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

[Flappy Pannus]

He reasons that the PS5 having the slowest load times (ouch) is down to how Direct Storage interacts with DX12 in this game. Yet as far as I'm aware the game doesn't even use Direct Storage on the PC? My guess is it's simply CPU limited and the PC and Xbox in this case were simply coincidentally the same speed.

Again, the 'pulling stuff out of my ass' speculation is the problem here. For example, he speculates there might be 'shader compilation stutter' on the PS5. Ok, so...test it? Go back and repeat the same area. If you get the same stutter, then it's not shader compilation issues. Why would there be any on a fixed platform regardless of the API used?

He also speculates that to hit a locked 60fps/4K you would need a 4090 with DLSS3 frame generation enabled. But I'm not sure he really appreciates how insanely powerful the 4090 actually is as it's achieving that performance level at native 4k - with Ultra settings at that. With DLSS 3 it should be able to breeze past 120fps with ease.

Yeah that's ridiculous. I suspect the 'locked' gives him somewhat of an out with that argument, there might be times with the rats in certain areas that it can't maintain 60fps 100% at native 4k/Ultra. This area with the vegetation on fire is very demanding on my PC and consoles from what I've seen though, and the lowest it goes is in the mid60's, usually above 70. DLSS2 gets you 90-120fps depending on Quality setting, DLSS3 gets you ~140+fps. He's guesstimate is off by more than half.



Edit: Ok here it is dropping below 60fps with DLSS 2.0 Quality. So you do need DLSS 3.0 to maintain 60fps.

Only thing is...this is at 8k.

Not dx12 but some kind of wrapper which for sure is possible taking into account asobo its not biggest studio with biggest budget

There's a big difference between a dev simply choosing a higher-level API to ease development and actually using a wrapper to convert calls. Also Asobo has 250+ staff, they did Flight Simulator. There are not some tiny indy studio.

 

[Dictator]

Not dx12 but some kind of wrapper which for sure is possible taking into account asobo its not biggest studio with biggest budget

I do not think auch a thing exists to be honest for the Sony APIs. Also, in such a case the 30 FPS OG Game would run awfully as it would invariably using this hypotethical unproven wrapper too on Sony consoles like PS4. It makes no good sense I think to insinuate things about opaque things a user could not possibly know IMO.

 

[snc]

I do not think auch a thing exists to be honest for the Sony APIs. Also, in such a case the 30 FPS OG Game would run awfully as it would invariably using this hypotethical unproven wrapper too on Sony consoles like PS4. It makes no good sense I think to insinuate things about opaque things a user could not possibly know IMO.

So if it exists you probably would know tough seemed possible for me taking into accounts wrapers for dx12 and vylkans for steamdeck (tough Im not sure how it works)

 

[pjbliverpool]

He also mentions shader compilation stuttering... on the PS5, at one point.

 

[Below2D]

I do not think auch a thing exists to be honest for the Sony APIs. Also, in such a case the 30 FPS OG Game would run awfully as it would invariably using this hypotethical unproven wrapper too on Sony consoles like PS4. It makes no good sense I think to insinuate things about opaque things a user could not possibly know IMO.

Curious but you mention here that the PS5 has 6.5 cores available for games. That's a strange number. How does that work?

 

[Pinstripe]

6 physical cores + 1 Logical core (Thread).

 

[Below2D]

6 physical cores + 1 Logical core (Thread).

That makes more sense. I thought he meant that literally half a core was available which I did not understand. Odd way to phrase it though. Don't think 1 thread is equal to half a core.

 

[Jay]

That makes more sense. I thought he meant that literally half a core was available which I did not understand. Odd way to phrase it though. Don't think 1 thread is equal to half a core.

Core has 2 threads, so reasonable way to phrase it.
Although it's even possible it's time sliced. But I expect it to be thread as lot more simple to implement.
OS gets 1 core and an additional thread.
So 1.5 cores.

 

[BRiT]

I was wondering how long it would be until someone else noticed or commented about it. Additional information has already been noted in the System Reservation Thread. The biggest hassle was getting XF to not inline the YT video directly.

System Reservations on PS4, 4Pro, PS5, XBox One, One S, One X, and Xbox Series X|S [2019-12, 2020-03]

What are the current system reservations on current-gen systems such as PS4, PS 4Pro, and Xbox One S, XBox One X? I seem to have misplaced my SDKs and searching/googling is drawing hits from pre-launch 2013, so I'm hoping the community can help out with this question. I'm looking for things...

forum.beyond3d.com

 

[BRiT]

Curious but you mention here that the PS5 has 6.5 cores available for games. That's a strange number. How does that work?

Same way as it worked on PS4, where the PS4 OS/Dashboard reserved 1.5 or 1.6 Cores.

PS4
Around late 2015 Sony changed System Reservations from 100% CPU Core #7 to allow for using only 50% of CPU Core #7 or 60% of CPU Core #7 if VR, giving developers use of 50% of CPU Core #7 or 40% of CPU Core #7 if VR.

 

[Below2D]

Same way as it worked on PS4, where the PS4 OS/Dashboard reserved 1.5 or 1.6 Cores.

Alright, so it's really 50% of a core and not a single thread per core? Or are they the same thing?

 

[Malo]

I think for me, the most impressive game so far I've seen is Ubisoft's Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, but what we saw was technically only 'in engine' and I'd be a bit cautious if the final game will actually look like that. But if it does, phew. So much fine detail.

A bit cautious? I guess you're not familiar with Ubisoft's track record on bullshots.

 

[Dictator]

makes more sense. I thought he meant that literally half a core was available which I did not understand.

Core has 2 threads, so reasonable way to phrase it.
Although it's even possible it's time sliced. But I expect it to be thread as lot more simple to implement.
OS gets 1 core and an additional thread.
So 1.5 cores.

It is indeed time sliced (based on the Info we have) 7th core to my knowledge - that is why I wrote 6.5!

 

[PSman1700]

What’s your argument against using a disc as a license that you can resell, which was snc’s only point? You’re going to download 150GB disc or digital, you’re going to pay about the same price day one, and the digital copy will be as useless as the disc copy when the servers shut down.

This post may seem a bit aggressive but I don’t understand arguing against and laughing at a point that has no rebuttal, that you can sell a used disc copy and you can’t sell a used digital copy?

(The stupidity and plastic waste of a 70MB disc, or the concept of a 150GB game “going gold” with said disc is another issue, as is continuing this OT.)

Its pointless to release an actual physical disc just for the idea of it, they could just sell key-codes or activation files. The blu ray disc seems to be there for no obvious reason. I have not seen any good arguments for this 70mb blu ray disc on any platform so far, be it EG article, YT or FB.
The only argument for doing this is to be able sell the game further, however i doubt theres no alternative ways for that, like say if you buy not a disc but simply a license/code or whatever, that can be used to download and play said game?
Buying digital is a mere key/license aswell, they just should make it possible to re-sell such too.

Sorry, i cant advocate Activisions actions on this one, not many do seeing the comments everywhere. And i sure hope this isnt the future for physical copies, if it already isnt? With physical the largest advantages are that you dont need to download 150 to 200gb or larger games in special on slower connections, and preservation ofcourse. With these advantages gone i think physical game copies degrade in their value.
The only advantage of physical would be you can re-sell it, i dont know what percentage of users do that, would be intresting to see. However i think thats something that should be possible.

To add, there sure seems some movement towards the ability to re-sell digital game copies on Steam:

Now you can resell your Steam games – Nmore Group

www.nmore.com

 

[Jay]

It is indeed time sliced (based on the Info we have) 7th core to my knowledge - that is why I wrote 6.5!

Forgot it was time sliced on PS4, so does make sense to use same method.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Ok, I checked out Sackboy PC. Quick tech review:

The Bad:

• Of course, the shader stutters. Definitely bad at first, the panning of the first town in the starting cutscene is filled with frame spikes. Definitely not a good first impression. Same with the initial gameplay, lots of little skips - nothing like say, Gotham Knights 150+ ms stutters, but basically many actions you do for the first time will give a hitch. Ugh.
  • However, it seems a lot of the shaders are shared across levels, you don't enter virgin territory just because a new world has some new materials. Granted I'm not planning to play this entirely through, but I rushed through 4 levels to see how consistent the stutters were, and after the first 10 minutes of the first level they're relatively sparse actually. As well, each level starts with a quick fly by of the environment/enemies, which can catch some of the new shaders before you actually start playing the level.
  • So yeah, not great - there definitely should be a compiling stage, and if anything this makes just a stronger case for it as it would also be relatively quick judging by the amount, which isn't seemingly anywhere near Horizon/Uncharted level. Gathering the unique PSO's here should not be a herculean task.

The Middling:

• Ray Tracing. Not that it's not working or isn't scalable, it is. Ray Traced reflections halves performance on my 3060, Ultra ray traced reflections halves it again. Ray Traced ambient occlusion and Ray traced extra shadows though, barely have an effect on fps. With DLSS performance though, I could have all ray tracing features on (just not Ultra reflections), every graphics option maxxed, and get a solid 60fps on a 3060 at 1800p. Not bad.
• The bigger issue is...do you want to bother? Digital Foundry brought this up in their review, the thing with a game like Sackboy is that the camera angles are pretty much fixed, so the screen space reflections work particularly well here. The RT reflections will be more accurate of course, but the screen space also give more detail in their reflections - that may be because they're not reflecting the material properly mind you, but it's just that one of the biggest benefits that RT brings with respect to not breaking the moment the object is out of screen space doesn't really apply here when you can't control the camera. You just don't have that much of an opportunity to peak behind the curtain like you do in an fps, so to speak. Ray traced ambient occlusion does provide a little extra occlusion on some surfaces, and unlike reflections, is very easy on the GPU - with it and 'additional effect ray traced shadows', I can get 60fps at 4k with DLSS performance. But overall, the visual impact for all of the RT features is very slight.
• DLSS only, no FSR support yet.
• Setting a fullscreen res has that problem where the game doesn't recognize your display scaling, so you've got to go into the game's .exe properties and enable DPI scaling to get it to behave. Very minor hassle, but this shouldn't be necessary today. Still though - fullscreen is at least an option here, so custom resolutions and downscaling are compatible.

The Good:

Everything else really.

• Performance outside of the shader stutters is superb. There is some very slight detail texture pop-in during the first cutscene on a couple of the characters, but that was about it - the full textures are being loaded, nothing like the problems we saw in the first PC trailer. This game is kind of the inverse of Uncharted - UC4 handled its shader compiling demands expertly, with both a pre-compile stage, but also allowing you to skip it and do it in the background without affecting framerate. It fell on its face with its extreme demands for GPU power though. With Sackboy, we've got a less than optimal shader caching solution, but the scalability and throughput of the game is excellent. For raster only, with all features enabled and just Ambient Occlusion at Medium (High is max raster level), and Shadows at High (Very High is max raster), I can get 60fps at 4k native with 90% scaling on a 3060. With DLSS quality at 4K and these settings, I'm usually not topping 75% GPU usage. DLSS performance at these settings gives me 100+ fps. Loading is also very quick.
• Scaling. A lot of recent games have had very poor scaling, where graphics options hardly have an impact on frame rate, not here. The starting base with all the raster options maxxed is already very performant, but settings such as ambient occlusion and dynamic shadows can increase performance ~10% with each lowered setting level, and the thing is, it's not until you get to low that you even notice any significant quality difference. A solid 60fps will absolutely be achievable on something like a 1060 at 1080p (if not higher) no problem. CPU load is basically nonexistent at ~15% for my i5-2400.
• DLSS looks very good in this game. No standout artifacts I've encountered, Sackboy's little hairs are more completed as opposed to native, so so far, I prefer DLSS Quality. Significantly sharper than the PS5 version in all modes.
• Proper frame pacing. Setting that 60fps lock is needed for my TV, as leaving it set to unlimited will have some pacing issues - but it shows they were thinking of this. Too many other games just believe vsync will be enough for proper frame pacing on fixed refresh displays, the devs here gave you a cap that irons that out completely.
• Full Dualsense support, Dualshock 4 support (motion tilt works with it too), and Xbox.

So yeah, #stutterstruggle and all that. It's perhaps not crippling to the game overall - but yes, no game should ship with it today. Meagre RT improvements, sure. Every other aspect though, it's actually a very solid port, add that shader compile stage and in terms of features/scaling/overall performance, it would actually be one of the best PC ports Sony has done.

Oh, and making the price something sane would also be good.

 

[chris1515]

Again, the 'pulling stuff out of my ass' speculation is the problem here. For example, he speculates there might be 'shader compilation stutter' on the PS5. Ok, so...test it? Go back and repeat the same area. If you get the same stutter, then it's not shader compilation issues. Why would there be any on a fixed platform regardless of the API used?



Yeah that's ridiculous. I suspect the 'locked' gives him somewhat of an out with that argument, there might be times with the rats in certain areas that it can't maintain 60fps 100% at native 4k/Ultra. This area with the vegetation on fire is very demanding on my PC and consoles from what I've seen though, and the lowest it goes is in the mid60's, usually above 70. DLSS2 gets you 90-120fps depending on Quality setting, DLSS3 gets you ~140+fps. He's guesstimate is off by more than half.

View attachment 7389

Edit: Ok here it is dropping below 60fps with DLSS 2.0 Quality. So you do need DLSS 3.0 to maintain 60fps.

Only thing is...this is at 8k.

View attachment 7393



There's a big difference between a dev simply choosing a higher-level API to ease development and actually using a wrapper to convert calls. Also Asobo has 250+ staff, they did Flight Simulator. There are not some tiny indy studio.

Only 75 people worked on Plague Tales Requiem, but as always NXGamer is horrible. I didn't see the video because this is shameful. A DX12 wrapper When was doing this on his own video this is ok but doing this on IGN with a much larger audience is not funny at all.

The only interesting thing it seems Plague Tale requiem is limited by single threaded performance. Now than consoles CPU are decent this will be a problem we will see in Game engine not using data oriented programming style(ECS). This is the same problem than Gotham City or the Matrix Awakens demo. If it is true, I prefer wait @Dictator video to be sure.

 

[davis.anthony]

Sackboy PC release has ray tracing! (Reflections, shadows and AO)

Sackboy: A Big Adventure тест GPU/CPU | RPG/Ролевые | Тест GPU

Примите вызов в одиночку и попытайтесь выиграть полную опасностей эпическую гонку со временем – или соберит

gamegpu.com

Average resolution on PS5 is 1620p according to Digital Foundry at near faultless 60fps

• To achieve a locked 60fps on PC at native 1440p with max settings requires an RTX2060 Super
• To achieve an average of 60fps with some drops at native 1440p at max settings requires a RX6600 or GTX1080.
• To achieve a locked 60fps at native 1440p with max settings and max RT requires an RTX4090 with all other GPU's needing DLSS.
• To achieve an average of 60fps with some drops at 1440p using DLSS at max settings requires a 3070ti.
• The game uses between 5-6GB of VRAM at 1440p
• The game uses 8/8.5GB of system RAM

 

[Michael Thompson]

I do not think auch a thing exists to be honest for the Sony APIs. Also, in such a case the 30 FPS OG Game would run awfully as it would invariably using this hypotethical unproven wrapper too on Sony consoles like PS4. It makes no good sense I think to insinuate things about opaque things a user could not possibly know IMO.

Yeah it does, wrappers are very common as they help you start a project with lower level of effort required to get the engine up and running with the API, I have used them often in my day job and DLL are a form of this also. GNMX was used a great deal by many teams, even huge teams like Ubisoft, among others, used it to get the game running. Some ship on that and then updated to the lower API (GNM) later, this helps with the GPU side most predominantly and is within the complier of the Sony SDK.

To assume Sony removed this for PS5 is an odd view and very unlikely, but maybe you are just not aware of them. That said it could be significantly different here but the PlayStation PSSL is largely based on OPEN_GL which is the basis of DX HSSL anyway, so much comes full circle on these.

The GDC talk on 2013 gives a good insight into the work and effort they made on easing PC/360 ports to PS4 and also highlights that the native functions exposed in the direct API can offer specific benefits to the platform, which is what DX12 will do for Xbox as it will sympatico. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019252/PlayStation-Shading-Language-for

Linux uses wrappers all the time, such as wine, and if they are JiT parser like Wine or not is not important, DoSBox is also a wrapper, the SteamDeck relies on this and Valve have invested heavily on it to improve it, even over Windows versions to reduce or remove stutter shader compilation, although much comes down to the fixed hardware spec. The issue here is, this is down to the development team and I am NOT saying that they have, merely I observed and demonstrated, the PS5 is affected far more from big stutters and performance hiccups over Series X and S at times. The CPU overhead may be coming from this or something else entirely.

 

[Henry swagger]

Nx gamer would get more respect if he learns to hide he's sony bias and upgrade his testing hardware.. because it looks amateur