| ethomaz said: This video is not console ingame... there isn't any video from console released by Crytek yet. And I think you are a little confused... the DX11 is just a API for graphics... if the hardware have the effects you can use it without DX11... and the lastest OpenGL support all DX11 effects/features too. |
I realize that it's not an Xbox video but what I am saying is the amount of technical graphical details in Crysis 3 on consoles should go far beyond the scope of any game made on PS360. For example, parallax occlusion mapping is not officially supported on PS360 consoles but it will be in Crysis 3. You are right that DX11 is just an API but certain of its advanced graphical features are too punishing for outdated DX9 hardware to perform at reasonable speeds. However, it seems Crytek might have found a way to include at least some advanced effects that modern DX11 titles get:
I think a lot of consoles gamers just confuse artistic graphics and how a game draws them into the gaming world and they get attached to the characters with technical graphics.
For example, if we look at Uncharted 3, it really has meh graphics. The shadows are pixelated and 2 dimensional, the vegetation is all flat, the textures are very plain. Look at this video and watch carefully at 1:15-1:20 mark as Drake falls through. The part where the floor breaks is a pre-rendered asset that always breaks the same way. There is no realistic physics and the floor will break exactly the same way every time. The pieces that fall down onto the ground will cast the exact same shadow every time you play this game forever. The character doesn't cast any shadow on the ground when he is laying at 1 min : 20sec. That means the entire world has no real time lighting / global illumation and the game world is just fixed area lights, nothing more. Also, pause at 1 min: 48-49 mark. Notice how Drake is running between 2 rock formations? Those are not rocks made hundreds of thousands of polygons. It's just 2-4 texture maps overlaying most of the screen. This is pure cheating. It's not the same as rendering a rock with all its geometric crevices and cracks and bumps.
Uncharted 3 Video
http://www.eurogamer.net/videos/what-if-uncharted-3-ran-at-60fps
Consoles games like Uncharted 3 use tricks all over the place that trick the average eye. This looks like "realistic" stones on the ground but it's just 1 giant displacement bump map. It's all fake.
Now look what happens when similar short-cuts and trick are used in Uncharted 3 in full shot:
Click the link for the larger image to see the details I am talking about: http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/1944/amarectv201111011714267.jpg
- the entire ground is just textures with random basic polygon stones thrown to fool you to think it has real geometric shapes/curves. The sandbags on the cart on the right are just displacement mapping on the texture. It tries to fool the human eye that the sandbags are individual pieces but you can tell right away it's just 2 giant displacement map blobs. There are very little polygons there. Most of the objects in the scene, include the bike, the carts, the poles, the stands and other items for sale on the left are very primitive from a polygon count and none of them cast their own shadows, refract light onto surrounding objects. There are 0 dynamic lights. All the light fixtures are fixed and all the lights and shadows are prerendered assets. All the shadows are fixed to the characters/models and they will always react the same way to other objects around them. They are not real and do not dynamically react to the world around them.
- Notice how only the shadow on Drake is soft but all the other characters have pixelated "untextured" shadows? All these are huge shortcuts the average gamer might never notice or not care. Technically it stands out like a sore thumb and makes it look awful.
- This is basically a fully static world with all destruction art assets that were made by artists in advance and when something needs to blow up, it gets triggered but there is no physics model behind it. This is why when you look at many scenes, it looks like the characters are "floating" in this some other 3D world. It's not integrated.
Even a game like LA Noir on PS3 has far superior shadow quality than Uncharted 3:
Larger sized picture link: http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/articles//a/1/3/6/1/3/3/8/view2_ps3.bmp.jpg
A lot of people just love Uncharted 3 as a game and don't know the techinical details of how to "cheat" to make graphics look good. So from a technical execution point of view, I have no doubt that Crysis 3 will blow away games like Uncharted 3 out of the water. Will console games notice the difference between soft and hard shadows, pre-rendered destruction assets and displacement bump mapping vs. high polygon models, parallax occlusion mapping and real time particle effects? Maybe, maybe not.
