[Dawntrail Benchmark] Character bodies are the same as before

[Aco505]

There's plenty of talk and posts about how the graphical update has affected the faces, eyes, lips, hair or skin of our characters.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned much is that their bodies are practically the same.

Fingers and toes seem to have been improved and nails are more obvious now. Yoshi-P did say in the recent PPL that they tried to increase the number of polygons as much as they could, although I personally think they should strive to make them look as good as they should be.

However, the rest of the body hasn't changed. Shadows might be improved to better reflect the different elements but overall it's all the same.

The way muscles like the biceps or pectorals look, the veins in the arms and legs for male characters (we do have those), the shape of areas such as the collarbone, the navel, the nipples for males... it all still looks like the old version.

In fact, you can still see the polygon-esque shapes on the waists and sides of the lower part of the chest on male characters (see picture below). These have not been improved at all.



I really hope that, since the graphical update is not finished and done in stages, our bodies will be part of it and become improved and more defined graphics wise.

Honestly, there's not been much information on this, since most of the panels and PPLs on the graphical update have been focused on the face and other elements.

Are you satisfied with the way our bodies currently look? Are there specific elements you'd like enhanced or added?

[Heavenchild]

Honestly, no. They still look low quality for nowadays. I was hoping for better models for Elezen and male Hyran for example.
And that they give male characters normal nipples instead of the barbie's Ken plastic doll look.

[Somnolence]

This is quite apparent and jarring since some new stuff such as clothing has more polygons, while characters are still stuck in ARR fidelity.

FFXIV characters have ~10k polygons. For comparison, Black Desert Online is supposedly 30-50k.

[Larirawiel]

The problem is, the game engine is already heavily choking on the CPU. If you increase the polygon count then the CPU usage will go up further. So it is not an easy task for this small indie company. The first thing, they should do is the migration of the engine to DirectX 12 or Vulkan API. It will lower the CPU usage and also make it easier to support more CPU cores. The current game engine runs basically on one CPU core and does very minor tasks on other cores.


Cheers

[Razraptre]

The problem is, the game engine is already heavily choking on the CPU. If you increase the polygon count then the CPU usage will go up further. So it is not an easy task for this small indie company. The first thing, they should do is the migration of the engine to DirectX 12 or Vulkan API. It will lower the CPU usage and also make it easier to support more CPU cores. The current game engine runs basically on one CPU core and does very minor tasks on other cores.

Probably showing my ignorance here, but don't higher fidelity assets usually place a greater strain on the GPU? Why would raising the polygon count in XIV stress the CPU instead?

[Larirawiel]

Probably showing my ignorance here, but don't higher fidelity assets usually place a greater strain on the GPU? Why would raising the polygon count in XIV stress the CPU instead?

It depends, how the "higher fidelity" is implemented. If you increase the polygon count then it will mostly hit the CPU. But if you increase the texture resolution or you add more unique textures then it will strain the GPU. There also effects like raytracing, which strains the CPU and the GPU etc. The devs always try to find a balance for it.



Cheers

[Somnolence]

Probably showing my ignorance here, but don't higher fidelity assets usually place a greater strain on the GPU? Why would raising the polygon count in XIV stress the CPU instead?

Polygons alone don't put much stress on modern GPUs, f.e. last gen game Horizon Zero Dawn has 500k polygon robots (while as I commented above FFXIV character has ~10k).

MMOs have higher dependency on CPU due to more diverse (and unpredictable) things happening on the screen. For example, you zone into Limsa. CPU has to handle info about all characters around you, recreate them based on appearance parameters, fetch equipment info, load equipment models and textures, handle character animations and actions etc.

[xbahax92]

The neck is not seamless anymore lol, you can see the difference between head texture and body texture. This needs to be adressed asap.

[Supersnow845]

Honestly call me “horny” or weird or whatever but in a game that doles out speedos to male characters left right and centre continuing to have bodies this low poly and with this bad textures during a graphical update is pretty poor form

The same EW body on the new DT head is going to look weird AF in my current glam (again call me horny I really don’t care that’s not the point)

If the game is excessively CPU bound they need to start allowing us to hide details or characters, the difference in graphical fidelity between the body and the face is really weird

[T-Vo]

yes, I was disappointed as well. I mean Tera had it to where if you wanted thicker thighs you could drink potions to make it happen over 10 years ago. The graphical update is cool but I as well was expecting at least something in regards to the character creator. With A.I. being able to help code now the "it would take too much coding" excuse is kind of poor in my opinion. Maybe this will be addressed in another live letter if enough people say something?