there IS bump mapping, but not a lot of it. Actually, there wasn't even a lot of bump mapping Crysis 1 except for very rocky areas. For the most part, some of your Crysis 1 pictures aren't even bump mapping they are just high-res textures. Crysis 2 has half the texture size of Crysis 1 which is why it doesn't look as good.

We have to wait for DX11 for all the goodies.

Watching your screenshots... now I see why Crysis 2 is faster than Crysis 1, even looking better...

Crysis 2 looking better than Crysis 1? Someone call eye doctor please! If you mean C1 looks better than you right)

P.S. - Also learn the facts dude, i know for sure that Splinter Cell Conviction have real time global illumination on pc, and perhaps on xbox (but not sure about it), its noticeable and thats was one of the reason SCC never appeared on PS3 - they said they would have difficulties to port their global illumination technique to PS3. And please dont start flame about SCC here.
And some ambient color of nearby object is really not that important as paralax mapping and high res textures, you know.

You obviously don't know the difference between REAL TIME and pre-computed. Learn about that then come back to me about REAL TIME global illumination.

Secondly lighting plays a greater role in render quality than texturing. After all lighting directly affects the way a texture looks (rendered on the screen). Trivialising something that important is clear demonstration of ignorance but I have grown acquainted with the high level of ignorance on this forum.

As I have mention before, there are parts in the game that could benefit with the use of POM as in the screenshot you have provided. But the game uses quite alot of normal maps to give the illusion of depth. Just like in Crysis most POM require the gamer to get very close the surface to really see POM in action.

Also stop behaving as if Crysis lacked low res textures for it did and it had alot.

As for GI. Take a look.

Odd that they went to the trouble of including GI for great visuals and then kind of ruined the whole effect with some shoddy textures and DX9 smoke. Stranger still is that some of the in-game textures look good then you'll turn a corner to be greeted by flat looking bricks that just kill the immersion. Or be creeping through smoke that has hard, square edges in layers. That screen above of the overlook from the castle stood out to me when playing as looking really shoddy.

If I had to guess I would say that they simply ran out of time to implement certain features for the release date. Considering the state of the game at present it seems like it could have done with another few months of work to get it up to a high standard. Which is a shame because I think it will colour people's impressions of the game even if they do manage to fix all the various issues. Despite a good portion of the production being very good people will remember the bad.

i think they made it flat because of the extremly low console power for texture streaming

i think Crytek just sold his ass to uncle Bill - that's all

They didn't do anything extra to the PC version is the issue. It's because of their engine's ability to make all 3 platforms at the same time, of course they just made a version the consoles could handle and had the engine spit out the identical PC version.

It's the whole selling point of their engine. Now console devs can crank out basically FREE pc versions that don't need to be ported. Only issue is they'll be identical in features (read: limitations) to their console bretheren.

Devs make more money on their games and we get to put up with crappy games that were designed to run on consoles.

May as well sell the high end graphics cards, boys, or wait for BF3.

i think BF3 will blow this sh1t up
so sad

It seems the texture's on Crysis 2 are flatter than Fearne Cotton's chest >:)

Because it's a dumbed down console game.

Atleast the texture quality is something that can be easily uplifted and will have a noticable effect on the visual quality.

yeah, but do u really think Crytek will spend their time for tuning this textures for PC users?
uncle Bill is glad with Crytek results - sh1tbox kids are hapy - mission accomplished, noone wants to fix the textures

someone will

Who even cares about Bump or Parallax mapping? We want Tesselation, or at least Occlusion Mapping!

Thats a big bag of FAIL you just opened up there.

POM= Parallax Occlusion Mapping

I take it Crysis 2 has no voxels either

Its not only that, but the physics, the physics in C2 are bloody awful
Also, lack of basic pc features as Quick Save, Graphics Configurations, really??

RUSHED game I'd say.

Crytek has seriusly dissapointed a lot of people with this game, the very same people who supported them before, may I add.
They better do something about this game

Of course the main game is ok, you can play it through without problems. But that's not enough. I expected this game would show current potential of PC graphics. But NO, NO, NO. Crytek has shown it lacks support of PC and it's very sad to see that. I feel so cheated. I regret now that I bought this game. Multiplayer is unplayable because of the cheaters and disconnect problem does exists (usually I have 30-40ms latency).

It's funny that some devs says that PC gaming is going downhill. Maybe it has something to do with devs who doesn't give a ****** **** about PC customers.

Crysis 2 real example of false advertising and fraud, i think we can even sue Crytek for this.

^^ true, lying and cheating is crytek's middle name

So now when DX11 patch announced, i wonder - will DX11 be same flat, or we will have proper normal and displacement mapping like in C1?

Cry-Tom or Cry-Adam - please give us answer!

Honestly I don't care, the game looks immense and most of the firefights are so quick and intense that I don't have time to stare point blank at bricks.

Maybe that's just me, sure I could pick out graphical faults but only if I tried.

I just hope and pray they add bump / normal maps for dx9 users.
I dont have a dx11 card, but it would still be nice to have features that were available in Crysis 1

This is not just about graphics.. Xbox360 has 2003 hardware with crappy 512 ram. 512 RAM !!!. in 2003 we had P4/Athlon64s single core, "dumb" cell phones with 128x128 resolution now we have great quadcore i7s or sixcore AMD X6, with tons of RAM and powerfull GPUs, smartphones, with screen resolution better than 2003 laptops. You cannot stop technological advancement.... OH WAIT...... XBOX360....We have still 512mb console in 2011!!! Damn, we could play games, not just with great graphics, but with advanced physics, realtime weather simulation or water and sand simulation. But we cannot. Because console players just want "press A button" so something awensome will hapen. And there you go. Crysis2, CoD series, Dragon Age 2. etc. R.I.P gameplay advance.

I think the version that is currently in and just a console port with the spec of the console, the patch will come with DX11 I think will last the long awaited PC version with DX11, pom, texture and other hd, everything the PC can do, then waited