My middie Hyur looked like I hadn't slept in three days and had been crying. Puffy bags under the eyes. As long as the Fantasia has caffeine in it, I should be fine.
The graphical update made my male Xaela go from scary Yakuza boss to how my wife describes it, "Bad Boy with a soft side Daddy vibes" and she wont stop simping. It made her Raen a trillion times more adorable and protectable though so its only fair. Its insane how much better the update made our characters look.
This update gave me a huge glow up. I play as a dark skinned midlander, and I can attest to square giving dark complexions some love, and it really toned my muscles. I almost look hot for a middy.
Same~. Male miqo'te with dark skin. The lighting made his skintone more bouncy and organic as well as better muscle apparenteur. Also the lips and mouth corners became more expression-able. 😙👌👌 Ps. Our WoL's eyes slightly twitch and wiggle too~.👀👁
I ran Copperbell Mines yesterday and it was gorgeous. After doing that dungeon I've seriously considered doing another run through the story in New Game +. The shine on the rocks, especially in the wet areas, was phenomenal.
This is also partially because Copperbell got a huge rework not long ago, so they likely remade it with the graphics update in mind. I reckon Thousand Maws is the same, that place already locked amazing after the rework.
What surprised me is how subtle changes can make a huge difference with this update. My old Highlander was perfect, but he didn't feel right in Dawntrail and I couldn't figure out why. I realized the old eyes I chose were just slightly smaller in the update. The result: his face looked chunkier. I used my Fantasia, colored his eyes more of blue steel, sorted through the options and switched from #1 eyes to #6 eyes--suddenly, my boy looked like my boy again.
Like many others, I believe that the facial adjustments still need some work. But I have faith that the team will deliver. The environmental updates were a breath of fresh air, especially the work on the shadows (no more 10 fps shadow movement)!
I loved the upgrades. I know they did say that it's gonna take them some time to upgrade literally everything and they mention some things take priority over others, but I am kinda disappointed when I found out that apparently the Exarch isn't one of that priority list considering that 1) he's an important MSQ character which they mentioned would be high in priority, 2) he has crystalline textures all over his body that would look just stunning if it matches the update the aetheryte crystals get. Heck when I checked the cutscenes with him in it, his staff actually got an update and not a single pixel on him did
My elezen man’s face changed and some small details are off. The previously flat eyebrows have an arch now. It seems insignificant but it really alters his look and makes him look expressive. The old brows gave him a very fae and unaffected look. Overall I’m satisfied with the update but I wish we could have the old brow option.
I started the game about a week ago. I log out in Ul'dan and yesterday when I log in I was like "Oh something is different... The game suddenly doesn't look so bad..." 😆 So I found your video. Thank you for comparsion. 😊
I am very attached to my female midlander and honestly I was a bit sad after I logged in the first day of early access. While before the update she looked youthful but not childish, now she looks like she is 40 or smth. She has these weird shadows close to the bridge of her nose (between the corners of the eyes and the nose) and the bags under the eyes in 60% of lighting types is depressing. In tavern lighting she looks sweet though. I used the fantasia to alter her jaw and make her eyes brighter, but I don't want to change her race and face (because the other midlander faces are absolutely not my cup of tea) The texture update is very pleasing, on the other hand
The update completely changed my hyur... Like the character I've been playing for years is no longer the same person, and I am trying to get used to it... Cuz I wanna get through MSQ with the girl whose been doing all the work. They changed her eyes completely, and nerfed her chin hard. I'd argue the change made her prettier, but it's still weird. (Midlander face 3 if anyone is curious)
Everyone's eyes are more marble-like now, with reflections and stuff. Before, the eye-shine was just painted on and wouldnt move if you turned your head.
@@Zadamanim it's more than just the shine. Her eyes are smaller and more "droopy" and it gives her a completely different energy. I have a before and after picture, but I sadly cant post in on UA-cam
The exact same thing happened to my hyur, with face 1. She was everything to me and now I can't even stand to look at her. I'm happy for the people who like their characters post-update, but it's also hard to not feel alone and left out seeing everybody talk about how great it is, meanwhile people like us are losing motivation to even play the game.
I was blown away absolutely by the Aetheryte crystals. So beautiful. You can see the water like Aether flow within them now. The metallic parts of the weapons look amazing. Those flowers looked amazing.
They should be the same. If I'm not wrong, they did an interview a few months ago and were talking about the update and mentioned the grapes. They said that the overall geometry of their environment will stay the same, so the angular grapes stay the same
I wasn't all that excited about the graphics update from the benchmark. It looked nice, but not OMG this is a HUGE difference to me. Then I saw a cutscene very early in DT where the sun was shining on my Au Ra through a window, and her horn was glowing from the sun shining through it. That was my "A Ha" moment for this update. That and I love how her umbral eye rings glow at night now.
Type "BOB ROSS????" into wrong chat. Man disappears. Pan camera to angry face... Genius. Diamond encrusted golden morsel of comedy you gave us at 8:40ish.
Update messed up my character's face, probably gonna fanta. The environment textures /lighting/ shadow updates are really nice. However, i feel like there is something wrong with the anti aliasing. Seems to be more jagged edges than before. Also, i can't understand how some armor pieces that got texture updates have low and high res textures on the same piece of armor. it makes the low res texture part stick out like a sore thumb. looks so bad.
I am sooo happy with my wol and just all the beautiful details and the graphics overall 😭♡ it really hits different when you always need to look on the floor and every single detail bc everything just looks so realistic and beyond amazing aaah !!
The fsr slider means. At 100, it's off. you are running at native res. At 99, fsr will kick in. you are running at 99% resolution and upscaled with fsr 1.0. which is notorious for oversharpening until you get halos around the edges. I suggest leaving it at 100 and off. The game looks softer because of the anti aliasing, TSCMAA, which is temporally based AA and usually blur everything. The new grass, metallic highlights and wet reflection shimmers a lot now, so there is no choice but to turn AA on. You can turn off camera jitter for slightly less blur. However, TSCMAA is tuned for ffxiv, the blurryness is not overly done like other TAA. The look has grown on me. Looks filmic now. I can't recommend turning off grass, the ground texture has a nasty repetitive pattern. keep at normal or high. Turning of DLSS means you will have TSCMAA + camera jitter on by default. No, DLSS doesn't upsample to AA your game. Not by default. As for characters, running around town, miqote, aura, looks dead inside. lalafell highest quality.
Female au ra face 4 lost their soul with this update, I liked how they had sharp eyes in endwalker, now they just have dead fish eyes in the portraits, you can barely see the limbal ring in it. When they said that au ras would be able to keep their "dead inside" look, I didn't expect them to force it on every au ra.
my husband's catboy was massacred. He fantasia-ed to a viera and has been really depressed about it. My mooncat looks very different too and its kind of upsetting to look at her. they totally messed up mooncat face 4 v_v I’ve been a mooncat on on my main the entire time, and I don’t want to switch… v_v just sad
Hm really? I love my face 4 moon cat! Sorry to hear ); I did make a sun cat with face 3 for my alt and it's gorgeous. Maybe..switch to a sun kitty? The eyes are amazing!
agreed. I was so proud of my Mooncat, she was perfect and i often got compliments for she looked. Not only my glamour, but how her face and color pallete were beautiful. But after DW the colors changed, her hair color is way more lighter andi have no other option to get the old hair color and her face looks odd, as well as most of the facial expression emotes. I am disappointed and miss my old Mooncat. On the contrarary, my alt character, a female Au Ra with wich i was not really satisfied became now somehow prettier. And the changed the lighting which messes with with my house as the object do not cast the same shadows and now i have to change it. (i think the enviroment looks great though)
@@foxdavion6865 Well, chocobos should lean a bit. They should also ruffle their wings for balance. But as it is now, yeah, way too much lean on the birds on the ground.
My au'ra's face looks very off, I've seen a lot of my friends' characters just look absolutely phenomenal without any fantasia since the update, and my au'ra now has a knife blade for a nose bridge.. I've compared before and after, it was not this bad previously.
As a dark Elezen duskwight I’m so happy. My boy was always cute but capturing him because of the lighting was so hard! The before/after of him is incredible. Not only that but my WoL wears glasses… and now I can have hats and glasses. I’m so happy!
To enjoy the graphical updates more, and to see what's what, I choose to WALK most of the time. Seeing the texture on the ground, on the grasses, on the wall, on everything, the best way is to do just that... when you pass by so fast, you can hardly see anything in detail. for me who have played since ShB, the changes are very visible to me, and like you, Avy, I cant help but feeling excited about it.
The biggest change I noticed for my mooncat was that the irises are particularly well-defined and have little lines in them. Also, her fangs are thankfully not as short as I was fearing.
You can fantasia all you want but that won't help if you had slanted eye as a lala. none of the eyes look like the ones i had before and all of the faces are fatter. just my take on Lala.
I don't think my Rava Viera has changed much, except... with the graphics update some hair styles, especially those with "long straight lines" look like paint on the head. It's hard to explain but those don't look natural, but like "one solid block". And the mount tili feels... odd...
Omgg i didnt know about the graphic update but i did notice!! Specially the mount i was like dam that a crispy movement also the skin. Also for my chara she looks soo emotionless:(( i wanna change her so bad
In general i like the graphics update, but there is room for improvement. The mount tilting is great when flying, but when running on ground it seems weird when e.g. a horse tilts that much. The resolution of self shadows is still really really low. For example look at the shadows your hair casts on yourself, it's extremely pixelated. And for female characters, the breasts can still cast really strange shadows. Also, that metals and such look so much better probably isn't due to upgrades to textures, but a result of the changes in the lighting system, how the light interacts with metal surfaces.
The mounts leaning/rolling when turning applies on the ground as well as in the air. Regarding my character, I've noticed something odd with the update: limbal rings sometimes appear dark, and sometimes appear to be practically glowing. I don't know yet if the difference is determined by the angle the light hits them at or what, but I've seen both effects in and out of cutscenes. Edit: It's definitely lighting.
Most of my characters came through alright but my Duskwight Elezen got hit a bit hard. He went from being very dark skinned to be almost weirdly glowing blue. xD I have no idea what went wrong there. I'm working on fixing him.
I had a small weird look with my miqo'te but now with each cutscene I look on amazement haha it vastly made my WoL look much better. Currently about halfway through shadowbringers so gots a LOT to look forward to besides msq now haha
I love the new graphics! All we need now are: facial hair choices, and good Highlander Male Eyebrow options I have a bushy beard and bushy eyebrows and haven't yet been able to make an avatar that looks like me.
I love the update except for the fact that I have the only female Miqo'te face bugged Moon Tribe face 4 has eyebrow color issues... I look super dumb, like my head is empty because my eyebrows does not match my hair and they blend with my skin - making me look eyebrowless... Besides that, my only other issue are facial expressions : they look weird. I had to change my portraits because the mouth is odd now, the corners looks puffy as if I was carrying food in my cheeks like a hamster or something.
I dont like my character and some things are looking grainy to me. Haven’t figured out what setting to change. Love the areas though - old a new, instanced and open world - all look amazing. Overall what a great improvement.
Not a big fan of what they did to midlander ladies to be honest. My character looks different in a way that completely shifted her vibe. I tried to make her look more like herself but it's impossible with the features we currently have. Also, very disappointed that we got 2 new hairstyles and both are short. :
The aetherytes do look amazing. The over all end result for my Viera was good. First benchmark - not as good. I personally still do not care for the haze over the game or the blur, gives it almost washed out look and once i see something else i can't go back to it, feels like i gotta clear my glasses or get new ones haha. Some soft blurring of shadow edges is fine but I want to see textures pop, and i want light sources to make sense and shadows to be shadowed, and night time to feel like night time. But this is what Reshade is for and i've already created a very basic set up that clears up the haze and blurriness while making the shadows more realistic, and give the color a bit more pop. - No one ask me for it, my computer and monitor has different settings than everyone else, so it wont be the same for you :D And like Miss Avycatte says, its personal preference. I love the mount tilt, though i do feel like i'm drunk flying at times. For many years our FC house has had the same carbuncle themed facade. Finally the leader said to change it to one of the new ones, she cant stand seeing her upgraded character next to that low res house haha
My aura, hyur, elezen were ruined by this update tbh. Miqo survived it but they changed actual eyebrow shape on her and made her angry. Luckily found viera i could play on which looks better than chars i had before, female viera got the best rework lol
Thank you so much for the comparisons. It's wild how subtle changes can improve how an area or a character looks so much. The point where i realized the update did a lot of work was when I ran the Crystal Tower raids on an alt and saw Syrcus Tower. The crystals, the gold, and the lighting combined made me actually catch my breath for a moment. I was like "oh... oh, the Allagans really did have something going here with the Crystal Tower's design" lol
My catgirl got butchered like crazy with the updated ngl. Horrible feeling to ditch a character I've attached myself to for years, I'm a fem Raen now since au'ras got a really pretty treatment in the eyes.
@@GameGod77 I used face 2 from miqo'te which is an ugly face by default, but with the eyeshape 6 for me It made it the most beautiful catgirl face. None of the other options are valid therefore there is no option for me and I was not going to use a free fantasia to change some minuscule details. When I said I'm a fem Raen it meant that I used the free fantasia to become au'ra.
Hint for PC users on improving your graphics: 1. For Resolution, switch to AMD FSR and set the resolution scale's slider to 99 (not 100), to remove blur issues. 2. For anti-aliasing, select TSCMAA + Camera Jitter Edit: Never mind, AvyCatte, you covered it about 5 min in ^_^
"If you dont like the how oyur character looks with the grphical update, here is a quest that gives you a fantasia." Yes. Feels awesome to change my character after thousands of hours because they messed up with em. Great.
My WoL (a lala) looked a little off when I got in the game for the first time. Like, just looking at her standing there, she looked... strange. Like, something felt wrong. But when I started seeing her moving around and doing stuff more, especially in cutscenes, it started to grow on me. This was further helped by a trip to the Aesthetician to update the colors on the hair and makeup. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, and I feel like I'm only going to like it more with time. I guess the thing that's throwing me is how much of a difference lighting makes now. Like, the ambient light levels make a MUCH bigger difference, in terms of color perception and saturation. The new system is much more responsive and dynamic, which feels unusual at first when you're used to very flat static colors. But I'll get used to it. I'm too enamored with ALL THE INCREASED DETAILS NOW. Like holy crap everything looks so sharp and crisp!
My female Mi´qote seems to have bigger eyes/irises than before. The texture on clothes are really amazing. But I noticed that in crystarium enemies pop up in the distance instead of slowly growing larger when nearing them. Playing on PS5,
Looking at old screenshots, you are right. I did use a fantasia because i wanted to make some minor adjustments to my female Mi'qote, like changing the eye color and voice (or the god while i was at it). While I was doing that I didn't like how big the irises were, so I changed that from large to small. It never bothered me before, but I think you are right. I'm looking at old screenshots now and i'm pretty sure the irises there are smaller than they were in the character editor, seems like they were pretty close to what they are now.
I noticed while staring at someones face upclose, that the eyes moved slightly, like they were reading something off in the distance. These guys went deep into it.
Before update my GPU: *sleep* After update my GPU: *The Fans are Active!* In all seriousness, these are the drastic changes which happen simply from adding parallax mapping (making 2D surfaces look 3D), global illumination, double the polygon count on character models, double the texture resolution and also add on top of that AI calculated texture scaling (FSR/DLSS). - If you have a powerful Multicore CPU like an AMD Ryzen 7 or 12th to 14th gen i7/i9 Processor, all of which have 20+ cores, use FSR instead if you're using an Nvidia card, it increases your framerate since the game engine only uses 1 core, freeing up your CPU to handle FSR on the other cores if you're not multitasking, also DLSS implementation is bugged.
How is DLSS bugged? Usually FSR looks terrible in any game I've ever tested it in, I only flicked it on for a sec on here and didn't notice a diff between fsr and dlss but it was only a min, except framerate went up like 10fps with fsr.
@@AkaTheJoker1 The way it is implemented is bugged, if you have a powerful GPU or you don't play on 4K you wouldn't notice. If you have DLSS on always and set it to 100% with fps limiter disabled (not synced to monitor), the engine will prioritize framerate, so DLSS will do weird things like downscale 4K textures till they are 360p smudges during cutscenes, repeat old textures, do odd things in the old pre-Shadowbringers zones. In other words, it is incorrectly implemented. Also, DLSS uses the Graphics Hard hardware to run, which again impacts fps, since the game engine itself doesn't use much of the CPU, better to use software upscaling with FSR for the time being. I am aware DLSS is superior; Also most people forget to set DLSS to only activate on low FPS too. It is mostly there to upscale the old ARR,HW and Stormblood textures for 4K, because they were added back when 1080p was the norm and haven't been updated. If your fps is synced to your monitor refresh it takes pressure off the GPU and CPU, either 75fps or 144fps, In that situation DLSS "bugs" don't occur.
@foxdavion6865 Ahhh okay thanks. Yeah I wasn't sure if I should switch to FSR bc of this, especially bc I heard good things about the TSMCC, AA or whatev it's called before this came out. I have a new 7700x but only have a 3060ti with it, so I've been running it at 1440p and not 4k.
@@AkaTheJoker1 Yeah I wouldn't *dare* use DLSS on a 3060TI, I mean if it was a 3070 or later, it's fine. But yeah as of right now it even causes a 4090 to drop from 500fps down to 120 when active at 100%. Like I said, the developers haven't implemented it correctly. It isn't their fault, it is a 10 year old game engine and NVidia is terrible at explaining their software to developers, for example I have a Canadian friend who used to work for bE (Behaviour Interactive) and he described NVidia PhysX as "A Nightmare to deal with" and "Even our Graphics Programmer struggled" Now, DLSS isn't PhysX, but it is I'd imagine just as obtuse because NVidia don't document their code because their higher ups are worse than Adobe - they make more money from developers than they do from us card buyers, ultra protective of their source code. FSR - devs are allowed to tweak it, DLSS - NVidia wants 100% control over it.
Scale 100 -> 99 reason. Some games using FSR don't enable Contrast Adaptive Sharpening unless the image is scaled (below 100). It's disappointing since CAS makes images look much better even at 100 scale. They should allow it to be enabled outside of the scaling. Although most driver software can enable it also.
3:44 I beg to differ on the reflections. There are no more glossy reflections on wood flooring. You can see it in your comparison, where in the old video you see a light reflected on the wood floor, and in the new version it’s just flat with barely a sheen. This is one thing I don’t like, but the rest is great. EDIT: You can see it at 7:55 as well. Look at the reflections on the floor on the left. I miss that a lot.
I’m gonna be real… I had no idea there was a graphical update. It’s been years since I’ve played, but at no point have I said “oh the graphics look better”. Crazy
I love your video, you can really see the differences of the textures ^^ I just recently started playin FF XIV and found all the helpful videos on your channel. Please keep up the great work!
Old: Flat shading with grey blacks, bright popping colors and very comic book-esque. Suited 2000s era MMOs to compete with WoW but very outdated now. New: Deep shadows, much more 3D depth. Darker colors, more realistic. That metal and crystal upgrade is huge though and the new eyes are so good.
I hate my Au’ra face after update, but thanks god they give us free Fantasia. I tweak it a little and somehow get my old Au’ra face from using other parts of her face. I love her now!
If you look at the Dawntrail graphics with the water on rivers, lakes and the sea, they look like the same graphics of the water from the 1.0 ffxiv version.
My character looked good both before and after the update, except for the eyes. The lower eye lid is too thick. I didn't like looking at her eyes after the update - they just looked wrong. I switched to an Au Ra (because my Viera couldn't show most headwear), and that one looks ok. Just a few tweaks from my saved character data from before. The eyes still aren't perfect, but not as bad (or at least not as noticeable) as before.
On the FSR thing: 99 Percent means that FSR upscaling and AMD CAS is actually turned on. At 100 upscaling is off. Or in other words: Your GPU is rendering at "XY percent of your set resolution and upscaling it to your set resolution". But you should use DLSS anyway if you have Nvidia GPU since it looks A LOT better. The difference especially in areas like foliage is INSANE.
Characters have really bad dark circles under their eyes. It does look indeed as our WOL had no chance to sleep since we met the scions. I hope they fix this lighting because it's horrible. My male Viera looks so fuckin done with his life 😢 Other than that I do love the graphics update but it's an extreme change to my dark skinned Viera face that will take some time to get used to ngl
Without even watching the video, I can honestly say the game looks like the right side of the thumbnail. It's NEVER looked like the lest side in the least bit.
Delighted with how my Au'ra looks! She's grown up so much ❤ Love the graphics update so far - anytime I think that it was underwhelming, I find something that makes me say "Damn, I can't remember this game ever looking this good!" Love how every basic NPC now looks totally on point 👌 Hoping for more improvements down the line. I love going back to old dungeons and seeing the differences :)
The new graphics engine and lighting system is AMAZING, I am loving it so far. One thing I miss about the old graphics though, is this weird trick I used to do with portraits. I would turn the ambient lighting all the way off, and crank directional lighting to max -- if you angle the light in just the right way, you could simulate an unshaded, flat colour look, sort of like they were a 2D painting. It doesn't seem to be possible with the new engine, though. Sad!
I had a great time seeing all sorts of new graphic updates, even in the oldest maps due to the lighting and universal material/texture changes. Thanks for the video! This is very handy for my friends that have difficulty noticing the changes.
It would look better if they fixed FSR and DLSS. Of course the update looks good, but I have legitimately struggled trying to find the right look I like lol
metal bits and the lighting are the two places where i see the most improvement. its like you said, everything looks a lot better but it still feels like FFXIV we know and love. great video Avy
Great Video but uploading in 1080P on UA-cam is suicide to the video quality. If you can't record in a higher resolution, upscale your videos to 1440P or 4K before you upload and UA-cam will grant you a WAY HIGHER bitrate.
Finaly, someone that actually did a good comparison video. Im curious to see more areas from a realm reborn, since those would be the biggest visual changes. Especially since the said the graphical update will start from the outside in, starting woth A realm reborn and dawntrail.
I didn't spend much time as male Elezen I found I had a fantasia in my chocobo bags and used it to become female Hrothgar. Stumbled on the quest for the free fantasia in Ul'dah later in the day while doing stuff in the markets so I can change race again when I feel like it without spending real world money on one.
I was already obsessed with my femRoe, but the update made me even MORE obsessed with her she is just gorgeous ^w^ i've loved noticing all the small details and how something like lighting and reshading has drastically improved how things looked. And my girl has darker grey skin as well and she looks so good~ also the INFAMOUS PRAETORIUM SCENE NO LONGER LOOKS AWFUL LOL I was shocked
The lines look worse on my PlayStation. There is no anti aliasing at all and when you look at line work close up, the lines look jagged. It's terrible. They need to fix it soon because if I was a new player I would not be impressed. Some of those graphics settings you show are not available to console.
I feel u. And honestly I've been considering getting a PC cause we are missing out on so much from so many games graphically. I saw a streamer that had a 1440p res and it looks so much better then my ps5 😢
the @235 comparison, look at the background. That looks amazing. That's the changes I was more interest in. I've played a little so far, but the ques kept me away so Elden Ring it was most of the weekend lol.
If you have an Nvidia card, you could swap to dlss, then use the Nvidia overlay to apply sharpness. You can even adjust the sharpness to your liking. I personally have mine set to 45%
I personnally loved these changes, I already noticed significant improvements on my character when I logged in, especially the hair texture being smoother and more polished, as well as lighting (knowing that I'm not running on full high settings), and honestly my character looked so good that I didn't want to use fantasia (well... I used it to create another appearance and race lol). For the environment, the changes are subtile but more stunning and lively, the aetherite (crystals and metals in general) being the most noticeable change compared to the rest.
My middie Hyur looked like I hadn't slept in three days and had been crying. Puffy bags under the eyes. As long as the Fantasia has caffeine in it, I should be fine.
My Catboy got bags under their eyes and looks like they've not slept in days.
And also more mature for some reason.
It's top tier.
The graphical update made my male Xaela go from scary Yakuza boss to how my wife describes it, "Bad Boy with a soft side Daddy vibes" and she wont stop simping. It made her Raen a trillion times more adorable and protectable though so its only fair.
Its insane how much better the update made our characters look.
that is one of the gayest things I've ever read BaD bOy WiTh A sOfT sIdE stfu
are we watching the same video??
This update gave me a huge glow up. I play as a dark skinned midlander, and I can attest to square giving dark complexions some love, and it really toned my muscles. I almost look hot for a middy.
Same~.
Male miqo'te with dark skin.
The lighting made his skintone more bouncy and organic as well as better muscle apparenteur.
Also the lips and mouth corners became more expression-able.
😙👌👌
Ps. Our WoL's eyes slightly twitch and wiggle too~.👀👁
Same ! I can finally see my back character 🤣
@@Glacier_Noir wth
@@scolamiero28 ?
I ran Copperbell Mines yesterday and it was gorgeous. After doing that dungeon I've seriously considered doing another run through the story in New Game +. The shine on the rocks, especially in the wet areas, was phenomenal.
I went through Halatali, and I couldn't believe how good it looks now! The new lighting system is working wonders in all sorts of areas.
This is also partially because Copperbell got a huge rework not long ago, so they likely remade it with the graphics update in mind. I reckon Thousand Maws is the same, that place already locked amazing after the rework.
now time to find out how Lakshmi looks-
What surprised me is how subtle changes can make a huge difference with this update. My old Highlander was perfect, but he didn't feel right in Dawntrail and I couldn't figure out why.
I realized the old eyes I chose were just slightly smaller in the update. The result: his face looked chunkier.
I used my Fantasia, colored his eyes more of blue steel, sorted through the options and switched from #1 eyes to #6 eyes--suddenly, my boy looked like my boy again.
Like many others, I believe that the facial adjustments still need some work. But I have faith that the team will deliver. The environmental updates were a breath of fresh air, especially the work on the shadows (no more 10 fps shadow movement)!
I loved the upgrades. I know they did say that it's gonna take them some time to upgrade literally everything and they mention some things take priority over others, but I am kinda disappointed when I found out that apparently the Exarch isn't one of that priority list considering that 1) he's an important MSQ character which they mentioned would be high in priority, 2) he has crystalline textures all over his body that would look just stunning if it matches the update the aetheryte crystals get. Heck when I checked the cutscenes with him in it, his staff actually got an update and not a single pixel on him did
That setting switch from 100-->99 makes a surprisingly large difference! tysm
Yes, it's actually bonkers
it looks terrible and costs performance
@@HikingFeral Looks great and I'm playing at 144fps anyway.
@@HikingFeral low quality bait
@@HikingFerallooks amazing and my rig runs it like it’s MS Paint. Low-effort troll detected.
The first thing i noticed was now my avatar has eye bags.
Eye bags perhaps were already there at least since Shb/ew, but in DT more visible
I love how my lala looks now! The small shine added to their eyes is so nice looking.
My elezen man’s face changed and some small details are off. The previously flat eyebrows have an arch now. It seems insignificant but it really alters his look and makes him look expressive. The old brows gave him a very fae and unaffected look. Overall I’m satisfied with the update but I wish we could have the old brow option.
I started the game about a week ago.
I log out in Ul'dan and yesterday when I log in I was like "Oh something is different... The game suddenly doesn't look so bad..." 😆 So I found your video. Thank you for comparsion. 😊
As soon i loged in It was raining in Limsa. I was like holy crap the cobble stones when it rains was freaking pleasing to see!
I am very attached to my female midlander and honestly I was a bit sad after I logged in the first day of early access. While before the update she looked youthful but not childish, now she looks like she is 40 or smth. She has these weird shadows close to the bridge of her nose (between the corners of the eyes and the nose) and the bags under the eyes in 60% of lighting types is depressing. In tavern lighting she looks sweet though. I used the fantasia to alter her jaw and make her eyes brighter, but I don't want to change her race and face (because the other midlander faces are absolutely not my cup of tea)
The texture update is very pleasing, on the other hand
Oh my god the graphics change is so noticeable, way better than silent hill 2 remake!
The update completely changed my hyur... Like the character I've been playing for years is no longer the same person, and I am trying to get used to it... Cuz I wanna get through MSQ with the girl whose been doing all the work.
They changed her eyes completely, and nerfed her chin hard. I'd argue the change made her prettier, but it's still weird. (Midlander face 3 if anyone is curious)
Everyone's eyes are more marble-like now, with reflections and stuff. Before, the eye-shine was just painted on and wouldnt move if you turned your head.
Hyurs got the worst of it. My midlander was ruined so I went catgirl lol.
@@dains6623 i was thinking of going miqote, but they changed my backup's eyes so her energy went from a brat to a trophy wife
@@Zadamanim it's more than just the shine. Her eyes are smaller and more "droopy" and it gives her a completely different energy. I have a before and after picture, but I sadly cant post in on UA-cam
The exact same thing happened to my hyur, with face 1. She was everything to me and now I can't even stand to look at her. I'm happy for the people who like their characters post-update, but it's also hard to not feel alone and left out seeing everybody talk about how great it is, meanwhile people like us are losing motivation to even play the game.
I was blown away absolutely by the Aetheryte crystals. So beautiful. You can see the water like Aether flow within them now. The metallic parts of the weapons look amazing. Those flowers looked amazing.
But the real question is: how do the grapes in labyrinthos look has anyone checked those out yet?! 😬
I can report, they have not changed, or if they did it's unnoticeable
They should be the same. If I'm not wrong, they did an interview a few months ago and were talking about the update and mentioned the grapes. They said that the overall geometry of their environment will stay the same, so the angular grapes stay the same
I hope they don't change the grapes 😂 they prob will but the laughs and memories 😂.
Wait! We're looking at _fruit?_ 🍇
I wasn't all that excited about the graphics update from the benchmark. It looked nice, but not OMG this is a HUGE difference to me.
Then I saw a cutscene very early in DT where the sun was shining on my Au Ra through a window, and her horn was glowing from the sun shining through it. That was my "A Ha" moment for this update. That and I love how her umbral eye rings glow at night now.
Type "BOB ROSS????" into wrong chat. Man disappears. Pan camera to angry face...
Genius. Diamond encrusted golden morsel of comedy you gave us at 8:40ish.
Update messed up my character's face, probably gonna fanta. The environment textures /lighting/ shadow updates are really nice. However, i feel like there is something wrong with the anti aliasing. Seems to be more jagged edges than before. Also, i can't understand how some armor pieces that got texture updates have low and high res textures on the same piece of armor. it makes the low res texture part stick out like a sore thumb. looks so bad.
I am sooo happy with my wol and just all the beautiful details and the graphics overall 😭♡
it really hits different when you always need to look on the floor and every single detail bc everything just looks so realistic and beyond amazing aaah !!
The fsr slider means.
At 100, it's off. you are running at native res.
At 99, fsr will kick in. you are running at 99% resolution and upscaled with fsr 1.0. which is notorious for oversharpening until you get halos around the edges.
I suggest leaving it at 100 and off.
The game looks softer because of the anti aliasing, TSCMAA, which is temporally based AA and usually blur everything. The new grass, metallic highlights and wet reflection shimmers a lot now, so there is no choice but to turn AA on. You can turn off camera jitter for slightly
less blur.
However, TSCMAA is tuned for ffxiv, the blurryness is not overly done like other TAA. The look has grown on me. Looks filmic now.
I can't recommend turning off grass, the ground texture has a nasty repetitive pattern. keep at normal or high.
Turning of DLSS means you will have TSCMAA + camera jitter on by default. No, DLSS doesn't upsample to AA your game. Not by default.
As for characters, running around town, miqote, aura, looks dead inside.
lalafell highest quality.
Well said
Female au ra face 4 lost their soul with this update, I liked how they had sharp eyes in endwalker, now they just have dead fish eyes in the portraits, you can barely see the limbal ring in it. When they said that au ras would be able to keep their "dead inside" look, I didn't expect them to force it on every au ra.
I feel mine went through the update fine. Maybe just unlucky?
I also have fem Au Ra (Xaela) and she looks so fine, she has white limbal rings and it's still catching
my husband's catboy was massacred. He fantasia-ed to a viera and has been really depressed about it. My mooncat looks very different too and its kind of upsetting to look at her. they totally messed up mooncat face 4 v_v I’ve been a mooncat on on my main the entire time, and I don’t want to switch… v_v just sad
I'm to hear that you and your husband are going through this. I'd feel the same if I were in your shoes
Hm really? I love my face 4 moon cat! Sorry to hear ); I did make a sun cat with face 3 for my alt and it's gorgeous. Maybe..switch to a sun kitty? The eyes are amazing!
agreed. I was so proud of my Mooncat, she was perfect and i often got compliments for she looked. Not only my glamour, but how her face and color pallete were beautiful. But after DW the colors changed, her hair color is way more lighter andi have no other option to get the old hair color and her face looks odd, as well as most of the facial expression emotes. I am disappointed and miss my old Mooncat. On the contrarary, my alt character, a female Au Ra with wich i was not really satisfied became now somehow prettier. And the changed the lighting which messes with with my house as the object do not cast the same shadows and now i have to change it. (i think the enviroment looks great though)
This is such a rude comment
It feels like they smoothed out the fem roe faces. Less jagged edges.
But the mount leaning looks ridiculous when you're on the ground.
the leaning is fine when it's a bike. But if it is a 4 legged cat or monster, they shouldn't lean and chocobos shouldn't lean at all.
@@foxdavion6865 Well, chocobos should lean a bit. They should also ruffle their wings for balance. But as it is now, yeah, way too much lean on the birds on the ground.
@@foxdavion6865it looks amazing on clouds bike
The leaning looks so strange, maybe ill get used to it.
Yeah, for flying mounts leaning is perfect, but when it comes to grounded ones it's kind of hit and miss, depends on a mount.
Wow, it finally looks better than the 1.0 graphics.
2:43 “Big cat lady
My au'ra's face looks very off, I've seen a lot of my friends' characters just look absolutely phenomenal without any fantasia since the update, and my au'ra now has a knife blade for a nose bridge.. I've compared before and after, it was not this bad previously.
As a dark Elezen duskwight I’m so happy. My boy was always cute but capturing him because of the lighting was so hard! The before/after of him is incredible. Not only that but my WoL wears glasses… and now I can have hats and glasses. I’m so happy!
To enjoy the graphical updates more, and to see what's what, I choose to WALK most of the time. Seeing the texture on the ground, on the grasses, on the wall, on everything, the best way is to do just that... when you pass by so fast, you can hardly see anything in detail.
for me who have played since ShB, the changes are very visible to me, and like you, Avy, I cant help but feeling excited about it.
The biggest change I noticed for my mooncat was that the irises are particularly well-defined and have little lines in them. Also, her fangs are thankfully not as short as I was fearing.
You can fantasia all you want but that won't help if you had slanted eye as a lala. none of the eyes look like the ones i had before and all of the faces are fatter. just my take on Lala.
I don't think my Rava Viera has changed much, except... with the graphics update some hair styles, especially those with "long straight lines" look like paint on the head. It's hard to explain but those don't look natural, but like "one solid block".
And the mount tili feels... odd...
Perhaps because it's smoother and polished?
Omgg i didnt know about the graphic update but i did notice!! Specially the mount i was like dam that a crispy movement also the skin. Also for my chara she looks soo emotionless:(( i wanna change her so bad
i started about a month ago - didn't really know about the update before looking through youtube - i really love the graphics
In general i like the graphics update, but there is room for improvement.
The mount tilting is great when flying, but when running on ground it seems weird when e.g. a horse tilts that much.
The resolution of self shadows is still really really low. For example look at the shadows your hair casts on yourself, it's extremely pixelated. And for female characters, the breasts can still cast really strange shadows.
Also, that metals and such look so much better probably isn't due to upgrades to textures, but a result of the changes in the lighting system, how the light interacts with metal surfaces.
The mounts leaning/rolling when turning applies on the ground as well as in the air.
Regarding my character, I've noticed something odd with the update: limbal rings sometimes appear dark, and sometimes appear to be practically glowing. I don't know yet if the difference is determined by the angle the light hits them at or what, but I've seen both effects in and out of cutscenes.
Edit: It's definitely lighting.
Most of my characters came through alright but my Duskwight Elezen got hit a bit hard. He went from being very dark skinned to be almost weirdly glowing blue. xD I have no idea what went wrong there. I'm working on fixing him.
I had a small weird look with my miqo'te but now with each cutscene I look on amazement haha it vastly made my WoL look much better. Currently about halfway through shadowbringers so gots a LOT to look forward to besides msq now haha
I love the new graphics!
All we need now are: facial hair choices, and good Highlander Male Eyebrow options
I have a bushy beard and bushy eyebrows and haven't yet been able to make an avatar that looks like me.
I love the update except for the fact that I have the only female Miqo'te face bugged
Moon Tribe face 4 has eyebrow color issues... I look super dumb, like my head is empty because my eyebrows does not match my hair and they blend with my skin - making me look eyebrowless...
Besides that, my only other issue are facial expressions : they look weird. I had to change my portraits because the mouth is odd now, the corners looks puffy as if I was carrying food in my cheeks like a hamster or something.
the only thing im disappointed with the graphical update is how garbage all my portraits look now... i loved them...
I dont like my character and some things are looking grainy to me. Haven’t figured out what setting to change. Love the areas though - old a new, instanced and open world - all look amazing. Overall what a great improvement.
Not a big fan of what they did to midlander ladies to be honest. My character looks different in a way that completely shifted her vibe. I tried to make her look more like herself but it's impossible with the features we currently have. Also, very disappointed that we got 2 new hairstyles and both are short. :
The aetherytes do look amazing. The over all end result for my Viera was good. First benchmark - not as good. I personally still do not care for the haze over the game or the blur, gives it almost washed out look and once i see something else i can't go back to it, feels like i gotta clear my glasses or get new ones haha. Some soft blurring of shadow edges is fine but I want to see textures pop, and i want light sources to make sense and shadows to be shadowed, and night time to feel like night time. But this is what Reshade is for and i've already created a very basic set up that clears up the haze and blurriness while making the shadows more realistic, and give the color a bit more pop. - No one ask me for it, my computer and monitor has different settings than everyone else, so it wont be the same for you :D And like Miss Avycatte says, its personal preference. I love the mount tilt, though i do feel like i'm drunk flying at times. For many years our FC house has had the same carbuncle themed facade. Finally the leader said to change it to one of the new ones, she cant stand seeing her upgraded character next to that low res house haha
My aura, hyur, elezen were ruined by this update tbh. Miqo survived it but they changed actual eyebrow shape on her and made her angry.
Luckily found viera i could play on which looks better than chars i had before, female viera got the best rework lol
Thank you so much for the comparisons. It's wild how subtle changes can improve how an area or a character looks so much. The point where i realized the update did a lot of work was when I ran the Crystal Tower raids on an alt and saw Syrcus Tower. The crystals, the gold, and the lighting combined made me actually catch my breath for a moment. I was like "oh... oh, the Allagans really did have something going here with the Crystal Tower's design" lol
These new graphics look really good. It will be fun to jump back into FF14 and see what everything looks like now.
Sadly I absolutely hate how my character looks after the update. Not just my character but the entire Au Ra race, so I'll have to do drastic changes
My catgirl got butchered like crazy with the updated ngl. Horrible feeling to ditch a character I've attached myself to for years, I'm a fem Raen now since au'ras got a really pretty treatment in the eyes.
You know you can get a free fantasia to change facial details right?
@@GameGod77 Yeah but the details we want back are gone now.
@@GameGod77 I used face 2 from miqo'te which is an ugly face by default, but with the eyeshape 6 for me It made it the most beautiful catgirl face. None of the other options are valid therefore there is no option for me and I was not going to use a free fantasia to change some minuscule details. When I said I'm a fem Raen it meant that I used the free fantasia to become au'ra.
Hint for PC users on improving your graphics:
1. For Resolution, switch to AMD FSR and set the resolution scale's slider to 99 (not 100), to remove blur issues.
2. For anti-aliasing, select TSCMAA + Camera Jitter
Edit: Never mind, AvyCatte, you covered it about 5 min in ^_^
"If you dont like the how oyur character looks with the grphical update, here is a quest that gives you a fantasia."
Yes. Feels awesome to change my character after thousands of hours because they messed up with em. Great.
My WoL (a lala) looked a little off when I got in the game for the first time. Like, just looking at her standing there, she looked... strange. Like, something felt wrong. But when I started seeing her moving around and doing stuff more, especially in cutscenes, it started to grow on me. This was further helped by a trip to the Aesthetician to update the colors on the hair and makeup. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, and I feel like I'm only going to like it more with time.
I guess the thing that's throwing me is how much of a difference lighting makes now. Like, the ambient light levels make a MUCH bigger difference, in terms of color perception and saturation. The new system is much more responsive and dynamic, which feels unusual at first when you're used to very flat static colors. But I'll get used to it. I'm too enamored with ALL THE INCREASED DETAILS NOW. Like holy crap everything looks so sharp and crisp!
My female Mi´qote seems to have bigger eyes/irises than before. The texture on clothes are really amazing. But I noticed that in crystarium enemies pop up in the distance instead of slowly growing larger when nearing them. Playing on PS5,
Looking at old screenshots, you are right. I did use a fantasia because i wanted to make some minor adjustments to my female Mi'qote, like changing the eye color and voice (or the god while i was at it). While I was doing that I didn't like how big the irises were, so I changed that from large to small. It never bothered me before, but I think you are right. I'm looking at old screenshots now and i'm pretty sure the irises there are smaller than they were in the character editor, seems like they were pretty close to what they are now.
Please upload in 1440p or higher... so youtube can give you better codec ...
And can you try compare with dlss ? Thanks
I noticed while staring at someones face upclose, that the eyes moved slightly, like they were reading something off in the distance. These guys went deep into it.
Before update my GPU: *sleep*
After update my GPU: *The Fans are Active!*
In all seriousness, these are the drastic changes which happen simply from adding parallax mapping (making 2D surfaces look 3D), global illumination, double the polygon count on character models, double the texture resolution and also add on top of that AI calculated texture scaling (FSR/DLSS).
- If you have a powerful Multicore CPU like an AMD Ryzen 7 or 12th to 14th gen i7/i9 Processor, all of which have 20+ cores, use FSR instead if you're using an Nvidia card, it increases your framerate since the game engine only uses 1 core, freeing up your CPU to handle FSR on the other cores if you're not multitasking, also DLSS implementation is bugged.
How is DLSS bugged? Usually FSR looks terrible in any game I've ever tested it in, I only flicked it on for a sec on here and didn't notice a diff between fsr and dlss but it was only a min, except framerate went up like 10fps with fsr.
@@AkaTheJoker1 The way it is implemented is bugged, if you have a powerful GPU or you don't play on 4K you wouldn't notice. If you have DLSS on always and set it to 100% with fps limiter disabled (not synced to monitor), the engine will prioritize framerate, so DLSS will do weird things like downscale 4K textures till they are 360p smudges during cutscenes, repeat old textures, do odd things in the old pre-Shadowbringers zones. In other words, it is incorrectly implemented.
Also, DLSS uses the Graphics Hard hardware to run, which again impacts fps, since the game engine itself doesn't use much of the CPU, better to use software upscaling with FSR for the time being.
I am aware DLSS is superior; Also most people forget to set DLSS to only activate on low FPS too. It is mostly there to upscale the old ARR,HW and Stormblood textures for 4K, because they were added back when 1080p was the norm and haven't been updated.
If your fps is synced to your monitor refresh it takes pressure off the GPU and CPU, either 75fps or 144fps, In that situation DLSS "bugs" don't occur.
@foxdavion6865 Ahhh okay thanks. Yeah I wasn't sure if I should switch to FSR bc of this, especially bc I heard good things about the TSMCC, AA or whatev it's called before this came out. I have a new 7700x but only have a 3060ti with it, so I've been running it at 1440p and not 4k.
@@AkaTheJoker1 Yeah I wouldn't *dare* use DLSS on a 3060TI, I mean if it was a 3070 or later, it's fine. But yeah as of right now it even causes a 4090 to drop from 500fps down to 120 when active at 100%. Like I said, the developers haven't implemented it correctly. It isn't their fault, it is a 10 year old game engine and NVidia is terrible at explaining their software to developers, for example I have a Canadian friend who used to work for bE (Behaviour Interactive) and he described NVidia PhysX as "A Nightmare to deal with" and "Even our Graphics Programmer struggled" Now, DLSS isn't PhysX, but it is I'd imagine just as obtuse because NVidia don't document their code because their higher ups are worse than Adobe - they make more money from developers than they do from us card buyers, ultra protective of their source code. FSR - devs are allowed to tweak it, DLSS - NVidia wants 100% control over it.
Looks very good now! Are these updates live?
Scale 100 -> 99 reason. Some games using FSR don't enable Contrast Adaptive Sharpening unless the image is scaled (below 100). It's disappointing since CAS makes images look much better even at 100 scale. They should allow it to be enabled outside of the scaling. Although most driver software can enable it also.
3:44 I beg to differ on the reflections. There are no more glossy reflections on wood flooring. You can see it in your comparison, where in the old video you see a light reflected on the wood floor, and in the new version it’s just flat with barely a sheen. This is one thing I don’t like, but the rest is great.
EDIT: You can see it at 7:55 as well. Look at the reflections on the floor on the left. I miss that a lot.
I’m gonna be real… I had no idea there was a graphical update. It’s been years since I’ve played, but at no point have I said “oh the graphics look better”.
Crazy
I love your video, you can really see the differences of the textures ^^
I just recently started playin FF XIV and found all the helpful videos on your channel. Please keep up the great work!
Old: Flat shading with grey blacks, bright popping colors and very comic book-esque. Suited 2000s era MMOs to compete with WoW but very outdated now.
New: Deep shadows, much more 3D depth. Darker colors, more realistic. That metal and crystal upgrade is huge though and the new eyes are so good.
Manager: Where did the the budget go
Team: the cristals
And here I am waiting for the 10 resons zu play Hrothgar video now that there are also the fuzzy muscle mommys available :D
I hate my Au’ra face after update, but thanks god they give us free Fantasia. I tweak it a little and somehow get my old Au’ra face from using other parts of her face. I love her now!
I prefer the old look.
Ngl the update made my catboy look good as fuck. Even I had to stop and appreciate the change XD
If you look at the Dawntrail graphics with the water on rivers, lakes and the sea, they look like the same graphics of the water from the 1.0 ffxiv version.
I was wondering what the name of the song you use for the intros of your ffxiv videos?
papaya, you can get it in game
My character looked good both before and after the update, except for the eyes. The lower eye lid is too thick. I didn't like looking at her eyes after the update - they just looked wrong. I switched to an Au Ra (because my Viera couldn't show most headwear), and that one looks ok. Just a few tweaks from my saved character data from before. The eyes still aren't perfect, but not as bad (or at least not as noticeable) as before.
On the FSR thing: 99 Percent means that FSR upscaling and AMD CAS is actually turned on. At 100 upscaling is off. Or in other words: Your GPU is rendering at "XY percent of your set resolution and upscaling it to your set resolution".
But you should use DLSS anyway if you have Nvidia GPU since it looks A LOT better. The difference especially in areas like foliage is INSANE.
Characters have really bad dark circles under their eyes. It does look indeed as our WOL had no chance to sleep since we met the scions. I hope they fix this lighting because it's horrible. My male Viera looks so fuckin done with his life 😢
Other than that I do love the graphics update but it's an extreme change to my dark skinned Viera face that will take some time to get used to ngl
Thank you SO much for making these side-by-side comparison videos! They help my bad eyes appreciate the changes more xD
Character model updates look so fucking horrid. It's like they outsourced it to North Korea or something. Yawntrail sucks.
No lol.
Without even watching the video, I can honestly say the game looks like the right side of the thumbnail. It's NEVER looked like the lest side in the least bit.
Delighted with how my Au'ra looks! She's grown up so much ❤
Love the graphics update so far - anytime I think that it was underwhelming, I find something that makes me say "Damn, I can't remember this game ever looking this good!"
Love how every basic NPC now looks totally on point 👌
Hoping for more improvements down the line. I love going back to old dungeons and seeing the differences :)
The new graphics engine and lighting system is AMAZING, I am loving it so far. One thing I miss about the old graphics though, is this weird trick I used to do with portraits. I would turn the ambient lighting all the way off, and crank directional lighting to max -- if you angle the light in just the right way, you could simulate an unshaded, flat colour look, sort of like they were a 2D painting. It doesn't seem to be possible with the new engine, though. Sad!
This is probably one of the better comparison videos I've found out there; splendid work!! o/
I have a female face-3 (the 'mermaid' horns) Raen and the texture update for her horns and scales are amazing. Skin tone was kept true to form too.
I had a great time seeing all sorts of new graphic updates, even in the oldest maps due to the lighting and universal material/texture changes. Thanks for the video! This is very handy for my friends that have difficulty noticing the changes.
That shot of the guild lady in gridania really shows the lighting lol.
I'd love to do a replay just to see the game again with the new visuals
Thank you for doing a comparison! It helps so much to see them next to each other.
I honestly don't know what y'all are smoking...the update is SUPER underwhelming.
I love how with the quest in Uldah for the free Fantasia, they basically cannonized that potion as being an actual thing in-game XD
It would look better if they fixed FSR and DLSS. Of course the update looks good, but I have legitimately struggled trying to find the right look I like lol
metal bits and the lighting are the two places where i see the most improvement. its like you said, everything looks a lot better but it still feels like FFXIV we know and love. great video Avy
Great Video but uploading in 1080P on UA-cam is suicide to the video quality.
If you can't record in a higher resolution, upscale your videos to 1440P or 4K before you upload and UA-cam will grant you a WAY HIGHER bitrate.
3:08 looks like you switched old and new, if not then i realy liked the old ambiant light...
Finaly, someone that actually did a good comparison video. Im curious to see more areas from a realm reborn, since those would be the biggest visual changes. Especially since the said the graphical update will start from the outside in, starting woth A realm reborn and dawntrail.
I didn't spend much time as male Elezen I found I had a fantasia in my chocobo bags and used it to become female Hrothgar. Stumbled on the quest for the free fantasia in Ul'dah later in the day while doing stuff in the markets so I can change race again when I feel like it without spending real world money on one.
I was already obsessed with my femRoe, but the update made me even MORE obsessed with her she is just gorgeous ^w^ i've loved noticing all the small details and how something like lighting and reshading has drastically improved how things looked. And my girl has darker grey skin as well and she looks so good~ also the INFAMOUS PRAETORIUM SCENE NO LONGER LOOKS AWFUL LOL I was shocked
Hmm. First time watching your video. Nice voice I gotta say.
The lines look worse on my PlayStation. There is no anti aliasing at all and when you look at line work close up, the lines look jagged. It's terrible. They need to fix it soon because if I was a new player I would not be impressed. Some of those graphics settings you show are not available to console.
I feel u. And honestly I've been considering getting a PC cause we are missing out on so much from so many games graphically. I saw a streamer that had a 1440p res and it looks so much better then my ps5 😢
the @235 comparison, look at the background. That looks amazing. That's the changes I was more interest in. I've played a little so far, but the ques kept me away so Elden Ring it was most of the weekend lol.
If you have an Nvidia card, you could swap to dlss, then use the Nvidia overlay to apply sharpness. You can even adjust the sharpness to your liking. I personally have mine set to 45%
I personnally loved these changes, I already noticed significant improvements on my character when I logged in, especially the hair texture being smoother and more polished, as well as lighting (knowing that I'm not running on full high settings), and honestly my character looked so good that I didn't want to use fantasia (well... I used it to create another appearance and race lol).
For the environment, the changes are subtile but more stunning and lively, the aetherite (crystals and metals in general) being the most noticeable change compared to the rest.
I guess most still use reshade...
I want to add that iridescent colorations look AMAZING as well.