» Tue Jun 28, 2011 3:33 pm I dont even know where to start... ok lets start from this
1) Co called HIGH Res textures, are nowhere nearby definition of term "HIGH RESOLUTION". Yes, new texture have higher resolution comparing to original, they are exactly twice bigger than vanila textures.
But stupidity of this Ctytek's logic worls almost like this: We had blurry 128x128 texture, ok lets put 256x256 version instead and call it high res.
Since when 256x256 textures called "high res"? Most of textures even with higher resolution than before, looks ugly, blurry and washed out, no detail textures (like we had in Crysis 1) applied above low res textures, so despite some upscale, they are still LOW FREAKING RES! In result you can barely nottice the difference, only some rare textures are actually high res and bigger than 1024x1024.
All those low res textures could fit 512mb vram easy, lol even Far Cry 1 textures was better mostly (especially in 64 bit AMD upgrade which is 6 years old now) than this.
But what is more frustrating than this LOW RES pack, is the fact that you trying to cheat us and make us belive that its so UBER-RES, so only 64bit OS can handle it! This is LIE!
Prove: Moving TexturesHighRes.pak from patch to gamecrysis2 folder (everyone who have options grayed out try my fix to enable textures on 32bit OSes) enabled all these pseudo-high-res textures, and Crysis runs find at 32 bit Win 7, with 3.2gb of RAM and 1GB of VRAM, i havent seen any difference in performance after enabling textures this way on 32 bit machine. So requirement "64 bit OS only" is lie, to make it sounds like uber updater (Surely fanboys will be affeceted by placebo effect after hearing "64 bit only" and will CRY how awesome textures looks now, when in facts they dont), another reason could be counting on minimizing rage after disappointment by lowering number of people who can see how ugly these "High" res, so forsing 64 bit only will surely makes less people see and criticize updated but still low res textures.
So grayed options for HIGH RES textures is simply a cover, there is no real reason to disable this pack on 32 bit os, and this pack isnt that performance demanding as you pretend, Crytek guys.
And in the end of texture pack criticism - most of very common and notticable textures wasnt even updated, i dont know why pack is 1.7 gb, but i suppose you could fake it's size by dummy data, lie is the way Crytek prefer these days, so this would not surprise me anymore.
2) Another reason why DX11 patch fails, is complete ignorance of Crytek related to Directx 10 and DX10.1 cards, that are majority now and that can handle at least about 80-90% of DX11 and by default any good DX11 game\app should be backward compatible with DX10card and just disable very few features like tesselation, so every DX11 game\app by default should work at DX10+ cards just almost without minor feature and wthout extra coding and porting. I mean DX10 cards could and should use DX11 render path, since they are backward compatible.
Why again, you Crytek trying to force us DX10 and DX10.1 cards owners to buy DX11 card if our top DX10 can handle everything you offered in this upgrade, except hw tessellation?
Why you forcing this artificial limitation to DX10 user, while we can use 90% out of box?
Why you forcing DX10 user to use DX9 without all that features that out card could actually handle with no problem???
I have even funnier facts to share:
DX11 rendering module CryRenderD3D11.dll have 2 funny DLL imports
of d3d10.dll and d3dx11_42.dll - so in fact DX11 rendered uses both DX10 and DX11.
But wait, its not even important, because
"Direct3D 11 runtime can run on Direct3D 10.0-10.1 hardware using a concept of "feature levels", but new features will be supported exclusively by new hardware."
If you still didnt get the idea, maybe this would explain you better:
"At Microsoft’s Gamefest show, the CTO of Microsoft's Entertainment Business Division, Chris Satchell, revealed that ‘DX11 is totally compatible with DX10. There's not that 9/10 discontinuity we created before.’ This doesn’t mean that DirectX 10 hardware will only be running DirectX 10 features under DirectX 11, either. According to Shacknews, ‘Microsoft also disclosed that DirectX 11 will add features to existing DirectX 10-compatible hardware.’ After all, once you have a unified shader architecture, your GPU’s processors are no longer locked into the architecture of a specific API."
So the point is - Crytek already created working DX10 rendered though DX11 but artificially locked DX10 backward compatibility, disabled everything of DX11 render, that DX10 card could handle, and forced DX9 rendered instead without all that goodies that DX10-10.1 cards can do.
Question is - WHY CRYTEK? Why you did this? Why you left DX10 with DX9 only? If that just stupidity of incompetence of your coders (which i cant believe myself) who can use properly DX10 though DX11 at DX10 card, or the reason is the same that ruined Crysis 2 from begining? Greediness?
Why greediness? We are all heard, that Nvidia paid few millions for release of this damn "GIFT" with DX11, that was promised to be part of game since 1st days of announce.
But what could Nvidia take back? Boost of new Nvidia videcard sales of course!
And how could they get this boost? Easy!
They just pay Crytek extra million of $$$ and ask to lock already existing by default DX11 >> DX10 compatibility, so every owner of yet pretty good DX10 card would be limited to DX9 features only, and will have no other choice but to go and buy new DX11 card, just to see all that locked things, that his year old DX10 card could render without problems. Perhaps AMD could be in deal too, since both Nvidia and AMD wins if everyone will be pushed to replace DX10 card with brain new DX11.
So Crytek, 1st you sold out youself to console market, now you cant even release a patch without selling it to videochip venders and without some commercial artificial limitation ?
3) Entire job, that was done, not even making Crysis 2 close to what you promised and showed us before release, it was done pretty lazy way, no removed physics with destructible environment was re-enabled, no AI (that was limited because of consoles poor computing powers) was enhanced, no consolish limitations was removed (especially poor render distance, and actually patch 1.9 made render distance even shorter on ultra, than it was before), no so many flat textures was bumped by normal displacement mapping, and not a single mesh (except prtesselated) was recreated. Damn it, Ctytek, you could at least replace this flat texture with debris of bricks, with some real brick with pretty primitive and non demanding geometry! And you not even replaced andy single low res textures of NPC's and not fixed lot of bugs like textures floating in air, invisible walls in placed where they should not be.
You not even enabled POM instead of Tesselation for every flat textures, for cards that cant do tessellation.
And what is worse - DX9 renderer became uglier, render distance is not shorter and new blocky shadow LODs appeared, and i havent notticed any good difference in DX9 ultra mode and very high that we had before, things was only screwed, but all improved things only available for 64 bit and DX11 user.
THIS ISNT GIFT, ITS ANOTHER INSULT TO PC COMMUNITY, CHEAP ATTEMPT TO CHEAT US, AND GAIN MONEY FROM US, VIDEOCARD VENDORS and so on.
Than only good thing, you did about patch 1.9 is MOdding support. But i doubt that C2 modding will grow as big as C1 when you still locking rendering path, texture packs and even absolutely harmless CVARs and console commands... damn it, you even locked that ugly unrealistic bloom in MP at unchangeable value 0.7... dont you know, how many people hate these glowing lines reflected by every highlighted surface in crysis 2 (from glasses of NPC that looks like they have fire inside, to wall of bricks, that shining like a sun and making us blind)?
And what sake you introduced ugly vignette effect that cant be turned off in options?
I have last simple question in the end - will this be fixed in next patch? Will you at least unlock what you locked, so we can make better textures than your lazy artists did, so we can configure anything we like the way we like without some artificial locking of features?
P.S. - GrammarNazy trolls - plz buzz off with your "larnz da anglash fust", English isnt my native, and nothing is perfect in this world) Plus i dont give a **** about spell checking when im posting at these useless forums which full of trolls like you... you dont deserve that much of my effort. So, just try to stay on topic, m'kay?
Update:
I forgot to mention few things:
U1) Real tife reflections - where they are? Even water, still have such a fake cubemaped reflections, so i can claim that FAR CRY and surely CRYSIS 1 had much beter and actually real-time reflections and refractions.
Why reflections are so bad in Crysis 2? Im freaking tired to stay on roof of building, and see in reflection cubemaps of road with cars and some random crap.
Same about water - why it always reflects something weird? Even half life 2 reflected entire world without problem, and that game of 2004 year, Crytek's previous games did this too, why its not in DX11 upgrade?
Why this weird crap still happens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kgY1-KjckU ???
Do console gamedev completely outdated Crytek's employees minds and pushed them back to 2005 year?
U2) DX9 renderer have now broken anisotropy, everything now looks like it have linear (one guy started thread here, whe he called it a Crysis 2 minecraft edition, because textures became unfilitered) and bilinear filtering. thats, in addition to broken shadow LODs that became blocky too, make this patch 1.9 for DX1.9 not a Upgrade but a complete downgrade, since nothing of promised things, works in DX9 mode, not even textures (because of 32 bit limitation)
U3) Most of light sources cant cast shadows and not very dynamic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Pd2jo3fYc&NR=1 this wasnt fixed in "ULTRA" upgrade".
