Real PS4 Screenshots Justify All That 'Next-Gen' Hype

[GotBored]

Real PS4 Screenshots Justify All That 'Next-Gen' Hype

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/04/real-ps4-screenshots-justify-all-that-next-gen-hype/

 

Back when the PS4 and Xbox One were announced, ?next-gen? meant a lot of things to a lot of people. Smarter games, bigger games, different games, more ways to play with your friends. But it also meant that games would look a whole lot better.

 

It could sometimes be hard to tell just what that meant. We?ve learned not to entirely trust the screenshots sent to the public by publishers, as they?re often scrubbed-up ?bullshots? designed to make a game look smoother and prettier than it ever actually looks as you play it.

 

That?s not the case with the PS4 game Infamous: Second Son. Fire the game up for the first time and it?s clear: It is beautiful. And, thanks to the recently-added Photo Mode, players have begun to take the time to capture and celebrate just how good-looking it all is.

 

The following images are all fan-made, authentic PS4 screenshots that look as good as we all expected next-gen to look. Hell, most of them look better than any of the Sony-approved promotional screenshots we in the press got during the buildup to the game?s release.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[notchinese]

Meh, I've been playing Second Son the past week. It looks good but its by no means amazing.

[trooper11]

Second Son is clearly a good looking game. I've enjoyed the entire experience so much that I was motivated to come back and do another play through. The visuals contribute so much to that experience. It aids in the immersion factor and the 'wonder' factor for the lack of a better term.

I'm glad to see that a game that is running at 1080p/30 is still held up as truly showing next gen potential. It reflects on the reality that some of the number wars are not as crucial as is sometimes implied.

I can only think of one other game this generation so far that I would point to as giving us a taste of what next gen visuals can be and 'justifying' the next gen hype.

The great thing to realize is that this is just the beginning. Even this early, we are starting to see what will come.

[theyarecomingforyou]

Not impressed. All those shots have very low polygon counts and try to make up the detail in the texturing and effects.

[Blackhearted]

They talk about bullshots, say they are a bad thing and not representative of the real game, and then post shots from a 'photo mode' which are the exact same thing thing as bullshots except taken by users instead of the developer.

[DeltaXray]

Seems like a few people are missing the point of the article in that they are fan-submitted screenshots.

In fairness Infamous is a very, very good-looking game.  The lighting/reflections in the wet have got to be some of the best produced so far on any platform.

[Melfster]

Seems like a few people are missing the point of the article in that they are fan-submitted screenshots.

In fairness Infamous is a very, very good-looking game.  The lighting/reflections in the wet have got to be some of the best produced so far on any platform.

I think that is unfair to PC people who have been looking at very nice looking games for long time. Even Xbox one Ryse looks very good but just like infamous the game play is not very good.

[game_over]

Not sure why that Bank of Seattle one is in there

[Draconian Guppy]

The chain link one looks pretty bad imo...

[GotBored]

I think that is unfair to PC people who have been looking at very nice looking games for long time. Even Xbox one Ryse looks very good but just like infamous the game play is not very good.

 

Most reviews consider the gameplay of Infamous to be very good, As someone who has played the game I'd have to agree with them.

 

 

They talk about bullshots, say they are a bad thing and not representative of the real game, and then post shots from a 'photo mode' which are the exact same thing thing as bullshots except taken by users instead of the developer.

 

Photo-mode is just a screenshot in-game which just pauses the game, allows you to move your view around and then take a screenshot without the health-bar and other indicators on screen.

 

 

Not sure why that Bank of Seattle one is in there

 

Its an In-game screenshot, the game is based in Seattle. 

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Reminder to you all, the "trolling-card" won't be tolerated. If there's a problem, report it.

[0nyX]

I find Infamous Second Son to be the first serious "sample" of what next gen games will bring.

 

The game is visually stunning and so fun, that hours pass by without noticing it which is something not to be taken for granted with most modern games.

[123456789A]

Those screenshots aren't half bad, nothing GTX Titan level of course but for a console very good. But if these are from a "photo mode" aren't they getting some effects put on? Forza 5 has a photo mode and you can spiff up the photos with some filters, so it's not really a true screenshot anymore.

[pmrd]

Seems like a few people are missing the point of the article in that they are fan-submitted screenshots.

In fairness Infamous is a very, very good-looking game.  The lighting/reflections in the wet have got to be some of the best produced so far on any platform.

 

Unreal Engine 4 looks better

[sanctified Veteran]

The last one is amazing in terms of color and composition

[Krome]

Not sure why that Bank of Seattle one is in there

lol that image look too real to be a game graphics.  I had my wtf moment :)

[pmrd]

lol that image look too real to be a game graphics.  I had my wtf moment :)

 

My WTF moment was reading your comment. That image looks far from real.

[HawkMan]

 

Photo-mode is just a screenshot in-game which just pauses the game, allows you to move your view around and then take a screenshot without the health-bar and other indicators on screen.

 

 

 

Hehe. you must be new to this ;)

 

photo mode will turn any 60 fps game down to 30, it will naturally disable all AI and stuff. and will turn on a bunch of extra effects and FSAA that it now has resources for with the lower fps and no AI and other stuff. 

[Mandosis]

Unreal Engine 4 looks better

You don't seem to understand how game engines work. I personally use Unreal Engine 4 for an indie game at the moment but what you say would be better stated as Unreal Engine 4 has the potential to create games that are better looking. You can make a game that looks like it belongs on the original xbox on UE4 if you want but its all about art style and quality of assets, lighting, shading, particle effects etc... that make a game look the way it looks. But regardless Second Sun looks amazing.

[dead.cell]

I find Infamous Second Son to be the first serious "sample" of what next gen games will bring.

 

The game is visually stunning and so fun, that hours pass by without noticing it which is something not to be taken for granted with most modern games.

I'd call it and Ryse to be graphical showcases, similar to what The Bouncer was to the PS2: a visually great looking game.

 

Although, I was probably one of the few that liked the Bouncer though haha. I'm pretty sure many more people will be pleased with Second Son. :P

[trooper11]

I'd call it and Ryse to be graphical showcases, similar to what The Bouncer was to the PS2: a visually great looking game.

 

Although, I was probably one of the few that liked the Bouncer though haha. I'm pretty sure many more people will be pleased with Second Son. :p

I actually had fun with the Bouncer back in the day after the launch of the ps2. However, the game has not held up well for me. I had a nostalgia moment a while back and fired the game up, only to not feel that good about playing it again :laugh:

[Ambroos]

Not impressed. All those shots have very low polygon counts and try to make up the detail in the texturing and effects.

 

Polygons aren't everything. Good models are important but the texture and lighting contribute so much more to the general atmosphere and are in the end what make a game look good. Beyond Good and Evil, a PlayStation 2 game, looked amazing in 2002 and I still like how it looks even though it's ancient and is quite low on polygons. 

 

These are all ingame screenshots. You can see it's old, but it still looks great. These are screenshot from a sligthly updated version with higher res textures (except the first screenshot), but everything else is 100% the same.

 

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Artistically inFamous SS looks great which helps it in the grand scale of things. It's still technically a superb looking game but other developers take note, choosing a good art style creates a lot of charm and goes a long way.

 

By art style here I mean the massive focus on lighting and showing off the lighting engine with creative and fitting special effects.

[DeltaXray]

Yeah the game has so few polygons...

 

• The engine streams environment blocks on a 100 meters grid. Each block loads 33 MiB (Mebibytes, basically a techie version of a megabyte) of data including everything (physics, scripts, AI and particle). Below you can see a visual representation of those blocks.
• Only 10 blocks are displayed at any given time. An extra 7 are loaded but not rendered to help with I/O (input/output speed) from the hard disk.
• 4 blocks are rendered with 48 MiB high resolution texture packs that are streamed separately.
• Each object has between 1 and 3 LODs (levels of detail based on distance) for near to mid distances.
• FAR LOD uses baked imposters.
• The engine regularly draws over 11 million polygons for the whole scene.
• There are many instances per block, with over three million instance vertices per block.
• In the worst case the player can move 20 meters per seconds before overtaking the speed at which the world can be rendered.
• Each character has between 300-500 separate bones, many of which for the face, cloth and hands.
• Characters have 120.000 polygons, but NPCs have more LODs (lower detail models displayed when far away from the camera) for performance reasons.
• They take 28 MiB of data, most of which are textures.
• There are thousands of animation clips, and facial animation during cutscenes is done separately for each vertex.
• Vertex animation is done with three bits per vertex, while wrinkles are procedural.

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04/14/infamous-second-sons-characters-are-120000-polygons-11-million-rendered-regularly-by-the-engine/

i'm keen to see how many The Order has, it looks even better than this game

[pmrd]

You don't seem to understand how game engines work. I personally use Unreal Engine 4 for an indie game at the moment but what you say would be better stated as Unreal Engine 4 has the potential to create games that are better looking. You can make a game that looks like it belongs on the original xbox on UE4 if you want but its all about art style and quality of assets, lighting, shading, particle effects etc... that make a game look the way it looks. But regardless Second Sun looks amazing.

 

As a matter of fact I do understand how game engines work since I've worked with almost every available one on the market since 10 years. What I meant is that even the most basic tech examples from the current UE4 look better than this game. The reflections are really bad in all these "real" screenshots.