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[Anton Sugar]

You can tweak the graphics for PS4?

Hahaha, no. This was for the PC version. Not sure if it's enabled for consoles.

Was that reported list of downgrades (which includes the water effect being scripted now) debunked or something?

Good post from a gaffer:

I've been warning people since that was outed. We know at least 3 items are categorically false and 1 that looks extremely suspect:

• AO cutbacks, which is total bullshit. We know for a fact that HBAO is still in (menu as well as INI file) and as far as we know, it has never been enabled in the last 9 months. The last I think we've seen it is in the 35 minute gameplay demo. And you can get HBAO+ as well if you had an Nvidia card as per Nvidia website.
• Global ocean tessellation is still in, as per the INI files and the menu settings seen today. INI shows up to 64x, which is the default for ultra
• Volumetric light shafts are still in according to the INI files. As we've seen today, it was not enabled in the stream and possibly never enabled in recent media. It is supposed to be on by default for both high and ultra, as per the INI files. So it was explicitly turned off, presumably pending performance optimization, though it may very well require more than a 980 to max out
• There is no evidence to prove hair works has been simplified. In fact most trailers including SoD does not even have hairworks enabled in several segments for Geralt's hair. The only thing people are going off of is the VGX segment where an NPC was wearing his fluffy fur coat and he wasn't in a later youtube preview capture. The reason for that is currently unknown

Thought this post from a few pages back was interesting. Note the difference between in-game sharpening enabled vs disabled:

Sharpening appears to add (artificial) details to the textures, as well as remove the brighter tone from the foliage. I think some kind of artifacting may make it appear as though the grass shadows are more detailed than they actually are, too.

Uuuuugh, I want some PC grabs nooow.

 

[Skyzard]

^okay, thanks for linking. Guess it's still uncertain. Not long to wait at least!


Which option defends why they lied to people afterwards about there being no-downgrade as well?

 

[Kintaro]

Which option defends why they lied to people afterwards about there being no-downgrade as well?

Hey man, that's their livelihood. It's okay in that case.

 

[robertsan21]

Hahaha, no. This was for the PC version. Not sure if it's enabled for consoles..

IT BETTER BE IN FOR PS4!
It makes teh sea look alive and dangerous.

God damn I hate consoles sometimes

 

[Latvian Hitman]

That's why you don't quote me out of context:

You really think I don't understand the costs... Interesting indeed.

Furthermore, I do put together demo reels, and I do select the best parts of the best work. That's part of the job. Is it completely honest? Not really. You don't have me here, sorry.

All I have to go by is what you post. If you feel I quoted you out of context, then I apologize. It wasn't intentional. IMO- nobody in the AAA game business has the luxury of B. That was kinda' my point.

If wishing for honesty is foolish, call me a fool. I'll call you a liar.

And I'll call you a super-duper poopy head. Take that.

 

[Altairre]

Option C: You use Option A with a disclaimer that product is still in development and will change over time and its not representative of the final game. Oh, and don't throw up a pre-order link begging for money. =P

That is every trailer ever though. The videos of the youtuber who showed the game off recently had a disclaimer in the description and most of them said that everything you see is subject to change in the video too. A trailer like the one you're referring to is supposed to give you an short impression of a game. And you're totally right, don't preorder the game due to the trailer because at that point you know shit all about it except maybe that it looks pretty.

What counts to me is the quality of the product I end up buying and looking at the reviews it seems they got that part right. I wouldn't have cared in the case of Watchdogs either if the game was any good but it isn't.

If it were up to me games would be announced a month before release, and the devs would show a lengthy gameplay demo but that isn't how marketing works unfortunately. They released a ton of gameplay videos since that trailer was shown so there was never a situation where you couldn't assess how the game looked (and cancel your preorder if you did preorder and didn't like it).

 

[Rodolink]

Above all else, a disclaimer is honest. If a people still chooses to outrage over it, they look the fool. However, by selling your title with footage from a game that doesn't exist at that point? You're being dishonest. That's all there it to it. Why was their such a big uproar over Watch Dogs? I mean, it was implied the game would never look like its reveal and gameplay right? So why did gamers and journalists hold Ubisoft's feet to the fire over that game?

Because it was dishonest.

Yeah they should've shown the game hot it actually will look, (every developer should do this)

 

[Yasae]

All I have to go by is what you post. If you feel I quoted you out of context, then I apologize. It wasn't intentional. IMO- nobody in the AAA game business has the luxury of B. That was kinda' my point.

They used to, but not anymore. Not with these kinds of budgets. That's the greater point I was getting at. They're under the gun for a lot of things. Cost/benefit.

 

[Skyzard]

Yeah they should've shown the game hot it actually will look, (every developer should do this)

An excuse floating around is that they didn't know the next gen consoles wouldn't have the power of 3 sli titans when they showed off gameplay footage at an early stage.

 

[Lunar15]

The weird nature about downgrades and optimization of a game in order to meet performance goals is that, at that point, the game probably DID look like that, at least in the parts they were working on. It's not like they gussied up something just for the trailers when the real thing looked like something else.

The problem is, over time, as their deadline approached and they had to reach those performance goals, they had to remove effects and re-design parts of the engine. If the former situation was the case, you'd see gussied up trailers all the way to release, but that wasn't the case here, nor was it the case with Watch_Dogs. I think each trailer was actually indicative of the game's look at the time the trailer dropped. I don't think there was a way for CDPR to show how the game WOULD look, because they themselves didn't actually know what it would look like until after all the work on the engine.

The "sin", here, for CDPR, is flat out denying what was going on when asked. That's the frustrating part.

 

[LeBart]

They look the fool either way.

Don't mistake people who throw the word downgrade for every other game over the slightest change in lighting, and people who are simply disappointed in CDPR for not being 100% honest with their trailers and in a couple of interviews.

Honestly I think the game looks great, and some of the old footage straight up looked bad.
Case in point, this looks awful:

This looks incredible:

I'm still really disappointed than they pulled a Naughty Dog with that VGX trailer.

 

[Sanador]

I do love some impressive graphics, don't get me wrong. But I love the dark fantasy setting of the Witcher, and the basic premise of a professional monster-killer, and will buy this - downgraded graphics or not.

But don't most games undergo graphics changes throughout the development cycle? If they let you see preview builds, and let you know its an early build, is the developer actually being deceptive? My opinion is no, personally.

 

[tuxfool]

You can tweak the graphics for PS4?

No. But the PS4 was never going to get anything shown in official media.

 

[Rodolink]

An excuse floating around is that they didn't know the next gen consoles wouldn't have the power of 3 sli titans when they showed off gameplay footage at an early stage.

Well its totally reasonable that, but even high end PC's can´t run with that detail, or can they? If they can then I don't know why the hassle

 

[Skyzard]

Don't mistake people who throw the word downgrade for every other game over the slightest change in lighting, and people who are simply disappointed in CDPR for not being 100% honest with their trailers and in a couple of interviews.

Honestly I think the game looks great, and some of the old footage straight up looked bad.
Case in point, this looks awful:
This looks incredible:


I'm still really disappointed than they pulled a Naughty Dog with that VGX trailer.

It still looks aiight. Sure. But sometimes the vegetation looks like barf too. And it's missing a lot of what made the original hype showing immersive. It will still do probably. But some people will be rightly disappointed and possibly even have some contempt for being deceived with the initial unrealistic misrepresentation and then the denial.

 

[robertsan21]

Don't mistake people who throw the word downgrade for every other game over the slightest change in lighting, and people who are simply disappointed in CDPR for not being 100% honest with their trailers and in a couple of interviews.

Honestly I think the game looks great, and some of the old footage straight up looked bad.
Case in point, this looks awful:
This looks incredible:


I'm still really disappointed than they pulled a Naughty Dog with that VGX trailer.

You sir are correct!

WOW is that a PS4 screenshot?

 

[dlauv]

But don't most games undergo graphics changes throughout the development cycle?

To be honest, not really so drastically. It's happening back to back lately, however.

Bloodborne and Dark Souls 2 are the main culprits, then hot off of those heels is Witcher 3.

I didn't know people were still expecting the 2013 footage. I thought for sure it was obvious that had changed since the 35 minute demo. I was just hoping it hadn't changed since that and the Sword of Destiny trailer, and it has a little. When people had asked them earlier this year about the downgrade, CDPR said it will look like the Sword of Destiny trailer on Ultra. Obviously, it won't now.

 

[CyberPunked]

Hahaha, no. This was for the PC version. Not sure if it's enabled for consoles.



Good post from a gaffer:



Thought this post from a few pages back was interesting. Note the difference between in-game sharpening enabled vs disabled:



Sharpening appears to add (artificial) details to the textures, as well as remove the brighter tone from the foliage. I think some kind of artifacting may make it appear as though the grass shadows are more detailed than they actually are, too.

Uuuuugh, I want some PC grabs nooow.

Damn, the sharpening does make a real difference.
So on the IGN stream yesterday these are the effects that were turned off:
-Lightshafts
-HBAO+
-Hairworks
-AA
-Sharpening

 

[EatChildren]

The only thing that still really bothers me from a technical and aesthetic point of view is how the engine handles foliage transparency layer, lighting, and shadow culling over distance. Sometimes it looks fine, other times it looks dreadful. The rapid simplification of the pine shrubs and the obvious billboarding on the leaves will be the ban of my existence.

EDIT: I hate sharpening. I can see the appeal, but it's just faking improved textures without actually adding any real data. It introduces noise on edges, highlighting aliasing.

 

[Skyzard]

Well its totally reasonable that, but even high end PC's can´t run with that detail, or can they? If they can then I don't know why the hassle

High end is underselling it majorly, really few people have those sorts of rigs but the PS4 and X1 couldn't handle some of the assets and what have you so they had to be taken out, like the vegetation differences, I think. But why the draw distances and particle counts and lighting differences? So they can market 1080p 60fps on something that "high end" covers for a lot more people (without AA, hairworks or whatever else they've disabled on "ultra").

 

[Tovarisc]

Damn, the sharpening does make a real difference.
So on the IGN stream yesterday these are the effects that were turned off:
-Lightshafts
-HBAO+
-Hairworks
-AA
-Sharpening

Don't forget Chromatic Aberration was off too, everything looks better with some CA

 

[H4r4kiri]

How does the dev want to explain the 35 Minutes Gameplay footage they showed ? That looked better and had more detail than the current version ? So at one one point it was possible to achieve that in realtime running on a PC. ?

 

[vpance]

Which option defends why they lied to people afterwards about there being no-downgrade as well?

No need for defense, because people are legit shook.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

To be honest, not really so drastically. It's happening back to back lately, however.

Bloodborne and Dark Souls 2 are the main culprits, then hot off of those heels is Witcher 3.

I didn't know people were still expecting the 2013 footage. I thought for sure it was obvious that had changed since the 35 minute demo. I was just hoping it hadn't changed since that and the Sword of Destiny trailer, and it has a little. When people had asked them earlier this year about the downgrade, CDPR said it will look like the Sword of Destiny trailer on Ultra. Obviously, it won't now.

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that high-end PCs running W3 aren't going to look like the SoD trailer (other than in the obvious ways it can't, given how the vast majority of that trailer is from a perspective you won't see in game).

And what Bloodborne downgrade?

 

[Denton]

The only thing that still really bothers me from a technical and aesthetic point of view is how the engine handles foliage transparency layer, lighting, and shadow culling over distance. Sometimes it looks fine, other times it looks dreadful. The rapid simplification of the pine shrubs and the obvious billboarding on the leaves will be the ban of my existence.

EDIT: I hate sharpening. I can see the appeal, but it's just faking improved textures without actually adding any real data. It introduces noise on edges, highlighting aliasing.

God I hope not, you are one of the best posters on gaf ;p

 

[dlauv]

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that high-end PCs running W3 aren't going to look like the SoD trailer (other than in the obvious ways it can't, given how the vast majority of that trailer is from a perspective you won't see in game).

And what Bloodborne downgrade?

Fog gates for Bloodborne, off of the top of my head.

Population density for Witcher 3. They had a sharpening filter and some water effects, as well as the fire, smoke, and the more complicated Wild Hunt armor, but I think the general lighting quality may be better now in comparison to the 35 minute footage.

 

[Skyzard]

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that high-end PCs running W3 aren't going to look like the SoD trailer (other than in the obvious ways it can't, given how the vast majority of that trailer is from a perspective you won't see in game).

And what Bloodborne downgrade?

IGN had a stream with the PC version maxed out apart from hairs and aa and sharpening (guys...it's not magic, you can do it with sweetfx with lots of games) and it didn't look anything like it.

 

[Denton]

Also, this interview

also cd projekt employee on the downgrade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU9rlkCOk9E.

is fantastic. Sure downgraders will not be satisfied with what Jose says, but I found it all interesting.

 

[Anton Sugar]

Damn, the sharpening does make a real difference.
So on the IGN stream yesterday these are the effects that were turned off:
-Lightshafts
-HBAO+
-Hairworks
-AA
-Sharpening

Yup, which really sucks, because they say "this is a 980 running on Ultra" and everyone automatically assumes it should be the BEST. And it really should, which makes those omissions puzzling.

So HBAO/HBAO+ (still not sure if HBAO+ is real, but regardless, IGN as using SSAO) and sharpening both add shadow detail (it's artificial with Sharpening, but clearly has left an impression on a lot of customers).

 

[Kaze2212]

How does the dev want to explain the 35 Minutes Gameplay footage they showed ? That looked better and had more detail than the current version ? So at one one point it was possible to achieve that in realtime running on a PC. ?

I couldn't follow the thread for a while. But have we seen PC footage of some of the scenes shown in that 35 minute gameplay demo? Because all other PC shots I have seen so far seemed to have just as much detail.

 

[Skyzard]

Also, this interview



is fantastic. Sure downgraders will not be satisfied with what Jose says, but I found it all interesting.

Do you remember which part? My bad, slow connection atm, it's right at the start.

He starts off saying no downgrade, no downgrade, it was a trailer! It was unplayable.

So he says about the 2013 gameplay trailer, it looked worse! It didn't have physically based shaders so it was flat. And it was too sharp with the vegetation and the filter.

-.-

Totally valid. Except, you could have just turned off the filter. And imagine how it would look with the new shaders too!

Much butter now good jub. Thanks for clearing it up.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

I couldn't follow the thread for a while. But have we seen PC footage of some of the scenes shown in that 35 minute gameplay demo? Because all other PC shots I have seen so far seemed to have just as much detail.

Yeah, this is what I'm seeing too. I just went back and watched the SoD trailer, and I don't see any kind of major difference. Not that there are none, but if they're there, I'm not seeing it.

It's certainly nothing like the Watch Dogs or Dark Souls 2 stuff.

 

[Denton]

Do you remember which part? My bad, slow connection atm, it's right at the start.

He starts off saying no downgrade, no downgrade, it was a trailer! It was unplayable.

So he says about the 2013 gameplay trailer, it looked worse! It didn't have physically based shaders so it was flat. And it was too sharp with the vegetation.

-.-

Totally valid. Except, you could have just turned off the filter. And imagine how it would look with the new shaders too!

Much butter now good jub.

Much cynicism. Wow.

I was talking about the rest of the interview though. It is obvious he will never agree with people who shout downgrade, being a biased dev who was there and all.

 

[Skyzard]

Much cynicism. Wow.

I was talking about the rest of the interview though. It is obvious he will never agree with people who shout downgrade, being a biased dev who was there and all.

15mins in and they haven't talked about it since, all gameplay stuff. Yep, nothing after that.

That's all there was to it...

 

[UnrealEck]

Well its totally reasonable that, but even high end PC's can´t run with that detail, or can they? If they can then I don't know why the hassle

High end PCs, yes. Even a single Titan X for example.

I think the people who believe that the 'pre-downgrade' footage wasn't of the actual game are gullible. It was clearly the game, playable by employees but not released to anyone outside. Surely that's what the guy means when he says 'wasn't playable'. They're not going to build all those areas and chuck it out. It's clearly the same game that's been stripped of high quality assets.

I'm starting to dislike CDProjekt's dancing around this shit though. All their 'it's not even on ultra either' bullshit too comes back to me when I'm thinking about this.

Just be honest and say compromises had to be made for optimisation purposes and to improve performance. It's clear you took what you had of the game and reduced the quality of things. I'm not an idiot, I can see it. Sit with one of these guys that work on the game, show them a comparison of assets and ask them how they can say that's not a downgrade.

 

[Skyzard]

When they imply a game will look like what is being shown, and what they're showing is something beyond the capabilities of most people who have anywhere near the average recommended specification of recent games, they make their game look more immersive, not just by a little. You feel the overall impression of the upgraded graphics and it is on a different level to what you've been experiencing. You're hyped, and fooled.

 

[Rodolink]

For example, Devs should be showing this

And then this

Not the other way around

 

[UnrealEck]

When they imply a game will look like what is being shown, and what they're showing is something beyond the capabilities of most people who have anywhere near the average recommended specification of recent games...

That's why we have scalability. That and constantly advancing tech which would easily accomodate the game running on very affordable hardware. Besides that, we don't know what it required before or would have required if they had stuck with the same asset detail. The graphics before seemed very achievable on the high end hardware range.
It's clear it was down to the fact they built it for PC as well as consoles. If it were built for PC then ported to consoles, it would have been a different story. The downside is that it'd maybe look worse than it currently does on the consoles.

 

[Derp]

I have yet to see any compelling evidence that high-end PCs running W3 aren't going to look like the SoD trailer

Uhh... You've seen the PC ultra gameplay on YouTube right...? If you actually can't see a difference (hint: they don't look similar in any way) then you should either consider yourself really lucky because since you can't see a difference you won't be disappointed when it comes out, or unlucky because... Your eyes have trouble picking up the difference.

 

[Skyzard]

That's why we have scalability. That and constantly advancing tech which would easily accomodate the game running on very affordable hardware. Besides that, we don't know what it required before or would have required if they had stuck with the same asset detail.
It's clear it was down to the fact they built it for PC as well as consoles. If it were built for PC then ported to consoles, it would have been a different story. The downside is that it'd maybe look worse than it currently does on the consoles.

It required a hell of a lot, quite clearly, nothing close to what a 980 could do. Is it not only Sony and MS's fault for not making the consoles they wanted, but also nvidia for not making insane strides in gpus performance and affordability in the next year or two?

It should be obvious that it was held back by consoles, they showed it all off. But why would it look worse? Is PBR console exclusive?

 

[H4r4kiri]

I couldn't follow the thread for a while. But have we seen PC footage of some of the scenes shown in that 35 minute gameplay demo? Because all other PC shots I have seen so far seemed to have just as much detail.

We have a lot of comparison Shots between the 35 Min Gameplay Video from 2014 and the 2ß15 Version, where the 35min Video looks better. Just go back a couple of pages.

 

[Anton Sugar]

Uhh... You've seen the PC ultra gameplay on YouTube right...? If you actually can't see a difference (hint: they don't look similar in any way) then you should either consider yourself really lucky because since you can't see a difference you won't be disappointed when it comes out, or unlucky because... Your eyes have trouble picking up the difference.

I'm hesitant now to use "Ultra" as a comparison for MAX PC graphics. The IGN livestream was a PC on Ultra but it had the following disabled:

-Lightshafts
-HBAO+ (it was using SSAO)
-Hairworks
-AA
-Sharpening

AO and sharpening could have a big impact on perceived image quality (see the sharp vs unsharp comparison posted on the other page).

 

[Kaze2212]

We have a lot of comparison Shots between the 35 Min Gameplay Video from 2014 and the 2ß15 Version, where the 35min Video looks better. Just go back a couple of pages.

Oh, were they from the IGN stream or the french stream yesterday? (Have to look up some video footage then.) I can only remember the PS4 shots from quite a few pages ago.

 

[Skyzard]

Big impact, not insane.

Lightshafts could make a major difference depending on how well they've implemented it since it's basically god rays right?

I'll take up to a 30fps hit for really awesome lighting, aa and ao.

Nothing's going to un-blur the vegetation though, even ruining your image with sharpening pp.

 

[H4r4kiri]

Oh, were they from the IGN stream or the french stream yesterday? (Have to look up some video footage then.) I can only remember the PS4 shots from quite a few pages ago.

Ahh okay, but CD said Textures etc will all be the same

 

[Lunar15]

For example, Devs should be showing this

And then this

Not the other way around

For one thing, it helps when you're both the creator of every piece of tech in your engine (no middleware) AND you're the developer of the console and know exactly the power it's going to have.

 

[Mad Season]

has this been posted?

developer-insider-the-witcher-3-was-downgraded-from-2013-list-of-all-features-taken-out-why

http://whatifgaming.com/developer-i...-from-2013-list-of-all-features-taken-out-why

 

[Lunar15]

has this been posted?

developer-insider-the-witcher-3-was-downgraded-from-2013-list-of-all-features-taken-out-why

http://whatifgaming.com/developer-i...-from-2013-list-of-all-features-taken-out-why

Yes, it's been posted. And there have been criticisms raised. It's unclear whether that's a valid source or not.

Some of the claims have been partially debunked.

 

[Denton]

15mins in and they haven't talked about it since, all gameplay stuff. Yep, nothing after that.

That's all there was to it...

Yes, they talked downgrade only in the beginning. I found the rest of the interview, nondowngrade related, interesting.

 

[Lostconfused]

will be the ban of my existence.

Don't think you can do that anymore.