Are PCs holding back the console experience? (Witcher3 spawn)

[Arwin]

Point me to something to read then.

 

[AlNom]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...he-witcher-3-graphics-downgrade-issue-head-on

"If the consoles are not involved there is no Witcher 3 as it is," answers Marcin Iwinski, definitively. "We can lay it out that simply. We just cannot afford it, because consoles allow us to go higher in terms of the possible or achievable sales; have a higher budget for the game, and invest it all into developing this huge, gigantic world.

"Developing only for the PC: yes, probably we could get more [in terms of graphics] as there would be nothing else - they would be so focused, like if we would develop only on Xbox One or PlayStation 4. But then we cannot afford such a game."

There were two possible rendering systems but one won out because it looked nicer across the whole world, in daytime and at night. The other would have required lots of dynamic lighting "and with such a huge world simply didn't work".

smoke and roaring fire from the trailer? "It's a global system and it will kill PC because transparencies - without DirectX 12 it does't work good in every game." So he killed it for the greater good, and he focused on making sure the 5000 doors in Novigrad worked instead.

and things

 

[iroboto]

Good. Game programming is critical to the game much more than graphics are. I think the choice is obvious for any developer but the masses easily take it for granted.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think this statement demonstrate Arwin's view (one I don't agree nor disagree with). Why was StarCraft II poorly optimised when it wasn't a console game?

Starcraft II and Blizzard in general are a bad example to use. They are pathalogical about supporting the lowest of the low common denominators. They will likely be the last AAA developer to support DX9, perhaps only dropping it years after all the other AAA developers have abandoned it.

RTS - is also a bad example for examining any graphical API effects as they tend to be very significantly more CPU bound than pretty much any other game genre. That's further compounded with the relatively massive amounts of physics they use in Starcraft II.

It's an outlier. It'd be similar to pointing at Crysis and using that as an example to prove Willardjuice's point.

Although it is interesting how Crysis 2 despite some graphical advancements in many areas, saw some graphical regression due to the need to support consoles. PC only development of Crysis 2 may not have seen the graphics regression (has to support base DX9) when it could have instead used say, DX10 as the base level with an engine tailored specifically for that level, but then that would have made a console port more difficult or impossible.

In many ways similar to how Witcher 3 would have been significantly better graphically if there wasn't a need to support consoles. Or if they did a delayed console engine development track like they did with Witcher 2, the PC would have seen significantly better graphics over what we have now.

But no, simultaneous release meant they couldn't afford to have one engine and assets be significantly different from another engine and assets. The total costs may be similar in both cases, but the up front cost (in time and money) is significantly higher which would mean increased development pressure as well as increased risk if the title didn't sell well. Whereas a staggered released would have allowed them to more easily fund the console port with revenue from the PC version (like Witcher 2).

Or going the reverse like Rockstar did with a console version first giving them time and money to make a significantly improved PC version.

Regards,
SB

 

[Lightman]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...he-witcher-3-graphics-downgrade-issue-head-on

and things

I liked this sentence:

"It's very important to stress: we are continuously working on the PC version, and we will be adding a lot of stuff, and there is more to come. We've proven it in the past that we support our games and we will be looking at the feedback and trying to make it better."

They also say there will be another big patch next week with 600 changes / fixes and soon after a small PC patch to allow more options to be tweaked within .ini files

 

[AlNom]

They also say there will be another big patch next week with 600 changes / fixes and soon after a small PC patch to allow more options to be tweaked within .ini files

Yeah, that'll be curious. Glad I'm waiting for all you brave paying beta testers customers to finish QA.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...he-witcher-3-graphics-downgrade-issue-head-on

and things

This one made me laugh...

"Yes!" realises Adam Badowski. "The game's performance: people say the game is well optimised. This is the first time for this company!" It's the first smile I've seen from him all interview.

Well, duh, if you don't push the envelope and max settings can be run on existing settings at good speed, it'll be faster than if people choose settings that their PC can't handle. I liked you guys far better when you weren't afraid to allow people to choose settings greater than the fastest hardware currently out could handle.

Well at least there is some hope that an enhanced edition will still surface and perhaps some improvements before then other than .ini tweaks.

"It's very important to stress: we are continuously working on the PC version, and we will be adding a lot of stuff, and there is more to come. We've proven it in the past that we support our games and we will be looking at the feedback and trying to make it better."

and

Marcin Iwinski adds: "You play it and you are not fine: really, that's touching and we'll do our best to make it up. But if you didn't play it and you're trolling: think twice please.

Good, because there's a lot of things I'd like to see improved. It's also interesting that they mention needing DX12 for good performance with some of the features that were cut. They've added support for newer APIs than what the engine originally supported in the past (via Enhanced Edition) so hopefully we'll see them add those effects back in along with DX12 for the Enhanced Edition.

Although since the engine won't be based on it, I'm not sure just how much better it could be without redoing the whole engine to base level DX12 which I'm not sure they can afford to do.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

Totally waiting for W3 enhanced edition now lol.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

and things

Huh!?!

The billowing smoke and roaring fire from the trailer? "It's a global system and it will kill PC because transparencies - without DirectX 12 it does't work good in every game." So he killed it for the greater good, and he focused on making sure the 5000 doors in Novigrad worked instead.

I move to have the thread renamed Are PCs holding back the console experience! This interview confirms what I've always believed, that they made engineering choices so they could deliver the game. Lots of engineering solutions work on a smaller scale (like the world built for the VGX trailer) but not on a larger scale (he world in the finished game).

 

[Rurouni]

Wait wait wait... so one of the stuff they mentioned is about not having DX12 is holding them back. Is PC not having DX12 also holding back console?

 

[AlNom]

Wait wait wait... so one of the stuff they mentioned is about not having DX12 is holding them back. Is PC not having DX12 also holding back console?

Consoles already have lower LOD.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Wait wait wait... so one of the stuff they mentioned is about not having DX12 is holding them back. Is PC not having DX12 also holding back console?

Not if they they are willing and able to write different code for different quality of effects for different platfroms. I personally would not want to do this.

 

[Rurouni]

Consoles already have lower LOD.

I don't know if the lack of DX12 only affects that transparency effect thing, but consoles (especially PS4? don't know how much X1 restricted by not having DX12) can get more to the metal. At least on draw call alone, PS4 should have massive advantage over PC. PS4 also should be able to leverage async compute without waiting for DX12 to arrive. But probably outside of PS4 exclusive games, most devs don't leverage it. Which is basically PC limiting what PS4 can do.

Anyway, I'm thankful for the modest spec of PS4 and X1, because I don't have to purchase expensive GPU to update my rig (Kaveri) to be able to play next (current) gen games.

 

[AlNom]

Which is basically PC limiting what PS4 can do.

Well the point is that the LOD on PC can be made much much higher.

 

[iroboto]

I don't know if the lack of DX12 only affects that transparency effect thing, but consoles (especially PS4? don't know how much X1 restricted by not having DX12) can get more to the metal. At least on draw call alone, PS4 should have massive advantage over PC. PS4 also should be able to leverage async compute without waiting for DX12 to arrive. But probably outside of PS4 exclusive games, most devs don't leverage it. Which is basically PC limiting what PS4 can do.

Anyway, I'm thankful for the modest spec of PS4 and X1, because I don't have to purchase expensive GPU to update my rig (Kaveri) to be able to play next (current) gen games.

The move from DX11->DX12 is not just only overhead. DX11 does not properly support multithreaded command buffers like how DX12/Mantle/GNM does. From what I understand even with Async commands built into DX11.Xbox the commands will still be submitted serially, so you're going to end up losing some of that gain if you intend to take full advantage of async compute. Even if you are not CPU bound, I believe a multithreaded command buffer would likely still increase performance over a single threaded one if the CPU is slow (which in both console's cases is @ 1.6GHz)

 

[AlNom]

The move from DX11->DX12 is not just only overhead. DX11 does not properly support multithreaded command buffers like how DX12/Mantle/GNM does. From what I understand even with Async commands built into DX11.Xbox the commands will still be submitted serially, so you're going to end up losing some of that gain if you intend to take full advantage of async compute. Even if you are not CPU bound, I believe a multithreaded command buffer would likely still increase performance over a single threaded one if the CPU is slow (which in both console's cases is @ 1.6GHz)

hm... so I wonder if it was in the context of tiled particle culling & using that with async & multithreaded submission to make it feasible? The smoke/particle systems being "global" might mean that it would have little to no scalability and no fallback or at least there's no time for them to implement both the fancy stuff and regular transparencies i.e. shit performance for everyone or zero particles ("off").

-> Kind of like Arkham Asylum PhysX particles being present and everyone without PhysX simply gets no smoke in those same areas.

 

[iroboto]

hm... so I wonder if it was in the context of tiled particle culling & using that with async & multithreaded submission to make it feasible? The smoke/particle systems being "global" might mean that it would have little to no scalability and no fallback or at least there's no time for them to implement both the fancy stuff and regular transparencies i.e. shit performance for everyone or zero particles ("off").

-> Kind of like Arkham Asylum PhysX particles being present and everyone without PhysX simply gets no smoke in those same areas.

I haven't seen the game myself, but from what I've read, there are a lot of things on screen at any given moment. It would not surprise me if the game is probably pushing the limits of draw calls for single threaded renderer at least on PC, with PS4 and Xbox they managed to survive due to lower overhead of the API.

I think because the game is open world, to keep draw calls under control I imagine there is a lot of stuff going on to keep things culled or what not (as you walk or fight in certain directions), constantly off-loading and on-loading items. This is where DX12 would really help out (PC and XO) with having async copy.

Regardless of other possible bottlenecks, I think if we just focus on the topic draw calls, I imagine the headroom is very little and introducing tons of particle, shadows and lighting effects on top of what they are in an open world environment where more and more items can just pop in likely blows their draw call budget. But with a multithreaded renderer it should alleviate the draw call limit entirely.

 

[Arwin]

Surely @willardjuice has something to say on this ...

 

[Davros]

Willardjuice you have been summoned to testify....

 

[pjbliverpool]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...he-witcher-3-graphics-downgrade-issue-head-on

I haven't seen the game myself, but from what I've read, there are a lot of things on screen at any given moment. It would not surprise me if the game is probably pushing the limits of draw calls for single threaded renderer at least on PC, with PS4 and Xbox they managed to survive due to lower overhead of the API.

I think because the game is open world, to keep draw calls under control I imagine there is a lot of stuff going on to keep things culled or what not (as you walk or fight in certain directions), constantly off-loading and on-loading items. This is where DX12 would really help out (PC and XO) with having async copy.

Regardless of other possible bottlenecks, I think if we just focus on the topic draw calls, I imagine the headroom is very little and introducing tons of particle, shadows and lighting effects on top of what they are in an open world environment where more and more items can just pop in likely blows their draw call budget. But with a multithreaded renderer it should alleviate the draw call limit entirely.

Draw calls definitely aren't a problem on PC in this game, it tops 70fps even on a 3Ghz dual core:

I'm not sure why people are jumping to the conclusion that the "billowing smoke and roaring fire" would only be a problem for the PC just because the developer only referenced the PC in that sentence. Afterall the context of that sentence was why the PC couldn't have kept those graphical effects while the consoles dropped them for performance reasons. So specifically referencing the technical reason why the PC also couldn't keep those effects makes perfect sense. It doesn't automatically mean the consoles could run those effects though.

It's also dependent on whether the sentence is completely honest. It's not like "billowing smoke and roaring fire" haven't been done before in PC games. The trailer was running in real time just fine on a PC afterall. Is it really that it couldn't run in a wider open world game (pretty short sighted of them to implement it in the first place if so given that the limitations of DX11 and the fact that this is a large open world would have been very well understood by that point - unlike the consoles performance) or is it simply that the work to implement it into the full open world was too great to be worth it on the only platform that could handle it and so they (in their own words) "focused on making sure the 5000 doors in Novigrad worked instead". The second seems far more likely to me, but clearly is something they could never say for fear of upsetting both console and PC fans.

 

[AlNom]

It doesn't automatically mean the consoles could run those effects though.

Not saying that they could, I'm just talking about PC in the context that their implementation (whatever it was) would be bad for systems with lower specs - only very high end CPUs/GPUs.

The trailer was running in real time just fine on a PC afterall.

Of unknown spec/actual framerate, no?

Is it really that it couldn't run in a wider open world game (pretty short sighted of them to implement it in the first place if so given that the limitations of DX11 and the fact that this is a large open world would have been very well understood by that point - unlike the consoles performance)

It was an early tech demo (essentially), so maybe they built what they thought they could get away with for the 2 consoles (before they fully realized how underpowered they were) + high end PCs?

Of course, it turns out the consoles weren't nearly so hot, so majority rules (low end consoles, low end PCs).

or is it simply that the work to implement it into the full open world was too great to be worth it on the only platform that could handle it and so they (in their own words) "focused on making sure the 5000 doors in Novigrad worked instead". The second seems far more likely to me, but clearly is something they could never say for fear of upsetting both console and PC fans.

As I was discussing above, yes. Whatever they built might not have been properly scalable (volumetric vs 2D?) for the lower systems, so it would have meant building two separate methods entirely and going over the entire world for every smoke/particle emitter twice during development, and the original implementation only for the high end PC segment, and no longer high end PC + 2 consoles.

Obviously they didn't have the luxury of time/management (even with the 9 month delay).