Optimized Photorealism That Puts Modern Graphics to Shame: NFS 2015

PLEASE READ FOR UPDATES & RESPONSES: 1. Watch this video in 4K (as in streaming settings) as any lower compression will hide the visual details discussed. 2. Some clarification regarding the statement made at 8:30, it's a real phenomenon outside of camera footage. Film grain is a "real phenomenon" as well, but that doesn't usually enhance graphics. 3. We apologize for the text mistake at 9:47 where "50ms" is written instead of ".50ms". We actually re-rendered the entire video to fix that but we obviously uploaded the wrong file. We would re-upload if that didn't mean wiping current support and promotions on other sites. 4. We would really appreciate it if viewers could share on giant game related subreddits. These prevent self promotion but *these can really push our channel's success by the thousands. * RESPONSE TO COMMUNITY QUESTIONS: 1. The issue with parallax cubemaps: This is why Kevin said "most common scenario" where environments are complex, irregularly shaped, dynamic lighting is present, memory management issues, baking times, plausibility issues, and most importantly constructed by real people with limited patience. When we say "Nanite is cutting companies time and money", that is not the issue. The issue is that it's at the expense of both massive performance loss and visual problems. We don't expect every AAA funded studio to optimize their meshes manually. We would rather compromise and promote a mesh algorithm that does optimization better automatically to cater to the permanent (flawed) mindset of modern devs. Raytraced specular representation has had many breakthroughs for performance and visual quality, if the game is optimized modern hardware will handle it and can produce way better visual results than what is offered in most games. We will speak about this again in a more dedicated video. 2. The motion blur statement has been repeatedly misinterpreted: The motion blur tip we suggested would not affect a portion of the screen and highly enhance motion on BFI. The final frame is absolutely representative of the anti-motion distortion seen during gameplay . We do not believe in re-creating motion blur produced from cameras. We reference stable coherent vision from the human eye during high speed traversal where animated objects and camera traversal induced velocity within the specified distance (via depth buffer). We suggest anyone who can run, drive a car, or bike to test for themselves.

The devs behind NFS 2015 knew how to use film grain, lens flare and the rest without making it so annoying that you would turn it off in the settings

Its crazy how NFS 2015, a game now nearly 10 years old, is still the best looking NFS to date.

The chromatic aberration only being visible in the corners is also how actual camera lenses work in the real life. I think that's what makes it so realistic and a great amount of attention to detail.

Crazy how after so many years a lot of the games from that era look visually superior than most titles released today. NFS 2015 is still the best looking NFS ever made imo.

This goes way above my level of comprehension, but what I did understand was very interesting. Most NFS fans know 2015 was probably the best the franchise ever looked. As a big NFS fan, I remember when the sequel to this game, Payback, was revealed to have a full day/night cycle and people were hyped, but then disappointed by how the end result looked when the game released. My question therefore is: how much does the fact 2015 is permanently night affect the final result, and would it be realistically possible to implement a similar look in a game with a full day/night cycle?

I'm so happy this game is finally getting covered graphics wise. Nearly 10 years later and it's still the most photorealistic game I've seen. Modern Warfare could pass as realistic from some angles, but NFS 2015 feels like a playable live action movie.

Here's something I learned from doing art: Real life has no obligation nor guarantee to give you good design. It doesn't matter if it's "realistic" if it looks bad. It doesn't matter if the ray-tracing and textures and face hair hair are accurate if it looks weird. You cannot rely on the computer to gives you good design. That's one big reasons why a lot of CGI looks bad too, because 1) lack of time 2) the over-reliance and trust in simulation. How many studios actually do anything to their motion blur other than tick a box? Do they even know how the effect is achieved?

I disagree on the point about motion blur—the blur happening to the background is pretty subtle, so it’s not really obstructing any important information. It’s what you’d expect from a real camera (the background is moving relative to the camera, therefore it’s blurred), and sells the smoothness and continuity of the camera motion. As an additional bonus it helps hide aliasing. When you removed the motion blur, the aliased edges instantly revealed themselves and made the city look a lot less real.

Fighting the good fight.

one other thing the game did well with the realism is that the color grading uses a lot of green witch makes it look more realistic since green is the most common in real life

Man, I'm expecting red circles and arrows on screenshots as you explain how and why it looks the way it does. Totally wasn't expecting you to dissect the rendering of a single frame in ways I didn't know possible. Edit: Just saw that this is the seedling of a indie gaming studio! I'm now expecting a well optimized and photo-realistic (if that's the style) product! Take my sub!

I just redownloaded Just Cause 3 (also 2015) still holds up today. I’m convinced games peaked in 2015

Thanks for calling out TAA. Crazy how it's remained the industry standard for so long. I don't think it'll go away, but I really hope it does so we can talk about it the way we talk about the overuse of bloom in late 2000s. Same with poorly implemented SSR which clearly fade in and out as you look around. Gamers won't accept pop-in but will accept reflections that only appear if you look at it right. Crazy world. Regarding cubemaps and raytracing; Source 2's parallax corrected cubemaps are pretty amazing even if they're not perfect especially in environments with a lot of 3D detail.

Wow, crazy indepth video, amazing. Completely agree about motionblur, it's a shame very few developers get it right, but Unreal doesn't help with it, they don't allow MB to be applied to objects only which would fix most games. BFI being mentioned at all makes me happy, very important for motion clarity and increasing the impression of fluidity especially when the bigger the TV is the blurrier games will look in motion. I think more people will understand the appeal of motionblur if sample and hold displays were less common. After all why further blur the picture in motion if you're already playing on a display that's not meant for games (which is 99.99% of displays sold today, even "gamer" monitors will never turn on BFI by default)

Its true! Developers focused so much on detailed materials and completely forgot art style, design and creativity...

TLDR; Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Regarding motion blur, I think trying to obtain as much detail as possible is going to create a more unrealistic experience; the motion blur appearing on the sides of the frame is entirely realistic to the way in which our eyes will distort reality, inadvertently making it more accurate to what we would perceive in real life.

Now i know how games visuals are made. I had no idea there was so much processing and stuff. Sharing this with my friends.

great thumbnail change, i had this recommended a few times, not realising the type of video it was, instant click after the change, great video