Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2020]

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And... I just checked and my TV can do 1080/120! How did I not know this??? Wow. This changes everything!

4K/120/HDR was in my mind when I upgraded a couple of months back. I'm generally fine with 30fps in most third person games so 60Hz is more than sufficient at 4K. But perhaps for some racing games, i.e. Dirt 5 supports 120Hz on both PS5 and XSX.

It'll be interesting to see if this is even perceivable to me. I'm also keen to see what graphical scarifices are required to achieve 120fps.
 
4K/120/HDR was in my mind when I upgraded a couple of months back. I'm generally fine with 30fps in most third person games so 60Hz is more than sufficient at 4K. But perhaps for some racing games, i.e. Dirt 5 supports 120Hz on both PS5 and XSX.

It'll be interesting to see if this is even perceivable to me. I'm also keen to see what graphical scarifices are required to achieve 120fps.
Absolutely! I just didn't think about it cause my TV is from 2016/17? It will definitely be worth trying it out just to see if it's worth the inevitable downgrade. I'm really quite happy with 60fps, but you never know, I've literally never seen a game running at 120fps.
 
Absolutely! I just didn't think about it cause my TV is from 2016/17? It will definitely be worth trying it out just to see if it's worth the inevitable downgrade. I'm really quite happy with 60fps, but you never know, I've literally never seen a game running at 120fps.

If you play at 144hz for awhile and go back to 60 for example, you do notice it's less 'smooth'. You get used to any of those refresh rates i think, it's when one switches between them you notice the differences the most. That's what i experienced but that's for CS, BF4 online pc games in general.

Going from 60hz to real 144 was that wow moment ;)
 
120hz is good even if you aren't running at high framerates. If you have a game that runs at 40fps, for example, you get better frame pacing because the frame pacing is more consistent. Those games that sit between 30 and 60 fps, assuming they are vsync'd, just have a better time if the refresh rate is higher. And from personal experience, if you enable 120hz on Xbox One it enables vsync also, so you get no screen tearing. Not sure if this is true on the S, I have an X.
 
120hz is good even if you aren't running at high framerates. If you have a game that runs at 40fps, for example, you get better frame pacing because the frame pacing is more consistent. Those games that sit between 30 and 60 fps, assuming they are vsync'd, just have a better time if the refresh rate is higher. And from personal experience, if you enable 120hz on Xbox One it enables vsync also, so you get no screen tearing. Not sure if this is true on the S, I have an X.
Very true, hopefully VRR will negate the need to run at 120Hz to get stable 40. I wonder if TVs pull more juice at higher refresh rates.
 
And... I just checked and my TV can do 1080/120! How did I not know this???
Wow. This changes everything!

If you haven't seen this yet, it's actually more interesting for casual players than hardcore players.


TL: DR
  • Casual players will see a significantly larger uplift in their playing skills from going from 60 Hz to 120/144 Hz.
    • Pro players and hardcore players will have developed skills around attempting to predict discrepancies due to latency (patterns).
  • 60 Hz with game rendering at around 200+ Hz will improve your in game performance significantly more than playing at 60 Hz with the game rendering at 60 Hz.
    • I knew this from the old UT CRT days. My display refresh was capped at 60 Hz, but I'd have the game rendering at 100+ Hz.
  • 120/144 to 240+ smaller impact on a player's performance in game.
I can only imagine the "holy shit" moment some console players will have on PS5 or XBSX when they go from 30 FPS in games to potentially 120 FPS in games. :D

Regards,
SB
 
If you haven't seen this yet, it's actually more interesting for casual players than hardcore players.

TL: DR
  • Casual players will see a significantly larger uplift in their playing skills from going from 60 Hz to 120/144 Hz.
    • Pro players and hardcore players will have developed skills around attempting to predict discrepancies due to latency (patterns).
  • 60 Hz with game rendering at around 200+ Hz will improve your in game performance significantly more than playing at 60 Hz with the game rendering at 60 Hz.
    • I knew this from the old UT CRT days. My display refresh was capped at 60 Hz, but I'd have the game rendering at 100+ Hz.
  • 120/144 to 240+ smaller impact on a player's performance in game.
I can only imagine the "holy shit" moment some console players will have on PS5 or XBSX when they go from 30 FPS in games to potentially 120 FPS in games. :D

Regards,
SB
From 60fps to 120fps. There are now plenty of games running at 60fps on console, particularly on mid-gen machines. Besides, most games that are going to be 120fps are already 60fps on current gen (COD, Dirt Rally, supposedly GTS, Gears of War 5 etc.).
 
If you haven't seen this yet, it's actually more interesting for casual players than hardcore players.


TL: DR
  • Casual players will see a significantly larger uplift in their playing skills from going from 60 Hz to 120/144 Hz.
    • Pro players and hardcore players will have developed skills around attempting to predict discrepancies due to latency (patterns).
  • 60 Hz with game rendering at around 200+ Hz will improve your in game performance significantly more than playing at 60 Hz with the game rendering at 60 Hz.
    • I knew this from the old UT CRT days. My display refresh was capped at 60 Hz, but I'd have the game rendering at 100+ Hz.
  • 120/144 to 240+ smaller impact on a player's performance in game.
I can only imagine the "holy shit" moment some console players will have on PS5 or XBSX when they go from 30 FPS in games to potentially 120 FPS in games. :D

Regards,
SB

Are you calling me... a casual... gamer??

HOW VERY DARE YOU
 
If you haven't seen this yet, it's actually more interesting for casual players than hardcore players.


TL: DR
  • Casual players will see a significantly larger uplift in their playing skills from going from 60 Hz to 120/144 Hz.
    • Pro players and hardcore players will have developed skills around attempting to predict discrepancies due to latency (patterns).
  • 60 Hz with game rendering at around 200+ Hz will improve your in game performance significantly more than playing at 60 Hz with the game rendering at 60 Hz.
    • I knew this from the old UT CRT days. My display refresh was capped at 60 Hz, but I'd have the game rendering at 100+ Hz.
  • 120/144 to 240+ smaller impact on a player's performance in game.
I can only imagine the "holy shit" moment some console players will have on PS5 or XBSX when they go from 30 FPS in games to potentially 120 FPS in games. :D

Regards,
SB

Yes it's that wow moment going from 60 to 144 already. Imagine going from 30 to 120/144 in virtually all games. I think the 3090 is for that kind of market that dont want to compromise settings and resolutions (8k 60fps).

Anyway:

 
Flight Simulator 2020 best settings: how to balance performance without losing the next-gen experience
Up to 70 per cent improvement to frame-rate - and it still looks amazing.

Microsoft's Flight Simulator is, arguably, our first look an actual next generation gaming experience. The visual bar is undoubtedly raised and the inevitable comparisons to Crysis as a system-melter are not without foundation. Let's put it this way: being able to sustain 60 frames per second while maintaining the game's next-gen sheen requires extreme hardware. In fact, I've been running a Ryzen 9 3900X with RTX 2080 Ti for a couple of years now and it has served me well on virtually every game I've tested in that period but even with optimised settings in effect, I found that a hardware revamp for my high-level system could still deliver an appreciably improved experience.

First of all, let's lay out the scope of the challenge. Like Crysis before it, the two highest settings presets in Flight Simulator 2020 add such a degree of precision and draw distance that most PCs at higher resolutions will not be able to sustain a very high frame-rate. And to understand why, we need to get to grips with how the game is essentially an all-out assault on your hardware. But first of all, I did take the time to analyse every single one of Flight Simulator's settings and to figure out how far you can cut back without losing the next-gen visual experience. Optimising a game like this though would usually be a monumental task as it has such varied visuals: the game has a range of environmental types and weather systems, where different settings in the menu will have lopsided performance impacts depending on what type of terrain you are flying over, what the weather is like or how close you are to the ground. With that said, I was able to find optimised settings easily in this game due to the amazing work Asobo Studio has put into crafting the game's graphical presets.

First of all, if you're running on a higher resolution display, don't be afraid to use resolution scaling. If you keep TAA engaged as your anti-aliasing option, using the resolution scaler also allows for temporal upsampling - where information from prior frames is injected into the current one, improving image quality. The higher your display resolution, the more latitude you have. I found that using 80 per cent native resolution on a 4K display looked very similar indeed to the native presentation, but to achieve a similar quality on a 1440p screen, 90 per cent is as far as you should go. At 1080p, I cannot recommend using resolution scaling - I'd keep that at 100 per cent.

Read the rest of the DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...or-optimised-settings-for-next-gen-experience
 
Flight Simulator 2020 best settings: how to balance performance without losing the next-gen experience
Up to 70 per cent improvement to frame-rate - and it still looks amazing.

Microsoft's Flight Simulator is, arguably, our first look an actual next generation gaming experience. The visual bar is undoubtedly raised and the inevitable comparisons to Crysis as a system-melter are not without foundation. Let's put it this way: being able to sustain 60 frames per second while maintaining the game's next-gen sheen requires extreme hardware. In fact, I've been running a Ryzen 9 3900X with RTX 2080 Ti for a couple of years now and it has served me well on virtually every game I've tested in that period but even with optimised settings in effect, I found that a hardware revamp for my high-level system could still deliver an appreciably improved experience.

First of all, let's lay out the scope of the challenge. Like Crysis before it, the two highest settings presets in Flight Simulator 2020 add such a degree of precision and draw distance that most PCs at higher resolutions will not be able to sustain a very high frame-rate. And to understand why, we need to get to grips with how the game is essentially an all-out assault on your hardware. But first of all, I did take the time to analyse every single one of Flight Simulator's settings and to figure out how far you can cut back without losing the next-gen visual experience. Optimising a game like this though would usually be a monumental task as it has such varied visuals: the game has a range of environmental types and weather systems, where different settings in the menu will have lopsided performance impacts depending on what type of terrain you are flying over, what the weather is like or how close you are to the ground. With that said, I was able to find optimised settings easily in this game due to the amazing work Asobo Studio has put into crafting the game's graphical presets.

First of all, if you're running on a higher resolution display, don't be afraid to use resolution scaling. If you keep TAA engaged as your anti-aliasing option, using the resolution scaler also allows for temporal upsampling - where information from prior frames is injected into the current one, improving image quality. The higher your display resolution, the more latitude you have. I found that using 80 per cent native resolution on a 4K display looked very similar indeed to the native presentation, but to achieve a similar quality on a 1440p screen, 90 per cent is as far as you should go. At 1080p, I cannot recommend using resolution scaling - I'd keep that at 100 per cent.

Read the rest of the DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...or-optimised-settings-for-next-gen-experience

So... scaling down is ok after all? ;)
 
So... scaling down is ok after all? ;)

Or good developer versus lazy developer.

Good developer.
  • Well, lets make our rendering and assets high quality and then scale them down to lower performance targets.
Lazy developer.
  • Lets use this lower spec as an excuse not to make higher quality assets or build in higher quality rendering into our engine even though it has all the same hardware rendering features as the higher spec machine. Scaling down assets to fit a lower resolution target and/or less memory is too hard.
If you only have the higher spec. everyone is forced to target that. If you have a lower spec., you give developers an excuse not to make the higher quality assets...that you would have had to make anyway if the only machine that existed was the higher spec. machine.

But if you are multiplatform and have to make higher quality assets anyway...you can be lazy and use the excuse of the lower spec competition to not take advantage of the higher spec machine from the other company? o_O:confused:

Again this isn't like the PC space where you have 100's of millions of graphics cards that don't support all modern rendering features. Or where you might have someone with a 2-core CPU.

Oh wait, FS2020 does have to deal with all those PC cases. Oooops. Although hopefully someone isn't trying to run it on a 2 core CPU (someone probably is trying to do that).

Regards,
SB
 
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I'm still dubious about the sacrifices that visuals will need to be made to get games outputting at 120Hz.

We'll find out soon enough as DIRT5 offers a 120 mode on both PS5 and XSX.

I think that when it comes to racing games, it’s much easier to hide the sacrifices, considering the speed of the game, and especially so at 120fps. Also, racing games tend to be less power hungry than a lot of other types of games. It will likely be a 1080 vs 4K decision with some settings turned down which we will probably not notice while racing anyway.
 
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