Sky comparison. SH2 vs SH5. 2001 vs 2010.

[Baleur]

Silent Hunter 2 (beta build)
Requirements: Pentium II 266Mhz
Platform: Windows 95/98/98SE/Millennium Edition CD-ROM, 64MB RAM





Silent Hunter 5
Recommended system configuration:

CPU: Intel® Core2Duo® E6850 or AMD® Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ or higher
Operating System: Windows® XP (with Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista® (with Service Pack 2) or Windows® 7
RAM: 2 GB (XP / Vista / Win7)
DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM speed 4x, dual-layer drive
Recommended Drive Space: 15 GB
Video Card: 512 MB DirectX® 9.0c-compliant video card (ATI® Radeon HD3000 series / GeForce® 9 Series or better)
Sound Card: DirectX® 9.0c-compliant sound card
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (included on disc)
(wall-of-text)
Internet connection required



It makes you think, doesnt it? Its alot like the Unreal Engine 3 fiasko, where they focus so incredibly on every aspect of the graphics, but totally forgetting about the one thing that makes or breakes immersion, anti-aliasing.
Except in the Silent Hunter world, it is the sky (since you'll see it alot).
"I'm the commander of a submarine, i'm stalking the... OH WAIT, look at those blocky sky effects. I'm just wasting my time in a game."

[Onkel Neal]

Actually, that top pic is SH2.

[Coldcall]

Sorry i cant understand what the thread is about.

SH5 has anti-aliasing. I play on just x2 as its enough to get rid of most blockiness on the horizon.

[Sonarman]

Interesting the OP chose a straight and level shot for thier image as any degree of roll would have shown the horribly jagged horizon of SH2.

[flakmonkey]

Well youre not wrong that sh5 deserves a kicking in some regards but the skys, really??

Granted it could use a few more stars but certainly the daytime skys with those beautiful 3d clouds are the best skys ive seen since crysis.


Re: system specs, just as an interesting note i recently tried to install sh2 (just for nostalgia) and was told by the installer that i didnt have enough ram and should upgrade to at least 16Mb!?! i have 3Gb!

[Nisgeis]

Originally Posted by flakmonkey

Re: system specs, just as an interesting note i recently tried to install sh2 (just for nostalgia) and was told by the installer that i didnt have enough ram and should upgrade to at least 16Mb!?! i have 3Gb!

I once had a game installer tell me "Your CD-ROM is operating faster than is possible!" hehe, welcome to the future.

[Commie]

The OP is talking about the horrible visible sky gradient in SH5 and comparing it to the much smoother SH2 one(gets SH's mixed up). I agree that it looks pretty dated, wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the game looked more archaic, but like this it really stands out, just as the low res pixellated backgrounds in Half Life when going outside. Weird.

[cherbert]

I agree with OP. This is a big issue in SH5. The sky is horrible when there are no clouds to hide the terrible colour banding. Other games can do it better so there should be no excuses.

I would hope its just a simple case of modding a better quality texture for the Skybox?

[Nordmann]

If you look closely, the SH2 sky has the same problem, and if memory serves, both 3 and 4 also have the noticeable banding. Perhaps it is not something easily fixed, if at all.

[Dowly]

I think the problem is that SH uses gradiant color for sky, instead of some games using textures. The game can't handle all the colors in the "line" going from blue to light blue and you get the banding. Same is in OFP/ArmA/ArmA 2 for example.

[flakmonkey]

I always thought the color banding issue was a problem with lcd screens, i cant say i ever saw this sort of thing back in the days of crt monitors.

[Coldcall]

I dont think everyone is having the same experience re Banding. And that has nothign to do with AA, so i still dopnt understand what the OP is saying. The banding is some sort of hardware issues, settings, graphics error, i dont know what...

I first started playing SH5 on a computer with a GT 8600, and i had no banding whatsoever (which demsonrates its not what SH5 is supposed to look like). I'm currently on another computer which is one of those HP Pavillion boxes (Samsung 23 inch widescreen synchmaster) with a nice lil processor i5 770, but a GT 220 for video, which while a little more powerful than the GT 8600 has now made banding a real problem. I've gone through 3 different driver sets and nothing reduces the banding.

The only other difference to when i was playing before with zero noticable banding was that i am playing on widescreen resolutions 1680 x 1050, or sometimes dipping down to approx 1300 x 900 (cant remember the exact value for that setting).

So why is it some computers are having this major banding issue and others not? It would be interesting to know what other types of rigs are having the banding issues.

PS: One other thing i noticed is that its really bad in foggy weather, the foggier the worse it gets.

[Bilge_Rat]

Is it a Nvidia issue? I am playing with a ATI 4890 on a 27" LCD monitor at 1920x1200 and I can't say I have noticed anything unusual at night.

[Coldcall]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Is it a Nvidia issue? I am playing with a ATI 4890 on a 27" LCD monitor at 1920x1200 and I can't say I have noticed anything unusual at night.

I dont think its nvidia as my GT 8600 had no banding but the GT 220 does. Maybe its their newer cards like the 200 series. I wouldnt be surprised as im shocked at how little improvement there is on the GT 220 compared to the old 2007 GT 8600. Its only slightly faster.

But leaving aside the ****ty gpu im currently stuck with unless i upgrade my psu, i dont think its just an nvidia thing.

[kriller2]

Interesting..
The reason for the colour banding is because of the sky in SH4 (maybe allso SH5 im sorry I haven't bought this time waiting for patches...) is made out of a 256x256 or 512x512 pixels texture. Where the colour-information of how the sky should look at different times of day is shown. To get rid of it you need to make a better texture (takes alot of time and experiement..) or make a higher resolution of the texture.