[Official] Crysis 2

[ViperAFK]

This is so confusing. Games never clearly tell you if you are missing any features by running DX11 with a DX10 card. I have [edit: one of] the fastest DX10 single gpu (HD 4890) and don't plan on upgrading it anytime soon, and this haze around DX11 support really irritates me.

Well DX11 is fully backwards compatible with dx10 hardware excluding a few specific things like tessellation. IMO any game that only supports dx9 and 11 should have dx11 work with dx10 cards, but for some reason a lot of games dont do that.

I know Dragon Age 2 will do this (if you have a dx10 card you can enable dx11 mode and it will just disable tessellation and dynamic lights cast from effects. I guess the point is, if you are making a directx11 game including dx11 support is superfluous since you can run dx11 on dx10 hardware just fine, and directx 11 has some improvements that can benefit directx10 cards too (basically improved performance.

But yeah, It can be a bit confusing because they don't usually tell you specifically what features are disabled (you can always assume tessellation is though)

Who knows what crytek will do when [if] they give us dx11. :shiftyninja:

[WastedJoker]

I have a feeling this result is wildly optimistic :blush:

[PGHammer]

^--That's false with my setup, Core i7 950 @ 4GHz and a single GTX 580 @ 920 MHz Core. And we're talking 1900x1200 here.

Crysis 1.21 (the original with patches) gets 40-50 fps at maximum settings + enchanced edge AA

Crysis Warhead gets 80-100 fps at maximum settings and 1.21 looks more real. I think it's much more optimized for cards with huge numbers of ROPs and shaders.

Crysis 2 MP Demo gets 70-80 fps at the hardcore setting. It looks pathetic.

I never checked the framerate for Metro 2033 DX11 but it's always playable at max settings and certain effects (like wispy 3d smoke) look very beautiful in it, but Crysis 1.21 is closer to reality.

I was hoping to see something more real (outdoors) than Crysis 1.21... but well, it does not look like Crytek are going to be the ones who make this happen :angry:

You just summed up (in a nutshell) the biggest complaint PC gamers have - the bar hardware-wise (and control-wise) is set too low!

Until recently, shooters didn't just tax your wallet with the $40USD-$50USD price - you then wound up laying out $100USD-$150USD for a better graphics card, followed by another $50USD-$100USD for additional memory and *possibly* another $100USD for a CPU upgrade. In other words, that $40USD shooter wound up with a total price of closer to $250USD (if not more) due to upgrades required to play it looking decently. (And that is if you had midrange hardware to start with.) Crysis 2 is priced in the AAA ballpark ($60USD is the new level for AAA titles, and Crysis 2 didn't set it - Starcraft II did); however, Crytek didn't require that even midrange hardware owners spend money upgrading their hardware. If you have midrange hardware, you likely won't need to spend *anything*, as your current hardware can play it with solid image quality and solid framerates as-is. The end of the *shooter hardware tax*.

But "oh no". We're not happy. Our hardware isn't being taxed enough. Does anyone have any idea what that sounds like? It sounds like someone complaining that the prices in a high-end restaurant are too low, even though the food is actually of decent quality. (In other words, the food quality is actually *better* than the price would indicate.)

Crytek has *already done* the high-end-only PC title - that was the original Crysis.

Crysis 2 is something that nobody has dared do ever - literally, a shooter for the rest of us. Not only is it multiplatform (hence consoles and PCs), it's even multiplatform within the PC space. Can anyone name ONE shooter that was friendly to laptops or notebooks of other than highest-end before this demo?

The controls are actually friendly to shooter-n00bs. (For shame, Crytek - actually daring to expand outside the niche of hardcore shooter-fanatics with easy-to-grasp controls. Have we forgotten that the control scheme being overly complicated was something that was mightily complained about in the original Crysis?)

One other reason Crytek took the deferred rendering path had nothing to do with development per se, but a lot to do with the economic picture (more so outside of North America, but even North America is not in the best of shape). In case you have been hiding under a rock, the economic situation is worse *everywhere* now than it was at the launch of Crysis. As bad as it has been in the US (or even the Western Hemisphere as a whole), in the rest of the world, it's worse - much worse. Crytek's homebase is Europe - which puts them practically at ground zero. UNfortunately, you can't fight off a poor economy, even with Nanosuit 2 and all the weaponry upgrades Crysis 2 offers. Instead, you lower the hardware bar (not just for consoles, but for a greater sheer number of PCs - even portable PCs). What you have is good escapist eyecandy which doesn't force you into spending a lot more than the initial cost of the game on hardware upgrades (whcih even the Battlefield 3 fanbase admits likely WILL be the case when their demo arrives).

If anything, Crysis 2's MP demo is even friendlier in terms of current hardware than even Enemy Territory was when it launched, if not the classic free MP shooter - Team Fortress Classic.

Maybe Crytek got a clue and decided NOT to BOHICA their fans by doing basically another Crysis in the midst of a barely-recovering economy.

[Athernar]

One other reason Crytek took the deferred rendering path had nothing to do with development per se, but a lot to do with the economic picture (more so outside of North America, but even North America is not in the best of shape). In case you have been hiding under a rock, the economic situation is worse *everywhere* now than it was at the launch of Crysis. As bad as it has been in the US (or even the Western Hemisphere as a whole), in the rest of the world, it's worse - much worse. Crytek's homebase is Europe - which puts them practically at ground zero. UNfortunately, you can't fight off a poor economy, even with Nanosuit 2 and all the weaponry upgrades Crysis 2 offers. Instead, you lower the hardware bar (not just for consoles, but for a greater sheer number of PCs - even portable PCs). What you have is good escapist eyecandy which doesn't force you into spending a lot more than the initial cost of the game on hardware upgrades (whcih even the Battlefield 3 fanbase admits likely WILL be the case when their demo arrives).

If anything, Crysis 2's MP demo is even friendlier in terms of current hardware than even Enemy Territory was when it launched, if not the classic free MP shooter - Team Fortress Classic.

Maybe Crytek got a clue and decided NOT to BOHICA their fans by doing basically another Crysis in the midst of a barely-recovering economy.

This page has had some nice technical discussion so far, please do not ruin it with some irrelevant blather about player skill and economics.

Nothing what you've just said in that bloated wall of text has any meaning; you do not need to gimp the high-end to support the low end. Deferred rendering allows for a larger performance budget, meaning better overall resultant quality on consoles; nothing more, nothing less.

[Ayepecks]

I have a feeling this result is wildly optimistic :blush:

Actually, I think you should be completely fine. You have a good graphics card and processor, and easily plenty of RAM. Should run great on the medium settings, which don't look much different than the high-end settings. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it ran well on the higher setting, too.

[PGHammer]

This page has had some nice technical discussion so far, please do not ruin it with some irrelevant blather about player skill and economics.

Nothing what you've just said in that bloated wall of text has any meaning; you do not need to gimp the high-end to support the low end. Deferred rendering allows for a larger performance budget, meaning better overall resultant quality on consoles; nothing more, nothing less.

The same way it helps out consoles also helps out lower-end PCs (desktops and portables). Actually, a lot of the technicalese came from the CryEngine3 site (http://www.mycryengine3.com), which explains (in a nutshell) the general theory behind CE3.

I have no idea what the issues were behind the non-optimization of the higher-end PCs, primarily because I don't HAVE a higher-end PC. However, the general thinking with shooters is that if you are going to cater AT ALL to the high-end PC, you have to raise the bar so high that the general PC is barred.

That is indeed the tack that the original Crysis took - while it admittedly looked great on high-end hardware, general midrange PCs took it in the chops.

That is what I meant by the lower bar - Crysis 2 is in no way aimed at the high-end PC at all.

The general theory behind CE3 is easy enough to understand - if you follow motion picture animation trends, and especially CGI. It's called render-farming (or distributed computing). It was made famous in the Toy Story movies, and had a major coming-out party with Avatar. CE3 is the first application of this sort of thing to gaming (and it has a ton of uses beyond gaming, as even Crytek admits, and goes into some detail about on the CE3 site).

One issue that may indeed be a concern is how well CE3's distributed-rendering method works with multiple platforms with different hardware capabilities doing rendering at the same time of the same scene (MP maps, for example). (That's not an issue that consoles, with fixed hardware setups, are going to face - that is uniquely a PC issue.) Said issue gets more convoluted when you have not just desktops, but portables in the mix.

Distributed rendering is new to gaming, period. Then you have the different combinations of hardware possible in desktops (and now portable PCs, such as laptops and notebooks). They likely went low-ball *because* this is new territory. Each additional complexity adds additional stress to the DR mesh. DX9c has, say, one level of complexity, but each additional DX10 or DX11 feature adds further complexity. What if adding a new feature breaks the mesh? Also, there is the issue of features that are unique to specific GPUs (or even a subset of a specific brand's GPUs, such as nV's Fermi) - do you add brand-specific or GPU-specific optimization at all? (One thing that I did notice in the leak was that the game communicated back to a host server - not with user information, but with general information about the client's hardware capabilities. Not anything new - Steam does this same sort of *generic* information-gathering today. However, the possibilities of what the servers can do with the information are very interesting, and go quite a bit beyond some of the details shown in the demo so far.)

It's a different way of thinking - so radically different that it's actually understandable for Crytek to start low (crawling before walking before running). Distributed-rendering may have issues with too-widely-variable hardware setups (again, something that consoles don't deal with, but common with PCs, even leaving out portables). CE3 may break when you have too many variations of DirectX clients (9c, 10, and 11) at the same time - therefore, DX11 may not be possible (yet, or at all). Again, crawl before you walk.

Even if Crytek doesn't add support for higher levels of DirectX at all, they have dared do something wildly different in moving away from the high-end PC. It's not the typical, but it is long overdue, in my humble opinion.

[Athernar]

<snip>

Please do not try and pretend that you know what you're talking about, deferred and distributed rendering are two totally different and unrelated concepts. If you truely understood the subject at hand, you would not of made such a grievous mistake.

Please stop.

[AbandonedTrolley]

I have a feeling this result is wildly optimistic :blush:

I want my machine so I can test out spec tests! lol

[PGHammer]

Please do not try and pretend that you know what you're talking about, deferred and distributed rendering are two totally different and unrelated concepts. If you truely understood the subject at hand, you would not of made such a grievous mistake.

Please stop.

Athernar - I as much as said that I have no idea *why* Crytek made the decisions that they have made - however, from what *is* out there, I do recognize that this is a completely new and different deal from traditional development.

From what I have been observing, that is what you (and others that have been raging over the results) are largely horked off about - that it IS different.

I'm willing to give them (Crytek) the benefit of the doubt because I know (and from rather painful first-hand experience) that doing things differently is not always successful right off (and hence crawling before walking makes all sorts of sense).

Are you THAT much in bed with the traditional way of doing things (despite the extremely slim success rate) that any attempt at doing things differently will ONLY be met with scorn and nerdrage?

[Athernar]

Athernar - I as much as said that I have no idea *why* Crytek made the decisions that they have made - however, from what *is* out there, I do recognize that this is a completely new and different deal from traditional development.

From what I have been observing, that is what you (and others that have been raging over the results) are largely horked off about - that it IS different.

I'm willing to give them (Crytek) the benefit of the doubt because I know (and from rather painful first-hand experience) that doing things differently is not always successful right off (and hence crawling before walking makes all sorts of sense).

Are you THAT much in bed with the traditional way of doing things (despite the extremely slim success rate) that any attempt at doing things differently will ONLY be met with scorn and nerdrage?

PGHammer, what I am "horked off" about is your goal here, it seems you're trying to decieve other posters into thinking you know more than you actually do.

Our previous discussions on resolution could be in part put down to opinion; but in this case your muddling of what deffered and distributed rendering are is revealing.

If you truely understood the topic at hand, you would not of made that mistake.

I honestly could not care less if Crytek wishes to shoot themselves in the foot with their approach to the PC, I feel no loss over a franchise that was mediocre at best. I do take exception to however, people that seemingly attempt to mislead others or misrepresent themselves with overdone rants and wild theories.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Here's a tech showcase that was shown at GDC 2011. It's... amazing.

[Kyle A]

The only thing that is really holding me back from pre-ordering this game (or from buying it all) is the uncertainty surrounding anti-cheat for PC multiplayer. Are they going to use Punkbuster? Is Crytek going to try and provide their own anti cheat? I don't follow the news for this game closely so if anyone does know this, I'd love to know. I especially became worried about this when I saw the mass murder and teleport hacks in the demo already. :no:

I have noticed they have been very silent about everything including the whole DX11 thing (which I'm quite disappointed about too). I guess they're trying not to shoot themselves in the foot before release though... :/

[CGar]

I think worst case, they will have a post-launch patch to fully enable DX11 technologies, similar to how Dragon Age 2 just released a high resolution texture pack for the PC today. I think Crysis 2 could use a high resolution texture pack too... a lot of the textures aren't very impressive.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

In case anyone didn't notice, the Crysis 2 PC demo was patched recently: http://www.vg247.com/2011/03/09/crysis-2-multiplayer-demo-pc-patched/

I'm glad they worked out the account issues but I never came across any bugs. Also, they changed the menu to say "Press Enter" (from "Press Start").

[apowers]

11 days :)

[ViperAFK]

I think worst case, they will have a post-launch patch to fully enable DX11 technologies, similar to how Dragon Age 2 just released a high resolution texture pack for the PC today. I think Crysis 2 could use a high resolution texture pack too... a lot of the textures aren't very impressive.

Yeah but bioware announced clearly that there would be a day 1 patch with the high textures, and there was a patch available a day before the game was even released. Crytek has been incredibly vague and not communicating with the pc community at all which worries me a bit. I've cancelled my pre order for now, I might still get it but am waiting to see how it is after launch.

[nyolc8]

In case anyone didn't notice, the Crysis 2 PC demo was patched recently: http://www.vg247.com/2011/03/09/crysis-2-multiplayer-demo-pc-patched/

I'm glad they worked out the account issues but I never came across any bugs. Also, they changed the menu to say "Press Enter" (from "Press Start").

I think they modified something with the graphics too, because after I patched, it crashed at the loading screen (before patch, it worked nicely), I had to update my amd driver from 11.1 to 11.2 to make it work again.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

The latest trailer shows a bit of vehicle gameplay.

[trag3dy]

Looks good, I just hope the campaign is longer than 5 hours. I also hope that's not asking to much for a series that was primarily a single player one to begin with as well. :wacko:

[AimLXJ]

Anyone know how to toggle fire mode in the Crysis 2 demo? When I press the button to toggle fire mode nothing happens (PC version, button #2) and the only reason why I want to toggle fire mode because according to this website: http://denkirson.xanga.com/742784256/crysis-2/ single mode does more damage (I want to test it :))

[George P Global Moderator]

Looks good, I just hope the campaign is longer than 5 hours. I also hope that's not asking to much for a series that was primarily a single player one to begin with as well. :wacko:

I'm with you, since I play games for the SP story etc I want longer FPS games again. Can we do a 10-12hr SP FPS please?

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Apparently, Crysis 2 can run on a $600 USD PC: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/17/crysis-2-can-run-on-a-600-pc/

[apowers]

Apparently, Crysis 2 can run on a $600 USD PC: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/17/crysis-2-can-run-on-a-600-pc/

Im not buying it too much....

I meet all the system requirements except the graphics card. Im on a R520 and Crysis 2 asks for a R600. I know games which I do not meet the system requirements in the graphics section and they run playable and even some pretty good. Crysis 2 is just horrible. I actually remember that Crysis 1 was playable on my PC (and this was with 2GB of RAM while that same rig has been now updated to 4GB (3GB usable)).

Im thinking its still going to be a hog...

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Im not buying it too much....

I meet all the system requirements except the graphics card. Im on a R520 and Crysis 2 asks for a R600. I know games which I do not meet the system requirements in the graphics section and they run playable and even some pretty good. Crysis 2 is just horrible. I actually remember that Crysis 1 was playable on my PC (and this was with 2GB of RAM while that same rig has been now updated to 4GB (3GB usable)).

Im thinking its still going to be a hog...

Really? I had a very different experience with Crysis 2. It ran much better on my system than Crysis and Crysis: Warhead. It's due to the fact that Crysis 2 was developed with consoles in mind so that set the bar a little low in terms of performance requirements. Fortunately, that same consideration also benefited PC hardware.

Also, here's a new trailer:

[apowers]

Really? I had a very different experience with Crysis 2. It ran much better on my system than Crysis and Crysis: Warhead. It's due to the fact that Crysis 2 was developed with consoles in mind so that set the bar a little low in terms of performance requirements. Fortunately, that same consideration also benefited PC hardware.

Also, here's a new trailer:

We'll see. Im hoping for some optimizations in the final version (although I doubt it)