Yesterday, we shared a story about the PC version of The Division being held back by the power of consoles. As a Ubisoft dev claimed, the development team had to keep the PC version in check with the consoles, otherwise it would be kind of unfair to push it so far away from them. And today, Ubisoft issued a statement about this.
As Ubisoft claimed (thanks PCGamesN):
“It has come to our attention that a comment from one of our team members has been perceived by some members of the community to imply the PC version of The Division was ‘held back’ and this is simply not true. From the beginning, the PC version of The Division was developed from the ground up and we’re confident players will enjoy the game and the features this version has to offer. And the feedback from PC players who participated in the recent closed beta supports this.”
We’ve already talked about The Division’s downgrade, and you already know our opinion about this. It’s also understandable that Ubisoft went into damage control and issued this statement.
However, this statement failed to address all the graphical compromises PC gamers have witnessed while playing the closed beta.
Things like destructibility, Global Illumination and dynamic material shaders have been toned down, so you do have to wonder why the PC version is actually in check with the consoles (when it comes to these effects/features). After all, these were showcased in the earlier E3 builds, right?
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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Damage control.
Ow, just shut up Ubisoft!
It’s understandable that they would defend their product, especially pre-launch. Still the Downgrade especially in Global Ilumination is clear. Besides that, I had fun with the Beta and I’m looking forward to play the Final Build
I would be willing to work for Ubisoft PR, it’s like they have monkeys on typewriters over there.
They put better shadows,better AA and some draw distance and they say its a PC port from ground up.LOLOLOLOL
I know this is you Beqa, why are you posting anonymously? You’re a fool if you think it’s only shadows, ambient occlusion, AA and draw distance that differs the console version from the PC version.
What else then?
Hm.. Good question. Let’s make a list shall we? 🙂
1. Resolution
2. Anisotropic Filtering
3. Anti-Aliasing
4. SuperSampling
5. Parallax Mapping
6. HBAO+
7. Draw Distance
8. PCSS
9. Shadow Distance
10. Reflection resolution
11. Spot shadow count/resolution
12. Particle density
13. Sub-surface scattering
And probably lots of other things I can’t think of at the moment.
Well, AMD and NVIDIA users are moaning about Gameworks features, PC users don’t want such features according to people on this site, you know,gimping performance and such.
The only thing I really appreciate by gameworks thus far is HBAO+. The rest they’ve got to offer is mostly performance taxing gimmick cr*p!
PCSS can be nice in some games if configured correctly. Their TXAA is nothing that interests me, I run 4K and a slight SMAA configuration via SweetFX or Reshade, that’s all I need. Hairworks doesn’t even justify the performance drops it gives, maybe it’ll be optimized and enhanced in the future who knows. Flux and Fireworks looks amazing, but I doubt it will be in any game any time soon, and when it eventually does, it’s gonna eat performance like a starving bear who wakes up in the spring.
Flex effects in the Fallout4 patch is amazing, well optimised, There is a video showing tons of debris with shadows and it staying at 60fps.
Gotta check it out, didn’t know flex was implemented already. Haven’t got to Fallout 4 yet, Witcher 3 is too long :/
Thanks for the headsup!
Almost all of these are just numerical increases from the value on the console versions. The original demo had Global Illumination, current version only has cheap screen space indirect lighting.
Do you actually think you can apply supersampling, PCSS, HBAO, Parallax mapping or Sub-surface scattering by increasing values (numbers) ??? Ahahahahahaha Consoles totally lack these.
The original demo showed GI yes, but there isn’t one video proving that GI doesn’t work in the current PC build. We have a faulty comparison in one video, and a comparison of PC vs console build in another one. No valid comparisons is made yet.
and u barely see the difference
You barely see the difference because you don’t know what to look for. Me and a load of others see the difference clearly and actually appreciate the superior visual fidelity, see that is why we buy expensive graphics cards that alone cost more than two peasantboxes combined.
i have a pc that cost me 2300$ and im telling u all those setting are lame and u can barely see them u can only know 30 from 60 i hope john make some changes in ultra vs low screenshot and let us know which is ultra and which is low im betting 30% will know
Am really concerned about your health. You eyes, your brain. I am at least glad your heart is filled with joy when you play with your console 🙂 That is a good thing
I dont know who is Beqa,what i meant is that the console specs are a joke in comparison with a high end pc,and that they could do alot more than that.
You have the same rotten English as Beqa, same lame arguments too. Those gave it away instantly 😀
Am not so sure they could do so much more, graphics are already top notch 🙂 To me it’s perfect. And with Reshade, we can get any kind of atmosphere and colortheme we want. And with the extensive configurable config files that follows with the game we are given the opportunity to push the visuals even further.
Better shadows, more light sources, better draw distance, higher quality AO, object detail, volumetrics if you push them to ultra.
The game looks amazing on PC. All those things you’re talking about make all the difference. The Division on console already has every graphics feature you want, but scaled down. When you scale them up, along with much better image quality and framerate, it is a world of difference.
The Division is a great PC game, not a port, period. Nothing you say will change that. Has a TON of customization specifically for the PC. Lots of graphics options. Full support for multimonitor, ultrawide, full UI customization, drag and drop functionality for inventory, even goes so far as to have LED features for gaming keyboards.
This game is a game that even TB won’t have anything to complain about in the options menu (well, kind of… he will find something)
Also, about this whole GI thing. People think the E3 demo had full realtime GI for the exterior. That’s not true. Even the snowdrop engine did not showcase that. it just looks that way because of the lighting conditions in that demo. If you actually look within shadowed areas and look for GI, you don’t see it.
In other words, the GI we have now is almost identical to what was shown in the snowdrop trailer – that light probe system for spot lights. That said, it might have been scaled down (occlusion removed ? which is understandable, because that will kill PCs)
How you can defend Ubisoft like you do it beyond me, Ubisoft didn’t even announce a PC version, PC users had to beg Ubisoft for it. The Division was firstly announced as console only.
So, the red wall isn’t bouncing red color to opposite wall in SnowDrop video at all? Call me blind, but I see red tones bouncing to white wall. Are you implying that this is not GI? lolwhat?
Damage control all the time.
I can confirm this aswell. One of Swedens biggest newsites for gaming also received a message directly from Ubisoft Massive in Malmö stating that the claims made by this co-developer is simply not true.
Moreover, I think the downgrades John speak about is a misinterpretation based on different aspects of perception and confusion. Let me break it down for yall:
Destruction seem to be the same in the PC Beta as it was in the 2013 reveal + the SnowDrop video. Cars destruct just in the same way. I’ve seen wooden benches having like 50 breakpoints of procedural destruction. I’ve seen clothes (t-shirt) hanging around in the world being dynamically destructable, kind of like voxels. With lights going through the hopes made by the user and shadows updated correctly, some of the sickest destructibility i’ve seen in a game. I also found that you can tear down every single brick on all brickwalls.
Global illumination. Nothing has yet confirmed that this has been toned down. A misinterpretation by John has been made, due to a specific youtube video where the author tries to compare GI but does it faulty, he compares the GI scene with the falling lamp in the Snowdrop engine video and compares it to a scene without colors and a similar light source moving around. There’s also another video floating around which compares the Snowdrop GI with a console build from one of the E3 exhibitions.
Dynamic material shaders. This has also been compared, but been compared in a bad way. I have two arguments to why it was a bad comparison. Firstly, the video from the Beta build used in the comparison has only light snowfall in it, and he fast forward only briefly. Thus not generation enough snow coverage compared to the Snowdrop tech demonstration. I also think that the demonstration of this shader done in the Snowdrop tech video was made using a slider, with a minimum and maximum value to more easily show off the shader. And with the slider to its maximum value is most likely either exaggerated or simulates heavy snowfall for a longer period of time, which would be a rarity to see in the dynamic weather system used in the game itself.
Additionally I’ve played the PC Beta for 4 straight days. I played extensively on highest possible settings. And to me all the aspects of the graphics I witnessed was not surpassed in the E3 2013 reveal. The only thing I noticed was the the color-scheme was colder in the e3 2013 build, but that could be due to different TOD and weather. I also noticed that they changed how lensflares appears, though I personally disables lensflares because I don’t like them so for me it doesn’t matter. I also noticed far distance uses some kind of DOF, similar to the one used in Crysis 1 where only far distance were blurred.
There will be another Beta, an open beta coming soon. I will try to make some good comparisons if I can get Shadowplay working by then.
What happened to your shadowplay?
I dunno bro, it installs correctly but the shadowplay overlay refuses to start when inside games :/
It worked flawlessly before, but ever since I changed to 360.xx drivers, it’s no more.
That’s a shame. I’ve only recently discovered how easy it is to use and made my first couple of vids but I’m actually going through some geforce experience problems too. It’s just been really buggy recently, it takes like 5 mins to open, when it does open its really slow. I’ve uninstalled/reinstalled it so many times, I’m now looking for something else to record my gameplay. Got any recommendations?
I will try to look into it in the coming days…
Well s0ldier recommended me to try Open Broadcaster Software, maybe you can give it a try and see if it suits you.
Peeeace
Yeah I tried that yesterday and it doesn’t get on with my OSD from afterburner which I use to compare my 980m and 970 in games. Oh well. Thanks anyway.
This is the guy that wrote the statement
hahahahahahaa now they trying to lie lol cause probably sony told them lol
Even UI in this game looks awfully consolish. From the ground up, lol.
PC versions of any game is always held back by consoles , to add higher resolution shadows ,HBAO+ ,higher res reflections and other higher res things is just a tiny improvements, these are laughable . PC version should have completely different and rewritten lightning, extremely more complex scenes like rocks ,buildings, 3 times more stuff on the ground . Just look from good angle how flat in most games ground and walls are, like they are made of paper . PC can do so much more..
You’re right. Thank god we got the configurable config files to play around with to increase visuals.
Rocks? Were in a City dude, it’s not a forest the game takes place in. U want more buildings? It’s New York allright, and pretty darn well recreated too, if you check a few newsarticles back you can find a video about it.
I don’t agree on the “3 times more stuff on the ground” though, streets are already very littered with sh*t, don’t know I would automatically enjoy it more if there were 3 times more s*it blocking my path. Sometimes less is more.
I think the lighting system is already mighty fine, better than the one used in Frostbite 3.
Yeah many games are flat, thankfully we have Parallax mapping in Division to solve that 🙂
All you peasant GTX 970 owners are holding us GTX 980 Ti and Titan X owners back. If it weren’t for you GTX 970 owners our games would look better.
Not sure if serious…
Is this this new troll humor thing?
Clearly because PC has scalable settings and options, it’s a bad analogy and a poor attempt at humour.
A poor attempt indeed!!
Stuck up clown!
Well this is semi true. The 970’s are undoubtedly extremely popular, perhaps the most popular card in the higher end segment of the PC gamers. 980’s, 980ti’s and Titan X’s are just too expensive for the grey masses.
And thanks to FailVidia the card even only got 3.5GB VRAM, which is a big problem when you start to crank settings up in Division, it’s literally eating VRAM. In my case the game used well over 5 GB of vRAM at the settings I ran on. Thank god my card has 6 GB 🙂
And you justify this “crave” the game has for VRAM? The result doesn’t at least even in Beta. I don’t think that anyone believe the game to be well optimized! The day when PC gamers will actually believe that cards like the brilliant 970 are holding back the visual progress in games then that day will be the end of many good things.. There is nothing semi true here. Only poor attempt at humor as WrATH stated below.
Hah! Yes the games technical fidelity and impressive visuals more than justifies the heavy vram demands. Oh I know the game is optimized, it used 99% GPU and +80% of my CPU cores evenly distributed.
Haha, you call the 970 brilliant? The 970 is a pretty weak card with a serious design flaw that limits it’s VRAM to 3.5GB, if any game tries to use more than 3.5, you will have serious stuttering and fps drops as a result. The 970 is simply not a good card for modern games who pushes graphical fidelity.
Not experienced that while playing heavy VRAM games, it’s an over stated thing, probably by people who haven’t got a GTX 970. You can actually play parts of Rise of the Tomb Raider with very high textures hitting 4.0GB and the game runs ok, it’s certain parts of the game where the performance drops off. I’ve actually seen the FuryX stutter more in videos I’ve seen.
I mean you explain this screenshot then using very high textures showing 4GB of VRAM in use.
http://i.imgur.com/lPL8RC2.jpg
Interesting. Thanks for the rundown. Looks like topping out vram usage isn’t causing stuttering/fps-drops in some games. I didn’t know this, as I have always had enough vram for the games I’ve played.
The game’s technical fidelity and impressive visuals? Hmm.. It didn’t seem as a total letdown as it was the case with Watch Dogs but I can’t say my jaw dropped from the visuals. As for the optimization we will see.. I won’t review the game, didn’t like it not a fan. I only did play the game thanks to a friend and that for “educational” reasons only. If 970 is a pretty weak card then I cannot but smile with your ignorance. Because if I was to agree with your comment about the game’s technical and impressive visuals then you don’t make sense and you have to agree with me that the card is indeed brilliant. That is because with an MSI Gaming 970 OC, i7 4790k, 16GB RAM settings on Ultra, fog on High the game run on 60fps. Witcher 3 also played at 60fps Ultra with distance on High and some drops here and there and I even had Hairworks ON! That was a good optimization for a game with the latest updates! Have fun playing games that push so hard the graphical fidelity man.
Ok, so Division didn’t drop your jaw? Maybe you should try the highest settings before you say something like that. How about looking at these screenshots I took while maxing out the game? : dsogaming(dot)com/screenshot-news/tom-clancys-the-division-looks-absolutely-stunning-when-rendered-in-4k-with-custom-sweetfx/
I wouldn’t go as far as saying the 970 is weak. But compared to my card, it just simply does lack that special spicy sauce 😀
I am not fascinated by images so much no offense. They look beautiful yes but it is different while in action. I already told you that I played the game on highest settings except a few tweaks that don’t make visually much difference. I haven’t tried SweetFX with Division to tell you the truth. Of course comparing a 980ti with a 970 it does lack haha I mean it would be insane if it wouldn’t. I never said anything different. But whatever I threw on my 970 even brand new games this 330$ card shows its power. I look forward on buying a 980ti but for the moment I OCed my MSI gaming and I am pretty satisfied. Although when you see for recommended specs a 980ti (Quantum Break) its a sign for the not so distant future.. Now that’s a game for jaws to be dropped.
Ok, let me put it this way. Screenshots alone doesn’t do the game justice. Here’s a 4K video of maxed settings: /watch?v=b-iHCu_6rQg
But he doesn’t run sweetFX, so he doesn’t get that nice contrast and sharpening.
The 970 is a good value card indeed. Undoubtedly a popular card. If you’re thinking about upgrading, I strongly suggest waiting for nvidias new Pascal line of cards. They are gonna be a big stepup from current generation GPU’s in performance compared to recent generation changes. Quantum sure has eyebrow lifting recommended specs, hope the visuals justifies it. Let’s see, Remedy usually delivers.
The 3.5GB of fast VRAM just isn’t much of an issue and has been blown out of all proportion. Yes NVIDIA maybe shouldn’t have designed it that way but really it was only picked up because a benchmark uses memory in a different way in synthetic benchmarks. I’ve had no issues with heavy VRAM games. Memory is a complex thing and it’s handled by the OS, the 0.5GB of slower ram is no different, if it’s managed well there shouldn’t be an issue like all memory.
I heard numerous people complain about bad stuttering and fps drops in heavy graphics titles like Division, they all had the 970. So am not convinced. I think the 970 is extra sensitive when games exceed it’s 3.5 limit.
LOLOL….this comment is gold…upvote
this… now this is what ive been looking for years!
Right Ubisoft, that’s why PC users had to petition you for a PC version to show interest because you made the console versions first.
Maybe they actually built the PC version from ground up as an own version separately, only just that the consoles version came before. But I actually don’t really believe that either, because the reveal footage must have been running on a PC to begin with.
Nope, the E3 trailer was a vertical slice built on PC, totally different to a real full blown game on PC.
Nothing Ubisoft says we will believe.
I just like gaming.
LOL, When I saw the other statement I knew this would be the following news article.
Same song and dance as Watch Dogs. One of the actual devs admits to console parity, Ubisoft’s PR team goes full damage control mode.
“From the beginning, the PC version of The Division was developed from the ground up”
From the beginning, this response to your meaningless PR babble has been developed from the ground up.
“feedback from PC players who participated in the recent closed beta supports this”
That’s weird, all I heard was that there is no anti-cheat so pvp is unplayable, and that the map is a fraction of what was promised.
1. I don’t smoke weed. I just don’t like little bitc*es like you and Beqa. 2. I think you’re the same person, prove me wrong by not hiding behind an anonymous profile. 3. Top notch for a single 980ti. I compared performance to Division and games like Crysis 3, AC: U, Ryse, GTA 5, all stay around the same performance level when maxed out in 4K, only that… Division just looks slightly better. 4. I don’t care about your English, I cared about you coming in here spreading BS behind an anonymous profile acting like a child making no sense at all. You nailed 3 things the PC were better at compared to console and ranting off a few “lolololol” like you thought you were funny. 5. It’s well know here, well known there. This is Massive, not a straight-out Ubisoft company. Ubisoft can act like a-holes as much as they want, Massive will most likely bring us a nice game nonetheless.
Developer says the consoles held it back, some Public Relations department lying pimp says that isn’t the case. Oh, and its obvious the game has been downgraded. It’s like they think that pissing on our legs and telling us its raining isn’t enough, they aren’t even bothering to say its rain anymore. It’s just a bold faced lie and its incredibly condescending to a user base who clearly sees it was downgraded.
Yeah AC IV was terribly optimised. The game didn’t look that Good but made my 780s scream. SLI was terrible too.
i knew all that being straight up with PC games was all BS. this is just another way of skirting the issue. instead of up front denial, confuse! just have one dev say one thing and another dev say something else. let the crap fall where it may and damage control backtracking commence!
At least they make us laugh!
Just shush man, i’ve read enough of ur bs
truth is a troll pc had to sign a petition to get it on pc.
Of course Ubisoft’s going to deny what the game’s dev said, they’re a company whose priority is profit above anything else. A statement like that would keep potential costumers away, and they don’t want that.
I actually applaud that dev for having the balls to say the cold hard truth like that, especially when it could very well affect the game’s financial performance on PC in a very negative way.
“Company that treats gamers with disgrace” ??
I Beg to differ sir. Just check the open beta changelog Massive just released. They actually listened to its players and fixed nearly every problem we had in the closed beta. That is good support. Look at Ubisoft Montreal for example, it took them 5 patches to fix the performance problems and a fraction of the bugs the game suffered. That is “disgraceful treating”
Yeah, your interpretation on my acting is something entirely up to you.
I’m not 15, am 28, I’m not rich, I live on subsistence level income and I do care about others opinions as long as they are valid and serves a point that can be backed up. Meaningless and re*arded comments like you posted however is nothing I can take lightly. Posting sh*t like that, you’re gonna have be prepared that others are gonna react to and reply accordingly as necessary.