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Digital Foundry: Halo Infinite E3 2019: A Taste Of Next-Gen Xbox Graphics?
- Thread starter chandoog
- Start date
Highly unlikely that they will sacrifice framerate given it feels like 343i have on many occasion attested to their commitment to 60fps as a cornerstone for the franchise since H5. Looking at the fidelity sacrifices that were made for OG Xbone, I would wager they would do more of the same.
Missed that part, my bad, but the marine obviously looks less impressive during that moment compared to cut-scenes.
So going by cut-scene models DS characters look pretty good, even if waxy. Point is saying that those characters are from cut-scenes makes no sense since the comparison is with Halo's cut-scene models, not that brief moment where it went in game.
The trailer begins with the title, "game engine footage". And the fact that it is 60fps is visually perceptible.
Well if you take into account how bad people models have always been in halo it's pretty impressive lol
Sure, I still think DS looks orders of magnitude better, but considering Halo Infinite will be cross gen, the Scarlett footage we'll eventually get will probably beat DS.
Fantastic video. I'm very much excited to see more of Infinite. Bummer that we won't see it again until next year but I appreciate 343 being upfront about that. I hope the devs aren't killing themselves to make this launch on time either.
DF says Halo Infinite is made with Scarlett in mind huh? But I recall reading that it was built around the X hardware?
I definitely think if this footage had gone further, so that we got to see the environment from last year again with Chief walking around there.... people wouldn't be saying "not impressed" but I get that they want to keep that for E3 2020. Please amaze us MS and 343.
I definitely think if this footage had gone further, so that we got to see the environment from last year again with Chief walking around there.... people wouldn't be saying "not impressed" but I get that they want to keep that for E3 2020. Please amaze us MS and 343.
plot twist - this cutscene is rendered in real time, in game. i'm fully expecting that to be the case, so there will be no discernible difference between the fidelity seen here and that seen in gameplay.
From the sounds of it from Bonnie and a few other people, they've really been able to settle into a healthy dev cycle by taking the time to build a new engine that is far more friendly to their artists and dev team so I wouldn't expect to hear anything like we heard about 5.
It's probably fine I imagine, around the time it comes out it has been like 5 years in development. Agreed though, hopefully the crunch is being kept to a minimum.
If you think that, fine.
But are you going to look at this
and tell me it looks as good as this?
Honestly, critique that Halo footage and tell me you think the skin/animation/facial detail is phenomenal let alone close to Death Stranding.
Both sets of footage are from cutscenes and the difference is still staggering, and you can say "it's just cutscenes!" all you want but both are supposedly in-engine so it's not unfair to compare them.
I'm even willing to say Halo doesn't look as good but since it's 60fps it's acceptable that it took a hit graphically, fair enough.
But I defy anyone, based on the footage we have so far, to say DS looks worse, let alone that Halo looks better.
Also the talk of 'waxy' looking skin is bullshit, Mass Effect has waxy skin, Death Stranding doesn't.
Halo's look better. Mama looks very waxy and fake. Just watching the 4k footage of Halo the Pilot looks so much more detailed. Just look at Mama's right shoulder....Plasticy shiny fake
Just his hands have so much detail it's amazing skin rendering
I don't believe it to be useful to compare the two, as the scenes are wildly different and serve different goals and are scenes of much different scope. But you are welcome to make the comparison.
The character's name is The Pilot.
The faces are kinda-sorta passable at TV distance, but when you look at them closely, they are very bad. Stuff like weird lightning on the faces that gives different parts of the face a completely different look. The faces do not behave realistically - tears look like scars and not like water. Lipstick looks like nothing I've seen in the physical world - just way too much sheen.
You can like the way DS looks. That is fine. I don't, because the effect doesn't work on me. On a technological level, what is going on in the Infinite trailer is miles above what we've seen of DS. And that makes sense, is obvious. DS is a PS4 title. Infinite is running on much, much more powerful hardware.
Honestly, if you folks are objectively looking for the most realistic looking human character in real time (not "in-engine cutscenes") from this gen then only game has it (and I think it also comes down to the kind of style other devs aim to deliver). That game is Days Gone. For all the technical issues (including notable object pop ins) this game is the benchmark when it comes this singular aspect.
The following real time screenshots come courtesy of Dumbmugi and is NOT meant to derail the thread, rather provide a baseline as to what to expect from next gen IF the developers target photo-realism instead of a more stylized approach.
From what I saw of Halo Infinite, it looks like they are, despite very realistic lighting, are going for a slightly more vivified style (reminds me of Uncharted 4) with distinctly clean lines.
The footage you are looking from is not from an Xbox One. The footage shown at Microsoft's E3 press conference is not from an Xbox One or from a PC that is approximating an Xbox One. You are looking at early footage of the next-gen version of Infinite.
Thanks. Can't game engine footage mean it was pre-rendered in slow motion and then sped up to 60fps? If that's not the case iam impressed. The character isn't on the same level as Master Chiefs armour but i guess human faces aren't really that important to Halo (-gameplay) anyway.
I was not impressed when I initially watched the Halo trailer. Watching the DF analysis had me more appreciative of the lighting, but overall I'm still pretty unimpressed overall. Yes, it looks better than current gen, but it's not super noticable as you would expect by how they are hyping the capabilities of scarlett. The fact that it is entirely a cut-scene leads to me being less impressed.
its almost like some people act like they are personally invested in their tribal game choice. and they get irrationally angry if you say one wrong thing about it.
Has anyone posted a gif of Master Chiefs gloves? If not, could someone do so? That alone blows anything from this gen clear out of the water. Especially at 4K/60fps
I get you, and I agree with some points, but I think they look good enough to compare them with any game that has great looking cut-scenes.
Obviously we'll have to wait for the final game, but cut-scenes generally look great in Kojima games. Thankfully the in-game stuff is looking good as well.
Btw, I thought the Halo footage was awesome, particularly MC who for the first time ever made a very breathtaking impression on me. Maybe it was the updated suit design, or how big and menacing he looked when he was walking so close to the ceiling, etc., but as soon as the trailer finished I felt like I wanted to play Halo.
Hate to use the term but this an obvious instance of diminishing returns. The details in the trailer make an obvious case for being next gen. The problem is, how much of that detail is perceptible without zooming in or slowing things down for analysis?
The lighting is what really stood out to me without analysis.
The lighting is what really stood out to me without analysis.
If you think that, fine.
But are you going to look at this
That's just giving me this impression..
and tell me it looks as good as this?
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If you think that, fine.
But are you going to look at this
and tell me it looks as good as this?
Honestly, critique that Halo footage and tell me you think the skin/animation/facial detail is phenomenal let alone close to Death Stranding.
Both sets of footage are from cutscenes and the difference is still staggering, and you can say "it's just cutscenes!" all you want but both are supposedly in-engine so it's not unfair to compare them.
I'm even willing to say Halo doesn't look as good but since it's 60fps it's acceptable that it took a hit graphically, fair enough.
But I defy anyone, based on the footage we have so far, to say DS looks worse, let alone that Halo looks better.
Also the talk of 'waxy' looking skin is bullshit, Mass Effect has waxy skin, Death Stranding doesn't.
I think that's one of the big problem the next gen will see, and i've been talking about that for a while. We're at a point where the tech (as in mocap tech, software etc..), talent and money invested in a game count more than the machine power.
That's a fine exemple.
See, when we go from PS3 to PS4, even if you don't have the ressources of a TLOU, you can still mnage to impress with brute power, cause it was pretty limited and now you have a huge poly and texture budget, ram wise etc..
Now let's think about PS4 to PS5, or XBO to XBOX. The difference in texture and model, and even in light if you're not super smart about it, will not make your characters look better than this gen's best. A super heavy budget realistic character that took a lot of time to animate on PS4 will still look better than your 14TF character with cheaper work. Sometimes it's not even budget, but just that certain team will have a different style that won't impress that much. We saw it this gen already.
Is "mediocre" an art style? ZING!!! Boo-yah!
I'm only kinda kidding.
See I don't know how people can honestly say that this:
Doesn't clearly look more detailed than anything else released this generation.
Doesn't clearly look more detailed than anything else released this generation.
It's a case of how taxing 4K/60 is and unfortunately for MS and Sony, they've already exhausted "4K" as a marketing bullet point so that by itself isn't going to blow people away. This is why a lot of people around here would prefer continued use of checkerboard/temporal injection or other lower resolutions.
what im seeing is that according to most of era, if it isnt photo-realistic; its bad. at least that SEEMS like the consensus, unless im misinterpreting a lot of posts.
Honestly, I don't think the Halo footage looks good. A couple of thoughts:
- Why did they choose the interior of a tiny space ship to show us a game that allegedly has strong open-world elements?
- Is this the best next-gen footage they have right now? Or why did they choose that as the first next-gen footage we should see?
- There doesn't seem to be anything that demonstrates the massive increase in CPU power or storage speed. Why?
Halo Infinite looks like Mass Effect: Andromeda in comparison to this and some of the other examples posted here. A good reminder that there is more to graphics than running at 4K / 60fps with X amount of particles and stuff like that.
- Why did they choose the interior of a tiny space ship to show us a game that allegedly has strong open-world elements?
- Is this the best next-gen footage they have right now? Or why did they choose that as the first next-gen footage we should see?
- There doesn't seem to be anything that demonstrates the massive increase in CPU power or storage speed. Why?
If you think that, fine.
But are you going to look at this
and tell me it looks as good as this?
Halo Infinite looks like Mass Effect: Andromeda in comparison to this and some of the other examples posted here. A good reminder that there is more to graphics than running at 4K / 60fps with X amount of particles and stuff like that.
That looks great. But it's not gameplay.
Maybe it just comes down to whether you find in-engine cutscenes interesting or not.
If they can deliver that fidelity in a bigger, action orientated scene - I'll be on board.
Even as an real time cutscene, the sheer amount of polygonal detail and shader work going on there is just insane. Better than anything else I've seen period.
One thing that I have been consistent about is comparing Real time visuals because in-engine cutscenes often times tend to swap out gameplay models for a slightly higher poly and higher texture detailed model (Spider-man did this and IIRC Uncharted used the same model for gameplay and cutscene) and then add other post processing fx (like additional lighting) that are inherently granted by nature of constrained cutscenes that takes player variability and world simulation out of the equation freeing up additional computational power. And so, this is where I think that real time models may hold up better, fidelity-wise on a next gen platform.
That said, I do agree that, as of right now, DS's process of translating face and mo-cap to in-engine visual is truly a cut above the rest. The opening segment when Cliff is singing, DF made a point where the animation is not exaggerated to sell the effect and looks utterly realistic for it. I was reminded of Uncharted and GoW, two other games whose animators did exceptional jobs doing the same.
Truthfully, I have always seen them as very close second. Looking at the colour and tinge treatment, R*, like ND, aimed for a slightly stylized look (I think the next GTA may opt for more photorealistic look if GTAV was anything go by).
And not to nitpick, save the last screenshot, the rest look to be from during cutscenes where lighting and shading around face look more sumptuous compared to the last one.
Pre-rendering in-engine is a thing that is done to hide load times but it is constructed to run on fixed spec of the console in question.
Also, as for speeding up, every aspect of world simulation would have to run at half the speed (if they recorded it at 30fps). It honestly would be more work (if they were to do it for all cutscenes) but more importantly, this would be tantamount to blatantly misleading people. I do not believe MS would do something like that to show off their next HW capabilities.
Finally, I think we are far too early to be able to conclusively call how the fidelity of individual aspects within the game will hold up.
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I know nothing of the technical details, so I'll just say that I disagree. It looks great, but using the Death Stranding comparison as an example, I don't know that it looks any better than everything else out there. It's certainly not what I am expecting to see out of 'next gen'.
I'm on the side that wasn't impressed as much when I saw this. Even after watching the DF video the take away is basically this is great because it's 4k 60 but it isn't an immediate leap at a simple glance in the same way watching something like the Heretic demo or the Samaritan demo during it's time.
If you compare it to something like the Shadowfall reveal which just the lowres gif of the cityscape with skyscrapers reflecting was enough to showcase the nextgen leap, or other early titles such as Ryse or Second Son, I don't think this provides that same wow factor.
Hopefully that's because it's a cross-gen game, but right now it pretty much seems like a slightly more impressive PC version of a good current gen game.
If you compare it to something like the Shadowfall reveal which just the lowres gif of the cityscape with skyscrapers reflecting was enough to showcase the nextgen leap, or other early titles such as Ryse or Second Son, I don't think this provides that same wow factor.
Hopefully that's because it's a cross-gen game, but right now it pretty much seems like a slightly more impressive PC version of a good current gen game.
Holy shit THAT'S next gen footage? Are you sure? The digital foundry video made it seem like it was Xbox One footage and that the game was only confirmed to be on Scarlett, not that the footage is from Scarlett.
If that is Scarlett footage then woof, that's underwhelming.
Halo's engine strength has never been motion capture/facial animations. The fact that those things look this good in a Halo game is great. What most games get wrong that Halo gets right is physics, and add visual and gameplay variability which I would argue many games with advanced graphics don't really have. Uncharted-types of games have fantastic animations/lighting/textures, but it all feels rather canned and predictable to me; more cinematic than interactive. In other words, I think Slipspace engine is going to be insanely awesome and versatile.
He's not wrong and i doubt it has to do with game favoritism. DS does fit under the uncanny valley title to me. It looks great, but when going for photorealism you need to really nail every aspect and not every aspect is there in the footage we saw. The shaders for the skin have way too much roughness (3d PBR map that creates that shiney look you see) and it is creating an unrealistic look. This is my opinion, but as a 3d artist focusing on photorealistic modeling and materials/textures. However, this argument is fairly pointless for everyone on whichever side because neither of these games are finished yet.
If you actually watched the Digital Foundry video that this thread is about, you'd understand how what was shown isn't even possible to produce on the Xbox One.
The footage is not from an Xbox One or from a PC targeting the Xbox One's level of performance. The version of the game that the footage was created with is the next-gen version.
I did watch, but he only says the game is confirmed on Scarlett, not that the footage is from Scarlett.
But either way, if that is Scarlett footage then i'm extremely unimpressed.
You might be right. Which is why I need to see a full blown Halo-esque scene to know how to feel about the engine. But the footage they've shown isn't anything special (in my opinion of course).
Constantly, throughout the video the Digital Foundry guy talks about how the stuff he is seeing is so much better than what is possible on the Xbox One. It's constant, throughout the video. Said again and again. The DF guy does not state that the footage is from a Scarlett, as he does not know that, but he does all but say it is not current-gen footage. In a way, it goes without saying - the LOD alone is not even remotely achievable on an Xbox One X at 4k/60, which the trailer is. I am stating that the footage is also not from a PC build of the last gen version of the game.
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