So after watching the really interesting dev panel live at fanfest I’m overall impressed with the direction they’re going with in regards to the graphics update. I do wish it went further but for a first update as they always imply I think it’s a good foundational shift for the games visual direction.

Improved lighting and shadows, PBR shaders, foliage improvements, ambient occlusion on objects blah blah it’s been nice to see but there are bits I would like to see improved a bit more and it could happen because they are showing more and more things being done in just a few months of progress so maybe Japan fanfest we will see more but here are things I’d like to see improve.

• Increased polygons to the hair and or like their new fur shader find a way to bring more depth to the hair. They’ve added polygons to the faces and ears and I just wish for a few more polys on the top of the head to clean up the jagged nature of it. This would also extend to hands and feet but that could be shown later on.

• Improve the water texture or shader because after seeing some of the improvements the water looks the most jarring considering how much we do see. I would also say while foliage is greatly improved trees need a bit more love as they have around 2-3x the leaves on them now but it still looks messy or lacks depth.

• Sort your AA solution out while you have the chance… it’s time to move from FXAA devs come on!

• Bring in DLSS or FSR support. Yes you’ve added dynamic resolution scaling but if this uses the same engine as 16 you used FSR 1.0 which while I’d prefer 2.0 having it would allow more options for customising settings, PC or console wise.

• While not visual… they’ve increased the memory ceiling… is it possible to make the 3 starter cities all one seamless place now… ishgard makes sense to stay but the core 3 could really do with that sort of improvement.