The Division 2 might have some minor technical improvements, but for me it seems somewhat worse than original game. First - color palette. The Division 1 simply uses more desaturated, sort of muted, but very realistic colours in textures, lighting effects, sfx and color grading in post processing, while the second match looks far more saturated and not so balanced, and it simply appears less realistic. At dusk or dawn lighting seems a little weird, particularly in some instances. And another defect of The Division 2 Boosting branch 2 images is ambient occlusion quality.
Take a peek the way they lack depth, and at shadows. There's not any deep black indirect soft shadows under automobiles, in corners of structures, in bud, some pieces of characters clothings does not throw indirect soft shadows, therefore overall image looks kinda flat. During daylight with direct lighting from sun it visible, although of course this problem is not so noticable at night . Ambient occlusion caliber is exactly the same between the two matches, but due to differences in colour grading and due to the simple fact that The Division 1 in most instances has lighting scenarions that is black or cloudy, this issues isn't too pronounced. Incidentally, the very first game was downgraded mostly in ambient occlusion and international illumination quality (one of the most heavy thing for perfomance ), so this is the reason why it doesnt looks so impressing as on the renowned announcement movie.
And the second match, as I can see, took a step farther and downgraded indirect light even more, and I can see why - they increased the quantity and density of foliage (that is always not a inexpensive thing to draw on scene), also terrain complexity obviously improved (now you do not have an asphalt streets and sidewalks covered in snow - there is much more distinct and intricate surfaces, which they create looks better thanks to parralax occlusion mapping ) so in order to keep the identical system requirements they created lighting somewhat simplier. And we recognize that lighting quality is the most importatnt thing for image, offline renders looks photoreal as they have time while matches has to find solutions that are cheap and rapid. More simple light - picture.
