Great read on Tesselation and Crysis 2

My initial hypothesis was correct. The patch dx11 and Ultra really don't add that much to the look of the game despite a HUGE performance drop. If I play DX11 with Extreme, I can hardly tell any difference than Ultra. But I can tell the 70FPS I get on Extreme to the 30 on Ultra. Here is a great report analyzing WHY the patch is so taxing...and kinda worthless.
Crysis 2 tessellation: too much of a good thing? - The Tech Report - Page 1

 

Wrong, DX 11 makes a world of differences. How you not seen the graphic comparison between DX10 and DX11?

 

It's a slight difference. Not much difference for a huge performance drop. Crytek...SHAMFUUUU DISSPLAYY *Shogun 2 accent*

 

the link won't open for me

 

It is down to one of those A vs. B rational thing. Yes there is a difference but the difference is so minute that in 90% of cases, DX 10 has already provided a wonderful immersion of the game without taxing your GPU's performance down more than 50%. Therefore the graphics improvement vs. performance utilization is not that great in DX 11 vs. DX 10. You get only so much more graphics wise for so much more performance resource hogging.

 

That is true, but it just so beautiful in DX11 and in 1080p it just mind-blowing!

 

Does Crysis 2 even use Dx10?
Have not checked out the patch that long but i think i could only do Dx9 or Dx11.

 

I think its DX9 or DX11 only.

I don't know...I could see the tessellation usage in some cases but a lot of times it seemed COMPLETELY wasted...like the brick walls got tessellated but I HONESTLY could not even tell they were unless I REALLLLY looked for it at some extreme angle and even then it was hardly impressive at all. I'd say a good 90% of the tessellation used was a complete waste of resources.

Other than that I feel that a lot of things were left unchanged that really should have been addressed...things such as water puddles on the ground reflecting outside buildings even though the puddles were...inside...just makes no sense and completely breaks immersion. I mean, REALLY, is it THAT hard to make something like a puddle have real time reflections? Cause I don't think so...no scratch that, I know so.

We had to wait months for this stuff and it still turned out to be a disappointment...but I honestly feel that the whole game itself was...my brother played Crysis 2 on the 360 and talked about how kick- it was then I let him play Crysis 1 on my PC maxed out and he was literally blown away by how much better it was in every possible way.

He put it best in saying that if the first Crysis were actually Crysis 2 its superiority would make sense...even he was completely perplexed as to how bad the second one was compared to the first...its like they took a step...or 10...back from the original.

I don't know...I'm just rambling now...but I mean, damn Crytek...way to kill a franchise and loose a hard core fan. In either case though, I still love Crysis and always will...to this day no game does what it does, both graphically and game play wise, I love being able to go balls to the wall guns blazing to complete tactical stealth all with the press of a key...awesome!

Hopefully Crysis 3 will fix all the issues of the 2nd and go back to the originals roots.

EDIT: WOOOOOW just read the article in the OP...I'm just speechless...I mean, really...this is ridiculous Crytek...I now have a feeling of total hate for this company...not only are they liars and lazy a$$es but quality control and any semblance of thought and how to do things right seem to be non-existent in their company! MY HATS OFF TO YOU CRYTEK!

 

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Aside from the graphics, I think Crysis 2 was a superior game to the original.

 

Not trying to bash you or anything...but care to go into detail as to why?

Really, the only thing I found better about the 2nd compared to the first was that the guns seemed to be a bit better in their power but other than that I didn't see anything that was better.

The levels took a major hit in size and scope, the AI was absolutely horrid compared to the first, the power suit upgrades were hit and miss (I loved using two powers at once but couldn't make sense as to why sprinting used suit power), the story was sub-par, the obvious console port was bad...could go on and on...again, just asking for more input. Thanks.

 

The first one had Koreans EVERYWHERE. Just EVERYWHERE. Oh, you want to cut through the woods to flank or bypass your enemies? Too bad, there's like 300 soldiers in there.

The first one was much bigger, but I'm a sucker for cinematic setpieces, and the second one nailed it pretty well in that regard. I didn't mind the linearity because the pacing and theming of the fights were much better. The suit powers felt much stronger, walking around in armor mode with a machine gun you just ripped off its pintle mount is awesome.

I never finished the first one, but I played through the second one without stopping until I was done, except for work and family stuff.

 

OK...I can see your point there...I do have to say however that you are dead wrong about the Koreans everywhere though.

Being the hard core Crysis player that I was back in the day I didn't find their placement to be unrealistic, there were many times I could go into the jungle and run around an enemy camp without a soul for hundreds of feet if not more anywhere around me. To me they always seemed to be where you'd expect them to be and when they were in the jungle wondering around it was more times than not made that way because that area was the most obvious path and they had to give you something to shoot at!

Other than that I do agree with you that Crysis 2 was a bit more cinematic though...I never finished the second one though...just couldn't get through it...is the ending worth it? Maybe I'll use a trainer and just run through it.

 

The final battle is a little uninspired, though suitably challenging. I found the best parts to be from the halfwayish point until the end (the fight on the library steps, the fight at Grand Central, and the fight in Times Square)

The part where

Spoiler

Central Park rips out of the ground and floats in the air is pretty epic.

 

The only real upgrade to the suit was using more than 1 mode at once, and the armor mode became strong.

Other than that, the suit is quite less capable in both strenght and speed feats. Jumping less, being slower, punching only once with power.

And while its good that you like all the cinematic set pieces, Crysis 2 felt too scripted and forced compared to Crysis 1. It boggles my mind how I cannot break a wooden door at will, or open a door by any other means except the exact weapon they want me to use right there.

The story is quite bad too, but that ends up in preference. It just seemed like a big pile of gibberish trying to sound all cool, and I HATE the suits voice. And the "tactical Options available". The game made me more mad than happy most of the time XD. I facepalmed at the useless QTEs to not fall from someplace...

Its still a solid game tho, just not really crysis...or what I pictured/wanted of a sequel.

 

Double post, sorry.

 

Thanks for the link. It is impressive the how at some suburbs the GPU gets taxed.... for underground water tessellation!!

 

Different people are different. I found Crysis 1 boring and irritating.

 

I found the 2nd one to be superior in all aspects. It was "linear" to a point, but the areas were still large enough to provide a number of tactical options. I didn't play it prior to the DX11 patch/high-res texture pack, but the game really just looks amazing at 1920x1200, now that I have SLI cranking up all the options is attainable.

I didn't quite realize how taxing the DX11 was though, those are some substantial FPS drops.

 

I enjoyed Crysis 1 and Warhead way more than 2. The suit functions were far superior and open jungle destroys concrete corridors.

 

Yeah. DX11 is great. But tesselation doesn't need to be used everywhere. And it appears that the people who do Crysis were just rushing to say "See, we've got DX11!" instead of thoughtfully implementing it.

But it's a brand-new technology. Another year or two and we'll start seeing games using it in subtle and appropriate ways instead of just slapping it in to check of a feature box.

 

The major differences in the 2 games is actually the design decision behind the scenes, imho. The original was made for the PC crowd, full stop. Nothing else was considered in the design of that game.

Crysis 2, was made with the consoles in mind, with the PC as an afterthought. That decision, to make the consoles the focus, made the ripple effects that changed the entire gameplay from Crysis 1 to 2.

I have both, and play both on my PC. Love 'em both.

Wouldn't it be great if Crytek were to remake Crysis 1, with the much more optimized Cryengine 3? Man would that be sweet. Totally never going to happen, I know but, one can dream, right?

My Alienware M17Xr1, can run Crysis 2 with everything set to Ultra, and the high rez texture pack added in. Runs smooth as butter.

Crysis 1 runs like absolute 5hite on certain levels, even though Crysis Warhead allows me to play it with everything set to the max, and runs very smooth as well.

There's something wrong with the original, on my system. Don't get it. Literally turns into a slideshow when I get to the enemy camp right before you go into the rock quarry, before the mountain. Weird...

 

Crysis: WH uses a slightly modified engine and is graphically less demanding due to texture cut downs and optimization. Crysis 1 was un-optimized, most people thought that the reason why you're getting low FPS is because of the graphics, wrong, it's because of the krap optimization.

My 2 cents.

 

Did you read the article? OK they tessellate a freaking road block with some 3d handles and add complete tessellation to scenes were there is NO water visible. I have a pretty powerful rig (2720, 6970CF OC 800/1000, 8 gig ram) and can PLAY at max settings but it is NOT worth the performance hit.

It's quite sad that it was that rushed. I mean some scenes are cool where you can see tessellation on the bricks, but they are few and far between. I always wondered on (I think the second level) where you have to have your armor mode on to jump down from the building why my FPS would be in the 20-30s with NOTHING going on. Now I know it is because there is Ultra high res/dx11 tessellation going under the building with water that cannot be seen. Absolutely horrible horrible coding and quality control.

So i am not that wrong on any account and tesssellation, while making a difference, not only is a bad performance cost, it isn't a giant difference. To be honest, I haven't seen a huge visual fidelity jump in years (from DX9) and don't expect one till the new consoles hit the market.

 

Ya Crysis 1 is an example in bad coding. The last level, was a slideshow on my system when every other level was 40-50FPS. I was getting 10-20 last level-turning down settings hardly helped.

Warhead was better optimized but not perfect. To the "consoles" credit, Crysis 2 is VERY optimized sans the dx11/high res pack. Interestingly, DX11 plays very well with few performance hits if you have tessellation off, or on "AMD optimized" if you have an AMD card. DX11 is at least much better and more efficient than DX10 and am happy dx10 kind of got jumped past as it was really a flop.

But to play Crysis 2 on highest settings in DX9 mode shows how optimized games can look when made right and invested (which was predicated on selling millions to consoles). Sure Ultra/DX11 looks better, but it is not "orders of magnitudes better."

The fact that I am playing games at much better settings than the consoles on a freaking laptop still blows my mind and am lucky to have such "problems" with my gaming...ie "Man they needed to optimize Crysis 2 better for the PC."- heck I am no programmer, but they could have hired me to quality test and I would have told them that it has no point to have an entire tessellated level of water when no water is found on the map