Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2023] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[Seanspeed]

So does anyone know of any games which use Sampler Feedback Streaming on Xbox hardware? They touted it so hard during the lead in to launch.. and we haven't heard anything about it since.

Wouldn't be surprised if it's already being used to some degree already. We dont always hear about these kind of non-visual aspects for console titles. Starfield's low memory footprint could be a conspicuous hint maybe?

Maybe when The Coalition releases something, we'll see it in action. Unfortunately, just like the use of hardware VRS that certain groups where shouting about pre-launch, I expect it's implementation to be bad.

VRS is quite a different thing. And it's been shown to be used really well in enough cases by now.

 

[Remij]

Maybe when The Coalition releases something, we'll see it in action. Unfortunately, just like the use of hardware VRS that certain groups where shouting about pre-launch, I expect it's implementation to be bad.

I've been hoping The Coalition has something special coming up which really does utilize all of these hardware features MS had heavily touted.. but I don't know how far they'll go. I suspect VRS will 100% be utilized, and I think the Coalition did a good job with it in Gears 5, and Tactics (for the most part).. I wonder if they'll customize UE5 and augment the virtual texture streaming of UE with something that takes advantage of SFS?

Xbox needs some games which look great and advertise the features of the platform IMO.

 

[Remij]

Wouldn't be surprised if it's already being used to some degree already. We dont always hear about these kind of non-visual aspects for console titles. Starfield's low memory footprint could be a conspicuous hint maybe?

The loading times would suggest otherwise though, no?

Xbox really needs some shining examples of these features and to speak about that stuff openly.

 

[iroboto]

So does anyone know of any games which use Sampler Feedback Streaming on Xbox hardware? They touted it so hard during the lead in to launch.. and we haven't heard anything about it since.

I suspect Starfield could given it’s very small memory footprint despite its high quality textures.

Streaming systems as they are (except Nanite) are not particularly novel anymore, but streaming systems with SFS should be made more efficient in sampling the correct mip therefore only committing resources that are correct and not over committed additional resources for a poor sample.

SFS does not resolve load times. That’s an engine limitation.

 

[BitByte]

Wouldn't be surprised if it's already being used to some degree already. We dont always hear about these kind of non-visual aspects for console titles. Starfield's low memory footprint could be a conspicuous hint maybe?


VRS is quite a different thing. And it's been shown to be used really well in enough cases by now.

Really, you’ll have to show me where because everywhere I’ve seen it used, it degrades texture quality noticeably.

 

[BitByte]

I've been hoping The Coalition has something special coming up which really does utilize all of these hardware features MS had heavily touted.. but I don't know how far they'll go. I suspect VRS will 100% be utilized, and I think the Coalition did a good job with it in Gears 5, and Tactics (for the most part).. I wonder if they'll customize UE5 and augment the virtual texture streaming of UE with something that takes advantage of SFS?

Xbox needs some games which look great and advertise the features of the platform IMO.

I haven’t played Gears 5 in a while so I’ll have to double check that…. I wonder if it has a toggle on pc so I can see if it degrades texture quality.

 

[iroboto]

Really, you’ll have to show me where because everywhere I’ve seen it used, it degrades texture quality noticeably.

VRS is on Starfield, I haven’t seen a “optimized” config that turns it off. I don’t think most people notice it at all in SF

 

[Remij]

I haven’t played Gears 5 in a while so I’ll have to double check that…. I wonder if it has a toggle on pc so I can see if it degrades texture quality.

Give me a bit and I'll post some pics and you be the judge.

 

[T2098]

VRS is on Starfield, I haven’t seen a “optimized” config that turns it off. I don’t think most people notice it at all in SF

In the short time I was playing around with Starfield on my Steam Deck (only an hour or two), enabling VRS in the starfield menu (not injecting it via the steam deck sidebar) was catastrophic to the visuals and made nearly no difference in performance - I was quite surprised.

I'm sure it was more obvious visually since I was playing at 800p with FSR2 balanced and/or performance, so there weren't very many 'real' pixels to go around, but I was surprised at just how little it did for performance given how much it degraded the image. I've turned it off on my desktop PCs ever since.

 

[iroboto]

In the short time I was playing around with Starfield on my Steam Deck (only an hour or two), enabling VRS in the starfield menu (not injecting it via the steam deck sidebar) was catastrophic to the visuals and made nearly no difference in performance - I was quite surprised.

I'm sure it was more obvious visually since I was playing at 800p with FSR2 balanced and/or performance, so there weren't very many 'real' pixels to go around, but I was surprised at just how little it did for performance given how much it degraded the image. I've turned it off on my desktop PCs ever since.

yea it's going be more noticeable as the resolution drops further.
Performance only improves if you are compute bound, but the degrading will always be present unless you've got some sort of dynamic VRS which I don't think exists yet.

 

[function]

Tracing rays and compute these results is much heavier than any other workload.

What?

And Starfield is stucked in pre 2020 level:

You found a bad looking screenshot. Is this supposed to mean something to people who aren't IHV Partisans?

Do you have a serious response to make?

 

[Karamazov]

 

[iroboto]

It's why when criticizing Bethesda, I rightfully pointed out that No Mans Sky has technology that's a generation ahead of Bethesda running on the switch.

This is a terrible take. They aren’t the same type of game at all. They have 0 desire to do what no man’s sky does.

Game design determines the technology made. Bethseda set out to make an RPG game with quests and dialog.

You criticize a game for how well it succeeds at doing what it is trying to do, not how well it builds on someone else’s title.

 

[troyan]

DLSSTweaker got an updated version for Cyberpunk. Ray Reconstruction can be used with DLAA together and increases performance by up to 20%: https://imgsli.com/MjA4NTAy

That a pathtraced game can run with 50 FPS+ is unbelievable. This here is Immortals of Aveum:


I said in the past. There is something wrong when a 100 TFLOPs GPU gets so limited by an engine.

 

[gamervivek]

Where is that exactly? I can't see any example of that, half the biomes in the game look last so last gen it's actually embarrassing. See the post above.

And see more here.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1703711781376663589

None of that is new, we've had that since Oblivion.


None of these videos show indirect lighting affecting the objects, all I see are objects lit by direct light.

The game seems to be missing key lighting features.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1703675446624149687

Not sure what Xbox is doing at the given time of the day and I'm running the LUT mod + levels to enhance the contrats. Anyway, I tried to match them up and it looks quite different on PC.

https://imgur.com/a/BLIYyRL

 

[Remij]

Ah right, I said I was going to post pictures from Gears 5 comparing VRS.. so here's a couple. I added the in-game performance metrics to clearly show the difference in performance.

Resolution = 5760x2400, all settings maxed. Sharpness set to 12.

VRS Off:

VRS Quality:

VRS Performance:

VRS Off:

VRS Quality:

VRS Performance:

Now I'd say The Coalition's implementation is excellent. From "Off" to "Quality" there's essentially no discernable visual difference.. and quite a bit of performance to be gained. "Performance" does degrade the image somewhat, but the performance gain is quite big, and worth the tradeoff to hit a target framrate. In motion, it's essentially imperceptible.

The other thing to remember, is if a game is developed from the start with this in mind, and enabled by default... gamers will never know of the detail they are missing.

 

[Remij]

Here's one for Gears Tactics as well. Similar story there, predictably.

Off:

Quality:

Performance:

 

[Remij]

I realized perhaps I'm being a bit unfair with my comparisons since they are at a fairly high resolution which isn't exactly representative of what an Xbox Series X would target, so here's a quick one of Gears 5 at my monitors native res 3840x1600, and "Off" and "Quality" remain mostly indistinguishable... "Performance" definitely shows a noticeable deterioration to texture quality and IQ. The game also doesn't benefit as greatly from VRS performance-wise in this particular scene.

Off:

Quality:

Performance:

Continuing on with Dirt 5... another game which supports VRS, which is known to have been a bit of a mess on Xbox and a not so great implementation of VRS. Series consoles resulted in an image which looked decidedly lower detail and lower resolution on Series X than PS5 at launch.

3860x1600p native (game has 3 different res settings for various buffers) Dynamic Res off, and all settings to Ultra Quality.

VRS Off:

VRS On:

There's noticeable degradation in detail on the track surface. Also with this game I believe VRS is dynamically adjusting coarseness with the speed of the camera movement. When VRS is engaged and camera movement is settling down I can notice slightly more detail resolve right as it stops compared to just before. Not a motion blur issue as I turned it off and the same thing happens.

That said, I love Dirt 5. It performs absolutely beautifully on PC and just looks very nice in motion. You can control all the settings with a fine toothed comb to your liking, and at very high resolutions it looks extremely clean.

Any other games out there that we know support VRS and allow users to toggle on and off?

 

[BitByte]

@Remij Thanks for posting those! The Coalition's implementation is pretty great and it's not surprising. They always do good work. I'm not surprised about dirt 5 as I experienced that first hand. A fun little game but VRS was a serious eyesore. Speaking of games that use it, I swear I saw it in the dead space remake before it was disabled by the devs. The implementation was not good at all.

 

[Dictator]

I thought the implementation of VRS in Returnal on PC you could toggle seemed to work very well. Perhaps that is one to check out?