@MADMAC50KI'm not sure if I can quite put my finger on it.
I play a lot on the lowest settings, as the game is too unoptimized and uses too much CPU. It already stutters and struggles a bit on low but is playable, and on ultra it gets much more annoying. Playing on lower settings definitely makes the game look worse, though often times not by a lot.
I decided to run around, turn off the HUD, take screenshots (all on Ultra), look at some videos, and I think one of two things that I can concretely say, is that BFV maps are more colorful. There are some colorless BFV maps like Aerodrome, but there is no 2042 map as colorful as Pacific Storm for example. Orbital and Kaleidoscope are not as colorful.
I decided to take some screenshots...
2042 has higher resolution textures than BFV.
These screenshots look fine. In a lot of cases, from far away 2042 looks very very good, like in the first picture, but up close it looks bad. I decided to investigate, and...
I think the other concrete thing I can point to after staring a lot that puts me off, is the liminal spaces. At launch, 2042 had a lot of liminal spaces. This was helped with the map reworks, but not completely fixed (or in rare cases, new ones introduced, see below). We know this is the object limit from the maps being too big; last gen. I think this is still limiting them a decent amount. There IS clutter... There ARE decals, in some places there's crazy amounts of them too.
I also have to wonder if it's a deliberate choice to omit objects in frequently travelled infantry areas. For example:
Peak liminal space!
And then going outside...
The distribution of clutter is very sporadic.
Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.
The best description of BF2042 graphics I can give. Yes, the game has higher-resolution textures. But BF5 has a larger number of small-scale assets that make its maps feel "alive". BF2042 bet on a large scale and empty maps.
Orbital - Huge rocket assembly and the rocket itself. Big, yes. Looks good in a trailer, but plays and feels like trash. That's how every map feels in 2042. Just an empty space filled with a couple of large-scale assets and a sprinkle of smaller ones for good measure.
BF5 on the other hand has smaller maps that are filled with small details. There is very little wasted space. Even maps like Hamada feel alot more packed than lets say Manifest.
@Anobix wrote:
I remember reading/watching early on since launch (no idea if it was changed later) that a lot of the detailed objects of the level (a large nut/bolt on Orbital) had an insane number of polygons/vertices that by themselves is whatever, but a bunch of them adds up performance hits with no real visual impact.
This is a non-issue. 2042 has LODs (like most modern games should), this was also extra obvious with the notorious PS4 Falck in the main menu picture that was floating around launch, you know the one. 2042 is CPU bottlenecked, whatever the number of polygons is, it's not high enough to cause issues.
Nearly sure that the reason it looks as it does is because of the poor visibility that people complained about in BFV, but you can't win I suppose.
Some of the newer maps are actually akin to the look of BFV too.
Whatever your opinion of it, it actually looks good if you analyse it.
Frostbite gets a lot of hate but it's an incredible engine.
Just hard to work with it in it's former state it seems.
From what I've read over the last few years it has been a priority for them, and hopefully they've improved it and reduced it's complexities and issues for the next game.
If you play solo on Redacted and follow the paths laid out, it's literally like playing a driving game, it's actually epic.
For me it's funny to hear people wanting Unreal engine for Battlefield, it may be more stable and easier to work with, but it is not on the same level.
