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Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered: A deep dive into its enhancements

diffusionx

Gold Member
This remaster will sell millions of upgrades, why can you not see that? It's by a studio bought by Sony for their expertise in PC ports and remasters so they are doing exactly what they were bought to do.
millions? lol ok
(You also didn't actually answer the question either, who's waste of time is it? The only waste of time I see is for people like you who are always whinging about it)
It is the waste of time of every person who worked on it.
 
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midnightAI

Member
millions? lol ok

It is the waste of time of every person who worked on it.
Yes, millions, it's 10 quid, many think the first game is superior and the first sold 20+million, it's coming to PS5 (it was given away free there for a while so loads picked it up) and PC

If Sony, and Nixxes make money from this then how is it a waste of time?
If Nixxes and it's employees learn more about Decima how is that a waste of time?
Just because you don't like the game doesn't mean it's not incredibly popular
 
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Perrott

Member
Dunno. Are people actually asking about this remaster? I don't think it'll do much either, but I could be wrong.


Yeah you might be right with this. If all they did was change some values on an .ini file and had the interns do the QA then I guess no resource was actually wasted with this.

Still, I'd love to see other games get remasters, specially stuff that's stuck on older consoles like the Killzones, the Resistances or Gravity Rush. I think there's window for actual improvements to be made there.
Just because Nixxes worked on an Horizon: Zero Dawn remaster to support the once-planned debut of the Horizon Netflix show, as well as to provide a definitive PC version, that doesn't mean that there aren't other remaster/remake projects in the works at other studios from around the world.

Out of the series you've mentioned, at least Gravity Rush 2 seems to actually be getting a remaster for PS5 and PC imminently. So you can look forward to that.
 

Katatonic

Member
Holy crap, what a huge waste of time and resources.
mad-annoyed.gif
What were you looking forward to that got derailed by this?

Nixxes developing new techniques which are shared with other teams while making this classic the best it can be is how winning is done.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Yes, millions, it's 10 quid, many think the first game is superior and the first sold 20+million, it's coming to PS5 (it was given away free there for a while so loads picked it up) and PC

If Sony, and Nixxes make money from this then how is it a waste of time?
If Nixxes and it's employees learn more about Decima how is that a waste of time?
Just because you don't like the game doesn't mean it's not incredibly
Just because they bought the game x years ago doesnt mean they are so eager to slog through it again, especially if they already slogged through the second game a year or two ago. I'm not doing it.

It sounds like quite a bit of time and resources went into it so I'm actually not sure anymore it is going to make them money, but as Herman Hulst has proven he doesn't really seem to have his finger on the pulse of the gaming audience.
 
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HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
It’s a powerhog and overrated as fuck IMO.
Games with no RT.
Um, that last one is a demo... :pie_roffles:

In any event, none of those pictures change a thing. You can call it a waste, but that doesn't change what it does to an image. inFAMOUS, in particular, would look considerably better with it. There's just no other techniques out there that achieve what it achieves right now.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
Um, that last one is a demo... :pie_roffles:

In any event, none of those pictures change a thing. You can call it a waste, but that doesn't change what it does to an image inFAMOUS, in particular, would look considerably better with it. For it to be "overrated", there would have to be techniques out there that achieve what it achieves and there simply isn't.

Power is better spent elsewhere, it can easily be replicated without RT as has been seen a million times over.
 

midnightAI

Member
Just because they bought the game x years ago doesnt mean they are so eager to slog through it again, especially if they already slogged through the second game a year or two ago. I'm not doing it.

It sounds like quite a bit of time and resources went into it so I'm actually not sure anymore it is going to make them money, but as Herman Hulst has proven he doesn't really seem to have his finger on the pulse of the gaming audience.
Even if it's just 1/10th of the sales of the original it's still 2.4million

Also, they won't have spent that much money on this other than the redone mocap, but Guerrilla own the mocap studio so not a massive expense there either. Most of the assets are from FW with the main exception of some of Meridian is being remade/re-textured. Other than time by Nixxes to make it (and again, this isn't a bad thing as that's another studio with who will have massive experience with Decima, whether that's for more remasters (again, Killzone would be nice) or even to make their own game) it won't have cost a lot.

Nixxes was bought to do exactly this kind of thing so the main studios don't have to do the remasters.
 
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HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
Power is better spent elsewhere, it can easily be replicated without RT as has been seen a million times over.
Except that it can't. You can attempt it with stuff like Software Lumen, but a non-hardware raytraced image will not be (and cannot be) replicated with older techniques.
 
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nial

Member
Still, I'd love to see other games get remasters, specially stuff that's stuck on older consoles like the Killzones, the Resistances or Gravity Rush. I think there's window for actual improvements to be made there.
Both Gravity Rush games are playable on PS5, though?
Resistance: Retribution, Killzone Shadow Fall and Liberation as well, but I get what you mean there.
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Lumen is faster than Ray Tracing, it is a different technology.
Lumen is literally software ray tracing in Matrix Awakens lol. It can just be used without hardware acceleration. With it, the lighting behaves even more accurately.
 
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It’s a shame to see the mental gymnastics that try to defend this remaster as if it’s a good thing.
Theres nothing to defend here. Its a 10€ update. You either buy it or you don’t. There so nothing offensive about this release lmao. It’s nit like an entire studio isn’t making a game because this was made. Nixxes is literally for stuff like this.
 
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scydrex

Member
Lumen is literally ray tracing lol. It can just be used without hardware acceleration. With it, the lighting behaves even more accurately.
So it's the FSR of the RT? Neither FSR or Lumen uses hardware acceleration. FSR is worse than DLSS because of that. We are looking how better is PSSR compared to FSR.
 
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Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
So it's the FSR of the RT? Neither FSR or Lumen uses hardware acceleration. FSR is worse than DLSS because of that. We are looking how better is PSSR compared to FSR.
No, because Lumen also has hardware-accelerated ray tracing, but it has software as well for less accurate and intensive GI.
 

Zacfoldor

Member
It's such a shame. After the first game I had high hopes for the second. The first game wasn't great but it was pretty good and the graphics at the time were pretty incredible.

It was a time when BotW had just reinvented the Zelda formula and Uncharted 2 was still the example for sequels to aspire to.

Then the second game came out and they doubled down on all the bad stuff I hated and basically didn't evolve at all. It was just more Horizon but this time Aloy was uglier, meaner, fatter, and an insufferable girl boss mary sue and it just killed it for me. The graphics in part 2 are really good, that's the best thing I can say about Horizon.
 
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Vick

Member
In any event, none of those pictures change a thing. You can call it a waste, but that doesn't change what it does to an image.
Yes, but doesn't change what it does to performance either.

Would a "Remaster" of a game running at 4Kcb 60fps on regular PS5 allow RT features to be used on the same machine, on top of the work they already did, without sacrificing IQ and framerate?

I really don't think so. And what pictures don't show is the absolute mess of flicker, dithering and general artifacts RT GI and especially Path Tracing almost always bring due to unoptimal denoise/too low native RT/PT res. Metro Exodus can look absolutely abysmal at times, and same goes for Cyberpunk. Some of the things I've seen in CB2077 path traced are the stuff of nightmare.

There's no doubt these techniques have been offering for years especially on PC a great preview of what's to come in the future of real-time rendering, and in many occasions already delivered perfect/close to perfect results (basically always on PC only). But pretending it's always the best approach and when a software house doesn't go this route is because of laziness.. well that's just not very bright/informed thinking.

Except that it can't, and if were that easy, it would be done.
Almost every single RT effect can be perfectly emulated in rasterization in a way or another. But no, it's not easy at all, and requires ton of time and talent. Especially time.
I could post right this second hundreds of pictures/videos I have in my folder of rasterized scenes in games that would see no perceptible benefit whatsoever by RT/PT implementation of any kind, that would on the contrary only achieve to drastically drop resolution and tank performance.
 
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RavageX

Member
So they made the trees prettier eh? I suppose this is fine for someone that hasnt played it but there are 100s of games that would have made more sense to do this with. How about a next gen Warhawk? Dont even mess with the gameplay mechanics, just make it nice and pretty.
 

Calico345

Gold Member
And it makes Sony money, lots of it, it has thousands of employees working on it (across multiple titles/studios) who get a wage, and we as gamers get some amazing games out of it, your hate towards this game and Herman Hulst is blinding you.

This remaster will sell millions of upgrades, why can you not see that? It's by a studio bought by Sony for their expertise in PC ports and remasters so they are doing exactly what they were bought to do.

And I'm a shill for liking this game and wanting the upgrade? Millions of others who upgrade the game are shills? Seems like a poor argument to just call people shills if they don't agree with your assessment

(You also didn't actually answer the question either, who's waste of time is it? The only waste of time I see is for people like you who are always whinging about it)

You keep talking about how much money Sony is making off of this, and also defending their resource management for a remaster no one asked for of a game people don’t care about that Sony keeps pushing as if it’s their brand.

PROTIP: That sounds like shilling.

If you had just simply said, “I like the Horizon franchise so this remaster is for me,” I don’t think you’d have caught as much flak.
 

Loomy

Thinks Microaggressions are Real
So they made the trees prettier eh? I suppose this is fine for someone that hasnt played it but there are 100s of games that would have made more sense to do this with. How about a next gen Warhawk? Dont even mess with the gameplay mechanics, just make it nice and pretty.
While it would be cool to have Warhawk again, it would require a remake at this point.

Zero Dawn is a good candidate for a whole bunch of reasons.
  • There's a sequel that they can get assets from or use as a guide to updating existing assets
  • The game is new enough that it wouldn't require a Demon's Souls level of effort & budget to remake
  • They know there's a lot of value in the IP right now
  • Nixxes gets to test out processes and pipelines for remastering games, which adds more value to the studio since now they're not limited to porting.
 
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Calico345

Gold Member
Theres nothing to defend here. Its a 10€ update. You either buy it or you don’t. There so nothing offensive about this release lmao. It’s nit like an entire studio isn’t making a game because this was made. Nixxes is literally for stuff like this.

Or maybe they could have made a Bloodborne remaster that, you know, people are actually asking for. Instead we’re getting a remaster that no one asked for of a game no one cares about and that Sony seems to think is relevant to the brand so they keep pushing it on us. Odd to think that people want the resources used elsewhere, almost as if the customer has a desire to spend money on something that the big corpo is tone deaf to, as usual…
 

bitbydeath

Member
These two are using ray tracing though.
Different tech.
Lumen is a form of ray-tracing, albeit a more optimized, and flexible form of it to allow more widespread adoption, across different graphics architectures without the need to own a $1,000 GPU.
 

Vick

Member
Or maybe they could have made a Bloodborne remaster that, you know, people are actually asking for. Instead we’re getting a remaster that no one asked for of a game no one cares about and that Sony seems to think is relevant to the brand so they keep pushing it on us. Odd to think that people want the resources used elsewhere, almost as if the customer has a desire to spend money on something that the big corpo is tone deaf to, as usual…
I certainly agree there's probably tens of thousands of games in need of a Remaster more than Horizon, but the "game no one cares about that Sony seems to think is relevant to the brand" sold 25 million copies.

In the same way Horizon is using Decima RT.
RT is just being used as a catch-all term to describe a lighting system.
When you say "Decima RT" you mean the real time bounce we've seen in some Death Stranding 2 material?

Because Decima games especially would benefit immensely from ray tracing. Some indoor scenes in the Horizon games in particular could appear literal night and day.

I do agree that you can pull of some pretty neat results with raster (Last of Us Part II's reflections, for example, can look pretty darn to close to a raytraced effect)
I wasn't referring to cubemaps + SSR as seen in recent ND games though (planar mirrors aside). Those can look good but never perfect, and SSR especially is something I hate and reason I welcome RT reflections so gladily. I referred to planar reflections and similar techniques that have been used for decades.
Thanks for the kind words by the way.
 
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GHG

Member
Different tech.


It's still ray tracing.

What you mean when you say it's a "powerhog" is hardware accelerated RT. However we've seen recent examples (Silent Hill 2) where the difference between software and hardware accelerated RT is huge and more than worthy of the performance penalty.
 

Loomy

Thinks Microaggressions are Real
You keep talking about how much money Sony is making off of this, and also defending their resource management for a remaster no one asked for of a game people don’t care about that Sony keeps pushing as if it’s their brand.
Instead we’re getting a remaster that no one asked for of a game no one cares about and that Sony seems to think is relevant to the brand so they keep pushing it on us.

I don't know man. Zero Dawn sold almost over 7 million copies in its first year(over 20 million since release), and Forbidden West sold over 8 million copies in its first year. Seems like a lot of people care about this series.
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
In the same way Horizon is using Decima RT.
RT is just being used as a catch-all term to describe a lighting system.
There is a difference between software based and hardware based raytracing, the latter of which cannot be replicated with any other technique. You also obviously like raytraced images as you used multiple examples of it to state that it was a waste. ;)
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Different tech.


The first 6 words of your quote are "Lumen is a form of ray-tracing". What does it matter if it's a 'different tech' if it's achieving the same purpose of ray traced lighting/shadows etc.

Lumen is also a powerhug. It's not a cheap feature.
 
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midnightAI

Member
You keep talking about how much money Sony is making off of this, and also defending their resource management for a remaster no one asked for of a game people don’t care about that Sony keeps pushing as if it’s their brand.

PROTIP: That sounds like shilling.

If you had just simply said, “I like the Horizon franchise so this remaster is for me,” I don’t think you’d have caught as much flak.
I'd say the same even if I didn't like the game though. Its kinda obvious why this is a good move for all parties involved.(The sheer number sold originally tells us that)

I don't like Bloodborne (I know, blasphemy) but I can also see why a remaster (and especially PC version).would be well worth doing and I suspect they are already working on it at Bluepoint
 
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Calico345

Gold Member
I don't know man. Zero Dawn sold almost over 7 million copies in its first year(over 20 million since release), and Forbidden West sold over 8 million copies in its first year. Seems like a lot of people care about this series.

Fair enough on the sales numbers. I was not aware of them. But let’s be real: people bought it for graphics and robot dinosaurs. I still don’t believe it to be a series worth remastering even down the road, let alone at this time in its life. And people are still shills for talking up Sony profits and developer engine experience. It’s laughable modern gaming. Time and resources still went into remastering something that doesn’t need it when we could be getting other remasters or new games.
 

bitbydeath

Member
It's still ray tracing.

What you mean when you say it's a "powerhog" is hardware accelerated RT. However we've seen recent examples (Silent Hill 2) where the difference between software and hardware accelerated RT is huge and more than worthy of the performance penalty.
Software as well.
Lumen performs similar activities but it is coded differently which is why it runs better.
 

bitbydeath

Member
The first 6 words of your quote are "Lumen is a form of ray-tracing". What does it matter if it's a 'different tech' if it's achieving the same purpose of ray traced lighting/shadows etc.

Lumen is also a powerhug. It's not a cheap feature.
It’s improved but you’re right that it still uses too much.
 

midnightAI

Member
Fair enough on the sales numbers. I was not aware of them. But let’s be real: people bought it for graphics and robot dinosaurs. I still don’t believe it to be a series worth remastering even down the road, let alone at this time in its life. And people are still shills for talking up Sony profits and developer engine experience. It’s laughable modern gaming. Time and resources still went into remastering something that doesn’t need it when we could be getting other remasters or new games.
Why is it shilling if I say it aids developer experience? As a developer myself that is majorly important, ergo... Not 'a waste of time's which is what I was arguing against
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
Yes, but doesn't change what it does to performance either.

Would a "Remaster" of a game running at 4Kcb 60fps on regular PS5 allow RT features to be used on the same machine, on top of the work they already did, without sacrificing IQ and framerate?

I really don't think so. And what pictures don't show is the absolute mess of flicker, dithering and general artifacts RT GI and especially Path Tracing almost always bring due to unoptimal denoise/too low native RT/PT res. Metro Exodus can look absolutely abysmal at times, and same goes for Cyberpunk. Some of the things I've seen in CB2077 path traced are the stuff of nightmare.

There's no doubt these techniques have been offering for years especially on PC a great preview of what's to come in the future of real-time rendering, and in many occasions already delivered perfect/close to perfect results (basically always on PC only). But pretending it's always the best approach and when a software house doesn't go this route is because of laziness.. well that's just not very bright/informed thinking.


Almost every single RT effect can be perfectly emulated in rasterization in a way or another. But no, it's not easy at all, and requires ton of time and talent. Especially time.
I could post right this second hundreds of pictures/videos I have in my folder of rasterized scenes in games that would see no perceptible benefit whatsoever by RT/PT implementation of any kind, that would on the contrary only achieve to drastically drop resolution and tank performance.
Just realizing I didn't reply here. Usually appreciate what you post, so didn't mean to miss it!

I do agree that you can pull off some pretty neat results with raster (Last of Us Part II's reflections, for example, can look pretty darn to close to a raytraced effect), but I'm not sure it would be able to stand 1:1 on the same stage as a full raytraced image (or even just raytraced reflections). Particularly hardware-based. Software Lumen does a good job of an attempt (Silent Hill on PS5 looks damn good), but I do get what you're saying overall though. For example, some of Sony's in-house stuff can look ridiculous without all of those visual artifacts you mention (and absent raytracing as well). Is it a waste of resources? Probably up for debate.
 
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Det

Member
It looks like the haters have found yet another front in their lunatic holy war

Now the objective is to make it "common sense" on the internet that Sony's new IP, which sold much more than the Xbox SX will sell, is bad... it's not "all that"

In the minds of lunatics, the fact that they didn't attack Last of Us 1, Uncharted 1, God of War (2018) when they were released made these IPs widely recognized even on the internet.

"If we had gone to war against Uncharted 1, perhaps Sony wouldn't have consolidated this IP, now we have to attack HZD so Sony won't be able to establish this other IP"

"No, another great successful IP from Sony... I can't stand hearing about uncharted, god of war, last of us, spiderman... I need to attack HZD so it isn't recognized on the internet like other IPs"
 
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Or maybe they could have made a Bloodborne remaster that, you know, people are actually asking for. Instead we’re getting a remaster that no one asked for of a game no one cares about and that Sony seems to think is relevant to the brand so they keep pushing it on us. Odd to think that people want the resources used elsewhere, almost as if the customer has a desire to spend money on something that the big corpo is tone deaf to, as usual…
If you think Sony is done with Bloodborne think again. But it will be a remake like Demon's Souls tbh.
 
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