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DF: Is Uncharted 4 the generational leap we were hoping for?

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Also, the single frame drop that happens in the video is when both characters in the cutscene are zoomed up to their closeup on the screen, which to me indicates that the cutscene was probably rendered in realtime, as render load would be at its peak in a moment like that.
 

hal9001

Banned
If they are able to maintain those graphics seen on the demo at 60fps then you would be hard pressed to find any game on a console match the visuals at that frame rate.
 
Also, the single frame drop that happens in the video is when both characters in the cutscene are zoomed up to their closeup on the screen, which to me indicates that the cutscene was probably rendered in realtime, as render load would be at its peak in a moment like that.

Hah, I dont think anyone would doubt this video is real time (didn't some dude fall through the floor while demo'ing it originally?).

Rather, I would doubt whether the first video put out @ E3 was real time / represented the realtime quality of the game's graphics.
 
That commentary says nothing as to why a cutscene moment looked worse and used worse models and techniques than something from 6 months ago.

I don't think that if you optimize one cutscene all cutscenes are running just like that.
You need to work on every single part of the game individually.
 
I don't think that if you optimize one cutscene all cutscenes are running just like that.
You need to work on every single part of the game individually.
While that may be so on a very specific case to case basis (oh noes, this one scene is running at 40 fps because there is too much alpha in the background!), it does not make sense how the player model and the hair rendering would get worse from one cutscene to the next.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
The things NXgamer guy was (probably) wrong about:
- Tessellation on the rocks

Things he's been right about
- Flashlight GI bounce (TLOU had this, and it's present here as well, even more visibly)
- Ambient Shadows (again, TLOU had this, and it's here in a more advanced state)
- Silhouette tessellation on characters
- Under-skin animated features like Adam's apple.

I'm not sure what other questionable claims he's made, because he was mostly pointing little details that are clearly there but that would be easy to miss, like rocks falling apart under gunfire, rope and gun belt deformations etc.

Hah, I dont think anyone would doubt this video is real time (didn't some dude fall through the floor while demo'ing it originally?).
Cutscene at the end (which IMO looks to achieve the same quality as their E3 trailer, minus the framerate) could still have been a video. Even though, switch to that cutscene happens within a single frame, with no black screen pause or anything. But I think the frame drop that happens at the conspicuous moment hints that it was indeed realtime.
 

psn

Member
Agree. That was my initial impressions. The game doesn't look as good as I thought it was going to be for a generational leap, it looks just OK to me, nothing special. Kind of disappointed to be honest.

Just okay? So there are several better looking games out there right?
 

Rajang

Member
You should never doubt ND. They are the top dawgs in the industry.

It's only logical that when they are shooting for 60 FPS it's going to look less impressive than 30. It has nothing to do with ND incompetence, you just cant have as many stuff on screen when you have twice the framerate. This is not like a PC where the sky is the limit.

The Order 1886 is by far the biggest leap from last gen and that's 30 FPS. I highly doubt we will see a game that looks as graphically impressive as that and that runs at 60 FPS on the PS4, maybe at the end of the cycle..
 

truth411

Member
The things NXgamer guy was (probably) wrong about:
- Tessellation on the rocks

Things he's been right about
- Flashlight GI bounce (TLOU had this, and it's present here as well, even more visibly)
- Ambient Shadows (again, TLOU had this, and it's here in a more advanced state)
- Silhouette tessellation on characters

I'm not sure what other questionable claims he's made, because he was mostly pointing little details that are clearly there but that would be easy to miss, like rocks falling apart under gunfire, rope and gun belt deformations etc.


Cutscene at the end (which IMO looks to achieve the same quality as their E3 trailer, minus the framerate) could still have been a video. Even though, switch to that cutscene happens within a single frame, with no black screen pause or anything. But I think the frame drop that happens at the conspicuous moment hints that it was indeed realtime.

I could have sworn I read somewhere that all Cut scenes will be rendered in real time, a big part of the reason why is to save disc space and the visuals is already Danny good.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Funny considering DF's own mishaps over the years. We desperately need a second source for these things, at least he knew that Far Cry 4 had Godrays on the PS4 version, I guess you guys missed that somehow. His framerate analysis also favored the PS4 while you guys gave the slight nod to the Xbone.
A second source is good, I agree. That said, I think he's far too quick to throw around buzzwords without qualifying them.

That said, doing a full video in that fashion is quite nice and allows him to note every single detail. It's difficult to put all of those things into text without the article devolving into a list of rendering details. I do actually enjoy watching those videos!
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
I could have sworn I read somewhere that all Cut scenes will be rendered in real time, a big part of the reason why is to save disc space and the visuals is already Danny good.
Someone from their devteam did say that. But things change so you never know.
 
The things NXgamer guy was (probably) wrong about:
- Tessellation on the rocks

Things he's been right about
- Flashlight GI bounce (TLOU had this, and it's present here as well, even more visibly)
- Ambient Shadows (again, TLOU had this, and it's here in a more advanced state)
- Silhouette tessellation on characters
- Under-skin animated features like Adam's apple.

I'm not sure what other questionable claims he's made, because he was mostly pointing little details that are clearly there but that would be easy to miss, like rocks falling apart under gunfire, rope and gun belt deformations etc.
I reall y do not want to watch the whole video because I found his hyperbole a bit obnoxious, but in the first two minutes he mentions:
1.POM on the texturing (it actually only shows up in an obvious manner in one instance with a hole in the wall when nate jabs it)
2. Tesselation in the ocean (he cannot possibly know that, it could just be a mesh animation / deformation/ it could software tesselated)
3. Even the silhouette tesselation can be doubted because there is no evidence for it beyond the fact that the polygon edges are smaller than the pixels. That does not mean tessellation necessarily.
4. Just scrolling ahead in the video (i really do not want to watch it :/)he mentions volumetric smoke and particles.


This game defintely does not have that, rather offline rendered volumetric sims, put out as billboards and layered sprites played in an animation (UE4 does this too!).
5. Liquid sim in the mud? Since when can call decals being applied to textures be called a liquid sim? Is Slpatoon using a liquid sim in this vein? Is a vextex color layer or a decal being appplied to nate to make him look wet a liquid sim?
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
While that may be so on a very specific case to case basis (oh noes, this one scene is running at 40 fps because there is too much alpha in the background!), it does not make sense how the player model and the hair rendering would get worse from one cutscene to the next.
Hair is something that ND has always been strange about. It's one of the last things they work on and it sometimes jumps around in quality during development. It's odd.
 

Hugo!

Neo Member
stash-1-50543b6493a01.png

But seriously, I thought the graphics were amazing, great leap in my opinion.
 
The game isn't going to truly blow anything away on the ps4 imo. It doesn't look much better than other games already on, and coming to the system.
This is some kind of meta-commentary right? There's no way people are legitimately arriving at such conclusions from an alpha, are they? Haha, man, I almost fell for it.
 
I don't understand this one little bit. I understand being underwhelmed, even though I'm not, but I'm not convinced at all that these visuals are identifiably the same engine as they've been using on PS3. In fact there's a lot of things about how this game is rendered, especially in motion, that looks distinctly different from the Uncharted games on PS3.

Why? ND themselves said they were using the same game engine from the PS3.

http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/ne...ast-of-us-engine-for-ps4.html#~oXSavDGDdj7cUb
 

BPoole

Member
Considering the level design seems much more open ended than the corridor crawlers that the previous Uncharted games were, and the graphics and animations are improved, I would say it's a generation leap over UC3
 

Broly

Banned
In my opinion, the answer to DF's question: "Is Uncharted 4 the generational leap we were hoping for?",no

Not because Uncharted 4 looks disappointing, but because what we hoped for was simply unrealistic. A better question should be "Is Uncharted 4 a generational leap", which is undoubtably yes.

It takes a great deal of processing power to increase resolution, increase environemetal detail, character models and animations and apply better physics.

Uncharted 4 looks great if you look at the complete scene and keep in mind that it has to be rendered in 1080p.
 

truth411

Member
Seriously, it's like you guys are solely focusing on I.Q. and ignoring that this is the I.Q. there aiming for @60fps!!!!! Twice the frame rate of other games. Ca' Mon man...
 

truth411

Member
In my opinion, the answer to DF's question: "Is Uncharted 4 the generational leap we were hoping for?",no

Not because Uncharted 4 looks disappointing, but because what we hoped for was simply unrealistic. A better question should be "Is Uncharted 4 a generational leap", which is undoubtably yes.

It takes a great deal of processing power to increase resolution, increase environemetal detail, character models and animations and apply better physics.

Uncharted 4 looks great if you look at the complete scene and keep in mind that it has to be rendered in 1080p @ 60fps.

Fixed...
60fps.... 60fps.... 60fps...
 

Haxxona

Banned
The graphics look great and there is only so much you can do after a year into a new platform and the game in real alpha state - not wannabe alpha.

However the point of interest for me was the really good AI which is something far more important than graphics. Fun and intelligent AIwith those graphics + plus the improved gameplay based from this demo is something I am really looking forward to.

A generational leap is not dependent on graphics alone and that should apply to Naught dog games too.
 
I can imagine the graphics will get much better as this is still early footage.

I remember the God of War 3 unveiling. People weren't impressed. And rightfully so. It didn't blow minds.
Then upon release God of War 3 came out and blew minds and still blows minds.
 

Famassu

Member
Is this the DF article they should've written for a game that will likely not be released until 10+ months from now?
 

truth411

Member
I can imagine the graphics will get much better as this is still early footage.

I remember the God of War 3 unveiling. People weren't impressed. And rightfully so. It didn't blow minds.
Then upon release God of War 3 came out and blew minds and still blows minds.

If there aiming for 60fps then what you see is close to what your going to get. 60fps = frame rate > I.Q. in terms of Priorities.
 
If they are still targeting 60fps then I think it will look great. That FPS will look great with all those planets smoothly moving will be sweet.

If they have shifted to 30fps? I will be concerned.
 

RetroStu

Banned
The graphics definitely grow on you. I was pretty dissapointed when i first saw the gameplay but a couple of days later and i think the graphics look very good.
 

meptrep

Member
30fps vs 60fps
1920x800 vs 1920x1080

Think about that. We are seeing why devs don't bother making 60fps games.

Except The Order looks to have awful gameplay which probably isn't enhanced by a lower framerate. Uncharted 4 will probably have pretty good gameplay and looks fine for a PS4 game, even though it's not absolutely amazing.
 

Handy Fake

Member
Except The Order looks to have awful gameplay which probably isn't enhanced by a lower framerate. Uncharted 4 will probably have pretty good gameplay and looks fine for a PS4 game, even though it's not absolutely amazing.

Yay, finally. Took a while but it arrived. Who had it on their bingo card?
 
I know all of this. it's just...people have called them naughty gods for a reason.

It is also silly to mystify something such as graphics programming. It just leads to overhyping and disappointment.

Or at worst, fanboyish levels of reality denial.
 
I can imagine the graphics will get much better as this is still early footage.

This comment always makes me scratch my head. The rationale doesn't have many variables in it. It's just extremely linear thinking. Either people don't understand development cycles or they are just being very very hopeful.

I've cringed at some comments in other threads like "They got this much already in pre-alpha, wait till we see what becomes of UC at the end of this generation!!"

Do we really think we'll see that early E3 trailer footage to be some gameplay in 5 yrs on the same limited hardware?
 

truth411

Member
I know all of this. it's just...people have called them naughty gods for a reason.
And they were @30 fps then. What's impressive is the I.Q. of the demo being achieved @ 60fps if they can do it. No other 60fps game looks close to looking that good. But it doesn't change the reality of 30>60 in terms of I.Q. and 60>30 in terms of gameplay and response time. But because Gamers cant SEE frame rate during advertisement and trailers, Devs making 60fps don't get the credit they deserve even on a technical level. 60fps by design means fps > I.Q.
 
Why are people still talking 60 frames?

The PS4 couldnt handle these graphics at 1080p/60 frames, and if ND indeed plans to ship the final game with 60Hz, they will have to make cutbacks and simply tried to bullshit us with this presentaition - but i dont think thats the case and this is indeed their honest vision.

These new consoles are low end devices (more than ever). Stop being delusional.
 
Even DF cant ignore how underwhelming this is from a graphics standpoint. the post process AA here also isnt as good as ryse. ND should just copy crytek here IMO
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I think the main problem is that it looks like Uncharted because it is, I'm not sure what people was expecting.
There's a generational leap in graphics but Uncharted is gonna look like Uncharted regardless of if Drake actually looks real or not.
 
Looks like after all the dicussion about staff changes at ND, they are still as awesome as ever. Truly a top quality studio. I'd like to say thank you for all the hard work they put into this. And a special thanks to the programming team!
 

Teletraan1

Banned
I still am not sure why they hyped up 60fps only to demo this game at 30. Were they trying to hype up the TLOU 60fps at the time?

Do games usually hit 60 fps a year out? The game doesn't waver from 30. As I said earlier it is likely they went for consistency rather than fluctuations and capped it at 30. For presentation reasons it makes more sense to be consistent.
 
I think the main problem is that it looks like Uncharted because it is, I'm not sure what people was expecting.
There's a generational leap in graphics but Uncharted is gonna look like Uncharted regardless of if Drake actually looks real or not.

this is more reminiscent of a remaster than a fully fledged new gen version
 
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