The Division Downgrade

[theprof00]

fatslob-:O said:

theprof00 said:

Just to explain it to you...

The kind of effects shown in the original trailer are very hardware demanding. The low-level lighting with the contrasting bright light sources, and reflections, and glows are very nice but very demanding effects. The first trailer is clearly showing multiple "global" light sources ie; radiating light. There's two ways to display light in a game. 

a) actually have the light interacting with in game objects using a light engine.
b) hand program the shadows for specific objects that you want to be highlighted.

The previous requires a lot of work, so that light sources know how to interact with the 3d modeling. The latter requires effort for a smaller portion.

This goes hand in hand with reflections in the water on the ground. In order for the reflections to perform properly, the 3d area has to be programmed for it, and the effects have to be implemented. Sometimes, this can really bog a game down because it then has to display twice what it would show without a reflection. 

When you "change" from something that is seen as a very nice, but very code-heavy painstaking display, and replace it with a simpler, less demanding artistic choice, it is seen as a downgrade. It is seen that way because despite what your personal tastes are, the previous trailer can objectively be called a more realistic version. While the actual gameplay is still very realistic, people notice things that aren't in real life like shadows, global lighting, reflections, glow, etc. 

TL:DR 
It takes a lot of work to make a game "more realistic". So when a trailer that's seen as VERY realistic is then released looking LESS realistic, we assume they cut out features, which makes us think downgrade.

@Bold Again with the vagueness. BTW it's "emssive" light that their showing and it's still in the game ... 

Define "interacting", practically all lights in every AAA engine are interacting with the materials to do some physically based shading. "Hand program" shadows ? Do you mean pre-baked shadows or the global illumination, well what is it exactly ? 

For the reflections do you mean you have to bake in the cubemaps ? You don't have to do that anymore but most of the reflections shown in the original trailer are "screen space" and are available via the "Local Reflection Quality" option on PC. 

Both the game and trailer are very far away from "realistic" since they don't even do any form of ray tracing that is not in screen space so judging the accuracy of both is moot ... 

I mean they're using pre baked lighting in the release.

But, just for shits.
:20 map changes from what is a very intesive looking map, to a 2d plane.
:40 steam from ground iluminated by brake lights, brake lights on release dont reflect or glow against nearby objects.
1:20 smoke and wind effects on nearby building, wind absent from release, smoke is lower quality
1:34 draw distance
1:40 lack of lens flare effects, and quite a lot of them
2:15 fight, lack of hard shadows under characters, replaced by fuzzy haze; also, lack of cold breath steam from breathing
4:30 area is completely different, no light trails in hallway or sequence event with the swinging light.
5:18 "check out manhattan" now replaced with fence because draw distance doesn't extend far enough to show good detail