Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2017]

[Silent_Buddha]

Reduced framerate from target is a bug that has existed since the beginning of video games. Dynamic resolution is a recent implementation to address this bug. No developer purposefully implements dynamic framerate, unlike dynamic resolution. I don't think the two are really comparable.

Not a bug but a design compromise.

With fixed resolution if you are running locked X FPS, then you are not fully utilizing the system as load varies depending on scene. Basically any game running at fixed resolution AND fixed framerate isn't fully utilizing the system.

So, how often do you want to dip below the target framerate will determine how much more of the system resources you use more often. Anytime you are running less than target framerate, you'll be pushing the system harder (not 100% as limitations vary between CPU, GPU, memory bandwidth, etc.). But the more times you dip below target framerate, the less pleasant gameplay is and the less pleasant your graphics presentation.

Dynamic resolution attempts to more fully leverage system resources while at the same time preserving consistent framerate. It is, IMO, the far more elegant choice.

In a heated battle where framerate or resolution is most likely to drop, I am DEFINITELY going to notice a frame drop, but I probably won't notice a resolution decrease.

Regards,
SB

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

edit: list time
Battlefield 1
Call of Duty Black Ops III
Call of Duty Infinite Warfare
Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered
Call of Duty WWII ** (Temporal reconstruction, not the same technique as CBR, but dynamic reconstruction none the less)
Destiny 2
Deus Ex: Mankid Divided
Final Fantasy XV

Thanks. I was under the impression that games had used just one or the other.

Cool. Then I don't see why every PS4Pro game wouldn't just use dynamic CBR. Other than lazy devs of course

I hope we see this solution from upcoming first party games, because that'll demonstrate a wide enough adoption with well developed tools, which can be disseminated to the third parties that haven't implemented it yet.

 

[iroboto]

Will edit post with written article link when it goes up.

Ubisoft did a great job here for both consoles. Frame rate is pretty much locked. AA techniques mitigate some resolution differences between the two.

Definitive console experience will sit with xbox due to higher graphical settings. But overall, as per the dialog, the game is a great experience on both consoles.

In fact watching it play out sort of selling me on For Honor, it was originally a complete pass for me, but it's peaked my interest.

 

[Scott_Arm]

For Honor would be a great game for a 60fps mode, but I'm guessing multiplayer parity and cpu are the barriers.

 

[dten]

If it were truly a bug developers would reduce the average load of a game to prevent it. Is the dynamic frame rate of Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2 a bug? No. It was a design choice.

If the framerate tanks, it is definitely a bug which you'll see in the buglist of probably every major game out there. There is no intention by developers to let framerate tank. It happens because software and especially games are very complex. Framerate has always been an issue in game development or any performance software and it's surprising to see someone actually saying it's intentional. Dynamic resolution is one solution out of many. It's not a problem in of itself like framerate.

Not a bug but a design compromise.

With fixed resolution if you are running locked X FPS, then you are not fully utilizing the system as load varies depending on scene. Basically any game running at fixed resolution AND fixed framerate isn't fully utilizing the system.

So, how often do you want to dip below the target framerate will determine how much more of the system resources you use more often. Anytime you are running less than target framerate, you'll be pushing the system harder (not 100% as limitations vary between CPU, GPU, memory bandwidth, etc.). But the more times you dip below target framerate, the less pleasant gameplay is and the less pleasant your graphics presentation.

Dynamic resolution attempts to more fully leverage system resources while at the same time preserving consistent framerate. It is, IMO, the far more elegant choice.

In a heated battle where framerate or resolution is most likely to drop, I am DEFINITELY going to notice a frame drop, but I probably won't notice a resolution decrease.

Regards,
SB

I get the way you're explaining it and in an ideal world, that would be awesome, but games and really all of interactive sotware is so dynamic, it's pretty much impossible to pre determine what's going to tax a system and very difficult to ride that edge of fully utilizing without going overboard. Anyway, the difference between dynamic framerate and dynamic resolution is that one is a system developers intentionally add and the other is a byproduct of development, which the above poster doesn't seem to distinguish. If I were a developer for some of these games, I'd like to get credit for coming up with dynamic resolution as a solution, but I most certainly don't want to get "credit" for implementing dynamic framerate on a 30 fps game.

 

[iroboto]

If the framerate tanks, it is definitely a bug which you'll see in the buglist of probably every major game out there. There is no intention by developers to let framerate tank.

Might be wrong to call it a bug yea?
From my very limited experience applying as a dev for Ubi. I would say that the technical questionnaire I was forced to write gave me some insights into how they look at engine development. A lot of the constraints are determined up front and they build the game and engine around that. The number of textures that can be streamed in per second, the number of polygons per second, all of it is targeted for the engine team.

What happens is that the world builders (not the engine team) start to build a world that surpasses the constraints and that's where we start to see slow downs in the game, that's why certain games (like racing games) tend to be very good at keeping a desired frame rate, whereas, games like W3, tend to have trouble areas. Viewing distance is a big problem for open world games. If you want to keep CPU load down, you need to mesh more and more things things together, but that also comes with some penalties, such as rendering a whole lot of stuff you can't even see, or sharing shaders when you shouldn't be. But if you fine tune the it for graphics, then your CPU load goes up (more draw calls, more sorting, more culling etc). There's sort of a back and forth effect going on here, until of course, you get into GPU side draw calls.

That's why exclusives tend to get away with being highly performant and highly optimized. When you reduce the number of platforms and be able to customize the software to the hardware, this process is of optimization is less painful.

 

[dten]

Might be wrong to call it a bug yea?
From my very limited experience applying as a dev for Ubi. I would say that the technical questionnaire I was forced to write gave me some insights into how they look at engine development. A lot of the constraints are determined up front and they build the game and engine around that. The number of textures that can be streamed in per second, the number of polygons per second, all of it is targeted for the engine team.

What happens is that the world builders (not the engine team) start to build a world that surpasses the constraints and that's where we start to see slow downs in the game, that's why certain games (like racing games) tend to be very good at keeping a desired frame rate, whereas, games like W3, tend to have trouble areas. Viewing distance is a big problem for open world games. If you want to keep CPU load down, you need to mesh more and more things things together, but that also comes with some penalties, such as rendering a whole lot of stuff you can't even see, or sharing shaders when you shouldn't be. But if you fine tune the it for graphics, then your CPU load goes up (more draw calls, more sorting, more culling etc). There's sort of a back and forth effect going on here, until of course, you get into GPU side draw calls.

That's why exclusives tend to get away with being highly performant and highly optimized. When you reduce the number of platforms and be able to customize the software to the hardware, this process is of optimization is less painful.

Bug is a trigger word for a lot of developers which I get, but you will see framerate issues in the buglist of games and almost all performant dependent interactive software. Fixed platform is easier to manage but software development isn't an exact science which is why you see drops below target especially as you mention in open world games. Anyway, the whole point is about dynamic resolution in TW3 and other games being a solution, not an problem, to try to keep framerate amplitudes from varying so wildly. Let's not keep focusing on a word and make a strawman from the bigger idea.

 

[iroboto]

Bug is a trigger word for a lot of developers which I get, but you will see framerate issues in the buglist of games and almost all performant dependent interactive software. Fixed platform is easier to manage but software development isn't an exact science which is why you see drops below target especially as you mention in open world games. Anyway, the whole point is about dynamic resolution in TW3 and other games being a solution, not an problem, to try to keep framerate amplitudes from varying so wildly. Let's not keep focusing on a word and make a strawman from the bigger idea.

Oh I don’t disagree. But yea i wanted to shed some light as to why some people are triggered by the word bug is all I wanted to add. The rest of your points I agree with.

 

[bunge]

If the framerate tanks, it is definitely a bug which you'll see in the buglist of probably every major game out there. There is no intention by developers to let framerate tank.

I believe this is largely incorrect. Now, of course that odd point when 50 explosions happen and yeah, unexpected things happen in games that devs can’t predict so the frame rate drops.

 

[bunge]

In a heated battle where framerate or resolution is most likely to drop, I am DEFINITELY going to notice a frame drop, but I probably won't notice a resolution decrease.

I wonder how bad SotC would look with a resolution drop during some of those battles. Regardless, I’m pretty sure most of us prefer dynamic resolution over a “dynamic frame rate”.

 

[BRiT]

What about variable frame rate provided they're on a VRR HDMI 2.1 display? Would the framerate have to always be above 30 for it to be tollerable, like it cant ever drop below 30 but a variable target rate of 40 or 45 is fine? Or would fps need to be targetting variable rate of 60 in order for the drops to 50 or 55 to be tollerable?

 

[iroboto]

Hmm, would have figured they'd be on holiday.

To what extent does Xbox One X deliver an improved 4K experience over PS4 Pro? We can't cover them all here, but for our money, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Wolfenstein 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of War, Hitman and Ghost Recon Wildlands are great examples of just how wide the gap can be. But the Pro still delivers equivalent experiences or advantages of its own in titles including Titanfall 2, Skyrim, FIFA 18, Fortnite and COD Infinite Warfare.

NOTE: Since we filmed this, Wolfenstein 2 has been updated with a new dynamic scaler option that improves performance. We will look at this in early 2018.

 

[iroboto]

What about variable frame rate provided they're on a VRR HDMI 2.1 display? Would the framerate have to always be above 30 for it to be tollerable, like it cant ever drop below 30 but a variable target rate of 40 or 45 is fine? Or would fps need to be targetting variable rate of 60 in order for the drops to 50 or 55 to be tollerable?

Yea, gysnc works best when the title is unlocked and close to 60. Once you hit massive frame loss, it's jarring whether you have VRR or not. Even going from 144fps to 80fps, as smooth as it still is, you will notice the slow down, it's nearly like it's lurching.

It's a weird thing frame rate is, once you get used to the frame rate, and you drop, those lurches hit you hard. But if you were consistently at that frame rate, I feel like your brain would have compensated a lot better. That's why unlocked is painful without VRR, the constant changes is fatiguing.

Below 30 VRR or not is painful imo.

 

[Recop]

The difference is really massive in some games... but i don't agree with Richard because the difference was pretty big between the XB1/PS4 in some games. The X is basically better at everything, so a 125% increase in pixel count should be expected if we consider the whole hardware and not only the difference in GPU power.

I mean with a fewer technical gap compared to the XB1, the PS4 could ouput a pixel difference close to 70/80% + a better framerate in some games (Doom and WF2 for instance).

 

[ultragpu]

Most impressive technical game of 2017 award goes to Horizon Zero Dawn

I think this is a no brainer, Horizon combines state of the art techs with beautiful art that elegantly outputs something almost like Planet Earth in real time, plus one of the best HDR implementation ever which really brings out every nuances of the frame.

 

[BRiT]

Post Disclaimers from Dark1X @ ResetEra so it's not a comprehensive article, just a personal list for fun:

https://www.resetera.com/posts/2548631/

Keep in mind it’s more of a personal list and not a collection of AAA games. It also doesn’t include patched enhanced games - so something like Gears 4 wouldn’t be included.

Lastly, it’s limited by what I’ve played. I have not touched Battlefront 2 so it wouldn’t be here.

It’s ultimatey just a list for fun - not some amazing award or anything. It’s about things that interested me and the other guys from a tech perspective.

So...don’t get too angry that stuff like GT Sport, Uncharted and Battlefront 2 aren’t on the list. That’s what I’m saying.

https://www.resetera.com/posts/2548749/

Exactly. It’s also not an actual “best graphics” video either - that list would look very different.

https://www.resetera.com/posts/2548990/

"with this title is really confusing what's the real intention though..."
Yeah, t’was my concern since I didn’t do the title myself. It should be clear once you start watching.

 

[Recop]

Zelda is indeed very impressive considering the hardware it is running on but i don't like developers that are too ambitious and don't prioritize a stable frame rate.

Post Disclaimers from Dark1X @ ResetEra so it's not a comprehensive article, just a personal list for fun

Enhanced games won't change the technical achievements of a game... but Battlefront definitely deserves a place in this classement along with TLL.

"Exactly. It’s also not an actual “best graphics” video either - that list would look very different."

And this sentence obviously concerns games like Zelda or Next Machina. Certainly not HZD.

 

[djskribbles]

Most impressive technical game of 2017 award goes to Horizon Zero Dawn

I think this is a no brainer, Horizon combines state of the art techs with beautiful art that elegantly outputs something almost like Planet Earth in real time, plus one of the best HDR implementation ever which really brings out every nuances of the frame.

Congrats to GG, well deserved.

Also special congrats to @sebbbi for making the list.

 

[djskribbles]

Post Disclaimers from Dark1X @ ResetEra so it's not a comprehensive article, just a personal list for fun:

https://www.resetera.com/posts/2548631/


https://www.resetera.com/posts/2548749/


https://www.resetera.com/posts/2548990/

HZD (and AC:O) would 100% be in the best graphics list as well. It has good tech AND art.

The disclaimer was more for the choices that Recop brought up (although I think Nex Machina looks amazing), but also more to re-emphasize the exclusions of games like GT Sport, FM7, Uncharted, Wolfenstein, BF2 etc., which most likely would all have made the best graphics list.

Also, it was a list done by all of the guys at DF, not just Dark1x. Dark1x did the writing and editing for the video.

https://www.resetera.com/posts/2550310/

What’s incomplete about it? We did discuss the list, of course, but I did the editing and writing for this video. Everyone is in agreement and the description is clear.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Also, it was a list done by all the guys at DF, not just Dark1x. Dark1x did the writing and editing for the video.

How is it a "personal list" then?

A little to much 'Christmas cheer' being consumed I reckon..