FH5 go brrrrrrrrrrrr
Holy screenshot dump.
This appeals to the Mexican sensibilities of me.
Also SpongeBob Movie game.
6 Likes
halo 2 soccer ball
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Yes I’m playing it at 1152x864, it’s supposed to be 1152x720 but I forgot to add the custom resolution when I built my new PC lmao
2 Likes
Now this is a car I’d love to own. 4-litre, naturally aspirated V8 and just one of the best, most timeless designs BMW has ever put out imo.
In fact, I was very, very tempted to get an E92 back when I was looking to buy a car, last year. Not an M3 mind you, but something along the lines of a 325i or 330i, with a naturally aspirated straight-six.
Maybe some day.
Oh, it’s Forza Horizon 5, in case you couldn’t tell just by the fact that this is about the 71st time I’m posting FH5 screenshots in here sdjhfosjasdfdksdfk
7 Likes
taking the shitbox out for a spin
okay, alright, here’s something that isn’t FH5; I played through CP2077 again:
4 Likes
Decided to put a couple of PS2 games through their paces on my new laptop.
First came Gran Turismo 4.
This is operating in the 1080i mode, which internally renders an interlaced 576x960 image. This was rendered at 2x scale, which makes an 1152x1920 image. Impressive, but not as impressive as this:
Burnout 3: Takedown running in hardware mode in Vulkan at 2x resolution in the 480p mode - 1280x960. EVERYTHING rendered correctly. Flawless 60fps, legitimately with only one hitch at the very start of the race. Even the damn texture filtering and mipmapping worked correctly, which shocked me. All of this on an APU, the 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800H.
2 Likes
Forza Horizon 5 on the Xbox Series S in the game’s Quality mode, which targets a resolution of 2560x1440 at what essentially amounts to the game’s Ultra quality preset (with 4x MSAA to boot!) at a completely unwaivering 30fps. For such a cheap piece of kit, it performs VERY admirably here. Not only is the frame rate a complete lock to 30fps, it looks absolutely gorgeous in this mode.
From what I understand, the Xbox One X essentially runs with the same graphics settings as the Xbox Series S version of the game, but targets a dynamic 3840x2160 resolution instead of 1440p as shown here. The Performance mode of the Xbox Series X version also targets a dynamic 3840x2160 at these settings, but aims (and completely locks to, from what I understand) for 60fps instead of 30fps.
It’s worth noting that with Forza games starting with Forza Motorsport 5 on the Xbox One, they use dynamically adjustable graphical presets to help lower the cost of rendering a frame and to help with sticking to a specific frame rate. This system appears in every subsequent Forza game, including the PC versions of Forza Motorsport 6: Apex, Forza Motorsport 7, Forza Horizon 3, 4 and 5. However, FH5 adds a dynamic resolution scaler to the mix on the console versions, which is generally intended to kick in if it’s the only way to decrease the cost of rendering a frame without dramatically lowering the graphics settings of a given scene.
4 Likes
Oh boy. I have a lot of screenshots to share from one game in particular.
Grid Legends on the Xbox Series S! Released in late February this year, this game got sandbagged pretty hard, with a horrible lack of promotion and mediocre coverage. Despite its lack of coverage, it’s a surprisingly good racing game with a career mode told with goofy interview-style cutscenes. It’s pretty fast-paced but not all that difficult, at least playing with the AI difficulty it set to medium. Much like most other modern racing games, it can also be adjusted from being really forgiving and easy to play to becoming a bit more unforgiving when you disable any and all assists and turn off rewinds.
As for the technical makeup of Grid Legends on the Series S, it targets a dynamic 2560x1440 at 60fps. It sticks to the 60fps target like glue, which means that the heavy-handed temporal anti-aliasing implementation tends to make the game look rather blurry when the game does drop its resolution. That being said, it actually holds up decently on a 4K TV from TV viewing distances. I was a bit floored to see how well it holds up like this, but overall, I really like the way this game looks. No, it’s not pushing ray-traced everything, but it makes use of a lot of standard-fare rendering techniques to make for a visually pleasant game - one that’s surprisingly colorful and consistent in the way it looks, no less.
2 Likes
Henninger Flats Trail (First Bench) via Eaton Canyon Trail
Time at Start: 4:15 AM
Time at Destination: 5:20 AM
Time at Return: 6:20 AM
AllTrails Route: Henninger Flats via Eaton Canyon Trail
Total Distance: 5.5 mi
Elevation Gain: 900 ft
Generic Scenery Photo:
Gate was locked at 4:05 AM, so I had to start from the Eaton Canyon Trail trailhead. 
Only made it to the first bench, didn’t have time to reach the top, 'cos I’ve to make time for work later this morning.
Gotta work every day this month, regular hours.
Pien. 
5 Likes
I’m about a year late to this train, but I finally bought a PS5. Because of that, I had to get Gran Turismo 7.
Gran Turismo 7 is a cross-generation game, releasing both on the PS4 and the PS5. The roots of GT7 are based very heavily in Gran Turismo Sport, and as a result, Gran Turismo 6. That being said, you can tell that Polyphony Digital put quite a lot of work into making this game look nicer on the PS5, while also making improvements to the engine itself that makes it look better, even on the PS4 and the PS4 Pro.
Right off the bat, I noticed a lot of model recycling from GT Sport and the PS3 GT games. I believe all of the starter cars are recycled from Gran Turismo 6, specifically - just with higher-quality textures and rendering improvements from the upgraded engine. Not that the entirety of the game’s cars are recycled assets from GT5, 6 and Sport - there’s a number of unique cars in here, and even the recycled cars actually look like they belong in here. It’s certainly an improvement compared to Forza Motorsport 4 vehicles appearing in Forza Horizon 5.
As I stated earlier, this game is built off of GT Sport, and because of this, a lot of the core rendering setup remains the same. A good temporal anti-aliasing component is present here, alongside GT series staples like real-time cube-mapped reflections for cars. GT7 on the PS5 sees a resolution bump from the PS4 and PS4 Pro versions (which run at 1920x1080 and a checkerboarded 3200x1800 when outputting at 2160p, respectively), gunning for a native 3840x2160, with extra goodies like a nice motion blur implementation added to the mix.
Image quality truly impresses here, trouncing the very lackluster PS3 games and the (admittedly good) less-than-native resolution GT Sport on PS4 Pro. Now granted, all of the Forza games (including Forza Horizon 5, impressively) on the Xbox One X gun for 3840x2160 with 4x MSAA, so maybe this isn’t that impressive just on pixel counts alone, but the image itself looks quite nice. Also grass clippings when you run over grass.
On a more general note about the game, I do like it overall. There’s some refinement over the past GT games, especially the ones on the PS3, that just makes it more pleasant to play. Also, GT7 lets you default to using the triggers to drive (from what I remember, so does GT Sport). This matters because GT7 takes advantage of the DualSense’s weird triggers. It feels less gimmicky and a lot nicer than you’d expect, all things considered. It especially helps that the DualSense is actually a good controller, which means that playing Gran Turismo isn’t a painful experience. Trust me, the old DualShocks are FAR too small for my hands.
3 Likes
I was reading this out of the corner of my eye on my side monitor and thought it said 7 years late. Then I thought the PS5 was 7 years old for a fraction of a second and was ready alt+f4 life lol.
4 Likes
Some more art of rally screenshots:
I might write a quick review of this game later since this is the one recent racing game that I’ve genuinely enjoyed playing, but man there is something very charming about the art style of this game and I definitely fell in love with it.
3 Likes
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake recently came out, and I’ve finally had a chance to play a little bit of it - mainly the first world.
The game centers around SpongeBob and Patrick collecting jelly to repair Bikini Bottom in worlds themed after various environments from the show. Much of the gameplay loop is very similar to Battle for Bikini Bottom and its remastered release from 2020, which isn’t much of a surprise, being that it’s the most popular and most remembered SpongeBob game by far. It plays very similarly to Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated, to the point where you’ll feel really familiar with the game’s control scheme and movement if you’ve played the latter game.
Much like how Battle for Bikini Bottom throws you into Jellyfish Fields as its introductory world, The Cosmic Shake does the same thing, albeit in a Wild Westified version of Jellyfish Fields. Right off the bat, you notice that The Cosmic Shake, while adhering to a general level layout design similar to that of Heavy Iron’s SpongeBob games, is far less constrained with reigning in both immediate and distant detail. Owing to the fact that this game is not battling the limitations of both RenderWare and the original Xbox, but instead targets the PS4 and Xbox One with Unreal Engine 4, the general level design is far more open and distant detail is more detailed as a result.
A few more screenshots that showcase the general visual flair of The Cosmic Shake. It leans more into the modern SpongeBob visual style, moreso than Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated could or did.
Most of the technical makeup of this game is very similar to its predecessor. The Cosmic Shake doesn’t lean much into fancy rendering features that UE4 has to offer, instead offering a conservative presentation that, while not necessarily crazy impressive, still looks nice and clean. This game exclusively makes use of FXAA, with no other selectable graphical options besides resolution. This means that you get the same texture quality, texture filtering, model quality, draw distance, shadow quality and all of that stuff no matter what setup, unless you’re using that Unreal Engine Unlocker tool. Interestingly, screen space reflections make an appearance here, albeit seemingly only on bodies of water.
Overall, it’s not bad. My main complaints have to go to audio mixing (as in it’s inconsistent), the voice acting (as in the general delivery of dialogue is also inconsistent) and the barrage of tutorial messages. God, WHY do they have these messages that you have to watch before you can skip them? It SERIOUSLY hurts gameplay flow badly. It’s the primary thing that put me off of Creature from the Krusty Krab. Both Battle for Bikini Bottom and the Movie game demonstrated new moves either with dialogue boxes that didn’t interrupt gameplay or in cutscenes that would more naturally flow with gameplay.
3 Likes
6 Likes
No, this isn’t how you’re supposed to play this game, but it’s the dev’s fault for making me have to deliver so much stuff.
5 Likes
Turns out if I get creative with a crane I can fit 6 large cargo on this truck, normally it would be able to carry 1. I can tell me and this truck are going to get along well.
Okay, where you want your bridge?
this is the first time I’ve ever seen the polar bear.
7 Likes
Was kind of fun staging a full road closure for a crash. 6 police cars, two “undercovers,” and an ambulance because I decided to crank the steering wheel on a loaded tanker at 85MPH lol
5 Likes
