I really appreciate the Ubisoft graphic artists. Those people are geniuses. How they can cram so much beauty and seamless, non-repetitive realism into the terrain, scenery and animation, yet still manage to make the games so fluid? It's beyond my understanding.
As examples, I noticed in going from Far Cry 3 to FC4, and then to Ghost Recon Wild Lands the level-of-detail transitions in objects and textures got progressively more subtle to the point where there is hardly any "popping" of the LOD's in Ghost Recon. Similarly, fine details such as small rocks, bumps and hollows in the ground seemed to improve from pseudo-3D texture effects (produced by normal maps) in FC3 to actual 3D at the scale of pebbles in Ghost Recon. How on earth is it possible to render so many polygons without slowing the game to a slideshow?
I suppose most gamers are more concerned with story line, gameplay or character development and take the graphics for granted, but I would dearly love to know how Ubisoft manage to pull off this magic, even it's just a general description of the techniques they use. I realise they are probably closely-guarded secrets, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
And I wonder how much further they've pushed things in Far Cry 5? Without knowing the 'how', it would still be nice to know 'what' to look forward to.
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With two TitanXP it will possible, i thinkOriginally Posted by mistados Go to original post![]()
Yeah, but thats the case for all modern games if you use the highest settings^^Originally Posted by mistados Go to original post
Im big in graphics and have been waiting for the Dunia engine to catch back up with the Cryengine it is based off of...I dont have high hopes for that. And you cant compare FC to GR, they are on different engines, so graphics wont be the same.
I expect incremental changes, as there have always been on the dunia engine. Expect slightly better graphics than Primal, or maybe even the same.
Now that Dunia is using full support for Speedtree middleware, for grass, bushes and trees, it made it look a lot better and run a little smoother.
The lighting got a lot better in Primal, so expect those changes.
Textures are still ehhhh, hope those change to higher res.
The biggest changes Ubi can make would be in a better terrain modeling tools.
I also expect a massive amount of assets in game, in general. Lots of little items, trinkets, etc. The pictures ive seen seem to support that, so things like that add detail.
And as ive said before, they need to really work on their GRASS modeling!
Look at GTAV, thats the best grass ever in a game, because they use parallax modeling, it just works well! We dont need grass 8' high blowing around. it hurts the performance too!
This ^^Originally Posted by HorTyS Go to original post
Although I really appreciate the amount of work and attention to detail that the graphic artists (and the sound engineers) put into games nowadays... the game must be fun to play. The gameplay should be the top priority because no matter how good looking, a game that is not enjoyable is not worth the money.
Generally, (as mentioned) graphic improvements damage performance.... Which Nvidia, AMD, Sony and Microsoft must loveI think there was maybe 5 years between the 1st and 2nd xbox version (probably the same with the playstation) but now as soon as they release one, they are already working on a Pro or a 4k or whatever the next version is..... people have to own multiple consoles and/or own multiple copies of the same game to be able to play them. PC owners on a budget are being left behind because of minimum required specs that can jump quickly....
I have seen too many bad performance/ FPS threads where people think if their pc runs 1 game at ultra settings and get 60 FPS then every game should run the same... or they have to wait a year to upgrade to play.
Unless game makers adapt (where possible) things like parallax modelling (thanks @akilyoung for the perfect example) that improve graphics without damaging performance, we will forever be paying for graphics just to play the game.
Setting aside gameplay, costs etc, I'd like to stay focused on the graphics question.
Can someone explain what 'parallax modelling' is? How does it work, what effect does it have?
I'm wondering if that's the technique they used in FC4 to make the broken bricks on the roof surface of the Rochan Brick Factory behave as if they were actual 3D objects? Same for the stones in the walls of many of the houses. You look at the walls from an oblique angle and see each individual stone kind of stretching back into the wall as if it was actual 3D.
Is there any website where the game- or game engine developers talk (or brag) about the latest advancements they have implemented?
Thanks for that video, it explains the effect very nicely. So that must be how they made the mountain backgrounds work in FC4, which is something else I always wondered about.
It clearly isn't the technique used to create the '3D' stones in house walls, or the brick fragments I mentioned in my previous (now edited) post. Any clues on that?