Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2020]
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I thought it stands for Drag Reduction System on F1.
This sounds rather overly blanke Statement nihilating the actual reality - did you ever try out all these games and look at the differences? When it was covering things like ground and Walls which were otherwise normal maps on consoles, it was a pretty big Deal...
PC games gifted us with a lot of great
displacement tessellation over the years. The Metro games since Last Light have been excellent in this regard. I recommend you Look at that example from my Video covering Metro Exodus (2019). Or better yet, my Video thereafter covering the quest to run Metro Exodus at 4K. I Show quite well how tessellation on the PC is using displacement maps for nearly every surface in the game.
That game is one of many historical examples that you, imo, are ignoring with such a Statement.
This is why many games have higher settings for tessellation to help prevent this. The 60 fps Mode in Demon Souls has this exact same swimming effect not as readily visible im its 30 fps Mode.
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I have played those games on PC yes. The Battlefield/Battlefront games do not suffer from much if any noticeable swimming. Dice has by far the best implementation of tessellation I've ever seen when you set the terrain setting to ultra. I haven't played Demon souls for myself yet but from John's video review it's not clear to me that its superior to Dice work. Metro games are decent there just isn't much of an improvement due to limited surfaces receiving displacement and the level of displacement being very slight.. They also use tessellation to smooth out silhouettes of character models which honestly I find to be a complete waste and almost impossible to notice during actual gameplay.
I completely disagree here. The Battlefield and Battlefront games have obvious swimming. I even ended up using the visibile swimming in them as an example for an advantage a nanite /microplygon model would have over typical GPU tessellation in my video covering UE5's reveal.
And I think you are also very wrong here on the Metro Games' example, please watch this segment:
I have seen your Metro video. I think outside of the under water pebbles and the brick wall the other examples are not too hot. Some of the examples just look different and not necessarily better. Your swimming example in Battlefront 1 was very minor and it was improved a lot for Battlefield 1. The swimming effect in Ubisoft's games is not at all comparable to that.
I think you're vastly under selling the Tessellation in that Metro video. Sure it's not game changing but in every shown instance there's a clear improvement. Not least of which is taking objects with obvious straight/unnatural edges and rounding them out. That's something that pretty much everyone on this forum should universally agree is a good thing and I've seen complained about, many, many times in the past.
+1 Things that should look round but don't look round is very triggering and should be banished from our screens.
The metro video is good. At least rounded things should have tesselation if it is possible.
Some of us just have different views on how much a given improvement translates to net visual gain. I personally think the rounding out of those slight angles on the wheel for example contributes very little. The underwater pebbles looking like actual rocks and not a flat texture contributes a lot to my eyes. The tree trunk example is one of the comparisons that just looks different and not better to me.
Thinking about it and reading this thread, here's some more speculation about tessellation.
As i see it, the limiting factors on tessellation's usefulness are
1. the swimming/cost at large distances,
2. your renderer's ability to light and shadow the tessellated geometry
3. How well your scenes and artists work with displacement maps for major detail.
1 will always be a factor (I'm not an expert on the performance costs, but I don't think tessellating the whole scene equally is ever going feasible,) and 3 will depend always heavily on the game, and 2 is the main one where we've seen serious improvement recently. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think there are any new technical solutions for the swimming (or, worse, the uniform growth of surfaces as you get close to them), just creative ones like smaller environments, groundcover and fog to hide it, etc. Ultimately I dont see tessellation as any kind of a huge selling point feature, it's just one potentially good way to render detailed surfaces, along with various forms of parallax mapping and simply throwing geometry at the problem.
I do wonder if we might see more of it than past gens because that it's not strictly bound by resolution, though. As dictator said in this thread, consoles are always chasing a much too high drender resolution. Tessellation mostly scales with geometric complexity, not pixel count, right? Might be one opportunity for a disproportionate gain despite absurd pixel counts.
As i see it, the limiting factors on tessellation's usefulness are
1. the swimming/cost at large distances,
2. your renderer's ability to light and shadow the tessellated geometry
3. How well your scenes and artists work with displacement maps for major detail.
1 will always be a factor (I'm not an expert on the performance costs, but I don't think tessellating the whole scene equally is ever going feasible,) and 3 will depend always heavily on the game, and 2 is the main one where we've seen serious improvement recently. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think there are any new technical solutions for the swimming (or, worse, the uniform growth of surfaces as you get close to them), just creative ones like smaller environments, groundcover and fog to hide it, etc. Ultimately I dont see tessellation as any kind of a huge selling point feature, it's just one potentially good way to render detailed surfaces, along with various forms of parallax mapping and simply throwing geometry at the problem.
I do wonder if we might see more of it than past gens because that it's not strictly bound by resolution, though. As dictator said in this thread, consoles are always chasing a much too high drender resolution. Tessellation mostly scales with geometric complexity, not pixel count, right? Might be one opportunity for a disproportionate gain despite absurd pixel counts.
One might appreciate DOA5/6 polybudgets.
Now if only they got their act together with their engine tech to show some really round... volleyballs.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...FQnCWM6fzfH8ZTNImSeEGqljoK3yyctCBJaopwxhH0xv0
Two of the Red Team's strongest graphics cards in years.
Next generation is here Thanks DF.
Two of the Red Team's strongest graphics cards in years.
Next generation is here
Thanks DF.In 60 fps mode there is a fog on the ground to hide the swimming effect in Demon's soul's. This is visible in DF video when he compare performance mode and fidelity mode.
DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...sassins-creed-valhalla-ps5-vs-xbox-series-x-s
Assassin's Creed Valhalla PS5 vs Xbox Series X - which copes best with 60fps?
And what's the score with Series S?
For many, this is the most crucial of the next generation cross-platform comparisons. The new Assassin's Creed is a big game, cross-gen in nature for sure, but apparently built with the new wave of machines at least partly in mind. Valhalla also represents a generational shift for the franchise as this is the first time a new series entry arrives on consoles with a 60fps target - on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at least, delivered with varying levels of success. Ubisoft Montreal aims for complete platform parity between Sony and Microsoft's premium consoles, but the results when they do diverge are perhaps unexpected.
Anvil Next gets a revamp, but there is the sense that much of Valhalla's shift in aesthetic comes from the art side. In fairness, this can tap into the engine's strengths: a sizeable enough proportion of the rendering budget is spent on the volumetric clouds system, and there are some spectacular vista shots delivered in the new game. The inclusion of wintry terrain also sees the introduction of snow displacement, similar to what we've seen in the past in titles including Horizon Zero Dawn's Frozen Wilds expansion. Ultimately, the engine continues to provide the beautiful landscapes seen since the franchise shift that began with Assassin's Creed Origins, but hopefully the dense cityscapes of Unity can be revisited with the shift to next-gen. One bonus feature we're happy to see though: per-object motion blur arrives in Assassin's Creed for the first time.
...
Assassin's Creed Valhalla PS5 vs Xbox Series X - which copes best with 60fps?
And what's the score with Series S?
For many, this is the most crucial of the next generation cross-platform comparisons. The new Assassin's Creed is a big game, cross-gen in nature for sure, but apparently built with the new wave of machines at least partly in mind. Valhalla also represents a generational shift for the franchise as this is the first time a new series entry arrives on consoles with a 60fps target - on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at least, delivered with varying levels of success. Ubisoft Montreal aims for complete platform parity between Sony and Microsoft's premium consoles, but the results when they do diverge are perhaps unexpected.
Anvil Next gets a revamp, but there is the sense that much of Valhalla's shift in aesthetic comes from the art side. In fairness, this can tap into the engine's strengths: a sizeable enough proportion of the rendering budget is spent on the volumetric clouds system, and there are some spectacular vista shots delivered in the new game. The inclusion of wintry terrain also sees the introduction of snow displacement, similar to what we've seen in the past in titles including Horizon Zero Dawn's Frozen Wilds expansion. Ultimately, the engine continues to provide the beautiful landscapes seen since the franchise shift that began with Assassin's Creed Origins, but hopefully the dense cityscapes of Unity can be revisited with the shift to next-gen. One bonus feature we're happy to see though: per-object motion blur arrives in Assassin's Creed for the first time.
...
Again, PS5 so much more stable. MS needs to get on top of their tools fast. And Sony needs to get their fingers out of their noses and get VRR working for those who can take advantage of it.
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