Ultra vs Remastered

[Karna5]

A couple of weeks ago my game got switched by a patch to Ultra. Normally I play on remastered at 4k resolution (1080 Ti graphics card), but suddenly my frame rate had dropped to an unplayable level until I figured out it had been switched to Ultra.

Other people have recently reported being switched unexpectedly to Ultra, and I decided to make a comparison in my game between Ultra and Remastered to see if Ultra actually makes the game look any better.

In my opinion, Ultra does not look better than remastered. In my game at 4k resolution the loss of frame rate from 50 FPS to 17 FPS gives nothing in return.

Here's a side by side comparison with Remastered on the left and Ultra on the Right:

https://i.imgur.com/bqyxEMB.jpg

Post Script: The two games I play the most are Black Desert Online and Fallout 4.

In Fallout 4 I use 8k body textures with 2k face textures. So in Fallout 4, the skin and texture qualities are literally realistic. I don't think BDO uses even 2k textures for body, and it certainly doesn't use 8k textures for body nor 2k textures for face.

So the problem with Ultra for BDO is it's probably trying to throw sophisticated graphics on low resolution textures. It does a great job in Remastered with the low resolution textures it uses, but the Ultra option has nothing in textures which benefit the attempt at better graphics.

[Karna5]

I've changed my opinion on whether there is a difference between Remastered (second best setting) and Ultra (best setting) in Black Desert Online.

When I first tested it was in Calpheon during the day in the rain. And there wasn't a shred of difference in quality nor in character appearance. I was using an Nvideo GeForce 1080 Ti graphics card at 4k resolution, and Remastered had 60 FPS with Ultra at 17 FPS with no qualitative difference.

However, today my girlfriend installed an Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics card in my PC, and I retested the Ultra settings but this time in a dark forest. And wowee, I mean wowee, it's like a completely different game.

The skin textures are still sadly poor (I'm guessing 1k), and I wish they'd be upped to at least 4k with more realistic textures. And the walk style is still that of a six year old child (no hip or shoulder swing at all, and the hands don't swing in opposite directions like a mature walk style would be).

But the lighting and fog and shadows in the forest are amazing. Fantabulous (that's fantastic and fabulous).

And better, with an RTX 3080 at 4k resolution I still get a full 60 FPS. While the 1080 Ti could only do 17 FPS in Ultra 4k, the 3080 is 60 FPS at the same settings.

I reduced the footage I recorded to 1080p for the sake of internet bandwidth, but here's BDO at Ultra settings. I used a sorceress for the test.

https://youtu.be/jvCQ8rkDQgo

I will definitely only play at Ultra settings going forward. I suggest that Pearl Abyss recommend the 3080 graphics card for BDO as it has such a huge qualitative difference over the 1080 Ti and equivalent graphics cards.

[profil84]

You also checked this forest on 1080ti??
Personally i got always waaay better performance in forest than in any city especially Capheon.

[Karna5]

Originally posted by profil84:

You also checked this forest on 1080ti??
Personally i got always waaay better performance in forest than in any city especially Capheon.

Yeah, I played that forest around 20 hours the last week or two. When I switched to Ultra mode there it was suddenly another game. With the 1080ti in Remastered mode it was very cartoony, almost like world of warcraft (which I never played but saw other people play and hated the aesthetics of it). But in Ultra it was very cool.

[Karna5]

Originally posted by profil84:

You also checked this forest on 1080ti??
Personally i got always waaay better performance in forest than in any city especially Capheon.

Hi, profil84. I just wanted to follow up to agree with you on Calpheon. I ended up reverting to remastered graphics settings (instead of Ultra) because even the RTX 3080 drops to 17 FPS in Ultra mode in Calpheon.

There's something wrong with how the textures are handled in Calpheon. I know from my experience with Fallout 4 modding that too many large textures should only lag while they're loading, not constant lag like Calpheon has.

My Fallout 4 game is 459 GB (113887 files in 13388 folders), and I use 8k body textures with 2k face textures. I use Fusion Girl body on all female characters which has close to 60k vertices, and I use HiPoly face and head for all characters. For males I use BodyTalk which likewise has huge vertex count. In addition, I make all clothing match the high poly count as the bodies so they minimize clipping during motion, and I have countless scripts (including those which insert random overlays on all NPCs) running constantly. No matter how many characters I add in an area, any lag is always just momentary as textures load when I enter a cell, no matter how many NPCs are present. There is never any lag whatsoever once textures load. And, of course, I play in 4k resolution with all-ultra graphics and very sophisticated lighting.

And yet BDO's Calpheon in Ultra mode brings the Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics card to its knees.

BDO has way fewer polygons, way smaller resolution textures, way less everything than my modded Fallout 4. There's something wrong with this. If a PearlAbyss developer sees this thread, I hope it's accepted as a polite incentive to investigate what's wrong. There's something unnecessarily inefficient.

[FizzyCerb VT]

i use 3090 and 5950x and i play in medium

[Siwkann]

Hi hi sorry to wake up the thread years later but this topic is interesting and I'm just learning about the differences. Thanks for the comparison photo, it helps a lot.
I notice increased resolution for shadows and ambient occlusion. Texture quality seems to be identical.
What I highlight the most is that the body has more detailed shading and proper occlusion where it has to. Notice in remastered there's a white outline in the areas where AO works. In ultra, that white outline is gone. I think that's caused by AO resolution.
Also notice the shadows under the tits. In ultra the tits are casting sun shadows. In remastered these shadows are so blurred you can't really notice what's casting them. This graphic feature is usually called contact shadows and ultra has it on higher resolution.
I'm reading there are other features like better global illumination, better screen space reflections, better particle and light effects...
I think gonna keep ultra.

[vkobe]

Originally posted by Karna5:

I've changed my opinion on whether there is a difference between Remastered (second best setting) and Ultra (best setting) in Black Desert Online.

When I first tested it was in Calpheon during the day in the rain. And there wasn't a shred of difference in quality nor in character appearance. I was using an Nvideo GeForce 1080 Ti graphics card at 4k resolution, and Remastered had 60 FPS with Ultra at 17 FPS with no qualitative difference.

However, today my girlfriend installed an Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics card in my PC, and I retested the Ultra settings but this time in a dark forest. And wowee, I mean wowee, it's like a completely different game.

The skin textures are still sadly poor (I'm guessing 1k), and I wish they'd be upped to at least 4k with more realistic textures. And the walk style is still that of a six year old child (no hip or shoulder swing at all, and the hands don't swing in opposite directions like a mature walk style would be).

But the lighting and fog and shadows in the forest are amazing. Fantabulous (that's fantastic and fabulous).

And better, with an RTX 3080 at 4k resolution I still get a full 60 FPS. While the 1080 Ti could only do 17 FPS in Ultra 4k, the 3080 is 60 FPS at the same settings.

I reduced the footage I recorded to 1080p for the sake of internet bandwidth, but here's BDO at Ultra settings. I used a sorceress for the test.

https://youtu.be/jvCQ8rkDQgo

I will definitely only play at Ultra settings going forward. I suggest that Pearl Abyss recommend the 3080 graphics card for BDO as it has such a huge qualitative difference over the 1080 Ti and equivalent graphics cards.

because you can run black desert with lower gpu in good condition, not need 800$ gpu

especially when rtx 3 didnt exist yet and were unknow when black desert remaster was release

we dont talking about gtx 1050 or even 1060

so gtx 1080, 1660, rtx 3050 look fine you can run the game in good condition

and majority people run in 1080p, so i dont see reason for pearl abyss to suggest 3080 when it is not necessary

3080 is in high recommendation, not in suggesting recommendation

[Kelset]

Ultra increases LOD draw distance, tessellation, shadow resolution, texture res (bit a little bit), reflection resolution, Global lightning resoltution and the reflection capabilities of some surfaces and SSAO resolution (this is what I noticed after hours of screenshot comparison), and also AA sampling.

The drop in framerate compared to the visual improvement isn't worth it and it's mostly an engine limitation giving so poor framerate.
Also AMD FSR doesn't help that much since the engine simply ♥♥♥♥♥ itself.