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

Video still looks to be there.

 

Dirt5 image quality 60fps mode: NXGamer found an average resolution of 1440p on XSX and 1800p on PS5. The settings are similar in that mode and the PS5 version performs a bit better. That's more than 50% more pixels displayed on PS5 with about the same settings on both machines (the textures are actually a bit better on PS5).

120hz mode: PS5 uses the image quality settings of the 60fps mode (tesselation, high AF, high res of textures and effects, best LOD etc.) at average 900p with max 1080p) while XSX basically uses the very low settings of XSS in that mode (no tesselation, low AF, blurry textures, low LOD) at a higher resolution (about 1080p on average, but can drop to 900p). XSX performs a bit better here (a few percent better). But the overall game is much better looking on PS5 in that mode according to him.

Fun fact: the settings on PS5 at 120hz are a bit better than the best settings (image quality) of XSX at 60fps.

120hz mode:

 

Has it been patched? Or is it the same version as DF tested?

 

not patched yet no.

 

It's the same version. The patch should be releasing for all platforms this coming week, if the Steam update post is anything to go by.

I was looking at the PC version before NXGamer made his video and I remembered thinking that there were some "VRS like" artifacts in the game. It becomes very apparent in the finer detailed areas on things like transparencies. One of the vehicles with a fine mesh covering the windows shows it off well.

I made a video of it in action, this is with a 1440p resolution (and a 4K output res comparison at the end):



It looks like a VRS grid artifact to me. I think maybe it's having issues with the fine detail and the background where the detail is fine enough that the algorithm can't decide whether there's detail there or whether it's fully transparent, as you can see it flicker and then fill it at points. The grid effect happens all over the entire screen, but isn't as noticeable as the detail is opaque.. so it manifests as more of a shimmer than an obvious artifact. You can see it in the video I provided around the edges of the vehicle body. At a higher output resolution it predictably becomes less noticeable, which I also show. This effect also happens whether Dynamic Resolution is activated or not.

Low resolutions do not do this game any favors. At 4K or higher though, it can look really beautiful at times. I think VRS is also what's making the Series X version look like it does. Unstable image, almost macro-block-like artifacting... it also becomes more noticeable because as I showed, lower resolutions don't do it any favors.

Anyway, considering the screenshot above, I thought it would be interesting to see how the PC version fares maxed out comparatively. The "Procedural Quality" which handles things like rocks and pebbles as well as foliage density is pushed out quite a bit further.



It will be interesting to revisit this once the patch drops.

 

So the rumours of PS5 not supporting VRS.. turned out to be a good thing?

 

We could already see the disastrous effects of VRS in Halo Infinite (maybe software VRS there). It's not worth it and makes everything blurry. The only benefit of VRS is that it technically allows the use of a slightly higher res, but it's only on paper, cause your image will look lower res than if you didn't use it.

The idea of using lower resolution textures (or effects) on visible objects is just a bad idea on consoles. They should better spend those ressources (because VRS is not free) at something that could actually make a better overall image (like reconstruction tech, more efficient DRS or better AA).

 

Should be great for streaming, Get macro-blocking with your macro-blocking.

 

VRS should be usefull in VR though, combined eye tracking.

 

Sony will probably still use it, but what VRS (probably?) was designed for; foveated rendering.
You cannot detect meaningful resolution outside your fovea anyway, so if it can detect and switch fast enough (maybe even predictive with heat maps for action trained by machine learning or something).

But to incorporate it in a game on 'visible' pixels indeed seems like a pretty bad idea. Unless it is for Kane and Lynch 3 if that game were to use a "steamed on Facebook"-look, then VRS could be awesome

good call!

 

While I can’t say for sure and it hasn’t been confirmed if there is VRS on or not for XSX; I think you’re going to have an incredibly hard time telling whether it’s present or not with YouTube compression.

Elgato already compresses the image from
Capture, YouTube even further. You’re bound to get extreme pixelation regardless.

Where VRS is applied makes this extremely challenging to identify without someone guiding you through where to expect it.

when implemented correctly, you shouldn’t notice it. At least not in such a visible blocking that you see in this YouTube video.

 

Yeah, like any technique it's heavily dependant upon how it's used, and you have to judge against what the savings allow you to do in other places. Everything is a tradeoff. Much better for developers to have the option rather than not.

I could imagine using VRS on overlapping transparent surfaces (e.g. looking through two or more car windows) particularly when they're the same could create some nasty cumulative results.

On another note, it's interesting that despite the Dirt 5 devs glowing comments on the GDK, Dirt 5 fares particularly badly on XSX compared to PS5 and PC. I don't think his favourable comments on Xbox development to Xbox.com necessarily reflect the full reality they faced in getting the game up to speed on Xbox.

 

VRS can be useful for depth of field and motion blur no need to use full shader rate behind DOF or motion blur.

 

Therefore the low quality setting for Xsx is just tradeoff for higher resolution, not some BUGs?

 

Agreed. I can't be certain it's a VRS issue, just that it seems rather VRS like in the way that it appears to adapt and affect the image in a grid like fashion around the affected areas.

 

Thats ridiculous -- lower resolutions on parts of the renderer are used universally, probably on games you think look great. Everybody uses lower resolution frame buffers for things like reflections, god rays, volumetric, etc. Some games use lower resolutions for some lighting steps, like particle lighting.

Variable rate shading allows you to do that for the whole frame in a fine grained way -- rather than for a whole buffer, or a whole object, or whatever, you can cut the res on only the fragments that won't need the extra res, freeing up budget for more expensive shaders and higher resolution without needing whole objects or buffers to look pixelated. Games will only look better as it becomes more adopted.

Like function said above, you can also reduce res on parts of the frame you know will be blurred or covered by another effect or otherwise lose info, but can't just cull (because theyre still partially visible).

 

Seeing as it's dynamic resolution scaling, aren't both of those things (higher resolution, higher framerate) expected with the vastly lowered xbox settings? Bug or not, if you turn down the load on your gpu, the load balancer will increase the resolution.

edit: oops, didnt realize i replied twice. this is before my coffee.

 

Not exactly, maybe. There's no telling what tier of VRS DiRT 5 is using, could be 1.0, could be 2.0. We know the Series systems support Tier 2, and while I'm not really knowledgeable on the finer details of VRS, if there is some programmability required by the dev then there could always be the case that Codemasters just haven't tuned their code to maxing out the Tier 2 implementation, though since everything I've heard on VRS makes it sound like an automated feature you can implement with a few lines of code at most, that may not be the case.

VRS Tier 2's said to provide up to 30% performance savings, but I think there's a good and bad way to do it. Gears 5 has VRS enabled and from the DF video on it, didn't seem to have any obvious artifacting at all. But all the same, Coalition would've had time/resources to them that a developer like Codemasters would not, and that has to be factored into things too.

 

And much of what people are basing their judgment on could very likely be compression artifacts from the capture device used and also YouTube video compression.

 

That and probably the Gears 5 analysis is not fresh in their head. The new story DLC should be coming sometime this month, it'll be interesting to see if that has even further efficiency optimizations for things like their VRS implementation.