Assassins Creed Unity May Help in Notre Dame Reconstruction

Zarathustra[H]

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As some of you may know, Assassins Creed Unity was centered around the Cathedral at Notre Dame. The in-game 3d models of the cathedral were apparently unusually detailed. A level artist at the studio spent years cataloguing it to make sure every brick was in the right place.

While the extraordinary attention to detail may have been lost on many players of the game, in the wake of the cathedral fire resulting in the partial collapse of the 8 century old church, the 3d models in the game may wind up being a very useful tool as part of the reconstruction process.

I've never played any game in the Assassins Creed series, but now I am actually tempted to check it out.
 
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Some of the landmarks in Unity and Syndicate were very authentic looking, at least to my untrained eye. I will say they looked close enough to give you the feeling that the cities felt real when playing those games.
 
I used to live a few blocks from Notre Dame and it was on my walking route to Uni. I've probably been through it 100 times including both bell towers and some of the less-accessible areas. I'm also very familiar with Unity, a criminally underrated AC entry, IMO. Meh... I'd say as far as general space and dimensions it's largely accurate. It's however missing the majority of the interior detail and there was a good amount of license taken by artists in the interior decoration and verticals/levels. And the artists were, after all, going for late 18th century Notre Dame... but even this they F'ed up by including a lot of the architecture that didn't even exist at the time e.g. la flèche/spire, some of the buttress embellishments. At the end of the day, it's a good video game model and might allow people to appreciate the cathedral, but isn't good for much beyond that.

There are far, far more accurate and comprehensive 3D models of Notre Dame, namely those that were done around the restoration recently. In fact, having such recent, onboing renovations means the cathedral is mapped to the nano-meter and every ounce and article has been cataloged.

I'd say this story is a gaming publication or Ubisoft PR throwing out slop. I'd love to have a chat with the author of that article.
 
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I love the AC series but they pump them out so fast I can't keep up... Playing as a basically superhuman assassin is fantastic but the whole obstergo / animus side story is down right annoying. Historical accuracy is definitely not their strength but they weave things together creatively. I don't think I've played this entry into the series yet.
 
I used to live a few blocks from Notre Dame and it was on my walking route to Uni. I've probably been through it 100 times including both bell towers and some of the less-accessible areas. I'm also very familiar with Unity, a criminally underrated AC entry, IMO. Meh... I'd say as far as general space and dimensions it's largely accurate. It's however missing the majority of the interior detail and there was a good amount of license taken by artists in the interior decoration and verticals/levels. And the artists were, after all, going for late 18th century Notre Dame... but even this they F'ed up by including a lot of the architecture that didn't even exist at the time e.g. la flèche/spire, some of the buttress embellishments. At the end of the day, it's a good video game model and might allow people to appreciate the cathedral, but isn't good for much beyond that.

There are far, far more accurate and comprehensive 3D models of Notre Dame, namely those that were done around the restoration recently. In fact, having such recent, onboing renovations means the cathedral is mapped to the nano-meter and every ounce and article has been cataloged.

I'd say this story is a gaming publication or Ubisoft PR throwing out slop. I'd love to have a chat with the author of that article.

I didn't read this as the game itself would be used to rebuild, but rather that work from two years of documenting the cathedral for the purpose of creating the game could be used.
 
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I'd say this along with the survey done by the restoration crowd should be sufficient to get it all back to the way it was
 
I love the AC series but they pump them out so fast I can't keep up... Playing as a basically superhuman assassin is fantastic but the whole obstergo / animus side story is down right annoying. Historical accuracy is definitely not their strength but they weave things together creatively. I don't think I've played this entry into the series yet.

AC: Unity is really worth a play. It got a (somewhat deservedly) bad wrap on release for the numerous critical and sometimes humorous bugs, and there was a wave of "my 2-yr old PC can't run it on Ultra" complainers. Also, some people dinged the gameplay, but I found the somewhat slower, more articulated nature of movement much better than the click-fest newer AC entries force you into. You actually had to plan your attacks and approaches as opposed to Syndicate, Origins and Unity where you can just hack your way to victory. The story (and side plots) are some of the better in the AC series, IMO.

Since release, the bugs have been largely resolved and modern GPUs have caught up with the graphics requirements. I loaded it up last month and was surprised as to how great the game looks. It looks astoundingly good in some places, especially the city-scapes and inside some of the buildings -- Notre Dame, case in point -- surpassing the follow-up syndicate and only just with Odyssey did the detail and graphics get better.

You can pick it up for under $5 many places, so nothing to lose.
 
I love the AC series but they pump them out so fast I can't keep up... Playing as a basically superhuman assassin is fantastic but the whole obstergo / animus side story is down right annoying. Historical accuracy is definitely not their strength but they weave things together creatively. I don't think I've played this entry into the series yet.

The Obstergo/Animus thing is hardly there since Unity. A few cutscenes at the beginning and end. Maybe some sprinkled in the middle.

Honestly I miss them but I was one of the few who enjoyed the modern day story. My hope was to see Desmond become this total bad ass thanks to the bleeding effect. Then have an AC game take place entirely in the modern day starring Desmond. Looks like that will never happen.
 
The Obstergo/Animus thing is hardly there since Unity. A few cutscenes at the beginning and end. Maybe some sprinkled in the middle.

Honestly I miss them but I was one of the few who enjoyed the modern day story. My hope was to see Desmond become this total bad ass thanks to the bleeding effect. Then have an AC game take place entirely in the modern day starring Desmond. Looks like that will never happen.

I was thinking they were going that direction with things but to me anything beyond World War I era weaponry makes a large portion of the game play completely unrealistic. Even WW1 era weaponry makes most hand to hand combat irrelevant. I like the fact that the games insert the assassins into real historical events with a bit of creative freedom. I like that they are capable of acrobatic and combat feats that are beyond human but you can only push that so far and then they are just mutants / super heroes. That is where they would lose me personally...
 
this article is clickbait level-

"Whether Ubisoft will offer its digital information to the French government remains to be seen — representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment."

No one said it would be used to rebuild the cathedral, there has been no comms between the french government and ubisoft, no one has commented or reached out to say that the model from a video game would be used in any capacity to rebuild the cathedral. The entire article is made from ONE sentence an employee said that he spent a ton of time working on it for the game. THATS IT ! !!!!!! !!!!111!!
 
this article is clickbait level-

"Whether Ubisoft will offer its digital information to the French government remains to be seen — representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment."

No one said it would be used to rebuild the cathedral, there has been no comms between the french government and ubisoft, no one has commented or reached out to say that the model from a video game would be used in any capacity to rebuild the cathedral. The entire article is made from ONE sentence an employee said that he spent a ton of time working on it for the game. THATS IT ! !!!!!! !!!!111!!

No doubt. It's a gaming-centric publication taking something out-of-context and vastly over-embellishing. Then, the regurgitation machine took hold and it's now been rehashed on every gaming site out there.

No, the French government doesn't need Ubisoft's video game models. They already have ultra-detailed, ultra-resolution mappings including stress and capacity measurements (much of it modeled by Dassault Systèmes) as well as gigabytes of catalogs.
 
this article is clickbait level-

"Whether Ubisoft will offer its digital information to the French government remains to be seen — representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment."

No one said it would be used to rebuild the cathedral, there has been no comms between the french government and ubisoft, no one has commented or reached out to say that the model from a video game would be used in any capacity to rebuild the cathedral. The entire article is made from ONE sentence an employee said that he spent a ton of time working on it for the game. THATS IT ! !!!!!! !!!!111!!

Exactly, this is no more that watercooler level talk. So much garbage out there.
 
I'd say this along with the survey done by the restoration crowd should be sufficient to get it all back to the way it was

A debate that is currently going on is what to restore it to.

The way it was just before the fire, which was the result of a 19th century restoration, or to take this as an opportunity to restore it to what it looked like closer to its original construction.
 
and there was a wave of "my 2-yr old PC can't run it on Ultra" complainers.

These people really piss me off.

IMHO games should be designed like they were 15-20 years ago. Even the highest end new PC can't run a new game adequately at Ultra settings. Ultra settings should be seen as something forward looking, for future hardware several years down the road, so that the title is more relevant for longer.

Ideally, the quality settings should be calibrated such that on launch, most mid to high end systems fall in the "medium" settings. A few top 1% very high end enthusiast systems may be able to get by on "high" settings, and nothing can touch ultra for maybe two GPU generations.

I am currently playing through Far Cry 2, which languished in my Steam backlog for many years after I picked it up during a particularly good sale. I understand that when it initially launched it was a pretty demanding title graphically. I doubt there were too many people playing it at Ultra at that point. The benefit to this? I can still play it today, 11 years after its launch, and it doesn't feel THAT dated. It's still very enjoyable.

Since release, the bugs have been largely resolved and modern GPUs have caught up with the graphics requirements. I loaded it up last month and was surprised as to how great the game looks. It looks astoundingly good in some places, especially the city-scapes and inside some of the buildings -- Notre Dame, case in point -- surpassing the follow-up syndicate and only just with Odyssey did the detail and graphics get better.

You can pick it up for under $5 many places, so nothing to lose.

I think the main reason I never got into it - and probably still won't - is because I have a really tough time enjoying any third person titles. Seeing the character you are playing from above and behind them totally breaks immersion for me. I just can't do it. I tried playing the Witcher Series on a few occasions and just couldn't do it without a first person mode. I'm glad the modern installments in theFallout series had an optional first person mode, otherwise I would likely have missed out on those.
 
this article is clickbait level-

"Whether Ubisoft will offer its digital information to the French government remains to be seen — representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment."

No one said it would be used to rebuild the cathedral, there has been no comms between the french government and ubisoft, no one has commented or reached out to say that the model from a video game would be used in any capacity to rebuild the cathedral. The entire article is made from ONE sentence an employee said that he spent a ton of time working on it for the game. THATS IT ! !!!!!! !!!!111!!

Business Insider is a gaming publication?
 
Interesting. i knew they were usiming robots, but not that they were sent in from the very beginning of the fire.

Good job robots.
 
They should restore it to be a support center for sexually abused children.
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Unity is actually a really solid game. It was super demanding at the time it came out, and there were some issues with performance - But on modern systems that won't be an issue. It's a really solid game, and the graphics in it are honestly better than Origins/Odyssey as there is a far higher level of detail in the map itself.
 
These people really piss me off.

IMHO games should be designed like they were 15-20 years ago. Even the highest end new PC can't run a new game adequately at Ultra settings. Ultra settings should be seen as something forward looking, for future hardware several years down the road, so that the title is more relevant for longer.

I think it has a lot to do with optimizing for hardware that doesn't exist. Pretty much all of the games that used to be like that, such as Crysis, ran like shit. Crysis 1 still doesn't run that well on my PC but I can run far better looking games with better performance. By the time new hardware would come out the game wouldn't look top of the line anyways.

I think developers have taken the right approach these days. They push graphics and some games do require top of the line PCs to run maxed out, but they're well optimized. I've been using mid-high level cards for a few years now with mid-high end gaming CPUs. GTX 970, GTX1070, RTX 2070 and there are always a few games that give them a run for their money at 2560x1440 with max settings.
 
Crisis wasn't optimized for future hardware, it just wasn't optimized at all. Games with equivalent graphics ran at much, much higher framerates (although they came out years later). The problem games like Assassin's Creed have is they're made for consoles and they don't take the time to scale them properly for the large variation in PC hardware.
 
AC Unity has nice architecture, but one of the worse stories because it's basically a monster-of-the-week thing, with cut-and-paste quests, rather than some major narrative like most other AC games.

Can't go wrong if it's for free, though.
 
Unity is actually a really solid game. It was super demanding at the time it came out, and there were some issues with performance - But on modern systems that won't be an issue. It's a really solid game, and the graphics in it are honestly better than Origins/Odyssey as there is a far higher level of detail in the map itself.

I'd say it's one of the better AC entries and a thoroughly enjpyable game. It definitely is an example of how a few crititcal bugs (amd high sys reqs) at release can ruin the reputation of an otherwise good game.

I spun it up again last night and continue to be amazed how good the game looks at highest settings. Standing atop Notre Dame you can see high-quality detail all the way to the Bastille and beyond. The devs really were asking for trouble releasing a game this taxing and forward-looking in 2014 when most folks were running GTX 780s at best (amd most people loweer) -- good on them. The fight mechanics are also really well done, much more about tactics than "pressing A to win".
 
And publishers complain about the costs of creating games :)
Whoever was tasked to model the building was just milking it.
All expense paid trip to Paris to model Notre Dame? Sure that'll take at least 10 months so I can get every brick in the correct place.
What's the next game, FPS based in Hawaii? That will take at least 2 years so we can get Kilauea accurate after the last round of lava flows.
 
Whoever was tasked to model the building was just milking it.
All expense paid trip to Paris to model Notre Dame? Sure that'll take at least 10 months so I can get every brick in the correct place.
What's the next game, FPS based in Hawaii? That will take at least 2 years so we can get Kilauea accurate after the last round of lava flows.
You realize they mapped / scanned most of Paris, along with Versailles. It wasn’t just one building.
 
The only thing I didn't particularly like about the game was using English accents in France

There's also other stuff I dislike about AC Unity, but I was also upset that they used English accents instead of French ones.
 
There's also other stuff I dislike about AC Unity, but I was also upset that they used English accents instead of French ones.
What AC Python wasn't fun? (for some reason I was reminded of the castle scene)
 
There's also other stuff I dislike about AC Unity, but I was also upset that they used English accents instead of French ones.

To add insult to injury, the French-language voice actors are far superior to the English ones as well.
 
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