Thread: 1.0 vs ARR Areas - A Visual Comparison

Originally Posted by Jagick

I don't know if 1.0 was on console as well but my immediate suspicion is to wonder of the downgrade was so this game could run on the PS3.

It wasn't on consoles, and it was a struggle to run on PCs of the time. The game ran on Crystal Tools (FFXIII) and now runs on a modified version of the Luminous Engine (FFXV) and among other issues had trouble displaying large amounts of players on screen at the same time, but there were some really beautiful areas.

If you ask me, I'm a bit in the middle. The Gate of Nald area looks way too dark and poorly lit in 1.0 if you ask me. Camp Riversmeet looks beautiful in 1.0 but Central Thanalan looks kinda flat, and could be because nothing is casting real shadows there. What 1.0 had was a rather amazing sense of scale, though that came with very repetitive looking areas and don't get me started with the copy-pasted corridors of the Black Shroud.

I'm tempted to find a better place in Toto-Rak from 6.1 because it's clearly way prettier than what you normally see in the game right now, and more in line with what I expect for the 7.0 visual update.

Originally Posted by Jagick

How do things look THIS much worse all these years later? Everything is so washed out and faded.

The new engine uses reflective lighting. Like in real life, the colors change depending on the lighting and that's why people think they are washed out.

Textures have so much less detail. The areas seem so much less open and more linear even by other theme park MMO standards. I don't know if 1.0 was on console as well but my immediate suspicion is to wonder of the downgrade was so this game could run on the PS3.

1.0 had extremely high detail in some areas and extremely low detail in others. It was uneven, so some things looked amazing and other things looked terrible. A balance was required, so a new rule was made that everything must be equally as detailed, so they are not as detailed as the best models in 1.0, but they are not as low detail as at the worst models in 1.0. An overall limit on detail of all the assets was required to work on the majority of people's hardware.

If you have an extremely detailed plant pot beside a pixelated tree it doesn't look very good.

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If you have an extremely detailed plant pot beside a pixelated tree it doesn't look very good.

Or an entire forest of like... six clusters of trees, copied and pasted everywhere.

(My salt with regards to the 1.x Black Shroud is dead and buried, but the grave is a very shallow one.)

Originally Posted by MsMisato

I also want to say during one of the live letters last year, during the gfx update announcement, Yoshi did stay they removed alot of shaders from the game (2.0 and onwards) and will slowly be readding some back to the game over time. not sure on the time frame.

About that...


I'm grateful that the game came to PS3, as it was the only way for me to play for almost two years. I'm just sad that we're still paying the technical debt it left us with.

Originally Posted by MsMisato

Totally understandable why they did that, but at the time during 1.0, i had a computer that was able to run it, and it was awesome despite the server to client side lag. I really enjoy the cities states from 1.0, them being open like they were as one zone was super cool especially in limsa. I remember hanging out on the deck next to the steps that ran from lower to upper watching people go up and down them xD

Thanks for sharing your photos its always nice to have a bit of trip back to 1.0 from time to time.

I still have trauma remembering the minute-long walk from the Limsa Aetheryte to La Noscea. That bridge went on forever.