Best grass and dirt fields in a video game?

[Turbojugend]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWarmWind

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my entire post is useless, because it's not fair to compare a modder's work to something studio developed.

Yeah, but can you imagine what a modded version of The Show might look like? Tons of custom unis, authentic stadium ads, new field textures, and just about anything else you can think of. I understand the reasons why it will never ever happen, but it's fun to think about.

[Cod]

Quote: Originally Posted by Turbojugend

Yeah, but can you imagine what a modded version of The Show might look like? Tons of custom unis, authentic stadium ads, new field textures, and just about anything else you can think of. I understand the reasons why it will never ever happen, but it's fun to think about.

If we could only convince Sony to release the game on PC...

Dreaming is fun!

[MythicalGnome]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cod

It's all about frame rate. Foliage (really landscapes in general) are resource hogs if done correctly. When you account for all the physics (movement, wind, etc.), color shades, and mathematics behind every single blade of grass, you require a ton of computing power. Think about graphic intensive games. The biggest resource hogs are shadows, foliage, and landscape view distance. So if you turn down any of those three settings, you'll see massive frame rate increases. The Show already has frame rate issues. Adding better grass and dirt will make this worse...unless, they can find a way to optimize graphics in other areas (specifically, shadows). It is all about perception. With most racing games that look great (Assetto Corsa, Project Cars, etc.), the foliage is actually very rough. However, because people playing racing games don't actually slow down to look at grass up close, the low res textures go un-noticed. Basically, if you make the stationary objects look great (the car itself, road, etc.), everything else will be perceived as the same quality in-game.

The Show has been and still is running on a core engine designed for a decade plus old hardware. It has nothing to do with anything related to grass and draw distance. The Show is not in any way doing more than something like Driveclub, or Dying Light, or GTA5, or Witcher 3, nor will it ever have to. There is no constant movement in The Show except for ballpark things. They have almost no draw distance to account for but what is in the stadium. There is almost no moving foliage in the entire game.

Yes, there is a lot that goes into ballparks and recreating them in 3D. But the PS4 is a very capable console. The problem is their engine is nowhere near ready to handle next-gen stuff. We even have a PS4 Pro now. There is no excuse for any of this.

We are literally talking about making the grass a proper color for each stadium. This has nothing to do with performance issues. It has to do with the team not caring about being a sim anymore. 2K did grass better than The Show on PS3 lol.

Better textures on the grass should be leading to absolutely no performance issues either. We are not even talking about having 3d grass right now. A modder could have had better textures and grass coloring on each stadium in 3 months! I can guarantee you that. Yet it takes 8 years for anything to happen with an 80 man team?

The grass in this game is beyond pathetic. It's terrible. It's been terrible for years upon years. And yet no one steps up to do anything with it. There really is no excuse for this IMO. But priorities. Apparently, The Show devs think their grass accurately recreates the in a ballpark feel you have when you go to a stadium.

About all it recreates for me is playing on a console in 2002. I honestly cannot even believe we are talking about something that looks so bad in 2017. Every other sports game with grass looks better than The Show at this point.

[countryboy]

Quote: Originally Posted by MythicalGnome

The Show has been and still is running on a core engine designed for a decade plus old hardware. It has nothing to do with anything related to grass and draw distance. The Show is not in any way doing more than something like Driveclub, or Dying Light, or GTA5, or Witcher 3, nor will it ever have to. There is no constant movement in The Show except for ballpark things. They have almost no draw distance to account for but what is in the stadium. There is almost no moving foliage in the entire game. Yes, there is a lot that goes into ballparks and recreating them in 3D. But the PS4 is a very capable console. The problem is their engine is nowhere near ready to handle next-gen stuff. We even have a PS4 Pro now. There is no excuse for any of this. We are literally talking about making the grass a proper color for each stadium. This has nothing to do with performance issues. It has to do with the team not caring about being a sim anymore. 2K did grass better than The Show on PS3 lol. Better textures on the grass should be leading to absolutely no performance issues either. We are not even talking about having 3d grass right now. A modder could have had better textures and grass coloring on each stadium in 3 months! I can guarantee you that. Yet it takes 8 years for anything to happen with an 80 man team? The grass in this game is beyond pathetic. It's terrible. It's been terrible for years upon years. And yet no one steps up to do anything with it. There really is no excuse for this IMO. But priorities. Apparently, The Show devs think their grass accurately recreates the in a ballpark feel you have when you go to a stadium. About all it recreates for me is playing on a console in 2002. I honestly cannot even believe we are talking about something that looks so bad in 2017. Every other sports game with grass looks better than The Show at this point.

I was wondering how long it would take for a statement like this to be made. I'm sure this statement is as 100% fact as the rest of your post.

[Cod]

Quote: Originally Posted by MythicalGnome

The Show has been and still is running on a core engine designed for a decade plus old hardware. It has nothing to do with anything related to grass and draw distance. The Show is not in any way doing more than something like Driveclub, or Dying Light, or GTA5, or Witcher 3, nor will it ever have to. There is no constant movement in The Show except for ballpark things. They have almost no draw distance to account for but what is in the stadium. There is almost no moving foliage in the entire game.

I agree with you about the draw distance and constant movement. Baseball game development is much easier in this sense.

Quote:

Yes, there is a lot that goes into ballparks and recreating them in 3D. But the PS4 is a very capable console. The problem is their engine is nowhere near ready to handle next-gen stuff. We even have a PS4 Pro now. There is no excuse for any of this.

I also agree with you about the engine SCEA is using. Unfortunately, the graphics engine is not the only thing that is dated. The animation and physics engines are also becoming relics. You have to understand though, rebuilding a game engine takes a lot of man power and hours. Its something they cannot do because of the annual release cycle. Unless, they license an engine from another company or game within Sony. This is exactly what EA did by implementing the Frostbite engine into their sports games. Since most of Sony's franchises use in-house engines developed specifically to a studio, this is unlikely to happen.

Quote:

We are literally talking about making the grass a proper color for each stadium. This has nothing to do with performance issues. It has to do with the team not caring about being a sim anymore. 2K did grass better than The Show on PS3 lol.

I will hold judgement until I see proof of both (The Show vs real life side-by-side and The Show vs MLB2k side-by-side).

Quote:

Better textures on the grass should be leading to absolutely no performance issues either. We are not even talking about having 3d grass right now. A modder could have had better textures and grass coloring on each stadium in 3 months! I can guarantee you that. Yet it takes 8 years for anything to happen with an 80 man team?

Remodeling the grass to be more realistic would definitely cause a hit on performance. Take Skyrim for example. If you use one of the flora overhaul mods, you're going to take a performance hit..specifically to vRAM usage. **PS4 does not use vRAM in the traditional sense. It utilizes an extra 2GB DDR3 of system memory. Concepts still apply though.**

Quote:

The grass in this game is beyond pathetic. It's terrible. It's been terrible for years upon years. And yet no one steps up to do anything with it. There really is no excuse for this IMO. But priorities. Apparently, The Show devs think their grass accurately recreates the in a ballpark feel you have when you go to a stadium. About all it recreates for me is playing on a console in 2002. I honestly cannot even believe we are talking about something that looks so bad in 2017. Every other sports game with grass looks better than The Show at this point.

Have you shared these concerns in the official wishlists threads on here and The Show Nation? Heck, you can probably share them via Twitter, Facebook, etc. if you want to get someone's attention.

[breakfastcat]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cod

Have you shared these concerns in the official wishlists threads on here and The Show Nation? Heck, you can probably share them via Twitter, Facebook, etc. if you want to get someone's attention.

People have been complaining about the grass and dirt textures for years. This isn't new, there's no way the developers aren't aware that people are dissatisfied. They really aren't wrong either. Close up, the grass looks fine, but when you get far enough away where you can see texture that shows the grass pattern, it turns into a splotchy low-res mess and has been that way for a long time. Maybe it's not as bad as that guy you quoted makes it out to be, but that doesn't mean it's not an issue. Especially in a game where the stadiums and lighting look stunning, things like low-res grass textures (and mediocre player models, but that's a whole separate issue) are really going to stick out, and will keep the game from being one of best looking games of this generation like it was in the PS3 gen.

[MythicalGnome]

I no way was I trying to say that The Show has nothing to render lol. Far from it. There are always people on field, complex animations, lighting, and we suppose grass and stadiums.

That was not my point. My point was that things do no inherently just change all the time in Sports games, and yes this is easier to render than something that has to account for say 64 players in an online match with millions of stats to zip through and animations for all those 64 players.

The Show is NOT BF1, and nor will it ever bad that complex for the GPU and CPU.

I'm not debating that the Engine takes time to build. We know it does. And we know EA chose Frostbite for a reason. It's a nice engine.

But then again we've been talking about things like jerseys, grass, and models WAY too long on these forums.

What I will give you is this: I hope they have it for 18. Meaning after whatever they reveal, and we know there are going to be graphical shortfalls for some of us, I hope they can finally get that stuff into 18 with a whole year not even thinking about about the PS3.

[MythicalGnome]

Also to clear things up, the PS4 uses no DDR3 RAM at all. It's 8GB of GDDR5 RAM. About 5 to 6 reserved for graphics at this point no one is really sure.

The PS4 Pro gets an extra 1GB of DDR3 RAM to go along with higher clocked 8GB GDDR5 RAM.

It's very clear to everyone that knows some of the inner workings of tech that too much of this engine is still based on PS3 core foundations. We know there are limits to what you can do. But I really hope 18 pushes the system. Certain elements on the field stick out too much for me. And I wish I didn't care. It's great that these things don't bother everybody. More power to you.