The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Carfax83]

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but apparently CDPR has been running the PC "ultra" footage with HBAO+, AA, light shafts, sharpening, CA all turned OFF the entire time. In fact, I doubt we've ever really seen footage of the game truly maxed out.

The substitution of HBAO+ for SSAO is a massive downgrade in and of itself. Ambient occlusion is a subtle technology, but it's impact on overall scene quality can be huge and HBAO+ is the creme de la creme of ambient occlusion tech for games.

So one thing we can be assured, is that foliage should look much better when we actually get to play the game ourselves assuming your hardware can run the game with HBAO+ enabled.

 

[Carfax83]

HBAO+ makes a huge difference compared to SSAO, especially when it comes to foliage. Check this out:

Far Cry 4 SSAO

Far Cry 4 HBAO+

As you can see, the HBAO+ makes a world of difference when it comes to giving the foliage depth and form. SSAO is absolutely terrible in comparison!

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but apparently CDPR has been running the PC "ultra" footage with HBAO+, AA, light shafts, sharpening, CA all turned OFF the entire time. In fact, I doubt we've ever really seen footage of the game truly maxed out.

The substitution of HBAO+ for SSAO is a massive downgrade in and of itself. Ambient occlusion is a subtle technology, but it's impact on overall scene quality can be huge and HBAO+ is the creme de la creme of ambient occlusion tech for games.

So one thing we can be assured, is that foliage should look much better when we actually get to play the game ourselves assuming your hardware can run the game with HBAO+ enabled.

That's a big assumption. And mentioning sharpening and CA? I hope they not only turn those off, but if someone elects to enable them, it sets their computer on fire. Those are two of the most loathsome effects to creep into games in the last few years; CA in particular makes me wonder how anyone thought that was a good idea. "It'll look like an old broken camera whenever they do... well, anything. Also, it's new and fancy. PUT IT IN ALL THE THINGS." No. Stop it.

 

[Carfax83]

That's a big assumption. And mentioning sharpening and CA? I hope they not only turn those off, but if someone elects to enable them, it sets their computer on fire. Those are two of the most loathsome effects to creep into games in the last few years; CA in particular makes me wonder how anyone thought that was a good idea. "It'll look like an old broken camera whenever they do... well, anything. Also, it's new and fancy. PUT IT IN ALL THE THINGS." No. Stop it.

My point was, that omitting HBAO+ from the pre-release media (both video and screenshots) was a huge disservice to the game and played a major role in all the downgrade rumors being spread across the internet..

Look at the screenshots. It makes a huge difference in the appearance of the grass. Also, inferior ambient occlusion can also affect the quality of the lighting by not properly taking into account occlusion of light sources. Here's an example:

Far Cry 4 SSAO

Far Cry 4 HBAO+

The lighting in the HBAO+ pic gives a much more accurate and realistic depiction of the scene by properly accounting for the occlusion of light sources.

 

[chimaxi83]

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but apparently CDPR has been running the PC "ultra" footage with HBAO+, AA, light shafts, sharpening, CA all turned OFF the entire time. In fact, I doubt we've ever really seen footage of the game truly maxed out.

The substitution of HBAO+ for SSAO is a massive downgrade in and of itself. Ambient occlusion is a subtle technology, but it's impact on overall scene quality can be huge and HBAO+ is the creme de la creme of ambient occlusion tech for games.

So one thing we can be assured, is that foliage should look much better when we actually get to play the game ourselves assuming your hardware can run the game with HBAO+ enabled.

Where'd you get that info from, and what is CA? It'd be nice to know that they're not really showing us ultra, but maybe that's because everything enabled is a slideshow.

 

[Stuka87]

Where'd you get that info from, and what is CA? It'd be nice to know that they're not really showing us ultra, but maybe that's because everything enabled is a slideshow.

My guess would be Chromatic Aberrations.

 

[norseamd]

Seems this is a screenshot on Ultra with Hairworks and HBAO+ enabled.

Downgrade confirmed.

 

[Stuka87]

Seems this is a screenshot on Ultra with Hairworks and HBAO+ enabled.

Downgrade confirmed.

That screenshot has been passed around for a while, no clue as to what the settings were. As far as I know it was taken at the release preview they did in Poland about a month ago.

 

[zinfamous]

That screenshot has been passed around for a while, no clue as to what the settings were. As far as I know it was taken at the release preview they did in Poland about a month ago.

It was also showed in the PS4 version posted 3 days ago that the stones and crack and whatnot are back. edged corner remains, however.

 

[Carfax83]

Where'd you get that info from, and what is CA? It'd be nice to know that they're not really showing us ultra, but maybe that's because everything enabled is a slideshow.

The IGN gameplay with a CDPR dev that was released recently showed the game running at ultra settings, but with SSAO enabled instead of HBAO+..

Couple that with the fact that the foliage has looked so flat in all the media they have released so far explains to me that they have been using SSAO this entire time rather than HBAO+.

Thats a huge downgrade in and of itself, as it's almost akin to having no ambient occlusion whatsoever..

And Stuka87 is correct, CA stands for chromatic aberration.

 

[Carfax83]

Interesting interview with Jose Texeira, a visual effects expert for CDPR.

He talks about the accusations of downgrade and the quality of the graphics in the Witcher 3 and he makes a convincing argument..

The main argument is that there was no downgrade, because the game as shown in the VGX trailer and the NVidia tech trailer was simply unplayable and or unattainable on current systems, whether PC or console; especially in light of the game's massive open world nature..

 

[zinfamous]

Interesting interview with Jose Texeira, a visual effects expert for CDPR.

He talks about the accusations of downgrade and the quality of the graphics in the Witcher 3 and he makes a convincing argument..

The main argument is that there was no downgrade, because the game as shown in the VGX trailer and the NVidia tech trailer was simply unplayable and or unattainable on current systems, whether PC or console; especially in light of the game's massive open world nature..

First posted here:

Ok, about the downgrade thing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU9rlkCOk9E

Skip to about 0:50 (or just watch from the start). Think what you will from what he says. I would be surprised if CDPR (or that guy in particular) was lying until the very end. That, or it is a matter of perception, for them. Maybe CDPR sees what happened to the graphics as "optimizations" instead. Maybe not. Maybe that insider article was right about members of a dev team never willing to admit that such a thing would have happened to their game (or at least to a specific version of their game) which would of course explain the reason as to why the identity of that insider was kept secret.

Here (in that video) you have someone from CDPR who says that 1) It was not downgraded, and 2) You cannot downgrade to start with if there's no build to go down from (there was no "grade" to go down from to begin with, is what he says). And points at the fact that the trailer was prepared for the purpose of showing off the game in a cinematic way (which should have already been obvious to everyone at the time), with all sorts of post-processing effects and good camera angles, etc.

So, there's two very simple possible situations going on...

1) CDPR is on defensive mode (call it PR bullshit, damage control, if not merely lying if you want to think that). They downgraded, period. No matter how hard THEY try to cut it by trying to make us believe A, B and C instead (such as "oh, it wasn't downgrading, it was optimization!"), the obvious is there and will be proven to the world of gaming at release (if not already being proven as I type this by the pirates).

2) CDPR did not downgrade TW3 for the PC, and somehow the screenshots taken for comparison purposes were all from either the Xbox One or the PS4 version(s) which themselves would have in fact been downgraded from a "pure" and original PC version, which also for some reason we wouldn't have seen true videos nor pictures of to this point.

Do I think that the game has been downgraded? Most likely. Why wouldn't it be downgraded if the PC version is a port? It would indeed make sense, both financially and resources-wise for the company to "just" port the lowest-common denominator'd TW3 to the PC (heck, maybe they even "ported" the Xbox One version to the PS4! oh boy... perish the thought). Do I think that CDPR themselves simply view it differently and uses different wording to describe what they've done to the PC version even though on paper it IS downgrading? It sounds like it. Do I have the definitive proof that all comparisons I've seen so far are indeed true? Nope (hint: I don't always believe everything I see and hear coming from "unknown sources" of complete strangers on the Internet).

There's only one thing I know, for sure, is that I consciously pre-ordered TW3 knowing that I would be in for an epic RPG experience. And since I cannot wait to play it I guess I'll find out about the "downgrade" thing in about five days from now, while being busy enjoying it.

Then commented on here:

From the link that Zenoth posted, with the dev interview, it makes tons of sense to me: wehave this great engine, we built this great world with amazing effects...but once we started building the concept--the open world and all that--it simply became unplayable.

So, the early development videos from 20seconds to several minutes of limited map spaces, never were part of a game. It was the engine, doing what the engine did. None of that was ever in a playable version of the game.

That makes sense to me, anyway. If people need to bitch about seeing that stuff, 2 years ago, and getting bitter that it wasn't every frame of the final product, then well...I want to feel sympathy but I really don't. I do get that it appears misleading, perhaps intentionally, but c'mon--everyone knows what marketing means.

Any good game should be about playability 90% of the time--eye candy the remaining 10%. Good to see, at least, that everyone here still seems to recognize that. If this thing looks at least as good as DAI, if not a bit better, then how can it not be a win?

about a dozen posts up. I know--walls of text, no one pays attention.

But it makes sense to me and is worth considering. What you essentially had were tech demos pushing the engine, in very trapped, very choreographed sequences. None of that was the actual game, because the game didn't exist.

And the downgrade conspiracy crew have been saying as much here, anyway--you simply can't push all of that advanced lighting, shading, textures, whatever, in an open world environment. I imagine that this would have worked in a game like Witcher 2--essentially an FPS (trigger points for specific mobs and effects, nothing to explore, rails, etc)--so background eye candy that can be perfectly choreographed to the very limited number of possible view angles.

In that video, he also makes the point, which I am sure he was referring to that image from 2013 of Geralt walking through that city with the Unsharp mask set to 11, that playing at that level of sharpness for any length of time, in their testing, was absolutely dreadful. Led to tons of eyestrain and fatigue, and another type of unplayable issue arose after a good bit of testing. It makes sense--looks glorious for the 2 or 4 seconds that we see it, but like New Coke and of course Pepsi--the sugar rush is only good in a taste test, and consumers overwhelmingly reject the full serving for something less obtrusively sweet.

 

[Carfax83]

Ah, yeah I definitely missed that one LOL! It is a convincing argument though. Still I must wonder how rigs with say Titan X Tri SLI would have fared in the original quality. Would it still have been unplayable?

I guess we'll never know.

 

[zinfamous]

Ah, yeah I definitely missed that one LOL! It is a convincing argument though. Still I must wonder how rigs with say Titan X Tri SLI would have fared in the original quality. Would it still have been unplayable?

I guess we'll never know.

I guess the real question is if it was ever playable on whatever it is they were working on in-house, which I assume would be rather substantial? It seems to me that even they couldn't get large maps to work properly, but I'm leaning more towards it being a greater issue of not even a pro-sumer/enthusiast class rig being able to play that game for the foreseeable future. CDPR erred on the side of releasing a playable game, and not a tech demo for a handful of uber nerds...like Crysis, right?

Now, I assume that core engine still exists? Wouldn't put it past them to release the uber-enhanced version for PC only? sometime down the road after hardware catches up, maybe even at a cost--say $10-15 for current owners--that replaces the release engine.

People would gnash at the double-dipping I guess, which is fair, but well, whatever.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

I guess the real question is if it was ever playable on whatever it is they were working on in-house, which I assume would be rather substantial? It seems to me that even they couldn't get large maps to work properly, but I'm leaning more towards it being a greater issue of not even a pro-sumer/enthusiast class rig being able to play that game for the foreseeable future. CDPR erred on the side of releasing a playable game, and not a tech demo for a handful of uber nerds...like Crysis, right?

Now, I assume that core engine still exists? Wouldn't put it past them to release the uber-enhanced version for PC only? sometime down the road after hardware catches up, maybe even at a cost--say $10-15 for current owners--that replaces the release engine.

People would gnash at the double-dipping I guess, which is fair, but well, whatever.

Year or so down the road, I'd pay for it.

 

[smackababy]

Can someone, just so I can clear this up, find me a source that stated the 2013 demo was going to be indicative of the final game quality settings? I mean, I want to be sure they "downgraded" something so I can whine about it.

 

[Stringjam]

It would be cool if they would just release their SDK like Crytek / Source / others have and let the modders have at it.

Even when devs release stuff, usually the community released assets / textures still end up being higher quality.

 

[zinfamous]

It would be cool if they would just release their SDK like Crytek / Source / others have and let the modders have at it.

Even when devs release stuff, usually the community released assets / textures still end up being higher quality.

I asked this before, but Witcher does have a Nexxus mod community, right? Not sure how substantial it is--if SDK is publicly available or not--but it seems like the low-cost way to do this.

Bethesda: eh, let the community do all the free work, fix all the problems, then we repackage their best mods a year or two later and call it "DLC."

 

[RussianSensation]

PCGameshardware. Some key points:

_______________________________________________________________________
(1) Focus on GPU optimizations:

"CD project in-house engine uses for The Witcher 3 Direct X 11 and a Forward + renderer, texture blending and LoD system by Umbra 3 middleware save power and memory."

Some of you may recall when AMD demonstrated Forward+ in the Leo Demo in 2012 that Forward+ > Deferred Rendering when trying to maintain MSAA compatibility and higher levels of performance:

"AMD Radeon HD 7900 series DirectX 11 tech demo that demonstrates the rendering of complex lighting that would normally require a deferred rendering path for reasonable performance, in a forward renderer, thus maintaining universal hardware MSAA support and proper alpha blending support." ~ Source

"The ForwardPlus11 v1.1 sample provides an example implementation of the Forward+ algorithm, which extends traditional forward rendering to support high numbers of dynamic lights while maintaining performance. It utilizes a Direct3D 11 compute shader (DirectCompute 5.0) to divide the screen into tiles and quickly cull lights against those tiles, resulting in per-tile light lists for the forward pixel shader." ~ Source

Major Kudos to CDPR for using Forward+ as it's preferable to deferred rendering when juggling multiple light sources in the scene.

Per PCGameshardware on GPU optimization:

"For Ultra-Details and Full HD it takes is a fleet middle-class graphics card as a GTX 770 or R9 280X. Impressive:. Despite very pleasing graphics and, in most cases considerable and varied texturing draw up The Witcher 3 in Full HD with 2 GiByte graphics memory satisfied"


_______________________________________________________________________
(2) CPU optimizations:

"The support of multi-core processors is excellent. On our computer, a i7-4790K, the load is distributed very evenly across all threads, even the logical cores are utilized properly - very nice. This exemplary use of resources allows us even to disable hyperthreading and to overclock the processor to 2GHz and still achieve exceptionally smooth frame rates with ultra details. The utilization of the remaining and additional gehandicapten calculators rockets in this scenario, to 100%. Assuming you have a reasonably current quad-core at around 3 GHz and a good middle-class GPU with 2 GiByte memory, you can look forward not only to the best looking version of The Witcher 3, but also to the most liquid after our previous findings so."

_______________________________________________________________________
(3) PhysX and HBAO+ appear to be vendor agnostic in this title.

"As already known, The Witcher 3 uses some Nvidia technologies. This includes Physx for physics calculations, presentation of clothes via Apex Cloth and partly destructible environment by Apex Destruction. However, all these effects run with both Nvidia and AMD on the CPU. To be joined by two Physx effects of GameWorks library name HBAO + and Hairworks. While HBAO + leistungsstechnisch is fairly unobtrusive, and also AMD GPUs can represent both liquid with Nvidia"

_______________________________________________________________________
(4) Hairworks takes a big performance hit on NV and a HUGE performance it on AMD.

"Hairworks is very demanding in our version, in particularly with an AMD graphics card."

Hairworks OFF

Hairworks ON

Lots and lots of screenshots:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/The-Witcher-3-PC-237266/Specials/Technik-Test-1158845/

 

[Head1985]

PC vs PS4 comparison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cn-ekHLqEY

 

[zinfamous]

I'm having trouble with the translation in that post, so does this:

"For Ultra-Details and Full HD it takes is a fleet middle-class graphics card as a GTX 770 or R9 280X. Impressive:. Despite very pleasing graphics and, in most cases considerable and varied texturing draw up The Witcher 3 in Full HD with 2 GiByte graphics memory satisfied"

...mean that I can run on Ultra settings with my 280X? And you need only 2GB GDRAM?

 

[cmdrdredd]

Can someone, just so I can clear this up, find me a source that stated the 2013 demo was going to be indicative of the final game quality settings? I mean, I want to be sure they "downgraded" something so I can whine about it.

It's just people being stupid as usual. The developer makes a very good point in that they made trailers using the engine but not inside the game world. You can cram all kinds of stuff in there if you don't have an open world to deal with.

 

[Head1985]

So ps4 and PC looks +- same look at this now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQ_moS4tTg&feature=youtu.be&t=134

 

[cmdrdredd]

So ps4 and PC looks +- same look at this now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQ_moS4tTg&feature=youtu.be&t=134

1) Youtube is terrible to make any type of comparison
2) Nobody knows the settings they used or whether they are trying to push an agenda with saying it's the same
3) I don't know who Gamestar is so how can I trust them as a source
4) even on youtube I can tell that the parts labeled as being from PS4 are less detailed in the videos I saw

 

[Artorias]

I'm having trouble with the translation in that post, so does this:



...mean that I can run on Ultra settings with my 280X? And you need only 2GB GDRAM?

Didn't PC Gamer's preview a couple months back use a 980 at Ultra which struggled to maintain 60fps?