Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2022] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[Inuhanyou]

We have seen two UE 5 games, Silent Hill 2 and Tekken 8. The two games run at 60 fps.

I would expect it out of any fighting game regardless of what needed to be cut, but we shall see what the ratio of games running at 60 are once the generation is matured. But no doubt despite no games besides fortnight being out yet what we see so far is encouraging

 

[Inuhanyou]

I think we'll see 30fps games for sure. But as you say, there's enough power to do 60fps since the CPU supports it. Whereas that choice was much harder to accomplish last gen with the CPUs were weaker. The Series S can definitely keep up to 60fps, the graphical quality will drop off compared to the stronger consoles. But I think there's evidence here that it is so far sufficient for the next forseeable future. Though by 2027/28 it's going to feel really weak.

Even if the gen lasts that long, the consoles as well as current scaling tech make me feel encouraged about it. Ps4 and Xbox one were much weaker relatively speaking than PS5 and series x are by default and PS4 still holds up very well 9 years on especially compared to PS3 and 360.

But then you add FSR, TSR support, dynamic res and whatever FSR3 ends up being, and it feels like we are starting at an inherently more advantageous ground than PS4 and Xbox one, which largely only used fxaa for a long time regarding post process solution. Just in software it's like we are getting more gpu power added on than what would be normally possible with traditional native res targets and old school resolution targets.

I remember that DF video where they were comparing Alien isolations switch version to PS4 version, and just having TAA alone made the image quality superior to PS4 despite the hw gap which made me start really thinking about how these technologies are impacting games as a whole

 

[Jupiter]

I played through Portal RTX.

Normally I like as much ray tracing as possible and the lighting in Portal RTX is great. Apart from that I don't like many aspects of Portal RTX' graphics. Because of the tiny and simple environments, the few events on the screen and the overall mediocre graphics despite the high computing power requirements the title is no proof that pathtracing can be used for current AAA games. As of today, I cannot agree with the thesis that this works.

Pathtracing is the future and we'll see what other games will offer when it comes to pathtracing. With the computing power requirements and the visuals offered in Portal RTX it may take a while unless there are other major advances. I'm also curious about the Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive Mode. On the other hand versatile non-path traced ray tracing is already possible in complex games like Cyberpunk 2077.

You have to find the best compromise. As of today, it is extensive ray tracing like in Cyberpunk 2077. On the console, Calisto Protocol offers the most ray tracing.

 

[troyan]

There is nothing simple in Portal RTX. You can spawn as many objects until the vram is full and the performance is nearly identical. And every objects has physical abilities - so shadows, reflections etc. It shows that you can make corridor shooters with up to date assets just fine.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

There is nothing simple in Portal RTX. You can spawn as many objects until the vram is full and the performance is nearly identical. And every objects has physical abilities - so shadows, reflections etc. It shows that you can make corridor shooters with up to date assets just fine.

In a game from 14 years ago. Yup. Cutting edge stuff there when it comes to games.

So, can you use full path tracing in games with relatively simplistic graphics? Yup. And will some people like it? Yup. And will some people prefer better use of graphics hardware? Yup.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 2197]

And some just prefer "watered down", uninspiring boring graphical effects. Yup.

 

[troyan]

In a game from 14 years ago. Yup. Cutting edge stuff there when it comes to games.

So, can you use full path tracing in games with relatively simplistic graphics? Yup. And will some people like it? Yup. And will some people prefer better use of graphics hardware? Yup.

Regards,
SB

Portal RTX has new assets and objects. There is nothing simple in Portal RTX.

 

[Jupiter]

There is nothing simple in Portal RTX. You can spawn as many objects until the vram is full and the performance is nearly identical. And every objects has physical abilities - so shadows, reflections etc. It shows that you can make corridor shooters with up to date assets just fine.

During my Portal RTX playthrough I did not have to deal with many dynamic objects.

It is impressive that pathtracing in real time and high frame rates is already possible today. For me to demand pathtracing in AAA games at all costs I need to see more. Otherwise the hybrid renderer approach remains to be favoured by me. When I look at Cyberpunk 2077 in the highest raytracing settings it is overall visually and technically far more ambitious and impressive than a Portal RTX. I have already said in the past that an old game with ray tracing graphics will not get reference graphics in my view. Many other aspects besides ray tracing have to be right. Otherwise Minecraft would also have been a graphics reference. A game like Calisto Protocol is much closer to the visuals of movies with CGI.

In Portal RTX many textures were reworked but I don't even find the quality of the rework particularly good. The textures are still low resolution and the objects are very angular with few polygons.

 

[trinibwoy]

During my Portal RTX playthrough I did not have to deal with many dynamic objects.

It is impressive that pathtracing in real time and high frame rates is already possible today. For me to demand pathtracing in AAA games at all costs I need to see more. Otherwise the hybrid renderer approach remains to be favoured by me. When I look at Cyberpunk 2077 in the highest raytracing settings it is overall visually and technically far more ambitious and impressive than a Portal RTX. I have already said in the past that an old game with ray tracing graphics will not get reference graphics in my view. Many other aspects besides ray tracing have to be right. Otherwise Minecraft would also have been a graphics reference. A game like Calisto Protocol is much closer to the visuals of movies with CGI.

In Portal RTX many textures were reworked but I don't even find the quality of the rework particularly good. The textures are still low resolution and the objects are very angular with few polygons.

These remasters of old games like Quake and Portal aren’t going to win any awards for graphics fidelity. They are useful proving grounds though for what is still very cutting edge raytracing tech. The fact that they exist at all is a small miracle.

 

[davis.anthony]

the title is no proof that pathtracing can be used for current AAA games.

You're making that judgment based on the developers choices rather than the technology itself.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Old games being used to show raytracing effects does come with "your milage may vary" feeling and i can atleast understand the sentiment.

The new rendering materials and lighting system is great, but it's still a pretty simple game that ran on 360. Not everyone is gonna be blown away merely by the fact that the visual fidelity has increased, same goes for doom and quake.

On the other hand, it's not as if old games were not good or indepth. If there was a full on path traced remaster of bioshock 1(an even earlier 360 game) id be all over that.

Maybe I just miss bioshock hopefully Judas is good

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You're making that judgment based on the developers choices rather than the technology itself.

Yes, developers have chosen not to use path tracing in modern games because it is far too slow.

Regards,
SB

 

[davis.anthony]

Yes, developers have chosen not to use path tracing in modern games because it is far too slow.

Regards,
SB

That has nothing to do with my reply.

 

[DavidGraham]

Yes, developers have chosen not to use path tracing in modern games because it is far too slow.

Actually no, it's beacuse consoles are too slow. Not because PC hardware is slow, I argue that PC hardware is perfectly capable of running fully path traced games with upscaling in 2022, and going forward.

And this is actually the norm in PC gaming, pushing the boundaries and fully utilizing hardware and APIs, it's only in the last decade or so that we've grown complacent under the influence of half assed console ports with barely any thing new visually, and with underutilized GPUs, CPUs and APIs.

We used to have a new version of DirectX every year, with new features and capabilities, we used to having multiple APIs, used to have very accelerated pace of new GPU releases every freaking year, all making the older versions obsolete .. From 1995 to 2006, there was a major DX iteration every year .. Since 1997 to 2009, there was a new NVIDIA architecture every year, same for ATI/AMD.

The industry was thriving. And people were constantly changing hardware, constantly running new things and constantly enjoying progress even if it runs slow on their current hardware, because tomorrow a new hardware will come along and make it faster. You think Doom or Quake or Unreal, Half Life, FEAR or even Crysis ran well on old hardware of their time? Or course not, these pioneer games were continuously pushing boundaries and urging PC gamers to upgrade. This was such a common occurrence in PC gaming that people grew accustomed to upgrading their hardware once a major release comes along, be it Doom, Far Cry, Battlefield ..etc.

But consoles made developers complacent, less inclined to make bleeding edge tech, and PC gamers grew complacent as well. Demanding new titles to run well on old hardware, and not push any boundaries, people grew accustomed to seeing their fps fly on basic level visuals rather than enjoy the thrill of a new tech every year.

Rest assured, this was not the norm in PC gaming, I argue this is just an anomaly. We should be getting back to the old norm, sooner or later.

 

[Jupiter]

Beautiful speech and I agree on many points. With ray tracing and image reconstruction we get more there again. I also don't understand why it is so hard to take an architecturally modern Turing generation graphics card as a minimum requirement since one can get them for a few euros these days.

These remasters of old games like Quake and Portal aren’t going to win any awards for graphics fidelity. They are useful proving grounds though for what is still very cutting edge raytracing tech. The fact that they exist at all is a small miracle.

That's right. Interesting insights are gained with this. Nevertheless, it is not a game that should be praised to the general public as a visual showpiece. Many won't understand that. It's much more exciting for a specialist audience.

You're making that judgment based on the developers choices rather than the technology itself.

That is correct. I also said that I could quickly change my mind. I didn't look much into how much you could optimise Portal RTX and how much slower a game like Calisto Protocol would be with optional pathtracing. As a tech demo I find Portal RTX unsuitable to show whether a current AAA game would work with pathtracing.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We used to have a new version of DirectX every year, with new features and capabilities, we used to having multiple APIs, used to have very accelerated pace of new GPU releases every freaking year, all making the older versions obsolete .. From 1995 to 2006, there was a major DX iteration every year .. Since 1997 to 2009, there was a new NVIDIA architecture every year, same for ATI/AMD.

The industry was thriving. And people were constantly changing hardware, constantly running new things and constantly enjoying progress even if it runs slow on their current hardware, because tomorrow a new hardware will come along and make it faster. You think Doom or Quake or Unreal, Half Life, FEAR or even Crysis ran well on old hardware of their time? Or course not, these pioneer games were continuously pushing boundaries and urging PC gamers to upgrade. This was such a common occurrence in PC gaming that people grew accustomed to upgrading their hardware once a major release comes along, be it Doom, Far Cry, Battlefield ..etc.

But consoles made develolers complacent, less inclined to make bleeding edge tech, and PC gamers grew complacent as well. Demanding new titles to run well on old hardware, and not push any boundaries, people grew accustomed to seeing their fps fly on basic level visuals rather than enjoy the thrill of a new tech every year.

I don't think consoles have anything to do with the change. Progress has slowed as products have become exponentially more complex. MS can't iterate DX as fast because it's bigger and does more and there's less room to change as we settle into reasonable solutions. CPU upgrades are no longer from okay to fast, and are instead from amazingly fast to slighter faster than amazingly fast. RAM used to double every couple of years - now it's largely stagnating. All while costs are going up and up, decreasing interest in upgrading for smaller gains versus previous decades. A new $800 (inflation adjusted) GPU to play Crysis or whatever was part of the joy of PC elite gaming. $1500 for the same thing now?! Yeah, right. No game is going to be that good, that bleeding edge, that it'll drive GPU upgrades.

RT is set to grow quickly, but the whole ethos of PC ownership and gamedev has, IMHO, changed, and would be in this situation even if consoles didn't exist. As ever, it's driven by market forces. If there was a PC market hungry for better, you'd expect devs would be targeting it. Instead, devs stretch their games to support slower PC specifications to facilitate maximum ROI while no-one is pushing the envelope. Kinda like VR - RT is an expensive high-end niche. Even if RTRT gets to a point where it can differentiate itself enough to be desirable, such as Racer RTX, the price of entry is going to be prohibitive, the audience small, and the economic reasons to target high-end RTRT rigs limited.

As such, devs want to find solutions that stretch down to lower-spec hardware. That's PCs, which also encompasses consoles but would be as such without them.

 

[yamaci17]

What do you think of 32 GB RAM requirement of Returnal? Isn't it a bit steep?

 

[PSman1700]

Actually no, it's beacuse consoles are too slow. Not because PC hardware is slow, I argue that PC hardware is perfectly capable of running fullt path traced games with upscaling in 2022, and going forward.

And this is actually the norm in PC gaming, pushing the boundaries and fully utilizing hardware and APIs, it's only in the last decade or so that we've grown complacent under the influence of half assed console ports with barely any thing new visually, and with underutilized GPUs, CPUs and APIs.

We used to have a new version of DirectX every year, with new features and capabilities, we used to having multiple APIs, used to have very accelerated pace of new GPU releases every freaking year, all making the older versions obsolete .. From 1995 to 2006, there was a major DX iteration every year .. Since 1997 to 2009, there was a new NVIDIA architecture every year, same for ATI/AMD.

The industry was thriving. And people were constantly changing hardware, constantly running new things and constantly enjoying progress even if it runs slow on their current hardware, because tomorrow a new hardware will come along and make it faster. You think Doom or Quake or Unreal, Half Life, FEAR or even Crysis ran well on old hardware of their time? Or course not, these pioneer games were continuously pushing boundaries and urging PC gamers to upgrade. This was such a common occurrence in PC gaming that people grew accustomed to upgrading their hardware once a major release comes along, be it Doom, Far Cry, Battlefield ..etc.

But consoles made develolers complacent, less inclined to make bleeding edge tech, and PC gamers grew complacent as well. Demanding new titles to run well on old hardware, and not push any boundaries, people grew accustomed to seeing their fps fly on basic level visuals rather than enjoy the thrill of a new tech every year.

Rest assured, this was not the norm in PC gaming, I argue this is just an anomaly. We should be getting back to the old norm, sooner or later.

Well said/written. Consoles have set the baseline and thats what developers are (hampered) to. SB has explained this nicely before, previously games where pushing the edge/technology, and then scale down, thus to highest end pc hardware and beyond, and then scale down. However nowadays developers are mostly starting with the baseline and then scale upwards instead. This hampers the push to the bleeding edge as was more the norm before.

The notion that hardware prices have gone up and developers have to keep the '3060 users' in mind isnt the cause, firstly hardware has evolved extremely fast in special in the GPU space. Previously you needed the highest end to match the consoles at launch (PS2 you needed GF2 atleast, perhaps GF3), Xbox 2001 matched a GF4 basically, 360 was very close to a X1800/X1900 etc etc. Nowadays all you need is a entry xx60 (3060, 6600XT etc) GPU to match and exceed them.
So yes, hardware prices have gone up, but so has performance relative to consoles. For example to match the 360 you needed a X1800 at the least, dual cores where the norm in PC land (2005).
Developers could still have the same targets as back then, a 3080 is still miles ahead of the consoles, in special in ray tracing. Things like the 3090, 4080 and then even 4090 (and AMD gpus that match those) they are touching the 100TF range.
Thats just the raw raster, theres then ray tracing and ML performance, its not even a comparison (if you talk NV, Intel or AMD, their all quite capable).

Secondly, developers do not have to 'hamper themselfs' to 3060 baseline, the same was true 10 or 20 years ago, the highest end GPUs/hardware has never been the most popular/mainstream. Target highest end and then scale down, down to the 3060's and below that the consoles.
This should and will indeed happen again (developers target PC's at the high end and then down, to consoles aswell).

 

[PSman1700]

What do you think of 32 GB RAM requirement of Returnal? Isn't it a bit steep?

Not really, you need 32GB ram if you still do not have a SSD this day and age.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Not really, you need 32GB ram if you still do not have a SSD this day and age.

Which games actually make use of more than 16Gb RAM - with or without an SSD? I'm genuinely curious..