lol
Do you even know what youre' talking about? Foliage is definitely not rendered similarly.
Also, what does "there's full time of day" even mean? lol Did you mean day and night cycle? Ocarina of time has a d&n cycle too - is it also comprabale to witcher 3? lol I'm talking about technical features, you're talking about gameplay features.
This is you: 'both Witcher 3 and BotW use kinda-maybe-similar rendering pipelines but they're just slightly different in poly count, texture resolution, number of draw calls and shaders used. So yeah, they're definitely similar from a tech pov'.
If you honestly think BotW is comparable to Witcher 3 technically (from both povs: engine features and what you see on screen) then I don't know what to tell you.
edit: also, even if they'd use the same engine (which they don't), the fact that one game pushes more polys, higher draw distance, 2K textures and a lot more materials, affects computational cost, which is what my original post explaind to that user. That's why Witcher 3 performs less well on the same hardware. Cuz it's a more taxing game when it coms to GPU&CPU cost. In no way are they similar, as you say.
The only hyperbole here is you saying that they are similar cuz they both have PBR rendering, day and night cycle and render foliage lol You really have no idea what you're talking about, but no need to continue. I obviously can't convince you that you don't know what you're talking about so let's give it a rest.
Both games render foliage by using billboards with a subsurface scattering shader, but which for the most part don't cast shadows or self-shadows.
BOTW has a very advanced weather simulation system that includes wind and wind physics (Just like Witcher 3) that affects cloud formation. Clouds in BOTW are simulated from the inputs of the wind system, using noise to generate the texture of the clouds, just like other current gen games, and they cast shadows and have subsurface scattering, just like other current gen games. The Witcher 3 uses moving billboards instead, but it's very effective as well.
Just like in The Witcher 3, game systems are affected by the weather system. And like in The Witcher 3, this means that foliage and cloth react to the wind simulation, as well as other forces in the environment like the shockwaves from explosions. (On top of this, the foliage in BOTW can burn, and the fire is affected by the weather system)
Just like in The Witcher 3, there is a main light point (Sun and moon) that casts global shadows, influences a simulation of the color of the sky (Rayleigh scattering) which in turn feeds into the image-based lighting for the color cast on the environment, and also some form of global illumination, and then additional lights that do not have the impact in the indirect lighting.
Both games are using a physically based renderer.
You just need to look at a timelapse of both games to see that they are both using broadly the same techniques, for rendering, for foliage, and for the lighting and weather systems. The assets are completely different, The Witcher 3 has a higher density of assets, and it obviously has a more realistic look, but the rendering techniques are fairly similar, which is what I was arguing. But of course it's impossible to talk about Nintendo games without people getting riled up.
