@NEStalgia There's a recurring theme here: you're doing that over-scrutinizing/dissecting thing again.
I used to be an artisan in printing, before I became a sales & marketing professional (12 years in the offset printing industry), so I'm no stranger to looking at the finer details, but I'll stick to my earlier statements regardless. Those EuroGamer stills in their comparison tool really only show a minor downgrade, that shouldn't really bother most of us. I've been flipping them back and forth, time and again, in full screen, even just now, and I don't see this almost harrowing experience that you seem to describe, at ALL.
Even in 60fps mode, the game STILL looks beautiful, although obviously not maxed out. But if it still looks as good as previous outings, such as I have already mentioned in previous comments, then it is a beautiful game regardless, in either mode. And I think the flat textures remark is highly over-exaggerated: there were very little to no flat ground textures in FH2 or 3, so I can't for the life of me imagine them to be there this time around, seeing as all Playground has ever done, is improve upon each game with a new installment.
I think games should not be put under a microscope. Instead, we should just play and enjoy them.
Taking it to another level either requires someone to either be predisposed to see what he/she wants to see, or to simply over-analyze things time and again, the latter of which is what I often feel you are doing, because in a lot of things, such as now FH4, but previously when discussing sound installations or PC builds, you seem to have a tendency to go overboard with the details, and which ones you fully take note of.
Too much scrutinizing, and in some cases, too little accepting and/or enjoying how things are, and that they're really good enough as is.
No offense, but that is, for the most part, the general impression across all these comments (well the text wall ones anyway), that I keep getting from you.
All that tinkering, or thinking about settings and so on, is still very much (too much?) in line with the whole PC community, so even though you did get on board of the Xbox One X train, that still seems to be pretty much ingrained into your system...
Oh, and no, I will NOT stop and gawk at some roadside vista or whatever, seeing as I play racing games to race, not to stand still. Never done that, never will...
But hey, I'm talking to the guy who's getting up close with the trees, to see if the bark texture is either flat or more realistic, so this will probably fall on deaf ears anyway...
@ThanosReXXX The differences in those stills are pretty stark to me to a degree. Look at the detail on the boat and the stone wall behind it in that one shot. It's not subtle, it's pretty stark. But in motion the emptiness of the fields and the radical loss of detail on trees in motion (and for that matter buildings) is pretty extreme. I don't mean the car in motion past the trees. I mean the car sitting still and the trees blowing in the wind. They're very reduced and very sprite-like. It's just unsettling Also the house-lined streets feel just more "backdrop". That doesn't cover the reflections on water, the headlights (headlights cast shadows and react with surfaces in quality mode, but don't in 60fps mode.) You can say it all doesn't matter, but what is a Horizon game? Is it about winning races, or interacting with the world? If it's about winning races, why not just play Motorsport? I'll cull all the detail for a few extra frames in Motorsport, you're note looking at the world, ever there. And yeah, dissecting things is what I do When presented any choice I ABX test it until I nail down the differences, absolutely
Yes, Playground improves each time which is my point: 60fps mode was a technical feat for them to pull off...but to pull it off on the X they had to back down to a fidelity level below previous fidelity levels, but do some neat tricks to make it still feel "mostly as good." But the improvements otherwise are all in quality mode (and they are quite beautiful.) The geometry, density, etc gets reduced, not just textures or reflections. Fields in particular are lush and alive normally. In performance mode they become a ground texture and a smattering of blobby plant-like filler. That's not to denegrate 60fps mode....it does mostly look good enough. But I do think it needs to be clear, 60fps mode is for someone who is all about maximized racing and isn't too interested in exploring the world and interacting with its pieces. It's awesome it exists, and I will use it at times. But I don't believe it's the intended way to experience the new seasons etc at their best. From what I've seen, a still frame from 1x Performance mode is lower fidelity than 1S normal play, so they had to back the visuals down below 1S performance to double the frames.
So, I'm OCD Yes I will obsess over things until I've evaluated every detail. I mentioned I was an audiophile....that means listening to the same track over again with every possible speaker/amplifier/DAC/cable/settings option at your disposal, back and forth, again and again and again until you can identify the differences between each and try to identify your favorite. It's an exceedingly OCD nature that goes into that....I do it with everything . Cooking, audio, video, everything. Can't help it! I'm obsessed with perfection? Which sucks when I never even get close The problem with PC is, yeah, that probably is most in tune with my nature but that's not always a good thing to feed that nature. I'd still have gone for it were it not the expense, and my litany of struggles to keep it actually running stably though. I got 1X literally because it was close to getting a PC without a PC for 1/3 the cost, after all....otherwise the PS4 would have been more than plenty
Ewwwww, not stopping to gawk at vistas in Horizon? Why play Horizon at all then? Motorsport is where it's at! I stop constantly.....slam into cars and walls often just to stop and enjoy the scenery.... Not during a race event....but while free roaming? Absolutely, non-stop. The beautiful landscape is the whole reason for the open world! I've been winning a lot of races all the same (even at 30fps mode ) And that's with all the assists disabled, save the full blue racing line, auto transmission, rewind active, and cosmetic damage model-only. But braking, steering, stability, traction are all manual/simulation, so I'm getting that nice 50% CR bonus. Even with taking in the vistas
Be one with nature! Make your fender one with nature!
@DarthNocturnal Looking at comparisons, 1X 60fps mode has a lot in common per-frame with OG X1 mode, but there are some aspects that look better, and some that look worse. IMO, 60fps mode on 1X has an excessively aggressive FSAA (We'll call it 'PS3 mode' ) that may help things look less jagged, but also soften too much of the image too extreme in a way that makes the OG X1 look sharper in some aspects. Specifically I think draw distance sharpness is better on OG X1, whereas Performance mode on X tends to close you in to a field of view close to the car and gets blurrier and less detailed further away than the OG X1 mode. So it looks better in some areas worse in others.
Awesome feature, but more for very focused race fans like our resident mad titan than for those that love exploring the beautiful seasons in the UK. I may switch to it as a "post-game" thing eventually. It's nice to have the option. "Same exact game as OG X1 but visually more striking" or "double frame rate version of same gfx more or less." It's a technical feat they managed to squeeze so much out of the OG 1 to the point some things look better on it than performance mode on the X!
@ThanosReXXX I press down for suggestions, then right for What Should I Do? Every time she says "You have a buckets list challenge to complete nearby, would you like me to set a route there for you?" NOOOO, DON'T SEND ME THERE AGAIN! would be my answer. Just take me anywhere else!
I can also set routes to nearest whatever, but sometimes take me to races where I already got the gold. There is no easy way to tell what new things I could do.
@DarthNocturnal It does look great on all consoles. NEStalgia is literally the only person in the world that thinks that FH4 visuals on S or in 60fps mode on X "are ugly".
@NEStalgia Yeah, the one with the boat is probably the worst one, and there's no denying it looks better in quality mode, but if it wouldn't, then that label wouldn't be very appropriate, so I would hope to be able to expect it to look better, but in the other pictures, I don't find the difference all that horrifyingly bad.
On a side note: just to be clear, I don't accuse you of being OCD, I just say that you've got those tendencies, and that it borders on being that. And the shame of it is, that this over-scrutinizing, or whatever you want to call it, just takes away SO much of what purpose games should actually have, which is of course to entertain, not to put people into a hissy fit about all the things that are potentially wrong with them. Unfortunately, the latter seems to become more and more prevalent, in this day and age.
There was a time when we laughed at mistakes in games, or used glitches to our advantage, and never once questioned them, or demanded that they'd be taken out of the game, much less put every damn thing under a microscope...
As for performance mode on X being lower than normal mode on S: this is going to be a merry-go-round of things I've already said, but if that mode is STILL looking as good as FH3, or even the Xbox One version of FH2, then that's still more than beautiful enough to me, and probably to most people. It may not be Xbox One X quality mode beautiful, but still...
That has been my whole point from the beginning. It isn't ugly, it just isn't AS beautiful as quality mode, that's all.
Now, if that is all true, then what you're basically saying, is that all previous installments of the series are now instantly ugly in comparison, which obviously, isn't the case at all. It's just a matter of one game already looking quite good as is, and the newer one improving upon that, and looking even better than before.
And I don't see all that many flat textures either, not even in Forza Motorsports. I think that all Xbox One outings of that game also look beautiful, surroundings and all. Heck, I even think that Forza 3 on Xbox 360 looks very nice. And as I've mentioned before, even the first game on OG Xbox still holds up pretty nicely, if seen in the right frame of reference.
As for what Forza Horizon is about in comparison to Forza Motorsport: it's not just as simple as saying that it's not really about racing, because it is, obviously, except one is more of a sim, and the other is more of an arcade racer, with all kinds of crazy events, but a racing sim nonetheless. It's not a cross country trekking simulator, regardless of whether or not some people might feel inclined to perform such activities in the game...
Anyway, we're probably not going to get much further with this, so I'll just move on to another topic we started to discuss, which is the My Apps & Games page.
Mine still looks like the same as it has ever done:
And I haven't received any OS updates yet, far as I'm aware, so when is this supposed to be implemented, then? Either way, it probably won't look all that different from how it is now. I've only ever seen incremental changes occur anyway.
@Grumblevolcano Fast travel? Hell, no. That's for noobs and impatient f***s...
No, I like to be able to do a mellow road trip in between races, and just drive along towards wherever it is, that I need to go. Mind you: it's not about watching and/or enjoying the scenery. Wouldn't want to give @NEStalgia any ideas...
@BlueOcean Well, you see, that's just it: you don't HAVE to press down for a suggestion. That's a choice you make. Which is especially weird, considering you first told us that you DON'T want any suggestions.
Don't want them, then don't press the button, simple.
That's also why I suggested that another option is just to use the full screen map instead. And of course, you could also just select another option. The bucket list is just one of three or four choices, normally.
I always select "next race" or special event instead. Special events as in stunts and so on. I use the full size map to locate the barn finds, and plan my route towards them.
@DarthNocturnal Yeah, that would be the exception. I do use fast travel sometimes, but more often than not,
I just like the leisurely drive across the map.
@BlueOcean Ugly-er I mean....the quality mode is just so gorgeous! I mean, normally I'm not a graphics snob though I'll always a/b the settings that look the best when given the option. Nioh on PS4 Pro is a stuttering mess of a frame pace on its quality mode: 60fps is quite uglier but is the only valid option there for the game to feel right.
On a similar theme I fired up MHW yesterday and forgot it offered settings (the Jan demo I did on PS4 Pro, quality was a no-go stuttering mess, I set it to framerate (and it was still a stuttering mess at times.) But I bought the game on 1X, and haven't started it yet. I tried "resolution mode". It's quite beautiful.....and quite choppy. No thanks. Not for that kind of fast action, it's worse than racing! And at "near 4k" (read: 1.7k or so?) it should probably look better than it does. Then there's two 1080p modes: framerate and graphics. Those they let you toggle back and forth real-time which is cool. Now in that case the two look very similar. graphics applies more shadowing, slightly higher LoD in the distance if you A/B it, slightly lusher foliage, but really there's not much else to it. framerate mode is a bit smoother, but also interesting is graphics mode doesn't really have much lower fps than framerate mode....maybe 8-10fps or so, low 40's vs high 40's. Unfortunately the game isn't locked, so it's a widly variable fps with poor pacing. I'll probably go framerate in that game. The wild spinning in circles demands it. But for now I'll setting on graphics. Nicer draw distance, not much fps penalty (On the X. On the PS4 Pro framreate mode is the only acceptable play mode....the others are just awful framerates. That engine is horrendous. Tell me it's the Deep Down engine.... )
But one thing that stands out is how amazing Playground is. They hit 60fps locked in 60fps mode, and 30fps locked in native 4k mode. Capcom can't hit 30fps stable in 1.7k, can't hit 60fps in framerate mode, and their world isn't even as beautiful and detailed as FH4 in any mode.
Compared to MHW FH4 60fps mode is gorgeous. Compared to FH4 30fps mode it's ugly It's not that 60fps mode looks bad, it's that 30fps mode looks sooooooo good! Easily the best visuals in any game to date (PC excluded.)
@ThanosReXXX you may not care about graphics etc. etc, but once you get yourself an X (or a BC scarlet or whatever) and you fire up the game.....I guarantee you even if you settle on 60fps because that's what matters to you, you're going to be wowed by the visuals of 30fps mode and how little you notice it's 30fps (unless you A/B it.) The world feel is quite impressive.
"That has been my whole point from the beginning. It isn't ugly, it just isn't AS beautiful as quality mode, that's all."
I've never said anything contradictory to that. My point was just that quality mode is so beautiful, I think performance mode loses something of what you can get from the game with quality mode. I.E. IMO quality mode makes the X upgrade more meaningful in FH4 than performance mode, but performance mode gets all the hype.
FH, in general, I mean why bother with an open world if it's not there to explore that world outside of events? Why not make a laddered arcade racer with crazy events? Barn finds, billboards etc kind of emphasize exploring and interacting with the details of the world itself. That's the charm. You may knock me for looking into the bushes, but the very first fast travel billboard I found involved driving around this one house a dozen times trying to figure out where it was before discovering it was behind the bushes....through them you go!
"Ready to Install" goes away whenever the Fall Update drops. Next week I think? Dolby Vision for video and Avatars are the two major changes. Ready to Install becomes a button at the top of the games page, and at the top of the apps page (separate, one for apps, one for games, rather than the unified tabs for all.) IMO it's a downgrade, but an unimportant one.
Not enjoying the scenery....this is your ideal racing game graphics isn't it?
You know, I forgot about pressing down to get the voice assistant. I always use the full screen map by habit.
Another topic. Geez, DmC....I'd heard the rumors...but...whoa that was a serious side-step for the DMC series. I can see the enthusiasm for 5 now (maybe not with the rumored microtransactions though.) What a weird game, to turn it into Dudete with a death metal soundtrack an all to serous demon theme and the cliche western street urchin helping the hero. It did some cool things and could have been an interesting new IP but trying to wrap that into DMC...who ever thought that was a good idea?
@NEStalgia Gods in heaven, man. My parents always told me that I was a special kind of kid, but you are most definitely nominated for being even more special, or maybe, to keep in line with the word usage in the discussion, I should call you special-er...
I wanted an end to the discussion, but by hitting me with another text wall, you're making it too hard NOT to respond. I never explicitly meant to say that you said ugly, that was just me over-emphasizing the overall points a bit. The thing is, AGAIN, that the game looks just fine, and in fact prettier than FH3 on the One S, so even if it would look a bit less than that, I'd still think that it would look pretty, as long as it doesn't go below FH2, which it doesn't, so it's all good, and THAT is the only thing that matters to most of us. And sure, seeing it in its full glory is something to behold, I never said it wasn't, but that doesn't make the other side of the story any less true.
At the end of the day it's all just opinions, except the more critical and/or discerning ones, such as the one that you have, will always be in the minority, no offense. And don't get me started on audiophiles: I used to have a friend who was one, and it nearly drove me crazy sometimes, because it can really make you feel inferior if you don't hear something, that you're "clearly supposed" to hear, according to the audio nut...
And I do like nice graphics, by the way, I'm just no graphics-wh... or someone that feels the need to dissect a game down to its bones to see what makes it tick or how and/or why we can make it look better or worse. And since I'm sat at 10 feet from my TV, that minor difference in graphics is even less significant to me anyway...
The whole driving into the trees thing, was not me knocking you, but just having a bit of fun at your expense. Of course you drive around: especially with the barn finds, it would be very hard not to, but there's doing that, and then there's doing that while also putting all the surrounding textures under an electron-microscope, which is what you seem to be doing, and that really is where I draw the line, otherwise gaming would become an obsession instead of a hobby for me, and that's just not what I'm looking to get out of games.
For example: I would honestly not be able to tell you how good or how bad the grass in FH3 looks. I only know that it reacted quite naturally (in my opinion) to me driving into it and around in it. Trees, rocks, buildings and the sky also looked pretty good to me.
In all honesty, though, I'll probably have to factor in the jump from going from Xbox 360 to the Xbox One, and me still being impressed with quite a few games on there, and also how good some previous gen games look and play on it, so there's that as well, but that's not a deciding factor, far as I am concerned.
Well, I can't make it any simpler than that, so here's to finally putting this to rest.
Smart man for using the full screen map, though.
However, the directional button operated route planner can actually be quite handy, at times.
P.S.
The other topic was the dashboard, I didn't mean coming up with a new one.
Talk about not being able to interpret text. And I even added a picture...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@ThanosReXXX Just to dial in on the "the discerning opinion in the minority" etc.....you do realize quality mode is the default mode, right? That's the one the developers expect most people that don't have a minority set of priorities are going to play in. It's performance mode that's the special mode for those who are seeking something out of the norm I simply expected I'd prefer performance mode but was stunned by what you gain in quality mode and surprised that I favor that one most of the time, fairly heavily.
Oh, I do, or did the audiophile thing. And the photophile thing....print outputs, lens differences at a pixel level....of foliage..... You think games are bad. Any idea with the tiny differences of different samples of the same lens let alone two lenses on two camera bodies net you, and comparing for the "best" frame out of 40 frames you took of the same thing? I mean you have to be OCD. I did art-landscape mostly, and an emphasis on b&w print......now that is some leaf edge detail scrutinizing!
But yeah, all that being said, one day you'll get your X or scarlett and you'll play FH4 on it and then you'll see what I mean Both modes are great, and the smooth play is really really cool. But FH is already great at 30fps and those visuals and that "movie" sense are just "wow". No game on the X shows off what the X can do like FH4 in 30fps mode, period. IF that engine makes Fable 4, I may not leave my couch for a month.
I figure the game even uses the full screen map to show you when they add events....why not just use that?
@ThanosReXXX Interesting, not surprising since they said as much at E3. It will be interesting to see if it does better in terms of latency and frame pacing than Google Stream and PS Now (Spoiler warning: It won't )
@NEStalgia Stepping over the big shiny FH4 tu**, and focusing on the quality thing:
You keep forgetting/omitting/ignoring key points I mention, which is detrimental to the conversation.
1. I actually DO know how to pay attention to detail, seeing as I used to be an offset printing artisan, like I told you, but I also know when NOT to apply that specific trade/attention to detail, because it serves little to no purpose in my opinion. It even detracts from any pleasure I could and/or would want to derive from games.
2. I will not deviate from my own points or views, and as such, I will also not suddenly be swayed or convinced once I get my X, that someone else's opinion was better or more accurate than mine. And I have a friend that has an X, so I have plenty of opportunities to see certain games in their full glory. It's not so much that I don't see what you mean, or understand what you're getting at, it's just that I'm not at all bothered or fazed about what you are showing and/or telling me, and that's not going to change.
The minority opinion bit was a general statement, not specifically tied to one game, just about a (relatively) small group people picking apart games as a whole, instead of being busy with using them as they should, so in that respect, it has nothing to do with a standard or added setting in FH4...
There, that's all I'm going to say about it. No more talk about FH4 itself from me, because that's done and dusted, and then some.
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@NEStalgia I think your spoiler alert is a bit too presumptuous. It would appear to me that Microsoft, and/or the Xbox department has everything to gain by making it work better than Google can. And they actually DO have far better resources than Google, so they could do it, but it will cost, so the gist of the story will more than likely be that it's going to be a decision of investment vs gain, and which one of the two will tip the scales in favor of Microsoft, and/or their target audience.
In other words: too soon to tell. They said they're going for the lowest possible latency, so let's at the very least wait and see if they're able to put their money where their mouth is. By no means am I an internet or streaming expert, so I'm not about to make any uninformed decision, exclusively based upon comparing like services that are already here. Tech moves forward, so they might very well have something new and exciting up their sleeves...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@ThanosReXXX I'm just not sure why you seem so strongly dead-set against the default mode of the game and the idea that it brings a lot to the experience?
Latency: Yeah they've said a lot about latency and the need to bring it down, but for now there's a lot of noise about "solving" what is ultimately a physics and infrastructure problem. They can solve physics to a degree with their volume of datacenters, but they can't solve the network infrastructure of the internet itself at this point in time. That's the problem with game streaming, too much of the problem is outside the streamer's control. I mean we already know it works reasonably well locally on a perfectly switched LAN, it's the nodes between you and the datacenter that are trouble.
At least we won't have to worry about performance/quality mode anymore?
@NEStalgia First I have to get off my chest that I really don't want to keep discussing a single game, sorry.
But my point, in general, was that I don't see the need for picking games apart, because for me (and many others), it's actually counter-productive, and detrimental to the pleasure of the experience that you could have with a game.
And specific to the game at hand, I just don't care (enough) about these minor differences. Mountains to you, mole hills to me. That's the big difference.
However, that takes nothing away from me not being able to enjoy something beautiful, let alone wanting to see something beautiful, but I'm just not that overly shocked by the difference between these two modes either...
Okay, I hope that makes it all clear enough, because I'm truly finished with discussing FH4 modes now,
so can we please move on? I already feel we've taken over the topic and scared off most of the locals, AGAIN...
As for the streaming solution: perhaps it will finally allow Microsoft to get a decent foothold in Asian regions, seeing as these do have a wonderful online infrastructure, as testified by them getting the streaming version of Assassin's Creed Odyssey on Switch...
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@ThanosReXXX we can move on to more interesting topics then. Who's excited for ghost of tsushima? Boy, death stranding sure looks interesting. Spidey sales are great! Hey look, there's a psvr anniversary sale... Plus the jak collection is only $17! What a time to own a Playstation!
Am i doing this right?
Oh, that's right, we were already on topic talking about the new xbox exclusive.... Go figure
Looking back at the update section of last month's Inside Xbox. I have to disagree with the intro, stability is the best part of updates though Nintendo Life is partially to do with that.
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