Factions and Prophecies armor graphical quality ..

I was wondering if the Prophecies armors are going to get some graphical tweaks (their texture size increased, detail level increased or whatever) so they look par when compared with the new Factions armor graphical quality ?

Maybe the reason why Prophecies armors look a lot less detailed is that they were made with DirectX 8 in mind (now GW is DX9-enabled).

I have attached a screenshot of 2 randomly chosen characters of mine. The first one is a Factions lvl 1 mesmer with undyed starter armor (see the detail level of it) and the 2nd one is Prophecies FoW armor dyed black (blurry and jagged). Screenshots were taken at the same camera distance, 1600x1200, 4xAA, maxed everything.



P.S.
This isnt a rant or anything, just a thing that pisses me off - new armors look a lot more detailed than the old ones, altrough they should be equal in quality.

Short answer: They got better at making textures.

Even within the prophecies campaign, some armors are not as detailed as others (Male ranger armor for one)

Another thing i would like to point out is the armor in cantha tends to have more intricate cloth pattern and weaves so their details do tend to show up more.

I just looked at the armours for all my chars (screenshots below), and all of them are wearing Factions armour except my Necro and Warrior. I get the feeling the texture resolution varies greatly even within the same game.

My mesmer has a Prophecies mask with a very clear texture, the armour is from Factions and the texture is definitely not as clear as the mask. My elem's Factions armour looks to have the same texture resolution as your Warrior FoW armour. Ritualist's armour has such simple patterns it's hard to judge the texture resolution. Necro's tunic looks crisp and clear, leggings not so and both are different Prophecies armour. On my warrior everything besides the bra looks lowres.

I think the artists in anet just aren't as consistent they should be with texture resolutions on armour.


http://img173.imageshack.us/img173/1783/gw0692zx.jpg

i doubt very much that the texture resolution changes, as opposed to changes in attention to detail or by artist to artist.

Maybe they are restricted by filesize and some textures loose more quality in compression.

I've always felt that the textures were rather low-rez... but that probably is intentional to keep the computer-related lag down(for those of us who still have 512 RAM )

Uh, look at the solid lines where two colors meet on the ele vs the rituliast. Notice anything different? Heck just look at the ele, his own one armor set is inconsistent with itself. (It's true he is additionally suffering from compression artifacts, but half the reason those are so visible is because its lower res anyway...)

I can't think of any particular reason why you would doubt that texture resolutions could differ in a game. Sometimes it's almost inevitable.

If you want to judge resolution, look for the jaggies!

Well from my experience with 3d games (Unreal and Sims skinning), theres a standard on texture map sizes.

What differs from model to model is the UV mapping. Some pieces lend themselves better to UV mapping, allowing more detail to show.

Warrior FoW Armor's mesh vs Mesmer's dress mesh is a perfect comparison. The FoW armor needs more vertices spread out farther apart in order show the very intricate geometry of the plating on the armor. A mesmer's dress is flat on the most part. We can imagine that both meshes need to be under a certain triangle/vertex count. The mesmer dress doesnt spread out its vertices, the fow armor has to.

When it comes to UV mapping, the FoW armor cant devote the same amount of detail because its vertices are more spread out, so its texture will appear more blurred/stretched. You also cant forget how much surface area there is to map. The mesmer dress is relatively "revealing" and has less square pixels to cover.