Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2019]

Status
Not open for further replies.
What I need to know is how many Kyro 2s worth of power are in the new consoles.
It isn't about power, it's about deferred power. To answer the original question, we are comparing vs nVidia parts because they have the only mainstream ray tracing parts on the market.

And what's the point exactly ? What was the price a the PC equivalent in 2013 ?
Why absolutly wanting to downplay the ps4 in the console section ? Honest question i'm curious.
The point isn't to downplay the PS4, only to look at what a mainstream PC was capable of in 2013 compared to PS4 and use that knowledge to project what a relative performance spread would mean for PS5. For example, if a $800 PC would equal a PS4 at time of launch, roughly, then what would a 2020 $800 PC be, and you would have a ballpark performance profile for PS5. At current pricing that would put us in the range of a higher end i5/r5 or previous gen i7/r7, with 16ish GB or ram, an SSD and a spinning disk, and a RTX 2060 or 2070, give or take a sale here or there. It should be a bit better in a year, and there might be some secret sauce in the form of tweaked caches or command processors that let some of those parts punch a bit above their weight, but stuff like that usually doesn't affect launch software that much.
 
* Detail is ridiculously high, more so than RDR2's
* Indirect lighting and detail are next level
* More samples for Motion blur than previous ND games
* Animation on par with E3 trailer
* 1440p / 30fps with superb IQ and AA
 
Nxgamer also noticed the motion blur (both camera and per object) have being much improved since previous ND games and even the old trailers.That's really, really good to hear. We really dodged a bullet here.

We can see the improvement on those compressed videos; like we can actually discern something when in fast motion.
 
I wonder if all of the lighting is still pre-computed light-maps. It would make sense if they stuck with the same solution.

Motion blur is one of those things that is a necessary evil of 30fps, but it doesn't look to be too aggressive in lou2.
 
Everything is baked!

This isn't necessarily true. The Last of Us (PS3/PS4 Remastered) and PS4 Uncharted series uses a combination of real-time global illumination and pre-baked material. So, if anything The Last of Us 2 should do these combination of things much better from that aspect.
 
Everything is baked! Just baked better!
source.gif
 
This isn't necessarily true. The Last of Us (PS3/PS4 Remastered) and PS4 Uncharted series uses a combination of real-time global illumination and pre-baked material. So, if anything The Last of Us 2 should do these combination of things much better from that aspect.
I did not notice the reflective shadow map stuff on the flash light this time around in the footage, but saw a lot of baked shadows!
 
I did not notice the reflective shadow map stuff on the flash light this time around in the footage, but saw a lot of baked shadows!

Sure. Could be a tradeoff for better SSS/SSLT. Which TLoU2 has one of the better (more natural) implementation that I have seen in awhile.
 
Sure. Could be a tradeoff for better SSS/SSLT. Which TLoU2 has one of the better (more natural) implementation that I have seen in awhile.
SSS/SSLT
Sub-Surface-Scattering / Screen-Space Light Transmission?

IMO, It will probably have that same "issue" that Uncharted or many game's have unless they changed how it works on a fundamental level. SSS will look great in real time dynamic/direct shadows and lighting, but lose much of its surface information and depth in areas primarily lit by bakes and probes.
 
SSS/SSLT
Sub-Surface-Scattering / Screen-Space Light Transmission?

IMO, It will probably have that same "issue" that Uncharted or many game's have unless they changed how it works on a fundamental level. SSS will look great in real time dynamic/direct shadows and lighting, but lose much of its surface information and depth in areas primarily lit by bakes and probes.

Yes.

From a gamers perspective (or at least mines) it looks better and more natural than most game implementations. From a technological standpoint, it very well may have the same issues which plagued prior games using the engine. But, it doesn't negate the current form or quality from being visually better or more appealing than the prior ones.
 
Where did DF explicitly say that last of us 2 looks better or has more detail then RDR2?

I did not notice the reflective shadow map stuff on the flash light this time around in the footage, but saw a lot of baked shadows!

The hardware is showing it's age, modern titles with GI/RT do a better job but that is for next generation.
 
Where did DF explicitly say that last of us 2 looks better or has more detail then RDR2?



The hardware is showing it's age, modern titles with GI/RT do a better job but that is for next generation.
They don't have to explicitly say it, they simply implied it indirectly by saying "but the level of detail here is ridiculously high" as in direct comparison to RDR2. So if RDR2 is as high, they wouldn't have mentioned it at all. Also you don't need DF to spell it out for you, it's easy to spot the level of detail in the density of the trees, the quality of the trees, the shading on them and the level of incidental detail on the assets in general.
 
They don't have to explicitly say it, they simply implied it indirectly by saying "but the level of detail here is ridiculously high" as in direct comparison to RDR2. So if RDR2 is as high, they wouldn't have mentioned it at all. Also you don't need DF to spell it out for you, it's easy to spot the level of detail in the density of the trees, the quality of the trees, the shading on them and the level of incidental detail on the assets in general.
RDR2 is an open world, you can waltz around and find a very highly detailed area. You can't take a single section of a trailer and compare it to the whole play area. There are some incredibly rich areas in RDR2. Their commentary is just commentary. There's nothing wrong with it, but once again you've cherry picked this comment.
If you're unsure of the definition of cherry picking:
(also known as: suppressed evidence, fallacy of incomplete evidence, argument by selective observation, argument by half-truth, card stacking, fallacy of exclusion, ignoring the counter evidence, one-sided assessment, slanting, one-sidedness)

Description: When only select evidence is presented in order to persuade the audience to accept a position, and evidence that would go against the position is withheld. The stronger the withheld evidence, the more fallacious the argument.

No one wants to do a comparison thread, it's a waste of time, and once again you don't have the game and it's not out yet. To be clear here, you are not doing a comparison of technology; or having a discussion about how TLOU2 is doing something different that is pushing the graphical barriers forward. You are taking a position that game (b) looks better to me, therefore everything else that is associated with that, must be true!
 
@iroboto Yep. Everything is in context. Open-world games have to store things on disk and stream in smart ways because people can choose their own direction, see long distances etc. And on top of that a game like RDR2 has time of day and a wide-variety of dynamic weather, so every asset and material has to respond correctly to all of it. All of that is "game tech," but tends tends to get ignored when people start comparing linear titles to open world games. They technical solutions for these games are different because they address different problems. You can pick a screenshot of a tree and count the branches and say the one with the most branches is technically better, but it's ignoring the reality of the scope of the games. Ultimately people will pick the game with the art assets that appeal to them most.
 
but with the streaming tech of the PS5, the difference between open world games and linear should be gone ?

It definitely makes things easier, but it just means you can stream more data in/out of memory faster and devs will always push the limits. All of the same differences between a linear title and an open world title will still apply.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top