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PC and PS4 best in Sniper Elite 3 graphics showdown
The tech geeks at Digital Foundry have put the three versions of brutal World War 2 shooter Sniper Elite 3 to the test, finding that the PlayStation 4 game looks better than its Xbox One counterpart, but not quite as good as the PC version. The footage above is a comparison pitting the Xbox One against its PS4 competitor. As you can see, the Xbox One game features noticeable screen tearing, reduced image depth and less detail at distance. A later video measures the two games' framerates and found that while the PlayStation 4 version of Sniper Elite 3 averages "a near-solid 60fps," the Xbox One game "trails behind in the mid-40s." Below the break you'll find a similar aesthetic quality comparison, weighing the PlayStation 4 game against the PC. The latter looks better, but the difference is minor - at least until you push the PC game beyond the PS4's capabilities, into the 4K resolution range. For full technical details, visit Digital Foundry's analysis. [Image: 505 Games]
Warlords of Draenor: Nights may get darker
Once upon a time, nightfall in Azeroth meant that things got truly dark--sometimes spookily so. For whatever reason, at some point Blizzard scaled back on the in-game lack of night lights, and brightened our nocturnal adventuring. Plenty of players have been clamoring for a good long while for a return to the dark and eerie Azerothian nights, and it seems as though their wishes may soon be coming true. In the following tweet, Lead Game Designer Cory Stockton indicates that some kind of darker night-time atmosphere is on its way potentially as soon as patch 6.0. @ucaniguana We are working on something for this, hoping to debut it with 6.0. Should have more details soon. - Mumper (@mumper) July 1, 2014 My personal hope is for some sort of toggle or slider in the graphics options, so individual players can choose how dark and foreboding they want their in-game landscapes to be. This has been a solution proposed by many, and I truly hope that's what's coming our way. Nonetheless, I'm eager to see whatever solution Blizzard has come up with.
EVE Probe helps CCP diagnose graphical glitches
To help better test EVE Online's graphical capabilities, the team at CCP Games is looking at EVE Probe to save the day. With a reported 855 different GPU configurations in use by EVE players, EVE Probe was created to deal with issues that may not necessarily be able to be replicated by the dev team. EVE Probe gathers performance data from your machine after you've experienced a graphical problem and sends it back to the team for a more detailed analysis than was previously available. All data is sent anonymously and nothing is collected that can identify a player. If you're curious about EVE Probe, you can check out the complete dev diary on the topic at the official site.
Halftone 2 adds video and sound to an already great app
We've looked at the Halftone comic book creator app in the past, and our reviewers have always liked its many capabilities. A new version, a major update to Halftone 2 (US$1.99) is out today, with many increased capabilities including video export at 720p, sound effects for each panel, new effects and transitions, and soundtrack support. What started as a clever app has now morphed into a complete production environment. The app works as before. Find some photos and import them into a variety of provided layouts. Add speech bubbles and comic-like banners, then render the project with a halftone look that makes it look like a professional comic book. Of course the content can be anything -- a vacation, pet photos, a party -- and the final results will likely please you and whoever receives your comic. Halftone 2 is extremely easy to use, and I had no trouble getting photos in, assigning captions, and moving the photos to frame them for best effect. The camera effects as the app animates and moves from frame to frame are extremely well done, and there are plenty of effects available to match any mood. If you add your own music, the video will "stretch" to match your audio clip. Video and sound are the big additions to this latest version, and the app has the "smarts" to make the addition of movement and audio easy, not at all like standard video editing. Your project can be shared via email, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox, Weibo, MMS or saved to your camera roll. I continue to be amazed at the content creation abilities that iOS presents, especially after the oft-mentioned but inaccurate tale of how the iPad in particular is for consumption of content. To create art like this on a computer would be impressive enough; to do this on an inexpensive tablet is astonishing. Halftone 2 requires iOS 7 or greater. It's a universal app and it's optimized for the iPhone 5.
Graphical upgrades en route for Age of Wushu
How do you feel about Age of Wushu's graphics? Do you think that they could really use an upgrade? It seems that they'll be getting one. Shi Hai, CEO of Snail Games, was recently interviewed in China, and a translation of that interview reveals that graphical upgrades are definitely in the works. While he declined to specify exactly what sort of upgrades would be coming, he did joke that the rumors about the Unreal 3 engine might well be true. Shi Hai also commented on the potential of a subscription server for Age of Wushu, noting that while several free-to-play games have dabbled with the idea, they seem to inevitably wind up going back to the free-to-play model in time. He stated that the company is currently focusing on porting the game to home consoles rather than exploring the possibility of any sort of subscription server. You can read a few more translated statements at MMOCulture.
N++ PS4 screens are fit to print
Metanet Co-Founder Mare Sheppard discussed N++'s visual inspirations on the PlayStation Blog recently. Sheppard said the game drew its clean, bold look from print-based graphic design, as seen in new next-gen screenshots of the twitchy platformer. N++ is due to launch on PS4 this year.
Sketch 3 makes a great design tool even better
If you're a designer type, you've probably heard about Sketch. It's an ambitious attempt (by a team of just four people) to produce a vector drawing application that can make the Adobe Creative Suite a moot point for most designers. That's not their mission statement, but they've created a tool that can do just that. Version 3 of Sketch is out now, and it fixes some rough edges and adds some vital features. The banner feature for Sketch 3 is "Symbol" support. This is similar to Smart Objects in Photoshop, where you can create and duplicate a set of layers as an object, and modifying any of those objects applies the changes to every instance of it. Sketch 3 lets you easily turn a group of layers into a Symbol, and then re-use it without worrying about how many elements you'll have to update to institute a design-wide font or color change. I've been using Sketch since version 2 came out, and it actually has replaced Adobe apps for me. Granted, my work is for my own apps and websites these days, so I'm not required to share my files in any common format, and my needs are less particular. Sketch makes generating CSS-friendly graphics, icons and mockups really easy (compared to the learning curve of Illustrator), and the export tools are outstanding for anyone working on web or app design. I won't lie, though, there have been times I thought I could have done something a lot faster in Photoshop than in Sketch. In version 2, scrolling on the screen was abysmal. It's much improved in version 3, but still not perfect. The redraw sometimes leaves artifacts on the screen and usually requires restarting the app. I don't find the mode-based panel on the right to be consistently intuitive, and often spend time searching for the button that will get it back to the set of options I need. That being said, once you get used to it you stop having to think about things like that. Sketch on its own is a great tool for anyone working with graphics at any level of experience. What's cool to me is the user community behind it, though. If you try it out, make sure you check out some of the available resources and see what it can actually do. Plugins can be written in JSTalk (from the developer of Acorn, the other half of my Photoshop/Illustrator replacement), and some of the best have been collected on GitHub. It was the actions from bomberstudios that were a turning point in my path to deciding whether I could stick with Sketch or not. For iOS devs, there are some especially great resources, including the Sketch Mirror app for seeing your designs on iOS devices. There are some great articles out there on workflows so slick they seem magical, and a ton of great resources from sites like Sketch App Sources. Bohemian Coding keeps a pretty good list on their Resources page. If you've never used Sketch, now's a good time to be a new customer. The app is currently US$49, available on the App Store and off (with free trial available). There's no "upgrade price," per App Store standards (read: shortcomings), so version 2 users have to buy the whole app again. Users who purchased in March or after can email the developers and get a non-MAS license. The $49 price is an intro price, and after this week it's set to go up to $74.99. Sketch is a powerful, extensible tool for creating production-ready designs and graphics. It still feels a bit like a work in progress sometimes, but it's always come through for me in the end.
Watch Dogs Nvidia trailer offers a close look at pretty environments
The Steam listing for Watch Dogs told us what we'll need to make the game function properly on PC, but Ubisoft's recent trailer offers a glimpse of Nvidia's visual effects, which we'll see firsthand on May 27. Check out the damp, shadowy, breezy scenery from the Windy City above. [Image: Ubisoft]
Bravely Default dev showcases rendering engine in tech demo
Silicon Studio might be better known for 3DS JRPG Bravely Default, but the company has its roots firmly in middleware development, including its YEBIS 2 post-processing engine. You may not have heard of YEBIS 2, but you've most likely already seen it in action. Its real-time natural light effects starred in last year's E3 trailer for Final Fantasy 15, and its post-processing effects also featured in Ubisoft's Kinect brawler The Fighter Within. YEBIS 2 lighting effects can also be seen in Saint Seya: Brave Soldiers, The Witch and the Hundred Knight and Valhalla Knights 3. While the video hints at Silicon Studio getting involved in its own "nex-gen" development, there's no indication the studio's hiring drive is for work outside of YEBIS 2. That said, Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda recently revealed he's considering the company's approach to JRPGs following the success of Bravely Default. It's just speculation, of course, but it'd certainly be a prospect to see the two companies team up on a home console JPRG. In any case, fans of Bravely Default do have a sequel to look forward to in Bravely Second, although we're still waiting for any news of its ETA.
MLB 14: The Show makes the old ball game look new on PlayStation 4
If this MLB 14: The Show trailer looked any more realistic, we'd expect Jose Canseco to author a tell-all book explaining exactly how and when developer SCE San Diego injected steroids into Mark McGwire's butt. [Image: Sony]
The Daily Grind: Are we ever going to get over our disdain for browser MMOs?
Go into any WildStar discussion and you'll see people decrying the graphics as too cutesy, and that's WildStar -- a robust AAA MMORPG with a custom client that taxes even a strong gaming PC. For browser games, that stigma is even worse. Either the graphics are too cutesy or people convince themselves that no game in a browser can ever rise above social spamalots like FarmVille. It's silly since so many deep and detailed MMOs have browser clients or exist only in a browser. Glitch may have been superficially cutesy and may have been Flash-bound, but it was a serious sandbox with incredible exploration, clever questing, an impressive crafting system, skill-based advancement, and a unique and completely customizable housing system with loads of player-generated content. And for all that, a lot of people, even sandbox fans, refused to even try it because it was lodged firmly inside Chrome or Firefox. Are we ever going to get over our disdain for browser MMOs? Can we judge games based on their content and not on stereotypes about their delivery? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Nvidia, Respawn implementing GameWorks support for Titanfall
Titanfall just got an update yesterday to squash bugs and balance general gameplay elements, but it didn't do anything to pretty up the game's visuals. A recent Nvidia post explains that visual improvement updates are still coming however, outlining a collaboration with developer Respawn Entertainment to implement GameWorks features for players piloting PCs. Among the additions will be support for Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TXAA), which boosts image clarity and reduces a flickering effect sometimes seen with games in motion. Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion+ (HBAO+) is in, which creates shadows based on what a scene's lighting can realistically reach. SLI support is also planned, which allows multiple GPUs to be used at once. An update to include support for 4k displays is coming as well, in case you're dreaming of dropping Titans on opponents in a new-age resolution. Unfortunately, release windows weren't shared for any of these updates, so you'll likely be playing Titanfall as-is for a while longer. If you're an Xbox One user that's a little jealous after reading this post, know that there's still a chance for the Titanfall's visuals to be improved on the Xbox One, too. [Image: EA]
World of Tanks to become better-looking than ever before in 2014
World of Tanks is poised to get a major graphics upgrade this year, and the devs want to show you a preview of the changes. Hopefully you're cool with that. Wargaming promises that the look of the game will become clearer, more realistic, and more detailed when the changes go into place. The team is utilizing advanced texture mapping and new material models to provide a higher level of visual fidelity than previously present. One of the big improvements is a giant leap in the polygon count for each tank, going from 8K-18K per vehicle currently to 50K-100K in the future. For more on this beautification process, check out the video after the jump!
Microsoft aims to power up PC and mobile games with DirectX 12
The time for teasing is over. Today at GDC, Microsoft pulled back the curtain on DirectX 12, a shiny new edition of its venerable graphics APIs that some lucky developers can start mucking around with later this year. Microsoft Graphics Development Manager Anuj Gosalia talked up a storm out in SF: he noted that DX12 would (among other things) yield performance boosts across all of Microsoft's platforms, including Xbox One and Windows Phone.
Imagination's new graphics tech brings realistic lighting to mobile games
Even the prettiest mobile games tend to look a bit ugly, with simple lighting effects that remind you that you're not using a more powerful console or PC. If Imagination Technologies has its way, though, those pocket-sized games will be truer to life. Its newly unveiled Wizard architecture brings ray tracing, a technique that calculates the path of every light beam in a 3D scene, to the company's PowerVR mobile graphics cores. You can see the resulting visual boost in the picture above: every light casts a shadow, glass is more realistic and reflections accurately portray the surrounding world. The first core to use Wizard is the high-end GR6500, which companies can license for their mobile processors. Imagination hasn't named customers, but we'd note that Apple and Intel are among two of its clients -- don't be surprised if your next iPhone or Windows tablet is a graphics powerhouse.
Titanfall graphics test highlights glitches on Xbox One (video)
If there was ever a game that could cope with a few graphical imperfections, it'd be a frenetic multiplayer shooter like Titanfall. But flaws do visibly exist on the Xbox One version of that game, and Eurogamer has highlighted them in a side-by-side video with the PC version. You can see the impact of the console's lower resolution (1,408 x 792) and weaker anti-aliasing, versus the 1080p experience offered by a mid-range Windows gaming rig (with a six-core AMD FX CPU and a NVIDIA GTX 760 graphics card). More noticeable than any of that, however, is the issue of screen tearing: Horizontal slashes that happen when the game drops below the holy grail of 60 frames per second that its creators intended. Like Eurogamer, we really don't think this does significant damage to Titanfall's overall experience -- we're still glued to it -- but this is one more notable instance of a mismatch between what developers wanted to achieve in a next-gen title, and what Microsoft's console was able to deliver.
NVIDIA says most laptops die after 50 minutes of gaming, claims new GPUs will double stamina
Thanks to the appearance of a curiously thin MSI gaming laptop at CeBIT a few days ago, we had an inkling that NVIDIA's new batch of laptop GPUs were inbound. Indeed, the 800M series has just become official, with a number of features geared toward portability and battery life. For a start, the lower half of the stack -- the 830M, 840M, 850M and 860M -- has been endowed with the company's latest Maxwell architecture, which allows gaming credentials to be claimed by thinner and lighter machines. The new Gigabyte P74 is a decent example: It contains an 860M inside a 21mm-thick chassis and we managed to play BioShock Infinite on it, running at 1080p and max settings with a frame rate above 40 fps -- that's a level of performance that NVIDIA says would have required a 55mm-thick laptop three years ago. The other big promise with this generation concerns battery life, and it comes courtesy of a setting called "Battery Boost."
NVIDIA Titan Black cards bring much improved specs, even crazier prices
That's right, a thousand dollars is just the starting price for the new Titan Black, which surpasses and replaces the original $999 GTX Titan that came out last year. Thanks to a more overclock-friendly version of NVIDIA's "Big Kepler" silicon, card vendors are offering custom-cooled versions of the Titan Black that go way beyond the 889MHz reference design, with monetary premiums to match. EVGA looks to be bringing out a 1GHz "HydroCopper" variant, for example, which will likely fetch in the region of $1,100 -- just reasonable enough, in a twisted sort of way, to make you question whether buying a base card might be selling yourself short. But the Titan Black is about more than just clock speeds. It adopts the gaming-focused features of the $699 GTX 780 Ti, including a full quota of 2,880 stream processors and 240 texture units, and it combines them with the 6GB of GDDR5 and double precision floating point performance that made the first Titan so good at semi-professional GPU compute tasks (just below the level of a Tesla). We haven't seen many reviews yet, aside from one saucy piece of literature that looked at four Titan Blacks side-by-side in SLI mode, but it looks like NVIDA might have finally hit on a solid product for those of us who want to mix business with pleasure.
NVIDIA launches two entry-level graphics cards based on its 'most efficient' GPU so far
AMD has enjoyed plenty of room on our pages recently, what with all the talk of Mantle-this and HSA-that. We imagine the folks at NVIDIA have found it all quite bemusing, because for them the graphics card business hasn't changed: it's still primarily about offering higher frame rates for fewer watts in common DirectX-based PC games. Indeed, that's exactly what the green corner's all-new Maxwell architecture is claimed to deliver, starting with the GTX 750 Ti card that should be hitting stores today priced at $150 (or £115 in the UK). At the transistor level, Maxwell is no more efficient than Kepler -- we're still looking at a 28nm fabrication process, which is pretty standard by now. However, NVIDIA says it has figured out much smarter ways of distributing power across its graphics cores, resulting in a doubling of performance-per-watt. What does this mean in practice? Read on and ye shall discover.
This new, low-end AMD graphics card's meant for budget-conscious PC gamers, and maybe Steam Machines, too
Not every gamer has the desire means to get the latest and greatest graphics hardware. Fret not budget-minded PC aficionados, for AMD's rolling out a new, more powerful low-end GPU that should suit your financial constraints. Called the Radeon R7 265, it brings twice the memory bandwidth of its predecessor, the R7 260x, which AMD claims translates into a 25 percent performance boost. It'll cost $149 when it goes on sale in late February, and with its debut, AMD's also dropping the cost of the aforementioned 260x to a scant $119. Naturally, those meager price points will appeal to cost conscious consumers, but AMD's announcement could have an effect on Steam Machine OEMs, too. We saw AMD's higher-end R9 graphics in several of the Steam Machines at CES, and we've been playing with a working iBuyPower prototype packing an R7 260x for awhile now. So, it stands to reason that the 260x and 265 will prove awfully attractive options to manufacturers trying to hit the all-important sub-$500 price point needed to compete with other gaming consoles. And, who knows, maybe these new (relatively) inexpensive options will help drive down the prices of both more powerful cards and the GPUs being offered by AMD's competition.
