FAO FRONTIER: List of Graphical Changes / Issues for since Patch 1.3

ozrix84 · Jul 11, 2015

Tinman said:
As for the last image of the "console" the resolution looks pretty much the same to me overall (slight UV mapping differences disregarded). The older version does however have more contrast, brighter colours and more "character" with coffee stains all over, but the actual resolution looks the same.

Why your images looks much worse I can't say for sure. All I can say is that my images have both been dumped raw out of the game on the same machine with the exact same hardware on both occasions. It does however look like the top image of yours (which I guess you found somewhere on the internet) have some sharpening applied to it. I'm not saying you have applied that though...

As I said in out previous conversation in that other thread. Certain parts of the model might have "lower texture detail" while others have higher, but this is mostly seems to be a UV mapping issue between the different styles IMO. Not a "lower res issue".

This isn't really going anywhere, I may as well doubt the validity of your images. Fact is that there's alpha footage out there that does the job. The new look is still washed out and less defined in comparison. The tubes and stuff are better (and confirmed to look better on my setup too), but they're outside your normal view, so aren't really a performance issue anyway. In contrast, the front of the cockpit is. And Frontier did ask for feedback on cockpit performance way back.

Here's some footage, and early in the video, there's plenty of proper lighting to get a good idea. Anyone can compare that with their own experience in-game.

[video=youtube;bVjvRSVmRxo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVjvRSVmRxo[/video]

Pecisk said:
So as it stands it is a bug or driver issue...not overall graphics downgrade.

Can we close subject now? And concentrate on actual bugs and reporting them?

Thank you.

Mate, if you don't have anything to bring to the table... There are many more things apart from the cockpits that got the 2008 treatment, but if you insist on calling out myths, driver issues, or bugs, you might as well do yourself a favor and ignore this thread altogether.

xaduha · Jul 11, 2015

Pecisk said:
To explain myself - I meant subject, not this thread I am bit tired of console downgrade urban myth which is still propagated and not challenged despite having no evidence.

Just because you started calling it an urban myth doesn't make it so.

Here's again the comparison with 1.0

http://jsfiddle.net/7frwu46m/1/embedded/result/

If it isn't a downgrade, then when can we expect an option to turn that back on, for those of us who had no trouble running it?

EDIT: To comments about the positioning and lighting - screenshots are made just after it loaded, so there was no positioning by me. It was left to some of the asteroids will be in the same place.

Also, a lesson in logic, for those who provide examples of improvements in other areas. Let's say there's a jar with change. I'm arguing that someone took money from it and provide evidence. You point out that someone also added money to the jar later. That has little to do with what I'm trying to show - that someone indeed took money from the jar.

Tinman · Jul 11, 2015

ozrix84 said:
This isn't really going anywhere...

Agreed, which is why I'll leave this discussion after this post.

ozrix84 said:
I may as well doubt the validity of your images.

I don't "doubt the validity" of your images...I'm saying that that is not what I'm seeing on my end and I'm also showing this with images. The old image in your example does however seem to have some sharpening applied to it...once again. I'm not saying you have applied it.

ozrix84 said:
Fact is that there's alpha footage out there that does the job. The new look is still washed out and less defined in comparison. The tubes and stuff are better (and confirmed to look better on my setup too), but they're outside your normal view, so aren't really a performance issue anyway. In contrast, the front of the cockpit is. And Frontier did ask for feedback on cockpit performance way back.

Here's some footage, and early in the video, there's plenty of proper lighting to get a good idea. Anyone can compare that with their own experience in-game.

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

Once again...I'm a Alpha backer and have played the game since 1.0. I'm well aware of the differences between the look and changes to different shader pipelines and lighting. As I've already said previously...these old images/videos had the lighting baked into the texture and the new game has dynamic lighting and different textures. I'm not contesting that it looks different. (I'm even agreeing that the old dirty look was better IMO)...I'm contesting the claim that the actual resolution have been "downgraded". The video is a bad example to compare with due to compression artifacts when it comes to actual texture resolutions and if I did such a comparison then that old footage would probably look even worse than in my previous post.

When the ship was re-textured the UV-mapping was also redone as part of that process. This will create differences in regards to different parts of the model. Some will be better, some will be worse.

So why did they change it then?

Well, most likely since their "cockpit construction pipeline" was standardized. The Sidewinder was the first ship they modeled and therefore a testing ground for different techniques. Some of these was integrated into the pipeline, some weren't. Eventually they had to go back and redo the Sidewinder though to keep it in line with the standard so that future changes to cockpits in general would be the same across all ships. Otherwise they would have to redo the Sidewinder separately every-time which would be ineffective.

Not saying that IS what happened...just my thoughts...

ozrix84 · Jul 11, 2015

Okay, fair enough. If we would look outside the cockpit for a moment, would you agree that, in asteroid fields for example, the amount of rocks rendered (amongst other things), has been reduced without any means to manually adjust the settings to their original values? Why is it, that with time passing by, and hardware getting faster, the quality seems to be decreasing? FD pride themselves for being future proof, yet stuff like this makes you wonder.

I can understand the process of normalising settings for broad hardware configurations, but why aren't you accommodating the higher end? Why is there such a small gap between low and ultra settings? I don't think that's an accident, more a design decision.

Kafka Datura · Jul 13, 2015

Frankfort said:
why the need for downgrading the graphics for PC and Mac

This is still very unclear, on the scale of the video game industry. The practice is too young to be defined clearly from players and consumers.

It all came back to the Watch Dogs release from Ubi soft where, not only was the game serverly downgraded from what had been shown before, the pc version was very far from what even middle-range computer were able to do. But to make matters worse, some people actually found the missing effects and graphics, and made a mod to give the game its real look - which was way better, and way faster to render. Why ? Because, according to the people maintaining the mod and now many others, the game was actually rendering everything and THEN downgrading itself to a level.

That was the birth of the idea that Ubisoft indulged Sony and Microsoft in making a downgraded version of the game for pc so that next-gen consoles, still young at the time, would not look too bad.

Now, if ED was really downgraded after its release, that would be a first - and I think a lot of people here underestimage the meaning of it.

On my side, I play in ultra in 1080p since 1.0, and the game is not as nearly as good as a lot of screenshot - not only regarding the cockpit, but also the planets rendering. So, no, I don't want this topic closed, I want to know what the hell. I want an answer, or a solution, or an investigation in the matter. We used to be able to take fantastic screenshot of Earth, now it looks like a PS One model.

Gourmand · Jul 14, 2015

I'm disgusted it's a shame the PC downgrade graphics only for match with the x-box verison ....

Ian Phillips · Jul 14, 2015

Gourmand said:
I'm disgusted it's a shame the PC downgrade graphics only for match with the x-box verison ....

You really haven't paid any attention to dev comments have you?

Obsidian Ant · Jul 14, 2015

I will raise this as a bug report, but there is 100% an issue where textures aren't loading in and I have to wonder if this is connected to some of the other graphical changes.

Seems to me that some people aren't all noticing the same problems, and this might explain things. Kafka, mentioned the Earth model - and I have seem screenshots where Earth looks really bad, yet on my PC it looks fine. Anyway - here is a screenshot of Lave Station. On one occasion the textures are complete rubbish, and it remained like this as I flew from station to station. I loaded the game in on another day, and everything looks perfect. All the graphic settings and system settings and drivers are identical in each screenshot.

xaduha · Jul 14, 2015

Ian Phillips said:
You really haven't paid any attention to dev comments have you?

You mean those non-answers? Let me ask a real question - why isn't there an option to turn back that 'dust' effect for systems that can afford it?

But generally, why there isn't much difference between Ultra and Low? Why Ultra looks about the same it looks on Xbox? Some of us have high-end PCs, why isn't there a HQ texture pack available to download, etc?

IronGremlin · Jul 14, 2015

xaduha said:
You mean those non-answers? Let me ask a real question - why isn't there an option to turn back that 'dust' effect for systems that can afford it?

Because it's an acknowledged bug.

Thanks for outing yourself as not paying attention to those 'non answers'

Obsidian Ant · Jul 14, 2015

IronGremlin said:
Because it's an acknowledged bug.

Thanks for outing yourself as not paying attention to those 'non answers'

There's two issues with the dust. The first is that it has been changed and therefore no longer hits performance so hard. In my opinion it no longer looks as good, and I would class it as a "downgrade". However Frontier claim it is an optimization™, because the reduced quality means it runs better on all systems.

The second issue with the fog is indeed a bug, and that is the fog doesn't display in some areas, it simply doesn't get drawn / rendered.

xaduha · Jul 14, 2015

IronGremlin said:
Because it's an acknowledged bug.

Thanks for outing yourself as not paying attention to those 'non answers'

Ok, quote it for me, go on.

Also, you ignored that other part.

Doolittle · Jul 14, 2015

More than likely the PC version will be brought down to the level of the consoles. Seen this many, many, many times before, even when the devs promise the console version will not effect the PC version.

After seeing some recent things in the industry I'll have to completely conclude that this industry is nothing but a bunch of freaking crooks. Seriously. Any dev or manufacturer that makes you a promise you can take to the bank that they will never keep it.

Gourmand · Jul 14, 2015

I paid attention to the screenshot...
dev could say no downgrade, we see the proof of downgrade...

Ian Skippy · Jul 14, 2015

Ignorance is bliss they say, but if that were true this community would be a whole lot happier.

- - - Updated - - -

xaduha said:
Ok, quote it for me, go on.

Also, you ignored that other part.

low/medium/high settings are not fully loaded when switching mid-game. This was confirmed by a dev. You need to restart, even though the game wont ask you to. The pics in the OP were made without leaving the session, and as such didnt change anything at all.

Obsidian Ant · Jul 14, 2015

sleutelbos said:
low/medium/high settings are not fully loaded when switching mid-game. This was confirmed by a dev. You need to restart, even though the game wont ask you to. The pics in the OP were made without leaving the session, and as such didnt change anything at all.

There is a bug in asteroid fields where shadows are not applying when ultra settings are chosen (either that or shadows have been removed). But I've no idea if that is what xaduha is talking about...

Gédéon_Lecanard · Jul 14, 2015

Get ready for a bit of trolling here.

Whoa hey someone could tell me where I could take such a lovely pic ingame? It's from Steam promotional pics, it looks gorgeous!

Could not resist, sorry.

Edit: I might as well give myself the answer: get yourself a time machine and jump into the past, bozo.

n4p0l3on · Jul 25, 2015

let's bump this issue again

what is the latest official stance on this matter?

daygobah · Jul 25, 2015

You must know how to mod the graphic settings. Its not hard to do it yourself. Google it. Youtube even has video tutorials.

Change it yourself. IF you got a super good system crank up the mod of the game files.

Vasea Azure · Jul 25, 2015

daygobah said:
You must know how to mod the graphic settings. Its not hard to do it yourself. Google it. Youtube even has video tutorials.

Change it yourself. IF you got a super good system crank up the mod of the game files.

Sure- but as I said before we should not be force to mess with any config files - we should be able to do this within game options menu.