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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

Ok HW Lumen GI is very much in place for Gear E-day. Seeing plenty of evidence in the new Unreal Fest footage. Don't know what was up with their Dev Direct... It's boiling like crazy though, so may be they revealed the game with it turned off like SlimySnake SlimySnake suggested? 🤷‍♂️
 
Plenty of HW Lumen reflections too, including puddles. None of those SSR artifacts I was seeing earlier.

Felnrioh1v1oNpS7.png



Daytime still needs to be seen, but the fact that all of this is even running on base console at 60 fps is impressive.
 
Plenty of HW Lumen reflections too, including puddles. None of those SSR artifacts I was seeing earlier.

Felnrioh1v1oNpS7.png



Daytime still needs to be seen, but the fact that all of this is even running on base console at 60 fps is impressive.
Maybe console vs PC footage?

Edit: my bad I hadn't noticed you specified it was both on console. It's impressive indeed, especially at 60FPS.
 
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Maybe console vs PC footage?

Edit: my bad I hadn't noticed you specified it was both on console. It's impressive indeed, especially at 60FPS.
The reveal was likely PC work in progress build as resolution seems much lower now in the series X footage. Lots of specular aliasing and lumen boiling.
 
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Ok HW Lumen GI is very much in place for Gear E-day. Seeing plenty of evidence in the new Unreal Fest footage. Don't know what was up with their Dev Direct... It's boiling like crazy though, so may be they revealed the game with it turned off like SlimySnake SlimySnake suggested? 🤷‍♂️
I think the xbox showcase footage was using hw lumen in lighting mode 0, it could explain the indirect light behaviour (well, its lack or slow update speed) in the gifs youve posted back then.

Its not easy to spot in static scenes, but in dynamic scenes with moving objects it can be immediately obvious and most games end up shipping with LM2 lumen which is imo much closer to a proper RTGI
XTilb2.png

XTiHl9.png

axe/grass are technically the the only truly moving objects here, but it affects everything else too, like the walls - costs a lot of performance though and game doesnt really have many reflections to show the true difference there
 
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No Law looking absolutely unbelievable. Sadly, last game that looked incredible at an Unreal Event still hasn't resurfaced (Marvel 1943).

At this rate we'll get No Law in 2029 if at all.
 
No Law looks absolutely bonkers. Best looking game I've seen in the last couple of weeks after Clutch.

They even have metahuman with randomization, so no NPC looks the same!

Damn, I need direct feed of this footage:

iwEHDywnmw47rzH0.png
1ruWMEGrtlxGWm6Y.png




All of this can be destroyed with physics and shattered glass persists too!
RZtDqVXEjYXF20Lh.png
ucUx4HAuNHSnQDoA.png
7H7NW9GXj2u8eh3Q.png
o3rGwyFKpLKSOfBB.png
cfsNRpvOTcX4VBWQ.png
CO3iViI1RufEpd88.png
fzH3trDqqE5Bx6RS.png
6kUsepf0m4RiyjMx.png
 
No Law looks absolutely bonkers. Best looking game I've seen in the last couple of weeks after Clutch.

They even have metahuman with randomization, so no NPC looks the same!

Damn, I need direct feed of this footage:

iwEHDywnmw47rzH0.png
1ruWMEGrtlxGWm6Y.png




All of this can be destroyed with physics and shattered glass persists too!
RZtDqVXEjYXF20Lh.png
ucUx4HAuNHSnQDoA.png
7H7NW9GXj2u8eh3Q.png
o3rGwyFKpLKSOfBB.png
cfsNRpvOTcX4VBWQ.png
CO3iViI1RufEpd88.png
fzH3trDqqE5Bx6RS.png
6kUsepf0m4RiyjMx.png

Is this the game from The Ascent developers?
 
So turns out that UE6 is Epic's attempt at creating a metauniverse or something.
This and the change to gaming scripting system, which could be a big thing if it will be more efficient on CPU than what UE5 has.
Zero announcements for the rendering side.

The beta is 18 months away, meaning we probably won't see the full release until, what, 2029?

This pretty much means we won't see games taking full advantage of UE6 until the end of the PS6 generation.
What's even weirder is that they are stopping UE5 development at 5.8, released today.
Meaning no UE updates between now and ~end of 28 at best.
I wonder how every studio which decided to use UE5 for their upcoming game feels now.

No Law looks absolutely bonkers. Best looking game I've seen in the last couple of weeks after Clutch.
Turns out that once you dump SW Lumen in favor of HW Lumen your games suddenly look a lot better. Who could've thought.
 
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lol No law is made by 25 devs. (up from the 12 person team that made Ascent) and looks two generations ahead of Gears made by 300 devs for $200 million. just goes to show that talent is still important. ue5 is not a magic pill, devs who have pushed it so far this gen have done so because they are incredibly talented unlike the idiots at Coalition who are using nanite to push 100x more detail that doesnt show on screen, and hardware lumen that looks like baked lighting done last gen.

I mean look at the detail in this city vs what we see in Gears. Fucking hell. MS should shut them down or have the NoLaw devs run the first party studios.

jnhfEdL.gif


rD3d8c8.gif
 
lol No law is made by 25 devs. (up from the 12 person team that made Ascent) and looks two generations ahead of Gears made by 300 devs for $200 million. just goes to show that talent is still important. ue5 is not a magic pill, devs who have pushed it so far this gen have done so because they are incredibly talented unlike the idiots at Coalition who are using nanite to push 100x more detail that doesnt show on screen, and hardware lumen that looks like baked lighting done last gen.

I mean look at the detail in this city vs what we see in Gears. Fucking hell. MS should shut them down or have the NoLaw devs run the first party studios.

jnhfEdL.gif


rD3d8c8.gif

Eh, this is kind of a silly analysis. We have no idea of the scope, level of interaction, performance, destructibility, etc.. etc.. in this 25 person game. I'm very confident it will be no where near E-Day though.
 
The beta is 18 months away, meaning we probably won't see the full release until, what, 2029?

This pretty much means we won't see games taking full advantage of UE6 until the end of the PS6 generation.
ue5 released in march 2022, and we had 4 ue5 games release in 2023. Remnant 2, Immortals, Lords of the Fallen and Robocop. A few months later Hellblade 2 came out and Wukong and SH2 soon after that, all in 2024.

Assuming it releases in 2029, we should see games ship on it by 2030. its not doing anything completely different like lumen and nanite so it might just be as simple as upgrading to a new UE5 version.
 
What's even weirder is that they are stopping UE5 development at 5.8, released today.
Meaning no UE updates between now and ~end of 28 at best.
I wonder how every studio which decided to use UE5 for their upcoming game feels now.
For reals? Source?

Mesh terrain, Procedural Vegetation Editor, Fast Geometry Streaming, Direct Mesh Control, Fog SSS and few more are all experimental on 5.8

They may not have a 5.9, but there were will be minor release updates, unless someone explicitly said no updates and these stay experimental until 6. That would be ridiculous, if true.
 
lol No law is made by 25 devs. (up from the 12 person team that made Ascent) and looks two generations ahead of Gears made by 300 devs for $200 million.
This speaks less towards the Gears team, and speaks more towards Tim Sweeney's idea of the future: Graphical Fidelity and game design should be easily accessible to nearly everyone with an idea, no matter the team size or budget.

Unfortunately most old guard AAA could not hold out long enough for this type of forward progress, so they shuttered a ton of studios instead.
 
They may not have a 5.9, but there were will be minor release updates, unless someone explicitly said no updates and these stay experimental until 6. That would be ridiculous, if true.
Near the end of the conference they essentially said 'we are moving forward on UE6 but if any substantial changes are made for UE5, we will put those in a 5.9 update'
 
The Ascent is still one of the games with the best environmental design. It's no surprise that No Law looks so good. But these guys were a small studio, I wonder how they'll handle such a big project. I hope it turns out great, I have high expectations.
 
Near the end of the conference they essentially said 'we are moving forward on UE6 but if any substantial changes are made for UE5, we will put those in a 5.9 update'
This makes more sense. They will at the minimum make those features production ready as a 5.8 update or 5.9. But probably no more new features ie substantial changes.
 
This speaks less towards the Gears team, and speaks more towards Tim Sweeney's idea of the future: Graphical Fidelity and game design should be easily accessible to nearly everyone with an idea, no matter the team size or budget.

Unfortunately most old guard AAA could not hold out long enough for this type of forward progress, so they shuttered a ton of studios instead.
Im no fan of microsoft. i think shutting down studios is silly, but these studios all used ue5 unlike sony ones, and just couldnt deliver great games. they made nothing but gamepass slop despite taking an insane amount of time, despite using ue5 which was used by much smaller teams to great effect.

im sorry, but some teams just arent talented enough. ms gave compulsion 8 years. they made south of midnight. a beautiful but shallow game on par with kena which was made by 20 people in half the time. they gave obsidian 6 years and they made two mid tier rpgs that both flopped and did nothing new. they gave ninja theory 7 years and they made a walking simulator. they gave 343i 6 years and they made halo infinite. 6 years to turn 10, 5 years to playground, and aside from forza horizon selling despite being mediocre, nothing seems to sell or get any critical acclaim.

at least sony studios can say their last gen looking games get great scores and earn goty nominations. ms was stuck with mid tier studios that were outshined by 20 person indie devs and other mid tier studios like bloober, game science and pearl abyss that took a massive leap this gen in terms of quality.

maybe ms failed their studios. jason schrier said that they were just following MS's orders. But i blame the studios for making slop after slop.
 
Plenty of HW Lumen reflections too, including puddles. None of those SSR artifacts I was seeing earlier.

Felnrioh1v1oNpS7.png



Daytime still needs to be seen, but the fact that all of this is even running on base console at 60 fps is impressive.
What I see is the things Floating, only the car has a baked shadow
 
For reals? Source?
UE 5.8 is the last planned major Unreal Engine 5 release on our roadmap as we ramp up work on UE6. We will continue to support UE5 for bug fixes and regressions, and may add another official release if circumstances warrant it. Meanwhile, let's take a look at the 5.8 details.
Our philosophy through this transition is to bring existing projects along, not to force a hard break. Studios shipping on UE5 today should expect a manageable, and clear path forward when UE6 is ready for them. To allow for this, Actors and Blueprints will be in early versions of UE6. Eventually, these will be deprecated when the new framework is sufficiently mature, and you'll have conversion tools to move projects from one framework to the other.

We're targeting a Unreal Engine 6 Early Access release at the end of 2027, with the full release of UE6 coming 12-18 months later.

So they suggest that there will be smaller releases for 5.8 but the next big "upgrade" is UE6, and it's release is planned on end of 28 to mid of 29 (!)
Seems like a rather big gap without major UE updates.
And 5.8 doesn't support a lot of things still, like pretty much everything from DXR 1.2 and the upcoming DXR 2.0, not even mentioning any neural rendering.

They may not have a 5.9, but there were will be minor release updates, unless someone explicitly said no updates and these stay experimental until 6. That would be ridiculous, if true.
I doubt that any feature which is experimental in 5.8 will be released for production prior to 6.0 release. Unless they'll release 5.9 at some point after all.
 
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Im no fan of microsoft. i think shutting down studios is silly, but these studios all used ue5 unlike sony ones, and just couldnt deliver great games. they made nothing but gamepass slop despite taking an insane amount of time, despite using ue5 which was used by much smaller teams to great effect.

im sorry, but some teams just arent talented enough. ms gave compulsion 8 years. they made south of midnight. a beautiful but shallow game on par with kena which was made by 20 people in half the time. they gave obsidian 6 years and they made two mid tier rpgs that both flopped and did nothing new. they gave ninja theory 7 years and they made a walking simulator. they gave 343i 6 years and they made halo infinite. 6 years to turn 10, 5 years to playground, and aside from forza horizon
And over time, Sweeney and crew is going to attempt to mitigate these problems and time sinks as much as possible.

UE5 is the beginning of this long term plan, not the end result.

We won't start seeing smaller teams pump out high end products on a regular basis until maybe late 2030s if Unreal/Epic reaches all of the milestones they need to reach within a timely manner.

His plan is eventually for creativity to be at the forefront and for technical know-how to take a backseat. It will lead to the results that many here are wanting, more complex, high end games releasing much sooner and on-time.
 
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So they suggest that there will be smaller releases for 5.8 but the next big "upgrade" is UE6, and it's release is planned on end of 28 to mid of 29 (!)
Seems like a rather big gap without major UE updates.
And 5.8 doesn't support a lot of things still, like pretty much everything from DXR 1.2 and the upcoming DXR 2.0, not even mentioning any neural rendering.


I doubt that any feature which is experimental in 5.8 will be released for production prior to 6.0 release. Unless they'll release 5.9 at some point after all.
Thanks. That's crazy. If they don't clarify what happens to the experimental features for the next 2 to 3 years, devs won't even bother with them without knowing what disruptive changes UE 6 would bring

And 5.8 doesn't support a lot of things still, like pretty much everything from DXR 1.2 and the upcoming DXR 2.0, not even mentioning any neural rendering.

Not as surprised about this. Until next gen arrives and is fully established, high end Nvidia is the only target, so they will just let Nvidia continue rolling with their own versions via NvRTX, instead of mainlining DXR 1.2/2.0 or neural rendering.
 
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Eh, this is kind of a silly analysis. We have no idea of the scope, level of interaction, performance, destructibility, etc.. etc.. in this 25 person game. I'm very confident it will be no where near E-Day though.
we have no idea? did you not watch their presentation? they literally show destruction being applied to thousands of objects, even particles on screen. they show dynamic weather. 3000 NPCs at any given moment. they show day/night cycle. they showed NPCs reacting to combat. every light source reacting to getting destroyed. all in an open world.

gears isnt open world. they also showed destrction, lumen gi and nanite, in a small linear world that looked last gen compared to what no law devs showed on the same stage just 5 minutes later.

watch both demos side by side and you will easily see the difference.
 
Im no fan of microsoft. i think shutting down studios is silly, but these studios all used ue5 unlike sony ones, and just couldnt deliver great games. they made nothing but gamepass slop despite taking an insane amount of time, despite using ue5 which was used by much smaller teams to great effect.

im sorry, but some teams just arent talented enough. ms gave compulsion 8 years. they made south of midnight. a beautiful but shallow game on par with kena which was made by 20 people in half the time. they gave obsidian 6 years and they made two mid tier rpgs that both flopped and did nothing new. they gave ninja theory 7 years and they made a walking simulator. they gave 343i 6 years and they made halo infinite. 6 years to turn 10, 5 years to playground, and aside from forza horizon selling despite being mediocre, nothing seems to sell or get any critical acclaim.

at least sony studios can say their last gen looking games get great scores and earn goty nominations. ms was stuck with mid tier studios that were outshined by 20 person indie devs and other mid tier studios like bloober, game science and pearl abyss that took a massive leap this gen in terms of quality.

maybe ms failed their studios. jason schrier said that they were just following MS's orders. But i blame the studios for making slop after slop.

Sounds like you're just sharing a bunch of personal opinions here and stating them as fact.


Forza Horizon mediocre? The new one is literally the highest reviewed AAA game of 2026.

I had a better time with Turn 10's Forza Motorsport than Gran Turismo 7. I had a better time with Avowed than I did with Horizon: Forbidden West or Ghost of Yotei. I had a better time with Xbox's AAA walking sim (Senua) vs Sony's AAA walking sim (Death Stranding).

I would agree with South of Midnight, while really good, felt AA.


The problem with Xbox's games is they sold like shit because of their poor marketing, muddled approach to exclusivity, and Game Pass. The games were good-to-great. I can name hundreds of games worse than Avowed that sold way more copies.


The problem, as it always has been with this shitty company, is Microsoft leadership. They have no vision, they have no direction, they have no conviction or real belief behind their decisions. They've been a completely rudderless shitshow for literally 15 straight years at this point.


These things are nuanced and I'm sure at least some of the dev teams share responsibility as well, but the one constant over all of the failings across the existence of Xbox over the years is that they're owned and guided by Microsoft leadership.
 
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What I see is the things Floating, only the car has a baked shadow
No there's no baked lighting at all. It's likely all the debris is not in the BVH. And I've seen soft shadows engaged in some places and not others, so not sure if it's all VSMs or ray traced (megalights can do both). This can be set at a per light level, so they could be selective. And lumen quality is definitely not the best we've seen either. Day time footage is when it would become a lot more clear. And if it still looks like the hot mess of the dev direct, then I have no idea how they have gone about configuring it. Lol.
 
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we have no idea? did you not watch their presentation? they literally show destruction being applied to thousands of objects, even particles on screen. they show dynamic weather. 3000 NPCs at any given moment. they show day/night cycle. they showed NPCs reacting to combat. every light source reacting to getting destroyed. all in an open world.

gears isnt open world. they also showed destrction, lumen gi and nanite, in a small linear world that looked last gen compared to what no law devs showed on the same stage just 5 minutes later.

watch both demos side by side and you will easily see the difference.

I did watch the demo. The fixed shots of vistas and corridors and such look amazing. The actual 1st person gameplay with a gun in hand looks good, but I'm not sold just yet. Their previous game, The Ascent, speaks to this. There's a reason that game sits in the low 70s on OpenCritic.
 
I did watch the demo. The fixed shots of vistas and corridors and such look amazing. The actual 1st person gameplay with a gun in hand looks good, but I'm not sold just yet. Their previous game, The Ascent, speaks to this. There's a reason that game sits in the low 70s on OpenCritic.
But that's moving goal posts no? We are talking about graphics. Not game quality or critical acclaim. Same engine with same feature sets too! Granted that e-day does building level destruction, but asset quality is entirely driven by the art team, one that Coalition would have several times more (in additional to outsourcing). And the other is lighting, which is literally selecting from different drop downs...

Let's see if daytime footage is any better in the final game, but comparing just graphics, one is a league beyond the other. In fact, the top 3 games are now putting everyone else to shame imo:

1) No Law
2) Clutch
3) ILL

And you know I speak highly of Laufey, but even that is a good few steps behind in everything, except asset quality, thanks to UE 5. Are the top 3 above going to set any charts on fire? Probably not. But the visual gap is shocking, given we are comparing tiny studios to AAA. UE 5 didn't just level the playing field. It flipped it upside down. It seems like until TW4 or one of those East Asian games are out, we may not even see what a AAA studio can really do with the engine.
 
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Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth ladies and gentlemen

I need to try that texture pack mod but I dont want to pay 10 euros for nexus to download 160gb lol

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But that's moving goal posts no? We are talking about graphics. Not game quality or critical acclaim. Same engine with same feature sets too! Granted that e-day does building level destruction, but asset quality is entirely driven by the art team, one that Coalition would have several times more (in additional to outsourcing). And the other is lighting, which is literally selecting from different drop downs...

Let's see if daytime footage is any better in the final game, but comparing just graphics, one is a league beyond the other. In fact, the top 3 games are now putting everyone else to shame imo:

1) No Law
2) Clutch
3) ILL

And you know I speak highly of Laufey, but even that is a good few steps behind in everything, except asset quality, thanks to UE 5. Are the top 3 above going to set any charts on fire? Probably not. But the visual gap is shocking, given we are comparing tiny studios to AAA. UE 5 didn't just level the playing field. It flipped it upside down. It seems like until TW4 or one of those East Asian games are out, we may not even see what a AAA studio can really do with the engine.

I'm just saying that I'm not fully sold on the ability of this team to accomplish what they're going for with No Law until it releases or I have the game in my hands. They're a new, small studio and their previous game didn't light the world on fire, so I'm not really motivated to give them the benefit of the doubt just yet.

With that said, everything we've seen of No Law looks awesome and I really hope it turns out great.
 
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Sounds like you're just sharing a bunch of personal opinions here and stating them as fact.


Forza Horizon mediocre? The new one is literally the highest reviewed AAA game of 2026.

I had a better time with Turn 10's Forza Motorsport than Gran Turismo 7. I had a better time with Avowed than I did with Horizon: Forbidden West or Ghost of Yotei. I had a better time with Xbox's AAA walking sim (Senua) vs Sony's AAA walking sim (Death Stranding).

I would agree with South of Midnight, while really good, felt AA.


The problem with Xbox's games is they sold like shit because of their poor marketing, muddled approach to exclusivity, and Game Pass. The games were good-to-great. I can name hundreds of games worse than Avowed that sold way more copies.


The problem, as it always has been with this shitty company, is Microsoft leadership. They have no vision, they have no direction, they have no conviction or real belief behind their decisions. They've been a completely rudderless shitshow for literally 15 straight years at this point.


These things are nuanced and I'm sure at least some of the dev teams share responsibility as well, but the one constant over all of the failings across the existence of Xbox over the years is that they're owned and guided by Microsoft leadership.
some of em are opinions but the dev cycles are facts, and the complete lack of goty nominations are also a fact.

i also liked forza 8 and i still defend its visuals to this day. hell i didnt even bother buying gt7 and only just bought yotei on a sale last week, but the fact remains that it flopped and it did not do a lot of new things compared to gt7 which was held back by last gen. especially after MS gave them 6 years. 2 more than PD got from Sony, and without a cross gen mandate.

i despise MS's leadership. i 100% agree with everything in your post about their lack of vision, especially post Don Matrick. But at the same time, Phil acquired studios, and gave them the time and money. and those studios delivered mostly b tier crap that didnt sell. save for Forza Horizon.

343 took 5 years to do a halo remake. i mean come on. even if they are using contractors, it should not take this long to remake a game in ue5. their devs are just bad at making games.
 
But that's moving goal posts no? We are talking about graphics. Not game quality or critical acclaim. Same engine with same feature sets too! Granted that e-day does building level destruction, but asset quality is entirely driven by the art team, one that Coalition would have several times more (in additional to outsourcing). And the other is lighting, which is literally selecting from different drop downs...

Let's see if daytime footage is any better in the final game, but comparing just graphics, one is a league beyond the other. In fact, the top 3 games are now putting everyone else to shame imo:

1) No Law
2) Clutch
3) ILL

And you know I speak highly of Laufey, but even that is a good few steps behind in everything, except asset quality, thanks to UE 5. Are the top 3 above going to set any charts on fire? Probably not. But the visual gap is shocking, given we are comparing tiny studios to AAA. UE 5 didn't just level the playing field. It flipped it upside down. It seems like until TW4 or one of those East Asian games are out, we may not even see what a AAA studio can really do with the engine.
tbf, i was talking about both graphics and quality. so thats what analog was replying to.

ive praised ms studios using UE5 this gen, but their games are so mid that i cant fault ms for not wanting to keep them open despite them pushing graphics more than sonys own studios. i love exp 33, wukong, and sh2, so its possible to do both great graphics and great gameplay. ms studios just havent managed to do both. everyone here was hoping for gears to set a new bar not just in graphics but also gameplay. it just didnt happen.
 
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