Watching the Keynote

I have to ask 2 things with regard to PS4 vs PC

1. Why is the entire UI in the PS4 less cartoony, and more polished? Why does the PC not have something that slick (I'm not talking about the scrollable loadout selections, I'm talking simply about the appearance). They look MILES better than what we have.

2. Why does the PS4 have the moody skies, and the PC has the drab skies? In fact someone has just asked the same question. It sets mood, it looks fantastic. Bug my ***, include the bug and give us proper changeable skies with a little bit of atmosphere.

A nice video of what was shown at the keynote speech for the PS4 here:

Weather effects would be really awesome to finally have. But I would definitely not want that UI.

EDIT: I don't know if those are weather effects with the cloudy sky, but if that's how it would look when a storm hits, would be cool.

i like how bf4 did there weather effects with the map called Paracel Storm

It's all in your head. Personal aesthetic taste. I honestly think it looks too spartan where not roughly the same, and most of the HUD is roughly the same, though with outlines. The rendering of the minimap confuses me, if nothing else.

I heard somewhere that the code would be merged between PC and PS4 builds, so the clouds and shaders will be coming our way. I'm not sure if the consolized menus will be or not.

Beamer kill? HAX! O_O

Jesus.... Look at all that controller aiming......

Those poor deprived fools.

Because PS2 devs refuse to put time in and to optimize the game for the current PC players that funded them to make the PS4 version. Theres no reason why my r9-290x and i7-4770k can't run PS2 like the PS4 version. Besides bad optimization and look at my sig.

That quote made me giggle. And it's true, my PC is about equivalent to a PS4 in terms of raw power, optimization aside. Yet I have to play on low to avoid my fps going below 15-20 in fights with more than 50 players, it's absolutely horrible. It's time for an operation make game faster 2.0, although I have heard some people say that the optimization for the PS4 can partially be carried over to the PC (I'm guessing mostly the multi-core support) and have an impact on the PC version. I'm just hoping that all of this work on the PS4 pays off and that console gamers will then throw all their money at PS2 and make the game better, the PC players have already given SOE the opportunity to bring their MMOFPS to a console, we deserve some love now as well.

If Ps4 runs ps2 better then my computer some one is getting a uppercut.

They have been telling us that(performance will get better with the PS4 launch yadi-da) but I am not hopeful it will ever happen.

Wouldnt you expect some sort of follow up on that?
Like, wow, now that the PS4 launch is kinda here we threw up a test build for the new and improved PC version with the NEW AND IMPROVED CODE and HOLY COW IS IT FAST!! ... or something like that? I mean if they actually had something to show I would imagine they would show us.. they have nothing to lose by doing it and everything to gain, people would be happy to hear that PS2 will finally run smoother than a solid rock.

If they had anything at all, I wouldnt even be suprised to hear them bragging about a 15% performance boost but nothing, zip and nada..

Nah, it isn't in my head. The menu system is cleaner, less cluttered, and apart from the navigation system which simply wouldn't suit a mouse / keyboard superior in almost every way.

I know that in the grand scheme of things, UI and menus aren't really up there in the list of things that need polish, but if the effort can be put in to make the PS4 look polished, uncluttered and easy to navigate then it damn well can be done on the PC too.

I'll reserve judgement on the minimap as the compression of the video doesn't help it I feel.

I'm not sure PC users want the menus (at least not the navigation), but the look and feel for me just oozes a more professional and finish product. It doesn't look as Noddy as the PC version does.

I haven't seen the video yet (will do now though).

I think its worth keeping in mind that the PS4 version is in development right now so what they show is work in progress. Due to PC and PS4 basically sharing the same architecture now its easy to port from one platform to another (they are both basically PCs), but it makes sense for them to polish and finish new stuff before they try to port any improvements back over to the PC version, and of course they are going to try to make improvements here and there when they are going for a re-launch on another platform. I just think that we are likely to see the benefits of any relevant improvements here on the PC platform too because its going to be a lot of shared code between the platforms.

As far as graphics goes I'd expect the PS4 version to look pretty nice. PS4 runs heavy not because its graphically intensive. It's actually a fairly light engine when it comes to GPU-usage and you can run the game fast with a mediocre GPU. For the PS4 the real challange is making it run fast enough on the CPU because the PS4 uses 8 cores running at mediocre speeds rather than the typical 4 much faster cores of most gaming PCs. As I have said before they are going to have to make an effort to further improve multithreading to make the performance good enough for the PS4, and any such improvements they make we are sure to share on the PC version shortly after.

The UI is another matter. They needed to redesign the UI to make sense on a console, and its not so strange they they make a more polished looking UI the second time around. We likely won't see much of that coming to PC except maybe a few elements of it that may make sense to port back over as PC features.

-Stigma

I could care less about it looks.

I care about how it plays.

Frame rate drops aka hitching and rendering distances in big fights.

Low time to kill and its impacts on the perception of hit detection and lag.

Base design and its impacts on both infantry and vehicle game play being centered around spawn camping and farming kills.

These are issues that are crucial since the game released keys to the public for the Beta over 2 years ago and still matter today.

These are issues that matter, I don't see/hear them being addressed anywhere in this Keynote, please correct me if I missed something.

1) The PS4 UI Looks absolutely terrible IMO, and another example on what console players have to put up with UI wise. It may be clean and smooth to navigate, but it offers zero infomation on the items you can select and there are literally no shortcuts to anywhere else in the UI (like the map screen for example).

That said, it's still WIP.

2) If you had watched until the end you would have seen Tray answering this exact question. The skybox on the PS4 version is currently bugged and doesn't load the correct shaders/textures for Amerish while it doesn't load anything at all for Indar or Esamir. Once they fix the bug they might go around to change the Amerish sky to what we have seen in the presentation if the demand is there from the playerbase.

They have removed a lot of stuff because they have to. Console games are generally played at a distance so you need what's known as a 10 foot UI. That is a UI that is optimized for viewing 10 foot away instead of a computer monitor that is generally only a couple of foot away. Then there's the problem with the input device. As you saw, they had a system where you switched between classes sideways, that's because the PC UI would be a complete and utter mess to navigate with a controller. There's too much jumping around buttons and drop down menues to be even remotely workable. The problem is that they need to have the same amount of information and options so they have to build a larger tree structure for options instead of presenting a lot of it at the same time.

So basically, the UI for a console has to be less efficient to handle because of limitations in the input device used. Much of the sleekness you talk about is the removal of information and options that are available at a glance and a quick click.

You don't get the quick access to weapon attachmetnts from the main screen or even the weapon selection screen. You don't get quick access to camos from the class selection screen. You can't switch between different classes in the weapon selection screen, you have to jump back a step in the tree. You don't get weapon stats in the weapon selection screen. So basically, there's a lot of useful information and options missing because of the limitations in the system. Maybe then could do another design pass and change some details to make it look more sleek but a lot of what you see in the video is actually a downgrade to make it useful on console.

(after having watched the video)

I certainly like the look of that sky. I think they also made some subtle lighting changes. Just that sky and lighting change makes a huge difference in making the setting feel moody and more real. I usually don't care all that much about fancy graphics, but for once they made a graphics improvement that was subtle and ambient. Two thumbs up!

it doesn't look like volumetric clouds (which could potentially change up the airgame a whole lot with in-the-skies-cover, but it looks very good visually. I'm betting that the sky is going to port back to PC too. No worries.

-Stigma

0:48-1:04

LOL