My Three Main Wishes for 7.0 Graphical Update

[DiaDeem]

Lighting

Lighting is a huge part in gaming graphics, and good lighting can often make up for low triangle counts and average textures. When lighting mocks up, it can bring down an otherwise good looking game, and XIV needs to improve its lighting. We spend a lot of time in The Ocular in Shadowbringers, and the lighting and shadows there look really weird. Faces looks like clay, with very unnatural looking shadows:



Emet in particular looks... really weird (really bad imho) in this place, and we spend a lot of ShB chatting with everyone in this location.



There's also places where light behaves very weirdly. Here we have a bright red source high in the sky, and the area looks properly lit, actually:



Until you flip the camera and suddenly the character is completely in the dark and very poorly lit. What happened with the big red source of light in the sky?



XIV's light model was fine, for 2014. They've said a lighting revamp is on the table, so I hope they can stick to landing!

Anti Aliasing

XIV uses an implementation of FXAA for its AA, and it's... really bad. I'm running the game at 1080p so millage may vary on higher resolutions, but the bad AA tends to pop out like a sore thumb, and some details end up looking just terrible:







It's also why stairs have this weird wobbly effect thing I'm sure everyone has noticed:



It's easier to notice in motion.

AA tends to be some of the less expensive graphical tweaks on modern engines, so I'm hoping this improves with 7.0

Textures

Just by improving lighting and AA, lower quality textures are gonna look way better than they do right now, but once you have some newer textures on, the game has the potential to truly look amazing. Not much to share here. We've all seen the low quality leaves, or Hien's clothes. This is the last thing I feel will help the game look super nice without destroying performance.

What wishes do you guys have in particular for the Graphical Update?