Will PlanetSide 2 ever look better?

[TGxCraig]

I recently uploaded this video:

The Beauty Of PlanetSide 2 - YouTube

And it has me thinking if the game will ever look much better (getting better hardware aside). I know that SOE will continue to work on the optimization and the game will (hopefully) run much better as time goes on, but will we ever see a patch that give the game some updated effects, such as the Physx?

I know that the Physx was in the beta for a time, so they are not exactly 'new'. I wouldn't mind seeing some optimization done to the Physx somewhere down the road. It seems that sometime, the Physx effects don't run at as smooth a rate as what I'm actually getting in game. In that video, I was getting 60fps for 95% of those shots, but in some the particles seemed like they were only 30fps (don't get confused with with the segments of the video in which I slowed the footage down).

Whether or not we do get a graphics patch or something of the sort, the game is still, and will continue to be, a fantastic game that looks great. But I do still hope for an update, maybe in 2-3 years if the game is still popular and SOE supports it for as long as they are hoping to.

[Hamma]

The development team has claimed numerous times that there is no video card that can handle Forgelight in the highest possible settings so they haven't even enabled them in the game.

[seanman]

agree with hamma
the engine game is a for future engine :).

[SturmovikDrakon]

Oh yeah... it definitely can, and probably will

If you look at some of the alpha screenshots, Vanu specifically, you can probably see what Forgelight is capable of

(right click, open in new window)

http://i.imgur.com/j01JzHV.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/OBlVH9X.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/YrlJL2C.jpg

Even with the .ini tweaks, the character models just don't look anywhere as good as these guys. Look at those textures, those details. Look at the arms of guy in the first picture.

http://i.imgur.com/I0amBEm.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/L5Q9jcL.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Hswl8B7.jpg

Look at that gorgeous lighting. Makes me wish some part of Indar actually had this, I think the game's missing that full-out sci-fi athmoshphere

In all honesty, I can't wait to see what they have in store for the future

[TGxCraig]

The development team has claimed numerous times that there is no video card that can handle Forgelight in the highest possible settings so they haven't even enabled them in the game.

Well that is true, but do you think they will in the future (2-3 years) add a patch that provides higher resolution textures, better/more Physx, etc...

I'm sure that a new game using this engine will have the added effects, but will they ever patch them into PS2? Somewhat similar to the High-rez texture pack for Sleeping Dogs or the DX11/High-rez pack for Crysis 2.

I'm sure we can all agree that it would be nice, and clearly more taxing on our hardware, but in 2-3 years we will have some GPUs much more capable (and CPUs as well, as that is the clear bottlenecker for PS2 currently).

[Sturmhardt]

My main grudge with the graphics are the textures, they are just insanely blurry. Everything else is pretty nice, but some of the textures look like from planetside 1.

.sent via phone.

[Kon]

i would say when they decide to give up on legacy support and move fully to dx11 and 64 bit in a couple of years majority of the gamers will have at minimum gaming rigs better than what high end systems are today

[Koadster]

Go watch alpha videos. They removed so so much graphical content before release. Biolabs actaully were complete jungles.. But as Adam the level dev said, as soon as you went in one even with their well optimized PCs it would be single digits.

Another thing that devs have said numerous times. There current is NO tech available that can handle the forgelight at max graphics.. Even in 10 years time the engine will still compete with future engines.

[Kon]

i think soe are underestimating the rate at which computers accelerate i meant 10 years ago the top dog card was a 9800 xt

spent a few mins on wiki

9800xt Fillrate 3300 mpixels/s (2003)
x1950 xtx 31200 mpixels/s ( 2006)
7970 29 gigapixels (2012)

unfortunatly i cbf with conversion
1 Mpixel = 1 million pixels
1 gigapixel = 1 billion pixels


cards have come a long long way in 10 years 6 years from now the top end cards will be light years ahead who knows how much grunt they will have

[Gatekeeper]

Those alpha screenshots remind me how excited I was when I saw pics of the Beamer actually shooting a beam instead of going pew pew pew... shame that didn't actually make it into the game :(

[Koadster]

i think soe are underestimating the rate at which computers accelerate i meant 10 years ago the top dog card was a 9800 xt


10 years was just a figure to point out that the gfx will still be good for many many years to come

[Figment]

IMO, excellent graphics are realy nice, but they're pretty low on the priority list when they have to compete with gameplay affecting mechanics.

And currently that's simply the case:

We don't have backpacks for scavenging.
We don't have large amounts of deployables per player.
We don't have vehicle entry/exit animations (fixed positions)
We don't have holstered weapons (would cost 25% of players on screen).
We don't have extensive stair well and walkway structures due to requiring too many polygons, hence the anti-grav escalators.

Despite of that, we have severe render issues already and it gets worse if you have a few years old rig. I really don't see major improvements in the graphics department until the average PC standard has risen. And that'll probably have to wait till after the economic crisis. Doesn't mean they can't do it, of course.



Now, I would assume that before any graphical improvements would come, we'd get ragdoll physics implemented. Another thing I personally could do without, but eh.


People complaining about texture quality should IMO remember where a game's priority should be: being able to play the game optimally with as little concessions to gameplay as possible. Graphics mostly contribute to emersion and aesthetic quality, but do very little to improve the quality of gameplay.


It's great when it's done, but priority should be given to ensuring the content functions optimally and has expansive options and variety.

Graphics, to me, are a tertiary factor. Unfortunately a lot of gamers that pay less attention to reviews, game trailers and gameplay, judge books by their cover focus entirely on graphics. "It looks good, therefore it must be better". Even more unfortunately, by the time people find out the truth, that the less visible gameplay systems are more important, they've already chosen their game and made up their mind about other games and leave and ignore the others. So even if a graphically nice game disappoints, they'll often still claim it is better, because hey: lense flare. If the nifty looking game disappointed, then surely the worse looking game must be worse? :/

[Satanam]

Well, I hope this game survive for so long that we can see updates like that while we'll still have a lot of active players. This game is too gorgeous to die young.

[Riekopo]

My main grudge with the graphics are the textures, they are just insanely blurry. Everything else is pretty nice, but some of the textures look like from planetside 1.

.sent via phone.

That was my main gripe with the graphics too. Now that I changed to TextureQuality=0 everything looks much better.

[Loban]

The only thing that looks good in PS2 is the lighting, and even that isn't on par with many bleeding edge modern PC games. The explosions and textures look pretty terrible. PS2 looks pretty good from a distance at night and at dawn and dusk, but overall it's looks pretty old school. I really wish it was DX11.

[TGxCraig]

That was my main gripe with the graphics too. Now that I changed to TextureQuality=0 everything looks much better.
Yea, not too many people know of the .ini changes you can make, and those that do don't know that the texture change is reversed from the others.

[TGxCraig]

The only thing that looks good in PS2 is the lighting, and even that isn't on par with many bleeding edge modern PC games. The explosions and textures look pretty terrible. PS2 looks pretty good from a distance at night and at dawn and dusk, but overall it's looks pretty old school. I really wish it was DX11.

I gotta disagree with the explosions. They look great and with Physx they look epic. As for textures, there are some really good textures in the places that matter to me, but there are a lot of bad textures for sure, but with a game of this scale, that should be expected.

[Morsong]

I remember 10 years ago playing Ghost Recon and other games around that time period thinking to myself, "man, can it really get better than this?". I can't wait to see what the next 10 years will bring. PS2 looks beautiful, BF3 is beautiful. I wish I had Skyrim because I heard that is a very atmospheric game..:)

[Silent Thunder]

Dont forget that you need to set your texture detail to "0" in the ini to get the actual high quality textures. God knows how many of my buddies keep complaining about the textures while still set to a gimped setting.

Also Skyrim was atmospheric in the way a taxidermized bear is. Sure its very lifelike, but something just feels.. off. And It's somewhat unsettling. Then again, at least it wasn't as bad as Oblivion's faces. THOSE could keep a man up at night!

[Chaff]

.
Skyrim is unique in its modding aspects. Via Nexus or Steam you can add almost endless mods to your game. It is pretty cool. I don't know of any other (popular) game(s) that the player community adds content to the game itself.

To get a full Skyrim experience requires every bit the power you need for PS2. If you have a high-end rig and are open to adding numerous mods - it becomes visually impressive. Skyrim's RPG elements grow boring too quickly for my taste. Of course, you can make your own game mods. Hell, there's even mods to add porno scenes into Skyrim.

I only added Skyrim to my PC recently. It quickly became boring. I went the heavy-mod route. The environment is great. The content needs major expansion. Character levels out at 81. By the time I got to LVL-40 I and expolred everything on the map, killed everything (repetedly), and finished all the quests. Without quests, there's little reason to open the game - I have it running at R (almost NC-17) mods, but T&A eye candy ain't enough to spend time on it.
.

[Loban]

I gotta disagree with the explosions. They look great and with Physx they look epic. As for textures, there are some really good textures in the places that matter to me, but there are a lot of bad textures for sure, but with a game of this scale, that should be expected.

I really think the explosions look rather terrible compared to other modern games (Far Cry 3, BF3). They're very generic and the pieces of a vehicle just sort of break into big chunks. There is no dynamic fire, or wreckage or sense of a shockwave. It's like they took stock footage of an explosion from a made for TV movie on sci-fi and apply it to every vehicle.

[Maidere]

In all honesty, graphics are pretty average in PS2. On par with the few years old UE 3.0 based games.

[Tatwi]

In all honesty, graphics are pretty average in PS2. On par with the few years old UE 3.0 based games.

Which is pretty good for an mmo. Aion uses the CryEngine, yet it environments are not as lush abd detailed as Crysis or Far Cry. They must have to make some trade offs to avoid setting their system requirements beyond the market that will make their product viable.

[MurderBunneh]

Go watch alpha videos. They removed so so much graphical content before release. Biolabs actaully were complete jungles.. But as Adam the level dev said, as soon as you went in one even with their well optimized PCs it would be single digits.

Another thing that devs have said numerous times. There current is NO tech available that can handle the forgelight at max graphics.. Even in 10 years time the engine will still compete with future engines.
Lots of game engines can look amazing while running at single digit fps. The key is doing it efficiently and maximizing pc resources.

[TGxCraig]

I really think the explosions look rather terrible compared to other modern games (Far Cry 3, BF3). They're very generic and the pieces of a vehicle just sort of break into big chunks. There is no dynamic fire, or wreckage or sense of a shockwave. It's like they took stock footage of an explosion from a made for TV movie on sci-fi and apply it to every vehicle.

Hmm... Do you have Physx on? My explosions look crazy and chunks of the ground go everywhere. When a Lib w/ a Zephyr shoots down at me, there is stuff going everywhere. When a Sundy explodes, there are parts all over the place, big and small, and they get pushed around as other explosions are going off as well as vehicles driving over the parts.

[Ironside]

I'll take performance over eye candy anyday

[artifice]

SOE made a mistake going with PhysX. It is entirely inefficient running on the CPU by design. There are far better physics engines that are CPU optimized and offer overall better physics than PhysX. I know they made a deal with NVIDIA, but it does more than hurt people with AMD graphics cards. It hurts anyone who doesn't have a top of the line CPU or NVIDIA GPU that can handle it.

[TGxCraig]

I'll take performance over eye candy anyday

Physx has no effect on my framerate that I can tell. My bottleneck is always my CPU, not my gpu.

... I know they made a deal with NVIDIA, but it does more than hurt people with AMD graphics cards. It hurts anyone who doesn't have a top of the line CPU or NVIDIA GPU that can handle it.

I'm sorry, but that is one of the dumbest things I have heard from a PC gamer in a while. So should we just stop coming out with advanced graphical effects because some, or even most, people don't have the hardware to handle it? Developers should always be trying to create more and more demanding graphical effects every chance they get. Otherwise our games will be stagnant.

[Maidere]

Which is pretty good for an mmo. Aion uses the CryEngine, yet it environments are not as lush abd detailed as Crysis or Far Cry. They must have to make some trade offs to avoid setting their system requirements beyond the market that will make their product viable.

We are not talking if PS2 looks great for an MMO or whatever. We are talking about if it looks great or not. Aion is built on modified original FarCry engine btw.
Check out Archage videos on youtube, Korean sandbox mmo.

[typhaon]

We are not talking if PS2 looks great for an MMO or whatever. We are talking about if it looks great or not. Aion is built on modified original FarCry engine btw.
Check out Archage videos on youtube, Korean sandbox mmo.

I'm not sure that's a reasonable discussion, then.

Everything has to be evaluated given the performance requirements


I do think the game looks excellent... my biggest complaint, though - would be that it feels a bit sterile... especially inside the buildings.

I don't know if additional objects and textures would cause significant performance hits... or if development just doesn't feel it would be a good way to spend more effort -but, I'd love to see a bit more detail added.