The most Insane AAA Game made in Unity has arrived in Closed Alpha

Why would the default shader match the look of a custom toony shader?

 

Indeed.

Terrain never got attention and the solution is always the Asset Store. Perhaps it's better Unity focus on the engine basics like instancing, multithreading etc ... and let users make plugins to bring it to another level for people that expect more.
Most Unity users are not interested in making a AAA game, and mobile is a huge part.

Because you expected a lot, while many indies using Unity does really not have AAA expectations lol
I use UE4 for a team game project on the art side mainly while i do some BP and BT, but for mobile 3D games Unity is miles ahead.

Does Unity really need that ?
If you take a look at games like Dishonnored or Prey it's AAA because of the project size, content and polishing, while graphics are stylized and not top grade AAA. They are great gameplay games that could be done in Unity with some extra work and tools. There is Recore showing Unity can do great; with more time and money i am sure they could had better shaders and more stuff.

About Unity graphics i would like to see some scene made with these plugins : Alloy, Uber, Natural Bloom, Scion, RTP3, Megasplat,Advanced Foliage shader, Beautify).
Because it really changes the look, like this scene is made with Alloy

 

Unity is also great for games that appeal to audiences that are not your typical super gamer. We tried UE4 and half our computers could not run it without crashing, and this was before adding a lot to the scene. Yes, it is beautiful, but many people play on laptops without fancy graphics drivers or older computers. If we were making a shooter or a modern action rpg and trying to appeal to the "gamers" then UE4 might be fine if you can overcome some of the other issues.

Unity, on the other hand, allows me to create a beautiful scene and it will run on my music guy's computer as well as on my son's computer. I want folks like my music guy to be able to play our game, even if he is a poor musician. lol So for us, Unity is perfect. It is also not hard for me to learn and not just for coders.

So..even for PC games, Unity can open up your unique, unusual, and niche games to people who otherwise can't play some of these super action graphical games.

Honestly, when I remember the old games way back when, with the simple graphics and the amazing storylines, the deep gameplay, and the simple joy of playing with all your friends, not just the ones with great systems, I actually wonder if we are going backwards, instead of forwards. Just like the action movies that have taken over the cinemas to the detriment of some really great stories, games are more about fighting, blood, gore, and the same old action hero archetypes.

I rather wonder if when we get to the pinnacle of graphics, what will developers do to make their game standout now that we have trained our users to see better graphics as the crowing achievement.

 

Action movies have taken over cinema, but great stories are on TV now.

I have no friggin clue if that relates to games, but I guess -- good content finds a way!

 

It's not a custom toony shader though, I think the "look" all comes from the art assets. Their shaders are pretty much PBR based, maybe tuned a bit differently, but I swear, a couple of the bastion skins, look exaclty like allegorithmic painter presets. They also use a lot of cubemaps + SSR for reflections.

But yeah, their rendering pipeline uses pretty much things that Unity can do out of the box.

 

To some extent, but even TV is full of much more violence, action, blood, gore, rape, etc., than ever before. I love the smart shows but a good portion of those turn me off with too much ugh. Would people say that these were great stories without the ugh?

If not, then I say it isn't the story that makes some defined them as great. lol

 

I actually think that default unity shader can be easily made to look this way without much tweaking.

Shaders on Arowx's screens are not even cartoonish. Judging by the screens it looks like a stock pbr shader to me. Basically, setting roughness to max (to kill specular) and using the same texture data as albedo will probably result in highly similar picture. Then you'd need to ramp up ambient, set it to color rather than skybox, and that's it.

Getting backgrounds look the same should be easily doable.

Basically... I'm really not sure where did "Unity can't do that" came from in case of overwatch.

Yup. Look like stock pbr effect that could be painted in substance designer/painter.

 

Afaik their pipeline is based on Photoshop and Quixel Suite, because they started working on the game before Substance Painter was production ready.

 

Does anybody ever think you may possibly lose your mind focusing on this AAA graphics unicorn so much? I mean truly guys from what I've seen several of you are very capable of producing some very nice looking games (or at least graphics). But that never happens because you are caught in this black hole from which there seems to be no escape.

I'd love to see any of you complete a simple game just doing the best you can do... within reason (not obsessing over 1 tree for 1 week or 1 character for a month). I think maybe you folks need to believe in yourselves more. Your game doesn't have to be perfect / look perfect. But actually making a very nice looking and fully playable game would be far better than posting scree shots of other people's games and critiquing them.

 

Yep, Unity will run lot better on some simple hardware casual people have. For many people Unity is some more easy to learn and code (despite i find both engine easy to use).

This is why there is indies and small studios .
There is still awesome games about gameplay or storyline like for example Recore, Divinity Original Sin, Ori, Seasons After Fall, Nier 2, Yooka Laylee etc ... There is really great games.
Big studios is not only "hollywood" productions, depsite beeing combat based i liked a lot "Horizon" game on PS4 and i found it's backgound and story very involving.
And some others are making games somewhat different also like "Detroit" game on PS4
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCuASnY9Tg
If you look at Nintendo this is the great example of how to do amazing successfull games without going AAA, the game "Zelda BOT" is a great example showing that art design and effects matter more than triple A graphics.

 

Yes!

I see it everywhere...In the UMA chat, in Facebook groups, mentioned in blogs...chasing the unicorn. I like that. Really creative cool people who are so concerned about perfection that they drown out everything else. They forget that gamers are not going to notice that the shoe clips through the skirt of the dress a few times as the player character is dancing. Nor do they seem to remember that this never stops someone from playing your game. I do not remember playing a AAA game that didn't have some clipping and other issues, where animations did not go weird on occasion, where the plate was round instead of octagonal.

Yet, I spent a lot of money on these games. I enjoyed them very much. I remember them fondly. I don't really remember the glitches or bugs, unless they gave us a laugh. I most remember the experiences. I also remember some really immersive experiences in games with what would be considered now not so great graphics...and yet, Unity's are better.

Having worked on a game 20 years ago when we were thrilled to have the graphics we had back then, and watch some of the fans of that game see my stuff now is amazing. They LOVE it and I have heard them say how great it is that we can do things now we could never have done then.

I am really glad that I have that perspective and that many of the people who follow our game do as well. It makes it very rewarding for us to realize that they appreciate how far game development has come for indies. Instead of demanding AAA quality, they are focused on the experience they are going to have in the game. I feel so fortunate.

 

Edit: Shorter version.

I disagree, I find both Unreal and Unity easy to use.. They both have or have had their issues, especially around crashing and they are now pretty stable. Performance in UE has been exceptional to say the least.

We could do with more resources to maximise what we can get out of Unity for larger projects, it started at one point (with the official threads). Of course not trying to get into another engine vs. debate.. (Sorry Hippo)..

@GarBenjamin

With the amount of resources and tutorials (like arch viz) it's pretty easy to surpass AAA in small instances. Issue being for us "pefectionist" obsessive types, it doesn't just stop at a small room with pretty lighting.

We dream big and that usually involves a massive amount of art, constant tweaking and big games. From the amount of mistakes I see in large budget games, it's of course not sustainable and as much as I dislike compromise it is somewhat inevitable.

@zenGarden

You are partially correct, at the time the time the choices were a closed engine with 25% royalties or spending at bare minimum $200K+ for an engine license.. So Unity was a good choice, if no other reason to learn.

 

AAA to me is an interesting challenge in that, whatever I gain by finding pipeline and standard to get close to it, it will help for project with less production value. I don't want that "lush" anyway lol, but I don't think anyone here can even touch the AAA standard from ps2 era, which is well below unity's performance, like FF12. The day indies does something like that they can tackle current AAA.

 

You seriously deserve an award for this post.

Dreaming big isn't wrong. The issue with that is, in most cases, it will stay exactly that; a dream.

 

I agree and disagree.

Yes, it's completely infeasible for a low budget effort to match AAA, but I do believe in learning from the best examples, even if my efforts can't match them.

• When I was working on HUD, I looked at examples from Witcher 3, Ryse Son of Rome, XCOM, etc.
• When I was working on targeting I looked at Batman, Assassins Creed, etc.

Do my systems match theirs? Hell no.
Did I learn from their examples and produce a better result? Hell yes.

The little message bar on on the left in Ryse has so much variation and detail, someone spent months of time on getting every last detail there right. No I can't match it, but I took the same basic structure and simplified it, and it's a fantastic addition. Same thing goes for looking at other elements of AAA work, no you can't reproduce the level of quality, but you can look at the core and mold it into something that is feasible for a small effort.

So yeah, I agree that you should accept the limitations of your resources and not waste time, but I believe that everyone should look to the best examples for inspiration.

Frankly, a lot of the time I learned that they hack the living crap out of stuff in the AAA space too. A lot of the time it was more like "oh, man, I don't even need to worry about that... it's s--t in Assassin's Creed too!!".

 

A lot of people seem to say this, any specific reason why? I've prototyped big games en mass, it isn't the "big" bit that's the problem.. It's the "good" bit that is.!

 

its weird, the game looks good but I remember it looking far far better than what I saw in this current trailer/devlog.

 

And how many of these big games did you finish to the end? " With AAA grade custom art assets?

At the end nobody cares about your big triple A like game if you can not get it out of the door.

I do not say you shouldn't strive for games with this kind of graphics. I enjoy doing these by myself. But the content creation is a huge time sink, so that game should be in a reasonable scope IMO.

But I know that you are already well aware of that, so...

 

Geez, what has this turned into, Graphics Addicts Anonymous? Is it my turn to share my story of 'breaking free'? Oh wait, I haven't done that yet, but I can tell you why I like graphics.

The reason I pursue better graphics is a very simple one - I'd much rather engage the player with great lighting than texture or geometry detail. It's much easier, much more efficient, and it comes off so much better to me - especially in the context of short immersive experiences which is what I'm aiming at in general.

When you can cook up some nice lighting, it actually looks better when the art is simpler (at least to me it does). Ad1ft is a perfect example of how trading off some complexity for lighting is a good move - although their art is not always simple at all. But in fact the parts where it looks less complex, come off better to me than the ones that don't.

Mirrors Edge Catalyst is another game that shows how increasing lighting quality, and reducing the complexity of the scene, can come off very, very nicely.

I don't think that art in Overwatch is quite as simple as it appears, but I do think it's an example of how really great lighting can make things look much better when less information is introduced into textures and geometry.

And for a short, immersive experience, especially in VR, would it be better to dunk your head into something that looks like Adr1ft or Mirrors Edge, or something ordinary?

So that's my perspective.

 

Well this is completely logical and actually, believe it or not, even I do this kind of thing in my very small game projects. Always looking to learn from what others have done before. But the key thing you are hitting on here is doing it to aid in actually completing the project or completing the project in a way you perceive as being better.

That makes good sense. What I was referring to is focusing almost exclusively on this one piece of game development to the detriment of everything else. We all know there are other important parts of a game. If a person spends all of their time trying to match or surpass AAA audio that probably is not a worthwhile thing in the context of actually completing a game. Looking at the AAA audio and picking up some things you put into practice to improve the game (that you are actually building) is very different.

I mean of course in the end people can do whatever in heck they want to do. I am just saying I do not personally understand why if a person can already produce quality work instead of actually using that skill to complete a game they instead strive to continually match the work churned out by companies with massive budgets, many more people working on the games and so forth.

 

How about something that looks like REZ isntead?

 

Yeah people really like that REZ VR experience when it came out!

It's been also said that NPR stylized graphics can work better in VR too.

 

Well that's one way of making a game, but it doesn't accomplish the same objective visually as something like mirrors edge. It's great though if that's the sort of game world you're out to make.

 

Sorry are you trying to prove something here? Does it matter?

Firstly a lot of people don't care even if you get it out the door and not everybody is interested in releasing a game.. I'm doing this for fun and nothing else, if it's a complete waste of time it's my time to waste.. Not yours!.

Just to mention I wouldn't even entertain the idea of competing against AAA / AA or whatever size batteries we mention.. It's a fools errand, I don't have a 400 employees and I seriously doubt I ever will.

I did a small stint on an MMO that was created by a small bunch of indies (trying to jump on as many projects as possible for experience), it got released a while back ago and those guys are my hero's they proved that big games most definatley can be released by indies..

You only have to peak over the fence to see what other indie's are doing to see some really cool stuff.. We have a team doing a Silent Hill type game, there's other games like PAMELA.. There's some mighty impressive games done as Uni projects.. There's an endless amount of awesome out there.

So I say to anyone reading this, do whatever the hell you want as long as you enjoy it..

 

Yes, they are both easy. But UE4 is a bit more complicated when people start learning it because of some casting between character class and others to make things work (could it be BP or BT), while Unity keeps simplicity with Gameobject and all other stuff is components attached to it.
About performance after Lightmass improvments , with 4.15 i have no more have shaders compile time , like compile times it's almost immediate.

Yep the AAA scope is not the same, is all about huge content done by hundred people working full days during some years.
For a 2 or 3 indie team it would takes ages to reach the same level of content and polishing, sometimes it's better to stay realistic and choose the right scope.

Indeed, and MMo is lot more doable, while other games like "Uncharted 4" or "Horizon" can't be done by a small indie team to the same level of content and polishing in the same time (it took five years for games like Horizon if i am not wrong) , and there is also lof of tooling, engine and gameplay tech.

 

Sure you can do with your time what you want. And do whatever you enjoy. I don't think I said otherwise.
No need to get defensive man The sentence you've highlighted wasn't specifically directed at you.

Still people get burned because they have unrealistic expectations. Especially for huge games with AAA-grade graphics.
Furthermore, I didn't talk about people doing gamedev for the enjoyment. But about people, who actually trying to publish a game.
So in that case, having a smaller game that is actually finished, is better than a unfinished game/prototype nobody knows about. Am I right, or not?

 

In all honesty, I think that graphics are seriously overrated.

I would go a step further and say that anyone who is seriously trying to publish a game has no pretense of AAA graphics. Most of what I learn from AAA has nothing to do with 'graphics' - it's usually functionality, HUD, AI, animation, controls, audio, camera. The only visual thing I look to AAA to teach me is about scene composition.

It's worth noting that even in these kinds of footnotes to AAA, the amount of time, effort and detail that goes into non graphical elements is still massive. Some AAA titles have more manhours in their GUI than entire indie games.

In terms of producing better visuals, these AAA threads usually offer nothing but another argument with @Billy4184.

I'll go further about graphics...

• Hyper realistic graphics are usually a disservice to game play, and reduce the scope of the developers options.

Games don't need high fidelity graphics, they need art that helps communicate the narrative to the player. Only in edge cases like military shooters does that narrative revolve around the pretense of realism.

 

Of course I agree, but there is no such thing as "AAA" grade graphics or artwork.. Some of the most boxy looking badly UV mapped dodgy artwork I've seen has come from AAA games (not just the one, many of them). In terms of rendering tech, I've seen more impressive (if not far simpler) stuff come out of Unity and Unreal than any AAA title I've played recently.

But it's not always about quality, it's about quantity and the "universal picture".. Unless you're a dev / artist that goes looking for it you may in many instances never notice and it doesn't always matter, also they will spend far more time on things you will constantly look at.

Here's the thing, last night I was working on a road mesh and it took me four hours.. Road meshes are somewhat simple but I'm trying to decide what fits out my vast library of materials, I'm trying to decide what lengths I should go to for a simple road mesh.. Do I add extra detail and go to the point of doing a high poly / LP bake when my materials already contain normals and HM information? Do I want to spend additional time adding extra decals?

I have hundreds if not thousands of meshes to get through, so I cannot afford to spend that long on a road mesh.. But AAA can, if they have 200 artists.. They could have one artist spend the whole day retopoing a high poly mesh, adding decals etc. etc. whilst the other 200 artists produce another 200 meshes..

It's a matter of time, nothing more and that's why I don't bother competing.. I don't have the time.

 

Mirror's edge (at least the first one) was fairly similar to rez - those colored corridors and all. If not for the micro details on the walls, it would be very similar.

Then again... high graphical fidelity is not my thing, and I'm the kind of person that will use pbr and gi on low poly untextured models.

I do agree with earlier @GarBenjamin's post about Unicorns. I get impression that people occasionally turn AAA into an unicorn and put it on pedestal. Most of the time it is just a lot of people and a lot of money.

 

Says the guy with an experienced team? LOL

 

Good? It is not just graphics that make a game good. I really think it is so unfair to 90% of the indie games out there when people think good is only graphics.

A great looking AAA quality graphical game could be horrible. Good is not defined by pixels.

 

What is odd to me is that making AAA graphics, spending the time and money to do so, for a small team, means they really want to compete with those AAA games..maybe? Not sure.

However, when we start talking about advertising and promoting, those AAA companies only have to slap their name on a trailer and it will be out of reach of the vast majority of small team indie developers. Or, even worse, you get the Indie Developers who really are AAA developers who split from the main and are getting funding from big places and pretend to be small indie developers by having a kickstarter.

So even if your time, money, and efforts create a game as outwardly gorgeous, you will not be able to compete with AAA. Yeah, if it is important to you, then try it.

But understand that for some people, the high fidelity graphics are not the goal for their game. That is okay too and those games can be just as good and some, can even do better than AAA because they put back elements taken out of those AAA games, which mostly strive to serve the masses rather than give us something unique.

Indies have the ability to make and do things with games that AAA companies find too risky. That is where we make our mark and why we are important.

If graphics are most important to you, fine, but indie games DO NOT have to push themselves to compete with AAA games in terms of graphical quality. They should push themselves to make a game that surpasses AAA in other ways, like innovation and game mechanics and other less obvious ways.

 

Well I agree, which is why I've only ever used AAA either ironically or to describe some aspect that I can't think of how to describe any other way. But it seems like the smoke from my 'AAA' thread hasn't cleared out yet.

As many people have mentioned, AAA is not always fantastical quality or some kind of artistic magic. To work for an AAA company as an artist, especially doing non-hero pieces, I imagine it's more important to be flexible, fast and consistent - over the years as I've gone and looked at artwork, I've seen a few portfolios on artstation of people working for well-known studios that I are not outstanding imo. AAA is more about insane amounts of content than anything else.

I don't know why people are going on about AAA with reference to me - at least as far as I'm concerned, 'AAA lighting' has nothing to do with being able to produce an AAA game or not, it's just a question of using the same rendering tech. I don't pretend to be able to create Destiny or something on my own, that's ridiculous, but if I had the same lighting and graphics tech, it would sure make my games look better.

As far as realistic graphics goes - I could make a concrete box and render it with VXGI but it still wouldn't be AAA. But that doesn't mean either that better lighting is not a great thing for me to have, or that the term 'AAA lighting' is a bad way to describe it when I'm not sure how to describe it technically.

I'm still perplexed by the reactions to mentioning the term AAA around here - most of the time it's quite clear what is meant by the term in any particular instance but it's still treated as a declaration of direct competition with Ubisoft or something like that.

 

Because AAA is reserved only for Ubisoft and similar. It's basic insanity and making things up to suggest otherwise.

It's like someone explains what a rock is: it's hard and mineral based. It's also heavy.
Then someone crashes the room shouting that a crispy sponge is the same thing.

???

 

Exactly my issue with this kind of thread: the usage of the strawman 'AAA' team to make an invalid argument.
'An AAA team can make an Unity game look like any Unreal Engine 4 game'.
NO! You mean AAA programmers can modify Unity to look like Unreal Engine 4.
But so can XNA!

No one is talking about 'AAA giant games' but the ability of making SINGLE AAA looking scenes, which are 1/1000th the effort of an AAA game, because you know, AAA games are made by 100 people meaning 3 years of that 1/1000th effort glued together.
No one is talking about streaming, AI, UI, gameplay, animations, etc.
Those are the things that take the majority of resources in game development.
Only scenes! Geometry, textures and lighting. Nothing else!

Good lighting can make average quality art look good, but bad lighting can make amazing quality art look bad.

This is Maverick, a really amazing level designer. The assets are AAA in both. One engine is just much weaker at rendering than the other.
Unity 5:

Unreal4:

Same effort, much better results.
Oh, but someone might say 'The Unity assets aren't AAA'. Read:

And the reason we demand 'high lighting quality' is because if games like Recore and The Forest lack compared to much more rookie efforts in Unreal 4, and those games are made by professionals, then Indies stand even less of a chance.
Even Unity Adam and Blacksmith may have AAA assets but the rendering is clearly still not there.

So the question would be 'Why do you use Unity instead of Unreal Engine 4?'
SCRIPTING.
Unreal Engine 4 combines Blueprints and C++. Both are extremes: you cannot make games in Blueprints as much as many want to spread this lie. And C++ is C++.
With Unity, even only having a basic/mid knowledge of C# I can accomplish anything I settle to do.

So far, Unity has had much more Indie games released than Unreal Engine 4 and it will keep being the case for a long time because scripting is much more important for finishing games than art.
But it is just frustrating because Unity is the one closest to kicking everyone's asses!
Unity with CryEngine rendering would be game development Heaven.

 

Every amazing human achievement can be summed up as "a lot of people and a lot of money"...

• The pyramids... just a lot of people and a lot of ancient money.
• The Hoover Dam... just a lot of people and money.

Let's take a different analogy: Film.

You can be an indie film maker, but that doesn't mean there isn't value in looking at how mega blockbusters do things. Michael Bay may have a mixed reputation among film buffs, but that doesn't mean his techniques aren't effective. Maybe your indie film can't afford a million explosions, but what about his use of color, what about how he composes a scene, what about the timing he employs?

I think there's value in looking at the "biggest and most polished" examples we have. Other people have different takes on the discussion and their own personal spin, but I'm always happy to try to break down AAA work and try to understand the gears and cogs that went into it.

Here's a serious analysis of Michael Bay's techniques for anyone interested:

 

Or the single artists making 3 minute CGI shorts that match Pixar.
And the many Unreal and CryEngine showreels.
Or is it a coincidence that barely no showreel is made in Unity...

 

Could not agree more.

When AAA is referred to it's usually simply a way of communicating a certain level of quality. Indie games come in all shapes, sizes and quality levels, and the term AA is completely useless as a marker of reference, at least to me.

If I say that I'm going to make an AAA scene, it simply means that I'm going to make one scene to the level of quality one might expect in an AAA game. It's not a perfect way of expressing it, but it's something. Otherwise, how would you describe it?

In the same way, if I don't know what kind of lighting I'm talking about, except that I can see it used in AAA games, and that I cannot see it in Unity, it's still useful to describe it as 'AAA lighting' since someone can, at minimum, google some similar scene from an AAA game and compare the lighting to whatever I'm talking about. Again, if I knew the technical term to describe it, I wouldn't be describing it simply as AAA.

 

I never said it is, I recently played Nier Automata and the graphics are somewhat retro.. Still doesn't mean it isn't the one of the best games I've played recently. I also played ME Andromeda and the graphics were far better, but the game was no where near as good.

It's like the order 1886, a lot of people bought that game based on graphics and was dissapointed by the actual game.. Here's the thing, good graphics if nothing else gives a front it's a well designed professional project. It's like going to an interview in smart clothes instead of looking like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards.. Doesn't mean the person in smart clothes is more qualified, it's just they'll give a better initial impression.

This is important when there's so much competition about, leverage every advantage you can.

I don't care about AAA, I'm interested in the best I can possibly do within the confines of what I have.. I believe you should put effort into graphics, then again I believe you should put as much effort into every part of the game from the UI to AI all the way over to the combat system. If something has to suffer, your project is too large or your design is too complex..

 

That's not what I meant.

1. There are creative and clever solutions.
2. And then there's "hire more monkeys!" approach where you throw money at the problem and zerg-rush it with army of employees.

So, in case of "AAA" it is always about throwing more money at the problem. Overwatch looks good because they had 5 artist per square meter and a special art committee dedicated to tracer's left buttock, for example. That's it.

Becuase in the end it is ONLY matter of throwing more money at things, the topic is not very interesting to discuss, because there's barely anything to learn about it. Meanwhile getting fascinated with AAA quality will distract you from clever/creative solutions that big studios don't need but which YOU could actually use.

That's why I don't get obsession with AAAs. You are not them. Their techniques don't apply. What's the point?

 

That would've been actually interesting, unless that artist spend 10 years making it.

There's no AAA lighting. Everything is documented somewhere on GDC and most of algorithms are available for stealing.

Lighting is Lighting Equations. Those are not exactly secret.

 

Thing is, I don't think that every player/gamer is choosing a game for graphics. Most of my friend who prefer indie games over AAA do not use that as a measuring stick. Those that do will probably pick the AAA games every time.

Best is not always defined by graphics. I get that it is one of those defining features for you and that is fine. I like to present the other side though since I think we all get caught up to much in believing that a trailer with AAA graphics is all we need.

 

It's not like people focusing on low-res games are too much better. How's the community RPG doing? I was ready to contribute quests...

Retro? I certainly wouldn't say that. They definitely aren't trying to push the ultimate edge of AAA graphics, but it's fairly photorealistic and probably one of the best-looking Japanese AA games out there.

I'll definitely agree with you about the different in graphical quality of the two games not being related to the actual "game" quality, though.

 

I'm going to post a picture that I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy.



It's Unreal ...

...

AND ITS FLAT!!!

In fact, all of the images in this article have that effect IMO. So Enlighten must be the issue. I think UE's shaders have a bit of magic going on, but it certainly doesn't change the fact that these screenshots pretty much all look the same as Unity to me.

 

And I raised you Langley (rich, well connected person who toss money at building stronger engine) vs Wright brother (two farmer brother in their garage that couldn't afford big engine and therefore invented the wind tunnel). One was forgotten by history. Tossing money and peoples at the wrong problem don't help.

 

I'm am a hundred percent sure I already said that and gave examples.. Although I've tried a few games from Steam Greenlight that looked graphically inferior to other indies but seemed interesting in terms of gameplay. Turns out it was just lazyness or incompetence across the board.

I don't use AAA as a measuring stick, I use other Indie's and some of these two / three man teams are damn impressive.! Examples below:

This game was made by a husband / wife duo:



Another example of a one man mammoth:



A bunch of peeps on a Uni project (which is a demo game):



I mean this is just a very small sample, some may say this isn't up to AAA standard and I say who cares? They all look great.. So what's the excuse?

 

I can't speak for others, but for me, I like reading about clever/creative solutions as well. I also like reading detailed technical discussion. I like reading about AAA work.

I'll also say this, I sincerely believe that budget indie efforts or solos can produce way better results and complete more ambitious projects than people around here tend to think.

That's not to say that some newbie who doesn't know how to code or model can build Skyrim, but for skilled, dedicated and serious people - the ceiling is far higher than most believe.

 

That's interesting.
EDIT: On closer inspection, I find it funny how 'Unreal magic' is trying to salvage what remains of the image quality. You can bet the Enlighten used by DICE in Battlefield is highly modified for their needs, so maybe Unity's issue was hiring Enlighten to help with the implementation rather than doing it themselves with no assistance.

Researching more on the topic of the 'flat and inconsistent image quality', I have come across this too:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/light-dark-pixels-along-the-edge-of-objects.465511/#post-3045775 (Third post is a long chain of reports!)
But according to comments in here, it will get addressed along with many other issues in the incoming 'Scriptable Render Pipeline': https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/05/15/happy-patch-day/

Then there's things like how specular artifacts get amplified after you make use of image effects.
Changing image compression to none got rid of many almost undiscernable specular artifacts on a test I was doing but on top of not using compression being unfeasible for a release, Unity compresses them at build time regardless of options.

 

Let me know if you agree @Frpmta.

Here's an example of 'AAA lighting' in UE:



And here's Enlighten in UE:



Second one looks like Unity to me.

So anyway, where do I go to hand myself in ... ?

 

There's a clear difference.
Though one is a PNG and the other a JPG. Might play a role.