I've compared Crysis, Warhead, and Crysis 2 Water side by side and there is really no reason to call Crysis 2 Water worse.

For one...Crysis water "appears" better because it is clean island water. NYC Water isn't clean...but on close anolysis, in both games, you can see through the water, there are real time reflections and refraction. In a small square area, Crysis 2 water actually has more vertices and tesselation than Crysis water, in..every square meter. Crysis 1 water didn't have more visual "features".

Aside from that, the water physics in Crysis 2 are far superior:


[*] When you shoot the water in Crysis 2, you see nice volumetric ripples form that act naturally and bend around other objects.
[*]The same thing happens when you jump in the Crysis 2 water. Amazing ripple physics.
[*]But in Crysis 1 when you did either, you saw this weird 2D ripple leaving a fake 2D foam behind it.
[*]There are water currents in Crysis 2 Water. In one of the missions there was a crashed boat that was leaking oil. The oil flowed in the direction of the current and your motion actually affected the path of the oil. This would NOT happen in Crysis 1.

Just because island water looks cleaner because its on an island, doesn't make it better looking water graphically. Both systems of water are realistic to their environments and support the same features.

Also two things:

[*]If you're going to base your opinion of the water from what you saw in Pier 17 in the MP Demo...your post is baseless. The Pier 17 Water is not "water". It's water covered in a vast layer of spilled oil...which is why you see the rainbow effect and no waves.
[*]If you're going to troll saying I'm an idiot because I said the water used "tesselation" when the game doesn't use DirectX 11...you're an idiot and you don't know what you;re talking about. CryEngine 2 and 3 both use levels of tesselation to create waves in the water giving it the natural appearance. It's not the same as DX11 geometry tesselation, but that's what its called.

DX9 water vs DX10 water: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/186/437944396_b2f73a2996.jpg

The difference is obvious, in the picture, and in the games.
I hope this is a troll post, or you're just ridiculous.

DX9 water vs DX10 water: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/186/437944396_b2f73a2996.jpg

The difference is obvious, in the picture, and in the games.
I hope this is a troll post, or you're just ridiculous.

You do realize that Crysis 1 Water didn't take advantage of what DX10 had to offer. Crysis 1 DX10 was basically just a render path. No actual features.

In you're taking screenshots from Microsoft Flight Simulator as proof. The way CryEnigne randers water is vastly different from the way FSX does it. Show me Crysis 1 water looking way better in DX9 Very High than DX10 Very High and I'll take your word for it.

DX9 water vs DX10 water: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/186/437944396_b2f73a2996.jpg

The difference is obvious, in the picture, and in the games.
I hope this is a troll post, or you're just ridiculous.

DX10 doesn't magically make water better. You have to make it look better.

It's not even funny how much some of you guys take the DirectX version to mean everything. FFS I could make remake Minecraft in DX11 and it wouldn't look any different than even DirectX 8.

A well made DirectX 9 game can beat the living **** out of a random DX11 game.

Take a look at this list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_11_support

Crysis 2 in DirectX 9 looks better than 75%+ of that DX11 list.

I'm of the opinion that Crysis and Warhead are both superior in virtually every way to Crysis 2, but even I'll admit that the water in Crysis 2 is just about perfect. I think that the first two games have exceptionally beautiful water so I would stop short of saying that Crysis 2's water looks better, but it's definitely not worse.

Umm dx 9 vs dx 10 is a big difference lol anyone that says otherwise doesnt really understand the big improvements that were made going from dx 9 to dx 10 a game nowadays that has dx 9 is like playing a game 4 years ago it just doesnt make sense as too why crytek did that. and crysis 1 did have dx 10.

Umm dx 9 vs dx 10 is a big difference lol anyone that says otherwise doesnt really understand the big improvements that were made going from dx 9 to dx 10 a game nowadays that has dx 9 is like playing a game 4 years ago it just doesnt make sense as too why crytek did that. and crysis 1 did have dx 10.

When did I say Crysis 1 didn't have DX10? It just didn't utilize DX10 features. Dx10 has cool features but when Cryte didn't use them it doesn't matter.

The tessellation effect on the water's surface is just as good, but the texture looks a lot worse than it did in Crysis 1.

Its ok, but it nowhere near as good as C1 / Wars.

I'm of the opinion that Crysis and Warhead are both superior in virtually every way to Crysis 2, but even I'll admit that the water in Crysis 2 is just about perfect. I think that the first two games have exceptionally beautiful water so I would stop short of saying that Crysis 2's water looks better, but it's definitely not worse.

Well I would say the lighting is better too. With Global Illumination and deferred rendering what they achieved in those night scenes like in Times Square are just amazing. They have 30+ lights in the same area while Crysis 1 tops had 4-5 in areas. But otheriwse I would agree.

Water in Crysis 2 is great, on map "Lighthouse" is always sunset and when you jump into water you can see how sunlight is spreading under water + water effects, i mean just amazing :X

Water in Crysis 1: Tropical Island, clean, clear water.

Water in Crysis 2: Dirty polluted, brown, murky water.

People seem to think that because the water looks less complicated that the render path to create it actually is less complicated, it isn't.

DX9 water vs DX10 water: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/186/437944396_b2f73a2996.jpg

The difference is obvious, in the picture, and in the games.
I hope this is a troll post, or you're just ridiculous.

No, yours is the troll post, or you are increadibly ignorant.
Not only have people already pointed out the fail in using images from another game as an argument, but what makes your post even more fail is the fact that is not even a genuine screenshot, its concept art, nothing more.

Water in Crysis 1: Tropical Island, clean, clear water.

Water in Crysis 2: Dirty polluted, brown, murky water.

People seem to think that because the water looks less complicated that the render path to create it actually is less complicated, it isn't.

Actually no, when you jump into water you can see that water is clear, it's a texture/colors of bottom what makes it to look like brown or dirty. Water is actually same like in Crysis 1

DX9 water vs DX10 water: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/186/437944396_b2f73a2996.jpg

The difference is obvious, in the picture, and in the games.
I hope this is a troll post, or you're just ridiculous.
I can't believe you don't know that this is fake

Water textures were low res compared to crysis water, and did you see any puddles? they were pre-rendered...

Here is my 2 cents.I think crysis 2 has some of the best night lighting i have ever seen.Yesterday i was playing some night mission and was amazed to see the amount of reflection,lighting was there.Night lighting in crysis was horrible as compared to crysis2.I think this is the only area where crysis2 excels graphically over crysis.And i would also like to say lighting is also good in crysis2.But looks unnatural as compared to realistic lighting of crysis.Low res textures of crysis2 kills it graphically as compared to super high resolution textures of crysis.

Nice anolysis of the water. I haven't played crysis 1 but i can say that the real time effects on water are amazing and very realistic. In my opinion dx9 is doing a pretty good job. I hope the dx11 patch actually brings some dx 11 features.
Cheers!!

Can someone show me these real time disturbance effects on Crysis 2's water? All I can recall is a 2D splash pasted over the top and I remember thinking "wtf?" It was the same for when AI moved in water, too.

Erm, no. Water in Crysis 2 looks good from a distance, but when you walk into it or shoot it, it looks like a DX7 game from 1999. I don't think it has much to do with DX itself, it's more related to the fact that Crysis 2 is a very crappy console port. Half-Life 2 water is also DX9 only and it looks great in every way.

If u want to appreciate some real water then play farcry2.Will raqe crysis2 in every department.

From Crysis 2 Key Rendering Features

This was primarily the same water rendering approach as in Crysis 1 (the different look is mostly due to cityscape environments instead of tropical environments). We use FFT based normal map using cheap parallax approximation for consoles, and vertex displacement mapping for PC specs.

I still think that Unreal Engine 2 has one of the best water effects I've ever seen.