A Technical Question FF 7 Remake " 2D Backgrounds"

DmckPower · May 17, 2020

So the purpose of this is not to bash the game's visuals or the graphics team.

I am genuinely wondering why did Square Enix choose to go with these low resolution backgrounds that seriously hurt the game's sense of believability ? looking up distinctly felt like looking at 2D background. I was not tricked into thinking the plates were really up there or that the slums were below in the parts that you look down from above.

What is the reason for this massive compromise ? Is current hardware unable unable to render these backgrounds in 3D at a playable framerate ? Was UE4 pushed to its limits ?

Or did Square maybe opt for these backgrounds because they didn't have enough time ?

The issue is that I feel we've seen similar trickery done much better in games to give an inflated sense of scale even on last gen hardware.

I am not technically knowledgeable but I think FF7R's playable area is small enough to allow the engine to render a distant 3D structure with some depth of field effect to give an actual sense that that city plates are up there.

Was this a necessary compromise or just a development shortcut ?

SE are masters of presentation and even FF13 for example did an amazing job with backgrounds and vistas on the PS3.

learning · May 17, 2020

Do you have any picture examples of these? I keep hearing about them and was watching a stream but was not able to catch them.

LebGuns · May 17, 2020

OP, just played that segment in chapter 16 and I know exactly what you're talking about. I had the same exact thoughts. They looked absolutely terrible. Like the low res backgrounds on FF9 on switch. It's insane really, because the game MAKES you look at them took too.

Petruccis Biceps · May 17, 2020

I didn't mind them at all, I thought the skyboxes looked awesome on my plasma, I knew it was mostly static other than some flickering lights and some other close 3d geometry, but it did a lot for the atmosphere for me. *shrugs* I did hear that people with larger tvs say the blurriness is a lot more apparent (I'm on a 42 in panny plasma). I dunno, I thought it looked awesome.

Moara · May 17, 2020

I definitely noticed that and it took me out for sure. The 2d image they use for the plates looking up is way too low res. It's a pretty bad skybox.

Hippopuncher12 · May 17, 2020

I didn't think it was too bad until I saw a suspended helicopter just sitting there in the background in the air acting like it was flying, but after looking harder I realized it was just a static helicopter. I looked at it for like 3 minutes trying to figure out wtf was going on lol.

Mauricio_Magus · May 17, 2020

I was also wondering about this, is it that difficult to make something that didn't look that bad?

Jakenbakin · May 17, 2020

It was something I honestly expected to get patched, alongside numerous others. I have no idea. It didn't detract for me as much as it did others, but it's just so obvious you'd think it wasn't meant to look like but...

Feep · May 17, 2020

The plates above weren't that bad. The slums from Chapter 6 and the ruins from Chapter 15 were far worse.

Anyway, yes, converting an insane amount of geometry and lighting to a simple skybox saves an incredible amount of resources and was likely necessary to get it running at the framerate it did.

ciddative · May 17, 2020

The worst parts are the 2 instances where you're very high up and looking down on the slums, they use a low res static image to represent an almost 360 degree view of the world 300 feet from above, they don't even try to skew or distort it or add a few low poly models in there.

It looked like absolute dogshit (and made 2 pointlessly expanded sequences even less engaging)

Edit: Yup 6 and 15, as Feep said. Reminded me of original FF7 for all the wrong reasons

DmckPower · May 17, 2020

Feep said:
The plates above weren't that bad. The slums from Chapter 6 and the ruins from Chapter 15 were far worse.

Anyway, yes, converting an insane amount of geometry and lighting to a simple skybox saves an incredible amount of resources and was likely necessary to get it running at the framerate it did.

Is this a reality check about the limits of current gen hardware ?

It is odd because FF13 has a lot of fake backgrounds ( not sure if they were 2D or actual geometry )

Soo the team KNOWS how to make grand backgrounds that look amazing.

I am pretty sure FF13 backgrounds look better than those found here.

Estarossa · May 17, 2020

Pat_DC · May 17, 2020

FF7R is one of the most inconsistent games I can remember playing.
Stuff like what you mention stands out but the whole game is full of instances where a fanatic looking asset is right next to a really bad or low res looking asset.
What makes it weirder is the game doesn't try and hide any of these things, instead focusing entire cut scenes around them.

It really stood out to me when I played it. I do wonder if they ran out of time (no time to optimise, c19?) or were fine with how some of these things looked?
The other thing that really stood out to me was how most npc models look like they should be in another game.

Feep · May 17, 2020

DmckPower said:
Weird snip

It's not about what they *know how to do*. I don't recall XIII using static skybox backgrounds, but if they did, it was not in the context of the rest of Final Fantasy VIIR's character models, effects, lighting, and animation. Those things cost a lot, and rendering the hyper-detailed plates above would have been very costly. It's *still* costly, even as a high-definition skybox, to some extent; clearly we have texture memory and loading issues all over the place.

Hilarious_Bearious · May 17, 2020

Petruccis Biceps said:
I didn't mind them at all, I thought the skyboxes looked awesome on my plasma

Just playing though; I still have a Panasonic plasma for my retro consoles because it has all the old inputs and does a good job at pillarboxing. Also those actually black blacks.

TheXbox · May 17, 2020

The chapter where you look out over the ruins looks strikingly terrible. Not sure why they didn't throw a bunch of bashed ruins around the level instead of giving the player a naked view of the godawful 2D skybox. Shit was baffling.

DmckPower · May 17, 2020

Feep said:
It's not about what they *know how to do*. I don't recall XIII using static skybox backgrounds, but if they did, it was not in the context of the rest of Final Fantasy VIIR's character models, effects, lighting, and animation. Those things cost a lot, and rendering the hyper-detailed plates above would have been very costly. It's *still* costly, even as a high-definition skybox, to some extent; clearly we have texture memory and loading issues all over the place.

Thanks for clarification.

That does make a lot of sense.

Its just a bit sobering that all these years later we still can't do midgar justice lol

Zips · May 17, 2020

Styles said:

I haven't been keeping up with things. But uh, does this also include Cloud's apartment door?

Xenosaga · May 17, 2020

Zips said:
I haven't been keeping up with things. But uh, does this also include Cloud's apartment door?

Arex · May 17, 2020

DmckPower said:
So the purpose of this is not to bash the game's visuals or the graphics team.

I am genuinely wondering why did Square Enix choose to go with these low resolution backgrounds that seriously hurt the game's sense of believability ? looking up distinctly felt like looking at 2D background. I was not tricked into thinking the plates were really up there or that the slums were below in the parts that you look down from above.

What is the reason for this massive compromise ? Is current hardware unable unable to render these backgrounds in 3D at a playable framerate ? Was UE4 pushed to its limits ?

Or did Square maybe opt for these backgrounds because they didn't have enough time ?

The issue is that I feel we've seen similar trickery done much better in games to give an inflated sense of scale even on last gen hardware.

I am not technically knowledgeable but I think FF7R's playable area is small enough to allow the engine to render a distant 3D structure with some depth of field effect to give an actual sense that that city plates are up there.

Was this a necessary compromise or just a development shortcut ?

SE are masters of presentation and even FF13 for example did an amazing job with backgrounds and vistas on the PS3.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they use these 2D background maps for the other chapters too.

I think because of the different perspective we're playing on chapter 15 (we're going up, looking down) instead of the others where we're on the ground looking up, it's much more noticeable that it's just a 2D image.

They probably didn't have enough time / resource. For sure there's better solution available.

Xenosaga said:

yeah nobody's putting in that kind of texture in game on purpose lol.
I reckon someone probably assigned a prop texture group for the door texture in UE (or maybe even wrong texture group); the game automatically reduce the textures sizes depending on those group's setting on runtime, and this door unfortunately got reduced to 64x64 or 32x32 blob maybe. I feel bad for the texture artists :p

Cordy · May 17, 2020

Styles said:

Xenosaga said:

Ahhhh I see, thanks for explaining. I was wondering what was up, figured it was a technical issue.

Hopefully a patch can clear it up. I wasn't bothered by it really but I was curious.

Feep · May 17, 2020

Also, that Twitter guy above is an idiot. "Unreal fucked us by deciding to not load them in"? UE4 is an engine with a very advanced and proven texture management system. How that tool is used by the developer and how it has to work within the confines of limited, seven year old hardware is the important thing, here. Epic is not at fault. UE4 works fine.

mute · May 17, 2020

Styles said:

That's wild. If/when I can get back to the game I hope it is something that can be fixed.

I'm sure the game will get a rerelease with extra bells and whistles, textures included, in the future though.

DmckPower · May 18, 2020

Arex said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they use these 2D background maps for the other chapters too.

I think because of the different perspective we're playing on chapter 15 (we're going up, looking down) instead of the others where we're on the ground looking up, it's much more noticeable that it's just a 2D image.

They probably didn't have enough time / resource. For sure there's better solution available.

I guess its nice that the remainder of this remake will hit next gen.

But then again the rest of FF7 doesn't really have any location as complex as midgar.

Surely some of the more open areas will still benefit from better hardware.

Deleted member 8468 · May 18, 2020

Styles said:

Weird to try and shift blame to the engine.

I feel like a lot of the texture loading issues was a lack of time/polish thing that was intended to be fixed.

TDLink · May 18, 2020

AFAIK it's a loading bug. Almost every area in the game uses these 2D images for backgrounds and they are so good 90% of the time that you never even realize it. The only times it really stands out (or did for me anyway) is Chapters 6 and 15, both instances where you're looking down at the image. It was good at every other part of the game. I am sure this will all be resolved in the PC release.

Arex · May 18, 2020

Yeah the engine is more than capable lol. They just need more technical artists to solve the issues. Anyway some levels are also probably given more care (and time) from the environment artists assigned to them than others.

LiquidSolid · May 18, 2020

DmckPower said:
I am not technically knowledgeable but I think FF7R's playable area is small enough to allow the engine to render a distant 3D structure with some depth of field effect to give an actual sense that that city plates are up there.

Why spend the time rendering a distant 3D structure when you're only ever going to see it from a distance? That's often a waste of resources. Skyboxes are extremely common in games, you just never notice them because they fit in so well that you assume you're looking at a 3D structure in the distance when in reality it's just a flat image. This is the case for 90% of FFVIIR, the issue is that remaining 10% where a loading issue makes them really stick out.

I'm actually surprised they still haven't patched FFVIIR since launch, I can only assume that they've struggled to adapt to working from home.

DeSolos · May 18, 2020

I wonder if the skybox texture was mapped to simple geometry if that would've improved things... At least for the vistas below it would help with the parallax of tiny buildings.

Yuntu · May 18, 2020

I honestly thought they used the skyboxes to great effect. Never looked wrong to me.

spam musubi · May 18, 2020

Baconmonk said:
Weird to try and shift blame to the engine.

I feel like a lot of the texture loading issues was a lack of time/polish thing that was intended to be fixed.

Yeah unreal and PS4 are perfectly competent at loading textures lol. It's in how the engine is used in this particular game.

100mega · May 18, 2020

I did notice that anytime you are supposed to be in an elevated location the skyboxes looked worse probably due to some perspective trick they were doing which zoomed them in too much. They skyboxes normally look great.

Kikujiro · May 18, 2020

Yuntu said:
I honestly thought they used the skyboxes to great effect. Never looked wrong to me.

The plate above is ok to great looking (especially by night), but Chapter 15 is absolutely striking, like it couldn't be the devs intention to make the backgrounds look like that. The amusing thing is that right after is Chapter 16 which is probably the best looking part of the game. I guess they have been working on a patch, but due to the Coronavirus emergency it's going to come out way later than expected.

Edit: Wrong chapters

Yuntu · May 18, 2020

Kikujiro said:
The plate above is ok to great looking (especially by night), but Chapter 16 is absolutely striking, like it couldn't be the devs intention to make the backgrounds look like that. The amusing thing is that right after is Chapter 17 which is probably the best looking part of the game. I guess they have been working on a patch, but due to the Coronavirus emergency it's going to come out way later than expected.

I honestly dont remember anything being wrong with Chapter 16.

HTupolev · May 18, 2020

DmckPower said:
It is odd because FF13 has a lot of fake backgrounds ( not sure if they were 2D or actual geometry )

Soo the team KNOWS how to make grand backgrounds that look amazing.

I am pretty sure FF13 backgrounds look better than those found here.

FFXIII uses a lot of large 2D cutouts, yeah. The main things making it less noticeable were the generally lower resolution of the game and the camera system. The latter being a big one: it's extremely difficult in FFXIII to stably hold the camera sideways while moving, so wrong parallax on distant 2d elements is kept remarkably non-obvious. I actually suspect it's a significant part of why people think that FFXIII-2 had some sort of big graphical downgrade: the area design and the revised camera system affect what sorts of visual elements the game can leverage.

Ferrs · May 18, 2020

Chapter 15

This is NOT looking at a hidden place out of bonds or anything, it's straight in your face.

Xenosaga · May 18, 2020

Ferrs said:
Chapter 15

This is NOT looking at a hidden place out of bonds or anything, it's straight in your face.

pretty sure that's chapter 15.
But yeah, that one is probably the one that stands out the most.

Deleted member 45414 · May 18, 2020

A couple of them were pretty bad, dunno why though... assuming lack of time / down priotizing, or maybe they just forgot.

Dark Ninja · May 18, 2020

It's due to limitations they are working with. The matte paintings work well sometimes and sometimes they don't. FF7 is trying to do way too much and it's combination of bad planning and ancient hardware. When you have too many unique objects in an area you will eventually get a texture streaming issue or crash. This isn't a UE4 problem it's doing that in order to load everything as best it can but they have just put too much shit in the map and have giant sight lines not allowing for optimization. Other games would go in either cut the assets or consolidate with another that is already in the map but they just left them. The low poly environment is obvious they prioritized the characters and honestly made a good decision the characters are amazing in this game. There will probably some fixes naturally when the PC version comes out.

A fix I can see they attempted on chapter 8 was remove all spec/roughness and normals from assets but honestly looks like someone tucked up the tiling on some of the assets. This probably got them stable frame rate at least in that area.

Ferrs · May 18, 2020

Xenosaga said:
pretty sure that's chapter 15.
But yeah, that one is probably the one that stands out the most.

yeah I edited, got the chapters mixed.

Marcus Aurelius · May 18, 2020

The visuals beyond character models are probably the biggest negative for me with this game. We all know about the horrible textures but everything just looks so drab and ugly and rushed/slapped together from a graphics point of view. You can't have the character models and enemies look so good then put them in contrast to these terrible background visuals.

Soriku · May 18, 2020

Uhh I thought the plate when looking up looked great, especially during the day with HDR on, least on my TV.

Ch 15 looks bad though as stated. Didn't ruin the game for me or anything, but yeah.

PowerThroughLov · May 18, 2020

Kikujiro said:
The plate above is ok to great looking (especially by night), but Chapter 16 is absolutely striking, like it couldn't be the devs intention to make the backgrounds look like that. The amusing thing is that right after is Chapter 17 which is probably the best looking part of the game. I guess they have been working on a patch, but due to the Coronavirus emergency it's going to come out way later than expected.

You sure you dont mean Chapter 15? Chapter 16 is a extremely good looking chapter.

nelsonroyale · May 18, 2020

Hmm, yeah. The 2d backgrounds are just weird. Sure I can understand that the scenes they depict require a level of geometry not possible on current gen - Although they could simplify them a bit to make them feasible. But in some chapters as you say they are super low res which doesn't make much sense. As for low res textures and blocky geometry, must be due to a lack of optimisation / polish. They literally look like assets dialed down to low setting on PC. FFXV had this issue as well. Here's hoping SE get better at optimising their assets next gen...

Marcus Aurelius · May 18, 2020

Xenosaga said:

Woooow. Welp, that'll teach me. Never buying a Square game again except on PC. At least then if Square can't be fucked cleaning up their mess, at least modders can do it.

Estarossa · May 18, 2020

I think SE should stop developing games and let a more competent western developer produce their games. They had 5 years so there's really no excuse.

Marcus Aurelius · May 18, 2020

Styles said:
I think SE should stop developing games and let a more competent western developer produce their games. They had 5 years so there's really no excuse.

The game was thrown out and restarted at one point don't forget, and that is because Square did exactly that and attempted to get the game developed externally lol CyberConnect were completely out of their depth.

DmckPower · May 18, 2020

Marcus Aurelius said:
The visuals beyond character models are probably the biggest negative for me with this game. We all know about the horrible textures but everything just looks so drab and ugly and rushed/slapped together from a graphics point of view. You can't have the character models and enemies look so good then put them in contrast to these terrible background visuals.

Yeah the visuals detracted from the game a bit somehow.

Sector 7 and Sector 5 are pretty rough looking areas of the game too.

Sector 7 (the start town)especially is kind of this indistinct mess. Not sure if its a technical thing or also a bit of an art direction issue.

7th heaven was ok looking.

To be fair, slums and shanty towns are actually very hard to do in games.

Niks · May 18, 2020

Styles said:
I think SE should stop developing games and let a more competent western developer produce their games. They had 5 years so there's really no excuse.

Holy overreaction batman!

95% of the game looks great. Calm down.

Hugare · May 18, 2020

Styles said:

I havent seen this before, thanks

This is an important find.

I also saw a thread that he made about it on his twitter, and it was very enlightening

He doesnt blame the engine there, he explains that it was probably a coding fuck up or something

And according to him, it's fixable, but it would demand some work, checking textures one by one (oof)

A Technical Question FF 7 Remake " 2D Backgrounds"

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