Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2020]

No idea, but aren’t you more likely to see uneven frame rates at 120hz than you are at 60hz?
Seems more likely you would.
Though off hand (not playing games myself) higher frame rates with uneven frame rates prolly feels better than a stable 60fps

 

Games aren't really developed with higher framerates in mind at the moment.

I believe you can run the 1X in I think it's 120fps mode at 1440p(?), which helps in some games but actually hurts others, DF did a video I think on it.

I think we'll see more about 60fps+ next gen, as more tv's will support it and the consoles will also, I also expect some game support also.

 

Not much uneven there

They aren't console centric, DF got Alex, a whole person/section dedicated to PC gaming, aside from the usual pc gaming related stuff done by the rest of the team. Best versions of games usually are on pc, the platform where the best hardware is available and always evolves. As tech related DF is, they very well know there's another world besides 7 years locked-spec consoles.

 

Think it can be if you run it on 1X in 120fps mode, I think some games benefit and others can actually be worse. Don't remember all the details.

I do agree with you, but their content output is a lot higher for console.
I personally think they've shown quite a few times the benefits of higher (120+) framerates specifically, and a generally when talking about pc versions.

Edit: home now and found the video, not rewatched it to see how badly I remembered what they said yet.

 

If anyone watches, could you give a tldr of it, as I'll not be able to watch for now.

 

Alex has a 120 fps monitor and prefers to game at high framerates. They dont discuss it often because of the difficulty in showing it to gamers.

 

with GSync or Freesync, both of which I experienced although I currently have a Freesync2 monitor, there is no uneven framerates.

The only game that gives me issues is King of Fighters XIII because you can lock the animations to the framerate. On my previous 240Hz GSync monitor, the animations were so fast that I could only but laugh, I didnt know what I was doing, same with my current monitor. That game must be locked at 60fps.

Mortal Kombat X, Street Fighter IV, etc, are also locked at 60 fps, there is no way you can unlock them, afaik.

On a different note, youtube videos at 60fps that I found so smooth, now I find them suitable to watch and they are ok, but they don't feel as smooth as they once felt....sometimes the animations can be a bit "jumpy", also the transitions.

 

Interesting that Oles Shishkovstov views RT as not the most interesting part of next gen consoles. There's been at least as much revealed about the storage subsystem, so I doubt that's what has him more excited than RT.

And that's saying a lot considering the implication that the RT solutions in next gen consoles might be a step above RTX as they'll be redoing the entire rendering pipeline for RT for the next iteration of their in house engine.

So, here's to hoping he's referring to the audio solution on next gen consoles. This could make sense as 4A games really leans towards atmospheric presentation in their games and nothing enhances the atmosphere of a place more than audio.

While I'm not going to get my hopes up, I'd be ecstatic and flying over the moon if we get properly good audio in games. The past decade plus of relatively flat and uninteresting audio in games has left me jaded that we'll ever see good audio in games again. The focus of large developers on the console game space has basically killed any innovation in audio.

But, that also means that if the 2 console makers go big on audio, that we may see a new resurgence in developers focusing on audio once again.

Personally, I'd trade all the RT in the world for fantastic audio in games. But if we can get both, that's even better.

Regards,
SB

 

This kinda implies that they will not support non RT supported hardware which I find hard to believe. Even for a next gen only game, on the PC side that would be cutting out a large section of hardware.
Be nice to see a studio do it though

Personally I think PC did it to itself, sure console didn't help situation though.

 

In a way, yes. While Creative Labs was huge in pushing enhanced audio with EAX 2.0 which had no licensing fees which lead to multiple hardware vendors (including Realtek with MB chipset audio) supporting it and thus opening things up for software developers (larger hardware install base = more developer interest), they then subsequently killed it by closing it off with EAX 3.0. A3D arguably had the better solution, but with a relatively small hardware install base, it saw relatively sparse support in games. Even if the Creative Labs lawsuit hadn't accelerated the death of the company, it's highly likely it would have failed on its own.

And I say that coming from the perspective of being a Pro Audio Spectrum user (Thunder board before that being a fantastic and cheaper SoundBlaster competitor), which is both good and bad. Good because I loved that they (Media Vision) provided a better value proposition for PC audio than Creative Labs. Bad because Media Vision actively used bad accounting practices to inflate their sales numbers which eventually lead to the death of the company. Media Vison then rebranded itself as...Aureal Semiconductor.

You can read a little about that sordid part of Aureal's Past at wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Vision )

IE - I loved that the company "survived", but I expected them to fail due to management just as Media Vision had done.

Regardless, all of this was soon coming to an end with MS launching the Xbox and giving prominent PC developers an easy path to console development. Basically the start of the death of many prominent PC AAA developers focusing on PC development.

By the time that PC positional audio and effects was dying (exemplified by the Doom 3 EAX debacle) most former AAA PC developers had already transitioned to a console first approach (Infinity Ward, for example) which basically meant there was no longer room for most AAA developers to push 3D positional audio and Hardware accelerated audio effects. IE - hardware accelerated audio was dying because AAA developers were now focusing on platforms which had no access to hardware accelerated audio effects.

Regards,
SB

 

How often does A4 release a new game? I looked it up: Metro 2010, Lats Light 2013, Exodus 2019.
So if they plan to release the next one after... say 4 years, assuming RT on minimal specs does not sound that risky.
Personally i guess RT is on all entry level GPUs that launch in 2021. Or i hope so at least.

 

No. With DXR most GPUs should be able to do RT using higher level API.

 

Where did they say that?

 

Profits are a factor of revenue less expenses. If RT render path leads to significantly less expenses your ROI ratio can go significantly up by focusing on the console space at the cost of your PC market.

 

No. Only pascal is the only family of cards to support compute based DXR. That’s a far cry from most GPUs.

I don’t know or think they will. Performance is terrible on pascals.

 

RT "resolution" can be decoupled from the chosen resolution and also use less rays. You could probably scale to some horid mess of a result at an acceptable framerate if no traditional raster backup path exits.

If its good enough for console in times gone by it will be interesting to see things upended like that.

 

If DXR works on Pascal, it should work on GCN and RDNA1