Most graphically advanced title (2017 edition)

The close of 2017 is almost upon us, and the last AAA title (Star Wars Battlefront 2) has already been released. There will be no more big titles being released until next year, at least on PC. So with that said, which game do you think earns the "Most graphically advanced title" of 2017? Notice I said graphically advanced and not best looking. Best looking is too subjective for me, which is why I decided on "graphically advanced."

For me, the decision is between Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus, and Assassin's Creed Origins. I have both games, and both of them have tremendously impressed me, though for different reasons.

Wolfenstein 2's performance is absolutely insane given how detailed the game is, and how many dynamic light sources and shadows are in the game. And the particle effects are the best I've ever seen in any game bar none. The CPU optimization in particular is amazing. Seeing the game fill up my 6900K with perfect scaling on all 16 threads is a thing of beauty

But the game's technical perfection is marred by the many stability issues that it has, especially for people with NVidia hardware. Seems like Id Tech and Machine Games went all out for AMD when it came to optimization, which isn't a bad thing per say. But when the majority of your customers are using NVidia, then it can be problematic.

As for Assassins' Creed Origins, it will be the first AC game that I actually complete. This game is stunning in terms of its size, scope and attention to detail. Ubisoft spared nothing it seems with this game, as there is so much simulation and activity going on. Tons of wildlife, NPCs, best water simulation ever, high resolution SSR, dynamic global illumination which looks amazing, unbelievably long draw distances and tons of detail in every scene.

The only problem with AC Origins is that it's using DX11. This game practically begs for DX12, due to how CPU intensive it is and how much detail is in it.

With that said, I have to give the nomination to Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus. This game's technical achievements are extraordinary, and highlight the potential of developing games on low level APIs. When I look at the graphical quality and then look at the framerate counter, my jaw literally hits the ground! Performance that actually exceeds that of Doom, with much more sophisticated and impressive effects and higher graphical quality.

When I think of what Id achieved with Id Tech 6.5 in Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus, it makes me extra excited to see what they bring us in the next iteration of the Doom franchise, which will use the Id Tech 7 engine.​

 

For me it's between forza 7 and RE7. Nothing really blew me away this year but that's fine. Dunno about the fuss about D2, it's just okay to me. Lots of aliasing and a soft image. Meh.

Did you use a custom font for your post? I can't read it w/o selecting the whole thing in the dark theme on chrome and firefox for some reason.

 

None i guess.

 

Sheer scope? Probably Assassin's Creed Origins though the characters models could perhaps be a bit better and the aggressive LOD and conservative memory usage holds it back a little bit but overall it's pretty good.

Optimization? Well that's probably Wolfenstein New Colossus though they probably have all sorts of AMD oriented things in their Vulkan code base but it does run well whenever it doesn't completely kill the available memory ha ha.


EDIT: Frostbite is impressive too but from reading about Battlefront 2 and comparing I'd say environmental quality looks to have been better in the first game and then it was scaled down a bit for Battlefield One and Battlefront 2 though the engine has likely seen some advancements in the time between these games and the SP campaign for Battlefield One had a number of highlights.

Water tech in this game is also very impressive such as droplets on the players gun.
I haven't played the second Battlefront myself though so I can't say too much about it other than what I've seen, screenshots have some good points and definitively showcase the Frostbite engine tech in some scenarios.

 

No custom font at all. I'm using Chrome 62 at the moment, and I can see the post just fine.

 

So was there any game in particular that stood out to you? And not just the ones on my list.

 

who ever voted for Assassin s creed origins needs to get the boat, sorry but its the oldest engine it doesn't even have enough physics, graphics in origins are ok not great, frostbite for the win for sure

 

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sorry i think you are overstating stuff, it is great yes but it s not better than doom, i've played doom and that game looked amazing, it is on par with doom but not better.

 

I didn't vote for AC Origins (though I would have if it used DX12), but it's a great choice. The graphics in that game are extremely impressive, and there is plenty of simulation and physics. AC Origins is the most impressive open world game to have ever been made as it currently stands, easily dethroning the Witcher 3 from a technical perspective.

 

Doom is great, one of my favorite FPS games ever. But Wolfenstein 2 definitely upstages it in the graphics department. Anyone that has both games will tell you that. Wolfenstein 2 has far more detailed environments, better texture quality, higher resolution reflections, much better particle effects, and tons of volumetric lighting and much more. This shouldn't be surprising, as the engine used in Wolfenstein 2 is an upgraded version of the Doom engine.

 

You need to remember that having DX12 render path does not automatically translate into better performance nor better graphics. Having seen already released titles which have both DX11 & DX12 render paths so far, chances for the AC Origin to provide any performance and visual quality improvement over DX11 (even if it also had DX12 path) are slim, I think. This trend may change in the future, surely. But I don't think we are there yet. Perhaps.. in 2018 and/or 2019, I guess.

 

I voted for AC:Origins since they've done amazing work to the water (different shaders depending on the depth, if it's near the Nile or if it's some murky water with a lot of algae), the global lightning system which does an amazing job at simulating sun through fog, dusk/dawn and so forth (only downside is that nights are too light and that there is no rain, and environmental textures like the boats for example. The bad would be NPC character details (except those in close up cut scenes).

My game is definitely broken and looks more like a grey pile of textures (just played the intro stage) plus the NPCs aren't as detailed as I expected (though look great in pre-rendered cinematics).

 

According to people who analyzed AC Origin's binaries (I read through Google search), the game uses so called VMProtect on top of notorious Denuvo as a DRM measure. (oh my..) And their claim is this heavy DRM measure is the cause of high CPU usage, it seems. (Ubisoft denies, of course. LOL) DX12 won't solve this, I think.

 

i can t see how it surpasses witcher 3...witcher 3 has better lighting and lod, animations could be ahead aswell

 

i had to go with ACO , an engine that runs an open world game will always beat others that runs fps shooters and sports engines

 

I definitively liked what Arkane did with Void for Dishonored 2 even if the initial launch was somewhat of a mess for the PC version, but that was November 2016 so doesn't count for this year.

I am also very curious about Far Cry 5 but that's next year and while not photo realistic the artistic style and fluid animations of Ni No Kuni 2 definitively impressed me but anime isn't popular with everyone.

For 2017 it just is Assassin's Creed Origins, CPU wise I believe the game engine is capable of using up to 18 cores or some such, Anvil NEXT should also be ready for DX12 even if the game ultimately didn't end up using it but then again most DX12 games have under utilized or under performed though given time this should improve. (Even Dice who have been using it through three or so games now have issues with that API and Frostbite, though their work with DX11 already seems really well optimized too from what little I do know of the engine.) anyways Origins also uses a massive amount of shaders a lot of which is in the form of compute shaders allowing for all kinds of interesting uses though I've only briefly checked this part of the engine since the display driver doesn't like tampering with these.

The water effects for one example are some of the best I've seen thus far in video games although it has some flaws where some areas look a bit artificial but on a whole it's really impressive.

Global illumination coupled with their implementation of physically based rendering also gives a very life like look to the game though again the conservative use of memory and quick to cull LOD means it's not too hard to notice the various transition stages of for example 3d models or terrain detail, tessellation is also relied on heavily although it's not too precise in cities leading to some odd holes or deformations in the roads and such but it's not like the player would regularly stop and look at cobblestone roads.
(Though if they do they'll notice Ubi added a bit of clutter to them, some poor artist had to model camel crap for example complete with various extras ha ha.)

Physics and the way reacts to the player and other characters is also impressive, overall the actual combat and AI when fighting other guards and such falls a bit short and the game relies a bit too heavily on numbers from leveling up and having upgraded weapons but it doesn't impact overall visual quality much though the facial expressions of Bayek and some of the less detailed NPC's just break in some sequences though without photo mode the player would likely never notice.

If Ubisoft ever releases a unprotected game exe we can also finally compare the DRM's CPU impact, sadly the game isn't really fond of trying to actively tamper with this at runtime and will shut down (or crash.) so it has to be patched.
(Cracked, no not really as far as I can tell at least it's usually just just loading a activation and bypassing the DRM but it's still there doing it's thing even if the game can now be played without a valid license so it doesn't compare to a DRM free executable.)


Physically based shading and global illumination even if not "ground truth" or how it's called and more approximated and even faked or pre-computed is still really impressive advancements graphically, ensuring games look less flat and making each different material having it's own distinct look or how to say.

Witcher 3 is a excellent example here because even with the downgrade to lighting the detail to textures and the extreme carefulness with how the game world was crafted really highlights some of these features, AC Origins can't quite match that even if it has strengths of it's own. (EDIT: But Witcher 3 is 2015 although it has held up pretty well.)


EDIT: Also Ubi basically omitting HDR for PC is a bit of a middle finger since it wouldn't be that difficult to bring the feature over and it's been requested that they do this but it seems that for now it's set though the game is still seeing patches and DLC so it could happen.

 

I voted for the last AC. The game world is massive and extremely detailed, lighting is astonishing and there is a big amount of tiny details which make the game stand out, not to mention the efforts put in the reconstruction of a 2000 yrs old land. I also really appreciated the AA technique used, it doesn't blur that much and it's super effective, never saw a jag (bye bye TXAA!). There are of course some flaws, above all the NPC animations, extremely clumsy from time to time, as well as the facial animations, which could be a bit better, especially for those characters you meet in side quests.

 

Hard choice between SWBF2 and AC:Origins.

I'll probably go with AC: Origins, it's just breathtaking riding through the desert. And everything is so detailed but not much variety in the world what i usually love in big open world titles.

 

Nothing.

 

I voted for Star Wars Battlefront 2 cause of FrostByte engine possibilities. Other listed game engines are limited and boring.