Graphics not as impressive.

[Project Umbra]

So looking at the trailer the game looked absolutely gorgeous. but when palying on 'Epic' settings as i says it just doesn't look the same. Lots of dull textures on the ships when up close compared to the gameplay video's. My PC has no problem running this, it's not breaking a sweat.

It could be that they've downgraded everything for the Beta or i just didn't notice them saying something about the graphics, hopefully it will look better on release.

Just wondering if anyone else has noticed the same thing.

[Swiss Army Knife]

Have you set anti-aliasing to low? They're using a pretty heavy handed version of FXAA which when set to Epic blurs and muddies everything to hell and back.

Setting AA to low made the game look a lot better for me.

[Project Umbra]

I will give that a try, thank you :)

[Masterhummel]

Ships are fine, ui is alright. However the map and enviroment is... not all that good. To put it lightly. But i learned to ignore it.

[Project Umbra]

It did work a fair bit Swiss Army Knife

[Swiss Army Knife]

Originally posted by Project Umbra:

It did work a fair bit Swiss Army Knife

Glad it helped. I'd like to see them either get the FXAA under control or use a different kind of AA. Without it the models can be a little jaggy and it's not like Imperial or Chaos ships need to be any more spikey than they already are.

[Crab Knight]

The AA present in the game is just simply wrong for the game. When you look at things close, you can really see those beautiful models. But the AA just doesn't do well with distance. Its like they tried to use the same type of AA that a FPS uses to blur out those far away backgrounds. Which would make sense, considering it is the unreal engine.

[Masterhummel]

Originally posted by spifomie:

The AA present in the game is just simply wrong for the game. When you look at things close, you can really see those beautiful models. But the AA just doesn't do well with distance. Its like they tried to use the same type of AA that a FPS uses to blur out those far away backgrounds. Which would make sense, considering it is the unreal engine.

It's not the AA per se. They got about three, maybe four level-of-detail and details get greatly reduced if you zoom out. It would be nice to let people with high end systems choose if they want to keep the highest level of detail all the time.

[Crab Knight]

Originally posted by Masterhummel:

Originally posted by spifomie:

The AA present in the game is just simply wrong for the game. When you look at things close, you can really see those beautiful models. But the AA just doesn't do well with distance. Its like they tried to use the same type of AA that a FPS uses to blur out those far away backgrounds. Which would make sense, considering it is the unreal engine.

It's not the AA per se. They got about three, maybe four level-of-detail and details get greatly reduced if you zoom out. It would be nice to let people with high end systems choose if they want to keep the highest level of detail all the time.

Is that so? I'm still learning about some of the technical details of games and graphics, so this is new to me. If thats the case, I would definitely agree there. More PC options is generally a good thing.

[Purple Judas]

Originally posted by Masterhummel:

Originally posted by spifomie:

The AA present in the game is just simply wrong for the game. When you look at things close, you can really see those beautiful models. But the AA just doesn't do well with distance. Its like they tried to use the same type of AA that a FPS uses to blur out those far away backgrounds. Which would make sense, considering it is the unreal engine.

It's not the AA per se. They got about three, maybe four level-of-detail and details get greatly reduced if you zoom out. It would be nice to let people with high end systems choose if they want to keep the highest level of detail all the time.

I couldn't agree more

[Schpam]

I too felt something odd with the graphical settings.

AA should have an "OFF" setting. It's not always needed, like with high resolution displays. I generally turn it off and notice a performance increase with negligible jaggies. However... I can't with this game.

What I also noticed, the AA had odd effects. On a destroyed cruiser in the shipyard, the model LOD was low res, like the model complexity was culled too much. The textures had a sparkling effect not present on higher AA settings. The textures also changed in detail level... none of this is what AA is supposed to fix.

There is a sad lack of graphical tuning options for a PC game. There are over 40 different types of Post Processed Effects a game engine like Unreal 4 can render... why would or should they all be controlled by a single low/high switch?


Anyways...


I love the look of the game and general presentation, but I did notice some things that caught my attention.

Sometimes, some effects like the engine trails are not present or glow when rendered. Weapon effects lack dynamic lights and can appear low res. When ships are destroyed, there is an unsettling lack of "drama" involved. The ship just disappears with a low res explosion, no debris, no scrap or hulk left behind.

The environment looks low res. The backgroud skybox looks wallpapered on. There is a generally flat/faded use of colors and environmental lights.


I don't know if any of this is because of the beta/demo version of the game being scaled down for distribution reasons, or maybe because optimizations on performance are still a work in progress, but things felt deflated compared to the trailer and gameplay videos.

[Asmodeos]

Originally posted by Swiss Army Knife:

Have you set anti-aliasing to low? They're using a pretty heavy handed version of FXAA which when set to Epic blurs and muddies everything to hell and back.

Setting AA to low made the game look a lot better for me.

Very Nice Tipp Thanks :)

[Decado]

The other setting in addition to the aa above is resolution scale or whatever it is - if you click Epic for settings, it doesnt seem to set that. Up that to Epic as well and the ships look as good as the trailers. Press F10 ingame for added eye candy

[EarthN]

Especially the asteroid fields look really bad imho....the background is beautiful though.

[Asterozoa]

Yeah I agree with the graphics; it definitely doesn't look as impressive as the videos make it out to be. I have AA set to low and everything else at epic, doesn't feel epic at all....

[Masterhummel]

Originally posted by spifomie:

Originally posted by Masterhummel:

It's not the AA per se. They got about three, maybe four level-of-detail and details get greatly reduced if you zoom out. It would be nice to let people with high end systems choose if they want to keep the highest level of detail all the time.

Is that so? I'm still learning about some of the technical details of games and graphics, so this is new to me. If thats the case, I would definitely agree there. More PC options is generally a good thing.

It's usually how things get done. Its basically a simplified version of the same model. You can see it pretty well while looking at your ship and then slowly zooming out. Geometry gets less, less shadows and stuff. Usually it's a great thing and people don't notice it. Though, the option would be nice.