Digital Foundry and console warriors alternate realities *spawn*

[Cyan]

Face-Off: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3 is a game of many firsts. Above all for CD Projekt Red, it has the distinction of launching on three platforms at once, pushing for PC, Xbox One and also its first Sony format - PlayStation 4. Also breaking new ground is a more open-world design than we've seen before in the series, widening the scope of Geralt's adventure as we enter a sprawling third act. We've had a cursory glance at how console versions hold up in performance terms, but factoring in a PC release with plenty of visual bonuses, how do the consoles compare?

DF are hiding some facts, if you omit important, objective facts you are misleading others.

Their wording is as much as harmful to the X1 as it can be. They say about the Xbox One version that they don't favour it because the framerate fluctuates between 20 and 40 fps. They do Know that's not true. During gameplay, which is what actually matters, the game Never goes below 30 fps.

Lies, lies and more lies.

Cinematics might be an entirely different thing, but they run fine for the most part. Plus it'd be nice if they talked about how texture streaming works in the game.

 

[Cyan]

OK @Cyan. Look at that video at around 2:50 (they are comparing XB1 with 750ti cards), a couple of things:

- The XB1 game regularly drops at 29 or 28 on the fps meter in this short city scene.
- Even when the fps meter stays >= 30, there are constant frame time fluctuations above 33ms meaning the game if capped would each time drops under 30fps in a very similar way of the PS4 game.

But don't worry, even DF completely miss the point and believe a fps counter above or equals to 30fps automatically means a potentially judder-free 30fps capped game, they imply that the capped XB1 game would run much better than the PS4 when it's in fact totally false. Here they are harmful to the PS4 not the XB1 game.



Now in the light of those new frame-time concepts, watch again the PS4 vs XB1 performance video by comparing only the frame-time values above 33ms, ignoring the rest, you'll see that in fact both games, if theoretically both capped, would run very similarly during basically the whole video. Obviously ignore also the cutscenes moments where the PS4 is capped at 20fps (in order to effectively hide judder, and it works believe me, a cutscene capped at 20fps is better than a ~25fps fluctuating one).

I've watched the video you linked to, comparing the PC and XB, and I know from a different video of theirs featuring the PS4 and XB1 versions that the X1 version only dropped below 30 fps in that city, nowhere else. The city is busy with people and buildings, and for a game with lots of vegetation in the cities, amazing shadows and so on, framerate can be hard to keep steady in those situations.

As for what their words imply, I don't agree with you on that point, because as you can read in the article they try to vilify the Xbox One version as much as they can, implying that one version runs between 20 and 40 fps (X1) and the other is locked at 30, having their own interests at heart in omitting a couple of "little" details --that the Xbox One runs at more than 30 fps during actual gameplay and that PS4 framerate drops.

It's obvious that Digital Foundry has an agenda and some of us are noticing it.

From their tone of writing, their motivations are obvious.

Back into what you mention about whether to lock or not the XB1, I've read your discussion on it with the amazing (not spiderman afaik) @HTupolev and I know that if the framerate is locked for the X1, it could drop to certain numbers in the 20s range.

However, even if unlocked, the Xbox One version is vsynced, which means that it is holding up pretty well. So, save for the big city, what makes you think that if you lock the X1 version it would lead to stuttering and more uneven and worse framerates when the vsynced-non-locked-framerate is always above 30 fps? What's the difference, if vsync is one of the main factors for an even framerate pace and it is enabled already?

 

[Boxercide]

I've watched the video you linked to, comparing the PC and XB, and I know from a different video of theirs featuring the PS4 and XB1 versions that the X1 version only dropped below 30 fps in that city, nowhere else. The city is busy with people and buildings, and for a game with lots of vegetation in the cities, amazing shadows and so on, framerate can be hard to keep steady in those situations.

As for what their words imply, I don't agree with you on that point, because as you can read in the article they try to vilify the Xbox One version as much as they can, implying that one version runs between 20 and 40 fps (X1) and the other is locked at 30, having their own interests at heart in omitting a couple of "little" details --that the Xbox One runs at more than 30 fps during actual gameplay and that PS4 framerate drops.

It's obvious that Digital Foundry has an agenda and some of us are noticing it.

From their tone of writing, their motivations are obvious.

Back into what you mention about whether to lock or not the XB1, I've read your discussion on it with the amazing (not spiderman afaik) @HTupolev and I know that if the framerate is locked for the X1, it could drop to certain numbers in the 20s range.

However, even if unlocked, the Xbox One version is vsynced, which means that it is holding up pretty well. So, save for the big city, what makes you think that if you lock the X1 version it would lead to stuttering and more uneven and worse framerates when the vsynced-non-locked-framerate is always above 30 fps? What's the difference, if vsync is one of the main factors for an even framerate pace and it is enabled already?

JESUS CHRIST will you stop with the fanboy drivel? This is a tech forum, not a place for you to whine about people having an agenda against your preferred console. Go back to misterx if you have such a problem with reality.

 

[Globalisateur]

...
However, even if unlocked, the Xbox One version is vsynced, which means that it is holding up pretty well. So, save for the big city, what makes you think that if you lock the X1 version it would lead to stuttering and more uneven and worse framerates when the vsynced-non-locked-framerate is always above 30 fps? What's the difference, if vsync is one of the main factors for an even framerate pace and it is enabled already?

It would not worsen the judder more than it is currently obviously, sorry if was unclear in one of my previous posts.

@damienw That's a bit rude...

 

[Boxercide]

It would not worsen the judder more than it is currently obviously, sorry if was unclear in one of my previous posts.

@damienw That's a bit rude...

It's all he does. Look at his history.

 

[Cyan]

It would not worsen the judder more than it is currently obviously, sorry if was unclear in one of my previous posts.

@damienw That's a bit rude...

What I am referring to is this quote from your post:

Even when the fps meter stays >= 30, there are constant frame time fluctuations above 33ms meaning the game if capped would each time drops under 30fps in a very similar way of the PS4 game.

Do you mean that the framerate would be uneven in the city area or in the entire game? I thought it was the later, hence I was curious, because frame pacing is almost always below 33ms.

Au contraire, if the framerate stays >= 30 fps most of the time, while v'synced like it is now, how couldn't the game run at locked 30 fps on the Xbox One without the console tearing a sweat 99% of the time?

JESUS CHRIST will you stop with the fanboy drivel? This is a tech forum, not a place for you to whine about people having an agenda against your preferred console. Go back to misterx if you have such a problem with reality.

On the outside, I am definitely not deep. If I expressed my thoughts more about thing, that would change, but that means doing things I do not want to.

I am kinda secretive IRL. My stance is clear to you, and yours is clear to me, you are a PC, PS4 or WiiU fan who can't stand counter-arguments against stablished theories.

Let me tell you, I just read Misterx a couple of times, and DF aren't gods. They've done a lot, but they aren't deities and some truths hurt.

 

[Boxercide]

My stance is clear to you, and yours is clear to me, you are a PC, PS4 or WiiU fan who can't stand counter-arguments against stablished theories.

Let me tell you, I just read Misterx a couple of times, and DF aren't gods. They've done a lot, but they aren't deities and some truths hurt.

I am a fan of reality. You make no arguments against established theories. You complain about facts and wish they fit your narrative. You insult people who put forward actual facts and research because it runs counter to your opinions/wishes.

 

[Cyan]

I am a fan of reality. You make no arguments against established theories. You complain about facts and wish they fit your narrative. You insult people who put forward actual facts and research because it runs counter to your opinions/wishes.

If you are sharing actual facts you better not omit what you don't want others to hear. Hence some DF articles are not their best.

 

[Boxercide]

If you are sharing actual facts you better not omit what you don't want others to hear. Hence some DF articles are not their best.

They didn't omit anything. They played the game and then analyzed it. Period. Full stop. If you don't like their analyses then don't go there. Whining about their analyses and accusing them of bias against YOUR OPINION is not what a tech forum is for.

If you want to start a site, or even a thread with your owns opinions, then do it. Continuously whining that DF has an agenda because they prefer higher resolutions, steady framerates, no screen tearing, et al is not what this forum is for.

If you are going to accuse them of having an agenda against MS (after a generation where MS won the vast majority of faceoffs), record your footage and point out what they are lying about instead of whining.

 

[Cyan]

They didn't omit anything. They played the game and then analyzed it. Period. Full stop. If you don't like their analyses then don't go there. Whining about their analyses and accusing them of bias against YOUR OPINION is not what a tech forum is for.

If you want to start a site, or even a thread with your owns opinions, then do it. Continuously whining that DF has an agenda because they prefer higher resolutions, steady framerates, no screen tearing, et al is not what this forum is for.

If you are going to accuse them of whining, record your footage and point out what they are lying about instead of whining.

And it would be nice for a change if you stop whining about my whine on DF, because you seem to be a member of DF staff.

Plus you are always here to point out how wrong my posts are..., but you remind me of the famous Groundhog Day.

 

[Boxercide]

And it would be nice for a change if you stop whining about my whine on DF, because you seem to be a member of DF staff.

Plus you are always here to point out how wrong my posts are..., but you remind me of the famous Groundhog Day.

It would be nice for a change if you stopped being wrong and whining about DF.

 

[Globalisateur]

Do you mean that the framerate would be uneven in the city area or in the entire game? I thought it was the later, hence I was curious, because frame pacing is almost always below 33ms.

Well, yes, I meant the framerate would be roughly as uneven as the PS4 game in the entire game. That's what the frame-time values show us.

Au contraire, if the framerate stays >= 30 fps most of the time, while v'synced like it is now, how couldn't the game run at locked 30 fps on the Xbox One without the console tearing a sweat 99% of the time?

Not sure about the tearing part but If you cap the game at 30fps (the same cap seen in the PS4 version), only the 'good' frame-time fluctuations of 16ms will disappear, not the 'bad' +33ms (unfortunately), and those will inevitably create judder and sub-30fps drops.

 

[HTupolev]

So, save for the big city, what makes you think that if you lock the X1 version it would lead to stuttering and more uneven and worse framerates when the vsynced-non-locked-framerate is always above 30 fps? What's the difference, if vsync is one of the main factors for an even framerate pace and it is enabled already?

Vsync isn't one of the main factors for an even framerate pace at all. In fact, for triple-buffered cases like this, it basically guarantees poor pacing.

Capping the XB1 version wouldn't cause more stuttering than the game is currently experiencing; it would be more evenly-paced. The question throughout the thread seems to have been whether it would be substantially more even than the PS4 version; based on the frame time data, it's not entirely clear that it would be.

 

[Cyan]

Well, yes, I meant the framerate would be roughly as uneven as the PS4 game in the entire game. That's what the frame-time values show us.



Not sure about the tearing part but If you cap the game at 30fps (the same cap seen in the PS4 version), only the 'good' frame-time fluctuations of 16ms will disappear, not the 'bad' +33ms (unfortunately), and those will inevitably create judder and sub-30fps drops.

That's where I don't agree, regarding the framerate. The frame-time values indicate that The Witcher 3 X1 version runs below the 33 ms all the time except for the big city and the cinematics, where the "bad" +33ms, as you say, are more noticeable. This means that the X1 version would run at 30 fps 99% of the time.

More on that below.

Vsync isn't one of the main factors for an even framerate pace at all. In fact, for triple-buffered cases like this, it basically guarantees poor pacing.

Capping the XB1 version wouldn't cause more stuttering than the game is currently experiencing; it would be more evenly-paced. The question throughout the thread seems to have been whether it would be substantially more even than the PS4 version; based on the frame time data, it's not entirely clear that it would be.

I still don't get all the technical quirks of the matter at hand. You say "it's not entirely clear", which means you are prone to believe the gae could run at 30 fps all the time on the X1 given the results.

For now it's clear that X1's can potentially be the best version of The Witcher 3 overall. If they lock the framerate and the X1 version is capable of running the game at 30 fps like 99% of the time, save the city part, then Digital Foundry will have to rewrite their article and give the nod to said version.

My question is.., given the current framerate data tables, do you suspect that the Xbox One version can run the game at a locked 30 fps in every single place without tearing a sweat?

Again, you say it's not entirely clear, and that's what I don't understand of this technical debate. If the framerate is locked to 30fps...what happens for it to become potentially unstable when the unlocked framerate is always above the 30 fps mark, hinting at a perfect framerate when locked?

Since the X1 version is vsynced and triple buffered already, that's where I am lost in your discussion with Globalisateur on the matter. It has everything to run fine, it only would need to get locked and you are done with it.

Sinematics would suffer a bit, but the unlocked framerate of TW2 cinematics hasn't been distressing at all, compared to Halo 1 TMCC where the game runs at 60 fps and then suddenly, the cutscenes go back to 30 fps, in fact this cutscene of the Keyes leve felt like a slide show for me, and I couldn't follow the flood vs elites battle at all, the framerate seemed too twitchy after playing the game entirely at 60 fps, but it was particularly distressing in that cutscene, because you could see the typical battle you'd have against the AI, with projectiles around, but the projectiles flew like slides, I could see the frames jumping from one to the next.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For now it's clear that X1's can potentially be the best version of The Witcher 3 overall. If they lock the framerate and the X1 version is capable of running the game at 30 fps like 99% of the time, save the city part, then Digital Foundry will have to rewrite their article and give the nod to said version.

Except it's lower resolution. In your hypothetical case, it'll be the best version regards framerate but not clearly the best overall in every criteria. There'd also be no need for DF to rewrite their article but no-one really cares that much and no-one's going to reread it. What they might do is compare post-patch versions and reconsider the relative performances and recommendations in a new article.

 

[Cyan]

Besides that, despite the fact that the game runs at 30 fps, I think Digital Foundry missed that the framerate of the animation of the enemies is like 15 fps in The Witcher 3 when you are at 15-20 meters away from them.

Maybe it is just me, but this is easily noticeable in White Orchard, in an area with Nekkers and vegetation around. When you are at a certain distance from the Nekkers, 15-20 meters, something is amiss. The vegetation and shadows move accordingly, so do the Nekkers, but the framerate of their animation is so low that it seems to be half of the 30 fps mark. It's very hard to follow them and know where they or what exactly they are doing because of that.

Ori and the Blind Forest is also an example of this, in the very few areas where the game runs at 60 fps -which is 100% of the time- but Ori's animation runs at 30 fps. You are playing and Ori looks weird.

 

[HTupolev]

The frame-time values indicate that The Witcher 3 X1 version runs below the 33 ms all the time except for the big city and the cinematics

That's simply not supported by DF's performance video. The XB1 version experiences occasional frames >33ms out in the fields, similar to the PS4 version. NX Gamer also explicitly makes a note of this in his recently-published video, speculating that streaming might be the cause.

You say "it's not entirely clear", which means you are prone to believe the gae could run at 30 fps all the time on the X1 given the results.

I use a "not entirely clear" because I don't have perfectly rock-solid insight as to how the buffering schemes of the two versions work. I think it's quite likely that the XB1 version wouldn't perform that much better than the PS4 version out in the fields if they applied the same cap, but not with enough confidence to use more absolute wording.

 

[Cyan]

Except it's lower resolution. In your hypothetical case, it'll be the best version regards framerate but not clearly the best overall in every criteria. There'd also be no need for DF to rewrite their article but no-one really cares that much and no-one's going to reread it. What they might do is compare post-patch versions and reconsider the relative performances and recommendations in a new article.

If they start one from scratch like they did with the Borderlands article.... The suggestion of locking the framerate was theirs and the problem is that people give a lot of importance to Digital Foundry articles.

This is akin to a football (soccer) match where someone fouls Cristiano Ronaldo close to the goal area, but you will have to wait for replay to know whether it was or wasn't a foul and the referee was either right or wrong. If he scores the free kick afterwards, that could be a very defining moment in the Premier (if he was at Manchester United) or La Liga. The referee would be to blame, but he/she doesn't have the luxury of a replay.

The difference with football is that DF is still in time, and can still change the outcome. And the game is still brand new and so ambitious, so future patches might be more telling and interesting. And we will openly see how wrong (or not) DF have been in that TW3 article.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The difference with football is that DF is still in time.

The difference from football is that DF's analysis has squat outcomes. Seriously, what actual impact is there from DF making any recommendation? At most, some people with both an XB1 and PS4 who didn't read the article and jumped straight to the recommendation and picked PS4 over XB1 will have had a lower framerate, higher resolution copy of the same game, whcih may or may not suit their preference.

How many people around the world is that? How many people actually care, unlike a major football team with hundreds of thousands (or millions even worldwide) of fans wanting a fair outcome from an important match?

I can understand you have strong emotional ties to DF, and that's your prerogative. But really, it doesn't matter. The rest of the world doesn't care. MS isn't losing money because of this. Devs aren't going to abandon XB1 because of DF recommendations. Games aren't going to play any worse if DF recommens against that console. DF articles are only of value in general interest, and console warring which no-one in their right mind would engage in.

 

[Arwin]

Here's a simple thought for you to consider, Cyan. How often have you seen a developer complain about Digital Foundry's analysis, and in those rare cases, has Digital Foundry just simply ignored them or corrected their pieces. And now the reverse - how many developers have fixed issues that Digital Foundry (not nearly always the only ones to notice, but usually giving the best suggestions on what was wrong or the most precise measurements) pointed out in their analysis? And who is worse off for this?

For all the complaints of partiality that Digital Foundry has received from all sides especially now that the scales have shifted (which is telling enough), they really show the partiality of those complaining more than anything else, in my opinion.