Cyberpunk 2077 Has Fake Traffic That Is Merely An Illusion of a Bustling Metropolis

Cyberpunk 2077 offers a huge open-world but it ends up feeling like a mere illusion once you spend some time observing the traffic.

[Jin_Sakai]

It just gets better and better. This game is something else.

[SullysCigar]

Just further confirmation of the AI in this game ranging from zero to dumb. Why couldn't they have started with GTA's logic as a baseline and gone from there? We need to see better progression with elements that increase world believability!

[Rocketisleague]

Gtas logic? They don't have gtas code?

Rockstar have spent years developing those systems. They have alot.of experience in that area.

Edit: Jesus people really don't have any idea about software development on here. Not excusing cdpr but wow the solutions from.fans are hilarious

[Magog]

Mafia, Watch Dogs, Just Cause, Saints Row and many others have good working realistic traffic. It's not like GTA is alone in having this basic function of an open world game.

[SullysCigar]

^ Rocketisleague, I'm not suggesting they have the code - wtf you get that from? And I'm not even necessarily talking about GTA5 for that matter - the traffic system in Cyberpunk is plain broken. It's in stationary gridlock sometimes and they AI drivers do NOTHING to resolve it!

Even PS2-era games resolved that issue. Have them reverse and go around - who knew?!

[spektical]

@Rocketisleague
TBF the AI for traffic in terms of outcomes isnt that great either it comes down to a swtich statement to trigger a behavior. There is nothing where the AI does a crazy thing where NPCs may band together to try to chase you down for example or NPC heroics for example. I'm not saying its easy as this, but the pseudocde is easily digestable. The problem is cyberpunk didnt even get to implement these sort of details becasue they have been endlessly workign on actual big issues. You dont build the interior of the cabin without the motor or the wheels nowhere close.

switch (charcter.type)
aggressive
wild
passive
chaotic

[frostypants]

GTA's logic? You mean like how it randomly selects a small selection of cars and spams those same cars at you until you reset or get away from the street for a while? A glitch that GTA has had since GTA 3 but nobody acknowledges?

[DragonWarrior19]

Because that would require the developers to actually put work into the game.

[LordoftheCritics]

Authors overreaction.

[badz149]

what? this has been proven to be true even by analysis by DF. the traffic you see from afar are not even real traffic. just twin dots in motion like an LED/RGB strip made to look like there are dense traffic at a distance. it's an age-old trick but not what you would expect in a game the fanboys are calling as "should have been next gen only"!

https://youtu.be/hZp8fXLXgq...

[RazzerRedux]

@badz149

Did you miss the part where DF said "as is often the case in such games"? Yeah....let's pretend to be shocked now that CDPR is using techniques used over and over before.

CP 2077 has plenty of shit to be critical of. I don't see why we have to invent shit. Oh....that's right. Click bait.

[badz149]

like I said...it's an age-old trick, meaning, there's really nothing special about the game that separates it from other open-world games on last-gen consoles that really warrant the "should be next-gen only" title that the fanboys like to parade every time it gets criticized! the game lacks optimizations, and even with obvious cutbacks like these, still runs like crap on last-gen consoles!

and this is just an example against CP2077:

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

are you gonna say that this is how people react and physics works in 2077 and we just don't know it yet too?

[lonewolf10]

I noticed this last night on a mission on a rooftop (the same one these screens are from), funny as hell, cardboard cars. Really they should either fix it to be better looking or remove the illusion altogether.

[Grayson076]

GTA V does the same thing. When you fly high enough, or view from far away enough, it'll generate the same thing here. Nobody complained there. This game was still developed with current gen in mind, of course it's using that tech. Smh. They messed up horribly bad with release, but looking for reasons to crap on this game is getting old.

[JEECE]

Yep. A lot of people who are upset about the last gen performance (a legitimate criticism), are now looking for any other reason to hate on the game, and going after things they would never criticize in other games. Which, in a way that's CDPR's fault, because devs should know by now that once you give a real reason for the hate train to start rolling, it's hard to say where it will end up, but still it's a little silly how far some people are going.

[Dee_91]

yes its in GTA V
but not nearly half as bad as this game
https://www.reddit.com/r/cy...

Nobody's "looking for any other reason to hate on the game". The game provide many reasons. Even the devs are pissed off with the publishers. I see no reason to defend any of it. Pretending like it's normal and okay accomplishes nothing.
GTA V has been the bar for nearly a decade now. Back when GranTursimo 5 released, people where comparing car sounds, even with GTA V fake cars, the sound quality completely embarrassed GranTurismo 5 and 6. With constant criticism towards PD over the years, GTSport arguably has the best sounding cars now.
Point being, criticism is needed when warranted.

[frostypants]

It's basically cancel culture in a nutshell...whining as a sport.

[RauLeCreuset]

"It's basically cancel culture in a nutshell...whining as a sport."

Preorder sales alone exceeding the costs of development and marketing = canceled now?

This is what happens when buzzwords replace critical thinking. "Cancel culture in a nutshell" indeed. Maybe people who yearn for the good ol' days will recall this word that existed back in the day called "accountability."

[Emme]

And lets not forget, at least up until Origins, if You climb high enough in Assassins creed, You see no people anymore of the ground.I mean ZERO, not even a pixel.

[Tankbusta40]

GTA V....came out when? Oh yeah 2013....

[MadLad]

And then was highly updated for PC, which was then used as the base for a next gen (now last gen) release.
It's no excuse for Cyber Punk, but GTA now is far different than GTA then when you look under the hood.

[CS7]

Lol. you fanboys are so ridiculous. It is clear you haven't even played the game.

The traffic in this game is NOTHINGGGG like even GTA 3!

It is the dumbest traffic AI of probably any game in the last 20 years.

The cars move from A to B. That's it. If you park 1mm in their path the entire line of traffic stops.

And if you turn the the camera and look back at it all the cars reset.

You CDPR apologist are so weird. Why do you defend a shit game?

You just compared the traffic to GTA 5... When I legitimately believe it may be beaten by even GTA 2.

Current gen tech!? Get out of here bootlicker... You guys are gonna cause companies to release broken games and steal people's money. Cyberpunk 1997.

[AspiringProGenji]

Cyberpunk is not a shit game, but Yeah it is certainly not a great time to be a CDPR fanboy. I will always love them because of W3 but Cyberpunk, while a great game, is suffering from the second-coming-of-Christ hype the fanboys have built up over the years.

“It will rate higher than TLoU2”
- It didn’t
“It will be the game of the generation”
- far from it
“It has groundbreaking AI”
- It doesn’t
“ it will be The best open world game of the gen”
- It isn’t
“CDPR is the most consumer friendly dev”
- are you sure about that?

And due to all of this people now are noticing flaws beyond the bugs, and more will keep coming. This all proves that the game needed way more time.

In Horizon ZD you could see Thunderjaws, Stormbirds, and Tall necks from very far distances and they still retained all the textures. The only thing that changed Was the walking/flying animations but the draw distances was awesome.

This is Just another proof of how lifeless Night city actually is. Sad!

[TakeTori]

Yep. Fair play to anyone with a console who were disappointed with this game. But beneath the flaws and bugs is a very strong backbone of excellent quest design, strong characters and exciting story, and amazing side quests. Give credit where credit is due. A lot of developers poured a lot of love into this project, and it shows underneath its flaws. It's a diamond in the rough. Give the poor developers the praise they deserve, and shit on management and investors instead.

[I_am_Batman]

Using sprites instead of 3D models is a fairly common optimization used to increase draw distance. The only problem I see here is that a higher LOD model isn't loaded in when zooming in on the traffic.

[SullysCigar]

Exactly this. Certainly SSDs would facilitate this and it would be great for next gen consoles/PC to have the option to benefit in this kind of way, once patches roll out.

[Asuka]

Every large open world game does this. Wtf would be the point of rendering every asset from a distance. Game already has shitty performance what more if it actually rendered everything all the damn time

[Rainbowcookie]

I mean yea they are dumb, but its a game what you expect. Traffic sim2020. I get everybody is dissapointed , but get your money back and get another game

[GrizToof]

Is it just me but are people just trying to find more things to complain about when it comes to this game? We get it, they messed up bad. They should have never released a game in such a sorry state on old hardware and they should have all shown us gameplay on last gen consoles. This we can all agree with and we should all want CDPR to step up right now and make things right and try to regain some of it's fanbase. I'm playing on PS5 fortunately and I love the game, I want it fixed and future expansions to come out. Stop trying to figure out more ways to bash the game, you look foolish.

[GamerBeast1982]

What traffic ?. I barley see a single car when driving around apart from one just spawns from nowhere right in front of me .

[T2X]

Hate to break it to everyone but, None of the game is real. It's a game.

[ikarodemon]

But fake things is normal in games. Every game has fake solutions in many levels this is industry standard. Ok some gamedevs can do better but maybe for this game with more care and time was a good solution.

[oof6781]

Billboard LOD isn't anything new, but this stands out a bit too much. lol

[WillyC009]

standard across all open world games. The problem is the same thing this game suffers from across the board. Poorly implemented and poorly optimized. This game needed many more months in the oven before releasing.

I own and play it on PS5, but It has plenty of problems(crashes every 45min-hour). Crazy part is when it works, I have been enjoying it.

[Gatsu]

Like it is with many other games. What's the point of this article?

[CDbiggen]

The reason this is a problem in this game is because you can zoom in (quite a lot) on anything at anytime when playing.

[Hikoran]

Well yeah? You realise that pretty quickly. It's a small thing man let's not pick that out of the bunch.

[whitbyfox]

Tony Hawk 1 traffic was more intelligent.

[UltimateOwnage]

Most games use “illusions” at a distance to simulate busy background activity. If it’s not extreme LOD it’s billboard sprites. This is nothing new. This was designed to support mediocre last gen launch hardware like XBOX One, there were bound to be some things like this in an open world game of this scale.

Seems like authors are just hate trolling to vent and get clicks at this point. We get it, the corp heads forced the game out because gamers whined canceling pre-orders because of delays, and they wanted that money. So here you go guys. You demanded a release and got an under baked product. Now we wait a bit for them to fix the issues.

In the meantime I’ll go back to enjoying Demon’s Souls while I leave 2077 in the wrapper until it can mature in a few months.

[Psychotica]

Which game is showing real traffic?

[CobraKai]

It’s the future. It’s those sideways cars from Minority Report. That’s all.

[RgR]

I guess it's all about perspective lol

[Lighter9]

Why does my health drop whenever the fake traffic hits me then? Lol

[RgR]

Maybe because you're in the matrix and everything is fake.

[Father__Merrin]

It's not going to end well for this game. If I was you I'd skip this and go for the new AC Valhalla instead

[Lionsguard]

Fake Traffic now too? Is nothing sacred anymore?

[Amphion]

Finished Cyberpunk - 6.5 / 10

Gonna try to be fair:

Pros
Stylistic visuals and good framerate
Sometimes strong storytelling (2nd half)
Some cool characters (Keanu)
Cool music
Has potential with many patches

Cons
Buggy, messy with a lot of crashes
Feels very raw, half baked and unfinished
Inconsistent storytelling
Needlessly complex RPG elements
Below average shooting mechanics
Bad melee mechanics
Not as "fun" as expected

[SmokinAces]

Random NPC's in the world are pretty bad too I walked past four female NPC's in a row on the street and all of them were exactly the same then I entered into a building immediately after and the very first NPC inside was you guessed it the same female NPC, LOL.

[badboyz09]

GTA6 please hurry

[SimpleSlave]

Basically an instance of art imitating real life. Everybody knows that most people are always in a hurry to get nowhere fast.

👍👌So Sad!!!👌👍

[Firehazard5]

This is normal in game design. GTA has done this for years. When you are up in a helicopter they use balls of light for cars at night, or extremely low poly cars in the distance. Madden uses sprites for crowds and depending on the use it can look fine.

[BioShockGX]

Yeah it's a annoying. I was in the middle of the desert with no car so I waited for someone to pass by so I steal their car. I saw the cars coming but every single one of them disappeared as they came closer me. Had to run to the nearest fast travel point.

[Eck0]

so today.. Dec 21 2020. my friend was showing me this game on a pc.. and sure there were some glitches.. but i didnt care.. most games have them anyway.. we just dont care.. so why is everyone bitching about it.. but the first thing i noticed.. is how great the city looks.. how dense it is.. the buildings look amazing.. the details .. the amount of cars around and people walking.. dont even compare to GTA V.. this game looks AMAZING.. but people want to act entitled and bitch about stupid things.. all those people take programming and all that for granted.. this game is badass..

[got_dam]

Wow. You would think that this game being broken had a real impact on people's lives.

[Shiro173]

Lmao they look like cardboard cut outs 🤣😂. Wow this game really screwed up badly in so many ways, but I still think once everything is fixed and patch it would be a good game since the story looked good from what I played.

[DJStotty]

Yeah because i spend my time in most games, zooming into the distance to pick out the small details.

Chances are you can find things like this in nearly all games, distance objects are not fully designed or rendered, they are created to "look" real from far away, not close up.

You ever zoomed into a wall on a game and seen the pixelated wall? Same thing.

Article is a joke

[The_DFO]

Well, duh. Is there anything about any video game that ISN'T an illusion? The thing about Night City is that, for the most part, the illusion is convincing, so much so that the only thing missing is the pervasive odor of urine and hot dumpster that big cities get in hot weather.

[Germaximus]

And other games don't? lol why is everybody so stupid?

[CrimsonWing69]

Isn’t this kind of the case with anything game related where you stop and observe it? How come none of these articles showed up for those games?

I’m kind of tired of this smear campaign on Cyberpunk. The damage is done, we’ve spent more than a week just dragging this game and CDPR through the mud. Let’s move on.

[TakeTori]

Fair play to anyone with a console who were disappointed with this game. But beneath the flaws and bugs is a very strong backbone of excellent quest design, strong characters and exciting story, and amazing side quests. Give credit where credit is due. A lot of developers poured a lot of love into this project, and it shows underneath its flaws. It's a diamond in the rough. Give the poor developers the praise they deserve, and shit on management and investors instead. Like others have already said: shitting on this game has gotten a little old at this point.

[MrBelasco]

Bottom line is CDPR pushed out a rushed and unfinished product. I cannot fathom what they were thinking or how they thought this would end. The game needs to be recalled (in that can even be a thing). Use what assets can be used and rebuild it.