's mainline branch.

They still collaborate on mainlining features once it gets sufficient adoption or Nvidia is able to convince Epic, but this stuff is not in the mainline branch. Neither is mega geometry. It would eventually make its way once Nvidia open sources it later this year. Since a lot of those elements are already being standardized in DirectX and Vulkan, it's only a matter of time before Epic mainlines it too.

T4keD0wN said:
I wish.

UE5 has pathtracing, epic just offers tech, devs are free to use whatever they want and the fact is you can offer multiple solutions for the same thing, heres Directive 8020 for example
Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-44-09.png

Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-33-06.png

Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-32-33.png

Greenshot-2026-05-21-18-48-39.png

Pathtracing, megalights, hw lumen
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Nope. You are confusing what Nvidia built with what Epic built. PT in Directive 8020 uses the NvRTX branch, which includes all the cvars that Nvidia built for PT. Restir and realtime path tracing does not exist in mainline UE5. Only offline path tracing.
 
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Gonzito said:
So apparently the new content has these ugly stiff cutscenes they've been using since Odyssey, fucking hell man



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Shitty custcenes within one of best acted AC games of all time. That won't be jarring at all...


Also, can I just rant a bit about how much I hate shitmarkers in singleplayer games? I understand why devs use them in multiplayer games but in SP games it enrages me, let me be fucking immersed, I don't need UI to tell me every single fucking thing that happens within the game's world...
Having played Black Flag a month or two ago this immediately jumped to my attention in not a good way.

J81L23ns9T4UmUI8.jpg
 
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dgrdsv said:
A myth is what you've said. GPU is as much important for 60 fps as CPU - if not even more important in a console scenario. The only reason why graphics look meh in 60 fps modes on modern consoles is their lack of GPU power.
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Sure. No one is saying games on console don't look meh because of lack of GPU power.

Your original claim was about lack of technological advancements. Not about looking meh.

I'm saying technological advancements aren't held back by it because GPU bound scenarios can be scaled down with resolution and tons of graphics settings in the engine. As long as the base technologies are supported by the GPU, this does not affect dev workflow. CPU bound scenarios often affect dev workflows as they can't design a city with complex simulations if the CPU chokes. You can reduce crowd densities, but anything else will directly affect gameplay.

The fact that a piece of target hardware can't do ray tracing at all is a much bigger design hurdle than a target piece of weak hardware that does it poorly. Look at AC Black Flag. They were able to get RTGI on base consoles too. At 60 FPS! Same with ID tech. Because GPU scaling is wayyy easier than CPU scaling if the feature set is supported.
 
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GudOlRub said:
Shitty custcenes within one of best acted AC games of all time. That won't be jarring at all...


Also, can I just rant a bit about how much I hate shitmarkers in singleplayer games? I understand why devs use them in multiplayer games but in SP games it enrages me, let me be fucking immersed, I don't need UI to tell me every single fucking thing that happens within the game's world...
Having played Black Flag a month or two ago this immediately jumped to my attention in not a good way.

J81L23ns9T4UmUI8.jpg
Click to expand...

You can remove the UI in real time, so if you dont want markers you dont even need to go to the menu to remove parts of the HUD
 
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