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Update: As expected the Crysis 2 "DX11 Ultra Upgrade" patch and the high-resolution texture pack are now available for download. The update introduces DirectX 11 support as well as graphical improvements to both DX11 and DX9 versions of the game. For more details on the changes read our original post from last Friday below. On a relevant note, there's also a fan-made Crysis HD texture mod here.
Making good on its promise, Crytek has announced that it will finally add DirectX 11 graphics to Crysis 2. The developer plans to release three separate downloadable add-ons that improve the game's visual quality alongside patch 1.9 next Monday, June 27. To be clear, although patch 1.9 will enable DirectX 11 support, you'll have to individually download and install the "DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade," "DX11 Tessellation Pack," and "High Res Textures."
The DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade will deliver a host of graphical improvements and performance optimizations for both DX9 and DX11 APIs. After installing the update, folks running Crysis 2 in DX9 will gain real-time local reflections and contacts shadows. In addition to those effects, DX11 platforms will enjoy hardware tessellation, parallax occlusion mapping along with various shadow, water, particle, depth of field, and motion blur enhancements.
To enable hardware tessellation, however, DX11 players will have to download the DX11 Tessellation Pack, which contains pre-tessellated geometries. As its name indicates, the third optional download simply contains high-resolution textures for a variety of assets. Both DX9 and DX11 versions of Crysis 2 will support the snazzier textures, but it's worth noting that you'll need a graphics card with at least 1GB of VRAM and a 64-bit OS.
Patch 1.9 will also deliver nearly a dozen gameplay tweaks, including a handful multiplayer bug fixes for issues that caused incorrect stat logging and authentication problems. Another glitch prevented JAW rockets from firing through windows with broken glass. The update will also improve anti-cheat measurements as Crytek has fixed an exploit that allowed players to become immune to vote kicking. We've included the full release notes below.
Although they haven't been officially released yet, a few lucky players managed to download the updates from Crytek's test environment before the company removed the files from public view. You'll have to wait until Monday to experience the higher-quality graphics in all their splendor, but you can whet your appetite with six animated GIFs that compare the before and after effects of DX11 Tessellation courtesy of a NeoGaf forum member.
Unfortunately, for every PC gamer that is ecstatic about the DX11 update, we imagine there are two who will shrug it off with a chip on their shoulder. Many PC gamers were disappointed by Crysis 2's console-biased launch, giving the game an average Metacritic user score of 6.4 out of 10. For those of you who dismissed Crysis 2 as a console port: is the DX11 patch enough to forgive and forget, or is Crytek simply putting tinsel on a dead Christmas tree?
Crysis 2 Patch 1.9
• Added Contact Shadows
• Added DX11 benchmark level
• Added DX11 support for Crysis 2 (the following features only work when downloading the optional DX11 package here):
• - Tessellation + Displacement Mapping
• - High Quality HDR Motion Blur
• - Realistic Shadows with Variable Penumbra
• - Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field
• - Parallax Occlusion Mapping
• - Particles Motion Blur, Shadows and Art Updates
• - Water Rendering improvements and using Tessellation + Displacement Mapping
• Added Realtime Local Reflections
• Added support for Higher Res Textures Package
• Added various new console variables to whitelist
• Fixed bullet penetration, which had been broken by a bug introduced with the DLC 2 patch
• Fixed issue in MP where player stats weren't always saved at the end of a game
• Fixed issue in MP where player stats would sometimes randomly reset
• Fixed issue with MP time played statistic, which would sometimes be too low on leaderboards and in stats
• Fixed issue with JAW rocket not firing through window's containing broken glass
• Fixed rare issue where a user could not access MP with a valid CD key if they had previously used an invalid CD key
• Improved advanced graphics options menu
• Improved anti-cheat measurements: fixed exploit which could prevent vote kicking working against a user
• Improved multi-GPU support
• Improved Tone Mapping
• Re-added possibility to enable r_StereoSupportAMD via config file (unsupported)
User Comments: 78
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I'm pretty sure that qualifies as urban legend. Some of the most buggiest games in history weren't even released in the last ten years (Ultima IX:Ascension (1999), World War II Online/Battleground Europe (2001) andBattlezone II:Combat Commander (1999)...not to mention Hellgate:London, SimCity 4 etc.
Maybe an urban legend to people who didn't play computer games, but there was a time about a decade ago where I would literally download every game that came out, if I had a slightest desire to even try it, and even though all those games were cracked they pretty much all worked. And even if they didn't, it was an exception not the rule.
I'm sure you can Google enough counters to whatever I say, but these days most AAA titles come out with bugs that are reproducible across a wide range of hardware, from good to bad. The problem started when games started being viewed as commodities by large corporations that began snapping up gaming developers to add to their asset portfolio, and games stopped being released when they're done, but according to some prearranged date set a year back.
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princeton said:
Guest said:thanks princeton for taking my point
I also unknowingly launching the game from crysis2.exe but now i will use launcher for autoupdate
No problem. Don't let....ignorant people try and put you down and try and mark you as a pirate.
Guest said:You're now arguing that the HD 6950 is the only card that matters when examining whether or not a game must use 2 gpus to run at 60fps on the highest settings.
It matters because that is what i have, yes. You quoted my comment saying the game didn't warrant 2 GPU's. That's a pretty general statement. All you had to do was ask what I had, before spouting off saying i said the 6950 was the only anything.
You cancel your account yet?
Do you know what a strawman argument is? Because it's exactly what you're doing. Your arguments are just filled with fallacies, just give up.
oooww stop crying already! just face the fact that the game runs at over 30fps at 1080P res on a single card OK!And Princeton was refering to the fact that the game graphics are pretty crap considering they were supposed to blow our minds yet a graphics card such as yours can run the game at full with ease.
It doesn't deserve 2 GPU's because it was a let down of game!
Sheesh!
Burty. How dare you try and impose logic on a post made from a Techspot guest. You know better than that!
Princeton: "Well you were actually making a very compelling argument until you said this.You do same/better is one of the the worst counter-arguments ever."
^^^ You confused me with the other Guest. The performance argument is something you are discussing with another person in this thread.
L.
Sorry about that. THERE'S TOO MANY GUESTS! We need tripcodes or something.
EDIT: By the way Crytek. You've had 8 major patches now. Could you please fix the issue where if you die in campaign before reaching a checkpoint in the level you lose all your attachments and have to restart the level?
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StaffCrysis 2 is a bad game because it represents everything that is going wrong with the PC gaming industry. Developers are not taking advantage of new hardware and at this point, with 360 and PS3 being out as long as they have, every game is just a remake with a slightly different story line. Enough time has gone by that it has all been done before and there is no one and no way to raise the bar. Games have reached a stand still as far as people going above and beyond what is possible. Crysis 1 went above and beyond what anyone had ever seen before.
Crysis 2 was just more of the same, it didn't have the wide open areas to name one. The shaders are also a good bit over the top... I think Crysis 2 has been a big let down because a lot of gamers have a "special place in their heart" for Crysis. Everyone who knows anything about PC games (or has a decent graphics card) knows exactly what Crysis is and what it stands for. Crytek was one company that ALWAYS raised the bar and that's not what happened with the sequel. Crysis 1 was a "game changer." Everyone was expecting Crysis 2 to be a game that takes the industry in a new direction, to set a new standard for gaming. Crysis 1 not only had amazing and unique graphics, It had an entirely different style of gameplay.
In a lot of ways Crysis 2 is a step backwards. No wide open areas, limited destructibility, and some uncomfortable controls. With that I'm going to leave on this, my favorite thing to do in Crysis. After I beat crysis 1 and did the second play through with unlimited ammo I would use explosives to blow up ALL the trees. Every map looked like a clearcut logging operation after I was done with it.
Your post is so spot on yRaz that I just had to quote it in full, I agree with everything you are saying!
You are worse than a bunch of 13 year old console kiddies. Honestly, based on the constant PC game bashing, you'd think nothing good has come out since Half Life 2 and Counter-Strike Force in 2004. Guess what, games like HL2 come out once every 10 years.
Well, can you name one good game that has come out since?
Frankly I was not that impressed by HL2, great games with great story I have played in recent times have been Half-Life 1 and Deus Ex 1
That's pretty much it!
Sure Starcraft 2 was kinda cool, but if we limit ourselves to FPS games like the aforementioned two....
Crysis 1 was really fun to play, it had a great atmosphere.
I could get lost in there hours on end, sadly the story was nothing like you find in HL1 or Deus Ex.
Crysis 1 is what I'd call an immersive game, not necessarily a game that has a great story that you can get immersed in, but simply something else (In this case the great vistas and awsome graphics for it's time, just like Far Cry)
This in and of itself is not bad, but it's important when you make a sequel to remember what gamers liked about the original game, because if you take all those parts away maybe user reviews will not be so flattering...
I did not have doubts that a DX11 patch would come, but I did not expect it to bring so much to the table, kudos to that Crytek!
I also said that I think there is no way at all that a high resolution texture pack will be released, simply due to the big size and job of releasing it, I was wrong there and it will be fun to see what a difference it makes.
It still leaves me wondering why the game was not released like this? (Yea, I mean holding up the launch until the game is finished)
But the problem remains, the AI sucks & the big Vistas of Crysis 1 are missing.
No getting around that I am afraid
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princeton said:Per Hansson said:
But the problem remains, the AI sucks & the big Vistas of Crysis 1 are missing.
No getting around that I am afraid
It's not even AI, it's scripted enemies that navigate using nodes.
They rely on nodes more than the combine from HL2. It's funny because when it comes to FPS games most use navigation zones, like UE3 games. Generally nodes are worse because the movement is all waypoint based, instead of decision making.
EDIT: Check out the DX11 page now. http://www.mycrysis.com/dx11 It says "Something went horribly wrong" Talk about encapsulating everything that is this game.
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I'm sure you can Google enough counters to whatever I say, but these days most AAA titles come out with bugs that are reproducible across a wide range of hardware, from good to bad. The problem started when games started being viewed as commodities by large corporations that began snapping up gaming developers to add to their asset portfolio, and games stopped being released when they're done, but according to some prearranged date set a year back.
I wont refute your argument because there is a great element of truth in it in general terms. Pick any TWIMTBP or Gaming Evolved title and it is a certainty that more than half the user base will experience performance handicapping and driver bugs. What I will say is that the bugged nature of modern games- as opposed to the supposedly bug-free nature of those in the past- is more a rose-tinted glasses scenario that is exacerbated by a number of conditions:
*Direct development/code implementation by Nvidia and AMD
*The larger number of released game titles per year (add in driver team overwork/incompetance)
*The rise of entitlement on the net
*Money/greed, sponsorship/product placement, media tie-ins (covered by yourself)
*A wider range of hardware configurations, graphics architectures, API's and an ever expanding checklist of graphical image quality settings (Question: How many ten year old games weigh in at 9 Gb for instance ?)
*DRM
As for being able to pick up any old game and having a bug-free experience, I'd say that gaming experience, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder- that and a modicum of luck. Google any game and add "problem", "bug", "error" etc.. and you'll most likely be rewarded with bona-fide hits.
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Pre Hansson,
I can think of plenty of PC games I enjoyed since HL2 and Deus Ex 1.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay - Developer's Cut (amazing!)
GTA IV
Dirt 2/ Dirt 3
F1 2010
Mass Effect 1&2
Battlefield 2 & BF:BC2
Dragon Age series
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Batman AA
Bioshock 1
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1
Unreal Tournament 3
World in Conflict
Braid
Portal 1&2
The Witcher 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Team Fortress
Burnout Paradise
Dead Space 1 & 2
Gears of War
Company of Heroes
If you don't like any of the above games, then I don't know what you want in a videogame. I tried playing HL1 and it's horrible compared to modern standards.
I think as people grow older, they just get more grumpy and life and like to complain. So the same gamers 10-15 years ago were much younger and more happy in life. Now, all they do is look at the negative aspect of a game.
Perhaps you should try playing outside of the FPS genre. Try a Zelda game for example. Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is better than 97% of games I've ever played. Most FPS nowdays lack good single-player campaigns - so by default in my eyes they can't be considered the top genre today.
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yRaz said:
Too little too late Crytec. Sorry, but you dropped the ball on this one. The game still isn't worth $60 and they have to balls to charge for DLC too. I was thinking of buying it on steam when the price came down but that's not happening now.
Maybe it would have been a good idea to show 1080p images of it, those small pictures don't do it any justice, you can't tell that much of a difference between the 2. Perhaps there is a reason for the low resolution images?
Their GameSpy network interface is still jerky and super annoying so it is hard to justify to myself to start playing this again when I know it is just going to be at the same level of all my other games (probably even less).
{shrugs}, we will see?
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princeton said:Too late! already deleted it on my soon list, 60 dollars for some good campaign and a mediocre multiplayer inst worth it! Besides i still have to give it back to my 11yo bro who didnt like it...
Pardon? It wasn't as bad as cod but cmon man, it was no stalker, half life, bioshock. It was...ok, it got predictable and repetitive at times. It certainly wasn't awful though.
*sigh* One thing console gamers have. They can return, resell or rent games if they turn out to be crap.
this
Most of the people that say crysis 2 failed aren't saying that its a bad game, but it failed to meet the standards of the original.
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princeton said:zecias said:princeton said:Too late! already deleted it on my soon list, 60 dollars for some good campaign and a mediocre multiplayer inst worth it! Besides i still have to give it back to my 11yo bro who didnt like it...
Pardon? It wasn't as bad as cod but cmon man, it was no stalker, half life, bioshock. It was...ok, it got predictable and repetitive at times. It certainly wasn't awful though.
*sigh* One thing console gamers have. They can return, resell or rent games if they turn out to be crap.
this
Most of the people that say crysis 2 failed aren't saying that its a bad game, but it failed to meet the standards of the original.
Exactly. It would definitely hold up as a stand alone game, but as a sequel it's disappointing.
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yRaz said:
Per Hansson said:Your post is so spot on yRaz that I just had to quote it in full, I agree with everything you are saying!
Even the part about the explosives?
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Amen brother. I enjoyed this game too and am looking forward to this dx11 patch.
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Oh no!!....???
I'm still hope that my gtx 560 ti run smoothly on dx 11
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The game is still a turd no matter the polish. ;-)
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StaffEven the part about the explosives?
Yea, even the part about the trees
I would usually drive around in the Hummer or other vehicle with mounted machine gun and shoot them down
One of my fondest memories from Crysis 1 is while attacking a few enemies I see a tree fall in the background, that still makes me smile to this day
The more I think about it it's the exploration part I love in these games, like Far Cry, Crysis 1 etc you can spend hours doing little silly things in the game even after having killed all enemies and it keeps you totally immersed in the game!
In Crysis 2 it's more like this, corridor with 10 doors, I try to open 9 of them, they are all locked...
Nevermind I'm packing a ton of explosives and guns, those doors stay closed.
So I go through the 10:th door
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I don't know if anyone's noticed but isn't the tessellation effect on the brick wall a bit buggy? If tessellation maps provide the walls with geometry-based beveling, if you can see from the farthest-left corner of the window that the bricks aren't aligned horizontally. The one thing that bugs me about that image, I mean the DX11 patch is going to look great, but man those bricks should be fixed.
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Well do me a favor. Go outside and look at a ground covered in rocks. Now tell me which one of these looks more like the ground covered in rocks.
[link]
If you said POM disabled you may want to invest in a good pair of glasses and or contact lenses.
Now that picture is cropped and contains some jagged edges. Here's a better example.
[link]
Could you please inform us all on how that looks inferior to when the ground is flattened?
I still gotta disagree, POM disabled still looks better as turning it on pretty much disables anisotrophic filtering on the rocky textures, but it could be just my personal preference but I would never go with the low AF- I even started up Wars and took some pics
ON - http://postimage.org/image/b565pguc/
OFF - http://postimage.org/image/b5uyro90/
-sorry the colour is off, havent tuned anything yet
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Xclusiveitalian said:
Console port!!!!!!!!!!!! Crysis 1 has better graphics, the DX11 patch is NOT good enough!
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Get over it mate. It's a great game that looks good and it fun. What else do you want?
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Guest said:
I have been a PC gamer for a long time and over the 3-4 years it's the same BS from so many of you so called "hardcore" PC gamers.
I completely agree with Guest here. The amount of bitching here (and elsewhere) is incredible. If you're that ***** who never has anything good to say to her guy, don't be surprised if you find him with another woman. Do you really think a developer will think anything but: "apparently these gamers don't really care about the DX11 improvements, might as well stick to DX9 next time."
Princeton, go do some reading about why there's a difference between 30 fps and 60 fps. I'm sure some googling will help you.
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I've installed the Patch and the High Res Textures, I do not have a DX11 card yet.
I have to admit, they have improved it enough for me to go through the single player again, just for the views this time, lighting is finally real, shadows look much better and reflections also work! and water now responds and moves like it should!
Why Crytek did it this way rather than just release the PC version later with all the tweaks, I will never know.
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captainawesome said:
i would like to see a CPU/GPU performance roundup for DX11 and tessellation enabled performance comparison please!
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: "apparently these gamers don't really care about the DX11 improvements, might as well stick to DX9 next time."
The reason that this "patch' exists is because enough people expressed their dissatisfaction that Cervat Yerli ran his lips for three years about Crysis 2 being the the "greatest graphics of all time" as well as other lofty statements about the then upcoming sequel. Then they came out with the dreadful game they did with a decade old API. They would have kept it that way if they could have gotten away with it. The rest of the industry was also watching intently to see if EA/Crytek would get away with it as well, so they could do the same thing. i would submit to you that all of the folks who 'Dont have anything nice to say' have done more for the future of PC gaming than has been done in a good long time. It may be the last time for a while that these guys try the "way over-promise, and miserably under-deliver while resting on the laurels of past work strategy" on a PC version.
Keep up the negative comments coming until Cervat actually believes what he said:
So with Crysis 2, we took a different direction, and it backfired a little bitnot to mention this preposterous rambling:
Yerli explained that the forthcoming high-end 1.9 patch for Crysis 2, which will introduce clevers such as tessellation, realistic shadows with variable penumbra, parallax occlusion mapping, and “Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field”, is a “gift” to the PC high-end community.A gift?...really? how about late delivery of what we paid for in the first place....remember? "the greatest graphics of all time"
That would have been extremely difficult to do with a console port and a 10 year old API.
I would say that if you are enjoying the DX11/Hi res pak ....you can thank the people who yelled ,wrote , posted, and Kvetched since dropping their $60 to be met with a trip back in time to 2007 graphics and an XBox port.
just my 2 cents.
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Nice one Bro!
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Superpeter said:
red1776 said:: "apparently these gamers don't really care about the DX11 improvements, might as well stick to DX9 next time."The reason that this "patch' exists is because enough people expressed their dissatisfaction that Cervat Yerli ran his lips for three years about Crysis 2 being the the "greatest graphics of all time" as well as other lofty statements about the then upcoming sequel. Then they came out with the dreadful game they did with a decade old API. They would have kept it that way if they could have gotten away with it. The rest of the industry was also watching intently to see if EA/Crytek would get away with it as well, so they could do the same thing. i would submit to you that all of the folks who 'Dont have anything nice to say' have done more for the future of PC gaming than has been done in a good long time. It may be the last time for a while that these guys try the "way over-promise, and miserably under-deliver while resting on the laurels of past work strategy" on a PC version.
Keep up the negative comments coming until Cervat actually believes what he said:
So with Crysis 2, we took a different direction, and it backfired a little bitnot to mention this preposterous rambling:
Yerli explained that the forthcoming high-end 1.9 patch for Crysis 2, which will introduce clevers such as tessellation, realistic shadows with variable penumbra, parallax occlusion mapping, and “Sprite Based Bokeh Depth of Field”, is a “gift” to the PC high-end community.A gift?...really? how about late delivery of what we paid for in the first place....remember? "the greatest graphics of all time"
That would have been extremely difficult to do with a console port and a 10 year old API.
I would say that if you are enjoying the DX11/Hi res pak ....you can thank the people who yelled ,wrote , posted, and Kvetched since dropping their $60 to be met with a trip back in time to 2007 graphics and an XBox port.
just my 2 cents.
Thank you for saying that so eloquently. I have to use some of that to clarify the half a**ed treatment that people in my life treat others like that everyday. In the things they do for people, I always think the same.. "A gift?...really?". Thanks for holding your torch to the light.
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Superpeter said:
Thank you for saying that so eloquently. I have to use some of that to clarify the half a**ed treatment that people in my life treat others like that everyday. In the things they do for people, I always think the same.. "A gift?...really?". Thanks for holding your torch to the light.
Why would you apply that to your entire life? we're talking about a game here that wasn't finished when it launched. We're certainly not talking about each others life story's :\
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