Anyone else underwhelmed by the new DX 11 graphics?

[Illya]

Tessellation and Parallax Occlusion depend on the resolution of the texture being "bumpified".

The textures in FFXIV must fit in a PS3's 256 MB of VRAM.

This is the result.

Until the PS3 is finally kicked to the curb and the game can be developed for PCs and PS4 with large memory pools, this what we have to live with. The other improvements in DX11 such as lighting/shading and reflections are very nice though.

[Bishop81]

Tessellation and Parallax Occlusion depend on the resolution of the texture being "bumpified".

The textures in FFXIV must fit in a PS3's 256 MB of VRAM.

This is the result.

Until the PS3 is finally kicked to the curb and the game can be developed for PCs and PS4 with large memory pools, this what we have to live with. The other improvements in DX11 such as lighting/shading and reflections are very nice though.

Yes, for parallax occlusion mapping. Tessellation on the other hand has nothing to do with the base textures.

Tessellation actually adds polygons based on a "higher order description" of the surface.

As for textures, there is no reason why the PC and PS4 can't have access to the hi-res ones - apart from them not existing.

With regards to parallax mapping, it seems to be a limitation of the technique. Unreal suffers from it too.

https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Deve....html#Parallax Occlusion mapping

The only solution seems to be to "flatten"/reduce the effect as the view angle approaches oblique angles - which SE has done for some surfaces but not others like rocks.

[Laraul]

The textures in FFXIV must fit in a PS3's 256 MB of VRAM.

Until the PS3 is finally kicked to the curb and the game can be developed for PCs and PS4 with large memory pools, this what we have to live with. The other improvements in DX11 such as lighting/shading and reflections are very nice though.

We've gone down this road before. The PS3 version uses simple/smaller textures than the PC/PS4 version... it has little impact on other builds of the game.

Beyond image quality concerns we also find extensive use of lower resolution textures and normal maps on the PS3 - along with a reduced amount of anisotropic filtering - which further softens the overall look of the game, leaving certain parts of the stylised artwork looking smudged and rather indistinct in comparison to the much cleaner PC version.

Source: Face-Off: Final Fantasy 14 (PS3 v PC)