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

[iroboto]

PS5 - The DCT and FFT pattern showcase the noise inserted by the tiling or whatever it is. Using the approximate location of the artifact we can also determine the internal rendering resolution of the frame.
XSX is nearly 4K, PS5 is just eyeballing it, around 1800p. I'm too lazy to do a quick measurement, I don't think it's necessary since the topic is about artifacts and not rendering resolution.
Artifacts are highlighted in red, the artifact on PS5 is more pronounced than the one on XSX.

In a naturally taken picture, or pure native, you won't see these types of 'star' artifact patterns, unless you're taking a picture of a wave etc, something with deterministic frequency and amplitude. So the fact that we can see this showcases that there is indeed a repeating pattern happening here.

PS5 DCT

PS5 FFT

XSX DCT

XSX FFT

 

[iroboto]

I didn't want to clutter the DF thread, but while watching the video, the tiling came up massively during the screen space reflections showcase. If you look at the water reflection, dead center where the cursor is; this grid pattern should be very noticeable. You can see it in motion on their video

 

[CHAOSHACKER]

The SSR is quite artifact ridden in BF2042, especially on guns where it's ghosting like f***.

Could these artifacts be caused by the lens effects they are using on masse? Like the lens distortion, chromatic abbreviation, vignette etc.? At least they are toggleable even on console. On by default though.

 

[snc]

Both versions are very similar, accroding to vgtech:

PS5 and Xbox Series X use a dynamic resolution with the highest resolution found being 3840x2160 and the lowest resolution found being 2560x1440. Pixel counts at 2560x1440 seem to be rare on PS5 and Xbox Series X.

And examples of dynamic res:

Xbox Series X: 3733x2100 and PS5 3584x2016.
Xbox Series X: 3648x2052 and PS5 3456x1944.
Xbox Series X: 3342x1880 and PS5 3093x1740.

According to df most gameplay in 4k on both but notice drop in some heavy scenes to 1800p on ps5 and 2016p on xsx.
Xsx has some probably bug as according to vgtech

Very large frame time spikes were found on Xbox Series X https://bit.ly/3FDfNNw These frame time spikes weren't found on PS5 or Xbox Series S.

confirmed by df

There's some occasional stutter on all consoles, though it seems worst on Series X: 50ms pauses occur regularly, although these can last for hundreds of milliseconds at worst.

 

[Globalisateur]

NXGamer has just done his analysis about PC and consoles versions of BF2042. It's a mess on all platforms. The most playable version seems to be the PS5. The 0fps pauses (or big frame-time lurches) are still there and only on XSX (and he tested for hours all others console versions). NXGamer has an interesting theory about what could cause them (also explaining why only on XSX).

 

[iroboto]

NXGamer has just done his analysis about PC and consoles versions of BF2042. It's a mess on all platforms. The most playable version seems to be the PS5. The 0fps pauses (or big frame-time lurches) are still there and only on XSX (and he tested for hours all others console versions). NXGamer has an interesting theory about what could cause them (also explaining why only on XSX).

His theory is probably not correct. hitting 0fps is very different from having to render from a slower pool bottleneck. You would be getting consistently lower FPS for instance as opposed to 60 lurching to 0. What we see is a slip between 60 and 52ish. But it’s not a consistent 52 either.

a memory shuffle could cause a lurch to 0; but you’d memory shuffle nearly every frame. So I don’t think memory shuffle is what we are seeing here.

And 3080 and 3070 cards would be unable to run this game with 8-12GB memory respectively.

And console optimizations can leverage ssd to reduce streaming pool sizes.

overall I’m going to disagree with his theory here.
XSX is likely too taxed on the settings or requires better optimization if they want to keep these setting as is. The reason you see XSX operate between 60 and 52 is load. The lurch to 0 is something else.

from what I know of the SDK you’re unlikely to do a shuffle during gameplay, it’s too slow.

 

[Globalisateur]

His theory is probably not correct. hitting 0fps is very different from having to render from a slower pool bottleneck. You would be getting consistently lower FPS for instance as opposed to 60 lurching to 0.

a memory shuffle could cause a lurch to 0; but you’d memory shuffle nearly every frame. So I don’t think memory shuffle is what we are seeing here.

And 3080 and 3070 cards would be unable to run this game with 8-12GB memory respectively.

And console optimizations can leverage ssd to reduce streaming pool sizes.

overall I’m going to disagree with his theory here.
XSX is likely too taxed on the settings or requires better optimization if they want to keep these setting as is.

Why? Because for instance mandatory mem defrag (followed by memory shuffle) could be a valid reason of those pauses, why else could cause this? Also why does it happen only on XSX (not on PS5 or XSS) and still now after the release?

But still he shows memory overload causing big problems on PC too (and PC have very different builds, setups, main ram / vram etc). Have we ever seen such a big problem on a console MP game before? This is big and something very specific is causing this on XSX. There is a reason GPU manufacturers have stopped doing splitted memory setup on their GPUs, because it could cause big problems in some games.

If you don't show us another valid explanation about the cause of the problem, then the simplest explanation is still the best.

 

[techuse]

His theory is probably not correct. hitting 0fps is very different from having to render from a slower pool bottleneck. You would be getting consistently lower FPS for instance as opposed to 60 lurching to 0. What we see is a slip between 60 and 52ish. But it’s not a consistent 52 either.

a memory shuffle could cause a lurch to 0; but you’d memory shuffle nearly every frame. So I don’t think memory shuffle is what we are seeing here.

And 3080 and 3070 cards would be unable to run this game with 8-12GB memory respectively.

And console optimizations can leverage ssd to reduce streaming pool sizes.

overall I’m going to disagree with his theory here.
XSX is likely too taxed on the settings or requires better optimization if they want to keep these setting as is. The reason you see XSX operate between 60 and 52 is load. The lurch to 0 is something else.

from what I know of the SDK you’re unlikely to do a shuffle during gameplay, it’s too slow.

I've had the second+ long stutters on PC too. Neither my 32 GB RAM nor 11 GB VRAM pool is ever close to being full. I think a more likely cause is some sort of CPU thread stall/synchronization issue. Could also likely be poor resource allocation in their DX12 renderer which has been bottom of the barrel in every implementation.

 

[DavidGraham]

nor 11 GB VRAM pool is ever close to being full

Do you have a 1080Ti or a 2080Ti by any chance?

Could also likely be poor resource allocation in their DX12 renderer which has been bottom of the barrel in every implementation

Yeah, most likely. Battlefield V still suffers from this problem to this day on all GPUs.

 

[BRiT]

If you don't show us another valid explanation about the cause of the problem, then the simplest explanation is still the best.

Simplest explanation is the game is a mess and released before its ready like prior BF games.

 

[techuse]

Do you have a 1080Ti or a 2080Ti by any chance?


Yeah, most likely. Battlefield V still suffers from this problem to this day on all GPUs.

1080TI

 

[Johnny Awesome]

You mean NXGamer's theory about what is happening is anti-XSX design? I'm shocked! I would take these silly theories with a grain of salt.

 

[iroboto]

Why? Because for instance mandatory mem defrag (followed by memory shuffle) could be a valid reason of those pauses, why else could cause this? Also why does it happen only on XSX (not on PS5 or XSS) and still now after the release?

But still he shows memory overload causing big problems on PC too (and PC have very different builds, setups, main ram / vram etc). Have we ever seen such a big problem on a console MP game before? This is big and something very specific is causing this on XSX. There is a reason GPU manufacturers have stopped doing splitted memory setup on their GPUs, because it could cause big problems in some games.

If you don't show us another valid explanation about the cause of the problem, then the simplest explanation is still the best.

If we ignore all the evidence that performance optimization is terrible across a lot of platforms, let’s just assume you are correct for a moment

Let’s assume they are shuffling memory to make ends meet. This shuffling causes a 0 FPS lurch for seconds. Let’s assume this is all true.
Now let’s explain how developers felt that knowing that this shuffle will cause a lurch, they would agree that this is the best foot forward to present their tittle.

typically developers are responsible for settings tuning etc to get the best graphical settings/performance on the console. So I want to know what’s going on at DICE where they felt instead of tuning down settings to meet VRAM limitations they instead decided memory shuffling and random lurches were the better experience for players.

 

[Globalisateur]

If we ignore all the evidence that performance optimization is terrible across a lot of platforms, let’s just assume you are correct for a moment

Let’s assume they are shuffling memory to make ends meet. This shuffling causes a 0 FPS lurch for seconds. Let’s assume this is all true.
Now let’s explain how developers felt that knowing that this shuffle will cause a lurch, they would agree that this is the best foot forward to present their tittle.

typically developers are responsible for settings tuning etc to get the best graphical settings/performance on the console. So I want to know what’s going on at DICE where they felt instead of tuning down settings to meet VRAM limitations they instead decided memory shuffling and random lurches were the better experience for players.

That's exactly my question. What's happening? Do you have a better explanation? If that was happening on XSS I'd say, yep, it's a thread lockup problem or a directx12 driver problem. But it doesn't happen on XSS at all, never. So it must be because of something specific to XSX. But why is it not easily fixable? If it was 100% software related why didn't they resolve the problem when such a thing never happened in any BF released on consoles since PS3, PS4 or XB1?

Now sure maybe what NXGamer noticed on PC isn't related at all (and PCs don't see those 0 fps freezes AFAIK). But I think the problem is really extraordinary in this day and age for it to be caused by a mere thread lockup or directx12 issue (that would cause more than 60 consecutive frames to lock and impossible to fix for months?).

Thing is, we have a genuine and probable explanation for that problem even if we don't like it. We know a splitted memory architecture can in theory cause those problems because it caused them in a GPU that was using such a fast / slow vram. The only machine with such a fast / slow pool of memory is the XSX and we already have one developer who said they couldn't use all settings (8K resolution) on the XSX because of that specific memory architecture.

 

[BRiT]

It's not really split pool system. The only difference is bandwidth to access it. The slowest portion isn't that slow at all at 336 GB/s.

 

[iroboto]

That's exactly my question. What's happening? Do you have a better explanation? If that was happening on XSS I'd say, yep, it's a thread lockup problem or a directx12 driver problem. But it doesn't happen on XSS at all, never. So it must be because of something specific to XSX. But why is it not easily fixable? If it was 100% software related why didn't they resolve the problem when such a thing never happened in any BF released on consoles since PS3, PS4 or XB1?

Now sure maybe what NXGamer noticed on PC isn't related at all (and PCs don't see those 0 fps freezes AFAIK).

Go up 3-4 posts it’s cited. A simple Google search will showcase a wealth of performance related issues on PC. Here’s one such remark, there are a great deal more and they are not hard to find.

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield2042/comments/qs7zg0

 

[Remij]

Yea, the PC version is just terrible. Constant stuttering and bugs galore. I kinda figured DICE was going to go downhill once Repi (Johan Andersson) and others left to form Embark Studios.

Really looking forward to their new project! We may even potentially see it at The Game Awards.

 

[davis.anthony]

Welcome to the world of release it broken and patch it later.

 

[PSman1700]

It's not really split pool system. The only difference is bandwidth to access it. The slowest portion isn't that slow at all at 336 GB/s.

How many times had this to be explained here on the forums now? Anyway, using BF2042 to gauge performance on any system, lol.

 

[snc]

PS5: dynamic 1620p at 30fps (1404p common)
SS: dynamic 1080p at 30fps (828p common)
SX: dynamic 1620p at 30fps (1404p common)

It's the first time we can see a direct comparison of Unreal Engine 5 on new generation consoles taking advantage of the new features. - All 3 versions use Temporal Super Resolution to upsampling to the original resolution. - The models have been recreated using Metahuman. - Lumen has been used for global illumination and reflections. Xbox Series S displays a lower setting, resulting in lower resolution reflections and shadows or more noise in ambient occlusion. - Chaos is the new physics and destruction engine applied by Unreal Engine 5. Vehicle hits have very good results, but they have a big impact on performance. - The World Partition & Rule Processor has been used for the creation of the city. - The new geometry virtualization system (Nanite) is also present. Xbox Series S shows a lower configuration in this section as well. - Loading times are fastest on Series S, followed by PS5 and Xbox Series X by tenths of a second. They hardly need 5 seconds to load the world. - The framerate during cinematics suffers constant stuttering at 24/25fps on all three platforms. - During gameplay, Series S and PS5 have a more stable framerate than Xbox Series X. During driving and impacts, they can drop up to 20fps. - The quality of the texturing seems to be the same on all 3 platforms. - The drawn distance is slightly lower on Xbox Series S. - It is a very interesting first contact with Unreal Engine 5, although it was a technical demo (quite complete). Without a doubt, a bright future awaits us with this engine.