Ugly water in HL2?

The difference between Far Cry and HL2 graphically:

Valve:

Artists "lets make textures like how they would look in real life."

Crytek:

Programmers "C'mon people, we need more normal maps to cover up the lousy textures and models!"
 
Honestly, if you really, really believe, that Far Cry is graphically better than HL2, you shouldn't do comparison reviews, because your obviously blind. To some people, who get amazed by tropical islands in cartoony looking landscapes, Far Cry is "teh win" but to people who like attention to detail, amazing textures, and good use of normal and bump mapping, HL2 cannot be touched.
 
guinny said:
Honestly, if you really, really believe, that Far Cry is graphically better than HL2, you shouldn't do comparison reviews, because your obviously blind. To some people, who get amazed by tropical islands in cartoony looking landscapes, Far Cry is "teh win" but to people who like attention to detail, amazing textures, and good use of normal and bump mapping, HL2 cannot be touched.
Click to expand...

Qouted for emphasis...
 
guinny said:
Honestly, if you really, really believe, that Far Cry is graphically better than HL2, you shouldn't do comparison reviews, because your obviously blind. To some people, who get amazed by tropical islands in cartoony looking landscapes, Far Cry is "teh win" but to people who like attention to detail, amazing textures, and good use of normal and bump mapping, HL2 cannot be touched.
Click to expand...

What are you smoking? FC's engine is 100x more impressive than the source engine. The draw distnace is incredible, and the overall detail blows away HL2. The ONLY thing HL2 has going for it is the facial animations and the physics. Its really not that impressive looking..everything in the world is flat with high res textures and some DX9 effects...wow! :eek:
 
TheHitman5 said:
What are you smoking? FC's engine is 100x more impressive than the source engine. The draw distnace is incredible, and the overall detail blows away HL2. The ONLY thing HL2 has going for it is the facial animations and the physics. Its really not that impressive looking..everything in the world is flat with high res textures and some DX9 effects...wow! :eek:
Click to expand...

Detail and far cry in the same sentence is funny.

An island taken over by mercenaries and an evil scientist. They seem to be experts in building one little hut in the middle of nowhere that serves no purpose, oh, except because your going there. (They saw ur boat crash and knew the route u were going to take, so they set up random huts and sniper towers.) And the textures in far cry suck. Draw distance? LOL. It's not that hard to show an enormous rock. BF1942 had the same, if not more draw distance. And you can clearly see in the new bink the draw distance for hl2 is great. Just because your upset that far cry blew doesn't mean you have to knock games that DO actually make use of their graphics engine.

edit - about the world being "flat", let me know when u go into the city or into a town if they have a bunch of rounded buildings and curving fronts. Besides, look at the jail pictures, look at the beach pictures, the game is not "flat" and even if it was, it was a design decision, because we all know very well source is fully capable of making "unflat" worlds, if thats your thing. :dozey:
 
guinny said:
Detail and far cry in the same sentence is funny.

An island taken over by mercenaries and an evil scientist. They seem to be experts in building one little hut in the middle of nowhere that serves no purpose, oh, except because your going there. (They saw ur boat crash and knew the route u were going to take, so they set up random huts and sniper towers.) And the textures in far cry suck. Draw distance? LOL. It's not that hard to show an enormous rock. BF1942 had the same, if not more draw distance. And you can clearly see in the new bink the draw distance for hl2 is great. Just because your upset that far cry blew doesn't mean you have to knock games that DO actually make use of their graphics engine.

edit - about the world being "flat", let me know when u go into the city or into a town if they have a bunch of rounded buildings and curving fronts. Besides, look at the jail pictures, look at the beach pictures, the game is not "flat" and even if it was, it was a design decision, because we all know very well source is fully capable of making "unflat" worlds, if thats your thing. :dozey:
Click to expand...

*sigh*

HL2 *WOULD* look good if it had up to date lighting and shadows, but it doesnt. If anything, its just a great UT2k4 mod. But whatever, pics speak for themselves.

914642_20040510_screen7.jpg


371314_20040323_screen054.jpg
 
TheHitman5 said:
*sigh*

HL2 *WOULD* look good if it had up to date lighting and shadows, but it doesnt. If anything, its just a great UT2k4 mod. But whatever, pics speak for themselves.

914642_20040510_screen7.jpg


371314_20040323_screen054.jpg
Click to expand...
Come on, you picked the worst screenshot. Why don't you direct people to here ?
 
Narcolepsy said:
Come on, you picked the worst screenshot. Why don't you direct people to here ?
Click to expand...

Those arnt very impressive either, but i also picked a pretty bad FC shot running on a GS computer...ew.
 
Just let this thread dies.

Who cares if a few people think HL2's water sucks? I don't.


btw hitman your sig is too big
 
TheHitman5 said:
*sigh*

HL2 *WOULD* look good if it had up to date lighting and shadows, but it doesnt. If anything, its just a great UT2k4 mod. But whatever, pics speak for themselves.

914642_20040510_screen7.jpg


371314_20040323_screen054.jpg
Click to expand...

Can you point me ONE thing in that screenshot that Source isn't capable of doing? The shadows on the floor? Guess what... they're not shadows, it's a projector map, just like most of the tree shadows, not to mention the shadows on your gun when you walk in the bushes. A major feature in the UE, guess Far Cry is closer to UT2004 than you thought eh?

What else does Far Cry have? Draw distance? Has little to do with engine capability, more with available resources and aggressive LOD. I don't think the draw distance is all that impressive when characters in the distance are not even being drawn at all.

The only thing I can think of that CryEn has above Source is per-pixel lighting. And I know smoke can be lit per pixel, so it isn't even that far behind.

I can show poor screens too you know:

http://www.jucaushii.ro/img/FarCry/30.jpg

(looks like Doom 3's retarded brother)
 
PvtRyan said:
Can you point me ONE thing in that screenshot that Source isn't capable of doing? The shadows on the floor? Guess what... they're not shadows, it's a projector map, just like most of the tree shadows, not to mention the shadows on your gun when you walk in the bushes. A major feature in the UE, guess Far Cry is closer to UT2004 than you thought eh?

What else does Far Cry have? Draw distance? Has little to do with engine capability, more with available resources and aggressive LOD. I don't think the draw distance is all that impressive when characters in the distance are not even being drawn at all.

The only thing I can think of that CryEn has above Source is per-pixel lighting. And I know smoke can be lit per pixel, so it isn't even that far behind.

I can show poor screens too you know:

http://www.jucaushii.ro/img/FarCry/30.jpg

(looks like Doom 3's retarded brother)
Click to expand...


914642_20040510_screen001.jpg


vs.

farcry_031904_002.jpg


we can do this all day, Half Life 2 isnt going to magicly look good.
 
hl2 already looks good, and ur the only person to say far cry is better. but then again, i wasnt expecting much of an intelligent conversation with someone who thinks far cry is detailed.
 
TheHitman5 said:
914642_20040510_screen001.jpg


vs.

farcry_031904_002.jpg


we can do this all day, Half Life 2 isnt going to magicly look good.
Click to expand...

The Half-Life 2 one looks better anyway. Mate, you're obviously looking to troll, so go to the FarCry forums and tell people how much FarCry owns Half-Life 2, we can't be bothered with your kind. We think Half-Life 2 looks much better than FarCry, and I find it difficult too see how people could see the revearse, FarCry is just ... plastic.
 
TheHitman5 said:
914642_20040510_screen001.jpg


vs.

farcry_031904_002.jpg


we can do this all day, Half Life 2 isnt going to magicly look good.
Click to expand...

Slimey elephant? btw the geometry is just as rigid in that FC pic.
 
TheHitman5 said:
914642_20040510_screen001.jpg


vs.

farcry_031904_002.jpg


we can do this all day, Half Life 2 isnt going to magicly look good.
Click to expand...

Again: what do we see here that HL2/Source is incapable of doing? The only thing I could possibly think of is the highlights on the elephant, and even of that I'm not sure.

I can't look at the Tenements bink and say with a straight face that FC looks better.

guinny, there's no need to insult anyone here.
 
PvtRyan said:
guinny, there's no need to insult anyone here.
Click to expand...

i tried being nice but he wants to defend his precious far cry so far that he'll be nasty about it.
 
PvtRyan said:
The only thing I could possibly think of is the highlights on the elephant, and even of that I'm not sure.
Click to expand...
There are effects like that in the CS:S beta... so, of course HL2 is capable of it.
 
pvt ryan every time i see that part of the tenements video i wanna cream myself.
 
FarCry's engine is superior to Source. However, FarCry wont work on DX6/7 without looking bad. Half Life 2 looks all around great.
 
Homer said:
Then I have to assume your not playing with a dx9 card, or if you are it isnt working o turned on or something.


As far as farcry looking better, if you factor in how it plays halflife2 is a much more impressive. I think even from a non-gameplay standpoint hl2 still has a leg up, it just focuses more on looking real than making sure everything is bump-mapped to hell and back. Water looks better in halflife2 by quite a bit, the reason farcrys water looks better is because 1. Your reflecting a beach with palmtrees instead of a shabby dock, and 2. you have SEEN it. the blinks dont do the water justice, load up bada_aztec with a dx9 card if you want to see the really good water.
Click to expand...

Well, I am in fact using a Geforce 3 card, which is DX9, bub...
 
Well moderators, you can't blame me for this thread devolving into a FarCry vs. HL2 slugfest... :)
 
Art_Crime said:
Well, I am in fact using a Geforce 3 card, which is DX9, bub...
Click to expand...
The GeForce 3's were DX8. The GeForce 4's were DX8.1. The FX line was the first from NVidia that supported DX9.
 
 
Art_Crime said:
Well, I am in fact using a Geforce 3 card, which is DX9, bub...
Click to expand...

you sir, have no idea what you're talking about.

directx 9 wasn't incorporated by nvidia until their 5th generation of geforces, the fx5900 series.
 
Bah, I give up. Basically, I hate yet to see anything near that quality from Half Life 2. I could go and climb to the top of a huge rock and get a screenshot of the entire island, but you would think of some stupid comeback saying "HL2 is capable of that!!!" Sure, it's capable, but is it done in the game? From the Draw Distance I've seen in the Bink videos, it's nothing compared to Far Cry. Also, someone said that the characters are being drawn. Take out your binoculars and zoom in.

Hey, OCyberManO, you live in Tampa? That's cool.

Also, I just want to say that I cannot wait for Half Life 2, and don't want to put it down. But it is apparent that this game has surpassed it in graphics, yet everyone stil stands by it....
 
Yes when you don't have you're binoculars they aint being drawn.

When you ar zooming in the agressive LOD system puts them in becaus ethere's not alot on screen.

Well graphics preference is a personal opinion.
 
Wow, I really can't understand all this aggresion here. I think I can agree about the water in some instances, I played the beta some time ago at a friend's place. Now I know that the leak wasn't representative but I think I can safely say that the shape of the water (waves, animation) looks fairly "repetitive", and it could be seen in several maps. Imagine the exact same wave hundreds of times in a grid pattern, it's not ugly, but I've seen it before (far cry), and it didn't look that special to me, so I really don't understand what the fuss is about. Yes the bink video showing the special effects cave looked nice, but the water and waves weren't that special, right? I think it is the best way to render water at the time, but that's only because our graphics cars can't handly any better, I know I can't imagine a game rendering different size/types of waves in a random pattern (which would look pretty damn good) for the the next few years, so yeah, HL2 is the best we're going to get.

SO AGAIN: What's all the fuss about a little water?
 
DarkSonic said:
Bah, I give up. Basically, I hate yet to see anything near that quality from Half Life 2. I could go and climb to the top of a huge rock and get a screenshot of the entire island, but you would think of some stupid comeback saying "HL2 is capable of that!!!" Sure, it's capable, but is it done in the game? From the Draw Distance I've seen in the Bink videos, it's nothing compared to Far Cry. Also, someone said that the characters are being drawn. Take out your binoculars and zoom in.
Click to expand...
It's all about LODs (levels of detail). If you're a long way away from a guy he'll be like 10 pixels on the screen... you don't need several thousand polygons and a 1024x1024 texture to represent him at that distance. So, you have various versions of the models with a range of polycounts that kick in at different distances to avoid wasting lots of resources on something that only takes up a small section of the screen. If you zoom in it goes back to using one of the versions meant for shorter distances. That is how FarCry renders a whole island. It cuts corners on things that are far away. It's especially easy to see as the trees and the textures on the side of the mountains go off into the distance.

Again, this is not new technology. HL2 can do this, as can lots of other games... and even a Half-Life mod called "Holy Wars" implemented an LOD system for models (but not level geometry). Half-Life 2 just doesn't need to render an entire island.
 
Well, I have apparently been proven stupid, so I shall leave the thread alone, and possibly post to add in a small comment here and there...
 
DarkSonic said:
Bah, I give up. Basically, I hate yet to see anything near that quality from Half Life 2. I could go and climb to the top of a huge rock and get a screenshot of the entire island, but you would think of some stupid comeback saying "HL2 is capable of that!!!" Sure, it's capable, but is it done in the game? From the Draw Distance I've seen in the Bink videos, it's nothing compared to Far Cry. Also, someone said that the characters are being drawn. Take out your binoculars and zoom in.

Hey, OCyberManO, you live in Tampa? That's cool.

Also, I just want to say that I cannot wait for Half Life 2, and don't want to put it down. But it is apparent that this game has surpassed it in graphics, yet everyone stil stands by it....
Click to expand...

So you're saying that FC surpasses HL2 graphically because of the draw distance, which HL2 is capable of too according to you, but doesn't use it because of design reasons (a clear sky would be out of place in a moody dark eastern europe). I'm sorry but you've stopped making sense.

Like I said, draw distance isn't anything special. It's decreasing the terrain tesselation over distance, decrease texture size and if a distance to an object is great enough then load a lower detail model for a character/plant, and decrease the prop count.

An apparent example is this here:
http://gamenavigator***/pub/gallery/news/news2003110601.jpg

You can easily see that the density of vegetation isn't as big in the distance and that the texture size is lower of the mountain and the terrain rougher. Also the trees are much lower detail. It ain't magic.

And yes, of course characters are being drawn when you zoom in on them with the binoculars, but when you look at a character in the far distance, it's simply not being drawn anymore. The picture below is a good example, and I'm not posting it to show how ugly it is, I know it can look much better, but to show characters 'fade in' from a distance. (the guy by the boat is semi-transparant)

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/volari-duo/fx5900-fc2-aa0-anis00.jpg
 
DarkSonic said:
Yes, I do think Far Cry looks better.

http://www.moddersforum.com/imagehosting/userfiles/Shadow/FarCry 2004-09-11 15-43-20-39.JPG
http://www.moddersforum.com/imagehosting/userfiles/Shadow/FarCry 2004-09-11 15-45-47-71.JPG
http://www.moddersforum.com/imagehosting/userfiles/Shadow/FarCry 2004-09-11 15-47-21-87.JPG
http://www.moddersforum.com/imagehosting/userfiles/Shadow/FarCry 2004-09-11 15-47-54-73.JPG
http://www.moddersforum.com/imagehosting/userfiles/Shadow/FarCry 2004-09-11 15-48-50-45.JPG
http://www.moddersforum.com/imagehosting/userfiles/Shadow/FarCry 2004-09-11 15-49-04-95.JPG

Oh yeah, a geforce 3 isn't a DX9 card, bub.

Not that it matters, but those are MY screenshots...
Click to expand...

Halflife 2 is capable of that level of bump maping. And, much more importantly, halflife 2 is going to play much much better. if your going to take still screens as a measure of how a game looks then you could say mist or riven looks better than halflife2.
 
...Please explain how it will "play much much better." Also, my idiocy has already been proven by many others.
 
Load up farcry, then load up cs:s. farcry plays like hell compaired to the source engine.
 
Yeah, because CS:S is not a true...whats the word...showing of the Source engine. Also, Far Cry is a full game, CS:S is just a little MP game with small maps and around 9 people per team. Of course it's going to run better. What are you trying to prove?

Also not like it matters, but those screenshots were taken with everything on high, water on ultra, shadows on very, uhh, lighting on very. I averaged 50 FPS. In your eye :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

MFL
Fascinating look at the ongoing psychological evolution of flat hieirarchies.
Replies
2
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
B
Community Interviews: Tony Newton, co-creator of Redemption
Replies
0
Views
5K
Barnz
B
pokenow123
2014 Hammer/Source 2.0 Content Analysis
Replies
14
Views
10K
HeadClot
HeadClot
Omnomnick
Valve Announces Source 2 + Steam Link [GDC 2015]
2
Replies
67
Views
37K
Skyace65
S
bluechirri
What do you want to see in L4D3?
Replies
14
Views
5K
TheWiktor
TheWiktor
Back
Top