Console vs PC: Texture quality

[Eisenblut]

Perhaps this can be definitely answered for me as it is something that I have wondered about for a while.

I understand that textures must be scaled down in quality for the limited RAM, both system and frame buffer, of consoles. However, why are the original created textures not used for the PC version where the frame buffer on video cards alone can be 5-6x the entire memory of the console?

Instead, I see things like Rage where even the 8k (even the 16k) textures are almost complete garbage if you are anywhere within 30 feet of them. Other times, I see inconsistencies like in Deus Ex: HR where there are borderline illegible sign textures on hi-res wall textures.

What stops the developers from using the original full resolution textures that were created in the original art assets and create PC appropriate quality assets, even on console ports? How difficult is that?

I see things in games like Rage with terrible textures and 4 polygon railings and it makes me want to...well, just like the game title.

 

[socK]

In Rage the textures themselves aren't 8k or 16k, that's the size of the texture cache.

 

[Eisenblut]

There is a difference in setting the config to 8k or 16k instead of the default 4k, but it's not much. Certainly not anything good looking at all.

 

[somehipster]

In most cases it probably isn't a conscious decision. An artist for the developer makes resource X then they optimize it to fit within the budget for that particular scene/level/whatever. Thus you get a lower resolution resource, Y. A few days/weeks/months later the people working on the PC version are working on the scene/level/whatever and they see that awful resource Y. Assuming they don't ignore it, they then have to find the corresponding high resolution resource for that, which may or may not exist anymore.

TL;DR: It's mostly human error on the developer's part.

 

[spine]

If you develop for a console, you develop for a console.


Getting the memory footprint right for a console game is a fight and a half, there's lots of little patch-fixes to get it all working smoothly, and deeper into development you'll be just working with the low res assets because that's how tight things get.

It's not just a simple process to 'redo' all the artwork at high res, because it's been heavily tweaked for low res; to the point where the high res assets are essentially 'lost'.

Modern game development, for AAA titles, is very aggressive. There's literally no time to spare to be nice to PC.


Ultimately, if I were funding a project, I wouldn't want my developers wasting time making high res assets that the primary market will never see.

 

[kcthebrewer]

Ultimately, if I were funding a project, I wouldn't want my developers wasting time making high res assets that the primary market will never see.

I don't agree. In a few years when your game is re-released for the next gen console (and possibly the one after that), you will want the higher res assets available.

 

[exlink]

Developers now prefer to just develop games for consoles since they can optimize them to a much greater extent since all the hardware is the same for each console (and there are far more console gamers out there than PC gamers). Then they generally just port them over to PC and toss in higher textures (sometimes) and other graphical improvement where they don't have to optimize as much because most PC gamers have hardware that is probably 5-6x better than console hardware.

If they originally developed it for the PC then they'd have to go through the tedious task of having to cut things out for the consoles which wouldn't work as well as just building it from the ground up for consoles and then porting it to the almighty PC (albeit ports really hinder what games could really look like on the PC ).

 

[Spare-Flair]

I don't agree. In a few years when your game is re-released for the next gen console (and possibly the one after that), you will want the higher res assets available.

Very few game ever become popular enough to receive that treatment. You work with the budget you have now. If you get money later, you think about porting or upgrading the textures even though it seems counter-intuitive to future-proof at the earliest and easiest opportunity, that's how business work - the hard way.

 

[somehipster]

Very few game ever become popular enough to receive that treatment. You work with the budget you have now. If you get money later, you think about porting or upgrading the textures even though it seems counter-intuitive to future-proof at the earliest and easiest opportunity, that's how business work - the hard way.

Yep.

Even the harshest critic of consolization would relent if it was their money on the line.

I do believe the best path for a developer to take, however, is to release the tools used to make the game (i.e. Skyrim) and let the community work at it... for free!

 

[Majinhoju]

it sucks for the pc gamer, but budgets and tight deadlines are likely the culprit to lackluster development on the pc. development teams work 60+ hour work weeks when the deadline is near.

 

[Tudz]

Honestly, I think its a bit silly. Things like signs which are too blurry to read, surely they would have been created as textures that were readable and then scaled down. They wouldn't have created blurry text initially, that would have been more trouble that creating sharp text.

The argument that "because of consoles" doesn't really fly with me, because they already are providing higher level textures and surely higher quality assets exist on the artists' computers, we aren't just being provided them as an option.

My thoughts would be....
Some of the textures in a level were created at a low level and so to keep things balanced they don't use the higher quality versions of other textures. Something like a concrete floor or barrier is probably an easier texture to create at a low level initially than create it at a high level then scale it down. Other things, say like a keyboard, were probably easier to create as a high res and then scale down... so they do scale it down to match with the other textures.

My other thought was perhaps space? Something like Skyrim, I wonder if they just released it as low res textures like they did to fit on a DVD and keep the download size small, even though they probably do have much higher res textures available in house. Same with Crysis 2, I reckon a lot of the textures they released in a high res texture patch probably existed before the game even came out, and even though modders have produced even higher quality versions now, I do wonder if Crytek do still have higher quality assets in house which they haven't released for one reason or another.

The "because consoles" argument doesn't really make sense in a lot of cases because the textures in a lot of games look like they were actually created at a higher level then scaled down for consoles, so why not just give us the higher level ones to start with?

 

[JimmiG]

In spite of the horrible user interface and wrong compiler settings rolleyes in the PC version of Skyrim, you have to give Bethesda credit for providing the original high-res textures for free.

 

[jeremyshaw]

Very few game ever become popular enough to receive that treatment. You work with the budget you have now. If you get money later, you think about porting or upgrading the textures even though it seems counter-intuitive to future-proof at the earliest and easiest opportunity, that's how business work - the hard way.

Yup, when Halo:CE got "remastered," it already had some work (iirc, from Halo PC? May be wrong) to draw from, but a Russian studio still had to do a lot from scratch. Though when run on the xbox360, I remember Halo 1 and 2 got rendered at 720p up from 480p (which accounted for most of the clarity gain, though textures remained the same), and had AA applied (which for Halo 2, caused some framerate issues at some points).

 

[txsizzler]

Thankfully, unlike the console counterparts, the PC has an active modding community for most games out there, with high res packs, and options that really push the graphics cards. Look at GTA IV with its modding... its probably better looking now than GTA V will look. Even Skyrim had high-res packs released almost immediately after the game hit the market.

This is partly why I stick with PC gaming... this, and having keyboard/mouse control. So much more precise, so much easier to use.


Ian

 

[Tudz]

Thankfully, unlike the console counterparts, the PC has an active modding community for most games out there, with high res packs, and options that really push the graphics cards. Look at GTA IV with its modding... its probably better looking now than GTA V will look. Even Skyrim had high-res packs released almost immediately after the game hit the market.

This is partly why I stick with PC gaming... this, and having keyboard/mouse control. So much more precise, so much easier to use.


Ian

There really isn't that many games with a decent modding community and modded texture packs, GTA and Bethesda games are 2 on a short list which do.

 

[txsizzler]

There really isn't that many games with a decent modding community and modded texture packs, GTA and Bethesda games are 2 on a short list which do.

Actually, there are quite a few. Google is your friend!


Ian

 

[Tudz]

Actually, there are quite a few. Google is your friend!


Ian

Meh, you said "most games", of all the games I've played in the past couple of years, only a few have texture mods. I see games with a modding community more of an exception for a few PC games rather than a blanket statement for PC games in general.

 

[txsizzler]

Actually, most big title games DO have an active modding community. And alot of them do have texture/graphics updates. Examples... the FarCry games, GTA games, ID software games (Doom 3, Quakes, etc). Of course, not all titles will have it, but I can think of quite a few. And when compared to the console counterparts, the PC stands out, big time.


Ian

 

[Tudz]

Actually, most big title games DO have an active modding community. And alot of them do have texture/graphics updates. Examples... the FarCry games, GTA games, ID software games (Doom 3, Quakes, etc). Of course, not all titles will have it, but I can think of quite a few. And when compared to the console counterparts, the PC stands out, big time.

I still think its a minority for the most part. Games that I've played recently without mods, Assassin's Creed series, Darksiders, DIRT series, LOTR:WITN, BFBC2, Force Unleashed 1 and 2, Warhammer 40k Space Marine, F1 2010, Dead Space. Most of the games I've played recently don't have texture mods or much of a modding community at all really. I'm sure you can list a handful of games that do have a decent graphical mods, but for each you do I reckon I could list 2 or 3 that don't.

 

[WBurchnall]

I don't agree. In a few years when your game is re-released for the next gen console (and possibly the one after that), you will want the higher res assets available.

I disagree with your disagreement . Yes, in a few years your game might be re-released for the next-generation console but usually as a downloadable file that costs the user between $4.00 to $10.00. Half of which, the platform(XBL/PSN) eats up right away as 'delivery costs'. Even if you somehow manage to sell 1/10th as many copies as when the game was new and more desireable, its questionable if that 1/10th as many copies at 1/10th the price will recoup the development cost of keeping the higher resolution textures.

Not to mention, your basically investing money in keeping a high resolution set of textures for your game that won't show any dividends to possibly as many as eight years later when the next console comes out. So realistically, your seeing less than 0% interest after inflation for 8 years til you pay a development team to re-release your game and then hope you'll make back the initial investment + money lost to inflation x 8 years + the development team cost to update the game to the new system.

Meantime, you could have taken the same money and put it towards your next game on the current-generation system to make it better/bug proof it more/extend development time/make a better quality product to result in more sales of your next title. I'd bet that the later more often makes you more money.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Lazyness, why make 2 sets of content when you can make 1 set and PC gamers complacently buy ugly-ass games anyway, us the gamers are to blame for accepting this kind of crap and not modifying our spending habits because of it.

it would help if people stopped buying modern borefare style games in the millions and put that money towards better looking PC games to encourage developers to put in the effort.

 

[Tudz]

Lazyness, why make 2 sets of content when you can make 1 set and PC gamers complacently buy ugly-ass games anyway, us the gamers are to blame for accepting this kind of crap and not modifying our spending habits because of it.

But they already make a set of higher res textures for PC for most games, and they probably have higher res assets which were made during development.

 

[The Rad Hatter]

Also, consider that PC games require higher quality textures as users will sit closer to the screen. With consoles the user is sitting happily on their couch.

 

[wonderfield]

What most seem to be forgetting (or simply don't know) is that most studios utilize various sorts of asset conditioning tools to take an asset in one format and 'condition' it into an asset suitable for the engine on a given platform (converting formats, down-rezzing, compressing, re-ordering vertices, etc.) I don't know under what possible circumstance anyone would push something through a conditioning pipeline in a destructive manner. Meaning: the original asset stays intact.

Also, as a minor addendum for the OP, the term 'frame buffer' and 'video memory' are not analogous. A frame buffer is cut from a chunk of video memory and has a very specific purpose in rendering; video memory is general-purpose and can store a variety of data. Texture resources are stored in video memory; rendered frames are stored in frame buffers.