Far Cry 5 Video Card Image Quality Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
Joined
May 18, 1997
Messages
54,875
Far Cry 5 Video Card Image Quality Review

We will be comparing Far Cry 5's Overall Quality, Shadows, Volumetric Fog, and Anti-Aliasing image quality. In addition, we will find out if we can improve IQ in the game by adding Anisotropic Filtering and forcing AA from the control panel. We’ve even have a video put together showing you many IQ issues we found in Far Cry 5, and those are plentiful.
 
Nice write-up, very thorough and informative. The game indeed could benefit from other AA options. While I agree with your assessment that TAA handles aliasing much better than SMAA, I find it introduces a "vaseline smear" effect to the entire image that I personally can't stand.
 
NukeDukem said:
Nice write-up, very thorough and informative. The game indeed could benefit from other AA options. While I agree with your assessment that TAA handles aliasing much better than SMAA, I find it introduces a "vaseline smear" effect to the entire image that I personally can't stand.
Click to expand...

In my analysis TAA is adding a sharpening filter, thus textures are actually sharper with TAA vs. SMAA or No AA.

SMAA, in my analysis adds texture blurring, or the "Vaseline smear" on textures.
 
Very nice article, thank you! I just started my second run-through of FC5 yesterday.

With my system (in my sig), I'm able to pull an avg of 90 fps at 1080p with adaptive Vsync at Ultra settings and Motion Blur turned off. The optimizing of this game is rather amazing, imo.

I'm looking forward to running through FC3, 4, and 5 again after my Mobo, CPU, and RAM overhaul and moving to a 1440p high-refresh HDR capable display.
 
Brent_Justice said:
In my analysis TAA is adding a sharpening filter, thus textures are actually sharper with TAA vs. SMAA or No AA.

SMAA, in my analysis adds texture blurring, or the "Vaseline smear" on textures.
Click to expand...

in static movement yes, TAA may look better, however the issue begins as soon as there's movement in camera.. fallout 4 also suffered from that issue even with sharpening from ReShade..
 
I just went in-game to double check my settings and compare/contrast, to me TAA just looks way more blurred, especially the foliage and especially in movement. Which is a shame, because it is definitely superior at killing those jaggies.
 
when did SMAA become so blurry?...I thought that mainly applied to FXAA?...I remember SMAA looking great in Crysis 3
 
What about the water? IIRC FC5 was supposed to have ultra-realistic water because of RPM.
 
the article states that forcing AF through the driver control panel delivers the best image quality...I always have it enabled in every game through my driver even if there's an in-game option...what happens if you have both settings enabled, does the forced driver AF disable the in-game AF or do they work together?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Meeho
like this
polonyc2 said:
the article states that forcing AF through the driver control panel delivers the best image quality...I always have it enabled in every game through my driver even if there's an in-game option...what happens if you have both settings enabled, does the forced driver AF disable the in-game AF or do they work together?
Click to expand...

Control panel override ingame options..
 
R_Type said:
Nice article guys.

Ultra settings and those trees look garbage for 2018. It's like crysis never happened.
Click to expand...
I think I noticed this in FC: Primal, and it continues in FC5. I'm glad someone finally went and did this kind of analysis to confirm it. FC4's performance (and Dunia 2) does not suddenly get "optimized," and other reviews claiming how "well" the game runs are all missing the point.

FPS is one thing, image quality (aggressive LOD cutoffs, textures, pre-baked lighting) is another.
 
Interesting, I look forward to picking this up in future. Hopefully a high res texture pack out by then.
When I first saw article I expected you'd test graphical difference between a few cards also, e.g. check for any ultra texture differences between high end card manufacturers. I remmember this was a thing in decades past but don't see it on hardocp these days. I guess each manufacturer realised blatant cheating never is worth it and it's not worth your time.
 
Farcry 5 looks really dated. the game world is so dead that I can't get immersed in it and even performance is not that good for me. Farcry 4 looks much better and runs much better on my PC even with all the gameworks enabled.
 
polonyc2 said:
the article states that forcing AF through the driver control panel delivers the best image quality...I always have it enabled in every game through my driver even if there's an in-game option...what happens if you have both settings enabled, does the forced driver AF disable the in-game AF or do they work together?
Click to expand...

Forcing AF from the driver control panel will always override the in-game filtering. So no matter what the in-game filtering is set at, the game will run the forced AF from the control panel. If you put it on Application, then the in-game AF will take over.

The methods are completely different, when you let the game decide AF it uses the filtering programmed by the developers, they can select what mip-map levels receive AF. However, when you force AF from the control panel it is a different AF, it's AF programmed from NVIDIA, and it always renders on every mip-map level, even if you don't need it. That is why sometimes control panel AF is a lot slower than in-game AF.
 
N4CR said:
Interesting, I look forward to picking this up in future. Hopefully a high res texture pack out by then.
When I first saw article I expected you'd test graphical difference between a few cards also, e.g. check for any ultra texture differences between high end card manufacturers. I remmember this was a thing in decades past but don't see it on hardocp these days. I guess each manufacturer realised blatant cheating never is worth it and it's not worth your time.
Click to expand...

It is really all the same now, not really a thing anymore, especially if you are just using in-game controls. It is when you use outside methods like AA or AF from the control panel that there can be differences. But even then, it's pretty much all moot these days. Filtering is the same, each one has optimizations but you can disable them for un-filtered, uh, filtering, heh. IN terms of AA, it doesn't work from the control panel in this game anyway, so you are just stuck with SMAA or TAA, or FXAA from NV control panel (a shader based method.)
 
  • Like
Reactions: N4CR
like this
polonyc2 said:
when did SMAA become so blurry?...I thought that mainly applied to FXAA?...I remember SMAA looking great in Crysis 3
Click to expand...

Different implementations. Remember also developers can mess with texture sharpening when introducing features like this, and that can make things look normal, or worse etc...

There are many different versions of SMAA, FXAA, TAA, TXAA, which ones the developer chooses has a great impact on image quality, some are better or worse than others. They don't always use the best and latest versions of these technologies available, or implement it well.
 
polonyc2 said:
the article states that forcing AF through the driver control panel delivers the best image quality...I always have it enabled in every game through my driver even if there's an in-game option...what happens if you have both settings enabled, does the forced driver AF disable the in-game AF or do they work together?
Click to expand...

Araxie said:
Control panel override ingame options..
Click to expand...

Depends on the driver setting. In radeon settings default is to use application settings. Then an enhanced setting and finally an override application setting.
 
Great focus piece here. There are far too few articles out there looking at IQ these days, it's good to be able to quantify what different options are doing and compare relative to other games (and predecessor games).

It's really a shame FC5 takes a step back in many ways from FC4. I (and others) "felt" this was the case and this article does a good job mapping out that de-evolution. To be fair, I do feel it's a "damned if you do/don't" situation for the devs: either put in advanced IQ and have people whining how their 4 year-old GPU can't handle; add them out and have others complain about lack of advance.
 

Attachments

  • 0uhAYuJ.jpg
    0uhAYuJ.jpg
    601.4 KB · Views: 167
I do not have a TAA setting for AA, just SMAA or OFF. Is TAA only applicable for NVidia or single card? Cfx two Vega FEs is what is running.
 
TAA looks terrible. I think this game looks awful at 1080p. I am completely CPU limited past 100fps so I play on a 4k display. 4k definitely the way to go for this game.

On another note, CPU core clockspeed scales linealy with FPS in this game for me.
 
i feel sorry for people getting fc5 as my experience with ubisoft has always been extremely dismal..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top