-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Next-gen Racing Graphics Face-off | (Next-gen means current-gen)
- Thread starter Gestault
- Start date
mercenar1e
Member
ChronotriggerJM
Member
So far I don't think project cars looks good at all graphically speaking. Still looking forward to the game regardless, and I'm glad it'll be 60 frames a second, but she definitely doesn't seem very pretty.
Really liking the way Horizon's looking so far! I won't be playing it unless they for some reason release it on PC in the distant future. But man kudo's to the team!
Then of course personal bias and love of Evolution studios, but man Driveclub is gorgeous. Especially digging the night races. The eventual weather patch is going to be nucking futs.
All these games look much better in motion obviously, so stills in a racing game don't necessarily mean much, I'm sure Pcars will blow me away when I play it.
Really liking the way Horizon's looking so far! I won't be playing it unless they for some reason release it on PC in the distant future. But man kudo's to the team!
Then of course personal bias and love of Evolution studios, but man Driveclub is gorgeous. Especially digging the night races. The eventual weather patch is going to be nucking futs.
All these games look much better in motion obviously, so stills in a racing game don't necessarily mean much, I'm sure Pcars will blow me away when I play it.
Bornstellar
Member
Puts some of the arguments people have in perspective.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
What's your rig? Those images are ridiculously clean!
ChronotriggerJM
Member
PC is ALL gens
What I mean is that FH2 and DC look nice, but they are a generation behind those 4k shots. The IQ is perfect.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
Oh absolutely. I wan't a beastly rig for PC gaming so bad lol. I just wish we could get DC's attention to foliage up and running on 4k Pcars.
Like I don't mind the IQ bump or the effects bumps at all in PC games, but when you don't populate the world with additional geometry, it looks extremely wonky to me. Like pristine, beautiful cars and textures, and just nothing to really look at... I dunno.
jellies_two
Member
I think I'll wait until project cars is out before deciding.
Clean edges with no aliasing and 4k frame buffers down sampled, look awesome and everyone says "ooh IQ", but it says very little about the complexity of geometry (outside the cars) and doesn't show whether you can see the dashboard realistically reflect back in the windshield, or how how many different material surfaces they have done, how glare is handled, whether the sun or car headlights interacts believably with the rain or the clouds... and it doesn't reveal much about how trees and foliage is done on a large scale, or whether the beading of the water looks right or not or a dozen other things.
These things are best viewed on your own screen, using movable cameras and a slider for the weather or time lapse videos. When I look at recent project cars footage, irregardless of the "IQ", some of it screams "game" not "real". But we'll see, right?
Clean edges with no aliasing and 4k frame buffers down sampled, look awesome and everyone says "ooh IQ", but it says very little about the complexity of geometry (outside the cars) and doesn't show whether you can see the dashboard realistically reflect back in the windshield, or how how many different material surfaces they have done, how glare is handled, whether the sun or car headlights interacts believably with the rain or the clouds... and it doesn't reveal much about how trees and foliage is done on a large scale, or whether the beading of the water looks right or not or a dozen other things.
These things are best viewed on your own screen, using movable cameras and a slider for the weather or time lapse videos. When I look at recent project cars footage, irregardless of the "IQ", some of it screams "game" not "real". But we'll see, right?
ChronotriggerJM
Member
The biggest edge PC in general has in that regards is to the modding community. So while I don't anticipate any form of geometry scaling from the developers, I know modders will eventually get on it y'know?
The development resource allocation is something I do appreciate about console development. They really do try to squeeze every last drop out of the hardware.
Sometimes it seems with PC devs, they program the game based on working mans hardware, then people with beefy rigs can just enhance said image 1000 fold. Like you mentioned, it's great that you can make the IQ and framerate absolutely amazing, but the worlds just feel so dead to me still. Especially games based on race tracks, they're all so drab.
mercenar1e
Member
mercenar1e
Member
what more do you want? mountains, rocks and huge bushes on tracks that doesn't exist? its the best looking current gen racing game.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
Absolutely! When you're re-creating a race track it's difficult, because you want it to be accurate. I don't like race tracks though. I want more exotic locations like Horizon 2, or Drive club, and I want to be able to scale the scenery based on what kind of hardware you're working with. Like if you're able to implement a more robust lighting engine, and you're able to scale the foliage trackside to say, Crysis levels of density, the lighting engine would work overtime trying to scale with the foliage. Really stress the hardware y'know?
But having tracks with very little to look at (which is many actual race tracks in my opinion), and maxing out the IQ and Framerate does little for me. The image looks great, but the scene is still boring.
I guess what I want are more racing games in crazy beautiful locations that I could really throw some amazing hardware at.
I want Driveclub or Forza Horizon 2 with Crysis enhancements lol.
mercenar1e
Member
i thought i was in the Next-gen Racing Graphics Face-off (Project Cars wins this by a mile) and not the next gen racing games wishlist.
Sure pCARs PC has 4k, better AA and AF, but those clouds look fake and the overall lighting of the scene still looks videogame-ish. If only DC was on PC, I don't think it would even be up for discussion.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
Oh I have nothing to contribute :/ I have none of the aforementioned games lol. I'm just whining. Eventually I'll own the new GTX980 and possibly be able to contribute, but that's months down the road.
Bornstellar
Member
Sure pCARs PC has 4k, better AA and AF, but those clouds look fake and the overall lighting of the scene still looks videogame-ish. If only DC was on PC, I don't think it would even be up for discussion.
The Driveclub clouds look fake as hell. They're much too soft and low.
mercenar1e
Member
the first screenshot you quoted was taken at a resolution less than 4K and the TOD was set before sunset with heavy clouds selected... the weather system alone blows away both DC and FH2.
what's contributing to that piss yellow cloud? it seems off.
mercenar1e
Member
You mean just like in real life?
that looks like it goes on for miles but DC is just one big blob of yellow mixed in with a clear blue sky in the background.. it looks off.
The storm clouds had nearly finished passing by. You can see blue in the real life pic in the background as well.
Nope nope nope. I have seen pretty similar clouds when I was in Norway 2 years ago. They are definitely not too low. Maybe a tad too soft.
Wavering Radiant
Member
Should have just posted this video.Sure pCARs PC has 4k, better AA and AF, but those clouds look fake and the overall lighting of the scene still looks videogame-ish. If only DC was on PC, I don't think it would even be up for discussion.
Also: I heard there are some longer road trip -style p2p tracks in PCars, can someone link me to a video of them? I love dat shit >.<
I hope we weren't supposed to be impressed. Low quality environments, poor looking lighting, etc. It looks like a low budget game to me. The only thing that impresses me in project cars is the cars themselves. Everything else leaves me rather unimpressed.
Thanks for making laugh so i guess real life is fake as well?
I still find it amazing how DC is doing its own little atmosphere emulation which gives actual depth to the sky, those clouds are never the same twice and the way the lighting changes accordingly to the conditions is pretty freaking cool when you think about it, lots of processing power went into those volumetric effects. When the weather update comes it will complement it nicely with precipitations.
lol, you dont know what you are talking about, rain clouds on PCARS are 2D sprites for fucks sake.
lol, you dont know what you are talking about, rain clouds on PCARS are 2D sprites for fucks sake.
I like how the FoV and the amount of cockpit that you see is almost the same in FH2 and DC. Personally I prefer FH2 over FM5. I think it's really the sweet spot for racing games. Upon close inspection the IQ seems better in FH2, at least the cockpit is near jaggy free, in DC it's pretty aliased.
mercenar1e
Member
Bornstellar
Member
You mean just like in real life?
That perfectly demonstrates the definition the DC clouds are lacking, as well as the distance that it's missing. DC gets a lot right, but the clouds have always looked pretty unconvincing.
nelsonroyale
Member
IQ is indeed fantastic, as are the cars and the lighting is nice. Tracks look sparse and pretty unimpressive in terms of modelling and geometry. Certainly well behind DC. I honestly think if DC had IQ like Pcars it would handily be more impressive graphically speaking.
That could be a limitation of their volumetric cloud engine. While highly dynamic, they look flat and not rough when they're lit (they have more in common with stratus clouds or fog than the types you see in say, PCars.)
the same can be said about Drive Club in this comparison.
Drive Club
Project Cars
Well, if i were you, I'd make an appointment with spec savers asap. Are you seeing the trees in the pcars screenshot you just posted or are you just conveniently ignoring them. The environments in DC are a generation ahead of pcars. Fully rendered 3d trees with self-shadowing vs trees that look like they are made out of cardboard. Smh, just because a game has super clean IQ doesn't mean it looks amazing. If driveclub had 4x msaa and 16x af we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Look at the textures on the driver in that screenshot. I guess you are going to conveniently ignore that as well.
IQ is not really playable yet though. Can any PC out there run PCars at max settings at 4k@60fps? Maybe a few years down there line, but not now.
Yeah, FH2 has better AA especially on the cars. The aliasing isn't that noticeable for the cockpit when playing in DC but the shimmering is pretty noticeable for the exterior view.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Damn, those rain PC shots look incredible.
Shame I'm not a sim racing fan, otherwise I'd be all over it.
Shame I'm not a sim racing fan, otherwise I'd be all over it.
The main reason I think is that FH2 uses Forward+ for their rendering which allows Multisampling AA, and FH2 has a 4xAA applied. DC is however using Deffered Rendering which is known to be incompatible with MSAA, so they have to use other methods like post processing AA and temporal AA, the final IQ I think is better in FH2 and might be the best of this generation so far.
eso76
Member
I don't like cockpit view in DC though..
It constantly makes me want to raise my seat to see the damn road, POV is just too low.
The ultra busy (in a good way, but still) scenery doesn't help, i just can't read the road which pisses me off since otherwise cockpits look amazing with that dirt windshield effect against the sun.
Also, FH2 IQ >>>>> DC. But DC is also not bad as screens suggest in regards to aliasing.
the same can be said about Drive Club in this comparison.
Drive Club
Project Cars
Wow that really shows how far ahead Project Cars is graphically. Game looks amazing. Can really notice the better environments and textures. Driveclubs textures look really low res compared to it.
Overall it's just splitting hairs for the most part, all of these games look fantastic in person. The battle isn't going to be nearly as intense as last gen, at least until GT7 shows up and blows every other game out of the water in regards to photorealism. Well, until a PS2 car or a track shows up anyway
icecold1983
Member
this is how i feel. the lighting and shading look very poor/harsh and everything comes off as unnatural. the art assets and tracks are also quite bad. theres more to graphics than IQ. most of the people posting these shots cant even play the game at the settings they are using anyway.
Fortinbras
Member
The fuck am I looking at? No one could possibly think that looks good, right?
Driveclub can look really ugly at times but there are moments with mind-blowing visuals.
I'm playing both FH2 and DC at the moment and I can't really decide which graphics I prefer.
DC offers better lighting and more detailed environments. FH2 offers vibrant colors, amazing image quality and seems more fluid. The latter is really weird. I know both games are 30 fps but the motion blur used in FH2 makes the game look more fluid.
I can't really say much about Project Cars. It's been a while since I played a build of that game.
In the DC pics it's just a portion of the storm cloud, similar to below where the cloud is a bit soft and lacks definition for half of the screen, until you look further back. It's still not incredibly defined as in real life but it's not like the whole sky looks like that one part of the cloud in the pics.
While it's not perfect in DC by any means and it could definitely use more definition, it's still a bit more convincing than clouds other racers imo.
mercenar1e
Member
im looking at the screenshots in its entirety and i just can't see how you believe DC is a generation ahead of pcars in any aspect. project cars environments (tracks and circuits) are for the most part modeled after its real life counterpart. maybe i should set up an appointment for you and ill pay the fees.
Bornstellar
Member
In the DC pics it's just a portion of the storm cloud, similar to below where the cloud is a bit soft and lacks definition for half of the screen, until you look further back. It's still not incredibly defined as in real life but it's not like the whole sky looks like that one part of the cloud in the pics.
While it's not perfect in DC by any means and it could definitely use more definition, it's still a bit more convincing than clouds other racers imo.
Cloud shadows are indeed awesome. And the size of the gif helps hide that the clouds lack definition. But, to be fair, the timelapses I've seen of FH2 show that it also has cloud shadows. I would say the DC still has better cloud effects even with my complaints about the resolution / depth.