ohmy god, i was wondering why the fuck it felt like my DMR was shooting blanks on MCC. i was like "i don't remember my aim being this dogshit on the 360". fuck bloom in general though
@@VictimHazard we're talking about the visual effect called bloom, where light reflected blurs part of the screen, not the game mechanic bloom. Reticle bloom was actually more intense in the 360 days and it got toned down for MCC multiplayer (the campaign keeps the original reticle bloom values though)
As a programmer I can tell you why the framerate and resolution cause these issues, the game was built with a specific resolution and frame rate in mind so a lot of the effects are hard coded as numbers to make the calculations to run them faster and easier for the aging 360 hardware. So if a raindrop is scheduled to be generated every X frames, and fall at a rate of y inches per frame, and you change the framerate there are going to be a lot more raindrops generated that fall faster than they should. Same logic for anti aliasing and light bloom calculations. It's calculating based on a certain number of pixels away from a certain point, and changing resolution makes the effect take a smaller percent of the screenspace. As for shadows and other bugs I have no clue.
There's always a trade off between optimization and portability. Obviously bungiee would've gone for insane levels of optimization. They never envisioned these games would one day be on PC
@@BudgiePanic Exactly, and that means to fix these algorithms, they'll have to change out hard coded numbers with a formula to calculate the correct numbers based on the resolution, or set multiple preset hard coded possibilities in an array that can be swapped out for the resolutions the game supports, which would be more work but would keep the same speed optimization. Mainly it'd just be a lot of code replacement.
@@RazorToshiba such engine revisions may not even be possible. We don't know how well Bungie documented their games, if Microsoft maintains the code base.
coincidentally, this is actually more physically accurate to real-world cameras. increasing the framerate while maintaining the same shutter speed of a camera would cause motion blur trails to appear smaller.
My biggest gripe with the MCC changes is definitely the lack of ambient occlusion. The lack of the shadows retracts so much depth from the game and makes the lighting seem really flat
Really informative video, were it not for this, I probably wouldn't have ever picked up on these changes! Hopefully, it's something that can be resolved in the future :)
honestly you and other Halo youtubers should probably bring light to this issue too, it might just get fixed if enough big voices start spreading the word
Yeah I remember finding OG reach more cinematic. Personally I’m not too fussed. The big change that makes me annoyed is that on the space mission (long night of solace) when youre In the saber, on legendary the A.I has been changed to focus only on you when you don’t have cover. Meaning when you can’t just dogfight and have fun like the original. Especially with the Seraphs, you have to hide behind the oribotal defence platform, then pop out score a quick kill, then hide again. Turns the entire section into a hated grind for most players.
In a blog post way back they mentioned how they deliberately removed/toned down the film grain considering how heavy it was in the original title. I believe the motion blur was removed for similar reasons, although I do agree that should have been left as a toggle.
Micro$oft and 343i are doing such a great job on MCC, why they're ruining Infinite so bad is bonkers. Completely different approaches and one seems infinitely superior from an end-user perspective.
So glad I get these games from Game Pass and don't actually give 343 any money, that's probably what kept me playing Infinite for a few weeks before dropping it
you say this, meanwhile a bug i had gotten on halo 4 campaing that i thought was so stupid and progression breaking was something "new" apparently the bug is on there since launch of halo 4 on mcc :) so yeah they don't care that much.
@@LyrisTheCat They do care. You just have to remember the team working on MCC is small, and MCC is one hell of a project with like 11 different game engines, and code never meant to see the light of day again. Not to mention that for a while before infinite they were also ordered to create a lot more content by higher ups and the fanbase alike so their resources were spread even thinner. If the MCC team is allowed to keep working on MCC it will get fixed, of that i'm certain, but who knows how long it'll take.
ODST also has the same exactly Film Grain issue with the Film Grain being much more subtle, and the outlines on Night Vision are much more thinner on screen.
Wow, I knew about the improper resolution scaling for postprocessing like lighting bloom, rain, blurring, etc made them less intense, but I never realized it led to so many missing shadows too.
Minor note: at 3:53, the effect missing primarily is "contact shadows". This is a small-distance shadow solution that's usually used on top of main shadows rendered by the game, often to fill gaps that may be caused. You can see this gap noticeably at 4:04 around the characters feet.
It's weird that they turned it off for MCC. I've played around with contact shadows on Blender myself and it doesn't seem to have any significant impact on performance from my experience. Could be engine limitation perhaps?
@@zenroles without knowing the engine it's hard to say yeah. It's entirely possible that the contact shadows program would need to be rewritten for higher resolution or frame rate, or it just wasn't a priority under a given deadline.
I honestly prefer the toned down bloom in MCC. I always thought it was a bit too intense and glaring in the original 360 release. Additionally I think that it also matches the bleaker vibes Reach goes for. However, having it optional would be a neat addition to closely resemble its legacy counterpart
Bloom slider would be best. I almost always turn off bloom immediately since it's usually pretty overdone. If I could cut bloom by like, half, it'd be fine.
Pretty much same. I can’t stand lighting bloom in any game just cause it makes stuff harder to see and especially in older games like reach, bioshock, and far cry 2, bloom makes stuff look kinda ugly
I gotta say, I dig the MCC's reduced bloom and film grain (well, "dug," as of the August update), I thought the limited/lack of bloom vastly improved visual clarity. It did admittedly reduce the luminance of glowing objects, but I would prefer that over the vaseline-smeared mess that Reach on MCC is now. I get that it was supposed to better restore the MCC's presentation of the games as they originally appeared, but I'd really appreciate it if they added a toggle to for the bloom effects, because I find it damn hard to look at in its current state.
I replayed Reach on PC and didn't even notice this stuff, mostly I was just impressed at how beautiful a game Reach always was, but when you point out the differences like this, it makes me realize how much prettier the MCC version could've been. The shadows and colors are the biggest letdowns if you ask me.
The bloom and AO is likely not a bug if it's tied to resolution. It was probably originally tied to the resolution on 360, so 343 would have to figure out how to either scale it based on resolution or make it not resolution based. Though with it being different at the same res as 360... that might be a bug.
I'm glad they removed light bloom, it's a graphical filter that was all the rage back in 2010. At first glance things look more flashy, but it mostly just boosts the contrast to the point where graphical details and sharpness are lost. I know it's how the game shipped, but some things are best left in the past IMHO.
While I agree, it would be nice to have as an option setting. I always thought it went overboard in H2, but that doesn’t mean I want it completely eliminated either.
Same with motion blur. While not necessarily being a bad choice back then, it wouldn't really make sense to have it in an age where much higher framerates exist
Along with Reach getting its motion blur back as an optional feature like the Classic HUD in Combat Evolved in MCC, we should also get a 30 FPS option to play the games how all they originally were played on the original consoles (as all the games did originally play at this FPS until the MCC came out). On PC, you can actually enable this outside of the collection (and EAC allows this) but would be cool if we could play them how they originally were.
@@CrypticMantisTX55 That'd be dope AF, you can use 4:3 on PC, but only in windowed mode, so no black bars on the sides. They should add classic resolution options too, I wanna play CE MP at 640/480 or whatever it was, with 4:3 @ 30fps
I mean there’s no point in doing that if they are able to fix issues with the current framerate. 30 fps is terrible for shooter games especially now that technology has improved a ton since 2010
I've actually done this a few times myself where I'll lock it to 30fps using RTSS and lower the res to 720p and plop on 'original' graphics just for the nostalgia. It's a shame the 4:3 only works in windowed because I'd totally do that too. Of course none of us are saying games should go back to being like this. It's just for the nostalgia and to see how we used to play. And to be honest, it's fine. You know, I firmly believe the smoothness of the frame rate is more important than how high it is. Like I'll take a perfectly smooth 30 over a 60 that constantly dips to 40. And boooooyyy can Halo do a smooth 30.
Wow. I think the only bit I've really noticed was the weird water physics and the amount of bloom displayed. Never would've seen the others, great notes taken, why!
Ambient Occlusion is an issue with the Blam! Engine actually, and it persists to this day in Destiny 2. I noticed it when I was comparing AA vs ingame Downsampling and Nvidia DLDSR on my own. The higher Res you go, the thinner the AO looks.
On the first mission just after you get off the helicopter and head down and make your way around the side building and the cliff side, the spinning windmills in the distance have glitchy animations. Was this in the original version?
I read someone explain that although the temporal AA was some kind of processor-saving option, it inadvertently gave Reach a dream-like quality that fit the "legacy story" it focused on. It'd be neat to see that restored.
@@dexedge4645 I know what Temporal AA does. The things you listed are the effects that _add_ to the 'dream-like' effect. Something terrible can be used to lovely results. It could be brought back just as an option or setting.
@@dexedge4645 "Dream-like" doesn't always mean actual, pleasant dreams; it just means it feels a little less 'real' and 'present,' instead feeling more like an old vision or memory.
Also there is a glitch on where you’re far away from say a rock, the rock will have like a black circular texture with lines on it which goes away when u get closer. It’s very noticeable and it really bugs me.
I doubt they'll bother doing much with MCC now that Infinite is out. Motion blur was removed from Reach but is present in Halo 3 with no option to turn it off which is something I wish they would have added.
Probably halfway through Infinite's seasons they will try working on MCC. It will be really slow tho since most of the resources are being used on the former
My first experience with Reach was on PC and I always thought something was off visually but couldn't pin it down since I didn't have an original copy on Xbox 360. Thanks for sharing. I hope these issues get addressed by the devs. Maybe open a ticket and share the link to the video?
They won't because everything they removed were terrible effects and the game looks a lot better. The only feature that actually made the game look better thats missing is the AO. Which is likely just down to not having time to port a really old/odd method for the shadows.
@@Wylie288 It really doesn’t matter if you think they’re terrible or not. This video was made to bring awareness to the differences in both versions. This is about the visual preservation of Reach and Bungie’s vision for it. It being as accurate as possible to the original is what’s right. I agree with him about making them able to be toggled though. Some people don’t like or can’t handle it, so I get that. But for the people who want to experience Reach as it was meant to be originally: they should be able to do that.
No wonder everythimg felt off when I played reach on MCC. I couldn’t quite describe why it seemed different, except the shield doors I noticed that they weren’t blue.
I actually miss the motion blur. People tend to hate motion blur, but most people couldn't even tell you the difference between temporal AA and actual blur. blurring the corners looks great, and doesn't affect player skill even half as much as people like to pretend it does. temporal AA can fuck right off though, no idea why they brought it back in Infinite
This is also an issue in Halo CE Anniversary on the MCC. The lighting has been toned down from the 360 version making most lighting effects dull in comparison. I do hope one day we will get a fix through a next gen optimization atleast given the better processing power.
Great video! Since they're updating MCC Again, I'm hoping they'll be able to fix the visual issues with Reach, and the other games some more, as well ^^ It's odd that almost all these are tied to resolution, but hopefully maybe that means it can be fixed easier? I'm not sure, but I hope so.
Mr. Why, I love you for putting the effort you do into what will always be my favorite game series. Halo is an incredibly rich game that deserves to be meticulously preserved in its original form, and I'm glad you're doing what you can to make this happen. I hope 343 eventually achieves the truly perfect 1:1 remaster. Reach in particular.
Really great video. Hope these are address in the next few months! Definitely would love to see a toggle for film grain and motion blur (theyre not for me, but they need to be an option to uphold the legacy)
I was so excited about the higher resolutions and frame rate that I didn't notice this at all. Thank you for the video because now I can see how much has also been lost as well. Hopefully 343 fixes this but I won't get my hopes up.
While I greatly prefer the mcc version, any good port would have the changes as a toggle in the options. Prime example: the Quake remaster has tons of graphical changes that you can simply turn off, and even includes the original version of the game as its own executable
FIX THIS... HIS IS EXACTLY WHY I WAS SO UNHAPPY WITH THE MCC I actually uninstalled the MCC (specifically when I saw this with my own eyes 0:09 ) and reinstalled the original Reach which I wish I wouldn't have to.. I am a veteran who played it for 7 years nearly every day so to me it seems so flat.. I get that people will never let go of their precious resolution clarity and FPS, but man these colors and blooming and shadow/light and water issues, not to mention the blurring or elite shields not showing or shields being white causes me so much pain. Reach is an amazing MASTERpiece and it should be done justice. The heavy feeling is lowered with these changes and they occur to more people than 343 thinks.
I’m glad you’ve taken the time to make a video like this - similar videos are the reason why 343 ever even fixed Halo 1 & Halo 2’s graphical issues, and with halo reach being my favorite game in the series for its cinematic details, all these little things add up to really make it a better experience - especially for new people who may not have played it on the 360 prior to MCC. None are inherently game breaking, but their absence does remove some of that “wow” factor we all had playing it back in 2010. It’s details like this that have made my girlfriend, who never played halo reach, want to hold off on the campaign until it’s either fixed or we have an opportunity to play it on a console through backwards compatibility (both PC, neither of us have an xbox console atm). I’ll definitely share this around and I hope others do the same - a video like this getting lots of traction has proven to get 343’s attention in the past, so here’s hoping it happens again!
I honestly prefer MCC, having the Spartan armor have a matte color makes more sense to me as opposed to a bright sheen and you can see more of the texture.
Legacy pretty much just looks more cinematic. Mcc does have some broken stuff but the clarity is way higher. I do wish for specifically the cutscenes they looked more like legacy but in game I mostly prefer mcc save for the color and shadowing bugs
The bleed through creates a lot of issues with social maps, it's fine for competitive but for social its too much, the maps are too big and you die much too quickly
Holy shit the water issues on MCC remind me of that Nvidia PhysX setting you could use on older games like Borderlands 2. Edit: Oh yeah, another big issue with Reach is 343 have fucked with the size of some armour pieces. The giant shoulder pad Emil uses for example, that's smaller than it was in Reach on the 360. As someone who used those all the time because I loved big, bulky armour, I can tell the difference. It also colours darker than the colour you use on it as well. Say you make your armour one type of blue in all colour options, those shoulder pads, and some others, will be darker despite using the same blue as the rest of your armour.
The remaster looks vastly better. Its got some odd shadowmap bias issues, which is just a bug, then the missing AO is a bit odd but its likely just reach used a really odd method no one had time to port. Everything else is a visual improvement. Reach was in an era where really, really bad post processing was used and people have wanted it gone for a long time.
Those are the only issues. The rest were improvements. There is a reason those effects weren't ported. Its not going to happen. Its likely the method used was odd to port and the AO provided via AMD or Nvidia is going to be better quality anyway.
@@Wylie288 True dat, older consoles had their own provided way of rendering that stuff, now computers have a default of rendering it a certain way it'll look different, so it's hard to replicate it on a hardware that's no the same of pc's.
While not perfect especially for the contact shadows Reshade can definitely fix some of the color issues. The rest like water physics are definitely engine issues however.
I think we might see the community work on mods to have a more accurate representation of legacy games. 343 won't bother for MCC for a while, they never implemented split-screen for instance, it bugs me a lot but as long as emulation isn't accurate elsewhere this is the only way to play them on PC.
All they need to do is add steam workshop support and the rest of the game modding tools and I guarantee so many bugs and issues will be fixed within months just from community efforts
The stuff related to framerate seems like coding issues that arise due to the game being originally designed for console and those bits of coding being tied to what was supposed to be a fixed frame rate and not have to suddenly scale to frame rate. The stuff related to resolution is essentially the issue that occurs for retro games where CRT's drew the game in a way that makes modern LCD ports look bad by comparison because lower resolution allowed a blending of colors/textures that higher resolution exposes. These things are what make modern games so much harder to make compared to older games, the imperfections have to be hidden to a higher degree.
Another thing unrelated to this video is that the commando rear fanny pack is gone also the brim of the mark v b helmet is gone when you use the other helmet variants
I actually had no idea there were visual differences. I never saw anyone speak in these previously. Edit: Except for Motion Blur. I do actually wish that was in the MCC.
Honestly, per object motion blur was definetly a better solution than whatever older games used Screen Based Motion Blur (which only works at 300+ fps).
For the most part I think the Master Chief Collection looks better. Visual clarity is my preference. Bloom, film grain, and blurring effects/motion blur is something I hated it even way back when it first reared its ugly head. A lot of games add this in to compensate for low frame rates. Ambient occlusion can stay however and shadows missing is a shame. Great Video bty, love it. Did you already do one about the missing music in Halo CE? The Maw's overlapping music at the end drives me up the wall. What a horrible experience for first-time players to have that happen.
There's a lot of issues with the port on mcc. The firefight AI is much too easy, in OG there was a way of adjusting the enemies aggressiveness and "shootiness" I feel like these were somehow turned down as default on the mcc
Videos like this are so important and need to be noticed by 343. It might seem small to some but, preserving the legacy as much as possible should always be top priority. Especially with a series as important to the FPS genre as Halo
most of this is that it wasnt a carbon port, they basically re-built most of the game from scratchm using what they had lying around, and some of it can be fixxed with playing with your monitor / tv's colour settings but overall, good vid
At least these don't affect gameplay. Unlike in CE where in one mission, plasma pistol charge bolts and Hunter charge bolts don't show until it comes out. So it's hard to tell when hunters would shoot
Many of these issues being resolution dependent makes a lot of sense and can be a common issue with certain implementations of these effects if not properly accounted for. They can often be tweaked as a value of pixels in size, so the more pixels there are on screen, the smaller the same size of the effect will be perceived. The solution would be to program these systems in normalized sizes
I do think Halo 3’s art style and colors looks better than Reach. Either way on MCC or 360, Reach is pretty drab looking, but I understand what they were going for. Especially with the high resolution and HDR, Halo 3 really pops.
