Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

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What the patch notes don't spell out in great detail is any particular push to optimise the experience for the PS4 and Xbox One generation of consoles, though there is a long list of engine-specific optimisations that should in theory improve the experience for all users. There are also promised improvements for the controversial temporal anti-aliasing solution, plus improved screen-space reflections. Xbox One is singled out for memory management optimisations too - but it's the streaming optimisations that caught our eye as it's this that seems to be the key for dramatic improvements on the title on PlayStation 4 Pro.


I wonder if this is just from Playstation developers getting a free license of Kraken + Oodle Texture and CDPR just made use of that.
 
I wonder if this is just from Playstation developers getting a free license of Kraken + Oodle Texture and CDPR just made use of that.
There is no such thing as a "Kraken License" (as given to developers) and besides Kraken compression only works on PS5.
 
There is no such thing as a "Kraken License" (as given to developers) and besides Kraken compression only works on PS5.

These statements are both wrong. Kraken License for PS5 SDK owners:



Kraken being a general compression tech that existed well before the PS5:

http://www.radgametools.com/oodlekraken.htm
Kraken is designed to run at blazing speeds on modern CPUs. It's great on the AMD Jaguar chip in the PS4 and Xbox One, which is a platform most compressors struggle on. Kraken achieves its amazing performance from new ideas on how to do LZ compression, and carefully optimized low level routines for x86, x64, Jaguar and ARM.

The PS5 just has a fixed-function high performance decompressor that supports Kraken and ZLib. It doesn't have exclusive rights to use Kraken.




When did it get pulled off other platforms?
Never. RAD was just bought by Epic and everyone developing in Unreal Engine can use it for free, so it's obviously compatible with everything.
 
By streaming optimizations they mean simply not loading the textures and geometry at all or delay loading them by a few seconds?

View attachment 5393
Well it seems they downgraded the amount of geometry and effects to get the performance running.
Which makes me wonder, what is actually running on PS5?
Are the new consoles running the base versions just at higher resolutions and framerates?
 
Well it seems they downgraded the amount of geometry and effects to get the performance running.
Which makes me wonder, what is actually running on PS5?
Are the new consoles running the base versions just at higher resolutions and framerates?

in the case of PS5 yes, it's exactly the PS4 pro version but running up to 60fps
 
I thought it was very clear as well but then I see talk of Kraken compression enabling this...
I don't think Kraken would make streaming faster in any case, sure you're loading a little less data but on PS4/Pro you're now having to decompress it in software which I doubt is faster to compensate loading less data.
 
It's not Kraken as the PS5 version (not tested here) runs exactly the same code as the Pro version that doesn't support Kraken.
 
in the case of PS5 yes, it's exactly the PS4 pro version but running up to 60fps
Well that kind of sucks now since the PS5 will be running the game with visual sacrifices which in it's case they may not be us necessary as on the Pro or PS4
 
Are the new consoles running the base versions just at higher resolutions and framerates?

The next-gen (err, current-gen) patches aren't coming until the second half of the year, so the earliest being July. But I'm pretty sure we're not seeing those updates until sometime in October or November.
 
It's not Kraken as the PS5 version (not tested here) runs exactly the same code as the Pro version that doesn't support Kraken.

Why would the PS4 Pro not support Kraken? It's not tied to the PS5 hardware and it's already present in a bunch of PS4 games.

You can assume CDPR chose not to recode their textures into the Kraken format, but it would have nothing to do with the Pro not supporting Kraken because that's a 100% false statement.
 
It's not Kraken as the PS5 version (not tested here) runs exactly the same code as the Pro version that doesn't support Kraken.

Kraken is supported on all hardware. There is just no dedicated ASIC for it on anything that's not a PS5. The most appealing aspect of Kraken is its low costs at high rates when it comes to decompression on a CPU. The other is that it targets almost all gaming hardware. So its ubiquitous and performant which makes it a great solution for multi-platform development.
 
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Why would the PS4 Pro not support Kraken? It's not tied to the PS5 hardware and it's already present in a bunch of PS4 games.

You can assume CDPR chose not to recode their textures into the Kraken format, but it would have nothing to do with the Pro not supporting Kraken because that's a 100% false statement.
There is no Kraken texture format. Kraken is replacing Zlib compression.
 
There is no such thing as a "Kraken License" (as given to developers) and besides Kraken compression only works on PS5.
Are you sure?

It's not Kraken as the PS5 version (not tested here) runs exactly the same code as the Pro version that doesn't support Kraken.
Are you sure?

Kraken is designed to run at blazing speeds on modern CPUs. It's great on the AMD Jaguar chip in the PS4 and Xbox One, which is a platform most compressors struggle on. Kraken achieves its amazing performance from new ideas on how to do LZ compression, and carefully optimized low level routines for x86, x64, Jaguar and ARM.

I can't speak for the console versions of Cyberpunk, but there's a Oodle logo on start up for PC that has been there since launch. They are using some sort of Ooodle compression, I always assumed it was Kraken but I'm not sure it is ever explicitly stated.
 
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