Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2024] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[arandomguy]

Isn’t it done for the source asset anyways? Developers with lower budgets would probably be better served just using the Quixel assets. Their quality is truly industry leading.

I don't believe all source assets are detailed to that extent. More detail costs time/money. That would add up rapidly if you're scaling up an entire game's worth of assets.

In terms of just using Quixel (or other stock) I'd think a concern here would cohesive fit. For the UE demo for example if you kind of think about it the character model, which is likely not Quixel but original, is somewhat out of place (just immediately it has a more "toon" look versus the photo realistic assets) compared with the Quixel stock environment assets. So even in a single level slice essentially you have a cohesiveness issue in terms of the overall presentation.

As an side this is a general concern I've had with photo scans (or photogrammetry) as some sort of panacea for photorealism. There's always been a slight cohesiveness issue to me in that the rock terrain for instance end ups being super photorealistic and detailed but then that doesn't match the more "fantasy" original elements of the game since those don't exist to get created via photoscans but had to be done by hand.

You see this issue with the Hellblade 2 screenshots above as well. The character model and the background environment don't really match. The former still obviously looks like a game model but the latter could be a real life photo.

 

[davis.anthony]

I don't understand the hate that nanite gets.

Because of videos like this..

 

[Davros]

I don't understand the hate that nanite gets

Because you never have enough of them in System Shock 2

 

[Scott_Arm]

Because of videos like this..

Yah, this loser scam artist. Great stuff.

 

[davis.anthony]

Yah, this loser scam artist. Great stuff.

Well I'm sorry but he's not completely wrong, as it standards, there's currently no game that needs Nanite because it's chucking so much geometry around that it just tanks any other way of doing it.

Running Silent Hill 2 Remake in DX11 mode disables Nanite and the performance increase you get speaks volumes..

We have gone so backwards in regard to performance it's insane.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Well I'm sorry but he's not completely wrong, as it standards, there's currently no game that needs Nanite because it's chucking so much geometry around that it just tanks any other way of doing it.

Running Silent Hill 2 Remake in DX11 mode disables Nanite and the performance increase you get speaks volumes..

We have gone so backwards in regard to performance it's insane.

I mean fine. If you want to turn it off for performance, you can in games that provide that option. But don’t pretend the rendered output is apples to apples because it’s not. Lods have other trade offs.

That kid is a joke.

 

[davis.anthony]

I mean fine. If you want to turn it off for performance, you can in games that provide that option. But don’t pretend the rendered output is apples to apples because it’s not. Lods have other trade offs.

That's not the point though is it, the fact that you can turn it off, get a performance boost and have no visible loss in geometric quality is piss poor marketing for UE5 and Nanite.

 

[ILikeFeet]

That's not the point though is it, the fact that you can turn it off, get a performance boost and have no visible loss in geometric quality is piss poor marketing for UE5 and Nanite.

Nanite does more than allow super high polygon assets, which is why they always advise using it if you can. Nanite does things like mesh compression and culling which are beneficial regardless of polygon count. the fact that objects don't look any different is less an indictment of nanite and more telling that these assets aren't hundreds of thousands of polygons to start with; because not ever asset needs that

 

[davis.anthony]

Nanite does more than allow super high polygon assets, which is why they always advise using it if you can. Nanite does things like mesh compression and culling which are beneficial regardless of polygon count. the fact that objects don't look any different is less an indictment of nanite and more telling that these assets aren't hundreds of thousands of polygons to start with; because not ever asset needs that

Alan Wake 2 has geometric complexity just as high (if not higher) than most/all UE5 games while using mesh shaders.

As gamers, we're paying the performance cost of Nanite trying to solve a problem that we've not run in to yet, and we're not even getting a visual reward for it over others options (like mesh shdaders)

 

[Scott_Arm]

That's not the point though is it, the fact that you can turn it off, get a performance boost and have no visible loss in geometric quality is piss poor marketing for UE5 and Nanite.

I mean, sure, if you just hand-wave continous LOD away etc then I guess it's not the point. But for me it is the point. I'm tired of LOD transitions and pop-in.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Alan Wake 2 has geometric complexity just as high (if not higher) than most/all UE5 games while using mesh shaders.

As gamers, we're paying the performance cost of Nanite trying to solve a problem that we've not run in to yet, and we're not even getting a visual reward for it over others options (like mesh shdaders)

As a gamer, and not a dev, you'll never run into the small/micro polygon issue because devs will optimize their games to avoid them. If you have an engine that can support them, guess what will probably happen?

 

[davis.anthony]

I mean, sure, if you just hand-wave continous LOD away etc then I guess it's not the point. But for me it is the point. I'm tired of LOD transitions and pop-in.

Funny, STALKER 2, a UE5 game, is riddled with visible LOD transitions

Alan Wake 2, a none UE5 game has practically no visible LOD transitions with just mesh shaders.

So you're paying that Nanite performance tax and still getting visible LOD transitions (and yes I know it doesn't use nanite for foliage, that's the point)

 

[Karamazov]

i think there might be a misconception about nanite and polygon density, nanite does not push more polygons than another engine on screen, if your power budget is 20 millions polygons per frame, you'll push them with a standard engine or nanite, but nanite handles by itself all the LOD transitions to keep the budget in line with power available; without the need for mutltiple manually crafted LODs for every asset in the scene, and reduce LODs to a pixel if needed.

 

[davis.anthony]

i think there might be a misconception about nanite and polygon density, nanite does not push more polygons than another engine on screen, if your power budget is 20 millions polygons per frame, you'll push them with a standard engine or nanite, but nanite handles by itself all the LOD transitions to keep the budget in line with power available; without the need for mutltiple manually crafted LODs for every asset in the scene, and reduce LODs to a pixel if needed.

You can use mesh shades for continuous LOD, without the Nanite performance tax.

 

[Karamazov]

isn't mesh shader handling LOD transitions smoothly but dev still have to create the different LODs manually ?

 

[Pjotr]

Funny, STALKER 2, a UE5 game, is riddled with visible LOD transitions

Alan Wake 2, a none UE5 game has practically no visible LOD transitions with just mesh shaders.

So you're paying that Nanite performance tax and still getting visible LOD transitions (and yes I know it doesn't use nanite for foliage, that's the point)

Oh Alan Wake 2 has some LOD popping, it's hard to spot but it is there, especially on grass. The artists did a good job of balancing the lods. But you still misunderstand the point. Nanite is not for gamers, it's for developers. They can spend less time on making assets look good so they can make bigger games or have smaller teams. It's really hard to make good looking LODs, especially in open world games as objects can be seen from very far away to up close from all directions. With Nanite developers do not need to put time into it.

In the Silent Hill 2 remake video you posted there are numerous shots where the ground looks lower detailed in the non-nanite version. That's where most of your performance difference comes from. So do gamers care or see the difference? Some might, other not. The visual difference is small, so yes the developers could have used the lower LOD terrain there without anyone complaining. But the point is, developers save time by not having to make and A/B test different geometry detail levels to see what the best performance/quality trade-off is.

The other game you mentioned, Stalker 2 is actually a good example. Yes, it has LOD popping in the non-nanite geometry. Just think about how much LOD-popping would there be if all geometry was non-nanite. I bet that without nanite they would have had to reduce the scope of the world or the detail on the objects significantly. Or even worse, the game would have had more delays and not be made entirely.

So think about it. Both Nanite and Lumen (and some other features of UE) are for developers. There is a flood of bad performing games coming out. But some of those games would have looked worse or would not be made at all without those tools.

 

[Subtlesnake]

Well I'm sorry but he's not completely wrong, as it standards, there's currently no game that needs Nanite because it's chucking so much geometry around that it just tanks any other way of doing it.

Running Silent Hill 2 Remake in DX11 mode disables Nanite and the performance increase you get speaks volumes.

It also disables Lumen as well, so how are you measuring the decrease that is specific to Nanite?

 

[davis.anthony]

It also disables Lumen as well, so how are you measuring the decrease that is specific to Nanite?

Because you can also disable nanite with a console command.

Quite a few videos on YouTube

 

[davis.anthony]

Oh Alan Wake 2 has some LOD popping, it's hard to spot but it is there, especially on grass. The artists did a good job of balancing the lods. But you still misunderstand the point. Nanite is not for gamers, it's for developers. They can spend less time on making assets look good so they can make bigger games or have smaller teams. It's really hard to make good looking LODs, especially in open world games as objects can be seen from very far away to up close from all directions. With Nanite developers do not need to put time into it.

In the Silent Hill 2 remake video you posted there are numerous shots where the ground looks lower detailed in the non-nanite version. That's where most of your performance difference comes from. So do gamers care or see the difference? Some might, other not. The visual difference is small, so yes the developers could have used the lower LOD terrain there without anyone complaining. But the point is, developers save time by not having to make and A/B test different geometry detail levels to see what the best performance/quality trade-off is.

The other game you mentioned, Stalker 2 is actually a good example. Yes, it has LOD popping in the non-nanite geometry. Just think about how much LOD-popping would there be if all geometry was non-nanite. I bet that without nanite they would have had to reduce the scope of the world or the detail on the objects significantly. Or even worse, the game would have had more delays and not be made entirely.

So think about it. Both Nanite and Lumen (and some other features of UE) are for developers. There is a flood of bad performing games coming out. But some of those games would have looked worse or would not be made at all without those tools.

I would prefer mesh shaders with continuous LOD and higher performance over Nanite.

We also have games like A Plauges Tale Requiem that has a lot of foliage on screen and very little noticeable pop-in, and that game doesn't use Nanite or mesh shaders.

Nanite I feel, has just because away for developers to be lazy (and I hate that term) with certain things like LOD transitions, and not only is it not delivering the results on screen, it's also costing a lot of performance.

 

[IQandHDR]

I have not noticed LOD transistions on assets in "Black Myth - Wukong", but I have observed LOD shadows (In the intro eg.) and that is rather distracing.
(Cinematic/Max settings)

I have however noticed a slight delay oncharacter "fidelity", the is a small (sub second) lag from loading a model until it has max texture/tesselation/detail fidelity when a new scene starts (also visible in the intro sequence).