Lackluster Graphics in FFXIV

The graphics in this game are actually quite amazing, though conceptually boring as well as poorly-optimized.


*GRIN*

Considering:
1. This is an MMO which needs to run faster for everyone
2. It has raytraced shadows

The game looks fine. Comparing it to single player games is a little unfair. Compared to other games (SWTOR) it looks great. It's probably on par with GW2 or maybe just a step or two behind (it's really a matter of taste in some respects).

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Originally Posted by Winterclaw

Considering:
1. This is an MMO which needs to run faster for everyone
2. It has raytraced shadows

The game looks fine. Comparing it to single player games is a little unfair. Compared to other games (SWTOR) it looks great. It's probably on par with GW2 or maybe just a step or two behind (it's really a matter of taste in some respects).

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Eh what? Raytraced? I thought they were baked shadows (well, for distant scenery like the mountains in Coerthas), but I guess that Raytracing would explain all of the complaints people have about it being intensive on the GPU.

I've noticed a little raytracing on my mithra's face from her hair... but maybe that's just me.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

He's a well-known troll who sits in Ul'dah all day b****ing about FFXIV and praising WoW. He also has an alt named Warcraft Cataclysm that sits at camp broken water to sign up for Behest. He's level 1, but he does this to grief players by taking up a slot of the Behest.

I really don't know why people even bother talking to him anymore. Too bad we can't make a sticky to let everyone know to ignore him.

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First off, I never praise WOW. I hate WOW for its contribution to the degradation of society.

Second, Warcraft Cataclysm is *Not* me. To be honest I have no idea who that guy is. I never go to camp broken water. I never leave Uldah, Blackbrush, Drybone or Horizon.

Third, I have proof that i am not Warcraft Cataclysm: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...4255#post64255

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Originally Posted by Winterclaw

The game looks fine. Comparing it to single player games is a little unfair. Compared to other games (SWTOR) it looks great.

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Why is it unfair to compare water from FFXIV to Wave Race 64?

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Originally Posted by BelgianRofl

Third, I have proof that i am not Warcraft Cataclysm: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...4255#post64255

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I could take a screenshot of my alt character if I duel-boxed too.

So could I, but I don't. Would you like me to take a picture of my PC setup?



back on topic, here's what limsa lominsa looks like with maximum graphics. Kinda outta place considering how good the character model looks.

http://i.imgur.com/rgFL8.jpg Nice cliffs, square enix.,,

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Wonder what he'll invent next, since this pretty much happened already here.

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Who knows? He'll probably start trolling about how lancer needs a dragon, needs to be able to ride on that dragon, and needs to to have it's own aerial dogfight levels ala Drakengard when travelling by dragon.

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Originally Posted by BelgianRofl

back on topic, here's what limsa lominsa looks like with maximum graphics. Kinda outta place considering how good the character model looks.

http://i.imgur.com/rgFL8.jpg Nice cliffs, square enix.,,

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Those are not maxed out graphics...

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Originally Posted by BelgianRofl

back on topic, here's what limsa lominsa looks like with maximum graphics

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1280x800? Seriously, might want to get a better monitor/video card. Mediocre resolution does not "maximum graphics" make.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5102/...0db7605c_o.jpg
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5143/...7be0abf5_o.jpg
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5142/...349ec714_o.jpg
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5027/...6628e7a0_o.jpg

Quite a difference I'd say. Isn't it convenient that we can take pictures too?

Turns out that it's not the game's graphics that are "lackluster", but someone's PC :D

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Those are not maxed out graphics...

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I'm pretty sure they are. Look at the texture work on his sleeves and on the stonework on the nearby spiral. The distant texture draw in Limsa is just REALLY bad. I can simply rotate my camera and watch it switch between the fantastic hi-res texture and the abysmal and blocky distant texture.

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Originally Posted by Dreamer

I'm pretty sure they are. Look at the texture work on his sleeves and on the stonework on the nearby spiral. The distant texture draw in Limsa is just REALLY bad. I can simply rotate my camera and watch it switch between the fantastic hi-res texture and the abysmal and blocky distant texture.

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It just looks a lot worse than on my PC, that's why I'm pretty sure they aren't maxed. When I get home, I'll turn everything up to max and post a shot from the same spot if I can.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

1280x800? Seriously, might want to get a better monitor/video card. Mediocre resolution does not "maximum graphics" make.

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K

http://i.imgur.com/uXXgP.jpg

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Originally Posted by BelgianRofl

K

http://i.imgur.com/uXXgP.jpg

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Better, but there's still quite a difference with the ones I posted. Besides the fact that you intentionally cherry picked the least impressive angle (convenient to zoom in as much as possible in order to show as little as possible of the actual city. Actually very convenient considering that one of the major strenghts of the engine is the wide field of view and amazing draw distance) in order to make the city look worse than it is.

Again, better rig is in order.

Until I play a game worthy of my time that can't be run on max settings @ 1920x1200 with at least 45 frames, I'll not be upgrading.

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Originally Posted by BelgianRofl

Until I play a game worthy of my time that can't be run on max settings @ 1920x1200 with at least 45 frames, I'll not be upgrading.

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Do you mean like this?
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5070/...2ae312fd_o.jpg

Notice the fraps FPS counter on top left.

And mind you, my PC is very far from being a beast.
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1329846

Before spending tens upon tens of posts stubbornly bashing a game's graphics, might want to actually experience them in their full splendor. As much as one might want to experience the vast majority of a game's gameplay and systems before bashing them.

I think graphics are pretty nice generally (technically speaking) with some letdowns here and there indeed (like the bad res of trees that makes them like 'paper' made sometimes).. BUT the game lacks about "warm" (and so immersion) in several Areas.

Take Limsa Lominsa. It's very cold and bland in this state... too GREY around. When i saw for the first time the art of it, i imagined it with Santorini colors (and maybe some mosaics on walls), lights from the sea surface in the night and trees around also from the water (i presume a sort of mangroves), like the above image suggests:

http://www.ffotaku.com/images/final-...sa_lominsa.jpg


Gridania is instead a perfect example of a warm and immersive area, much more detailed than LL if you ask me. It's all matter of colors and details around. A perfect example is the Tavern, with colored-glasses. A little masterpiece imo.

Uldah, in the end, is in the middle. Several streets are empty and bland but there are some plazas rich of colors and the market street, with th stands, gives a sense of warm indeed.


Concluding, some areas need a restyling about colors and details, adding stuff (flora, fauna, objects) to make the enviroment more alive... not so cold and sometimes 'artificial'. I don't like to make comparisons usually, but FF11 was FULL of warm and details in every corner. Why FF14 is sadly a (long) step backward in this departement? :( Btw i have still faith and hope devs will make something about it in the future..

Your PC is very good. Believe me, if I didn't have to buy this I'd be upgrading my system every generation.

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Originally Posted by Munba

Take Limsa Lominsa. It's very cold and bland in this state... too GREY around. When i saw for the first time the art of it, i imagined it with Santorini colors (and maybe some mosaics on walls), lights from the sea surface in the night and trees around also from the water (i presume a sort of mangroves), like the above image suggests:

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That's a matter of art direction, not of graphics. Limsa is basically a pirate cove. Pirates aren't exactly known for their artistic exploits. Also, the grey cliffs do have a nice effect. They pick up lovely hues with sunset/sunrise (and even night actually) light conditions.

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Concluding, some areas need a restyling about colors and details, adding stuff (flora, fauna, objects) to make the enviroment more alive... not so cold and sometimes 'artificial'. I don't like to make comparisons usually, but FF11 was FULL of warm and details in every corner. Why FF14 is sadly a (long) step backward in this departement? :( Btw i have still faith and hope devs will make something about it in the future..

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Might really want to polish your FFXI memories a little. Try to remember Bastok. It was basically the same as Limsa. Actually even much worse, due to the much smaller presence of water and vegetation.

It is, by the way, a pretty common problem with MMORPGs. Since almost no team designs all the areas at once, areas designed first tend to be less impressive than those designed later, as the team starts to pick up the style and the art direction of the game, and becomes more confident with the tools.
You can also look at Coerthas and Mor Donha. They look a TON more beautiful (and less monotonous) than Thanlanan, Black Shroud and La Norsca.

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Originally Posted by BelgianRofl

Your PC is very good. Believe me, if I didn't have to buy this I'd be upgrading my system every generation.

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I didn't say it's bad, but it's definitely not near the top as well. Currently it's pretty much a mid-range gaming PC. I built my girlfriend an identical setup (just changing the motherboard because she wasn't interested in a future SLI expansion) for 800 bucks.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

Do you mean like this?
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5070/...2ae312fd_o.jpg

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Those cliffs still look absolutely horrible though.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

Might really want to polish your FFXI memories a little. Try to remember Bastok. It was basically the same as Limsa. Actually even much worse, due to the much smaller presence of water and vegetation.

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I remember Bastok and its "greys" indeed but like you'll see in this image, they are fragmented and merged with "whites" and other colors around:

http://images.wikia.com/ffxi/images/5/56/Nm02.jpg

You'll notice the general effect is different from LL and warmer indeed.

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Originally Posted by Sinzfeldt

Those cliffs still look absolutely horrible though.

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I wouldn't say so. They look pretty realistic stratified cliffs to me, and the normal mapping improves the visuals very nicely.
Sure they'd look even better with tassellation, but that kind of effect is probably too heavy for a MMORPG.

Maybe they're a tad too clean, and could use some weathering/vegetation (even if volcanic cliffs in very windy area actually tend to be quite clean, and limsa is a volcanic area, and very windy).
But as I already said that's a matter of art direction, not of quality of the graphics.

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Originally Posted by Munba

I remember Bastok and its "greys" indeed but like you'll see in this image, they are fragmented and merged with "whites" and other colors around:

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That's an extremely zoomed out image (that I believe couldn't even be seen in game from that perspective. Might be wrong, but I'm 99% sure). Looking with a nearer perspective the grey was very, very strong.
I actually find limsa quite a lot warmer, thanks to the the use of a lot of dark wood (which is actually used in modern architecture to "warm" concrete/steel interiors that tend to be extra cold), an element that was pretty much absent in Bastok.

Mind you, even some areas of Jeuno that were designed much later than bastok were strikingly grayish and "clean".
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4109/...5567c876_o.jpg

Thing is though, no matter how many polygons you added to that cliff it would still look crap because the texture is low res as hell because of the crappy curtain LOD.

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Originally Posted by Sinzfeldt

Thing is though, no matter how many polygons you added to that cliff it would still look crap because the texture is low res as hell because of the crappy curtain LOD.

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That's why you're given the option to use the depth of field effect if you find it so much of a problem.
Most games hide it by adding distance haze (that normally can't even be deactivated) or by shortening radically the draw distance.

I'd rather have the minor annoyance of the LOD, but the extremely long (and quite spectacular) draw distance that the FFXIV engine grants, than not being able to see at an even remotely realistic distance like in other MMOs.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

That's why you're given the option to use the depth of field effect if you find it so much of a problem.

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Yes lets give players fish vision, that's a real solution to the problem eh.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

Mind you, even some areas of Jeuno that were designed much later than bastok were strikingly grayish and "clean".
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4109/...5567c876_o.jpg

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And also in Jeuno that white/yellow in the floor 'softens' the general grey atmosphere. :D LL becomes a bit warmer only during the sunset and dawn, for obvious reasons.

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Originally Posted by Sinzfeldt

Yes lets give players fish vision, that's a real solution to the problem eh.

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Which is pretty much the same than adding the strong distance haze you see in other games (just as unrealistic as depth of field). The difference is that depth of field in FFXIV can be deactivated. The option to deactivate the haze in other MMORPGs is most of the times not present, because it would reveal extreme clipping in the distance.

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Originally Posted by Munba

And also in Jeuno that white/yellow in the floor 'softens' the general grey atmosphere. :D

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I disagree, that floor is way too bright and flat. Personally I find it the most jarring part of the entire architecture.

I much rather prefer thenormal mapped cobblestone in Limsa. At the very least it has depth and weathering (without even going to touch on the darkwood of the upper floor, which is way better wnd warmer, IMHO).

tastes, I would guess. And that's the whole issue. Art direction is a mainly subjective topic.

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LL becomes a bit warmer only during the sunset and dawn, for obvious reasons.

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That's the good aspect of grey, or similar neuter colors. They take on the color of lighting much more effectively, and sunset/sundown lighting in FFXIV is quite stunning (not as stunning as the glare that shoots in your eyes when you walk out of a doorway in full sunlight, but that's a different "stunning" effect :p )

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Originally Posted by Abriael

Which is pretty much the same than adding the strong distance haze you see in other games (just as unrealistic as depth of field). The difference is that depth of field in FFXIV can be deactivated. The option to deactivate the haze in other MMORPGs is most of the times not present, because it would reveal extreme clipping in the distance.

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I'd take haze over fish vision anyday personally, in some areas Cadaevre mire it really worked well. But the problem is that the texture detail distance really isn't that far so running around it is really noticeable.

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Originally Posted by Sinzfeldt

I'd take haze over fish vision anyday personally, in some areas Cadaevre mire it really worked well. But the problem is that the texture detail distance really isn't that far so running around it is really noticeable.

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Maybe I wouldn't take "fish vision" over haze (in fact i run with the depth of field deactivated, something tghat I can't do with games that feature haze), but I definitely won't take haze over the long draw distance.
The texture LOD (that's evident only in very few areas), is a small price to pay for a game in which you can see pretty much as far as you do in real life. IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

tastes, I would guess. And that's the whole issue. Art direction is a mainly subjective topic.

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Indeed. And i see your points as well.


Instead, speaking about graphics (technically) only, here are some bad points i noticed more:

- Water seems really not 'consistent' when you walk in it. Splash effect is very bad in the actual state and the whirls are too subtle.
- Trees (and brushes) are too much low-res, with too much 'tiny' leaves, so the upper part (with leaves) seems a sheet of paper, especially when they moved by the wind. It creates a strange effect of 'trasparency' between the leaves sometimes.
- Lack of building/trees/other shadows. It would increase the atmosphere MUCH.

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Originally Posted by Munba

Indeed. And i see your points as well.


Instead, speaking about graphics (technically) only, here are some bad points i noticed more:

- Water seems really not 'consistent' when you walk in it. Splash effect is very bad in the actual state and the whirls are too subtle.
- Trees (and brushes) are too much low-res, with too much 'tiny' leaves, so the upper part (with leaves) seems a sheet of paper, especially when they moved by the wind. It creates a strange effect of 'trasparency' between the leaves sometimes.
- Lack of building/trees/other shadows. It would increase the atmosphere MUCH.

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Also, whenever you move around, in the distance the low res textures come into view as an approaching wavefront. There is no gradual progression between high and low resolution textures. It's crazyyy.

I created this in beta, but the flaws are still relevant in present time: http://forum.daow.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23

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Originally Posted by DAOWAce

I created this in beta, but the flaws are still relevant in present time: http://forum.daow.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=23

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Yes, the game is running a horribly optimized engine, and the lighting is just atrocious. The characters look ok (except for the lighting), but the world just looks horrible - especially limsa.

FFXI looks better because the graphical technologies all fit together - like a toyota camry with stock rims. here it's like putting doughnuts on a ferrari - and that just ruins the whole image.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9anRoYGko

Tessellation based water

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Originally Posted by Ilean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9anRoYGko

Tessellation based water

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I thought this was a troll post for sure, since this is still the best looking MMO I've seen by a large margin, but I didn't notice how distractingly bad the water looked in Limsa or that the LoD was distracting even on high settings until I recently got a new computer. To say that the graphics are lackluster is a bit much, but certainly the water has room for improvement, and it seems the engine in general could potentially run better. The water in WoW is actually a fairly good example of the scalability that could be used--I run it on ultra now and it looks noticeably better than FFXIV water even though the rest of the game doesn't even touch FFXIV as far as graphic fidelity. Just some proper DX10/11 support would probably improve the water noticeably without demanding too much more in resources.

Although I'm sure there's be a lot of work involved in optimizing the engine (and we know that they're aware of the issues and are working on them), it would pay off if it properly supported DX11 while being a bit more forgiving in the lower range to allow more players. Most FFXI players I knew wanted to try this game out at launch but simply didn't have PCs that could run it. Really, I didn't either--until last week I could only run it on my laptop with all the settings turned down as low as possible, and had lots of loading lag as a result. The game runs tons better now that I upgraded, but not everyone has that option, and when the game is in better shape it'd be great if more could play it.

Still, aside from the water, some pop-in issues with LoD, weird normal mapping in Limsa, and the somewhat unrelated issue that they're working on of kinda boring spell graphics, the game looks pretty awesome. I hope in the future the zone design philosophy allows for a little more variety inside zones, though. The actual regions are pretty diverse graphically, but inside them everything looks pretty similar and there aren't many distinguishing landmarks to make the world feel unique or real.

*necroposting*

I don't give a damn about the graphics quality. It's the boring visual design of every area that's the real problem.

Gameboy Color has games with more visual brilliance than this bland landscape of generic nothingness.

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Originally Posted by Seif

I don't give a damn about the graphics quality. It's the boring visual design of every area that's the real problem.

Gameboy Color has games with more visual brilliance than this bland landscape of generic nothingness.

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Indeed, since sprite based games weren't naturally more 'eye catching'.

Seeing the tech demo and then comparing it to the current game makes my eyes brim with tears. :/

I have no issue with the graphics in the game , yet I feel an emptiness within the environment especially while running from one place to the next, I can run for 5-8 mins with nothing but empty landscape. I'm not complaining I'm new to the whole Final Fantasy experience so I would have nothing to compare it with, but I can say that (through personal experience) good graphics don't always equal good game play. This is just my point of view I'm not aiming this at anyone. Some posts claim they have not yet seen a MMORPG with graphics equal to or better than FF14, might I suggest you take a quick look at Mortal Online. http://www.mortalonline.com/videos (I am by no means advertising or claiming that this is a far better game) Just check it out graphics wise.