AbsolutSurgen Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 Best graphics of the year: Digital Foundry ranks its top games of 2023 WWW.EUROGAMER.NET The Digital Foundry team has convened to aware the best graphics of the year for 2023 - and what throughlines can be dr… Spoiler The top three slots on our list this year went to Cyberpunk 2077 with RT Overdrive, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Alan Wake 2. All these games combine stylish and performant graphics with genuinely boundary-pushing ray tracing techniques, with two of the three supporting full path tracing on PC - essentially wholly replacing the faked lighting systems used for years in rasterised titles with a realistic alternative that "just works". Even at the start of 2023 I wouldn't have expected so many AAA games to be upgraded with path tracing so successfully, as the impressive path-traced retro remakes we've seen on PC over the past few years still came with massive performance concerns. Clearly, enterprising developers and graphics card makers have made a huge amount of progress here, and that's worth celebrating. I feel like game studios have also gotten better at making these RT upgrades more obviously good-looking, in comparison to early efforts that often tanked performance with only subtle fidelity improvements. When used correctly, these RT and PT techniques can also act as a force multiplier, letting smaller studios deliver a great-looking game without requiring a massive technical and art staff, eg by eliminating the need to manually place extra lights in a scene to get a desired look. We saw a similar effect in another top 10 pick, RoboCop: Rogue City, which used Unreal Engine 5 features Lumen, Nanite and VSMs (virtual shadowmaps) to produce incredibly realistic looking environments packed with detail on a AA budget. As we look into 2024, I hope other developers and publishers are learning lessons from the technical successes - and failures - of 2023. The best games of the year from my point of view were the ones that had the time to mature, that chose graphics techniques and technologies wisely to serve gameplay and hit performance targets, rather than the other way around. None of these decisions are obvious or easy, especially in the midst of development, but there are at least some indications that studios are moving in the right direction. After all, the end of 2023 certainly saw more technical competence (and excellence) than the beginning and middle of the year. With luck, we'll see that trend continue next year, and maybe even some new consoles and graphics hardware to keep things interesting... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepee Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 Gonna watch this over the weekend during my elliptical but I can’t argue with any of the picks. I’m glad they gave Robocop its due, it’s pretty crazy looking at times. I would probably give honorable mentions to Hogwarts and Immortals at least though. Idk if I’d give Avatar over CP77PL/AW2, I’d have to play them back to back and really think about it, I would probably be lazy and three way tie them. I do think Avatar is probably the most impressive on console of the three though so that can give it an edge too. For console only from what I’ve seen I’d probably say Robocop, Avatar, Spider-man 2. All movie based games, oddly enough! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
best3444 Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 3 minutes ago, stepee said: Gonna watch this over the weekend during my elliptical but I can’t argue with any of the picks. I’m glad they gave Robocop its due, it’s pretty crazy looking at times. I would probably give honorable mentions to Hogwarts and Immortals at least though. Idk if I’d give Avatar over CP77PL/AW2, I’d have to play them back to back and really think about it, I would probably be lazy and three way tie them. I do think Avatar is probably the most impressive on console of the three though so that can give it an edge too. For console only from what I’ve seen I’d probably say Robocop, Avatar, Spider-man 2. All movie based games, oddly enough! What about RE4 Remake? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepee Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 1 minute ago, best3444 said: What about RE4 Remake? It made the top 10! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AbsolutSurgen Posted December 23, 2023 Author Share Posted December 23, 2023 3 hours ago, stepee said: Gonna watch this over the weekend during my elliptical but I can’t argue with any of the picks. I’m glad they gave Robocop its due, it’s pretty crazy looking at times. I would probably give honorable mentions to Hogwarts and Immortals at least though. Idk if I’d give Avatar over CP77PL/AW2, I’d have to play them back to back and really think about it, I would probably be lazy and three way tie them. I do think Avatar is probably the most impressive on console of the three though so that can give it an edge too. For console only from what I’ve seen I’d probably say Robocop, Avatar, Spider-man 2. All movie based games, oddly enough! I'm watching it now. I'm now tempted to pick up Robocop -- it was never on my radar until now. My backlog is huge, but... I'm thinking that Hogwart's Legacy should be on the list -- but I recognize that all of the journalists are never going to give it a reward, because they are scared the mob will come after them for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AbsolutSurgen Posted December 23, 2023 Author Share Posted December 23, 2023 CDKeys had it for dirt cheap -- and howlongtobeat.com says its short.. Robocop is now installed on my PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepee Posted December 23, 2023 Share Posted December 23, 2023 27 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said: CDKeys had it for dirt cheap -- and howlongtobeat.com says its short.. Robocop is now installed on my PC. I gave it a 9/10, I think it’s fucking phenomenal. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AbsolutSurgen Posted December 23, 2023 Author Share Posted December 23, 2023 The path tracing they are showing for AW2 makes the PC version look phenomenal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepee Posted December 23, 2023 Share Posted December 23, 2023 9 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said: The path tracing they are showing for AW2 makes the PC version look phenomenal. Yeah, I think AW2, CP, and Avatar on max settings almost look like in a different generation than everything else. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AbsolutSurgen Posted December 23, 2023 Author Share Posted December 23, 2023 1 minute ago, stepee said: Yeah, I think AW2, CP, and Avatar on max settings almost look like in a different generation than everything else. I agree -- there are a few folks who are suggesting that the difference between PC and console don't justify the cost differential. And, IMHO, I've never seen the gap be as big as it is today. Those games are a step function above everything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepee Posted December 23, 2023 Share Posted December 23, 2023 8 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said: I agree -- there are a few folks who are suggesting that the difference between PC and console don't justify the cost differential. And, IMHO, I've never seen the gap be as big as it is today. Those games are a step function above everything else. Yeah I think people downplay it because A) they haven’t seen it in person and youtube compression kills a lot of it and B) You can scale down so many things and still retain at least the basic look of a game and also the level design doesn’t have to be modified like in some previous generations. But before it seemed like you would get double the performance and double the resolution to the console releases and yeah higher settings, but nowadays some pc stuff is essentially the next gen remaster version early in addition to that. DLSS3 really changes the game a bit too of course especially with frame gen. A new generation is usually around 8x performance but you already have the 4080, (which I’ll use since it’s probably the minimum to play those three games at good IQ/performance), at 6x performance of a ps5, but then you add frame gen and you’re already over the generational threshold. So it makes sense. And next year or early 25 at the latest it’ll just get even wider. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AbsolutSurgen Posted December 23, 2023 Author Share Posted December 23, 2023 1 minute ago, stepee said: Yeah I think people downplay it because A) they haven’t seen it in person and youtube compression kills a lot of it and B) You can scale down so many things and still retain at least the basic look of a game and also the level design doesn’t have to be modified like in some previous generations. But before it seemed like you would get double the performance and double the resolution to the console releases and yeah higher settings, but nowadays some pc stuff is essentially the next gen remaster version early in addition to that. DLSS3 really changes the game a bit too of course especially with frame gen. A new generation is usually around 8x performance but you already have the 4080, (which I’ll use since it’s probably the minimum to play those three games at good IQ/performance), at 6x performance of a ps5, but then you add frame gen and you’re already over the generational threshold. So it makes sense. And next year or early 25 at the latest it’ll just get even wider. Agreed. The fact that games like Avatar are being rendered at 720p on console, and still can't maintain 60 fps, suggest that perhaps the extra money might be adding something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepee Posted December 23, 2023 Share Posted December 23, 2023 2 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said: Agreed. The fact that games like Avatar are being rendered at 720p on console, and still can't maintain 60 fps, suggest that perhaps the extra money might be adding something. Or UE5 stuff running at sub 720p! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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