Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2020-2021] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[jlippo]

I wasn't paying attention during ps4 pro hype, but isn't the ID buffer just hardware acceleration for..... ID buffers? Surely the new consoles have the bandwidth to just stick id in the regular g buffer if they want it without special purpose hardware support.

Yes.

It's basically additional command which can be used to write ID buffer at the same time with another pass. (Like prepass.)
One can choose what info is written and how deep buffer is.
Frostbite and Dark Souls remake CBR talks had some info.
In Dark Souls XO version they wrote to ID buffer manually.

In future and rise of V-buffer methods, I guess we will se more use for it. (If everyone doesn't move. To software rasterization.)

Sounds like fun/nice feature, if it's very cheap to have.

 

[iroboto]

You mis-understood, ML wouldn't be using the triangle data.

Instead of using temporal AA upscale + ML, they could go CB + ML?

Surely giving a better result?

The ML methods we’ve seen so far just use ML to do both AA and upscale. There is temporal data kept and motion vectors, but it’s for it’s own usage.
I’m not sure you want to run 2 separate techniques, as it’s already costly to run ML.

 

[Globalisateur]

Yes.

It's basically additional command which can be used to write ID buffer at the same time with another pass. (Like prepass.)
One can choose what info is written and how deep buffer is.
Frostbite and Dark Souls remake CBR talks had some info.
In Dark Souls XO version they wrote to ID buffer manually.

In future and rise of V-buffer methods, I guess we will se more use for it. (If everyone doesn't move. To software rasterization.)

Sounds like fun/nice feature, if it's very cheap to have.

Just before reading your post I actually found the very interesting talk about the checkerboard rendering done in Dark Souls remastered. I have just done a thread about it:
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/checkerboard-rendering-in-dark-souls-remastered.62612

 

[iroboto]

The ID buffer just identifies surfaces at the pixel level as belonging to one or other object. It'd be another additional piece of pixel data, colour, motion, ID. Might prove useful in the ML knowing whether it constructing a boundary or interpolating a surface? Though in real terms it's more subtle than that, I guess.

Yea, we could always feed more data into a neural network, but this seems really, I'll be honest, I'm not even sure how it would work. The input vector spaces for both the SSAA and 4K upscale are both 1080p for instance, well certainly not 4K buffer sizes. Then we'd have to find a way to feed in a 4K ID buffer into the NN combine it with a 1080p input - and teach it to output to a perfect 4K upscaled image. I mean, you'd have to construct the pipeline first to see if there is any difference made here to create the labelled data. The question I would have is, is there something better than native? that the ID Buffer can provide to a native image? If not, the ML algo won't see how to leverage ID buffer data to translate 1080p to 4K - it'll come in as noise I think.

Yeah. But then if AMD did, would it see use? Maybe it seemed a good idea but they realised it'd be an unused feature as it's not a DX standard or something? If the future is ML reconstruction, perhaps the ID buffer just came too late and is unwanted as a legacy concept tied to CB/algorithmic reconstruction ideas that no-one cares for any more?

Yea, you're probably right. ID buffer is a good piece of technology, but AMD moved forward with huge amounts of compute coupled with infinity cache to supply it. ID buffer will likely fit fine inside infinity cache so bandwidth is supplied well, and there's enough compute available to allow developers to run their software version of ID buffer calls. I think these 2 reasons coupled may have put ID buffer off the list at least for silicon savings.

 

[snc]

 

[davis.anthony]

All three machines spend less then 1.8% (or less) of the time below 16.6ms according to the supplied stats.

So really strong performance from all three systems.

 

[mr magoo]

question, looking at the video there seems to be many places with high density vegetation yet XSX dosent show same issues as with Elden Ring which some people believe is related to ROPs. Why it is not problem here? Is it because vegetation is handled differently here (less alpha heavy effects)?

 

[Jay]

question, looking at the video there seems to be many places with high density vegetation yet XSX dosent show same issues as with Elden Ring which some people believe is related to ROPs. Why it is not problem here? Is it because vegetation is handled differently here (less alpha heavy effects)?

One is months from release compared to the other.

Things can change a lot across all platforms, things may only change a little. We won't know until release code.

 

[Globalisateur]

question, looking at the video there seems to be many places with high density vegetation yet XSX dosent show same issues as with Elden Ring which some people believe is related to ROPs. Why it is not problem here? Is it because vegetation is handled differently here (less alpha heavy effects)?

I'd guess it depends of the rest of the pipeline of the game engine. We know Battlefield games are very reliant on compute and bandwidth (both areas where X1X / XSX have a notable advantage against Pro / PS5). The last Battlefield (BF5) was often outputting about 100% more resolution than on Pro.

Here it's only pushing about 10-15% more resolution than PS5. Also it seems the XSX framerate suffers a bit more than on PS5 (while BF5 was pushing twice more pixels and had a better framerate on X1X), but I think we better wait others analysis and framerate stats to have a better performance picture because of the random nature of performance in a MP game.

 

[Karamazov]

At least performance seems far better than what was BF4 on xb1/ps4 at the time !
But still a lot of bugs and connection issues, i'll wait a few weeks/months before getting it.

 

[techuse]

All three machines spend less then 1.8% (or less) of the time below 16.6ms according to the supplied stats.

So really strong performance from all three systems.

The stuttering on Xbox is non stop through a lot of the clip.

 

[Jay]

The stuttering on Xbox is non stop through a lot of the clip.

Not watched it, but sounds like could be bad frame pacing

 

[Karamazov]

I don't remember the stutter happening in the beta though ?

 

[Globalisateur]

Do they use a touch of VRS on XSX? Some ground textures seem to be at half or quarter resolution compared to PS5. I am using the s21 images. That's on the left (also visible on the right).

Compared to previous Battlefield they have massively improved the quality of their reconstruction technique (and the overall image quality, it's much less blurry!). It should be interesting to compare to regular native resolution on PC. I gather we'll find the same difference seen in Dark Souls remastered CBR vs native: not much.

 

[iroboto]

Do they use a touch of VRS on XSX? Some ground textures seem to be at half or quarter resolution compared to PS5. I am using the s21 images. That's on the left (also visible on the right).

Compared to previous Battlefield they have massively improved the quality of their reconstruction technique (and the overall image quality, it's much less blurry!). It should be interesting to compare to regular native resolution on PC. I gather we'll find the same difference seen in Dark Souls remastered CBR vs native: not much.

no, that's not how VRS looks like; you're still looking at AF differences. And shadow quality differences.
But if you look closely, it's apparent that it's reconstruction artifacts are everywhere.
On PS5, I can see the individual tiles connect to each other, XSX less so, but still there. This is really poor that I can see the tile based rendering in plain sight. if I put this through my analyzer, this would be visually apparent for all to see.

If you step back, you can see a perfect grid of artifacts over the image on PS5, and on XSX, you can still see tiling, just with less artifacting on the edges of the tiles.

 

[iroboto]

if I'm being honest, and when I have the time I'll double check (and now that I'm looking at it again), but you might be misinterpreting the tiling artifacts for more detail than is actually present on PS5.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I'd love to have you point out the tiling as I'm not seeing it! Some regular pixel noise in the foreground? This vertical bar of noise?



That said, I can't see this being anything other than a difference of texture detail...

 

[Karamazov]

We need to zoom in more.

 

[iroboto]

I'd love to have you point out the tiling as I'm not seeing it! Some regular pixel noise in the foreground? This vertical bar of noise?

I've drawn some red lines as guide lines, and I used some arrows for you to9 follow the patterns.
Though having zoomed out now, they are really tiny on a 4K image LOL. You'll need to zoom in

 

[Jay]

The stuttering on Xbox is non stop through a lot of the clip.

Looks like it could be the rubber banding going by the DF video.
Can be pretty bad.