Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

On the PC the picture quality with DLSS and Rey Reconstruction will be excellent. When I activate Rey Reconstruction in games like Alan Wake 2 or Cyberpunk 2077 nothing flickers anymore. Almost everything is perfectly smoothed. Without Rey Reconstruction Alan Wake 2 had a lot of specular shimmering in New York.

Games with DLSS and Rey Reconstrucion have the best picture I have seen in any games. I believe that this trend will continue in SW Outlaws on PC.
Yes. I saw a comparison from another youtuber and DLSS looks considerably better than both FSR and XESS. One of the largest differences I've ever seen. I'm looking forward to Alex's video to see how much RTXDI adds to the visuals as well.
 
Even if it's a great positive since it drives adoption and there are some great implementations on pc, I think that putting ray tracing support on console as it is was a mistake.

Any time ray tracing gets implemented on console the resolution gets so low that it's not even worth it. Almost any game that pushes graphics is blurry-has framerate problems-has ghosting problems.

Most of the times you are still looking at a great image, but it's always a bit compromised is some way.

This gen, kind of like the ps3-360 gen, isn't equipped adequately for the developers ambitions.

At least maybe next gen will be great.
 
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The picture quality on the consoles is very poor. We will have to see what the PlayStation 5 Pro brings for improvements.

I wouldn't play a game with flickering/very noisy image.
The last FSR2 game I bought was The Talos Principle 2, I had to buy the game as I loved the first game. But I hated the IQ / image fidelity in that game caused by FSR2 and bad reflections. Overall the graphics were worse than TTP1 running on PS4.
 

Console video is up. Even YouTube compression cant hide how terrible FSR 2 looks.

60 FPS - 720p
40 FS - 900p
30 FPS - 1080
The compression might even make it look worse. I saw a ton of macroblocking when I watched it, especially in known trouble areas for FSR (foliage and the like).
 
The compression might even make it look worse. I saw a ton of macroblocking when I watched it, especially in known trouble areas for FSR (foliage and the like).
It doesn't. I also watched the HQ video from the DF supporter website. The shimmering, fizzling and disocclusion artifacts are much worse. It turns into a pixelated mess. The macro blocking is less offensive for sure.
 
Even if it's a great positive since it drives adoption and there are some great implementations on pc, I think that putting ray tracing support on console as it is was a mistake.

Any time ray tracing gets implemented on console the resolution gets so low that it's not even worth it. Almost any game that pushes graphics is blurry-has framerate problems-has ghosting problems.

Most of the times you are still looking at a great image, but it's always a bit compromised is some way.

This gen, kind of like the ps3-360 gen, isn't equipped adequately for the developers ambitions.

At least maybe next gen will be great.

Nvidia announced RT with Turing in 2018. By then the console designs were pretty much done but then you had this big RT and upscaling hype which caught on with Ampere as 2nd gen RT horsepower made it more than a gimmick. DLSS at this point had matured even better.

Console makers basically had to ride the RT bandwagon to keep up the marketing hype. Ultimately they can’t deliver it without major compromises.

This is why I want next gen and not mid gen. A proper next gen in 2026 would really leave the current gen behind and we’d have major uptick in quality but diehards are happy to pay twice for a small bump so why not milk them.
 
Even if it's a great positive since it drives adoption and there are some great implementations on pc, I think that putting ray tracing support on console as it is was a mistake.

Any time ray tracing gets implemented on console the resolution gets so low that it's not even worth it. Almost any game that pushes graphics is blurry-has framerate problems-has ghosting problems.

Most of the times you are still looking at a great image, but it's always a bit compromised is some way.

This gen, kind of like the ps3-360 gen, isn't equipped adequately for the developers ambitions.

At least maybe next gen will be great.

I think a few considerations should be factored in here.

The consoles aren't fully custom and there likely wasn't going to practical benefits in actually physically stripping out RT support. I think we've also went into this debate before and the likely transistor cost for RT acceleration wouldn't amount to signficant performance gains or cost reduction.

In theory the RT support would allow for relatively easier scalability with future hardware. Therefore forward planning for a "pro" console and even the next generation might a factor here as well.

I also wonder here about the importance of allowing developers to start working with RT in terms of how it impacts the development side. I think this is still someonething that isn't as widely considered in terms of how RT going forward can impact the development side with respect to content authoring.
 
Nvidia announced RT with Turing in 2018. By then the console designs were pretty much done but then you had this big RT and upscaling hype which caught on with Ampere as 2nd gen RT horsepower made it more than a gimmick. DLSS at this point had matured even better.

Console makers basically had to ride the RT bandwagon to keep up the marketing hype. Ultimately they can’t deliver it without major compromises.

This is why I want next gen and not mid gen. A proper next gen in 2026 would really leave the current gen behind and we’d have major uptick in quality but diehards are happy to pay twice for a small bump so why not milk them.
The funny thing is that Nvidia probably knew what the consoles would have, and waited until 2018 to talk about it, late enough to make it impossible for AMD and platform owners to respond.

Right now it's the Squidward meme over and over again.

"I'll have blurriness and fsr 2 artifacts"
"How original"
"But with ghosting, low res reflections and unstable framerates"
"Daring today, aren't we?"
🙃
 
I think a few considerations should be factored in here.

The consoles aren't fully custom and there likely wasn't going to practical benefits in actually physically stripping out RT support. I think we've also went into this debate before and the likely transistor cost for RT acceleration wouldn't amount to signficant performance gains or cost reduction.

In theory the RT support would allow for relatively easier scalability with future hardware. Therefore forward planning for a "pro" console and even the next generation might a factor here as well.

I also wonder here about the importance of allowing developers to start working with RT in terms of how it impacts the development side. I think this is still someonething that isn't as widely considered in terms of how RT going forward can impact the development side with respect to content authoring.
I understand that rt is using minimal die space and that it's good that developers are learning how to use rt effectively.

It's just that in the here and now, the situation is not great.
 

Console video is up. Even YouTube compression cant hide how terrible FSR 2 looks.

60 FPS - 720p
40 FS - 900p
30 FPS - 1080
Even without FSR, compared to battlefront from nearly 10 years ago even it looks like absolute garbage. I would refuse to play this just based on the colors and aesthetic. I understand the scale and game is different but at the very least get the look right.
 
Even without FSR, compared to battlefront from nearly 10 years ago even it looks like absolute garbage. I would refuse to play this just based on the colors and aesthetic. I understand the scale and game is different but at the very least get the look right.
It wouldn't surprise me if the original battlefront on PS4 had better image quality than this.
 

Console video is up. Even YouTube compression cant hide how terrible FSR 2 looks.

60 FPS - 720p
40 FS - 900p
30 FPS - 1080
Wrong 60fps: 1280x720 - 1920x1080, 40fps 1664x936 - 226x1152, 30fps 2016x1134 - 2880x1620
But have to say ue5 make ps5/xsx aged worse than last gen. Imo opposite too common belive Ps5pro is more needed than ps4pro was.
 
Wrong 60fps: 1280x720 - 1920x1080, 40fps 1664x936 - 226x1152, 30fps 2016x1134 - 2880x1620
But have to say ue5 make ps5/xsx aged worse than last gen. Imo opposite too common belive Ps5pro is more needed than ps4pro was.
Who cares about what the resolution is when you look up at the sky though?
 
I am not sure how that works - if you look at the frame-rate graph here you can see it is very commonly not 60 fps. The reason why that happens is because the resolution is bottoming out.
40 and 30fps modes are much more stable, maybe info about common res would be nice addition
 
I think we can say that the management of Nanite-like micropolygon systems was a mistake in this generation. UE5 et al are not for these hardwares.

I'm sure that Indiana Jones, for example, will show much better image quality with 60FPS and will have detailed, beautiful graphics. IDTech engine fits better with current generation consoles
 
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