Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2017]

For the love of god, can't anybody find a cure for graphics-slider fever!?!

 

Battle Royale / King of the Hill is kind of a new genre. H1Z1 King of the Hill was the first big one, then PUBG blew up after H1Z1, and now Fortnite is eating into PUBG's success.

PUBG is more similar to H1Z1 than Fortnite is to the others. H1Z1 / PUBG are more serious in tone and have a more complicated loot system with different weapon attachments for each of the various weapons, and different levels of armor etc. Fortnite BR focuses more on action with a more simplified loot system, has no vehicles and also adds a building mechanic to the game (which is the main differentiator).

 

Resolution doesn't help Fortnite that much given the art direction. It would have been better traded-off doing other things.

 

Building mechanic certainly changes the game. It’s different enough to stand on its own but I prefer PUBG more

 

sorry my mistake I thought that was on the PC, I thought this was yet another post of ppl posting modded skyrim pictures and claiming its the second coming of hendrix.
but even for xb1 its still not great check out other xb1 games for better scenery gfx

Even WRT the graphics, sure its different styles but

but man PUBG looks flat out bad, even the PC version looks bad

 

Assassins Creed Origins

But yea I agree. The question was asked why it was left at 4K@30. It was an under use of the available power. I suggested it could have been to make room for mods. So I wanted to show that there was some they existed.

 

yes for example, or new far cry games, star wars etc

 

Switch's Resident Evil Revelations is best played in mobile mode
Great on the go but falls short when docked.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-resident-evil-revelations-switch-analysis

All cutscenes are low resolution pre-rendered video clips that look worse than the real-time graphics and some of the presentation choices feel a little strange - like the persistence of a 720p HUD into the 1080p docked experience. The general animation and look of the game is also rather dated. Characters animation is rather simplistic, the field of view is very low, the environment looks boxy and textures possess a low resolution. And even with the bar set this low, the uncapped frame-rate still drops into mid-30s territory when really we'd hoped for a locked 60fps. Curiously, performance actually seems smoother when gaming on the go - the area where this port feels most impressive.

There's the same 1080p/720p resolution split in docked and mobile modes and cutbacks compared to the other current-gen machines are evident, but mostly well-judged overall.

The biggest cut is disappointing though - anti-aliasing is removed completely, certain texture elements are of a lower resolution and on top of that, Capcom has chosen to add a sharpening filter. This results in sharper looking textures but also more visible noise and shimmering.

While the graphical compromises are fairly well-judged overall, Revelations 2 retains the same wobbly performance as the first game. It attempts to reach 60fps but generally falls far below this point. Now, we've experienced issues with PS4 frame-rate on earlier builds of the game, but several patches on, it's pretty solid at the target 60fps. Revelations 2 on Switch again delivers a variable experience mostly between 30fps to 60fps - it doesn't feel great to play and we really would have preferred the option for a locked, properly frame-paced 30fps experience.

 

- native 4K, no dynamic res on X1X
- no extra graphic details over other consoles
- solid 30fps

 

I love how they circle and zoom to show the "obvious" improvement then I can tell which is which. DF needs to lay of the hyperbolic descriptions ("massive improvement", etc.). Just show the results and STFU with their opinion.

Still more pixels no 60fps, no PC settings, no new textures? Bungie edited one config files and called it a day.

 

What the Bungie Technical Artist guy did talk about was "Less available overhead available on the 4Pro versions of the game" which lead to the dynamic scaling used on 4Pro while base PS4 has static lower resolution.

The differences then comes between PC and consoles, as Bungie used same graphical settings as the 4Pro except for higher fixed resolution on One X.

DF then goes on to show the blurriness of checkerboarding rendering on 4Pro compared to true native 4K rendering OneX, by doing what all image quality comparers do -- zooming in on the finer details and showing the differences.​

 

Considering it is capped at 30 FPS with virtually no instances of frame drops, I'm wondering whether the XBO-X is even remotely stressed by this. Is it a case where Bungie just didn't want to put in the effort to max the XBO-X? Is it a case where they wanted to keep feature parity with PS4-P? Is it a case where this was actually the best they could do while maintaining a locked 30 FPS and a locked 4k?

DF touched on that a little and it makes me wish someone at Bungie could elaborate on it. Unlikely to ever happen, but I am curious.

Whatever it was, it was a better choice than some developers have made by pushing the XBO-X version so hard that their game ends up performing worse on XBO-X than a weaker machine, even if it features higher IQ settings.

Regards,
SB

 

DF's stress test isn't even close to being the most stressful area of the game. Public events, which are mini missions in large open public spaces where you can have 6+ people with super abilities going off and dozens of enemy AI on screen.

Bungie straight up said it's a CPU limitation. DF seems to only test the campaign, which is not where the CPU is stressed.

 

As far as know this game runs pretty well on PC so I wouldn't be shocked if this could run 1080/60 on X1X. To me this is more of a keep parity across consoles decision.

 

Capcom needs to include a 30fps cap and call it a day. It is decisions like these that irritate gamers. The developer was well aware their game wasn't holding the target 60fps, so why not lock it at 30fps? Or at least give the user the option. It sounds like everything else is fine for a $20 budget release, but the inconsistent update is jarring. I may buy these, but only if they patch in a 30fps cap, or a less likely patch that gets the framerate to hold tighter to 60fps.

 

Read my post above.

PCs have way better CPUs than console...

 

Meant to say "wouldn't be shocked"...

Yes I know the consoles have "weak CPU's"...hear that argument a million times, but considering how this runs on PC and that it's doing native 4K 30fps with potentially some overhead remaining I'm not convinced that X1X couldn't do a 60ps mode.

 

But DF didn't test the CPU stressful areas. The entire story campaign is taxing on the GPU, not CPU. You need to go into patrol and do public events with lots of enemy AI and players on screen.

DF's stress point doesn't even allow for multiple players, that part of the campaign can only be played solo.

I've seen twitch streamers (most of them keep the FPS on screen) do public events with 1080ti's, not even running at 4K, and their framerate runs at around half compared to doing PVP or campaign.

 

They likely wanted to remove the completely randomness of the network from their controlled GPU stress sections. DF indicated that was the same section that causes resolution drops on the 4Pro.

 

Makes sense to compensate for the fact that viewers are looking at a compressed video and may not be viewing that video at native resolution, IMO.