Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Absolutely, I was just pointing out that despite what many people think, WoW is actually a rather brutal system killer at this point.
Right, but its not really pushing graphics card sales, which again, kills about half the PC sales demographic off the top.
It's the exclusives I'm talking about. Given that we know the ports easily run much faster on the PC, why aren't PC exclusive games looking easily superior to the console exclusives? Honestly, the fact that I have to use Crysis, a game that came out in '07, as a comparison speaks quite poorly about the state of PC engine utilization by itself.
I don't disagree PC exclusives are lacking. I agree that the majority of games with high quality visuals nowadays tend to be console ports. We've already touched on that a bit with many PC pioneers like Carmack and Sweeney, and more recently Yertli stating they plan to focus on console development going forward. The financial considerations of producing a high visual quality PC exclusive simply don't make sense anymore. I'd say Nitro put it pretty well, there aren't PC devs anymore, there's just game devs.
But none of that makes my point any less valid, that a PC version of a console port will always look vastly superior than the console version. To me that's still a huge advantage for the PC even if we have to wait 5-6 months for the port, or not get some exclusives at all (MGS, Halo 3, GoW2, KZ2 etc).
Contrast in particular a TNT1 hooked up to a high quality CRT will simply obliterate quad SLI or Crossfire setups on a LCD, that is what I was getting at.
I'd disagree, especially if the image on the CRT was a low contrast image and the image on the LCD was a high contrast image.
What I am getting at is due to the direction the PC market went, exclusively moving with LCD technology, they can not compete with higher end console setups in terms of color or contrast. Yes, you can hook a PC up to a plasma, although that removes pixel density advantages that help mask a lot of issues with PC visuals.
I'm not really following what you're saying here. PC games still look fantastic on CRTs and Plasmas, there wasn't some dramatic shift that changed that with LCDs.
Anyways, my point was that the PC versions are going to produce better colors than the console versions, so given the same output, the PC version will look superior on the same display. I'd also go as far to say the PC would look better on the LCD than the console would on the plasma due to the inferior quality of the output.
Crysis made a huge profit.
Only after a huge influx in hardware to satisfy its incredible hardware requirements with the release of the 8800GT and 3870. Crysis sold <100k units before Christmas (considering only $300-$600 G80s could run it well, this wasn't surprising), both of those mainstream parts were released in November for $200-$300, sold like crazy over the holidays and ultimately translated into sales for Crysis hitting 1,000,000 at the end of January. I think Crysis may ultimately become the de facto case study for why PC exclusives that rely on high visual production values simply don't make sense anymore.
Geometric LOD adjustments popping up all over the screen, clearly visible and distracting foliage draw in and very obvious LOD adjustments there, heavy utilization of alpha textures with occlusion culling to give the impression of dense screen population- all over the place in Crysis. Not knocking them in the least, that's how you handle an engine of that complexity(except the geometry LOD issue, that really does look like absolute ass).
Again, what are you basing this on? The canned fly-by demo? That certainly does show excessive texture pop-in and blatant LOD adjustments, especially given the default texture streaming settings but that's certainly not reflective of actual gameplay as you'll never move that fast at such a wide FOV to cause such pop-in. Its much less noticeable in actual gameplay and all the base world geometry is still there. For example, if you're running along and see a clear skyline, you won't suddenly see a mountain pop up out of nowhere (or through the fog in KZ2) once it reaches whatever set view/occlusion distance for distant objects. You also won't see low-res 2D mock-ups or distant impostors like you see in many games.
Also, you can significantly reduce any such texture or LOD pop-in by running the 64-bit binaries and using console commands to disable texture streaming and enabling texture precache for each level. Of course this will increase hardware requirements, but that just stresses the advantage PCs have with scalability.
Honestly, how can you even compare the resource management and view distance of Crysis to KZ2? You might as well compare a shooter that's completely indoors based on those screenshots. Not only does KZ2 rely heavily on limited view distance, it looks to be completely linear/funneled in design meaning it has a clear advantage when it comes to predictive rendering and caching.
It really isn't. The above mentioned points along with 1) overdone IK(200lb guys don't go flailing when shot by a 7.62mm round), 2)inferior weapon models, and a 3) less robust particle system is where I see KZ2 showing clear advantages over Crysis. Crysis has its' own elements where I think it has a clear overall advantage, but when taken as a whole- I see them as pretty much a wash.
1) Refers to physics, I don't disagree that software ragdoll effects are largely overdone but they could certainly be worst. Its fully destructible environments and use of physics elsewhere are arguably the best done in software on any gaming platform.
2) Again, I don't see it, and I know you know the difference between art direction/style vs. visual quality so I guess we disagree.
3) Impossible for me to tell without seeing live footage, but I can see already KZ2 makes heavy use of fog and smoke to mask and populate the scene. I guess the real question is if rendering particles for smoke and fog is more expensive than rendering all the detail you'd expect to see more than 30m in front of you. As for other particle effects, I found explosions, fire and smoke to all be extremely well done in Crysis and you've already made comments about Crysis' water being superior to KZ2. Perhaps the most impressive particle effects were the surface water effects on the carrier flight deck, which I've only seen surpassed in the Cryostasis demo.