Incredibly short draw distance for shadows, looks to be around 15 metres tops.
As per usual for Bethesda games, the LOD is absolutely terrible. Super low poly “distant” objects everywhere.
Everything is plagued by low res textures
Everything is low poly
Very poor ambient occlusion
Particles don’t receive shadowing
Minuscule draw distance for vegetation
Once again, vegetation and terrain don’t cast shadows. Shadows seem to only be cast by actors and props
The screenshot with the vault-tec bobblehead has a light that doesn’t cast shadows
Very poor depth of field effect (see the last 4 screenshots)
At least the game actually has ambient occlusion now
Shadows, although rendering within incredibly short distances, look WORLDS better than those in Skyrim. High res, appropriately smooth, and there seems to be a distance-dependent blur factor (notice how shadows closer to their casting objects are much sharper than the shadows cast by objects further away). If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, this technology is marketed by Nvidia as “PCSS” – which you’ve probably seen in a few games
The move to PBR has worked wonders for the aging engine they’re using. Everything looks like it’s made of realistic materials, even if the low res textures spoil the progress made. Look closely at the clothing, power armour, pistol and the Pipboy – the way they react to lighting looks real
It’s hard to be certain thanks to Imgur’s overly aggressive compression, but the anti-aliasing looks much better than Skyrim’s FXAA. Still quite blurry, but significantly better than the bizarrely terrible AA they used in Skyrim.
Lighting is volumes (pun intended) better thank Skyrim’s thanks to the use of volumetric lighting in order to provide accurate 3D godrays and fog, that add a much needed sense of depth to the scene that Skyrim so sorely lacked
Tonemapping may as well have come from a different universe. Where Skyrim relished in its crushed blacks, massively blown out bright spots, incredibly obnoxious bloom and terrible contrast, Fallout 4 does a fantastic job at making lighting look consistent and balanced
