Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[AlNom]

Also, for 720p, aren't you getting some free AA by rendering at a higher res and displaying at a lower res, or does it have to be 2x native res.

I think you have to look at how the math is done in squeezing down every 11 pixels into 10... Or just try it yourself. The impact to image quality can be rather uneven.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Really curious to see what the difference to X360 version is. Xbox 360 runs the source engine pretty well. If its 720p/60fps or just slightly sub hd it has to be really cut down version and not just textures

Makes no sense. Will a PC with similar GPU power to One is run this at 1080p?

Perhaps that's why there is a delay on the XB360 version? They realised that it looks as good as the XB1 version and needed to either dumb it down or smarten the XB1 version up. That's why it's running at such a strange resolution on the XB1, first steps in trying to make it look better than the 360 version?

 

[taisui]

Perhaps that's why there is a delay on the XB360 version? They realised that it looks as good as the XB1 version and needed to either dumb it down or smarten the XB1 version up. That's why it's running at such a strange resolution on the XB1, first steps in trying to make it look better than the 360 version?

What have you been smoking?

 

[zupallinere]

Perhaps that's why there is a delay on the XB360 version? They realised that it looks as good as the XB1 version and needed to either dumb it down or smarten the XB1 version up. That's why it's running at such a strange resolution on the XB1, first steps in trying to make it look better than the 360 version?

MS would look ridiculous if they wanted the 360 dumbed down and it would piss off the folks at the dev house so it wouldn't be a shock if someone involved in the project would express their displeasure in public.

The difference between the 2 may or may not be great ( People don't buy Games for Graphics !!! ) and the 2 week delay may be to bump up XB1 sales or something like that but I can't imagine if it got out that MS would kneecap a game like this. Neogaf would be down for weeks !!!

 

[mosen]

Perhaps that's why there is a delay on the XB360 version? They realised that it looks as good as the XB1 version and needed to either dumb it down or smarten the XB1 version up. That's why it's running at such a strange resolution on the XB1, first steps in trying to make it look better than the 360 version?

Xbox one runs TR at 1080p with many improvements over xbox 360 and even PC version at 30 fps. What are you talking about?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Perhaps that's why there is a delay on the XB360 version? They realised that it looks as good as the XB1 version and needed to either dumb it down or smarten the XB1 version up. That's why it's running at such a strange resolution on the XB1, first steps in trying to make it look better than the 360 version?

I don't really know if I should be infracting you for a troll here. If the XB1 version doesn't look better than the 360 version, the developers need to be shot. The most sane explanation for a delay is that the game taxes XB1 already so getting it running in a decent flavour on XB360 is likely a real challenge.

 

[-tkf-]

I don't really know if I should be infracting you for a troll here. If the XB1 version doesn't look better than the 360 version, the developers need to be shot. The most sane explanation for a delay is that the game taxes XB1 already so getting it running in a decent flavour on XB360 is likely a real challenge.

or they simply focus on the xb1 edition, this is a very very important game for xb1 and the developers.

So far I like what I am seeing, slightly surprised by the low resolution, I didn't find the graphics that taxing, just shows what I know

 

[Jedi2016]

So far I like what I am seeing, slightly surprised by the low resolution, I didn't find the graphics that taxing, just shows what I know

No, that's been my thinking too. "Highly modified" or not, it's still just the Source engine. The console should be half asleep and still running this at 1080p.

I'm not really buying all the hype for Titanfall anyway. Just another shooter as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Rangers]

Thank Tom for the very good shots with super long edges.

---

It's kind of a suspicious choice considering we just heard about the 8% reservation being freed up and the resolution is +10% over 720p. It's entirely possible there's no causal relation. "It's not 720p" works in PR favour.

Even so, in terms of milliseconds, 8% time slice should mean about 1.33ms for 16.67ms frame (I think). Pixel load may increase 10%, but that's only part of the rendering load, so maybe it works out (I'd expect the framerate dips in this game to be fill limited anyway though).

Anyways, the framebuffer should be ~17MB assuming it's a forward render 32bpp. I was expecting something ~1360x768 2xMSAA since that's neatly around 16MB, and then they could just fit a 2k x 2k shadowmap (16MB) into the rest (all speculation).

The talk of increasing res (from that blog) is kind of hard to believe given the obvious trade-offs between MSAA and higher res. From a scratchpad POV, even 1080p no AA is slightly smaller memory footprint than 792p 2xMSAA.

Woulda-coulda...

I'm not 1000% on this but I think GAF said Thuway said the 8% more GPU thing is not supposed to come into effect until this fall. I suppose I should search his twitter for that.

(Apparently) apart from the 8%, Rebellion did confirm a faster Xbone SKU recently hit

http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a550445/rebellion-xbox-one-1080p-issues-can-be-fixed.html

Bolcato remains optimistic about the future of the machine, however, claiming that a new software development kit would make it easier to run games at 1080p.

"They are releasing a new SDK that's much faster and we will be comfortably running at 1080p on Xbox One," he said.

With that and "bubu source engine" I would sure like to see 900P for Titanfall.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

No, that's been my thinking too. "Highly modified" or not, it's still just the Source engine. The console should be half asleep and still running this at 1080p.

Any engine can chew up unlimited amounts of hardware, you just need to increase the computational complexity. Add some complex vertex and fragment shaders, increase the number of passes and so on.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Any engine can chew up unlimited amounts of hardware, you just need to increase the computational complexity. Add some complex vertex and fragment shaders, increase the number of passes and so on.

Yeah, that's an important plot point. Any normal game engine (not like a 2D sidescroller engine) will scale. There are mobile phones playing Unity games, and yet a Unity game can bring a decent PC to its knees. The engine being used is not indicative of the level of performance of the device running it.

 

[pMax]

There are mobile phones playing Unity games, and yet a Unity game can bring a decent PC to its knees

Unity is really an amazing piece of s*it, it amazes me how they could make a common, very complex front end for so many different back ends and features (DX,GL,ES,custom plats) ...essentially for everything, today.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

A friend of mine has been working with Unity for about a year and he claims the engine is single-threaded.
I find it hard to believe, but anyone here knows if it's true?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Some aspects to Unity are multithreaded (backend stuff hidden from developer) and you can apparently write your own multithreaded code, but the core code pipeline (event driven) is presented to the developer as a single thread. I like it.

 

[DieH@rd]

Digital Foundry has tested both versions of Titanfall, and situation is not perfect on Xbone:

By and large, Titanfall is a healthy 60fps shooter as promised, but only as long as it's played with an on-foot Call of Duty mindset. With Portal 2's Source engine at its core, it's as fluid and responsive as you could hope for when pistolling Pilots and kicking AI grunts.

However, it all changes once you buckle into a Titan, and in this build we see lengthy passages of play (particularly by the end of a mission) falling within the 35-45fps range. Neither one of the levels on show is especially worse than the other in this regard, and it's clearly the barrage of alpha effects that ends up pressing the hardware too far.

It's also impossible to ignore the tearing that creeps up during such dips. Adaptive v-sync is in play, which taps in any time the engine detects a frame going over budget and missing a slot within its 60Hz refresh. Temporarily removing this lock helps to make control over the action feel smoother than it otherwise would, but at a big - and regular - cost to the overall presentation.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-titanfall-beta-tech-analysis


The only advantage on PC version are higher rendering resolution, MSAA and FOV slider. Everything else is directly copied from Xbone code - textures are identical, as well all effects and their LOD states. Engine is simplistic, low poly, no dyunamic shadows. Just basic source engine without any nextgen touch.

 

[Mize]

Shame...was kinda hoping do an updated Mechwarriror fused with Haloesque backdrops.

 

[Rangers]

Digital Foundry has tested both versions of Titanfall, and situation is not perfect on Xbone:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-titanfall-beta-tech-analysis


The only advantage on PC version are higher rendering resolution, MSAA and FOV slider. Everything else is directly copied from Xbone code - textures are identical, as well all effects and their LOD states. Engine is simplistic, low poly, no dyunamic shadows. Just basic source engine without any nextgen touch.

Well, Respawn is a small team (~80 only IIRC). cant expect them to compete with the graphics giants. Besides that, it's multiplayer only, also a major drawback to graphics.

 

[steveOrino]

Digital Foundry has tested both versions of Titanfall, and situation is not perfect on Xbone:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-titanfall-beta-tech-analysis


The only advantage on PC version are higher rendering resolution, MSAA and FOV slider. Everything else is directly copied from Xbone code - textures are identical, as well all effects and their LOD states. Engine is simplistic, low poly, no dyunamic shadows. Just basic source engine without any nextgen touch.

I dont see how they bump the resolution on the x1 version when the frame rate dips so severely during firefights. If anything they should lower it.

 

[Boxercide]

I'm not really sure why the insistence on 1408x792 vice 720p as resolution. 1.1 mpixels vs 921k isn't a massive bump and with performance sitting where it is, you'd think that would be an easy choice to scrap back some temporal performance. Maybe it's a marketing thing?

I mean it is a 20% resolution increase for, IMHO, not many perceivable benefits according to the screenshots. Last gen basically the same team had no problems delivering 1024x600 resolution to ensure the FPS held up to their standard.

I also wonder why they insist on MSAA vs FXAA as that is another performance hit.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

FXAA doesn't work well with distant detail, which I'm guessing is important in this game as a shooter? Or is it all run-and-gun with no need for spotting enemies afar?