Updated benchmark

[VerdeLuck]

Just a smidge frustrating that they never did anything about the botched lip fillers on face 2 vieras, especially after all the other changes they made. There's another option I can select that's 'kinda' close enough, but still changes the face.

It's how it goes with viera, there's an incredibly old thread that still gets bumped every now and then complaining about the lack of hair styles, hats, graphical issues, etc and it's sad how few of those are ever addressed by SE.
But hey, keepers lose their fangs and that's patched in a week with multiple in-progress shots to get feedback right?

[LuciaMirain]

It is a huge improvement and looks alot more like my actual character. I still am not happy with the nose having shadows removed bc it makes the nose look rounder than what it is. This issue disappears as soon as I turn my character a little bit into a shadow ofc.
My miqo though looks really good! Overall alot happier with this benchmark. And excuse the difference in light but since they adjusted it I can no longer get the entire face lit up like in the other ones.
OG

Benchmark 1

Benchmark 2

Miqo
OG

Benchmark 1

Benchmark 2

[Gyson]

I'm still really disappointed with how my character turned out in the updated benchmark. It just doesn't look like the same character to me, nor does it look like an improvement. I realize Male Highlanders aren't as common as some of the other races but I would appreciate seeing them get some love with needed fixes.



Left is Endwalker, Right is Dawntrail. Face Type 2 is being used.

Mouth Type 4 - The lips appear larger, both in width and height. This is likely because the shape of the upper lip has changed. Significant space has been added into the cupids bow, where previously nearly none existed. Mouth Type 4 is the smallest sized mouth available to male Highlanders and should remain as a small option, rather than being sized closer to the other larger options already available.

Hair - The hair, while more detailed when zoomed in extremely close, seems much less detailed when viewed from any reasonable distance. I believe this is due to the lack of shading that is now present in the hair, causing it to look very flat.

Hair - Two-tone colors no longer blend nearly as well as they used to, and for the lighter color I am using the darkest shade available. I can not make it darker without switching to a different color entirely. Again, this seems to be a problem with lost shading or variance in its color, so rather than each tone having areas that are slightly lighter and slightly darker and allowing the sections to blend together better, each section now appears separate and distinct (which is not good when it's supposed to be a blend).

I have not seen these issue on all hairstyles, so it seems to be a problem with this particular hairstyle.

Face Paint (Eyebrows) - The placement of these markings is positioned significantly higher on the brow than it was pre-Dawntrail. This makes the character look more "surprised" all the time. Please return the eyebrow face-paint to the position they currently occupy in Endwalker.

Face Paint (Eyebrows) - Even with the darkest color (black) selected, the shade appears lighter or less vibrant than it currently is on live. This makes it difficult to pass these markings off as eyebrows, as the lighter they appear the more fake they look.

Nose Type 6 - From brow to tip, the entire ridge of the nose is now more squared off and blocky, where as previously it was more smoothed/rounded. This gives the ridge the appearance of being wider.

Skin tone (RGB 169, 133, 104) - The skin tone has changed and is darker than it is on live.

Jaw Type 4 - The chin is a bit shorter than pre-Dawntrail, making the head look more squared instead of oval.

Of all of these, the most important ones to me I would like to see fixed (those with the largest impact) would be the issues with the hair, the eyebrow facepaint, and the mouth. At least then I would feel like my character is "close enough" to what I have now, although even then it still feels more like a downgrade than an upgrade (which is disappointing given the work/time that went into the graphics update).

[MimizuMizu]

First of all I am very satisfied with the changes and how everything has been addressed until now. As of now, however, I still have a very small nitpick for my lalafell character and i'd like to provide feedback on that since that could also be an issue for more people.

Here's my character in the new benchmark and in-game as of now (patch 6.58):



This is a female dunesfolk lalafell with the first face, type 6 eye shape and type 3 mouth.

It's hard for me to put this in good words, but her eyes have lost it's "sharpness" and now have a more "round" feeling to it. I believe the cause of this is the shape around this highlighted region:



Now for this next one I am not really sure which one I preferred, but I'd like to also note the changes for the mouth shape:



With all that I'd be pleased if its possible to give some attention to this, specially the eyes. In the benchmark I feel like my character is way better than what she was before and I'm still very excited for the next expansion!

[SongOfTheWind]

Overall, I am happy with the changes, but I will say that in the updated benchmark, they took away the only I liked: my bunboi's lil nose fuzz. Now he just has a hyur nose and he doesn't look like my bunboy. I tried other noses, as well, but none of them (for Rava, at least) have the little dark patch of fuzz no matter the lighting or angle, and that's kind of heartbreaking to me since it's similar to au ra limbal rings and moonkeeper fangs: a unique racial feature.

I think it was overfixed, as it indeed lost its unique pattern, but the benchmark face 3 nose was pretty broken for veena especially. It was never so dark as they made it in v1.

[aiqa]

characters look great, i wanna know about these graphics options like the myriad ambient occlusion options, is gtao the best?

why is the dlss/fsr setting so darn vague? is any AA actually on if the game never drops into low framerates?

wheres the technical nerds in this forum?

Yes, antialiasing is still active. And yes, the settings are very confusing.

Antialiasing an inherent part of DLSS and cannot be disabled (while DLSS is active) even if you try. That is why the normal antialiasing options get disabled when you select DLSS. The framerate settings for the upscaler only determine when resolution is scaled down more. But even when above the target framerate, DLSS/FSR is still active. The exact values for the render resolution when above/below target framerate are unknown.

For FSR it's different because the demo is using FSR1. FSR1 doesn't include antialiasing at all, it only does upscaling. And the upscaling isn't all that great since it lacks the temporal stuff you get in DLSS/FSR2. So for FSR you still need to select your prefered antialising technique.

[MoonstalkerZ]

My character's pupils turned gray, he looks blind
1.0

1.1


Edit: The full face picture makes it look even clearer
1.0

1.1

[Lyaha]

I quite like how it turned out with the new benchmark.

The shadow below the mouth texture seems to be much higher quality, though I find it a bit much, slight reduction would be nice but I think it's the same on the live build, just lower resolution.

[moodud]

Hello. I guess this will be the thread for feedback. Male Midlander face 3 here.

Current / New Benchmark


Old Benchmark / New Benchmark


The new lighting (or rather how it should have been from the beginning) is so so much better. Shadows are crunchy similar to the original yet look way better in dark places, no more jump scare lightings. My character eyes felt closer to the original and I am very happy. Big upgrade.

!!! However the beard still has low resolution even in the new benchmark. !!!




The low res beard stands out quite a lot.
I looked at other faces/races to see if they have the same problem and I found this 3 faces:



Haven't check every face, could be more, but it's clear that this is simply a mistake, something that has been overlooked. Would appreciate it if this could be fix before Dawntrail launch.

Some updated beards for reference:

[Isurith]

Can't help but be disappointed. The update overall is impressive, and the new benchmark is very nice (the aetheryte on the map/party up scene catched my eyes this time, it's beautiful).
And I won't say my character was "butchered" like some people extrapolate.

But still, the feeling is still off, the problematic changes were not coming from lights (and everyone that said that before are just full of bad faith).

Mouth shape is changed (and that seems to be the case for a lot of variation), and pupils got bigger without reason (and without any way to correct that with a fantasia).

In the end, I will live with that and get used to it if I must. But that's sad. I liked the sharp mood of this face, and that feeling is lost.



Au ra F feels more samey between face than before, and that's a shame imo.
Not only face 4 lost, but overall the custom options lost.