(Rant) This game's textures are **** and that's a fact.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by CapEnTrade, Jan 25, 2015.

  1. CapEnTrade

    I run my texture on ultra, as high as it goes, set it from the graphics file in the game folder.
    They look terrible, pixilated, compressed, buggy to some extents. I just dont get it!

    I grabbed the game-file extractor and took at look at some of the textures in Blender3D and Photoshop.... and, well, I did NOT like what I saw!

    All the TR character textures are one 1 diffuse 1 normal, and 1 spec map, all the classes.
    Same goes for NC and VS.
    It's like a 2k image texture, but they've put all the characters on it...
    Performance wise, I can see how this is a good idea, but BY MY BEARD! each class basically has a 512x512 texture when you boil it down, even less in fact! IT LOOKS TERRIBLE!

    Freaking freakers are using .dds format, dear goodness me.... Such a terrible format! They use it to compress the textures with the few that have alpha channels but it's just a bad way of doing it. Compressed .dds is slow too.

    I wonder, if they realize that they can use a 4k image for the diffuse texture as a jpeg or even better, jpeg2000 and it will be like 1 megabyte and look better than a compressed 2k .dds, should be smaller too...
    They could do this for the diffuse maps because they don't have alpha channels.
    Seriously! Take the original HQ diffuse maps for all the textures in the game, make them 4k jpeg/jpeg2000s, and BOOM, game looks WAY better (that's effectively 4x the res) and the file size might even be smaller! Files could be faster too!!! They'd still have them all on 1 map, just that map would be much better.

    Derp.

    Seriously...
    What the heck SOE...
    • Up x 2
  2. Jac70

    Some of the textures are terrible even on Ultra. In fact most of 'em are. I always figured it was due to the scale of the game and a drive to keep memory usage down. I find it hard to believe that the people who developed the engine are unaware of the techniques you mentioned. There must be a reason why the textures are so poor.
  3. Stigma

    I have to agree there. Textures are very important to the overall look of the game, and ideally as long as you have enough VRAM it shouldn't impact performance much if any to run them high. The highest level textures are very unerwhelming to say the least. I don't know enough about the details of the game engine to say if this is something that they HAD to do this way in order to make the game perform properly given the scale, but I suspect it could have been done better.

    I'm sure they have original super-high-res versions of all textures lying around. Perhaps eventually they might do a texture upgrade to allow people with up-to-date graphics cards to take advantage of the VRAM. Current cards have 3+ gigs after all, and even ultra textures in PS2 probably only uses a small fraction of that space...

    -Stigma
  4. CapEnTrade

    I was actually setting it up for a kkk joke.

    It's ridiculous, it's 2015, come on SOE...
    Not like people cant turn their settings down still :/

    Well it sure seems like they don't know about it. It seems to me like they are being crazy conservative to the point of creating detriments were there seriously don't need to be any.
  5. Foxirus

    My textures look great I think..

    [IMG]
    [IMG]
    [IMG]
    • Up x 2
  6. FateJH

    Doesn't Planetside 2 use that distance shifting trick that uses reduced geometry andf textures based on how far the model is from the observer?
  7. CapEnTrade

    Pretty much all game engines worth their salt do this, Forgelight included.
  8. z1967

    Textures look fine for me on Ultra. Maybe you are overreacting a bit?
  9. Yago

    Not be a programmer myself, but wouldn't the file type be inexorably part of the engine code?
  10. Boosted

    I think Higher Res download should be optional for those who can run it. Textures don't bring added benefit as far as killing goes, we all just like eye candy, am I right?
  11. Captain Kid

    I notice some textures look absolute pants and other look reasonable (up close). I think there is a trend in gaming having textures look less crisp (up close I mean) then ten years ago.

    But I still think the game looks good, especially the terrain and considering the HUGE buildings and being a MMO.
  12. LIKE A BOSS!

    I kinda agree. IMO the game looked better back during 2012-2013 than in 2014-2015. I feel like the game downgraded.
  13. Borsty

    Bad people say they had to, so PS4 can run it ;)
  14. Whatupwidat

    I'd rather have the game run well than look nice.
  15. Bindlestiff

    I honestly don't see the textures being the biggest problem with the game, at all.

    Some of them look pathetic, and the art department should be ashamed of the quality.
  16. Pikachu

    Prop and terrain textuures are fine I think. :) Vehicles and faces are not so much.
    • Up x 1
  17. Mythologicus

    I remember looking at this game on maxed out settings back in very early 2012/late 2011, maybe a month or two after the game released. I didn't see much, just someone walking across some mountains on Amerish. But my very first thought was "those terrain textures look like ****."

    This was three years ago. Okay, maybe I had just finished with Crysis 2 on 'low' settings and was amazed by how well it performed and how good it looked at the same time, but damn. PS2's textures are about on par with games from '06-'07-'08. It seems like it's following PS1's trend of looking older than it actually is.
  18. Pikachu

    The mountains are fine. :(
  19. BelisariusR

    You guys should try changing the .INI file so that the game super-samples. Obviously only a good idea if you have the hardware to spare, but I use it and the game looks great.
  20. bl33ping

    [IMG]
    • Up x 1