Why do modern games have sludgy and cluttered graphics? Older games had more clarity.

[Don Cheadle's victim face]

Not all modern games of course. But games like F1 2018 & Project Cars 2 - it's like they are trying to cram too much deatail in, and the result is a cluttered mess.
Maybe it looks ok if you have a 2080TI set up and 4k monitor. But for those of us on 1080p screens, and medium/high anti-aliasing settings, it looks a bit of a mess.
Even on maximum anti-aliasing F1 2018 is not very sharp in 1080p, It somehow manages to be sludgy and jagged at the same time - quite an acheievement. Compare that to the older games which were perfectly clear and sharp.

[gpk99]

are you using the latest Nvidia driver???

[Don Cheadle's victim face]

Oh yes.
It's been this waty since F1 2016.
Whatever Graphics engine/style and anti alaising methods they are using now is the problem.
I don't think any graphics driver in the world is going to help the situation.

[gpk99]

funny...I don't seem to have that issue.The game runs silky smooth.....and my system is 6 yrs old now. Obviously it seems something is out of whack with yours but who knows what the heck it is?..It can be several things.

[Maya-Neko]

Well, you should look up, how AA actually works. It takes time to convert jagged borders in sludgy ones and it then takes even more time to get rid of the sludgyness. And don't forget, that this needs to happen 60 times per secondes or even more with never monitors. So instead of limiting your FPS to like 10 or giving you huge amounts of input lag, they're actually accepting, that it isn't perfect, but still the best they can get without wasting too much computing power for such minor improvements.

And personally i actually doesn't see any difference to other games and i'm using just a 1060 GTX and a 1080p monitor. Even if i look at other games where i've higher settings enabled, i can still see some jaggedness and many artifacts caused by AA.

[CSL-Drive]

Ps4 slim uses checkerboard anti alias for smoothing out jagged edges.
I find the temporal anti aliasing they use in Assetto corsa Competitzione unreal 4 engine and GT Sport feels like that aswell, that looks stunning. So smooth. But I can also say 4k on this game looks even better. But it's just heavy to handle, and my tv doesn't support 2k unfortunately. The gamma becomes very dark when I use 2k for some strange reason. If this game had rendering scale, that option would instantly be solved. I hope Codemasters will apply that one day.

[Don Cheadle's victim face]

They had better Anti-Aliasing option in the previous games.
Depending on what option you choose you get a lot of different results.
I find using sparse grid supersampling via Nvidia inspector is great on the older F1 games - crystal clear, no jaggies, and no flickering or shimmering.
But the newer F1 games dont support many options in Nvidia inspector, and the in game Alaising options are really crappy - you are left with jaggies even on max, plus there is flickering and that general sludgy look.. utter garbage for 2018.

Dirt 4, by the same company looks fine however, at least the anti alaising is good enough.

I guess some people don't care about jaggies and prefer 'better' lighting and more detail (more clutter sometimes too). I dont.. Jaggies are the number one issue for me. How can a game made ten years ago on max settings have less jaggies thant a game made this year on max settings? Thats dung in my book.

To be fair and to say it in a shorter way, Project Cars 2 looks ok at 1080p, but only on max setting.
F1 2018 maxed out is only good on 4k tho... why ?

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Trident_Barclay:

I guess some people don't care about jaggies and prefer 'better' lighting and more detail (more clutter sometimes too). I dont.. Jaggies are the number one issue for me. How can a game made ten years ago on max settings have less jaggies thant a game made this year on max settings? Thats dung in my book.

As i said already: Modern graphic cards doesn't have enough time to get rid of all artifacts, even in AAA games. Lighting, Shadows, reflections and all the other things invented over the past few years need much time to be calculated too, so the time, AA is using, is pretty limited and that are problems, older games didn't had, as lighting was pretty simple back then. And you also shouldn't expect this to get better in the near future, as the graphics cards now need to actually render even more frames per second in modern monitors, so there's even less time between frames, where the developers can use AA to smoothen the borders. The only way to really reduce the possibility of artifacts without putting just more load on the graphics card is by reducing the amounts of colors used in the game or by lowering the contrast, which however comes with it's own disadvantages.

[Don Cheadle's victim face]

Originally posted by Maya:

Originally posted by Trident_Barclay:

I guess some people don't care about jaggies and prefer 'better' lighting and more detail (more clutter sometimes too). I dont.. Jaggies are the number one issue for me. How can a game made ten years ago on max settings have less jaggies thant a game made this year on max settings? Thats dung in my book.

As i said already: Modern graphic cards doesn't have enough time to get rid of all artifacts, even in AAA games. Lighting, Shadows, reflections and all the other things invented over the past few years need much time to be calculated too, so the time, AA is using, is pretty limited and that are problems, older games didn't had, as lighting was pretty simple back then. And you also shouldn't expect this to get better in the near future, as the graphics cards now need to actually render even more frames per second in modern monitors, so there's even less time between frames, where the developers can use AA to smoothen the borders. The only way to really reduce the possibility of artifacts without putting just more load on the graphics card is by reducing the amounts of colors used in the game or by lowering the contrast, which however comes with it's own disadvantages.

I think they are going in the wrong direction. Prioritizing cluttered 'detailed' graphics and over the top bloom effects at the expense of basic and essential anti aliasing.
Eye candy but badly optimized & unclear eye candy is no eye candy at all.

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Trident_Barclay:

I think they are going in the wrong direction. Prioritizing cluttered 'detailed' graphics and over the top bloom effects at the expense of basic and essential anti aliasing.
Eye candy but badly optimized & unclear eye candy is no eye candy at all.

And i think they're going the right way. This problem is so hard to come by, that it definitely isn't worth killing the atmosphere in any game i play. And i also don't buy a good graphics card to just use 90% of its computing power for smoothing something out, that i actually doesn't see when i'm concentrating at the gameplay or the storytelling in cutscenes, especially not in a fast paced game like F1.

[gpk99]

PUT your money where your mouth is...give us some screenshots to prove it.

[Don Cheadle's victim face]

Originally posted by Maya:

Originally posted by Trident_Barclay:

I think they are going in the wrong direction. Prioritizing cluttered 'detailed' graphics and over the top bloom effects at the expense of basic and essential anti aliasing.
Eye candy but badly optimized & unclear eye candy is no eye candy at all.

And i think they're going the right way. This problem is so hard to come by, that it definitely isn't worth killing the atmosphere in any game i play. And i also don't buy a good graphics card to just use 90% of its computing power for smoothing something out, that i actually doesn't see when i'm concentrating at the gameplay or the storytelling in cutscenes, especially not in a fast paced game like F1.

It's the first thing I notice when I play games.
Depends what gets your attention I suppose.

They are heading in the wrong direction in my view - sacrificing quality for eye candy is not good.
At least give us the OPTION for better anti-alaising, then we can turn of the post processing etc instead.
F1 2018 looks crap either way - unless you play in 4k

[Don Cheadle's victim face]

Originally posted by gpk99:

PUT your money where your mouth is...give us some screenshots to prove it.

Who is that directed too?
If me, well, You have exact same screen as me if you play this game at 1080p and maxed out Anti alaising.
If you can't see jaggies (on the telegraph wires is a good example), or shimmering jaggies on the cars (especially apparent during action replays) for example, then I think you need your eyes tested.
Neither of those issues are present in the older games on high and correct settings, And this is called progress ? lol

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Trident_Barclay:

Originally posted by gpk99:

PUT your money where your mouth is...give us some screenshots to prove it.

Who is that directed too?
If me, well, You have exact same screen as me if you play this game at 1080p and maxed out Anti alaising.
If you can't see jaggies (on the telegraph wires is a good example), or shimmering jaggies on the cars (especially apparent during action replays) for example, then I think you need your eyes tested.
Neither of those issues are present in the older games on high and correct settings, And this is called progress ? lol

What games are you actually referring to? The only games i know which didn't have a problem with AA were actually the games, who didn't use it at all, especially in the CRT TV era

[gpk99]

nothing wrong with my eyes...but there's definitely something MAJORly wrong with your system if your having issues with your graphics...and I just upgraded my monitor to a 34 inch ultra-wide and the game looks great.

[Don Cheadle's victim face]

Strange
It seems like people arent paying attention to what I write.
No, my system is FINE
Many games look great - because they use better anti -alaising methods.
F1 2018 uses very weak and limited Anti alaising.
I notice bad anti alaising even on my 17 inch screen lol, and your'e on 34 inch screen and think it's fine.
Your eyes mate, seriously. Did you even check the areas I mentioned?
The cars look absolutely terrible during replays.