Be Excellent To Each Other

I don't want to start a fiery argument. However, I would be interested in a debate over this. Not because I am looking for a fight but more because I just feel that better graphics enhance a game play experience. Draw distances, frame rates and so on. Now obviously they may not seem like huge improvements to some, but I just truly feel that an already great game can indeed be made better by a few things that have been mentioned. Namely visual quality, draw distances, frame rates and so on. Also, with any luck we can all fight, I mean argue, I mean debate over it here instead of in a serious game thread

Now obviously you guys (well, some of you at least) saw the pics I posted of Just Cause 2 yesterday. I did report having an issue when driving the car (which was odd) but last night I tracked it down to garbage build up on my SSD. NP, 12 mins later I was back to full RW speeds which in turn solved my lag issues in game.

So I won't bore you with those screenshots but the difference between that and a 360 game are surely pretty vast? Now I admit in that game it probably wouldn't make too much difference as the landscapes are pretty barren and thus detail and draw distances are not that important. However, as I mentioned in the other thread in Fallout 3 the differences changed the game quite dramatically into something better, even though it was merely graphical.

Now I know using Dirt 2 could be considered a dirty trick here as tbh? It's really not very fair. The graphics being pumped out by dual 5 series Radeons will pretty much slay anything put in front of them. But it's not just about the graphics it's about the entire experience. And I can swear with my hand on my heart that I have never played a game that was made so much better by graphics. Now with Fallout 3 I read about the differences, but they were pretty clear. With Dirt 2 I have experienced first hand the switchover from DX9 to DX11 and I must say I was totally wrong about DX11. The differences are fucking immense. It's not just some wavey flags and tesselation it's the entire game. It also uses lots of DX10 lighting which of course isn't enabled with the DX9 version. I remember saying when I got Radeon 1 something along the lines of "Man, I swear the Radeon has nicer truer deeper colours than my Nvidia". And I wasn't saying that because I had read something, it was just something I noticed immediately. It turns out that it was down to DX10 and DX11 working in unison and was due to a new lighting technique in DX11 where colours can be ovelaid to create shadows that are not white and washed out. And noone told me that but I noticed it IMMEDIATELY. So much for the diffrerences in DX11 not being noticable. So I admit it, I was completely wrong.

And it wasn't just the wavey flags either. It was also the water effects, the shadows, the particles. All added together it makes a game so gorgeous it brings tears to my eyes.

Apologies for the large sized screen shots but I find this important. I'm not going to post JPGs because they degrade the quality. The pics do speak for themselves, however.

So, the pics I have chosen are to demonstrate IMO how graphics can change a game. I have decided to play Dirt 2 from the cockpit as it's the most realistic. It's also the hardest way to play due to a couple of reasons but it's BY FAR the most realistic. And realism DOES affect a game's overall feel and playability IMO.

PIC 1. Due to DX11's tesselation when you crash through a puddle the water sprays all over the screen. You can not see where you are going. The wipers come on, and after a second or two push the water from view. However, it doesn't just vanish. It goes up above the wipers and slowly trickles up the screen due to the wind pushing it away. And, having driven a car in the pissing rain this is absolutely 100% as it would be in a real car, in real rain. It's actually quite frightening too. I played the game in DX9 and the effect was absolutely no match for what DX11 does with it.

PIC 2. The wavey flags in the parking lot. Now yes, this bit is whorey as it doesn't make a difference to the game play. But it is noticable (but doesn't matter).

PIC3. Lighting. Here I am un Utah with a nice folded bonnet from pressing F10. However, note how the light falls into the car accross my arm and the carbon dash and accessories? That light moves around and at points hits you in the eyes, temporarily taking your view from the road ahead. Again, totally realistic and does offer a gameplay element created by a visual effect. Also note my left window is cracked and the side mirror is now broken? well again because of tesselation the mirror can break more, and more, until you can't see anything out of it. The windshield can also break ruining your view. But, again, this isn't just nice looking shit it affects the gameplay. It adds realism which to me adds to the experience.

Now of course I have never seen Dirt 2 on a 360 or ps3. However, I have seen it in Directx 9 on the same computer I run it on now and DX11 does make a huge difference. I do know that on ps3 it suffers with terrible slowdown. Especially on the Battersea stage.

What's the maximum framerate the eye can differentiate? I ask because I'm sure a load of people got terribly excited about having 64 million colours on their PC and then someone pointed out you can actually only differentiate between 6 million or something, so the extra 58 million made no difference.

I'm not sure. I do know that the game hardly ever dips below 60fps. And because of that it feels a lot nicer than when it was running on one card at 32fps.

I know the post is about the little graphic detail of the wind and water effects but the lighting in that middle picture seems to spoil it - that kind of yellow glow. Either that or my eyes are knackered.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

From what I understood from the articles I read (which tbh I trust a lot less having seen how much of a difference DX11 makes in the actual world on my actual computer) it allows them to draw things with much smaller pieces allowing for a more fluid movement effect and so on.

But as I say, I do put my hand up and admit I've not gone bonkers over swotting about everything it does.

The parking lot shot was in the daytime and uses a lot of trickery (sun blur and heat waves, particles and so on). It's only a menu and looks pretty arse sitting still

I see. So it would seem highly likely then that several articles I have read are full of plop.

Now I see why you always said you don't trust gaming magazines

I can't see, in the case of Dirt, how any of that* affects the gameplay when you're driving at 100mph through the dust.


*water aside, as panicking in Colin McRae 2005 when I couldn't see a bloody thing was awesome. Oh, and that was on the original Xbox, which isn't a PC.

The main advantage of the new tessalating schemes is one for authoring, not for graphical fidelity.

Well dust is another thing entirely. And with DX11 and it's snazzy effects you get it too. When you're on a really dry stage such as Utah the dust slowly builds on the screen. As you hurtle around a corner and the sun hits the dust it goes a yucky tan colour and you can't see

Amazing the detail makes a difference to that also. Basically there's different levels of dust thickness. It's the same with the water. Note how in there there's light shades of water and darker shades with chunks of dirt in?

I actually feel really stupid admitting this, but I broke my windsheild out hitting a wall. After that the water comes through the screen and I was sitting here going "putt puttt putttt" like I had a mouthful of the stuff. All graphical of course, but makes for some amazing realism.

You pretty much summed it all up for me when you mentioned that bizzare bug that only effect the frame rate of one small aspect of the game.

That is why I don't care about the PC graphic advantage. I don't want to fiddle with settings to get the right balance between the holy trinity of frame rate, view distance and graphical quality.

That fiddling completely destroys any immersion I have in the game.

The first thought I had when playing Zelda and walked into Hyrule field was that of amazement and wonder at all the things in store for me. Same for leaving the sewer in Oblivion.

If I was plahying them on the PC my first thought would have been. "Ah bigger enviroments, maybe i should drop the graphics complexity, I don't want it to harm my fram rate"

I just want to sit and play the game as the developer intends.

It specifically bothers me when it comes to view distance. If depending on the power of the machine, you can start sniping people from further away that kills it for me.

TL ; DR A single console in my mind, increases the ability of the developer to give you exactly the expereince they desire - making for a better ad more immersive game[/b]

Also: Graphical Complexity doesn't mean artistic worth.

note that is mainly a criticism of myself.

I think this point is being overstated by yourself and others.

Unless you're playing Crysis, any reasonably specced PC (dual core, decent dedicated graphics card, 2GB RAM) will play just about any game maxed out without issue.

I recently started replaying GTA4 on the 360, and whilst it's an immensely good game I eventually gave up because the creaking nature of the game engine, horrendous frame rate drops, awkward controls, torn frames, and the appalling input lag got the better of me.

This is a clear example of where a game just needs more horsepower under the bonnet (albeit not a very good one as the PC version runs like a box of bums as well ), something that the fixed architecture of the consoles can't provide, and where the 'PC graphic advantage' can fundamentally improve the game.

GTA IV also runs terribly on a PC if JC's posts on the subject are to be relied on. Therefore GTA IV=shit not PC>Consoles

I just accepted that it ran like crap on the PC too, although that said a state of the art PC might be able to handle it now as it's been out for a while.

It doesn't negate the basic point that the game itself could be much improved by more powerful hardware - it's not just fancy effects that don't make any difference.

Nah, it wouldn't make the story more interesting or the missions less of a chore, therefore it wouldn't make it a better game.

hah, don't worry about it. I'm totally guilty

The Dirt 2 thing also turned out to be the same issue I was having with Just Cause.

I didn't realise that the installation was a write, the sorting out the drivers and deleting all the temp files was a write, etc etc. Thus I aged my SSD very very quickly. Now I realise that once I was done all of that I should have done a secure erase and back written all the installation stuff. Did a test last night and I'm back to 210/110 RW which is bang on the money.

I would imagine that it was due to virtual memory. Obviously if my drive is being used and is performing badly (40/40 RW before I did the wipe restore) then when the PC goes over to it (in certain views or aspects) it will hurt performance.

Mind you, as annoying and fiddly as it all sounds it takes me 12 minutes to do the lot. I simply create an image to my spare drive then reboot with the linux disc. Boot that (about a minute to load it into ram) then do a secure erase (10 secs tops). Reboot from my second drive and restore the SSD. From time shut down after making the image I am back on the ssd in about 12 mins.

Probably already posted by the time I do.. from Pedia Wiki:

Main article: Persistence of vision
The human visual system does not see in terms of frames; it works with a continuous flow of light/information.[citation needed] A related question is, “how many frames per second are needed for an observer to not see artifacts?” However, this question too does not have a single straightforward answer. If the image is switching between black and white each frame, then this image will appear to flicker when the pattern is shown at rates slower than 30 frames per second. In other words, the flicker-fusion point, where the eyes see gray instead of flickering tends to be around 60 Hz. However, for fast moving objects, frame rates may need to be even higher to avoid judder (non-smooth motion) artifacts. And the retinal fusion point can vary in different people, as well as depending on lighting conditions.
Although human vision has no "frame rate", it may be possible to investigate the consequences of changes in frame rate for human observers. The most famous example may be the wagon-wheel effect, a form of aliasing in time, where a spinning wheel suddenly appears to change direction when its speed approaches the frame rate of the image capture/reproduction system.
Different capture/playback systems may operate at the same frame rate, and still give a different level of "realism" or artifacts attributed to frame rate. One reason for this may be the temporal characteristics of the camera and display device.

My eyes always seemed to be fine above about 18fps on PC games. Any more and the difference seemed lost.

May as well chuck in my tuppence...

It. Depends.

I found playing the original Mass Effect to be a far superior experience on the PC. The graphics were sharper and had more detail, the frame rates were smoother, the elevator rides quicker and I found the shooty shooty worked better with a mouse. Normally, having been brought up on a staple diet of consoles, I'm more of a pad user in FPS and shooty games than mouse and keyboard, but there's no getting around the fact I found the shooty to be easier to control and more fun on the PC version of the game. I can't comment on ME2 as the only version I've played is the PC one, though for me it renders in 1080p with silky smooth frame rate. No idea what the frame rate actually is, I'm not anal enough to check.

DIRT 2 is another one that I much prefer on the PC than the PS3 version I had previously played. Largely because the 60FPS does make an actual difference to the gameplay. Dunno about the graphics, I imagine they may be better than the console versions, but you don't tend to notice when you're racing.

Mirror's Edge looks so much better and runs so much smoother on PC than the PS3 version, it's not funny. If I had a SLI graphics set up, I could use the PhysX effects and it would look better still.

Batman Arkham Asylum does let me use some of the PhysX effects with my existing PC setup and it still runs better than the PS3 version. The PhysX stuff is just little things, like realistic fog, leaves and paper that blows behind you as you run, tiles coming off the walls in the Scarecrow bits, little things but they make an impact.

On the other hand...

GTA IV is better on console, without question, even though the PC version can use a 360 controller (like most modern games, TBH). The PC version just seems buggy and badly put together compared to the console versions. I had similar issues with Just Cause also.

What I will add is that I use my PC like a fancy, overpriced console these days, that also has proper internet and stuff. It's permanently hooked up to my 40" LCD telly, just like the PS3 and 360 are, with a wireless keyboard and mouse and a wired 360 pad plugged in. I spend 75% of the time using it for games alone. For stuff that requires a mouse and keyboard, I use a wireless mouse and a Belkin n52te keypad thingy, perched on a Viz annual (with a mousemat on top), which in turn sits on my lap, so I still get the 'on the couch' experience with my games. All the PC games I have are legit and the vast majority were purchased through Steam, so aside for some hardware issues a couple of months ago, it's a very fuck-about-free experience for me.

Also, I'm not factoring in price. If all I wanted was something to play games on, I'd get a console and not even think about whether or not I'd be getting a better experience on PC. As it stands, I've got this machine I built two years ago for something to do that I've added enough to over time to have a decent gaming PC setup. So much so that I often question if I still really need the consoles.

Graphics shmaphics, as long as the game works well & it's fun to play I couldn't really give a toss if the pixel count is so low it looks like a mosaic. Frame rates matter more, but if it's not choppy & there's no slowdown I don't care either.

Aye, shit hot state-of-the-art graphics & effects are nice to have, but I'd rather play Race 07 than Need For Speed (or whatever the latest sexy looking racing game is) on my PC. Race 07 would never win any awards for its looks, but it gets the feel bang on.

Computer graphics are only ever representative of something anyway. The PC is capable of rendering smaller drops in greater number more shinily than a 360, sure, but neither are water and if my brain could accept I was looking at water in Scuba Dive on the Spectrum, it can handle the 360 not being cutting edge.

Nevertheless reading Zio's post about PC Mass Effect makes me want to do my second playthough on my Cyberpower rig, not me 360 again.

The bypass minigame thing in Mass Effect is different on the PC version. First time you do it, you'll think "what the fuck is this rubbish?", but then you'll remember that the minigame on the Xbox was shit too. Everything else is better with the PC version.

Console: "Oh, I like the look of that. Good price, too. I'll buy it."

PC: "Oh, I like the look of that. Good price, too. But will it run on my PC?

[HOURS PASS]

Oh, fuck this, if they can't even be bothered to put a system requirements link on their own fucking website, they probably can't make a game for shit, either. I'm going to go and play the settlers instead."

As for the difference in graphics quality: It doesn't matter. We reached the point where games aren't going to age dreadfully in that department years ago unless they're plain ugly through bad design/art. The difference between consoles and PC graphics is only appreciable if upgrading your PC is already a part time job for you anyway, so it's not even worth debating.

Graphics. Don't. Matter.

60fps or 59fps doesn't matter. It sounds like all those people who describe GT in terms of front wheel slip angles and all that, they are playing a fucking game and that is no representation of reality in any way whatsoever. Your example of dirt on the windscreen, it might look good, but it isn't any more real - it is still you, a joypad and a screen.

Your imagination makes a game realistic, not your eyeballs. All they do is get fooled. That is why 3D Monster Maze was scary in 1Kb.

It depends on the situation. Your eye can spot a single black shiloutte (of say a jetplane) on a whitebackground, in amongst thousands of frames of all white, with it only being displayed for a fraction of a second*, but can't really spot the difference between say, 100hz and 200hz. Even though their periods are larger than the other one. It's all relative. Much like lots of predatory animals having really shit colour skills, but can spot the slightest movment from miles away, etc.

Really though, do you even notice anything about a (stable) 100? The only think I notice when it's above that level is inconsitency (ie, dorpping down to 80fps for a few frames). Infact I suspect we notice the rate of change of framerate more than the framerate itself.



*(I cba googling for the article to get the numbers)

Also: Shit graphics? I'll stop noticing after about 10 minutes of playing.

Good graphics? I'll stop noticing after about 10 minutes of playing.

Largely, great graphics don't matter unless I'm in a big open and deep sandbox world. Then I find I'm constantly wowed by GFX, otherwise not fussed. My fave game for ages was Space Rangers!

I can't notice FPS differences above about 30FPS, tbh. I'm cool with 24fps and up.

Regarding framerates: everything you've ever seen in the cinema has been 24fps. Has that looked jerky?

Gianna does.

Would Super Mario Galaxy have been a better game at twice the resolution? Would it fuck.

I was an active PC gamer for many years eschewing consoles in favour of grabbing the latest detonator drivers and overclocking tools to squeeze and extra 10% out of my Voodoo graphics cards so I could get a slightly higher figure in a Quake 3 timedemo. Luckily I got better.

I liken it to wine. If you spend years educating your palette and seeking out multiple flavours and aromas contained within a glass of wine then as the years pass you will get more and more selective about what you drink until you narrow down your choices of what is acceptable / desirable. Me I'm happy with a £5 bottle of Hardy's Crest.

If you can get excited about the difference between 2x and 4x AA on a windscreen wiper then that's your prerogative - I couldn't give two shits myself.

Trousers may be an old, old man, but I luffs him.

He's the youngest old man I know!

I think you're missing the point though Trousers.

My point was when graphics actually change a game and make it better, rather than just making it look nicer. For example the enormous draw distances in Fallout 3 allowed me to (when I was levelled up quite highly on aim) take out enemies before they even knew I existed. Which would not have been possible if it wasn't for the fact I could see a 5mm dot on the horizon and start taking shots at it with my sniper rifle. It also allowed me to see situations that I might not have been healthy enough for nor could be bothered with drawn out battles that would cost me stimpaks and ammo.

Look back at an older racing game with horrific pop up and terrible draw distances. Then look at a modern one where you can see a half mile of track in front of you. Which would be the better and easier to play? I mean, seeing more track is surely better yes?

That's the point I'm making. I'm not being anal (as I usually would over particles and such) and I'm not saying that it happens very often (because I accept that it doesn't) but graphics can change a game's play, not just what it looks like.

Really, if graphics don't matter at all then we would all still be playing Mario in 2d because Mario 64 wouldn't be ness.

Ah, but look at an individual frame of a movie and what do you see? Big blurs of arms swooping around and so on. The motion blur in each frame makes it smooth. It's a hard effect to recreate with polygons so most frames are of a perfect static image. This makes them appear more jerky.

Thats also why stop motion and cartoons can look a little weird.

(Not enought for me to care about mind)

I'm not saying they don't matter - I'm saying the differences between Fallout 3 on a 360 and Fallout 3 on a PC don't do anything for me.

I enjoyed Fallout 3 and played it for 80+ hours. I can't see that the difference you cite would have fundamentally changed that experience - if anything it would have either made the game too easy or made it less intense. Picking off pixels on the horizon is all well and good but making your enemies legs not work through the poisoned crossbow and watching then hobble about was a massive part of the fun for me.

Also I had no problems picking off most enemies before they knew I was there. And Fallout 3 is significantly worse on my PC than it was on my Xbox.

An older racing game was running on older hardware and they made the tradeoff to have popup so that the stuff nearer to you would look nicer. If they'd made it all just plain untextured polygons they could have had unlimited draw distance.

Same thing with any game, really. You could quite easily do a vast draw distance in anything if you're willing to compromise on spangly textures and effects. And don't forget, many games of yore DID have huge draw distances. You could see capital ships from great distances in X-Wing, you could see huge amounts in Frontier, you could see for miles in old versions of Flight Simulator, you could see a LONG way in SEAL Team (an early squad-based FPS)

Good. Then maybe my point that to 90% of the living world graphics DO MATTER is becoming clear. If they didn't people wouldn't buy new consoles. And there wouldn't have been the mass warfare over how much better the graphics were on the C64 as opposed to the Spectrum. Or how the Atari ST was supposedly better for it's sound capabilities, and so on and so on.

I find it utterly amazing that people can tell me that graphics don't bother them. Poppycock. If graphics did not matter we would all still be playing pong.



Right, because it's all about making the best looking games. And, I remember STARKLY when I got my Saturn all of the PSX owners saying that the PSX had better 3d graphics.

Sorry what's the maximum resolution of the best selling console this generation again?

I gather you mean the Wii yes?

Well now you're talking about a wavey wand motion controller which none of the other formats have. Without that? See how many it would sell being as it's basically a gamecube in a smaller case.

Which of course sells because of it's controller. Which has a lot in common with graphics progressing and making things more realistic. However, graphics have been the dominant force in gaming as the controller itself hasn't changed many times over the years. We went from a pad with two buttons through about ten different incarnations with extra buttons. Then Nintendo took us analogue, now nintendo has introduced us to motion controls.

Zardoz, see the above. Then add one golden cash cow that you can pull the tits of because you have this controller. Without the controller that's the same game that we played many years ago.

Graphics did matter more than they do now though JC. Today even the lowly DS can display 3d worlds quite convincingly. GamePLAY is what's important now. To me anyway.

The point is that graphics don't matter as much any more. It's not like the differences between C64 and Spectrum or NES and SNES or even PS1 and Xbox... I think it was DocG who said to me (with the Dreamcast) that now we're at the stage where you can depict just about anything you want in a game and it'll be crisp, clear and nice looking. All we're doing now is adding increasingly hard to notice frippery.

Now they need to (and I think, are) able to concentrate on gameplay again. Except on PC, of course, where there's still that cadre of fanatics who need to render beads of sweat or sleep-crusties in their character's eyes or something to show how big their epenis is.

Well I might be the only one that feels this way, or, I might be the only one who has a DX11 gaming machine with Dirt 2. But I do see DX11 as the next step forward. I mean, it might even be that Codemasters have just pushed the envelope with Dirt 2 but I don't think so. I know it wasn't the same in DX9 and all of the extra realism things I have noticed in DX11 make it feel like I'm playing something new, something different.

In a very similar way to how I felt when I played Mario 64 all those years ago, or Half Life. I mean really dude. If graphics didn't matter why would we get 1290384988934789389738478374 new graphics cards every week? All faster, bigger and better? Surely if graphics didnt matter Nvidia and ATI would go out of business wasting all that money on things people don't buy?

I do hope that people understand here that in usual normal circumstances I would agree. Graphics do not a good game make. However, in certain circumstances and when the wind is blowing in the right direction and circumstances are just right? they do.

Doom 3 used Direct X 9. It was supposed to change gaming, it didn't. Half Life 2 on the other hand? did. It used things in DX9 that were not possible before to create a new gaming experience, not just the better graphics.

MA. I agree ! graphics matter far less before the big 3d boom than they do now. Gameplay is the most critical element of any game. What I am saying though is that 90% of the world will choose a game that looks better over one that doesn't. I've seen a lot of 360 owners bash on PS3 owners because the graphics on the 360 are better. Infact, ask a 360 owner what he would prefer and why and he will list that as one of the reasons why he has a 360. Maybe not the most important one, maybe the least important depending on personality, but it will be there for sure.
Of course game play is important dude. I've not once said that it isn't the singlemost important thing in a game. What I've been saying is that when you take a great game that's great because of its' gameplay and you add to it graphically it makes for a better game. No, graphics are not the most important part of a game, but they do play a part. And, when they change quite a lot they make a big difference.

This is how I saw the past few pages:

I've always assumed that the PS3 had slightly better graphics capability than the 360 (not sure if that's true?), but to me, they're much the same anyway. There are plenty of other reasons to bash the PS3 anyway.