Thief 4 is trash.

[Airship Ballet]

How dare you offer a little common sense amidst cherry-picking radicalism fueled by naive and unrealistic expectations.

[AluminumHaste]

 

For whatever reason SSAA just feels much more crisp but comparing the two screenshots below there doesn't appear to be much difference so I guess I'll just run FXAA because the experience is much more fluid.

 

 

Unfortunately it being more crisp, is in your head. Just the way SuperSampling works will add blurriness to the scene as it renders the scene at 1.5x or higher than your screen resolution then samples it back down (similar to photoshop Resize Image).

Multisampling will blur only edges. The same with FXAA but it differs because it is a "post process" shader based method which will blur the edges in an image after it's been rasterized by the graphics card.

 

The best method for blurring jaggies vs performance will always be MSAA as it's more accurate in picking edges, but doesn't have the HUGE penalty of Super Sampling.

[AluminumHaste]

This whole thing reeks so badly of cash grab, I think even if stuff "has been relayed to the devs", its more of a joke than anything. Like they pile the complaints in 30 or 40 bins in a back store room until they finish the first 3-5 $20 DLC missions, and then once in a while visit the bins and pull out a couple of particularly butthurt complaints to have a good laugh around the office. Think its far-fetched? http://www.cinemable...rity-62173.html

 

I don't know man, this was in developement so long, it's unlikely this was rushed to make cash. More than likely they released it stop bleeding cash.

[Bikerdude]

From a mapper's point of view the amount of Z-fighting and Ai sinking into the ground in the benchmark is very disapointing.

[c0mputer-fr0d]

kinda annoying how when I buy it I'm not going to be able to play the bank heist mission without someone sending me it.

[ungoliant]

I don't know man, this was in developement so long, it's unlikely this was rushed to make cash. More than likely they released it stop bleeding cash.

maybe i have a different definition of cash grab, but I think anything that involves releasing trash with the intention of alleviating loss, making huge profit, or just trying to break even can fall under the blanket, if they are intentionally taking the path of least resistance, work, or cost.

 

patching up some menu option "customization" bandaids instead of redesigning their shit mechanics is probably good evidence of this for example. Motherfuckers decided to just put in a "slow mode" instead of rebalancing the auto-run + swoop = garret-ferrari problem. lazy ass fucks. plenty of other menu-customize garbage i could cite in the cash-grab argument, among other material, but i'm not going to write an entire dissertation on the subject.

And no, I don't care that they are trying to make money. Once they realized their product and direction was shit, (probably pretty early), they should have accepted the sunk costs and abandoned the project entirely. Instead, they went for the cash grab.

[Oldjim]

I can't play the game at all

I can play Crysis 1, 2 and 3 no problems and Dishonored no problems but this is a total mess with the CPU bottlenecking everything

[Bikerdude]

I can't play the game at all

Check the T4 ftweaks and fixes thread, forcing the game to use the 32bit executable resulted in my min fps going from 6.1 to 30.

 

- http://forums.thedar...4-tweaks-fixes/

[brethren]

Oldjim, what are your PC specs?

[Oldjim]

CPU is a core 2 duo 6750 and graphics are Nvidia 650Ti 4GB ram

Checking I can change the CPU for about £60 second hand and £100 new but it seems a lot of money just to play one game

Ideally I should be looking at an i7 CPU for future proofing but that also means a new motherboard and memory but then I am talking about £400 plus

 

I will try the 32bit thing as well

 

UPDATE

Changing to 32 bit has fixed it :D

Edited February 28, 2014 by Oldjim

[stumpy]

the 32bit version makes it playable on mine, but I still get bad lag on some cutscenes, someone said elsewhere probably steam forum, the problem there is that its a in game engine cutscene and it auto sets the setting to the highest posible for the cutscene that it thinks your graphics card can handle then resets the game back to what setting you are actually playing the game at after the cutscene. Instead of just playing the cutscene at the setting you are using.

the 64bit version does not seem to have been optimised, and will run at 100% or will try to run at 100% on all cores available, so I got 4 cores running at 100% in the 64bit version. and the lag is unbearible.

[Bikerdude]

the 32bit version makes it playable on mine, but I still get bad lag on some cutscenes

Try enabling Exclusive FullScreen mister and see how you get on.

[Lux]

Unfortunately it being more crisp, is in your head. Just the way SuperSampling works will add blurriness to the scene as it renders the scene at 1.5x or higher than your screen resolution then samples it back down (similar to photoshop Resize Image).

Multisampling will blur only edges. The same with FXAA but it differs because it is a "post process" shader based method which will blur the edges in an image after it's been rasterized by the graphics card.

 

The best method for blurring jaggies vs performance will always be MSAA as it's more accurate in picking edges, but doesn't have the HUGE penalty of Super Sampling.

 

Let's not be over dramatic here. Every form of FXAA I've used to date adds blurriness to the entire scene. All textures. Maybe they're poor implementations or maybe its some other issue. All I know is I've never used SSAA prior to this game because its has never been an in-game option. Generally games offer MSAA or FXAA. Just becuase SSAA blurs a scene to some extent does not mean that FXAA in this implementation is not blurring the scene more or less than FXAA.

 

In this particular implementation SSAA does make everything brighter, the fog is brighter, some textures are brighter, the overall scene is brighter. Does that add sharpness to textures? No, but it may fool the eye in to thinking that.

 

Does the implementation of SSAA in this game have sharper textures than the FXAA option? It appears that it does. Whether from lightening the scene or by not blurring quite as much, its difficult to tell.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Lux

[AluminumHaste]

Wasn't being over dramatic man sorry.

FXAA does not work the same way as SSAA. FXAA used a type of edge detection to blur edges, whereas SSAA will blur the whole image.

 

FXAA is really fast and cheap, compared to MSAA. In some cases FX will look better but in most cases Multismapling will look better, just the way it works. It's complicated.

 

AA has nothing to do with texture sharpness, are you perhaps thinking of AF?

Although, I think I understand what you are getting at, with the textures looking brighter. So I tried SSAA low and high but aside from slightly blurrier edges, the overall brightness of the scene did not change.

[Lux]

To my understanding, FXAA is just a shader routine so it doesn't necessarily alias "just edges". That's why its fast on modern cards. They have shaders out the yang.

 

AA has nothing to do with texture sharpness eh? I beg to differ. It shouldn't if that's what you're getting at but it depends largely on the algorithm that is used to accomplish it.

 

And I do agree with you completely that MSAA is the bomb. The only reason FXAA has come about is because its inexpensive on modern hardware.

 

You can view the two screenshots I posted and clearly see the SSAA scene is brighter.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Lux

[AluminumHaste]

My apologies man, you were right the latest version of FXAA does smooth the whole image, no longer edge detecting.

[Lux]

I'm not trying be right. I just don't want to confuse anyone.

[AluminumHaste]

Ah I see the screenshots, weird mine doesn't look like that. I think I like the FXAA though, darker looks nicer.

[Lux]

Yeah I am partial to the darker scene as well. I'm going to give MSAA via the driver controls a shot and see how that looks.

 

Just got off work so I'm playing catch up.

[AluminumHaste]

How far are you into the game? I'm at 12 hours now and am only on Chapter 2 and just finished 10 side quests.

[Lux]

Well I checked things out yesterday eve and this morning but have only gotten to the prologue cut-scene where I was losing audio.

 

I hope to play this evening (in the dark) and make some progress though. We'll see... I have some shows to catch up on.

 

EDIT: Unfortunately the Nvidia CP AA options do nothing in-game Either Override or Enhance do nothing to the scene.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Lux

[Bikerdude]

FXAA does not work the same way as SSAA. FXAA used a type of edge detection to blur edges, whereas SSAA will blur the whole image.

Something is broken then because is I have SSAA on 'OFF' or 'LOW' the game is noticably blurred comepared to 'HIGH'

[Airship Ballet]

maybe i have a different definition of cash grab, but I think anything that involves intentionally taking the path of least resistance, work, or cost an fall under the blanket.

 

In Ungoliant police state, is no fun, is only perfect game that is releasings. Budget are not of important, is no room for compromisings. Releasings good of games for glory of fatherland. Not like democraticing pig-dog of other, them is only cash grab there, do not hearing other argumentings.

[Lux]

man bear pig dog you speak of? ...where is hees? Wees is bees hungrees!

[Byrgius]

I really don't like the new Thief feel. Time frame is about 100 or more years in the future, so I feel like I'm playing in 1900's - 1920's :S

They're now saying "shit" and "fuck" all the time which is really disturbing. No deep mystery in this game, everything's presented to you by cutscenes.

No classic ground material sound and light exposure which was one of the most original and main thing in previous games.

 

Overall I'd say it's a decent game, but not worthy of wearing a name 'Thief'.