19 replies to this topic

[Masterrix]

Hallo guys


MWO's graphics are [bizarre]

on the one side, the effects are looking great, like to expect in 2013

on the other side, the terrain looks terrible, like from a videogame of 2005
- low detailed terrain textures
- boring colours
- lame lightning
- generic, unorganic landscapes


Are there any plans to overhaul the terrain graphics like WoT has done it 1 year ago ???

I would really like to see a boost here:
- high res terrain textures
- stronger colours and lightning
- smooth, organic landscapes


Since Closed Beta, MWOs graphics traveled backwards
....because PGIs engineers arent able to use the engine effectively enough to offer a solid relationship between graphic quality and sys requirements

MWO has the most powerful engine of all F2P games.....
....but at the moment, MWO looks worser than WoT (after 8.0), WarThunder and others, while having higher system reqirements
The system requirements are even higher than these of Crysis2, which is using the same engine with better overall visuals

the current terrain graphics....
- ...are NOT what I would expect from a game of 2013
- ...are NOT what I would expect from a CryEngine game
- ...are NOT what I would expect from game with these sys requirements

.

Edited by Niko Snow, 30 May 2013 - 09:48 AM.

[Syllogy]

Yes, they are going to be optimized and overhauled.

It's pretty far down the priority list, there are only a couple of environmental artists, and they are also working on the 3 new maps.

Once there is a healthy variety of maps, I'm sure that the older maps will be revisited and touched up.

[Duncan Jr Fischer]

I frantically agree with the topic starter!
It's not hard to see why the camera automaticaly switches to external when the mech falls - or else we'd be beaten in the face by some giant terrain pixel.
It's nice to hear that the textures and lighting may get overhauled in the future, it may add to better perception, but it will hardly help with what the TS called 'unorganic landscapes'. Maps are the weakest point in the whole game now. They are too few, they are one-color, they look like artificial arenas, there's little sense of scale, no sense of a real place. Luckily we have River City, it's nearly perfect from all sides and makes us hope for the best in the future. Caustic Valley is maybe the second acceptable one.

Still, being not a stranger to gamedev, I perfectly understand that the team of 50 people is a really small force for such a project. I'm amazed to see they have actually made such a fantastic progress in this rather short period.
So I just wish many new talented cadres and great inspiration to the team and hope that in time we'll see MWO grow and have its first and second priority goals achieved. By that time I guess devs will have much less issues with the engine and much more workforce to polish out the graphical side and actually give us some great 31-st century places to fight on.
Best regards)

[coolcook007]

I wonder why the closed beta game looked so much better..

[Adridos]

coolcook007, on 29 May 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

I wonder why the closed beta game looked so much better..

... and ran so much worse.

[Sephlock]

" on the other side, the terrain looks terrible, like from a videogame of 2005" Those same maps have been stomped upon by countless mechs over these past few months- its only natural that it look terrible .

[Tennex]

its not that bad. tehres some dispalcement mapping too..

alpine is terrible though. because of texture popins.

Edited by Tennex, 29 May 2013 - 03:12 PM.

[Sephlock]

Tennex, on 29 May 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

its not that bad. tehres some dispalcement mapping too..

alpine is terrible though. because of texture popins.

[Veebora]

Indeed yesterday I played Crysis 3 for the first time, and I got astonished by the graphics quality, above any expectations I had.

It is really obvious that MWO is just scratching the engine potential.

[Tennex]

coolcook007, on 29 May 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

I wonder why the closed beta game looked so much better..

graphics are bad now because they are choosing to go a new art direction.

mechs now have dark lines over the boarders almost like they want them to look cell shaded.


very ugly in my opinion
and if its meant to be wear and tear, they are not doing it right.

[Ralgas]

Still locked to DX9, once dx11 is running (damn memory leaks!!) it'll be purdy

[Duncan Jr Fischer]

Tennex, on 29 May 2013 - 10:38 PM, said:

graphics are bad now because they are choosing to go a new art direction.

mechs now have dark lines over the boarders almost like they want them to look cell shaded.


very ugly in my opinion
and if its meant to be wear and tear, they are not doing it right.

I haven't noticed that yet, but I'd agree that cell shading is absolutely not the direction to go. It became trendy, but even the latest games with cell shading are graphically terrible, they are famous for their gameplay, not the looks. And MechWarrior is no comic book to make all those black outlines.

Sephlock, on 29 May 2013 - 03:30 PM, said:

...

Other than getting stuck, in these screenshots it's seen that BJ's textures are obviously more blurry than the rock texture.
Also I have to say that though the rocks seem detailed, can you really imagine getting out of your cockpit to the level of a normal human height and looking at the same very rocks without a doubt? They would look strange. And sometimes it's funny to look at the MWO maps like that. There is surely a good amount of effort though, but the perception just fails to believe..

Look at some modern FPS shooter and just put giant mechs in there - they will work just fine. As the maps are scaled to humans, there are big objects, there is cover for infantry and lots of small objects with even smaller details that create perfect sense of scale that lets us feel normal and have the sence of presense. In MWO the stuff is primarily scaled to 10 meter machines and the human eye has so little human scale detail to feel his normal size in normal environment. If you just put camera on the floor in MWO it won't feel good for some infantryman, just try to imagine it.

[Adridos]

Duncan Jr Fischer, on 30 May 2013 - 03:01 AM, said:

If you just put camera on the floor in MWO it won't feel good for some infantryman, just try to imagine it.

Or put one of the mech models in some CryEngine 3 level and spawn in the testing FPS mode. One could hardly believe how big those things are... mostly because of the failed perception. I mean, they do have details like tiny windows and doors, cars and such, but it all comes flat as you don't notice those in the heat of combat. Game being all about heat of combat, there is little reason to stop and look around to actually notice it and then most people see it just like any other shooter in terms of scale.

[Fooooo]

The textures aren't too bad.

Alpine is the worst.


Are you running on very high settings ? Or a custom CFG with even higher ?


If not, then yeah it looks pretty crap on the lowest settings.......


The textures dont look any worse imo than the normal ones from crysis2/3 or the defaults in the sandbox..........



As for scale vs a human ??

Here is a few shots from one of my WIPsolaris maps with the scale atlas model in for reference..... Those dirt textures are almost identical to the ones in MWO....at least on canyons. Even the rocks look similar.

A human would be fine running around in most of the maps imo.


Hmm, maybe I should have put the human model in next to them.......but anyway they reach about just above half the atlas's shin.

Spoiler

Edited by Fooooo, 30 May 2013 - 06:28 AM.

[Viper69]

Ralgas, on 29 May 2013 - 10:43 PM, said:

Still locked to DX9, once dx11 is running (damn memory leaks!!) it'll be purdy

Only if you utilize it. If you are running graphics detailed for DX9 they wont look any better by using DX 11 magically. All the graphics then need to be up-scaled to make use of DX11? DX11 does not magically transform DX9 graphics into pretty DX11 graphics.

Edited by Viper69, 30 May 2013 - 06:33 AM.

[Coolant]

I agree mostly with OP, but PGI has sooooo many things on their plate that they have promised is coming...by September...that the graphics I'm sure is on the agenda but a low priority. I at least hope it's a low priorty, because there are MANY features that have a small window of just 4 months till launch to get in and PGI hasn't exactly raised the bar on content release...

[KovarD]

Fooooo, on 30 May 2013 - 06:18 AM, said:

Here is a few shots from one of my WIPsolaris maps with the scale atlas model in for reference..... Those dirt textures are almost identical to the ones in MWO....at least on canyons. Even the rocks look similar.

A human would be fine running around in most of the maps imo.


Hmm, maybe I should have put the human model in next to them.......but anyway they reach about just above half the atlas's shin.

Spoiler

Ouch my eyes. Do you want to give me eye cancer with this oversatured colors?

[Ocilfa]

Those screenshots from above must be on lowered settings or something. I run this at max setting, and it doesn't look that bad.

[Blue Footed Booby]

KovarD, on 30 May 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

Ouch my eyes. Do you want to give me eye cancer with this oversatured colors?

I've seen that look in lots of modded games. I don't know whether it's an overreaction to lots of games being really bland, a lack of understanding of the concept of too much of a good thing, or just mods being made by people who never go outside.

Or maybe it's because the people who make that stuff have terrible monitors?

Anyway, I don't get it. How do you look at something like that and not only think it looks good, but specifically think that it's more realistic? Lots of people evidently do.

Ocilfa, on 30 May 2013 - 11:09 AM, said:

Those screenshots from above must be on lowered settings or something. I run this at max setting, and it doesn't look that bad.

There are lots of things that should cast shadows that don't, and terrain ambient occlusion seems to be either non existant or so understated it's invisible. Both of those are things that can be toggled at will and don't require additional assets, so I suspect PGI has them turned down to compensate for the performance loss that comes with all the telemetry and logging stuff that betas always have.

[Fooooo]

Blue Footed Booby, on 31 May 2013 - 05:39 AM, said:

I've seen that look in lots of modded games. I don't know whether it's an overreaction to lots of games being really bland, a lack of understanding of the concept of too much of a good thing, or just mods being made by people who never go outside.

Or maybe it's because the people who make that stuff have terrible monitors?

Anyway, I don't get it. How do you look at something like that and not only think it looks good, but specifically think that it's more realistic? Lots of people evidently do.

I posted those pics to show that the default textures in the sandbox for cryengine 3, and the ones from Crysis 2, are pretty much the same quality as what we have in MWO right now.

Not to show that what I did was more realistic or better coloured or anything.

So not sure where you got that from.


So someone complaining that crysis 2 or 3 looks better just because of textures has no idea what they are going on about.


Oh wait I see your sig, lol nvm..........