Can't vote for TSW because of the butt ugly animations, which are unforgivable for the company that made the well animated AoC. Also, TSW completely lacks "scale"... there's no sense of scale, something you would await from a game with a modern setting. Same reason I won't vote for LOTRO either, not to mention LOTRO got very old in 5 years, character animations already sucked 5 years ago, the game has some ugly repetitive textures for hill sides and other terrain areas, and also some very "spiky" terrain (stones, hills, etc... which look like they've been cut with an axe). The game still has some amazing areas like The Shire or Evendim though.
EQ2 has washed out colors, and just like LOTRO, even though the engine was quite good at release, it has aged. Character animations aren't that great either.
Rift's characters look like they have a stick up the darkest part of their lilly white, and the graphics never impressed me that much despite having a very good DX11 graphic card and everything maxed out. Looks just like Warhammer... aka, average.
Tera has that asian style I don't like at all, and some of the most ugly mobs I've every seen in a MMORPG (even if other mobs are quite nice). Aion is even worse.
WoW is WoW... the Blizzard art team is still one of the best of the industry, managing to make wonders with only a few polygons. It deserves a special mention for that, but not the first place.
SW:TOR managed to capture the Star Wars feeling quite well actually, even with the more cartoonish take on the graphics, but that's it. For instance they totally failed towns graphically, Coruscant is just another level, and not a town. Doesn't feel at all like the Coruscant of the movies. The animations are not too bad though.
Conan is great, but GW2 has a scale even Conan lacks. Cities are something you've never seen in a MMORPG before.
My vote goes to GW2, no contest.
Originally posted by bcbully
It's not just about AA. TSW has full tesselation aswell all in DX11. Tesselation makes every pebble, every brick and even clothing 3 deminsional, where as other games have pictures of bricks and such.
You obviously don't have a clue about what tesselation is, or you confuse it with displacement mapping which exists for ages now.
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
i voted for gw2 because they are going for realism more then WoW..
Those are...the only two you considered?
Brings up a side point op--not many people are qualified to take your poll (= evaluated every game on that list). Or even, you know, more than a couple.
Unfortunately I am. Sort of a sad comment. . overall I voted for LOTRO though. Not so much for the whole game but for a few areas that just blew me away.
S'ok, I've played six of them, on his original list.
But I don't evaluate graphics the same way GPU salesmen do, never have. Aesthetics are greater than the sum of your techniques.
Unfortunately, evaluating aesthetics leads us to the land of amateur art critics; where anything goes in the Opinion Arena. And indirectly, right back to fanboy central.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by ShakyMo Tesselation makes flat surfaces more 3dish. It does make ground textures and stuff look better.
That's displacement mapping, tesselation doesn't affect textures at all.
Tesselation subdivides polygons to add more details to the objects, not to the textures. One of the result is that even low polygon count models don't look "spiky", and you can achieve rounded surfaces with only a couple of initial polygons.
I can create e.g. a rectangular brick area with only two polygons (triangles), no tesselation at all, yet make the bricks appear being in 3D with displacement mapping.
Originally posted by Icewhite
But I don't evaluate graphics the same way GPU salesmen do, never have. Aesthetics are greater than the sum of your techniques.
I do program graphic effects for a living (among other things), and never have I either. You can have the best technician providing the most advanced effects, tesselation, displacement mapping, shaders, etc..., if you don't have a good art team behind to use those features, your project (be it a game, or anything else) will look like crap.
Pretending otherwise is like saying Mozart was a musical genius only because he had the best quality music instruments.
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
The Secret World. With a good system, the details really pop. Dawn in Kingsmouth is nostalgia-inducing.
I think TSW's modern setting gives me an Uncanny Valley reaction.
I just can't stand it and think people are crazy for believing the game has good graphics.
Completely agree with the "uncanny valley" argument... Too many devs get enamored with graphical "realism" and paint themselves into a corner with either this or the fact that standards of "realism" pretty much follow moore's law.
Imo, that's why games like WoW or TF2 have almost unlimited longevity... I can see myself playing TF2 in 10 years lol, there is nothing I would take away or add to gfx of that game... just like you can watch 60 year old tunes 60 without them feeling dated.
Tera, gw2 , aoc (but is showing age lately) , tsw (except characters)
Recently I bought a high performance graphics card and the game that has surprised me more in terms of graphics is..... RIFT!!!
Thats right with ultra settings and a good monitor its the best around here. Was deeply impressed myself cos i was used to play it with another graphic card.
It's not just so easy. I'll split it into two parts. I. (objective)Technical and II. (subjective) utilization of said technology
On a technical level
1. The Secret World. DX11, Tesselation, TXAA, high resolution textures, HDR, AO.
2. Archeage Personally the Cryengine 3 is superiour to Funcoms, but they don't have TXAA (yet) and Archeage is not utilizing as much as possible
3. DX11 / 10 "capable" MMOs such as Lotro / WoW (yes i really did write WoW!)
4. DX9+ Games where TERA with Unreal engine 3.5 leads the bulk
Utilization of said technology
1. Archeage (seamless zones > fixed zone "maps" so it's before TSW)
2. The Secret World
3. TERA (That's how you pump up DX9)
4. FFXIV - AAR (Character Detail / Mesh - Polygon utilization even blows out Archeage and TSW, landscape "was" lacking which AAR is fixing, that only leaves low texture resolution which is a good 4th place)
5. The shallow "REST" with "DX11 capable" games like Lotro and low poly / low detail objects and characters like GW2 and abyssmal texture resolution like SWTOR.
im sorry the gameplay may have been buggy and the game may have lacked content but its rather obvious at least to me even with the asian styled graphics tera looks the best its no contest even with GW2.
Edit: Unreal Engine in general is just badass and any game that has it will be ontop in terms of graphics. until a better engine is released.
Originally posted by wordiz Say what you want about it, but GW2 is PRETTY. So much to look at too.
Yeah, gotta love DX9..
Sure, they obviously did a great job with the limited technology available, but it will not compare to newer DX11, or even DX10 MMOs (obligatory IMHO).
Tera, gw2 , aoc (but is showing age lately) , tsw (except characters)
Recently I bought a high performance graphics card and the game that has surprised me more in terms of graphics is..... RIFT!!!
Thats right with ultra settings and a good monitor its the best around here. Was deeply impressed myself cos i was used to play it with another graphic card.
Truly amazing.
This is obviously pure opinion, but I agree wholeheartedly. I run Rift on max settings, and I love their art style and the attention to detail everywhere you look. And it just keeps getting better. Trion is the hardest working MMORPG developer there is.
Originally posted by ShakyMo Odin: What like cryengine?
Has any MMO used cryengine yet?
Edit: Im guessing no because it would be bad profit wise anyone without a true gaming computer couldnt run it.
Aion uses CryEngine 2
Archeage uses CryEngine 3
You'd be guessing wrong.
Theres no way Aion uses cryengine lol the graphics are so mediocre at max settings >.> but i would likely believe you about ArcheAge as i havent tried it out yet nor have i kept up with it.
By style I really like WoW, RIFT and SWTOR, but when it comes to oooh! and aaah!s I had to pick GW2, which makes me ooooh and aaaaah after every hill/wall/house.
"We need men who can dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy And for MMORPGs ever so true...
Originally posted by ShakyMo Odin: What like cryengine?
Has any MMO used cryengine yet?
Edit: Im guessing no because it would be bad profit wise anyone without a true gaming computer couldnt run it.
Aion uses CryEngine 2
Archeage uses CryEngine 3
You'd be guessing wrong.
Theres no way Aion uses cryengine lol the graphics are so mediocre at max settings >.> but i would likely believe you about ArcheAge as i havent tried it out yet nor have i kept up with it.
Originally posted by ShakyMo Odin: What like cryengine?
Has any MMO used cryengine yet?
Edit: Im guessing no because it would be bad profit wise anyone without a true gaming computer couldnt run it.
Aion uses CryEngine 2
Archeage uses CryEngine 3
You'd be guessing wrong.
Theres no way Aion uses cryengine lol the graphics are so mediocre at max settings >.> but i would likely believe you about ArcheAge as i havent tried it out yet nor have i kept up with it.
Meh CryEngine 1 no wonder lol, when i hear CryEngine i think Crysis 2 graphics at max which would be CryEngine 3. And wow ArcheAge uses the third engine so i'd definately believe you. I gotta check up on ArcheAge now, I already heard it would be a good sandbox but didnt guess it would have insane graphics.
Originally posted by IzikGraphically TSW wins hands down. It's the only mmo (and game) in the world that utilizes the new TXAA anti-aliasing technique, among other things (http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/the-secret-world-txaa). You're delusional if you think any other game comes close to the technical prowess ...Ok, you still didn't say anything because you admitted it's "irrelevant" to you due to the fact your gpu doesn't support it.The topic is what is the best mmo graphically. Enabling all of the tech (yes, including TXAA) inside TSW easily makes it the best. You can have your opinions about TXAA, but the fact is TSW is the only mmo recently that has been pushing the boundaries in graphical technology. Whereas you have games like GW2 that are still running DX9, and yet have "amazing graphics" to untrained eyes.
I wasn't argueing if TSW was the best or not - it could very well be. I was disputing your conclusion that TSW was the best solely on the use of TXAA - which is pretty much what you said in your first post - that is what I took issue with. Your latest post quoted above you say "everything" - which ok, I can give you a pass on, because things like Tesselation and such do count - that makes it relevent to the discussion.
But just based on one Nvidia-specific technology for AA - no. That makes the game a marketing tool.
Originally posted by ShakyMo Txaa is just a bit more advanced version of nvidias fxaa or amds mlaa. It's post processing blur aa.Msaa is more taxing, but looks better if your pc can handle it.
TXAA isn't shader based to the best of my knowledge - it's based on MSAA with an additional time-based component (motion vector). MLAA and FXAA are shader computes that are applied to the frame after it's rendered in post-processing. SSAA and MSAA are calculated after the image is calculated, but before anything is overlayed on top of it (like UI elements).
First announced with the launch of Kepler, TXAA is another anti-aliasing technology to be developed by Timothy Lottes, an engineer in NVIDIAs developer technology group. In a nutshell, TXAA is a wide tent (>1px) MSAA filter combined with a temporal filter (effectively a motion-vector based frame blend) that is intended to resolve that pesky temporal aliasing that can be seen in motion in many games.
They say it works great at providing AA with low performance hit, but it makes the image very blurry. I didn't know temporal aliasing was a big problem in gaming - that isn't the same thing as tearing. Maybe at very low framerates... but then you wouldn't be enabling AA or other processing effects that degrade your framerate even further.
Shader-based methods tend to be the most efficient, because modern video cards are massively parallel and can chew up shader computes very fast. Shader methods often tend to wash out UI elements, fonts, and other items that don't necessarily need (or desire) to be smoothed though - although i hear they are getting better at detecting static items not to smooth. SSAA and MSAA are fairly expensive computational-wise - SSAA renders the screen at 2-8x the displayed resolution and downscales the image, MSAA does smoothing calculations based on nearby pixels, and both are fairly taxing.
TXAA, being MSAA-based is probably fairly taxing as well - supposedly with the temporal component nVidia claims that you can get a 4x image quality increase with the same computational tax as traditional MSAA - which is nice, but still a long ways from Shader-level efficiency.
Originally posted by ShakyMo Odin: What like cryengine?
Has any MMO used cryengine yet?
Edit: Im guessing no because it would be bad profit wise anyone without a true gaming computer couldnt run it.
Aion is CryEngine1 based.
MechWarrior Online and ArchAge are both slated to be CryEngine3.
To give a better list of some other game engines:
SWTOR is HeroEngine based.
Vindictus is Source based.
DAOC, WAR, and RIFT are Gamebryo based
Lineage II and Vanguard are Unreal2 based
APB, Blade & Soul, TERA, DCUO, Dust 514 are/will be Unreal3 based
This list isn't all-inclusive, but many of the bigger MMO developers will have an internally developed engine that they use that aren't licensed (EQ2, Planetside2, FFXIV, WoW, etc), since graphics engines designed for static FPS levels don't necessarily lend themselves well to MMOs, where hundreds/thousands of players (each with unique models and textures) can possibly congregate in the same area, on screen at the same time.
I always love the "amazing graphics to untrained eyes" style arrogant comments - missed that one because the guy is already on my block list.
Anyone who really works in graphic programming knows that the best graphic engine with the latest technological features is nothing without a good art team behind it - and it's the humble developer talking here. A game could have science fiction DirectX 15 features which aren't even released yet, with real time photon mapping and other experimental stuff, it would still suck graphical wise if the art team isn't able to fully exploit that technology.
As I said - Mozart was a genius not because he had the best instruments, and also not because he had them all - he was a genius because he could do wonders even with a simple average quality piano.
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Comments
Can't vote for TSW because of the butt ugly animations, which are unforgivable for the company that made the well animated AoC. Also, TSW completely lacks "scale"... there's no sense of scale, something you would await from a game with a modern setting. Same reason I won't vote for LOTRO either, not to mention LOTRO got very old in 5 years, character animations already sucked 5 years ago, the game has some ugly repetitive textures for hill sides and other terrain areas, and also some very "spiky" terrain (stones, hills, etc... which look like they've been cut with an axe). The game still has some amazing areas like The Shire or Evendim though.
EQ2 has washed out colors, and just like LOTRO, even though the engine was quite good at release, it has aged. Character animations aren't that great either.
Rift's characters look like they have a stick up the darkest part of their lilly white, and the graphics never impressed me that much despite having a very good DX11 graphic card and everything maxed out. Looks just like Warhammer... aka, average.
Tera has that asian style I don't like at all, and some of the most ugly mobs I've every seen in a MMORPG (even if other mobs are quite nice). Aion is even worse.
WoW is WoW... the Blizzard art team is still one of the best of the industry, managing to make wonders with only a few polygons. It deserves a special mention for that, but not the first place.
SW:TOR managed to capture the Star Wars feeling quite well actually, even with the more cartoonish take on the graphics, but that's it. For instance they totally failed towns graphically, Coruscant is just another level, and not a town. Doesn't feel at all like the Coruscant of the movies. The animations are not too bad though.
Conan is great, but GW2 has a scale even Conan lacks. Cities are something you've never seen in a MMORPG before.
My vote goes to GW2, no contest.
You obviously don't have a clue about what tesselation is, or you confuse it with displacement mapping which exists for ages now.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
S'ok, I've played six of them, on his original list.
But I don't evaluate graphics the same way GPU salesmen do, never have. Aesthetics are greater than the sum of your techniques.
Unfortunately, evaluating aesthetics leads us to the land of amateur art critics; where anything goes in the Opinion Arena. And indirectly, right back to fanboy central.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
That's displacement mapping, tesselation doesn't affect textures at all.
Tesselation subdivides polygons to add more details to the objects, not to the textures. One of the result is that even low polygon count models don't look "spiky", and you can achieve rounded surfaces with only a couple of initial polygons.
I can create e.g. a rectangular brick area with only two polygons (triangles), no tesselation at all, yet make the bricks appear being in 3D with displacement mapping.
I do program graphic effects for a living (among other things), and never have I either. You can have the best technician providing the most advanced effects, tesselation, displacement mapping, shaders, etc..., if you don't have a good art team behind to use those features, your project (be it a game, or anything else) will look like crap.
Pretending otherwise is like saying Mozart was a musical genius only because he had the best quality music instruments.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Completely agree with the "uncanny valley" argument... Too many devs get enamored with graphical "realism" and paint themselves into a corner with either this or the fact that standards of "realism" pretty much follow moore's law.
Imo, that's why games like WoW or TF2 have almost unlimited longevity... I can see myself playing TF2 in 10 years lol, there is nothing I would take away or add to gfx of that game... just like you can watch 60 year old tunes 60 without them feeling dated.
Tera, gw2 , aoc (but is showing age lately) , tsw (except characters)
Recently I bought a high performance graphics card and the game that has surprised me more in terms of graphics is..... RIFT!!!
Thats right with ultra settings and a good monitor its the best around here. Was deeply impressed myself cos i was used to play it with another graphic card.
Truly amazing.
It's not just so easy. I'll split it into two parts.
I. (objective)Technical and
II. (subjective) utilization of said technology
On a technical level
1. The Secret World.
DX11, Tesselation, TXAA, high resolution textures, HDR, AO.
2. Archeage
Personally the Cryengine 3 is superiour to Funcoms, but they don't have TXAA (yet) and Archeage is not utilizing as much as possible
3. DX11 / 10 "capable" MMOs such as Lotro / WoW (yes i really did write WoW!)
4. DX9+ Games where TERA with Unreal engine 3.5 leads the bulk
Utilization of said technology
1. Archeage (seamless zones > fixed zone "maps" so it's before TSW)
2. The Secret World
3. TERA (That's how you pump up DX9)
4. FFXIV - AAR (Character Detail / Mesh - Polygon utilization even blows out Archeage and TSW, landscape "was" lacking which AAR is fixing, that only leaves low texture resolution which is a good 4th place)
5. The shallow "REST" with "DX11 capable" games like Lotro and low poly / low detail objects and characters like GW2 and abyssmal texture resolution like SWTOR.
im sorry the gameplay may have been buggy and the game may have lacked content but its rather obvious at least to me even with the asian styled graphics tera looks the best its no contest even with GW2.
Edit: Unreal Engine in general is just badass and any game that has it will be ontop in terms of graphics. until a better engine is released.
Yeah, gotta love DX9..
Sure, they obviously did a great job with the limited technology available, but it will not compare to newer DX11, or even DX10 MMOs (obligatory IMHO).
Iiiiiiiii'm just sayin'
1 wow
2 war
3 gw2
What like cryengine?
This is obviously pure opinion, but I agree wholeheartedly. I run Rift on max settings, and I love their art style and the attention to detail everywhere you look. And it just keeps getting better. Trion is the hardest working MMORPG developer there is.
Sorry, my Rift Fanboyism is showing. blush.jpg
Has any MMO used cryengine yet?
Edit: Im guessing no because it would be bad profit wise anyone without a true gaming computer couldnt run it.
Aion uses CryEngine 2
Archeage uses CryEngine 3
You'd be guessing wrong.
Theres no way Aion uses cryengine lol the graphics are so mediocre at max settings >.> but i would likely believe you about ArcheAge as i havent tried it out yet nor have i kept up with it.
"We need men who can dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
And for MMORPGs ever so true...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryEngine
"We need men who can dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
And for MMORPGs ever so true...
Meh CryEngine 1 no wonder lol, when i hear CryEngine i think Crysis 2 graphics at max which would be CryEngine 3. And wow ArcheAge uses the third engine so i'd definately believe you. I gotta check up on ArcheAge now, I already heard it would be a good sandbox but didnt guess it would have insane graphics.
I wasn't argueing if TSW was the best or not - it could very well be. I was disputing your conclusion that TSW was the best solely on the use of TXAA - which is pretty much what you said in your first post - that is what I took issue with. Your latest post quoted above you say "everything" - which ok, I can give you a pass on, because things like Tesselation and such do count - that makes it relevent to the discussion.
But just based on one Nvidia-specific technology for AA - no. That makes the game a marketing tool.
TXAA isn't shader based to the best of my knowledge - it's based on MSAA with an additional time-based component (motion vector). MLAA and FXAA are shader computes that are applied to the frame after it's rendered in post-processing. SSAA and MSAA are calculated after the image is calculated, but before anything is overlayed on top of it (like UI elements).
Anand does a decent writeup in one of their 600-series video card reviews:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review/6
They say it works great at providing AA with low performance hit, but it makes the image very blurry. I didn't know temporal aliasing was a big problem in gaming - that isn't the same thing as tearing. Maybe at very low framerates... but then you wouldn't be enabling AA or other processing effects that degrade your framerate even further.
Shader-based methods tend to be the most efficient, because modern video cards are massively parallel and can chew up shader computes very fast. Shader methods often tend to wash out UI elements, fonts, and other items that don't necessarily need (or desire) to be smoothed though - although i hear they are getting better at detecting static items not to smooth. SSAA and MSAA are fairly expensive computational-wise - SSAA renders the screen at 2-8x the displayed resolution and downscales the image, MSAA does smoothing calculations based on nearby pixels, and both are fairly taxing.
TXAA, being MSAA-based is probably fairly taxing as well - supposedly with the temporal component nVidia claims that you can get a 4x image quality increase with the same computational tax as traditional MSAA - which is nice, but still a long ways from Shader-level efficiency.
Aion is CryEngine1 based.
MechWarrior Online and ArchAge are both slated to be CryEngine3.
To give a better list of some other game engines:
SWTOR is HeroEngine based.
Vindictus is Source based.
DAOC, WAR, and RIFT are Gamebryo based
Lineage II and Vanguard are Unreal2 based
APB, Blade & Soul, TERA, DCUO, Dust 514 are/will be Unreal3 based
This list isn't all-inclusive, but many of the bigger MMO developers will have an internally developed engine that they use that aren't licensed (EQ2, Planetside2, FFXIV, WoW, etc), since graphics engines designed for static FPS levels don't necessarily lend themselves well to MMOs, where hundreds/thousands of players (each with unique models and textures) can possibly congregate in the same area, on screen at the same time.
I always love the "amazing graphics to untrained eyes" style arrogant comments - missed that one because the guy is already on my block list.
Anyone who really works in graphic programming knows that the best graphic engine with the latest technological features is nothing without a good art team behind it - and it's the humble developer talking here. A game could have science fiction DirectX 15 features which aren't even released yet, with real time photon mapping and other experimental stuff, it would still suck graphical wise if the art team isn't able to fully exploit that technology.
As I said - Mozart was a genius not because he had the best instruments, and also not because he had them all - he was a genius because he could do wonders even with a simple average quality piano.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023