Some more Silent Hill 3 shots

[Private Hudson]

That close up of her face... wow

[Great Rumbler]

That third pic is kind of disturbing...


This game is gonna be so uber-freaky! I'll have to get it!

[OB1]

That face model looks fantastic, although I really think that she needs some new skin cream.

[Weltall]

It's amazing...

[Dark Jaguar]

[Darunia]

Wow, those are probably the best looking animated faces I've ever seen.

[Weltall]

My FROTHING demand for this game INCREASES.

[OB1]

Just keep in mind that the faces only look that good in cinemas. They use scaling you know, so the faces are far less detailed during gameplay.

[Weltall]

His FROTHING demand to state the obvious INCREASES.

[Weltall]

Seriously though, SH2 had some of, if not the best graphics of almost any game at it's time. That this game will be a graphic masterpiece just goes without saying.

[OB1]

Well considering how incredible tiny and simple the environments were the game definitely wasn't as technically impressive as you may think, but for what it was it looked great. Aesthetically pleasing, yes. But technically-speaking? For a PS2 game at the time, sure. But that's it.

However, the game looks fine because it doesn't need huge, complex environments.

[Weltall]

Originally posted by OB1
Well considering how incredible tiny and simple the environments were the game definitely wasn't as technically impressive as you may think, but for what it was it looked great. Aesthetically pleasing, yes. But technically-speaking? For a PS2 game at the time, sure. But that's it.

However, the game looks fine because it doesn't need huge, complex environments.

Tiny and simple? You were walking around huge city streets and they were absolutely LOADED with tons of tiny details, as was each hallway and room. Detail and complexity were everywhere! You sure you even played the game?. It looked ten times as good as Code Veronica, had far more detail, and had realtime lighting to boot. It was hardly small or simple.

But my point wasn't technical achievement, rather graphical.

[OB1]

Weltall, the game was shrowded in fog. There's a reason for that.

[Weltall]

Originally posted by OB1
Weltall, the game was shrowded in fog. There's a reason for that.

Atmosphere. If it were static fog like many N64 games (and Silent Hill 1) had, I would agree. But SH2's fog was volumetric and always in motion, which taxes the CPU more than distance-drawing.

And, the indoor areas lack both fog and popup.

[OB1]

The indoor areas are also very small and simple. They certainly look better than the outdoor areas, but that is of course because of their size. The outdoor areas are considerably less detailed. The draw distance is bad (but it works), the environments aren't very detailed, and the textures aren't that great. There's also that typical aliasing problem.

The fog is there to hide the pop-up, but it's also there for atmospheric effect. Volumetric fog can be taxing, but it's definitely not the cause of the poor draw distance in the game. It would definitely be more taxing on the engine if the environments were huge and complex, but since the developers didn't want to have huge environments they probably thought that it would be nice to use some volumetric fog since the backgrounds are so simple (where there is fog).

So while the graphics engine isn't the most impressive one for the PS2, the developers used it in such a way that it does look impressive. I'm sure that even if they had a system five times more powerful than the PS2 to work with, the draw distance would still be the same. Did that make any sense? I'm tired so I might sound a bit confusing.

[Weltall]

You sound like you're either on drugs or referring to the original Silent Hill.

Silent Hill 2 has fog so that it remained consistent with Silent Hill 1. And neither the indoor nor the outdoor areas are simple or lacking detail.

[OB1]

Both the outdoor and indoor areas in SH2 are fairly simple, although the outdoor areas are much simpler than the indoor ones. The fog is used for effect and to cover the poor draw-distance.

[Weltall]

Originally posted by OB1
Both the outdoor and indoor areas in SH2 are fairly simple, although the outdoor areas are much simpler than the indoor ones. The fog is used for effect and to cover the poor draw-distance.

You never really did play the game. Admit it.

There isn't a problem with draw distance, other games have done things on this scale without the fog and passable draw-distance (Shenmue). In the first Silent Hill you could see the draw-in, even with the fog. You can tell by playing SH2, as there are a few large indoor areas without darkness or fog, that are rendered without any popup.

And why do you say that areas aren't detailed? You can see all sorts of little things all over the place, cars on the street, mailboxes, awnings, the entire forest area, etc. If you want to say anything, say that there's little computationally going on, as there are rarely ever more than three characters on screen at once, but to say the game lacks detail, indoor or outdoor, is a damn lie. One of the things us SH fans love so much is the detail and the hidden nuances everywhere in the game.

[OB1]

It's funny you should say that since I have the disc in my PS2 right now.

Dude, the draw distance is bad in the game and the fog is there to hide it. But you're not getting what I'm trying to say. They intentionally made the draw distance poor because it didn't need to be great. The developers wanted the areas in the game to be very small. If you could see a monster a mile down the road would that be scary? No. Seeing a monster pop out of the fog five feet away is scary. So they pushed as many polys as they could into those small areas. That is also why the texture quality is above-average for a PS2 game.

And the environments are simple, but also detailed. The actual architecture is simple; there isn't a huge amount of polygons being pushed. But that doesn't mean that they're not detailed. You don't need to be pushing a lot of polygons in order to get detail in a scene. That's not what I was talking about.

Oh and the fog isn't entirely volumetric. Some of it appears to be, but they did add some old-fashioned flat fog over everything else. I believe that most of the fog you see is volumetric, but it's difficult to determine how much. If you want to see 100% real volumetric fog, play Rogue Leader (that one level with the green clouds and the clouds in Bespin) or Eternal Darkness (there's a bit on the ground in some areas.