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How Can A Cryengine Game Be So Ugly?


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#181 Sifright

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Posted 20 February 2013 - 11:54 PM

View Postjakucha, on 20 February 2013 - 11:50 PM, said:


A planet that's engulfed in war would have a ton of dust though, which could muck up all that nature.


Dude just no.

Battle tech army sizes are pathetic.

No planet is ever engulfed in war to the point it would kick up as much dust as mwo makes it look like.

Seriously if you check the men under arms figures for some of the great houses China has a standing army which is about the same number of personnel actually chinas standing army is bigger in some cases.

Edited by Sifright, 20 February 2013 - 11:57 PM.


#182 Havok1978

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Posted 20 February 2013 - 11:58 PM

View PostMavairo, on 20 February 2013 - 11:00 PM, said:


I think RIFT's artwork looks great actually.
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Posted Image Sure there's some duds in the game too, but for the most part it's great quality and great looking art and I like the style most of the time for a fantasy game. The sheer size of the game for as young as it is with the quality level involved is respect worthy if nothing else.

The mechs aren't really my biggest beef with MWO, it's the god awful environments. I think Frozen City Night looks decent if only because it's not layered in the thickest fogging that PGI could throw on everything to hide the sub par texturing.

I've seen alot of the 'it's beta'' guys posting about how this game is going to some how dramatically improve upon launch. Having been in a handful betas in modern games now (STO, RIFT, star wars, this game's, guild wars) the graphics aren't what improves. Stability, does, frame rate will. It's more than likely that what we see now in terms of graphic quality is what we get, which is disappointing given just how beautiful a Cry Engine game can look, and given the performance requirements this game has to get over 30 FPS on high specs.

Do I think MWO is the worst thing ever for being graphically fugly? Not really, but when I see my PC chugging the same load or more than it does in Crysis 1 or 2 I expect abit more you know? Especially with as far along as we are in the development cycle at this point.

And for those that say "I don't want bright vibrant colors that's cartoony!" By the way the corvette photos were taken on a partly cloudy day. And there's more light and vibrancy than you find anywhere in MWO. You can even see the clouds reflecting in my car's clear coat :angry:

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How about in the heart of a forest?
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Life is vibrant, life is bright. Life is colorful. I think people that think otherwise need to either A drive out of the city for a while and get away from all the greys, or B step out of the basement or their rooms during the daylight and take a look outside.


and this, yes life is bright and etc, in someplaces, but take a look at what a "brazilian" sun does to area's also.
the light reflected by objects influences this also, the ocean for example is why the sky is blue persay... <due to reflection cuz the water defintely isnt blue>
http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/
ya this is all kinda geeky and semi-irrelevant but a little informative.. :)
"realistic" coloring is gonna differ per region basicly, but I do agree the graphic colors are a bit... bland.
I think this was done to make desolate places feel desolate and dreary as opposed to "garden worlds"

Edited by Havok1978, 21 February 2013 - 12:01 AM.


#183 jakucha

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 12:02 AM

View PostSifright, on 20 February 2013 - 11:54 PM, said:


Dude just no.

Battle tech army sizes are pathetic.

No planet is ever engulfed in war to the point it would kick up as much dust as mwo makes it look like.

Seriously if you check the men under arms figures for some of the great houses China has a standing army which is about the same number of personnel actually chinas standing army is bigger in some cases.


Okay, well a local area engulfed in war will cause the same effect, just on a smaller scale.

#184 Duncan Jr Fischer

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 12:19 AM

View PostThontor, on 20 February 2013 - 08:49 AM, said:

If you think this game looks "ugly"... You are nuts IMO. Is it the best looking CryEngine game ever? Is it perfect? Maybe not... But its definitely not "ugly."
Behold the beauty:


I also think you are nuts if you think the 2009 MW5 trailer looks better than MWO.
But hey, that's must my opinion.

Care to elaborate on this? MWO's ballistic weapon projectiles are fully modeled in the physics engine... With ballistic drop and everything.


These videos concentrate on mechs, because it's all we have in MWO on the graphics side (not taking fantastic gameplay). Why do you think they had to blacken out everything in this videos? So that the ugliness of the landscapes wouldn't show. But the mechs are really great, it is known. Except they don't feel tall and massive thanks mainly to the environment. The only map that gives some scale feelings is River City.

#185 EgoSlayer

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 12:37 AM

View PostMavairo, on 20 February 2013 - 10:20 AM, said:


Okay, then Trion.

Trion was a tiny company and they've hit it big with RIFT. <snip>


Oh Please... If Trion is your definition of a small company, I'am a billionare. Trion was founded by a former EA Vice President. They had 100 Million in VC when they founded. They spent over $50 Million on Rift http://www.develop-o...budget-over-50m

You know how much Piranha Games raised from Founders? $5 Million, a Far Cry from $100 million in the coffers.

MWO looks fine, not mind blowing and maybe a bit over processed, but hardly ugly. I'd rather have a game that plays well and looks good, than a game that looks stellar but plays like crap. It's the budget that pays for that, yes a "small" company can do it but it takes money. At this point *in beta* more of the budget needs to go to game play and features than to art.

Edited by EgoSlayer, 21 February 2013 - 12:41 AM.


#186 lsp

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 01:56 AM

View PostCaptain Midnight, on 20 February 2013 - 03:24 AM, said:


RL is pretty bright and colorful dude, and I am of the belief that fantasy sci-fi should be MORE extreme, not more bland.

IMO Far Cry 3 is about an appropriate amount of color and realism balanced.

No thanks, Rl is not as colorful as farcry or crysis.

#187 Lil Cthulhu

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 05:33 AM

View PostCybercobra, on 20 February 2013 - 03:41 AM, said:

im sorry but who actualy gives a DAMN about graphics? this game could be running in frikking DOSbox and i would care becouse i play games to have FUN, not to have my eyes sprinkeled with pretty pictures. ill go to a art gallery or a movie if i want that.


I'm sorry but I didn't drop $300 on a graphics card to not care about graphics, While what your are saying for the most part is true, the fact that this game has fairly steep base system requirements more or less negates your premiss.
If I need a high powered, dedicated GPU to run a game in 2013, it better look damn good.

#188 Javok

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 06:29 AM

View PostZapmunk, on 20 February 2013 - 07:01 AM, said:

r_ColorGrading = 0
r_DepthOfField = 0

Half the game's graphics problems solved.


what does it do?

#189 Mechteric

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 06:49 AM

View PostJavok, on 21 February 2013 - 06:29 AM, said:

what does it do?


turns off the color grading and depth of field


wahhhhhh

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 21 February 2013 - 06:49 AM.


#190 Mavairo

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 07:23 AM

View Postjakucha, on 21 February 2013 - 12:02 AM, said:


Okay, well a local area engulfed in war will cause the same effect, just on a smaller scale.


You want dust?

I can think of no dustier local environment caused by man, than the Baja 1000
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Ontop of that Baja is in sections (namely the above) very windy, which makes it very dusty.

How about Iraq during a sandstorm?
Posted Image if this were MWO you wouldn't even be able to see the F16s in the image because it'd be so dark and fogged out.

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What makes the Iraq sand storm images so surreal is that they aren't the norm, even in war time conditions. Vietnam which was a much larger conflict in terms of size, than pretty much anything in BT lore, wasn't a dirty aired greyed out mudhole either.

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[img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WdC_XyuKXlQ/T7ZtQcHZgaI/AAAAAAAAABc/GHo8arQWL3E/s1600/Fog-at-Forest-wallpaper.jpg

Fog rendering outside of weather condition rendering, is something developers steer away from as much as possible for several reasons, not the least of which is that it's very easy to get far too muted on the color schemes. Now if that fog rolled in, and then away again as the battle unfolded that'd be different. But it doesn't. It stays there, every single game. 24/7. It's not a weather effect, and it's not even a real fog condition. It's just drabbed down and muted colors so they could try to hide the poor texturing effects.

#191 Sifright

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 07:40 AM

View Postlsp, on 21 February 2013 - 01:56 AM, said:

No thanks, Rl is not as colorful as farcry or crysis.


Rl is way more colorful than Farcry or Crysis.

#192 GuardDogg

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 08:02 AM

Yeah, would think with the technology we have today, that our games would be so realistic. But game designers do not have the patience. Or yet, when watching a intro of a game, that appears so realistic (awesome), the game is less graphic.

#193 Dukarriope

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 08:24 AM

most of the complaints are coming from the fact the game looks like
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and not like
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or like
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or like
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right?

#194 Shumabot

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 08:31 AM

My only issues with this game are performance, which is a DX issue and a stated concern of PGI, and poor texture quality. Poor texture quality is a mark of poor asset staff, and its all over the place in MWO. Environmental textures in this game are mediocre at best. They're high enough resolution, but I've done in game texture work before, and the texture work for maps specifically (mechs look great) is terrible. There is almost no attention payed to texture weighting along visible paths, so the ground is high resolution, but hills, buildings, and cliff faces, things that players will actually see because it interrupts their line of sight (people don't stare straight down a majority of the time) are stretched and low quality.

Alpine is a perfect example of this. The giant mountain faces appear to be very poorly texture weighted, so asset performance is wasted on the shiny snowy ground that people aren't looking at while muddy and blurry cliff sides that everyone can see at all times look terrible.

If it took seven people several months to make alpine six of them should probably have a frank discussion with the dude responsible for texture weighting and mapping. Also, it did not take seven people several months to make Alpine, that is one months worth of work from one dude.

Edited by Shumabot, 21 February 2013 - 08:32 AM.


#195 Lightfoot

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 09:04 AM

I am told destructable objects are coming. I am looking forward to the day when the buildings start to collapse from collisions and stray rounds on River City. I want to blow out or crash thru the side of a building and power down, waiting to pounce. In fact using the shell of a building as a bit of extra armor could be a cool tactic.

Parallax texturing at this stage doesn't concern me too much. MWO has barely more than a year of development right now. I am amazed everytime I think about that, how fast MWO has come so far.

My only gripe is alot of the maps are too dark on my monitor and I absolutely need a Gamma or Brightness slider from MWO to adjust it. Just that one thing would make my enjoyment of MWO go up ten-fold.

Edited by Lightfoot, 21 February 2013 - 09:13 AM.


#196 Shumabot

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 09:13 AM

The game also lacks any sort of paintable textures, like explosive burns or bullet holes. Goldeneye had that, that's just sad.

#197 Havyek

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 09:31 AM

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#198 Havok1978

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 01:24 PM

I dont like the film grain either. most these things can be fixed by editing the client side .ini file typically. or use of ENB's and the like.
If PGI will allow us to do this or not is a different story.
and it helps to understand what a graphics engine actually does as opposed to a physics engine..
cuz some of this reads like
"my car isnt running properly when I turn on my tv"
If you dont understand the analogy, then your one of these people.

#199 Shumabot

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 03:52 PM

View PostHavok1978, on 21 February 2013 - 01:24 PM, said:

I dont like the film grain either. most these things can be fixed by editing the client side .ini file typically. or use of ENB's and the like.
If PGI will allow us to do this or not is a different story.
and it helps to understand what a graphics engine actually does as opposed to a physics engine..
cuz some of this reads like
"my car isnt running properly when I turn on my tv"
If you dont understand the analogy, then your one of these people.



A graphics engine is a rendering suite, content pipeline, physics engine, and anything else that falls under the umbrella of the specific engine. Cry Engine has a graphics engine built into it, and this game makes use of it often. Non interactive physics can be considered a part of the graphics engine, especially when relating to particle effects or environmental destruction.

You don't sound like you actually understand what a graphics engine is.

#200 TheUncle

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Posted 21 February 2013 - 04:10 PM

Hey guys,

I think I can say a little about CryEngine in general and what i think of the implementation in MechWarrior Online.

I have a little blog over at Crydev, in which i talk about some new tech features which come in the latest SDKs, and I often times help artists with their work.

I worked in CryEngine for quite some time now, but not as a professional. Nevertheless, I think my knowledge of the engine is pretty good.

In my spare time I sometimes do some screenshots, but they never take longer than an afternoon: (If you like Mechwarrior check it out!)
Spoiler



So first of all, let me make that clear - CryEngine 3 is superior to CryEngine 2, even though some shots might look better in CryEngine 2.
But make no mistake, from a technological point of view, nothing of significance has been lost, while many essential features have been added, while overall performance has increased.

Now, I like MechWarrior Online, but I surely don't like it for its graphics. Or let's better say its looks.

I know this is a controversial post and I hope we get some discussion on this.

There are several things, which feel to me like either art direction is not completely determined, or some people did not really find an optimal solution and just settled with some so-so stuff. Or they just have a different taste than me.

First about the looks in general.
-> An overall lack of contrast. Forest Colony or Frozen City would look a lot better and feel a lot more real if the shadows were a bit deeper. The lack of black is very apparant. Shadows are so bright, it's often times not worth enabling them. This could look a lot better.
Also by now CryEngine 3 has some brilliant SSAO modi, which essentially combine several SSAOs into one, not having too much unrealistic looking halos, while still doing a fine job of making the scene feel much more integrated. (r_SSAO 5 with multiple radii).

-> River City Night is a mess. How can it be so dark, while the sky is so bright?
Of course it is a night scene, but why not make it coherent looking?

There is a big BIG problem with HDR_eye_adaption in the implementation of Mechwarrior online. I feel like in many cases the scene has been darkened, not by making the sun and sky lights darker, but by turning down the blacks in post-processing. If the HDR eye adaption would work as usual, the eyes would slowly make the scene brighter until at least some contrast is given. At least that is the intention, but it can be modified in various ways.

You can see the effect work when you get hit by something, which in 99% of the case is some overly bright effect, which makes the eye_adaption go crazy and blacken your whole screen for a few seconds.

Also - NightVision/Heatvision can be controlled very easily by parameters which can be set individually per Level. Why not adjust Night Vision for RiverCity alone? It clearly fails there.

-> Assets in general look very flat. CryEngine 3 has, like many other engines, stuff like Environment probes, which add cubemaps to each element in a part of a level. I don't see that used really. It brings out beautiful reflection which makes shadowed objects still have some structure and depth to them.
Also why not add more reflections to windows of buildings? I can see how that would make a difference in how Frozen City would feel ;)

So I did the work and checked through the assets. And there are actually several environment probes for Rivercity for example. But the windows are often times not glossy! They don't reflect!

-> Mechs have predefined environment maps in their material files. Why not have the mech reflect their actual surroundings? Also make them a little little bit more reflective ;)


For you to illustrate my points, I show you what i mean with some assets in CryEngine. And maybe the Artists use some of the effects, but to a very little extend. I am prone to blindness, so if someone steps in and says - hey that's clearly in game! Then ok.



I don't want to show off, or try to humiliate the devs or anything (hell no! You are awesome), but here is some stuff which i mean could be improved.

I launched the editor and just threw together some buildings, i was not trying to create a city, just show some effects. Don't judge the scene because of the arrangements of buildings etc. That took me 5 minutes only.
I might look into making some beautyful scenes later on.

This is the level without any reflection.
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This is the level with environment probes used in a way I like
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To make the point of cubemap reflections clear: (And this looks a million times better in motion)
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vs
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Don't get it wrong - cubemap environment reflections are in game. But they are used with so little effect that one has to ask whether it's worth the computation cost. Or maybe it's just me.


Now the Scene with GI. GI means global illumination, which calculates the way light is reflected off of objects.
Posted Image

It seems to me like the GI in Mechwarrior Online is not really configured for the game. The stock GI in CryEngine works good for first person shooters, and the maximum distance for which this is calculated is default 100 m. But in Mechwarrior Online we look from a much higher point of view.

See how flat it looks without and with GI:
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Apart from that little rant, I have really noticed how awesome the assets actually are.
The buildings are really imaginative and have a unique style. I really love that. The River City assets in particular have a "Bioshock" Steampunkie/Future feel to them. I like it. Never noticed ingame though ;)
Posted Image

Apart from that, the Ice cave is a masterpiece. With all the laser reflections in the ice it just looks awesome.


So yeah, I don't know maybe someone found this useful. The guys who use CryEngine already especially ;)

Edited by TheUncle, 21 February 2013 - 04:37 PM.






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