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II JumPeR I

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
2,770
Germany
Is it me or do the Sony games almost look the same graphicly? All have this weird Wax figure look to them, hard to describe. Not a hate or anything just my point of view.
 

KKRT

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,544
Battlefront and BF 1 look better than any game released so far.
Anybody who played them in high resolution knows that, unless we are talking exclusively about character rendering tech.

As i said before quite a few times Sony studios are the best in blending art and tech, but they are not the best in tech.

Ps. People downplaying Crysis 3 on past gen consoles is something else. Its a miracle that it even worked on them, let alone played in somehow playable framerates.
 

RossoneR

Member
Oct 28, 2017
935
Battlefront and BF 1 look better than any game released so far.
Anybody who played them in high resolution knows that, unless we are talking exclusively about character rendering tech.

As i said before quite a few times Sony studios are the best in blending art and tech, but they are not the best in tech.

Ps. People downplaying Crysis 3 on past gen consoles is something else. Its a miracle that it even worked on them, let alone played in somehow playable framerates.

Only Dice and Rockstar re comparable imo. And yes last gen crytek was great. I platinumed crysis 1 on ps3 lol. I was blown away how it looked on 256mb of ram.
 

chris 1515

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,074
Barcelona Spain
Battlefront and BF 1 look better than any game released so far.
Anybody who played them in high resolution knows that, unless we are talking exclusively about character rendering tech.

As i said before quite a few times Sony studios are the best in blending art and tech, but they are not the best in tech.

Ps. People downplaying Crysis 3 on past gen consoles is something else. Its a miracle that it even worked on them, let alone played in somehow playable framerates.

Technical and art proficiency is the most important and I don't like to use PC as a benchmark... The most important things is to compare the game on the same machine and doing nearly the same things and most of the time first party come on top... Sony is not doing fps anymore at 60 fps nothing to compare to Battlefront, BF1 or Doom...

Sometimes like with GT Sport on PS4 Pro it is better than Forza 7 on PC...
 

X1 Two

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
3,023
I'll never understand how or why Sony is able to pull off what they do. Literally every game they make now is just oozing with atmosphere.. and Microsoft can't even make one.. not even one game that is even close. I'm a huge Xbox fan too. I just don't get how Sony does it

They clearly have different stances on what makes a game interesting to play. Sony is going for very cinematic experiences, often taking control from the player if it means showing a great camera perspective. Microsoft is more traditional, gameplay first. I think both have their place, though I often find it enough for me to watch a Sony game Let's Play because there are at times that many cutscenes that the gameplay distracts from the experience. Microsoft games are the opposite where you often don't get rewarded well enough for what you do in gameplay. I think Rockstar and Ubisoft nail that balance between the two extremes.
 

BladeX

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,110
I honestly cannot understand how people think AC Origins is anywhere near Horizon. It is an amazingly beautiful game but seriously now, either you have a long time to boot Horizon or you havent played it.

Where to begin really? Animation? Textures? Geometry? Lighting? Shadows? Effects and particles?

Seriously how do people even begin to compare these 2 games is beyond me. If I can give something to Origins is water. The rest, I am sorry but no.

Now in terms of Sony exclusives in general they push graphics tech to new heights. Spiderman's sense of scale is insane, TLOU part II looks like a CGI movie, Ghost looks amazing, God of War as well... the list just goes on and each of these devs is pushing the other to perfection.
 

chris 1515

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,074
Barcelona Spain
I honestly cannot understand how people think AC Origins is anywhere near Horizon. It is an amazingly beautiful game but seriously now, either you have a long time to boot Horizon or you havent played it.

Where to begin really? Animation? Textures? Geometry? Lighting? Shadows? Effects and particles?

Seriously how do people even begin to compare these 2 games is beyond me. If I can give something to Origins is water. The rest, I am sorry but no.

Now in terms of Sony exclusives in general they push graphics tech to new heights.

After seeing the nib95 image, there is not doubt, HZD is kooking better on PS4 Pro...
 

KKRT

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,544
Technical and art proficiency is the most important and I don't like to use PC as a benchmark... The most important things is to compare the game on the same machine and doing nearly the same things and most of the time first party come on top... Sony is not doing fps anymore at 60 fps nothing to compare to Battlefront, BF1 or Doom...

Sometimes like with GT Sport on PS4 Pro it is better than Forza 7 on PC...
You can compare Battlefront and BF 1 to Uncharted 4's multiplayer.
 

Segafreak

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,756
Remember back in 2013 when people said gen 2/3 games on PS4 won't look better, because of the architecture? Mark Cerny was right again. Insane how far along games have come. I'm sure the CGI look will be attained by some on PS5.

Also you left out the best
image_detroit_become_human-35798-3428_0006.jpg



image_detroit_become_human-37022-3428_0011.jpg

image_detroit_become_human-35798-3428_0019.jpg
 

Patitoloco

Member
Oct 27, 2017
23,714
ICE Team is the key for having such wonderful graphics. Insomniac might be the odd duck here, as they are outsiders, but Santa Monica, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Guerilla etc all have a good footing within the ICE Team and are the first to get any new advances.
 

FFObsessed

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
259
Trying and succeeding. Horizon is just spectacular. Hell, The Order 1886 still hasn't been surpassed yet in terms of linear games.
 

KillerMan91

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,358
I mean of course there is a lot of talent behind these studios too but graphics are more and more about budget every year. Sony gives its developers big budget to make largely AAA single player games which then leads to graphically great looking games.
 

Edgar

User requested ban
Banned
Oct 29, 2017
7,180
I honestly cannot understand how people think AC Origins is anywhere near Horizon. It is an amazingly beautiful game but seriously now, either you have a long time to boot Horizon or you havent played it.

Where to begin really? Animation? Textures? Geometry? Lighting? Shadows? Effects and particles?

Seriously how do people even begin to compare these 2 games is beyond me. If I can give something to Origins is water. The rest, I am sorry but no.

Now in terms of Sony exclusives in general they push graphics tech to new heights. Spiderman's sense of scale is insane, TLOU part II looks like a CGI movie, Ghost looks amazing, God of War as well... the list just goes on and each of these devs is pushing the other to perfection.
Because art diretion and aesthetics matter as much as pushing pixels and tech. I can agree that maybe HZD is pushing more serious tech cause i dont know the nitty gritty, but i just prefer AC look the topography and scale , the overall atmosphere of Egypt is more to my liking than HZD.
And then we all gotta remember we are comparing multi platform games with console exclusive , i think exclusives have a quite the advantage catering to one system instead of 3.
 

Beef Stallmer

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
875
I find this not a good thing at all, even though I am primarily a PS4 gamer.
IMO Sony exclusive titles always make multiplatform titles , or other platform exclusive titles for that matter, look extremely shitty in comparison. In theory you could play Forza 7 on a 10.000 euro PC and GT:Sport would still look better, even on the 200 euro non-pro amateur system..
Indeed, DICE is the only one on the same level. Almost all other games look worse to the point that I don't want to play them anymore.
It saves me a lot of money in the end I guess. But still what is the point?

I would have been exited for the new COD, but honestly, it only looks like BF1 with all the graphical detail and lighting turned off. COD WW2 looks closer to COD:WAW (on PC maxed) than BF1. In previous generations the difference was less obvious
 

KKRT

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,544
UC4 is a third person game... The best comparison is a launch game Killzone shadow Fall...
And what camera perspective has anything to do with tech behind the game?
Actually its even easier to get some performance back or make things nicer in TPP mode as camera is further away from objects, so devs can save sometimes on texture and shading resolution.
 

barit

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
1,163
I think these are not in game, but I could be wrong.

After the CGI Killzone 2 fiasco at E3 2005(?) Sony learned their lesson. I can´t think of one trailer that didn´t match the final product after that event. Sometimes the final games even looked better than what we saw in the trailers years ago. Yes the gif´s in OP are all cutscenes and so they look slighty better than say the game play counterparts. Just like Uncharted 4 looks the best in the cutscenes but it doesn´t mean the overall game would not achieve this quality. What you see now is what you´ll 100% get in the final game.
 

BladeX

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,110
Because art diretion and aesthetics matter as much as pushing pixels and tech. I can agree that maybe HZD is pushing more serious tech cause i dont know the nitty gritty, but i just prefer AC look the topography and scale , the overall atmosphere of Egypt is more to my liking than HZD.
And then we all gotta remember we are comparing multi platform games with console exclusive , i think exclusives have a quite the advantage catering to one system instead of 3.
I can agree with you that whatever artistic style you prefer is valid reason to like the looks of a game more. Hell to some people Braid is a visual masterpiece, and I am not being sarcastic here I fully support that.

But I got the impression that this thread is about graphics tech more so than art. If we go by art alone, then this thread becomes pointless.

So going by gfx tech, the absolute objective answer is that Horizon is in a different league than AC Origins.
 

GhostTrick

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,316
After the CGI Killzone 2 fiasco at E3 2005(?) Sony learned their lesson. I can´t think of one trailer that didn´t match the final product after that event. Sometimes the final games even looked better than what we saw in the trailers years ago. Yes the gif´s in OP are all cutscenes and so they look slighty better than say the game play counterparts. Just like Uncharted 4 looks the best in the cutscenes but it doesn´t mean the overall game would not achieve this quality. What you see now is what you´ll 100% get in the final game.


Uncharted 4 60fps trailer.
 

chris 1515

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,074
Barcelona Spain
And what camera perspective has anything to do with tech behind the game?
Actually its even easier to get some performance back or make things nicer in TPP mode as camera is further away from objects, so devs can save sometimes on texture and shading resolution.

Naughty Dog would probably do different choice on technical side if they were doing a FPS. I prefer compare games doing the same thing on the same machine... Open world versus Open world... Semi open design like UC 4 against Tomb Raider and so on... 3rd person game against 3rd person games... Guerrilla changed many things for Horizon going from FPS to 3rd person games...

Frosbite 3rd person games aren't as impressive as the fps game and it was difficult for the different team at EA to change an engine optimize to work for first person point of view (rendering side, animation side and on tools side)...
 

Deleted member 1589

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
8,576
Uncharted 4 60fps trailer.
Yeah and I was thinking about it and that's probably the only one. Uncharted 4 still looks incredible though!

Infamous Second Son, Killzone, Horizon Zero Dawn all surpassed their first reveals.

Im not counting GT Sport in there because the reveal was such a shitshow you know improvements were coming anyway.
 

KKRT

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,544
Naughty Dog would probably do different choice on technical side if they were doing a FPS. I prefer compare games doing the same thing on the same machine... Open world versus Open world... Semi open design like UC 4 against Tomb Raider and so on... 3rd person game against 3rd person games... Guerrilla changed many things for Horizon going from FPS to 3rd person games...

Frosbite 3rd person games aren't as impressive as the fps game and it was difficult for the different team at EA to change an engine optimize to work for first person point of view (rendering side, animation side and on tools side)...
You mean one 3rd person game? Not made by DICE even.
Still dont see the difference between tech in those camera modes. And Battlefront is mostly designed around 3rd person view, not 1st person.

What would you change in tool side for 1st and 3rd person? Animation i agree, you can cut some for your main character in 1st person, but rendering and tools are exactly the same.

Having baked lighting to real time is way more impactful to the whole game tech design than camera view for example.
 

chris 1515

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,074
Barcelona Spain
You mean one 3rd person game? Not made by DICE even.
Still dont see the difference between tech in those camera modes. And Battlefront is mostly designed around 3rd person view, not 1st person.

What would you change in tool side for 1st and 3rd person? Animation i agree, you can cut some for your main character in 1st person, but rendering and tools are exactly the same.

Having baked lighting to real time is way more impactful to the whole game tech design than camera view for example.

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/10/the-collapse-of-viscerals-ambitiousstar-wars-game/

Frostbite had been challenging enough for Visceral during Hardline's development, and that was a Battlefield game. For Ragtag, Visceral would have to build key features from scratch. Like BioWare on Dragon Age and Mass Effect, Visceral found itself trying to make a third-person game on an engine built for first-person shooters. "It was missing a lot of tools, a lot of stuff that was in Uncharted 1," said a former employee. "It was going be a year, or a year and a half's work just to get the engine to do things that are assumed and taken for granted."

Same story for other studio like Bioware or Guerrilla Games coming from Killzone to Horizon Zero Dawn...
 
Oct 27, 2017
15,056
They clearly have different stances on what makes a game interesting to play. Sony is going for very cinematic experiences, often taking control from the player if it means showing a great camera perspective.

If this happens "often", would you mind giving a handful of examples? The only one I can think of that happens at the expense of gameplay is in God of War Ascension when the camera pulls right back to show Hecatonchires but leaves Kratos fighting in a tiny portion of the screen. It looked nice but was awful from a gameplay perspective.
 

chris 1515

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,074
Barcelona Spain
Use fully dynamic ambient occlusion when your games is not using dynamic time of day or weather is not mandatory. Naughty Dog and Ready At Dawn use baked GI like in AC Unity but it is a good choice for their games, they only use dynamic ao for torchlight or some specific light source. It depends of what you want to achieve on your games and for the moment baked GI look better than realtime GI. It impact your graphic pipeline but if you can do it why not... And realtime preview tool with baked GI for artist is a reality...

Each teams craft the game around the art or the goal to achieve on screen... Everything is a technical choice...

EDIT: And the saved rendering time using baked GI is used for something else...
 
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2112

Using multiple alt accounts
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
1,696
Portsmouth
Battlefront and BF 1 look better than any game released so far.
Anybody who played them in high resolution knows that, unless we are talking exclusively about character rendering tech.

As i said before quite a few times Sony studios are the best in blending art and tech, but they are not the best in tech.

Ps. People downplaying Crysis 3 on past gen consoles is something else. Its a miracle that it even worked on them, let alone played in somehow playable framerates.
Seeing Battlefront at 4k 60 FPS in person was insane, I doubt most of the people who think PS4 games are the best looking have experienced that.
 

nelsonroyale

Member
Oct 28, 2017
12,130
Agreed. I think it is the fact that Sony seems to invest in SP games, gives their devs a good amount of creative freedom and has some very talented devs in the mix. Horizon is the most impressive game I have seen across PC and consoles, and U4 is the total package. There are a few multiplatform devs that can hang: Ubisoft, Crytek, ID software and Dice for instance. However, these three upcoming games in particular may push things even further. TLOU2, if that transitions to gameplay sets a new bar in my opinion. Spiderman has some of the best daytime lighting in the game. Ghosts of Tsushimi looks very crafted. Need to see gameplay of that, but Infamous SS and FL look very good.
 

emir

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,501
It is the secret of this business to provide sufficient budget, time and convenience to developers. All the people who work in the Sony Studios are creative and visionary people. They've always proved that and they know what the user wants.

And don't forget the God of War. All these scenes are running inGame.

gow_screen_house_ps4_t0spk.png

large1p4sdd.jpg

largeg3sei.jpg

god-of-war-fragparta-2oup9.jpg
 
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Laser Man

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,683
Is it me or do the Sony games almost look the same graphicly? All have this weird Wax figure look to them, hard to describe. Not a hate or anything just my point of view.

I wouldn't call it waxy but I know what you mean, they are on the road to photorealism and not fully there yet (the waxy part) and employ the same means techwise and artistically. But they are close, inching closer with every game and every newly created tool that let's them come closer to it, the logical conclusion is that they will look more and more similar because there isn't really any other choice. You either stylize your graphics, go for cartoonish or hyperrealism etc, or you try and be as realistic as you can get. That means when you use a pbr workflow and have a certain memory budget and engine specific features etc, even if your game has Orcs and Elves... wood will look like wood in other games, fabric like fabric in other games, glass, water, grass, dust, skin, humans etc.
So even if they lose the "wax figure look" or whatever it is that bothers you and me, even if they are perfectly photorealistic... in the end they will still all look the same when viewed through the technical lense.

This in itself isn't really a bad thing, but the excitement of the old days regarding this specific thing is gone. Kinda similar to CGI in movies, nobody is excited about good CGI anymore these days, it is expected and in the best case you don't even realise you are dealing with CGI.
What stands out to people these days is when CGI looks bad, I assume this will happen (or already happens to some degree) in videogames too, down the road. The excitement will die down completely to that level and the flaws will be the talking point.
 
Oct 25, 2017
13,246
For me, what sets apart Sony's first party and other studios that are great with tech is the consistency amazing art design behind the games. Very few other studios can match both the art and tech together to create a beautiful looking end product.
 

chris 1515

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,074
Barcelona Spain
It is the secret of this business to provide sufficient budget, time and convenience to developers. All the people who work in the Sony Studios are creative and visionary people, forcing limits on their first targets. They've always proved that and they know what the user wants.

And don't forget God of War. All these scenes are running inGame.

God of war is running on standard PS4 for E3 presentation and to confirm but it seems the same thing for PGW...
 

ShaiKhulud

Member
Oct 27, 2017
487
Kazan, Russia
GT Sport replays is the closest thing to real life in realtime CG right now. I mean, look at this replay, it's lifelike. And this is my humble base PS4. As an avid PC gamer with mighty 1080 Ti I'm still shocked about Sony's output. Horizon Zero Dawn is nothing short of marver bearing in mind that it runs in 1080p/30FPS on a 2013 AMD APU.
 
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J-Skee

The Wise Ones
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,112
I'm more impressed with Sony's commitment to sticking with these huge, single player games & not following the trend of loot boxes right now. Granted, I should probably expect them in the next MLB game, but it's just nice to see. Can't freaking wait for Ghost of Tsushima.
 
Oct 25, 2017
11,717
United Kingdom
Sony might get some shit for delays, not giving release dates, letting developers run over with development ect but when you look at their games, the results speak for themselves. They really do have the best looking games out there.
 

Gamer17

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
9,399
Yea I guess I agree

Here is my list of this generations best looking games on consoles :

1-uncharted lost legacy/4
2-Horizon zero dawn
3-rise of the tomb raider
4-gears of war 4
5-ratchet and clank
6-untill dawn
7-dying light enhanced edition
8-mgs5
9-drive club /forza horizon 3
10-infamous SS
 

Ikaruga

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,055
Austria
Sony was always investing heavily into the graphics department but I can't shake the feeling that they could do much better gameplay wise. Horizon for example looks incredible but it's using pretty much the Ubisoft open world formula packed with a rather interesting story at least. The last Sony game where I thought "this looks amazing, this plays amazing, the story is amazing" was The Last of Us on the PS3, I sure hope that the sequel can deliver in the same way.

-I also wouldn't mind them toning down the graphics a bit to push some of their games to 60FPS but I guess that's never gonna happen, as long as eye candy is valued more important by the players, advertisers and developers.
 

xs2kys

Member
Oct 29, 2017
117
Yea I guess I agree

Here is my list of this generations best looking games on consoles :

1-uncharted lost legacy/4
2-Horizon zero dawn
3-rise of the tomb raider
4-gears of war 4
5-ratchet and clank
6-untill dawn
7-dying light enhanced edition
8-mgs5
9-drive club /forza horizon 3
10-infamous SS

u forgot gt sport xD
 

Acquiescence

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
10,257
Lake Titicaca
Yea I guess I agree

Here is my list of this generations best looking games on consoles :

1-uncharted lost legacy/4
2-Horizon zero dawn
3-rise of the tomb raider
4-gears of war 4
5-ratchet and clank
6-untill dawn
7-dying light enhanced edition
8-mgs5
9-drive club /forza horizon 3
10-infamous SS

The Order: 1886 is a glaring omission there. The actual quality of the game itself is another matter, but to this day it still looks like hot fire.
 

spam musubi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,381
They clearly have different stances on what makes a game interesting to play. Sony is going for very cinematic experiences, often taking control from the player if it means showing a great camera perspective. Microsoft is more traditional, gameplay first. I think both have their place, though I often find it enough for me to watch a Sony game Let's Play because there are at times that many cutscenes that the gameplay distracts from the experience. Microsoft games are the opposite where you often don't get rewarded well enough for what you do in gameplay. I think Rockstar and Ubisoft nail that balance between the two extremes.

I think this is kind of ridiculous to say. What Sony game are we talking about here? Other than more minor exclusives like The Order 1886 and Until Dawn, many of their games have tons of gameplay. Bloodborne? Horizon? Even Uncharted games have a lot going on, and Lost Legacy specifically is even more gameplay oriented. The Last Guardian? Infamous? Gravity Rush?

Even going back last gen, despite people saying TLOU is too cinematic it's also one of my favorite games for gameplay. Grounded mode was something else.
 

Griffith

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,585
I do think Sony has, overall, been more ambitious than Microsoft in pushing or raising the bar of high fidelity in video game graphics, but I also know better than to trust their "exclusive games" trailers because often time the final product, while usually still impressive, does not look as good.

Example: Uncharted Series, Killzone 2, No Man's Sky (I'm sure there are more examples, but these are the ones that came to mind)