As a 3D artist for games, I've noticed a few visual additions to DMC 4: SE in various streams and shots. Since I haven't seen them mentioned elsewhere, I thought it would be worth laying them out and theorizing on the performance impact.
Perhaps the most noticeable change upon immediate inspection is the introduction of alpha-sorted hair ingame. This is one feature that seems noticeably absent from DmC: Devil May Cry, and it's rare enough to see it in a game from the last generation. The fact that Devil May Cry 4 was able to pull it off during cutscenes in 2008 is incredible, and now it makes its debut in gameplay. It should be noted that, from the screenshots Capcom has given us, Dante and Nero retain their polygon-only hairstyles, as I assume they didn't want to tamper with the existing assets.
Another addition is motion blur. Although YouTube tends to compress and artifact video, this 60 FPS demonstration by Gregaman retains a fair bit of quality- enough to show us the motion blur. It's still noticeable in combat, but if you look closely at the corners of the screen where the camera is rotating around the floor in Bloody Palace, you'll see an unmistakable blur. I personally don't mind it all that much and I'm sure it will be toggleable on PC.
That brings up my last point- what appears evident about the graphics on the PS4 version of the game. As seen on Gregaman's Vergil stream, the PS4 version (and presumably the Xbox One version) doesn't have graphical options. There is a torrent with footage of the PS4 version with low compression out there which retains motion blur, but also shows a relatively low antialiasing setting. If I didn't know better, I'd say it wasn't antialiased at all, but it could be that it's merely the lowest AA setting from the PC version (2X MSAA).
So, what does this mean for performance?
Well, I would usually say alpha-sorted transparency will chomp on your framerate, but mostly in cutscenes. Since the original game already handled it so well (I need that MT Framework alghorithm) and the amount of pixels needing sorting during gameplay is pretty low, I don't anticipate this having much performance impact at all.
Motion blur, on the other hand, could cut off more than a few frames depending on the implementation. It could be that they cranked down the AA to make sure motion blur would run reasonably well. Now, that is a big assumption, so don't go reading into it too much- we still have more than a month to go before release, so they could still be tweaking this stuff for the console versions. I wouldn't be surprised if the image quality on consoles wasn't quite up to snuff, although I think they can definitely handle it. It may simply be that Capcom doesn't want to invest in any new AA tech like SMAA since they're already doing so much with an 'old' engine.
One more thing I am wary of is whether they'll be using the DX10 version of MT, as its particle effects were notoriously slow on PC without adding much at all to the visuals. If this is the case, and the newer version MT hasn't improved, it could explain the low AA settings.
However, due to some differences in lighting and chroma in certain screenshots we've seen, I'm inclined to believe MT Framework has experienced a minor overhaul since 2008. My hope is that DMC 4: SE actually happens to run better than the original because of additional MT development.
Until the game is released, however, we'll have no idea why these choices were made- only that they were made. Thanks for reading this massive wall of text.
Perhaps the most noticeable change upon immediate inspection is the introduction of alpha-sorted hair ingame. This is one feature that seems noticeably absent from DmC: Devil May Cry, and it's rare enough to see it in a game from the last generation. The fact that Devil May Cry 4 was able to pull it off during cutscenes in 2008 is incredible, and now it makes its debut in gameplay. It should be noted that, from the screenshots Capcom has given us, Dante and Nero retain their polygon-only hairstyles, as I assume they didn't want to tamper with the existing assets.
Another addition is motion blur. Although YouTube tends to compress and artifact video, this 60 FPS demonstration by Gregaman retains a fair bit of quality- enough to show us the motion blur. It's still noticeable in combat, but if you look closely at the corners of the screen where the camera is rotating around the floor in Bloody Palace, you'll see an unmistakable blur. I personally don't mind it all that much and I'm sure it will be toggleable on PC.
That brings up my last point- what appears evident about the graphics on the PS4 version of the game. As seen on Gregaman's Vergil stream, the PS4 version (and presumably the Xbox One version) doesn't have graphical options. There is a torrent with footage of the PS4 version with low compression out there which retains motion blur, but also shows a relatively low antialiasing setting. If I didn't know better, I'd say it wasn't antialiased at all, but it could be that it's merely the lowest AA setting from the PC version (2X MSAA).
So, what does this mean for performance?
Well, I would usually say alpha-sorted transparency will chomp on your framerate, but mostly in cutscenes. Since the original game already handled it so well (I need that MT Framework alghorithm) and the amount of pixels needing sorting during gameplay is pretty low, I don't anticipate this having much performance impact at all.
Motion blur, on the other hand, could cut off more than a few frames depending on the implementation. It could be that they cranked down the AA to make sure motion blur would run reasonably well. Now, that is a big assumption, so don't go reading into it too much- we still have more than a month to go before release, so they could still be tweaking this stuff for the console versions. I wouldn't be surprised if the image quality on consoles wasn't quite up to snuff, although I think they can definitely handle it. It may simply be that Capcom doesn't want to invest in any new AA tech like SMAA since they're already doing so much with an 'old' engine.
One more thing I am wary of is whether they'll be using the DX10 version of MT, as its particle effects were notoriously slow on PC without adding much at all to the visuals. If this is the case, and the newer version MT hasn't improved, it could explain the low AA settings.
However, due to some differences in lighting and chroma in certain screenshots we've seen, I'm inclined to believe MT Framework has experienced a minor overhaul since 2008. My hope is that DMC 4: SE actually happens to run better than the original because of additional MT development.
Until the game is released, however, we'll have no idea why these choices were made- only that they were made. Thanks for reading this massive wall of text.
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