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[Digital Foundry] Are Current Generation Graphics A Bit Of A Let Down?

Bojji

Member
people obsessed with graphics aren't real gamers

But there is almost no progress in gaming other than graphics, games from over a decade ago have very similar gameplay to current games. There is even regress, TW3 from 2015 is still much better game than over 90% of games released in recent years. Most "RPG" games have dogshit side quests and average main quest plus weak ass stories. They learned nothing...
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
No? We're hitting the ceiling of manhours and diminishing returns, maybe some broken pipelines. But right now even smaller teams can make absolute visual bangers like SH2 remake.

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Same here. I think graphics are amazing.
I had a doubt how much better graphics can get compared to tlou2... and they did. a lot.
The problem is manhours indeed.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I can't go back to 30 fps now. The difference between 30 and 60 is huge. Going from 60 to 120fps seems overrated though.
it is a big difference. it always was.
But it's all in your brain. If you play 240hz a bit, then 60fps sucks too.
but you can go back to anything.... granted it's not a botched 30fps and motion blur is correct.
Compare 30fps demons souls ps5 to 30fps bloodborne. Demons souls is unplayable and slow. BB controls just fine. really responsive.
With devs botching 30fps so badly these days... 40fps is the new 30.
 

intbal

Member
it is a big difference. it always was.
But it's all in your brain. If you play 240hz a bit, then 60fps sucks too.
but you can go back to anything.... granted it's not a botched 30fps and motion blur is correct.
Compare 30fps demons souls ps5 to 30fps bloodborne. Demons souls is unplayable and slow. BB controls just fine. really responsive.
With devs botching 30fps so badly these days... 40fps is the new 30.
Pixel response matters a lot, too.
30fps on a 60hz VA panel can generally look fine.
 

Venom Snake

Member
Graphics are fine and they have been since Doom 3 and Half Life 2.
What we need is more interactivity with environment, objects, fire, water simulation, physics, smart AI. Also strong artistic direction and not photorealism.
This requires talent which is lacking nowadays.

I agree with that.

We are debating a underwhelming generational leap in a world of diminishing returns, where people are forced to pay several thousand dollars for debatably satisfactory gains.

I miss the era when technological progress along with the increase in visual quality offered greater possibilities for the player. I wonder if in times of industy's attachment to mass appeal we can still recreate this feeling, i'm sick of constant pondering about the accuracy of reflections or shit you need 300% zoom to detect in lifeless and uninspiring environments, good graphics should be the icing on the cake, not a substitute for creativity.

That being said, i don't care about the graphical leap as much as any of the things you mentioned.
 
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I knew PS5 pro being a good cost/benefit machine woudl ruffle some feathers on DF (which is a clown channel since the beginningof this generation), but i never thought they would do a 180 turn so suddently :-D
 

SABRE220

Member
it is a big difference. it always was.
But it's all in your brain. If you play 240hz a bit, then 60fps sucks too.
but you can go back to anything.... granted it's not a botched 30fps and motion blur is correct.
Compare 30fps demons souls ps5 to 30fps bloodborne. Demons souls is unplayable and slow. BB controls just fine. really responsive.
With devs botching 30fps so badly these days... 40fps is the new 30.
Bloodborne is hardly an example of good 30fps its framepacing is all over the place but agreed 30fps titles nowadays have little effort put in getting input lag etc right
 
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Yoboman

Member
Its really just the software hasn't lined up due to the length of dev times and need of cross gen, and it's only a few Devs who set the bar for the rest of the industry to follow

Rockstar and Naughty Dog set the bar for graphics but both have been absent due to long dev times and having late gen releases last gen

Santa Monica and Guerrilla are also up there for graphics tech but both were early gen enough to be cross gen limited

DS2 is looking like one of the games to finally push the boundaries on a full next gen Decima

The reality moving forward is these show pieces will only come a few times per gen while the rest of the industry tinkers with graphics that are 5+ years behind

Next gen will go through the same
 

deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
Graphics of past gen were already nice, and running at 60fps should be the rule

Ray tracing and some stuff can be applied on some games to make a difference, but not all. We should focus on physics and new mechanics, maybe even development methods to make the games not that big
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Bloodborne is hardly an example of good 30fps its framepacing is all over the place but agreed 30fps titles nowadays have little effort in getting input lag etc right
some framepacing issues there. sure. but nothing too bad.
as a reward though, that's one of most responsive 30fps games.
 

simpatico

Member
The cost of ray tracing plays the biggest part in how we look at it. The GPU required vs what you need for Uncharted 4 and Red Dead 2 just isn't worth it. Especially when you factor in the benefits only coming into play in very specific lighting and ToD conditions. Broad daylight is very flat unless the dev throws some volumetric fog in there. You gotta have overcast and wet. Bonus points for neon and fog. Anything else and you don't really notice it, but your wallet does.

Another concern is the tech is so good that artists don't have to put much effort into getting a game to look great in terms of tech. You see all these games using stock UE5 effects and assets and they all kinda blend together. It's kinda like UE3 all over again in terms of saturation and visual likeness amongst disparate games. At least UE3 was really perf friendly. There really aren't many classics using the uber expensive tech. Cyberpunk might be the only one. Making that value prop even weaker. Hell, we don't even have formally announced games that beckon GPU upgrades right now.

SH2 is a great example. Bloober got let off the hook BIGLY just for using some stock UE5 fog and playing with ray traced lighting through broken windows. If people had to actually judge the game by how it played, I think it pulls in 5-7 review averages.

When devs had to hack and cheat to make tech effects stand out from the pack, we got a little natural selection going on that lifted the entire medium. Now it's just who has the balls to release a game that 1% of the gaming public can reasonably run (Wukong).
 
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TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Pixel response matters a lot, too.
30fps on a 60hz VA panel can generally look fine.
Indeed a Higher Refresh rate can improve clarity, moment and stability of the picture even at 30fps or even Film content
 
They are partly to blame among other things, because 80% they talk about resolution and framerate. Imagine if some developers could target 1440p or even 1080p at 30 fps. They could quickly make everyone but the cultists forget about these metrics because they would melt our faces.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
I don't mind a "gamey" looking videogame that is not pushing tech or graphics, but the performances have to match what you have on screen.

There's a lot of shit optimized games so far into the gen and the crossgen stretched way too fucking long.
 

ZehDon

Member
I've said it before, but its worth repeating: game development pipelines have changed, and are continuing to change, to prioritise the developer. That means a push to real time, a push for more programmatic solutions, a push for engines to handle more and more out of the box. And that costs extra CPU cycles, extra memory, and extra frames. Graphics can't improve if games are struggling to hit 30FPS because the developer used every real time effect in the book to speed up development so they could actually ship a game before they went bankrupt. Why is this happening? Because AAA games take as long as an entire console generation and $300m to make now. Even Sony, who spent USD$250m on titles like TLOU2 on the PS4, isn't seeing enough return on their investment to justify this kind of expense anymore. Something has to give. Combined with the seeming collapse of the western AAA sphere as Asia resurges back into dominance, a lot of developers are just trying to stay in the game. As more AAA studios go under, I believe we'll continue to see the top talents re-form new AA studios, licence an Engine, and ship a AA game with a dramatically smaller budget - and that means less developers pushing the limits of the hardware.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
Marching Orders to get people ready for Next Gen even though a year ago they was telling us PlayStation Pro wasn't needed 😂

Nothing you said was a lie, but it'll be ignored as you pushing a conspiracy...

They were absolutely talking about how mid gen refreshes weren't needed (and are still downplaying the Pro, or isolating it) yet they're also talking about so many concessions being needed in games right now.

They also call out grifters on youtube pedaling negativity to generate clicks/views in the most ironic things I've seen in a while.
 

Chronos24

Member
Where the real jump needs to happen is not in the graphics anymore but the intelligence of the game itself. We need better interaction with NPC's and enemies and other objects within. We need better physics like TotK has done and go even further on that and look at the hardware that was on! We've got great looking games, now it's time to have smarter games overall.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
You can quote me back from years and years ago. This generation and the current advancements have been about immediacy. Complex rendered graphics loading faster than ever. Load times reminiscent of the cart days.

You have graphical, API, SW, and HW advancements. It's still a pretty exciting time despite HW issues on some PC components.

Underwhelming mainly due to creativity. Not technically.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
I've said it before, but its worth repeating: game development pipelines have changed, and are continuing to change, to prioritise the developer. That means a push to real time, a push for more programmatic solutions, a push for engines to handle more and more out of the box. And that costs extra CPU cycles, extra memory, and extra frames. Graphics can't improve if games are struggling to hit 30FPS because the developer used every real time effect in the book to speed up development so they could actually ship a game before they went bankrupt. Why is this happening? Because AAA games take as long as an entire console generation and $300m to make now. Even Sony, who spent USD$250m on titles like TLOU2 on the PS4, isn't seeing enough return on their investment to justify this kind of expense anymore. Something has to give. Combined with the seeming collapse of the western AAA sphere as Asia resurges back into dominance, a lot of developers are just trying to stay in the game. As more AAA studios go under, I believe we'll continue to see the top talents re-form new AA studios, licence an Engine, and ship a AA game with a dramatically smaller budget - and that means less developers pushing the limits of the hardware.

I am very curious how that Rebel Moons game turns out. It’s basically exactly what you described here.
 
Can play a comparable looking version on a ps4….

We are in a very disappointing era of graphics.
Thats true, but it doesnt nullify the fact it still It looks more next gen than the new Final Fantasy game. It comes down to talent, budget and games engines. Hardware is just an excuse for poor optimization.

Horizon Forbidden West, a big open world games with swiming, flying and climbing, has high quality textures and industry leading facial capture tech, but cost over 200M to develop. Spiderman 2, a well optimized open world game with ray tracing, Machine learning tech and instant loading, but cost over 200M. Read Dead Redemption is one of the most densely filled open world world games ever created and cost over 350M to develop. Next gen looking games are not coming from AA games or devs with less than 150M. Calistol Protocol cost 160M, but even that game was linear and short. It had potential, but some people just didnt like the combat and story.

The only games that are pushing graphics forward come from western devs studios, but people say Japanese devs are carrying the industry after releasing a million souls like clones, and no one has issues with those games looking last gen with middling optimization. We've heard it before from Japanese devs own mouths that they cant compete with western dev studios but people are letting their political alliances get in the way of actually enjoying next gen looking games. Naughty Dog released a trailer for Intergalactic, showing their in game engine graphics at the game awards that impressed Digital Foundry, but the only thing gamers want to focus on, is the fact the main character isnt a waifu. Same thing for Ghost of Yotei.

I think people( reddit and neogaf) just want next gen looking games from non western devs studios, but thats rarely ever going to happen. Black myth Wukong is the exception, but it was built on the Unreal Engine that specializes in high quality asset streaming, and even then its still a souls like, poor optimized linear game with invisible walls and limited enviormental interactions. I enjoyed it, but it was no where near one of the best games I ever played, which is a prerequisite for winning GOY.
 
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BeardSpike

Member
Remember when crossgen games had this level of difference





And these are third party developers.

And we see that games look cleaner, instead of mess we have now. Which is why someone can say "yes, no, maybe" - games look plenty of fine, diminishing returns or not.

Just ports seem rushed, not all of games mind you, just as it happens mostly UE5 games...

Which also runs horribly on PC.

And i mean, like one of the least optimized games ever made. They even render the whole town under the fog, despite you not being able to see it. It's completely ridiculous.
Yeah, I hope devs get more competent at optimization again but these are costs so publishers and probably some devs are with mentality why spend time on it when AI will take care of the rest.

And also why use proper AA techniques, when we can blur the image with one technique and people will use ML Upscalers to clean up the image.

What is laughable is that there are some modders which do better optimization work than the actual devs of some games, look at SH2 Remake mods for example. No loss in visuals, 20 to 30% more performance.

With all that in mind, I've been eyeballing RX 9070XT and will see reviews in a week or so - if AMD actually finally competes with FSR4.

Since PS5 Pro is a test ground for PS6, I doubt industry will go back now on ML Upscalers.

As there are mods to change FSR to DLSS. there are also mods to change DLSS to FSR3 or XeSS. I bet modders will find a solution to mod DLSS to FSR4 too - and I have held my ground till now with upgrade, will held some more see what's what.
 

Allandor

Member
Keep demanding 60 and 120fps and graphics will always “underwhelm”
This. Even with 60fps we are where we were with ps4pro/xboX at 30fps. Maybe a bit more, but most comes from more memory. With 120fps we are ... well at about ps4/xbo level, with more memory.

On PC we see what's more or less possible, more or less. Most times, it is just to resource-intensive in development to make it better. More than 5 years of development time, is currently the limit.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
They are partly to blame among other things, because 80% they talk about resolution and framerate. Imagine if some developers could target 1440p or even 1080p at 30 fps. They could quickly make everyone but the cultists forget about these metrics because they would melt our faces.
Bingo.

These fools spent the entire generation focusing on pixel counting and 60 fps not realizing that consoles are simply not powerful to do 60 fps and push next gen graphics. Consoles have never been powerful enough to do that. Thats why every gen the best looking games target 30 fps.

They praise devs who do the bare minimum. They trash devs who actually push the bar. Devs who produce last gen games get a pass. Devs who actually try and take risks get trashed.
 

Madflavor

Member
My main disappointment is how in the late 80s to around 2014 (when the 8th gen started), video games took huge graphical leaps between generations, and it consistently took 1-2 years for a developer to push out a new game, maybe 3 years.

Now we're seeing little cute and adorable graphical baby steps, and games take 2-3x longer to make.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Funny video; to be fair John Linneman explains the situation perfectly, but I did have to laugh at them calling out negative "grifters".

Like, HELLO, that's been DF's gimmick since day fucking one!

Naming "winners" and "losers" like they did in their Face-offs for years, often for comparatively minor discrepancies in frame-rate and resolution... How's that not cashing in on negativity?

Its why I've always had a bone to pick with them; its never felt to me like DF was about celebrating achievement or artistry, but nit-pickery and petty point-scoring between brands and platforms.
 

Vaquilla

Member
The leap from PS4/XBO to PS5/Series is definitely the smallest generational leap in my lifetime, and I started gaming on the SNES. The trend of devs leaning heavily on image reconstruction from low resolutions also tends to produce poor image quality.

That said, I'm hardly a stickler for the latest and greatest technology, hell my primary gaming system is the Switch, and even some Gamecube games still look nice to me. It's more about good optimization and a pleasing art style than raw numbers in my view.
 

bundylove

Member
Lolololol.

My god i feel so lost in this world .

The real question is. Are current devs and corporate shills a let down? Thats an absolute. Absolutely yes.

There is zero intelligent questions, topics, news, rumors etc in the gaming industry and community.

Hey digital foundry and corporate fucks. We are all in our 40's. Treat us as such. And not like idiots.

Graphics are a let down get the fuck outta here lol
 
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onQ123

Member
My main disappointment is how in the late 80s to around 2014 (when the 8th gen started), video games took huge graphical leaps between generations, and it consistently took 1-2 years for a developer to push out a new game, maybe 3 years.

Now we're seeing little cute and adorable graphical baby steps, and games take 2-3x longer to make.


A big part of that is the cost of RAM & Storage , we could get games that look like it's from a different generation compared to what we have now but this game would have to stream data to RAM from the storage at a high rate which would be a game 500GB - 1TB but who would buy a game that takes of the full storage of their console?

Moving to Digital Downloads & Games that have to be installed instead of larger disk formats meant that devs had to make the most of the storage they have .


Cloud gaming could give us the 500GB & 1TB games but then quality is loss streaming it to us :messenger_loudly_crying:
 

kunonabi

Member
The last two games I was impressed with visually were Silent Hill 3 and the first Dead Rising for all the zombies it was able to put on screen.
 

Jesb

Member
I don’t think so. But I’d be speaking based on pc performance via gfn. A game like Indiana Jones is the type of quality I’m happy with. Great looking game, fully maxed out in 4K and getting 100+FPS. I expect certain games to be real standouts visually like GTA6, RE9 and intergalactic just to name a few.
 

Edder1

Member
Other than criticising poor performance DF have lost their ability to criticise graphics, along with losing their ability to have detailed analysis videos breaking down graphics tech. Their inclusion of games like 2D Super Mario and other indie titles in their best looking games of the year in recent years shows that they dont care all that much about graphical progress. It's all about "artistic vision" and other such bs nowadays.
 
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viveks86

Member
Pretty much every ue5 game they review.
They praised hellblade 2 and avowed. Black myth wukong PC was praised. Console version was mixed and deservedly so. Just bizarre decisions with each mode.

Silent hill 2 was mixed due to performance issues. So that seemed deserved as well. Though I do feel Alex is getting a bit too whiny about stutters on PC and leaving technical deep dives incomplete.

I feel like UE5 did deserve the early criticism and DF did their part. Though I believe it will redeem itself after 5.6.
 

kevboard

Member
Pretty much every ue5 game they review.


DF doesn't go hard enough when it comes to that dogshit engine imo. They still blindly praise RT GI just for being present, even if it looks like diarrhea in basically all UE5 games.
when you have to install mods and do manual .ini tweaks to get a game like Silent Hill 2 to not look like absolute garbage, then there's nothing worth praising.


and the post you quoted about how great games would look if they pushed graphics at 1080p 30fps is quite hilarious in combination with trying to say UE5 games get too much criticism.

UE5 at its core, completely breaks apart at low resolutions like 1080p.
nearly everything in UE5 is dithered. as in, basically imagine if every single shadow, every single cloud you see in the sky, every single strand of hair, is missing half the pixels in a checkerboard pattern... that's how UE5 works by default.

UE5 is designed entirely around being upsampled and reconstructed, as a clean non smeared image would make games look broken. the smearing from reconstruction and/or agressive TAA is needed, while also making everything look blurred and adds ghosting.
so low resolution games in UE5 rely entirely on denoising and upscaling to create anything resembling a remotely coherent looking image... and often fails at doing so.

TLDR: 1080p 30fps in UE5 in its default form looks disgusting, as most effects it uses would run at basically checkerboard 1080p, then get smeared over multiple frames to hide that fact.
the only type of UE5 game that would look good at 1080p 30fps is one that basically uses none of its features and runs with only mid-last-gen UE4 level features like Gears 5 or Gears 4 for example... that's the only way to make a 1080p UE5 game look presentable, at which point you can just as well run that game at dynamic 4k 60fps... like Gears 5...
 
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I can't go back to 30 fps now. The difference between 30 and 60 is huge. Going from 60 to 120fps seems overrated though.
60fps looks like a blurry mess compared to 120fps. However, for anyone satisfied with 60fps - don't try 120fps or you won't be able to go back.

30fps is heresy.

I don't want consoles to ever target 120fps however.

As long as they target 60fps, I'll just buy a more powerful PC GPU to obtain 4k120.
 
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