Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

[BRiT]

DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-pro-skater-1-2-xbox-series-x-s-playstation-5

120fps is a game-changer for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles
All the upgrades tested.

We've been massively enthusiastic about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 in the past - Vicarious Visions revamped and modernised a brilliant game for PC, PS4 and Xbox One consoles while retaining the core genius of its original incarnations. It's one of John Linneman's top games of 2020 and I'm happy to report that the next generation update for the game is highly impressive - though the upgrade process itself could be better, and if you've already bought it, Activision wants more of your money for the latest rendition of the code. The good news is that the upgrades themselves are excellent - at least in our experience.

With that said, it seems that some users have had issues and we're not entirely sure why, as we didn't encounter any problems with the game during testing. Maybe the fact that we were given specific Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 review codes allowed us to side-step some of the problems others are facing - no upgrade was needed, no existing code was sat on our hard drives - but the fact is that the game just worked with no problems in the time we spent with it. Your mileage may vary of course, but fingers crossed that any outstanding issues will be resolved sooner rather than later because whether you're gaming on PS5, Series X or Series S, the improvements are palpable.

...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-pro-skater-1-2-xbox-series-x-s-playstation-5

120fps is a game-changer for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles
All the upgrades tested.

We've been massively enthusiastic about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 in the past - Vicarious Visions revamped and modernised a brilliant game for PC, PS4 and Xbox One consoles while retaining the core genius of its original incarnations. It's one of John Linneman's top games of 2020 and I'm happy to report that the next generation update for the game is highly impressive - though the upgrade process itself could be better, and if you've already bought it, Activision wants more of your money for the latest rendition of the code. The good news is that the upgrades themselves are excellent - at least in our experience.

With that said, it seems that some users have had issues and we're not entirely sure why, as we didn't encounter any problems with the game during testing. Maybe the fact that we were given specific Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 review codes allowed us to side-step some of the problems others are facing - no upgrade was needed, no existing code was sat on our hard drives - but the fact is that the game just worked with no problems in the time we spent with it. Your mileage may vary of course, but fingers crossed that any outstanding issues will be resolved sooner rather than later because whether you're gaming on PS5, Series X or Series S, the improvements are palpable.

...

PS5 still doesn't support 1440p@120 Hz output? I'm surprised, Sony doesn't just have the PS5 internally upscale it to 4k before outputting it. AMD (and NV) graphics cards have been able to do this for decades with virtually no performance impact. I always set my upscaling to be handled by my GPU instead of my display because the result is generally better or similar quality with lower latency. I can't imagine it would be all that difficult for Sony to support internal GPU upscaling like this. If they are unable to themselves, just ask AMD to do it for them.

Also, interesting, that so many titles like this one still don't show much work put in by developers to properly support the new storage subsystems on the current gen consoles.

A level that took 14.5 seconds on Xbox One X takes four to five seconds on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles - the Sony machine is faster but only by less than a second. Interestingly, I found the new Xbox consoles to be virtually on par with my Core i9 10900K-powered PC running an NVMe drive with 3.5GB/s transfer speeds.

I guess I shouldn't be THAT surprised since it's likely something that developers aren't going to bother with unless it's a new title release.

Hmmm, speaking of storage subsystems. Has Sony enabled the internal NVME expansion slot for end user use, yet? A friend of mine was asking me about it as he's been holding off trying to get a PS5 until there's confirmation it works (he plays a LOT of different games in any given week, so he needs more storage than what comes with either PS5 or XBS-X base configuration). He's actually thinking of picking up a XBS-X soon if it isn't enabled yet on the PS5 or won't be enabled soon.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 86764]

@Silent_Buddha

"Sony doesn't just have the PS5 internally upscale it to 4k before outputting it."

That's exactly what they are doing. The video even explained it. The PS5's GPU is scaling based on the selected output resolution. Not sure why you'd think they'd need AMD's assistance with their own software.

 

[cwjs]

Those minor ps5 fps drops are mystery solved imo -- looking at the lower performance in edge cases they probably targeted a lower resolution at some point, before optimizing or just realizing it's rare that it's fine to run at 1440

 

[snc]

Those minor ps5 fps drops are mystery solved imo -- looking at the lower performance in edge cases they probably targeted a lower resolution at some point, before optimizing or just realizing it's rare that it's fine to run at 1440

Accordign to vgtech xsx in performance mode drop to 1080p and ps5 to 1188p (21% more pixels) so more aggresive dynamic res would probably fix this rare drops

 

[Globalisateur]

This IMO was the biggest PS5 disappointment of November 2020. And then the biggest disappointment of December, and then January, and then February, and then March.
Let's hope it's not the biggest disappointment of April 2021.

That and still no VRR. I think for many the lack of VRR is a bigger annoyance than the lack of M.2 expansions.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

That and still no VRR. I think for many the lack of VRR is a bigger annoyance than the lack of M.2 expansions.

VRR is a close second!

 

[Deleted member 11852]

PS5 still doesn't support 1440p@120 Hz output? I'm surprised, Sony doesn't just have the PS5 internally upscale it to 4k before outputting it.

2560x1440 at 120Hz is not a HDMI standard output. Games internally rendering at different resolutions before upscaling to output at 4K is the more common approach - that way your game UI and OS overlays benefit from the higher resolution.

 

[Globalisateur]

Accordign to vgtech xsx in performance mode drop to 1080p and ps5 to 1188p (21% more pixels) so more aggresive dynamic res would probably fix this rare drops

Very probably. We actually know those minimum resolutions are actually located in the same area where the framerate drops the lowest in both VGTech tests and DF tests (with the transparent character). It would be interesting to check the resolution of the scene shown by DF with transparent character (AFAIK DF didn't pixel count this scene), but I am confident there should be the same or a similar resolution difference (20% higher res on PS5). Because we know from VGTech findings that the DRS settings on PS5 are not aggressive enough specifically in this area.

 

[Shortbread]

2560x1440 at 120Hz is not a HDMI standard output. Games internally rendering at different resolutions before upscaling to output at 4K is the more common approach - that way your game UI and OS overlays benefit from the higher resolution.

While true, however, the lack of 1440p/120hz, VRR, and expanded internal storage support, makes Sony's SDK software engineering teams look bad when compared to Microsoft. And quite honestly, Sony should have resolved the first two aforementioned issues months ago.

 

[dobwal]

While true, however, the lack of 1440p/120hz, VRR, and expanded internal storage support, makes Sony's SDK software engineering teams look bad when compared to Microsoft. And quite honestly, Sony should have resolved the first two aforementioned issues months ago.

MS is not perfect (GDK not as stable at release as Sony), so you really can't blame Sony for not being perfect either.

 

[Shortbread]

MS is not perfect (GDK not as stable at release as Sony), so you really can't blame Sony for not being perfect either.

My point wasn't about perfection, but more so about Sony's incompetent support of VRR which has been available in AMD's solution/driver stack since 2018, and even more trivial lack of support for 1440p/120hz gaming panels which has been around since 2014. There really is no excuse at this point...

Hell, my Xbox One X supports both if I'm not mistaken... yeah, really no excuse.

 

[dobwal]

My point wasn't about perfection, but more so about Sony's incompetent support of VRR which has been available in AMD's solution/driver stack since 2018, and even more trivial lack of support for 1440p/120hz gaming panels which has been around since 2014. There really is no excuse at this point...

Hell, my Xbox One X supports both if I'm not mistaken... yeah, really no excuse.

2 years? AMD 6000 series GPUs were disabling VRR for most popular TVs that didn't support freesync just a few months ago. I am not sure if its been resolved.

https://www.overclock3d.net/news/gp..._radeon_rx_gpus_with_a_future_driver_update/1

"Radeon Software will add support for HDMI 2.1 Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technology on Radeon RX products in an upcoming driver release. This support will come as an addition to the Radeon FreeSync technology umbrella, as displays with HDMI 2.1 VRR support reach market."

That was two years ago but issues were still persisting earlier this year.

 

[Shortbread]

2 years? AMD 6000 series GPUs were disabling VRR for most popular TVs that didn't support freesync just a few months ago. I am not sure if its been resolved.

https://www.overclock3d.net/news/gp..._radeon_rx_gpus_with_a_future_driver_update/1

"Radeon Software will add support for HDMI 2.1 Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technology on Radeon RX products in an upcoming driver release. This support will come as an addition to the Radeon FreeSync technology umbrella, as displays with HDMI 2.1 VRR support reach market."

That was two years ago but issues were still persisting earlier this year.

Yes, but once again, my point was that VRR was out on AMD hardware since 2018, which means Sony had time (like Microsoft) between then and the PS5 launch to improve on any AMD soft/API level insufficiencies. No matter how we split hairs here, Sony PS5 being behind in VRR and 1440p/120hz support when compared to Microsoft's prior generation systems is quite embarrassing. But I'll leave it at that.

 

[dobwal]

Yes, but once again, my point was that VRR was out on AMD hardware since 2018, which means Sony had time (like Microsoft) between then and the PS5 launch to improve on any AMD soft/API level insufficiencies. No matter how we split hairs here, Sony PS5 being behind in VRR and 1440p/120hz support when compared to Microsoft's prior generation systems is quite embarrassing. But I'll leave it at that.

On what hardware exactly? AMD has freesync. If u have a tv that supports HDMI 2.1 VRR but not freesync, AMD gpus won’t provide variable rate refresh functionality.

Sony seems to have foregone freesync support and has the same issue as AMD with HDMI 2.1 VRR. Thus the reason the PS5 doesn’t have VRR support. In terms of AMD hardware, MS is the outlier not Sony.

 

[BRiT]

On what hardware exactly?

Xbox One X.

 

[see colon]

2560x1440 at 120Hz is not a HDMI standard output.

Isn't it? Pretty sure that's been supported over HDMI since 1.3 or 1.4 in a more limited color space (422 or something like that), and fully supported in 2.0. It's not a broadcast or television standard, so TVs aren't produced with that resolution in mind. But I imagine that plenty of modern TVs support it as an input.

 

[Shortbread]

On what hardware exactly? AMD has freesync. If u have a tv that supports HDMI 2.1 VRR but not freesync, AMD gpus won’t provide variable rate refresh functionality.

Sony seems to have foregone freesync support and has the same issue as AMD with HDMI 2.1 VRR. Thus the reason the PS5 doesn’t have VRR support. In terms of AMD hardware, MS is the outlier not Sony.

Let's call Freesync for what it is, it's simply AMD’s open standard version of VRR. There really is no outlier here. Both are using AMD hardware and both are HDMI 2.1 compliant. And for whatever reason Sony hasn't (or unwilling) provided VRR support. But then again, it could be the lame excuse which they used for not supporting 1440p/120hz panels, and possibly the same reason why for not supporting VRR (i.e., customer demand).

 

[BRiT]

Isn't it? Pretty sure that's been supported over HDMI since 1.3 or 1.4 in a more limited color space (422 or something like that), and fully supported in 2.0. It's not a broadcast or television standard, so TVs aren't produced with that resolution in mind. But I imagine that plenty of modern TVs support it as an input.

Found this table on Wiki. Looks like HDMi 1.3-1.4b can do 1440p@120Hz with 4:2:2, or HDMI 2.0/2.0b full.

 

[dobwal]

Xbox One X.

LOL. Good one. However, MS seems to have done something AMD is having problems with. IDK. Maybe MS came up with an alternative and pushed TV manufacturer to adopt their solution because they seem to have the most hassle free VRR so far.