Saturday, January 31, 2009

Naughty Dog, Realtime Graphics, and Comparisons Part 2! : Particle effects, lighting, secondary character models and AA, oh my!

Part 2 of the comparison is now here! My apologies for the delay. For those who have not seen my previous comparison (Part 1) you should go check it out. As promised this comparison examines lighting, AA, particle effects, secondary and enemy models. For those interested I have a public gallery of images that were used in my comparison. Currently there are over 230 images and I will be adding more images soon. Also as requested by popular demand in emails. I will do an Uncharted 2 and Gears of War comparison when Naughty Dog's next game releases. Thanks for all of those who emailed.


*Click on the images for the original full resolution 720p image*

Secondary and Enemy Character Models



Sully
Random Pirate

Navarro
Eddy Raja


Random Locust Soldier



Kantus




Cole

Baird

Giant Lake Monster




Inside the monster






Lighting













I noticed in Gears 2 that there was some strange things going on with the lighting. For example in the next two captures below it would appear that the light from the glowing plants isn't real light but, perhaps some kind of strange cloud or blue blur?



In this part of the under ground cave level there were some cases of the blue cloud disappearing when I approached the plants.

In this shot it seems the lighting has no effect on the character model.



Here is one example of the best lighting I was able to capture on Dom.








Particle Effects












I noticed in Gears 2 that many of particle effects such as flames, smoke, and torches are 2 dimensional. This is very noticeable in the sunken city of Lima areas.


Click here to see the video















Anti Aliasing

Since doing the previous comparison I was informed that the blurring was how Gears 2 handles aliasing, so I decided to see how uncharted matches up in covering aliasing.
































38 comments:

  1. what a POS comparison.....tell ya what? why don't you use some actual good captures of Gears 2 next time. LOL....this is laughable at best.

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  2. gears of war 2 doesnt look like that, there's something wrong with the way you capture pics

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  3. biased blog is biased do you even know what you are talking about mr blogger troll? people should stop reading here

    ''light from the glowing plants isn't real light but perhaps some kind of blur?''

    lol at this troll

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  4. Actually it isnt light from the plants, its a rendering effect called self illumination.

    What he is saying and showing is true. The thing is Gears looks good in motion, but horrid in screens, while Uncharted looks good either way.

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  5. How a lighting source can fall in the category of 'blur'this guy is just fucking fanboy talking out of his ass and being biased,deal with it mother fucker geow2 looks better than uncharted simple..

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  6. Unchartted is technically a Marvel, Gears 2 too but it falls short.

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  7. really impressed by what uncharted manages to pull off. There's basically no scenery shots of the game available ... but still manages to outclass gears of war 2. All the xboy fanbots need to just suck it.

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  8. Wow, I would say this comparison isn't near as bad as the xbox fanboys are making it seem. If you've played both then you choose. I own both and to tell you the truth I prefer yes PREFER Uncharted, for it's more fluid and entertaining. Please people, quit being so damn childish and have an open mind.

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  9. lol at people who says that gears don't look like that in motion. Please..go watch his vids. Lol 2d fire action. And yes, I've played Gears 1 and 2, and it does look like that. It looks like low particle models with 3d looking sprites. At least that's how it is at max setting on the PC for gears 1 and 360 for gears 2.

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  10. Lmfao, @ the 360 fanboys.

    Cry with me, crrrrry!

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  11. Of course Gears of War doesn't normally look like that, but Uncharted doesn't normally look like that either. That is because the author is getting the camera close to the character models and textures to show their quality. Dang, how ignorant can some of you get.

    This a technical comparison and it is accurate to what I have seen myself. I own both games and just for fun I have compared them fairly in depth. There is no doubt that Uncharted is more graphically advanced than Gears of War 2.

    Gears doesn't even have any sort of real-time lighting engine--as Uncharted does--it simply relies on specularity and other kinds of maps to create the effect of light reflectivity and highlights. Aside from basic character shadows there are no real-time light sources in Gears 2 allowing every object to cast shadows and to be lit accurately (as there are in Uncharted). That difference, by itself, represents a pretty significant technical gap between the two games.

    There are also other areas, as we can see here, where Uncharted is superior to Gears of War 2. The textures and detail on the character models is much better in Uncharted. I found even the environmental textures to be more detailed and convincing in Uncharted.

    Gears 2, like Gears 1, has a tendency towards textures that look pretty good at medium and far distances, but when you get close to them you can see that they lack any real detail. Objects in Gears are often covered with a generic bumpy normal map that doesn't really reveal any true detail. Bumpy for the sake of being bumpy isn't true detail.

    Another aspect about Gears of War's presentation is that nearly everything looks like it were carved out of the same material (or a few basic materials). Look at the character models in the screen captures above for a perfect example of what I am talking about.

    Anyway, I am not saying Gears of War 2 is a bad game, because I actually think it is a good game (although I do personally enjoy Uncharted a bit more). But based on my own comparisons, there is no doubt in my mind that Uncharted is a more graphically accomplished game. Naughty Dog should be proud.

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  12. All uncharted's PICS is stolen from IGN.

    http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/812/812550/imgs_1.html

    http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/812/812550/vids_1.html

    NOTE:THE RELEASE DATE

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  13. LOL owned, using postprocessed, prerelease screenshots from IGN... how pathetic.

    ReplyDelete
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