Re: MLB The Show Graphics Discussion Thread
The fact of the matter is that for a AAA game that is developed by a first party developer from Sony, this game lacks a lot in the graphical department compared to about any other AAA game for the current gen, and it lacks compared to many prior gen games as well.
While many people don't really know all the technical information surrounding graphics and just roll their eyes at things like people talking about water splash effects, that does not excuse that the game has plenty of dated textures, no traces of ray tracing, a clear lacking of things like subsurface scattering, zero cloth physics, and many other items that are very very common in games today.
Most games haven't looked awful for nearly 10 years now. We hit a point graphically where games age a lot less and are less of a hassle to go back and play because the visuals hold up so well. The Show is far from an atrocious looking game, but it is also equally as far from being a technical marvel. It doesn't need to be a technical marvel, but it's also pretty far from being up to the standard graphically that most AAA games, sports and non-sports, are achieving on the regular.
I remember years ago when they did a dev stream talking about how they were starting to incorporate PBR textures into the game. It was neat. PBR textures were becoming the norm back then. Now, you look at the graphics in the series still, and you notice that there are still plenty of textures that aren't PBR textures. There's still plenty of flat looking areas that look like they don't even have a normal map at all.
You focus on the key parts of a baseball game and you see skin textures that are comically bad, jerseys that look rough even when you zoom in and get the best LOD model, the grass and dirt are pretty bad at nearly every park, the texture resolution in many areas is questionable. For example, even when playing on the prettier graphical settings, you'll still see extremely low res pants textures on the batters from a batting camera leading to the glove pocket being very jagged and bad looking. For this day and age, things like that should not be happening in a AAA game.
While the game may look good enough to play, and many old timers here may think it looks fine because they grew up playing Duck Hunt(I did too), that does not mean the game is well behind the modern standard graphically. This thread is also here to have a dedicated place for graphical talk, so when people do mention smaller details in the graphics like splash effects, subsurface scattering, etc. They shouldn't be shrugged off as nitpicking. That's tossing someone's opinion away simply because you don't think like they do. Instead, it should be accepted that those details are small and we can acknowledge them lacking doesn't make the game a 0 out of 10, but we should also be able to accept those are things that should be expected in a AAA game in 2024. Heck, those are things you'd have expected in a AAA game in 2018.
Simply put, from a technical standpoint, The Show is lacking compared to your average AAA releases and really even your AA releases as well. A AAA game developed by a first party studio should have significantly more technical details in the game and that's just an objective fact. Whether the graphics are good enough for you is irrelevant to the fact that this series is lacking any technical details that became the common standard years ago.
The fact of the matter is that for a AAA game that is developed by a first party developer from Sony, this game lacks a lot in the graphical department compared to about any other AAA game for the current gen, and it lacks compared to many prior gen games as well.
While many people don't really know all the technical information surrounding graphics and just roll their eyes at things like people talking about water splash effects, that does not excuse that the game has plenty of dated textures, no traces of ray tracing, a clear lacking of things like subsurface scattering, zero cloth physics, and many other items that are very very common in games today.
Most games haven't looked awful for nearly 10 years now. We hit a point graphically where games age a lot less and are less of a hassle to go back and play because the visuals hold up so well. The Show is far from an atrocious looking game, but it is also equally as far from being a technical marvel. It doesn't need to be a technical marvel, but it's also pretty far from being up to the standard graphically that most AAA games, sports and non-sports, are achieving on the regular.
I remember years ago when they did a dev stream talking about how they were starting to incorporate PBR textures into the game. It was neat. PBR textures were becoming the norm back then. Now, you look at the graphics in the series still, and you notice that there are still plenty of textures that aren't PBR textures. There's still plenty of flat looking areas that look like they don't even have a normal map at all.
You focus on the key parts of a baseball game and you see skin textures that are comically bad, jerseys that look rough even when you zoom in and get the best LOD model, the grass and dirt are pretty bad at nearly every park, the texture resolution in many areas is questionable. For example, even when playing on the prettier graphical settings, you'll still see extremely low res pants textures on the batters from a batting camera leading to the glove pocket being very jagged and bad looking. For this day and age, things like that should not be happening in a AAA game.
While the game may look good enough to play, and many old timers here may think it looks fine because they grew up playing Duck Hunt(I did too), that does not mean the game is well behind the modern standard graphically. This thread is also here to have a dedicated place for graphical talk, so when people do mention smaller details in the graphics like splash effects, subsurface scattering, etc. They shouldn't be shrugged off as nitpicking. That's tossing someone's opinion away simply because you don't think like they do. Instead, it should be accepted that those details are small and we can acknowledge them lacking doesn't make the game a 0 out of 10, but we should also be able to accept those are things that should be expected in a AAA game in 2024. Heck, those are things you'd have expected in a AAA game in 2018.
Simply put, from a technical standpoint, The Show is lacking compared to your average AAA releases and really even your AA releases as well. A AAA game developed by a first party studio should have significantly more technical details in the game and that's just an objective fact. Whether the graphics are good enough for you is irrelevant to the fact that this series is lacking any technical details that became the common standard years ago.
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