Assassin's Creed Unity

Well we will have to agree to disagree then. I tend to notice aliasing in console games (GTA V on PS4 has some poor AA for example) and I've found AC Unity's IQ on PS4 to be surprisingly effective in spite of being 900p. I do play games on a 32" Sony Bravia HDTV though, which is in a bedroom, using Game Mode (i.e. no processing or additional sharpness) from about 2-3 feet away and obviously screen size and viewing distance are going to affect how good or bad a game looks to a viewer. I find 32" to be good compromise for console games and it's why I doubt I will ever go above that until 4K becomes standard, which I suspect will not be for another decade at least on consoles.

 

The problem I have with AC Unity, and all Ubisoft games in general really, is that their engines aren't top tier, when they should be for a AAA release..

Ubisoft makes second class rate in house engines that offer very poor LoD management, have egregious pop in and stuttering, short draw distances, faulty or dysfunctional SLI/Crossfire support and other wacky issues.

This is common across nearly every Ubisoft AAA title in some form or fashion, and I'm getting tired of it. Playing Dragon Age Inquisition and AC Unity on my PC just reinforces how poor Ubisoft's engines are in comparison to Frostbite 3, a real top tier engine.

Dragon Age Inquisition has EXCEPTIONAL LoD management and ridiculously long draw distances in comparison to AC Unity, and it also runs at constant 60 FPS maxed out with 2x MSAA V-synced 1440p with no stuttering or hitching of any kind..

AC Unity runs at a constant 60 FPS frame rate as well, but only with FXAA and is luckily pretty much stutter free on my rig with a few minor exceptions like the first few seconds after loading a save. But, the LoD system is God awful, and pop in is very noticeable; although the last patch improved it a bit..

Looking at resources being used, AC Unity uses more VRAM than DAI, but less system RAM. DAI on average uses about 3GB of VRAM and 3GB of system RAM. AC Unity uses about 3.5GB of VRAM, and 2.5GB of system RAM.

Such a strange discrepancy, because AC Unity is completely seamless whilst DAI isn't, so you'd think that it would use more RAM. AC Unity is also far more dense than DAI. But this has always been a weak point for Ubisoft in house engines. Their games use the lowest amount of system RAM it can get away with, which is a major reason why I think their streaming system is so weak compared to elite engines like Frostbite 3, CryEngine etcetera..

Far Cry 3 and AC IV for instances both used only 700MB of system RAM, which is absurdly low for such large games if you ask me. Their games access storage far too often, which results in hitching, stuttering and overly obvious LoD transitions and pop in..

So basically, Ubisoft should drop these craptastic in house engines of theirs altogether and license a more capable engine like CryEngine or Unreal Engine 4 or something..

To be fair, Snowdrop engine is looking to be much better, but we won't know until we get our hands on the Division.

 

You're right at few points, but personally I can't see AC or FC on Unreal Engine, if 4th (Unreal) will be like 3rd, they will have to drop open world, plus (at least U3) is extremely plastic, which looks good in some games, but makes many just look stupid and wrong.

CryEngine, on another hand, looks fantastic and is capable of large maps. I don't know why there's no interest in it.

Let's hope Snowdrop will be better, but don't expect Ubi to focus on PC, clearly all they care for is money (consoles).

 

Playing Dead Kings, oh boy this is actually better than the main game.

 

i got so sick of all the performance issues, random freezing and stutterings that I finally uninstalled this load of bull-crap.

Just installed Watchdogs with the DLC add on & it runs great. The game itself is pretty mediocre though - have gotten bored with all the repetitive side missions and the game mechanics overall are nothing to be excited about either but atleast the damn thing works well.

I think I might pick this up again a couple of years down the line or so when I have a GTX 1000 or something!

 

WD, FC3/4 and AC are pretty much the exact same game.

 

Would strongly disagree with that... but that's a debate I don't want to have to the twentieth time.

 

With a different setting / time period.

But... you are pretty much correct.

 

Good to hear!

The game, when it runs, seems to be quite smooth actually and playable with a controller as then the movement is not necessarily required to be very fast as a mouse. What really bugged me was the frequent freezes for apparently no reason and then after a few seconds, it resumed just fine. Also, game is nothing groundbreaking - its just the whole AC thing again & again so i finally thought, let me just shelve it and play it a few years later as I already have a huge backlog pending.

 

Agree with you. I was playing FC3 and thinking the same thing. All the towers remind me of viewpoints, game mechanics like stealth and all are like AC - its like playing AC in first person view ;-)

 

Well i Iike AC and Watch Dogs, but not Far Cry 3, so they can't be that similar.

 

Gameplay wise to be more specific. Though, the setting and subject material could be why you prefer AC and WD over FC3, even though they share the same gameplay "activites" and template in design. Obviously neither AD or AC is played in first person view.

It takes a lot for me to lose myself in a game and patterns in gameplay design stick out to me so much so that what is considered a great game by others will most likely get the thumbs down from myself because it resembles game X far too much and the plot of game Y isnt interesting enough for me to be able to spend time caring.

I think the issue with open world games is that they're to activity oriented rather than gameplay focused. If i was really that interested in finding the so called loot that liters FC3/4's worlds, id go down to the beach and pick the same crap up off the ground and sell it to the local scrapers and make real world money. But because I value my time, i feel no obligation to do this and even more so in a video game. Pulling down posters, killing the same bad guys over and over again just to receive more crap than you need whether its xp, money or ammo. There really is no need to engage in any of FC3/4s shops or spending of xp points and so on.

I mean, people complained of FC2's respawning checkpoints. FC3 came along and they then complained that the world was to boring after FC3's...what were they called..fack...camps! had been cleared. So the developers made it so you could repopulate the world. What that clearly says about FC3 is that without the shooting, there is nothing to do that is worthwhile to keep coming back to. And to me, what that says is that FC would be better off focusing on that shooty part and a game that has a clear direction and purpose, rather than the open world checklist FC has become.

After stalker, open world games have an unreachable level to meet. One that im slowly realizing that will probably never be matched ever again.

Sure, ones a hardcore fps/rpg and the other is a G rated Fallout 3 - before the bombs dropped.

I just dont think Ubi are trying any more.

 

Well I finally got a response back from ubisoft about the SLI glitch and it turns out that ubisoft SLI is not supported...

 

And yet it works perfectly in Black Flag, the same engine.

I'm guessing Ubisoft is happy to wave goodbye to any future sales of its games. And considering 4K is going to be the norm soon, and 4k requires SLI for any decent framerates, I guess we can expect to see its stock drop even more...

 

lolWUT?!?!?!!!

I played every AC game since Brotherhood while having 2 cards SLI'd, granted the scaling wasn't always the best (it was decent in Black Flags) but it worked... so the answer to their tech problems with Unity is simply "**** it, SLI not supported lol", and this after all the nvidia marketing? wow...

 

These tech "help" guys need to use their head before replying, especially these days.

I think Nvidia has to speak to someone at Ubisoft, it would be funny if it wasn't people's time and money being wasted.

 

Usually they (we) are being told by management what to tell customers, based on a standard list of solutions, regardless of if it will solve the actual issue or not.

 

Management should know better, well you would expect anyway.

I wonder if Nvidia care that they are contradicting what the Nvidia site says, you would image they would care as the must have given Ubisoft a fair amount of money for all the serial numbers with new GPU's.

 

I posted it on the nvidia forums so that they're aware. The irony is that I bought SLI 970's primarily to play AC Unity

 

Solution : get a 1.3 version of the game - sli Works fine there