Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2016 - 2017]

[London Geezer]

^^this

 

[Clukos]

Rewriting a major aspect of the engine like frame synchronization post-release would be a terrible choice. I doubt any experienced and sufficiently non-reckless developer would go for it. Best strategy here is just not to assume anything about people's technical competence without enough info to do so.

I'm talking about Dark Souls 3 specifically. It was a problem in Bloodborne and it is still a problem in Dark Souls 3, there is no excuse for that no matter how high I hold From personally.

 

[nightshade]

Maybe they can't fix the framepacing issue if they want to keep the low input lag in the game. I still think there is link between the two.

I remember Destiny Beta that was also plagued with frame-pacing issue on both consoles. They mainly fixed it, particularly on PS4, but the XB1 still had some of this issue after launch (not sure now) and even the PS4 after launch could still very rarely have it.

Halo(s) on X360 always had this problem too. But all games have all a very low input lag at 30fps. Comparable or even better than some 60fps games. As far as I know, no other 30fps games have that kind of input lag.

My theory is that in a way framepacing issue could be seen as some kind of mini framerate drop, but only from the part of the engine that maybe runs at 60fps internally (like the controls), while the other part (like the final output) runs at only 30fps.

LIke the game could run internally at 30fps but in parallel and in 2 16.67ms parts, maybe vaguely similar of how TLOUR run on PS4, except with the controls running at every 16.67ms of each part and the rendering displayed only every 33ms. So it'd improve the input lag and it'd allow them to have mini framerate drops of only one 16.67ms part of the rendering, so they still can catch the time lost in the next 16.67ms part of the rendering, because in a parallel engine the rendering never stop being computed, thus creating a 30fps average but irregular pacing.

Not sure if sufficiently clear but that's just a very vague theory based of not much....

No 30 fps Halo game had input lag below 100ms. While there are 30fps games like NFS Hot Pursuit that have stable performance an less than 100ms input lag (and there is another one which is as low as a 60fps game).There's also the fact that uneven framepacing will result in worse controls.

 

[function]

Actually Sega Rally 1995 on the PS2 is the best rally game ever.

OG Sega Rally (still have it for Saturn) was my favourite until RC2. Best playing driving game of it's day IMO, and a technical marvel for both the arcade and the previously wretched Saturn (I still have OG Daytona for Saturn too!). No DF in those days, that would have been fun ...

Like Sega Rally, the more you dug into RC2 the more you appreciated the handling and the balance of sim and arcade. And it also had the Stratos and Delta (S4 tho)! It's an almost perfect game.

 

[Cyan]

not just console related, but something that I don't understand about current Digital Foundry articles like the one in the link is that they don't mention at all an incredible CPU like the Intel Core i5-4460 which beats the quite more expensive Core i5-6400 in games and stuff, costing only 175€, while the other costs almost double..

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-6400-vs-Intel-Core-i5-4460

 

[Clukos]

 

[Deleted member 86764]

That is one pretty game. More developers needs to use that image reconstruction tech, coz the 720p image looks very nice. They compare is briefly to Battlefield at the same resolution and the difference is dramatic.

 

[Starx]

It does sound incredible from a graphics perspective, I want to see how amazing the PC version will look.

 

[Scott_Arm]

It does sound incredible from a graphics perspective, I want to see how amazing the PC version will look.

With shadow quality probably being much better on PC, I think it'll look like a million bucks.

 

[Allandor]

That is one pretty game. More developers needs to use that image reconstruction tech, coz the 720p image looks very nice. They compare is briefly to Battlefield at the same resolution and the difference is dramatic.

I don't think it would work in battlefield (60fps). Here we have many artefacts (e.g. trails), but the game/story is build that way, that the artifacts are actually wanted

But when I saw battlefield hardline, I didn't note that it is 720p. Yes, the game is not good, but resolution is not everything for pretty graphics.
More pixels are just the easiest way to get rid of aliasing. but it is not the best way performancewise.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Quantum break also has 4x MSAA, which is a huge step up from battlefield, but Quantum break is also 30fps, not 60. The termporal reconstruction does seem to work pretty nicely in that eurogamer vid. When you want to stop and look at something in detail, it definitely makes a significant improvement. Overall, I still think the game looks fantastic. Guess I'll see how I feel when I play it on my tv instead of looking at it on a monitor. Remedy definitely has a different aesthetic than other studios. I really like their focus on lighting. It adds so much to the visuals. Only real drawback I see that sticks out from a pretty well composed image is their shadow resolution. That's the one that I find a little jarring. But the Xbox One isn't exactly a powerhouse. I think as trade-offs go, I'd rather have low shadow resolution, then have them seriously scale back on the lighting, or other effects.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

I don't think it would work in battlefield (60fps). Here we have many artefacts (e.g. trails), but the game/story is build that way, that the artifacts are actually wanted

But when I saw battlefield hardline, I didn't note that it is 720p. Yes, the game is not good, but resolution is not everything for pretty graphics.
More pixels are just the easiest way to get rid of aliasing. but it is not the best way performancewise.

Yeah, the artifacts don't bother me at all. They're definitely worth the compromise in my mind.

I do prefer native resolution though. I wonder how this technique would work with a 1080p image. Could it give a supersampling look about it?

I'd like to see more games use this or the KZSF resolution tricks.

 

[nightshade]

I donno, I'd be up for KZSF style temporal reprojection or R&C/Rainbow six style MSAA reconstruction with temporal AA...but not this temporal reconstruction seen in Quantum Break because it's effectively useless since it breaks even in the slightest of camera movement and is only beneficial for taking screenshots.

Also yes, it can give a supersampling look at 1080P I think. Witcher 2 Uber sampling combined multiple full res frames to give a pristinelook but that game used data gathered from rendering the current frame multiple times rather than using data from past frames.

 

[Globalisateur]

Just played a bit of Killzone MP tonight: The graphics are still really impressive particularly on the open levels. Still naively look between 900P and 1080p easily, even on slow or moderate motion when the re-projection still works as intended.

Retrospectively that could be the best reconstruction technique I have seen. Would be perfect for 4K gaming.

 

[BRiT]

That reprojection technique on KillZone MP doesn't save them as much as one would expect once you factor in the additional steps they need to take. I doubt it would be as usable for 4K gaming without the near doubling of everything GPU related.

 

[nightshade]

Just played a bit of Killzone MP tonight: The graphics are still really impressive particularly on the open levels. Still naively look between 900P and 1080p easily, even on slow or moderate motion when the re-projection still works as intended.

Retrospectively that could be the best reconstruction technique I have seen. Would be perfect for 4K gaming.

That doesn't sound right tbh, it should look 1080P because that's what it is. The reprojection will only produce artifacts, it won't make the image appear lower resolution.

 

[HTupolev]

That doesn't sound right tbh, it should look 1080P because that's what it is. The reprojection will only produce artifacts, it won't make the image appear lower resolution.

IIRC, when the system correctly detects that the reprojection is inaccurate, the "artifact" is spatial scaling. I recall it looking exactly like a horizontal half-res render in areas of the screen where this occurs.

Vertical comb artifacts are a catastrophic worst-case scenario.

 

[Gitaroo]

Cant wait to see pc native 720p, 900p, 1080p vs xbone version. I bet pc native 900p would still looks a lot better than xbone. Right now ppl thinks it looks good because there isnt any other version to compare to. The game always looks super blurry and muddy to me since the very begining, i was shocked when previews says it runs at 1080p. The effects looks amazing though.

 

[Shortbread]

Cant wait to see pc native 720p, 900p, 1080p vs xbone version. I bet pc native 900p would still looks a lot better than xbone. Right now ppl thinks it looks good because there isnt any other version to compare to. The game always looks super blurry and muddy to me since the very begining, i was shocked when previews says it runs at 1080p. The effects looks amazing though.

I have a feeling the PC version is going to suffer certain performance issues (nothing pertaining to Remedy or the Northlight engine), but more so being tied behind UWP. Plus, not having certain controls (levels of sampling control) over the IQ settings, is off-putting to me as a PC gamer.

 

[Gitaroo]

I have a feeling the PC version is going to suffer certain performance issues (nothing pertaining to Remedy or the Northlight engine), but more so being tied behind UWP. Plus, not having certain controls (levels of sampling control) over the IQ settings, is off-putting to me as a PC gamer.

If my single 970 can run it at max @1080p and 30fps, thats already miles ahead. Higher shadow res and draw distance and LOD and high res volumetric light alone are worth the upgrade even with everything else being the same, those looks very bad on xbone. I wonder if the image rescaling technique is also available on pc since it supports dx12.