• Detroit Become Human 2016 vs 2017 vs 2018 Graphics Comparison
    47 replies, posted
tech demos always look better than the end release, for many reasons, but the easiest of which is "unless you have a top-of-the-line supercomputer, this is going to run like shit." Crysis 1's trailer looked much better than the end result(although the end result still looked great). This is a pretty bad downgrade though, even with the 2018 video not being the best comparison. Wtf happened? Did someone deliberately run the 2018 video through several compression layers to make it look shittier? Good lord.
Is there an example where the end release ended up being wildly better than the tech demo?
[QUOTE=TFA;53179137]God bless fxaa[/QUOTE] I hate Post-Processing AA with a fiery passion. It looks like trash, even the fancy nVidia/AMD specific ones on their respective hardware. Way too many games don't even offer MSAA as an option, and I know it comes down to technical bullshit with the renderer, but we had the shit in the 90s and potato-boxes can play without AA.
[QUOTE=usaokay;53179448]Call me when the game actually comes out so we're not using Youtube compression.[/QUOTE] I don't understand this "oh it's youtube compression that makes it look like 90's cgi and not the fact that it looks like 90s cgi" excuse that's not how compression works. If anything, compression should make it look BETTER. If it still looks like bad cg when only the finer details are lost then it's the larger details that are at fault.
It looks like someone found out about beauty filters and plastered it all over the video to make it look "prettier", even though it comes out looking like shit.
Other than the last shot, these changes -aren't- due to compression, the entire lighting of these shots has changed, as has the the model and texturing of a lot of the characters. Wouldn't be the first time that they were disingenuous about their final product.
[QUOTE=FpShepard;53179333]Comparing a direct feed screenshot with a horribly compressed snapshot from a youtube video ? Even then with these downgrades, [b]the faces look more natural, believable and animate miles better than the oversharpened, unnatural looking faces from Crysis.[/b] Shame about the downgrades though. Visuals are pretty much the only thing that Quantic Dreams have got going towards them, considering how shit their writing is.[/QUOTE] I'm not gonna say Crysis is the best animated game, but very few characters in Quantic Dreams ever look 'right'. Beyond Two Souls, maybe, but even then. And this game quite literally has robots performing uncanny valley, while the human characters look nearly as uncanny as they do. For all the budget they put into these things, there's always something off. Horribly, uncomfortably off, whether they intend on that or not.
Every game has the Quantic Dreams mouth
Having a red rectangle with the upper half moving at an even frequency is the best possible way to make a mouth. The second best possible way is to dedicate 95% of system's resources to generate ultra high definition graphics and emulating every single molecule in the muscles to make a mouth and make the rest of the game look like Grim Fandango.
So, hear me out; I'm sure a lot of things are actually downgraded for pretty standard optimization reasons so that they aren't overshooting their target hardware, but there's more than just texture/model downgrades here. As mentioned, there's lighting changes and stuff too. In a lot of ways, I feel like even if their target hardware was a suped up gaming PC, some of these changes would've still been made while the designers zero in on what they want the player to actually be looking at. Economizing in art is basically taking out all the lines and details that don't directly add to the composition you're trying to make, and especially the details that detract from whatever you're trying to show. For example; [2016 left, 2018 right] [t]https://i.imgur.com/xcK4KF1.jpg[/t] His skin here is noticeably less detailed, but it makes his face look smoother and cleaner to look at, and his eyes also pop way more, same with his eyebrows. There's far less detail for your eye to get stuck or lost in, which even though that can be considered a downgrade, is also an artistic choice to keep things flowing. The lighting is also tons nicer and way more dramatic. [2016 left, 2018 right] [t]https://i.imgur.com/yHy8dbi.png[/t][t]https://i.imgur.com/jY11QEq.png[/t] Same with her; the lighting is way more dramatic and reacts against the skin nicer (regardless of resolution), and the tears on her face are way more pronounced since they aren't fighting with the detail on the skin. The tears are probably something they really wanted you to clearly see, even though the shot isn't zoomed way in on her face. That's not how it goes for all the shots in the video, mind you; but it takes experimentation to get it to look right. Plus, when you're forced to strip away fancy stuff to make room for only what is completely vital, you can end up with a stronger product. (That is, if they know what they're doing, anyway.) Just a little devil's advocate.
I do not believe that is the case here specifically, there is definitely a way to have less detail in order for the visuals to be less overwhelming, however we are instead noticing a strange barbiefication effect of everything.
Well, what really made me think like that is the first pic in my post I kept fixating on how many specks and dots he has all over his face and it just felt needless. (Needless to me, anyway. Especially since he's an android and wouldn't say, have blackheads all over his nose or open pores and stuff.) They might've gone too far in the other direction, but that's the designer's discretion.
I hate David Cage just as much as the next person, but I think the graphics here are being terribly misrepresented and I'm going to have a little rant about it: The source of the 2018 graphics is compressed as shit for a start, and possibly not even captured from the 1080p version of it. Here's a screenshot I just took from that video at 1080p (Open it fullscreen): [t]https://i.cubeupload.com/jaoJu2.png[/t] While I agree that the area of his face that is in shadow is kinda blurry, it already looks far better than any of the clips from this video show. You can see the details in his forehead and his cheeks, and check out those eyes! You also have to take into account the compression of the video, you can literally see the artifacting and the banding on the darker areas of his face. Another thing to bring up, is that there's been some pretty radical changes in the way that human skin is rendered in games since -to use the example in this thread- Crysis 1 and 2. In the past, faces were normal-mapped to shit, it was a race to see who could render the most detailed individual pores on a person's face. I feel as though it's conditioned people to think that is what a realistic CGI human should look like. More recently the focus has shifted to more subtle methods of rendering realistic skin, like the way that light bounces and scatters on/through skin, and how it reflects off of the smaller bumps, pores, and imperfections in the skin. It's tech that's improving all the time, but it's not perfect, granted. If you look at the early footage, you can see that the difference isn't really in the quality of textures, or the quality of lighting, it's in the way that all of the scene's materials and lighting is handled. In the 2018 version, they appear to be using more modern techniques, and personally I think it's for the better. There are arguments for both. We've certainly spent so long now playing games with characters and environments that look like the 2016 version that the sudden change is jarring. The new techniques are becoming the standard and they're improving year on year, but right now, sometimes you get Vaseline. TL;DR: Vaseline for now, but not forever!
[QUOTE=usaokay;53179448]Call me when the game actually comes out so we're not using Youtube compression.[/QUOTE] This shit excuse doesn't hold an ounce of water if you put even the littlest bit of thought into the comparison and research into compression. Youtube's compression doesn't magically cause that drastic of a change or are you telling us that Youtube is capable of magically changing the textures of objects in videos now? Take a look at the comparison at 1:12, the texture of his jacket is completely different. Maybe Youtube is using witchcraft!
[QUOTE=chunkymonkey;53179765]This shit excuse doesn't hold an ounce of water if you put even the littlest bit of thought into the comparison and research into compression. Youtube's compression doesn't magically cause that drastic of a change or are you telling us that Youtube is capable of magically changing the textures of objects in videos now? Take a look at the comparison at 1:12, the texture of his jacket is completely different. Maybe Youtube is using witchcraft![/QUOTE] youtubes compression coupled with lighting that's completely off due to brightening can make a game look drastically worse in a lot of different ways not saying the game wasn't downgraded but the lighting being off can change how good or bad something looks but a metric shitload
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