Has PC gaming become synonymous with "maxing the graphics out"?

LeninGHOLA said:
Why would you think that post was poo? Anyone who plays competitive multiplayer at a high level dials down the detail levels for maximum frames per second and minimum latency. It's not something you can do on a console.
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You're probably going to need to use pictures to illustrate your point to him, sadly
 
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Think more people are into mods and texture re-hauls for games these days.

Maxing out graphic settings these days in any game is easy, resolution has the bigger impact. If you want your system to be pushed to the max grab some 4k resolution packs and max out ENB for a supported game.

We've come a long way from the Crysis days and even then Crytek had there heads up there asses when they coded that turd. Same goes for popular console ports such as GTA IV. The STALKER series comes to mind too.

All have potential to run and look better though.
 
yourgrandma said:
I want to know what this secret aa technique is because the only thing that i have seen that looks better then msaa is down sampling or SSAA neither provide better performance then msaa. Both fxaa and mlaa blur and distort the image and most of the time i just prefer it completely off then use them.
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SMAA and good implimentations of FXAA make MSAA look like ass and go doubling your frame rate.

Matthew Kane said:
We've come a long way from the Crysis days and even then Crytek had there heads up there asses when they coded that turd.
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That's a little harsh. It was pretty revolutionary.
 
yourgrandma said:
I want to know what this secret aa technique is because the only thing that i have seen that looks better then msaa is down sampling or SSAA neither provide better performance then msaa. Both fxaa and mlaa blur and distort the image and most of the time i just prefer it completely off then use them.
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the biggest issue with MSAA is that most engines today have "deferred" elements and other shader and post process effects which MSAA does not work on at all. or if one of those elements overlaps an object on your screen, MSAA is broken. So if MSAA even works at all in a game, it may only give you a visual benefits sometimes. It also completely does not work on alpha textures (unless "alpha to coverage techniques are used. they almost never are) or shader effects. It only works on polygons.

SMAA is a post process ant-aliasing (It is an improved form of MLAA). it runs off your shaders, and treats the screen as a 2D image. So, it can be applied to any game engine. It generally gives better performance than MLAA and also is scalable, with different levels/settings. It doesn't blur the image like most implementations of FXAA and generally doesn't negatively affect HUD elements, like typical MLAA (although if SMAA or MLAA is implemented in engine, it can be applied before the HUD is rendered, making this all moot). and one of it's best features, is that it does sub-pixel motion estimation and temporal sampling. So it looks better during motion, than most forms of aliasing. I don't know why every single game doesn't include SMAA options.

You can inject SMAA 1x, via SweetFX (it's also included in Dark Souls main mod, DSfix). Unfortunately, as long as SweetFX and the official SMAA injector have been out, no work has been done to get the 2x version in the injector. Even 1x is better than most MSAA in the majority of instances. But 2x is where SMAA really shines. SMAA 1x - 4x is implemented in Crysis 3. I think Dead Space 3 has an SMAA option, but am unsure of what level is used.
 
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Pringle said:
You're probably going to need to use pictures to illustrate your point to him, sadly
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My Quake games (all of them) have always looked like the below and will... no matter how much hardware I have to back them. If I cared about how pretty something looked I'd watch a movie.

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Not sure wtf the OP is talking about.

Top games played on Steam

1. Dota 2 - not graphically intensive
2. TF2 - not graphically intensive
3. Civ 5 - not graphically intensive
4. CS: GO - not graphically intensive
5. Skyrim - graphically intensive
6. Garry's Mod - lol
7. Rust - not graphically intensive
8. DayZ - not graphically intensive
9. Football Manager 2014 - don't know, don't care
10. LFD2 - not graphically intensive

WTF are you smoking OP?
 
chalmer9 said:
Not sure wtf the OP is talking about.

Top games played on Steam

1. Dota 2 - not graphically intensive
2. TF2 - not graphically intensive
3. Civ 5 - not graphically intensive
4. CS: GO - not graphically intensive
5. Skyrim - graphically intensive
6. Garry's Mod - lol
7. Rust - not graphically intensive
8. DayZ - not graphically intensive
9. Football Manager 2014 - don't know, don't care
10. LFD2 - not graphically intensive

WTF are you smoking OP?
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Civ 5 can definitely be graphics intensive (if you turn up all the settings or play at high resolution)

My kids play Football Manager 2014 (they are enormous soccer fans) and it is not graphically intensive (but apparently it is pretty addicting since they have logged 256 hours playing it since I bought it for them at the end of November) :D
 
SuperCell said:
It seems this is the case.

COD MW2 is an old game, but even so, I can get a playable experience on a single-core Celeron 450 @ 2.2GHz, 4 gigs of 1066 RAM, and a $30 video card that was really only intended for streaming HD video.

It seems people game less for the gaming experience, and more so just to be able to max out the graphics.
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You missed the point, why not have your cake and eat it?
People game for all sorts of reasons, I game for looaads of reasons.
The game is only one part of it, with a PC you get to do a whole lot more.

Take Skyrim for example.
I played it a few years ago with a fairly jerky framerate. At the time it had a few issues, slower hardware and available video memory made it hard to max out.
Now I'm playing it again fully maxed and highly modded with a TON of user created mods that improve the game in so many ways.
There are even 4K visual mods now!
Not only that but I can play it natively with a mouse and keyboard.
Its great seeing how much you can improve a game and even join in the modding scene.
Do that on a console.

FordFanboy said:
Biggest load of poo I've read in a while.
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This forum and PCs are wasted on you :p
 
kbrickley said:
Civ 5 can definitely be graphics intensive (if you turn up all the settings or play at high resolution)

My kids play Football Manager 2014 (they are enormous soccer fans) and it is not graphically intensive (but apparently it is pretty addicting since they have logged 256 hours playing it since I bought it for them at the end of November) :D
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Oh god... first it's football, then it's something else :D

Anyway, Civ 5 is not a graphically intensive game. It's TBS ffs. You need how many fps to read and click on pretty menus?
 
Mods in PC gaming is definitely where you can go beyond max graphics, i got skyrim with a ton of texture mods and ENB pushing 2GB on my 670s. Crysis 2 with maldohd mod makes it look amazing and some games look good in their own right without mods like witcher 2, metro and crysis 3. I also have GTA 4 modded out with ENB and texture mods, ultimate vehicle pack but it runs like shit (bad console port).
 
Nenu said:
Take Skyrim for example.
I played it a few years ago with a fairly jerky framerate. At the time it had a few issues, slower hardware and available video memory made it hard to max out.

This forum and PCs are wasted on you :p
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Load of bs, Skyrim was a shit port initially and has taken over 13 updates (latest 1.9) to get to where it is now, finally stable. My old i7 960 and 980x with various cards 465, 470, 480's and 570 maxed the game easily but random CTD was still present. Skyrim is more CPU bound than GPU (this is what I've found ime).

As I said in my post above (not directed at you), mods is where it's at now to unlock the potential of what some game engines can do and take pc gaming graphics to a new level since dev's don't give a shit about the PC platform anymore (except a small handfull) whipping out rehashed releases (COD) every year or unoptimized console ports.
 
SuperCell said:
It seems this is the case.

COD MW2 is an old game, but even so, I can get a playable experience on a single-core Celeron 450 @ 2.2GHz, 4 gigs of 1066 RAM, and a $30 video card that was really only intended for streaming HD video.

It seems people game less for the gaming experience, and more so just to be able to max out the graphics.
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No, that's the great thing about PC gaming.

You can play on cheap hardware or expensive hardware. It's up to you, the gamer to choose which you prefer.
 
Matthew Kane said:
Load of bs, Skyrim was a shit port initially and has taken over 13 updates (latest 1.9) to get to where it is now, finally stable. My old i7 960 and 980x with various cards 465, 470, 480's and 570 maxed the game easily but random CTD was still present. Skyrim is more CPU bound than GPU (this is what I've found ime).

As I said in my post above (not directed at you), mods is where it's at now to unlock the potential of what some game engines can do and take pc gaming graphics to a new level since dev's don't give a shit about the PC platform anymore (except a small handfull) whipping out rehashed releases (COD) every year or unoptimized console ports.
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Which bit was BS?
 
I said that today you can get a better experience with Skyrim and gave a few reasons why.
There are more, but I didnt want to rant.
I dont understand your anger at my post.
 
Nenu said:
Take Skyrim for example.
At the time it had a few issues, slower hardware and available video memory made it hard to max out.
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Oh thought you meant something else.

No I'm not angry but I'm pointing out the above as bs as it wasn't the case. We had plenty of fast hardware to max it out at the time it was released. It wasn't released during C2D time or such, the game itself had a lot of issues itself which like BF4 is today optimization and random crashes not related by hardware and available video memory.
 
Matthew Kane said:
Is this directed at me and if so, which part of my post are you questioning?
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No not you. I should have completed the sentence. :)

When has PC gaming not been synonymous with Maxing out graphics? or at least attempting to max out graphics?
 
Matthew Kane said:
Oh thought you meant something else.

No I'm not angry but I'm pointing out the above as bs as it wasn't the case. We had plenty of fast hardware to max it out at the time it was released. It wasn't released during C2D time or such, the game itself had a lot of issues itself which like BF4 is today optimization and random crashes not related by hardware and available video memory.
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Any one of those made it problematic for many to run it at max when it was released, now its way easy to run it maxed and mod it to be even better, unless you are running pretty old or slow hardware.
The same with most high caliber games, they run better on newer hardware and when the issues are fixed.
My point was more that on PC, there is replay value in older games that you couldn't max out at the time you first played them and user added content/fixes makes them even better.
 
If that's what you meant then I don't disagree sorry for being a little harsh for calling your post BS but that was the way I interpreted it as.
 
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