A couple of hours ago, a massive update for Shadow Warrior was rolled out, adding DX11 support to this FPS title (alongside major performance improvements). Due to some lighting changes, fans claimed that Flying Wild Hog had downgraded the game’s visuals. This prompted one of the developers to step in and explain what changes were made to Shadow Warrior’s DX11 path.
Flying Wild Hog’s “KriS” (who was doing programming for the DX11 version of Shadow Warrior) said that the game’s foliage system was completely replaced, the shadow filtering algorithm was improved, the in-game SSAO was totally rewritten, and that the lighting was changed by the company’s graphic artists.
- Foliage. We did replace foliage (grass, junk etc.) placement algorithm, so it distributed a bit differently now. Just as previously, foliage is placed randomly, so in some places it can be a bit less or more dense in DX11 version. We didn’t decrease the draw distance nor average foliage density.
- Lighting. All lighting changes were made by our graphic artists, who decided to improve looks of this game by tweaking lighting and post processing.
- Shadows. Shadow filtering algorithm was improved, so now shadows have less jaggies and look better. It’s mostly visible when you compare tree shadows from the beginning of the game.
- SSAO. SSAO was totally rewritten. DX9 version had a lot of awful SSAO artifacts (especially in motion), which now are gone. Additionally it was tweaked to be softer and more realistic.
- Performance. Performance is much better, because we got a bunch of new engine programmers who have totally rewritten the entire engine. It took us more than a year, to do that. Because of the sheer magnitude of changes we have introduced there will be inevitably some differences between versions, but we didn’t cut anything, we just worked really hard for a long time just to squeeze every cycle we could.
In short, Flying Wild Hog claims that it did not downgrade the visuals, despite the huge performance gains witnessed thanks to the game’s DX11 path.
Before closing, we should note that under DX11, Mirrors are being handled by the GPU instead of the CPU. In DX9 mode, Mirrors were being handled by the CPU, something that – despite early arguments from a number of our fans – was unveiled during our PC Performance Analysis article. Guess our ‘older’ PC system served its purpose by exposing such optimization issues after all, don’t you agree?
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I didnt notice any downgrade, I did notice the performance increase though. It would be hard not to, its huge!
Fools… the whole lot of you! 😀
I don’t think it was downgraded, but the new lighting is awful IMO. With that being said there’s no reason for people to be whining about a free update, especially when they can still play the older DX9 version.
I’d have to see some comparison shots. It sounds more like people are just resistant to change than anything else.
The PC community is so disappointing at times. If a game manages to give such a tremendous FPS boost with degrading slightly the visuals (which this may not be the case at all here, I am just assuming because I don’t have the game to compare the versions) we should all welcomed it with open arms rather than start screaming downgrade. Solid 60FPS shouldn’t be the privilege of the elite dual GPU systems.
It reminds me the famous DX11 Crysis 2 patch fiasco when Crytek trolled the high end users by activating tessellation waves in areas where the sea wasn’t even visible which resulted in insane GPU usage.
The tricked worked though because after that there where no more seriously idiotic posts like “my uber triple GPU setp up is sitting idle”, “the game is using just 30% of my supah GPUs”. People seemed to enjoy their invisible tessellated waves as everybody was jumping like a cheerleader, shouting now this is a true Crysis game…
So my advice to you dear Devs of Shadow Warrior, send the Mirror effect back to a CPU rendering pipeline, f**k up the code a bit more so that even uber set ups will knee down and everybody will be happy again…
Lol, your post is comedy gold! Im with’cha.
well it has happened multiple times, look at dying light patching the lower draw distance or gta v on consoles lowering the quality.
Great post, PC community is mostly like that. Especially on steam forums where some of the biggest idiots can be spotted. They will whine no matter what, literally no matter what.
It’s just one guy who is disappointed with the changes they made. He doesn’t represent the whole community, and his thread doesn’t even got a support and attention. Not sure from where comes this “fans scream”, lol.
It looks the same but it has better performance so good job but its kinda to late but you know what they say better now than never!
Ok…So I reinstalled this game just to see just how much had changed….I am completely blown away!!! I demand a manditory breathalyzer test to anyone who cant see this as being WAY better looking and optimized than it was at launch. The kind of care and effort put into this 2 year old game, is why PC gaming will always be the best way to go in my opinion.
agree
Looks waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better! Also, get this game! It’s in the current humble bundle!
Thanks a lot for letting me know….I bought the bundle!
I really wanted to play both Shadow Warrior and Outlast…and now I got both for a really great price!
Thnx again!
no jaggies, what res you running on?
2560 x 1440
wow
I really believe 2560×1440 is the sweet spot res. 4k is WAY too demanding even for the most beast rigs ( my rig is beast and and it still can’t handle 4k ) and 1080p is just not enough for me anymore.
Yeah I’m playing 1440p and getting a solid 144fps. Tried 4K DSR but while it looks nice the frame rate still just isn’t high enough for me to enjoy this fast paced game.
well yeah every console video i see has jaggies in 1080p. 1080p belongs to the past.
decent low poly bamboo
How about this? No reflections on the water.
Which is wierd. My last pic shows reflections. Could be just that area.
Will you do an updated performance analysis for this game now ?
I think it might be an interesting idea to test some games that went through a lot of updates/patches and compare that to the initial test results.
and visual comparisons.
I was just thinking, imagine if they update Hard Reset too!!! Would be amazing!
The 2.5x framerate boost totally worth the minor visual changes.
After Watch Dogs and Dark Souls, people think everything is downgraded. Some games are, but not all of them. The performance gains in this build can’t be achieved by just lowering some settings. They clearly rewrote the engine and replaced older assets with new ones. I’m glad that at least someone is making old school FPS games. They clearly put a lot of effort into this build. It’s shame that people are complaining about it instead of appreciating their hard work. The game looks different yes, but technically it’s not downgraded, it’s updated and assets are replaced.
Meh. Performance improvement is always more important than graphical fidelity. And the game didn’t look good to begin with so it had no business running badly. If there are visual downgrades though they messed up and should give players the option to activate the legacy features. You shouldn’t have to worry about patches breaking something you liked about a game you spent money on.