VF5FS & VF5US Comparison

I think US looks way better. Sarah's face could use some work, though.

And sorry if this is already posted somewhere else.

 

Well of course you know that's subjective. The Hit Sparks alone puts VF5US in 2nd place. But many players do not like aspects of the character models for some characters in VF5US. There have been complaints.

Akira's stage is VF5US is not as nice as Akira's stage in VF5FS.

But El blaze's stage is better in VF5US than the VF5FS version.

And Pai has horses on her stage in VF5US and only the tails barely move. The horses don't walk their heads don't move up and down, they're basically statues. It looks weird. So the jury is out on that one. I prefer Pai's stage without the stiff horses.


There are some aspects of the visual presentation that VF5US does better. There are some aspects of the visual presentation that VF5FS does better. One thing for sure those Hit Spark imo is a very negative mark against the VF5US presentation. It loses a lot of points for that. On the other hand the lighting in VF5US is an overall improvement over VF5FS.

So I'm not sure you can say that VF5US definitively looks better than VF5FS. Also it depends on which art style you prefer in terms of the faces

 

@masterpo Yeah it's definitely a subjective opinion.

There are some things I like in FS more than US. But overall I think US looks much better. Specifically the characters and their clothes. From head to toe, they look much more detailed instead of the flat look (don't know how else to describe it). It could be argued that Wolf and El Blaze look more detailed in FS.

I think the faces look a lot better in US, too. I think the drastic shift may have had some knee jerk reactions. Or maybe not.. Some of the female faces could use some fine tuning. Pai and Eileen look good with certain hair styles, but their faces can look strange with others. Aoi looks great, though. Best looking female face by far, in my humble opinion.

I haven't gotten too deep into the difference in stages, but. I do like Akira's FS stage better. Mainly because it had that blue lighting. I thought it looked cool. But that's the only thing I personally saw that stuck out to me the most. I know/think there's a good number of other changes with that stage.

 

Faces of Sarah, Lion, Vanessa, Akira and Jean looks much better in old VF5FS.

Stage intro presentation looks much better in old VF5FS.

Old VF5FS has wet clothes , hot air from mouth, and reflections on water or glance surfaces! New VF5US does not have at all.

Shadows in Vanilla much better - when two shadows overlay each other then this part is darker.

No interactive objects on stages in new VF5US (like fog and flying leaves).

 

It's a 50/50 but it doesn't show how bad US is, but how great Vanilla is and to some extent FS.

Guys, VF5 landed 2006.... that's 15 years ago....

 

Yeah, VF5 in 2006 was more "on current tech" compared to modern fighting games recently. We can only blame niche status of genre, or how more expensive development became. But in ~1994-2004 arcades (and genres from it like fighting and shmups) were still gfx powerhouses, not anymore.

I dont really believe that any ps4/x1 fighting (at least if we talk Japanese ones, i've no idea about western ones much these times) really pushed "tech" side of things as much as fightings were doing that during saturn/ps1 - dreamcast/ps2/xbox/gc - early ps3/x360 eras.

One would expect fightings still be most "tech imrpessive" games due to how it's just 2 main characters on screen and stage isn't huge (semi)openworld monstrosity, so with such limited setup you can really push hard AND maintain stable 60 fps perfectly. But it doesn't happen in these years anymore, maybe cause of plenty of reasons.

Now. sorry for this casual "rant" that isn't something very important (i know many people here care for gameplay in first place). But i'm just kinda an enthusiast of 3d stuff overall, and i really like how in old days fighting, arcade racers and shmups were the most amazing visual experience (they are still, though, if you talk about ART or DESIGN instead of TECH, i think). And i speculate that if Sega or Namco could have huuuuuge budget, their fighting game could look better than TLOU2 or Crysis, in terms of visual power stuff AND be able to do it while keeping perfect stable framerate etc. etc. But that doesn't happen. Maybe there is NO NEED for such to happen, i dont know! Even doa6, while milking polygons/materials into characters and doing nice lights/shadows, economises much on stages quality in return.

Personally, i prefer, for example, Tekken Tag Tournament 2 over Tekken 7 cause how TTT2 looks crispy and T7 is "blurry mess", especially not on PC. Hell, even KOF14 was fine for me due to it clean readability look, even though SNK 3d entries are always kinda struggling and look very past gen (play well, though).

Now, sorry again for sub-discussion. As for VF5US - VF5FS - VF5 comparison and tastes, i agree that its very subjective for us here, and i would join crowd of "some things i like less, some things i like more". Also i always liked Yakuza series, so i dont have anything "against" 5US look overall. But i still share plenty of love for 5/R/FS etc. etc.

EDIT:

One thing i would like to add. As it sometimes happens with console generations, there was a specific shift in graphic approaches during PS3/X360 generation, though it became more of a standard on PS4/X1. Such specific "trick" was PBR rendering, aka physical based rendering, which improves much textures/materials and lighting approaches for more believable look in "realistic" style 3d. It became a new standard around 2013-2014, and nowodays its very often expected to be used. While most games before that used a different approach, that was less "nature-driven", and it depended more of wheter or not authors can "trick" visuals into looking "right way" or not.

So this is one of factors that now contributes to cases of looking at older games vs. newer games, aside from obvious rise of polygons/textures numbers.

Ah, right. Well, Sega AM2 were maniacs for details and gave all the heart into games they were making, of course. Perhaps people who were doing remake? remaster? that we call VF5US are not as attentive or caring in terms of small details. Or Sega asked them to rush so they cutted the corners.

 

Yes well AM2 had a hand crafted powerhouse graphics and game engine for Virtua Fighter that the developers were very familiar with. RGG's Dragon engine is still being developed, and some of the things that AM2 could easily do with their game/graphics engine, the Dragon engine either can't do yet, can't do at all, or the developers don't know how to do it using Dragon engine.

At present the Dragon engine's big selling feature is its lighting effects. The fact that the horses don't move on Pai's stage in VF5US is very telling.

 

Speaking of which, i still hope for Binary Domain 2...

 

Also i'm not much of fan for 5US new music.

I like very much both vanilla 5 and R/FS soundtracks, while 5US tracks leave me a bit puzzled. Maybe it's just my personal taste, but they sound "overcomposed" or "overarranged" to me.

 

Music and pre-fight Art of characters both are also better in only FS.
Old Vanulla and R and FS game cover Art is also much better than US, which is very ugly.

 

Pai's face looks ugly in both FS and US.
They should use her cuter looking face, seen in the VF4 Evo game manual on page 24/and on the character selection screen, as a reference, for her ingame face model for VF5 US. Or maybe make a cuter version of her VF4 face, minus the semi big forehead.

And what is up with Akira having Jackie Chans nose? Like for real? Even though it kinda suits him.