Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2013]

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It also appears to have a tacky sharpen filter to combat the blurring effect of upscaling (like BF4). I don't subscribe to the idea that this is some magical feature of the scaling hardware, but I would not be shocked if MS is evangelizing the technique to every Xbox One developer producing a sub-1080p game.

Judging from the screens it looks that way. I'm surprised DF didn't comment on that. A perma 'enhanced' setting that can't be turned off is a major mistake imo.
 
Is the sharpen filter done in hardware by the scaler ?
If yes, that's the worst decision they could have done.
I don't want sharpening filters on blu-ray, I certainly don't want them in video games.
When they talked about the new scaler, I was expecting a new scaler doing super resolution, edge-directed interpolation, or something like that, not a sharpening filter with white halos on every edges...

I hope they'll get crucified for this choice in game reviews
 
If I'm not mistaken, it looks like the HUD is also sharpened. For BF4 I don't think it was. Maybe it is just the case that MS is encouraging devs to employ a sharpen filter rather than it being part of the upscale process?

Either way, it's horrible. Though I'd like to see what it'd look like on someones set that already has the sharpness jacked up for kicks..
 
If I'm not mistaken, it looks like the HUD is also sharpened. For BF4 I don't think it was. Maybe it is just the case that MS is encouraging devs to employ a sharpen filter rather than it being part of the upscale process?

Either way, it's horrible. Though I'd like to see what it'd look like on someones set that already has the sharpness jacked up for kicks..

It might be the case that sharpening filter has it limits and that going from 720p to 1080p doesn't fit within those limits.

I heard no complaints of Ryse but its 900p upscaled to 1080p.

I imagine devs would only employ this "horrible" filter if it was less horrible then simple upscaling. Unless devs are rendering their titles natively at 1080p, I surmise most are comparing the filter technique against references that lack the effect.
 
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Just as a sidenode: here is one of the first released PS3 exclusives...Heavenly Sword:

720p resolution + 4xMSAA+ Nao32 HDR + massive amounts of enemies on screen + about the same framerate as DR3.

Sorry, could not find 720p vid, game is too old...lol!!!

Go to about 2:00 minute mark to see the amount of DR-style on-screen enemies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV2xJ0Ll8T8

All enemies in HS during swarm battle basically look the same repeated over and over not to mention very simple environment ie flat plain ground and some mountains way in the distance. Animations look pretty bad and everything is in slow motion. It's an old game and looks the part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QWVQG4BTjA8#t=56

DR3's zombies are all unique since they're procedurally generated and they all have dividing internals when you mutilate them. Then you have the dense and huge environment that is streamed. The two games aren't really comparable beyond the superficial "many enemies onscreen"...metric.
 
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I imagine devs would only employ this "horrible" filter if it was less horrible then simple upscaling. Unless devs are rendering their titles natively at 1080p, I surmise most are comparing the filter technique against references that lack the effect.

Not too sure about that, we'd have seen it used more often this gen if that was the case. I'm thinking, maybe it's an MS TRC..? If your game is 720p, sharpen filter is mandatory. Ryse skips this since it's at 900p.
 
I really think that it is due to lack of time: launch release window, new hardware, apparently quite some changes late to the OS reservation/functionality like party chat, efficient use of ESRAM seems to need a bit different data structures compared to last gen...which takes a lot of work (time) to redesign extrapolating from my coding experience.

All in all it is due to launch problems imo...and that Sony and MS went with relative low next gen specs.

Its also the question of cost. Given that by the time the XB1 even reach a userbase of 10 million DR3 will mostly be a bargain bin title, there is not a lot of potential for profits with launch titles. I imagine launch titles get pretty anemic budgets under most circumstances.
 
Not too sure about that, we'd have seen it used more often this gen if that was the case. I'm thinking, maybe it's an MS TRC..? If your game is 720p, sharpen filter is mandatory. Ryse skips this since it's at 900p.

The impact of scaling is probably cheaper this gen than last. Im thinking if MS lets you choose your native resolution they probably allow you option of whether you want to employ a sharpening filter or not.
 
Not too sure about that, we'd have seen it used more often this gen if that was the case. I'm thinking, maybe it's an MS TRC..? If your game is 720p, sharpen filter is mandatory. Ryse skips this since it's at 900p.

This gen these games weren't being compared to 1080p games on a directly competing platform.
 
Sending overpowered devkits probably didn't help either.

If you are refering to dev kits being talked about at E3 (nvidia gtx 770, dual Hd 7970) those are not dev kits sent by Microsoft. The are PCs used as devkits with Microsoft's permission. Also dont forget about consoles having a closed box advantage.

I dont understand how people are so fixated on resolution and framerate being the main qualifications of a next gen title. I have not played Dead Rising 3 yet. I have watched several gameplay videos. It seems to me the frame rate only drops when there are massive amounts of NPCs on screen. I can almost promise that 3 years from now that 1080p and 60 fps is not going to be the standard of what a next gen game is on either console.
 
If you are refering to dev kits being talked about at E3 (nvidia gtx 770, dual Hd 7970) those are not dev kits sent by Microsoft. The are PCs used as devkits with Microsoft's permission. Also dont forget about consoles having a closed box advantage.

The closed box advantage is only going to apply if your developing on the closed box. You cant develop on a non comparable PC and then just expect the game to suddenly get faster when it runs on a console because its a "closed box". And no closed box advantage would come close to making up such a huge power gulf anyway. That said, devs are intelligent enough to realise that a dual 7970 PC is not equivalent to the X1 and therefore not push it to its limit and expect it to run fine on the console. Even with overpowered dev kits they still would have limited the scope of their code to be able to run on far lesser hardware.
 
boys, all i am gonna say is that you shouldn't pretend to be technical while you are obviously not...this is just getting way too ridiculous...can someone stop this non-sense already...

There's the devkit, which is pretty much a powerful PC where you code. There's the debug kit, which is the same spec as the actual console that you load a build and test.
 
The noise comparisons are interesting. I'd love to see some like for like comparison to some example PC setups. This level of noise, while plenty quiet doesn't seem out of the ordinary for modern high end PC's but it's very difficult to test without a proper like for like comparison.

The load power draw is excellent, about 50% that of a high end PC with an equivalent GPU. Idle power draw is similar to a top end PC though, I guess there's only so much you can do to bring this down.
 
I dont understand how people are so fixated on resolution and framerate being the main qualifications of a next gen title. I have not played Dead Rising 3 yet. I have watched several gameplay videos. It seems to me the frame rate only drops when there are massive amounts of NPCs on screen. I can almost promise that 3 years from now that 1080p and 60 fps is not going to be the standard of what a next gen game is on either console.

:rolleyes:

If framerate and resolution don't matter why bother with the next gen at all? The DF Dead Rising 3 review makes it abundantly clear that the issues are not confined to edge cases such as when you have thousands of zombies on screen. I don't blame the console for this it just seems like a game that's been made way too ambitious for the hardware it runs on, boasting of thousands of zombies is frankly laughable if that comes with <20 fps.
 
boys, all i am gonna say is that you shouldn't pretend to be technical while you are obviously not...this is just getting way too ridiculous...can someone stop this non-sense already...

There's the devkit, which is pretty much a powerful PC where you code. There's the debug kit, which is the same spec as the actual console that you load a build and test.

The final PS4 devkits uses retail silicon just like the test kit.
It's in a different case, it has an additional USB Host port, an extra network connection, runs a slightly different firmware and the debugger runs on it (Not sure what the final decision for test kits was on this one), other than that the biggest difference is price.

Developers write code on a PC and run it on the devkit just like every other console.

Early kits were just PC's with something that looked like the OS might.

A lot of games targeting the next few months for release that I am aware of were developed as PC titles first and ported to the consoles when devkits with real silicon became available, and I know of several cases where the PC versions were used as the main development platform for a long time after that because it allowed the bulk of development to be insulated from incomplete OS and tools, even though there is no intention to ship those titles on PC.
 
For Need For Speed, Digital Foundry spectacularly missed the HBAO on the PS4, told there was no AO in PS4 but in XBoxOne version, only to be corrected by the devs later on. Actually the effect is so subtle that it is easy to miss but also quite apparent on the exhaust on one of DF's own screenshots. Curiously, the effect is most apparent on the exhaust but it could also have been easily baked right there (unless they wanted to make their lives easier if there are lots of customizations possibilities)
 
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