Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

XSX holding about 20% res boost over ps5 and both drops FPS but some areas hold on XSX over ps5 like top of crane and vice versa, with VRR XSX is the way to go I’d say easily. This is the first true next gen RT tech used impressive results. Worried about that sub 1080p in ps5 they’re using this tech in future games they said wonder how it will fare

 

20% res xsx advantage and small perf advatnage of ps5 so almost behave ideally as paper specs (20% difference in teraflops, 25% bandwidth), and I remember this from interview with metro exodus Chief Technical Officer Oleksandr Shyshkovtsov:

so hard to imagine more compute heavy game

 

I think that later in the gen we will achieve similar results but with higher resolution. With RT and all other things. Also does VRR helps with frame drops here?

I think that better framerate is due to lower resolution.

 

Series X is using 4X VRS, so not an apples to apples comparison.

 

didn't they say the ps5 would use their software VRS ?

 

Its only VRS tier 1 and not heavly used afaik on pc it gives you like 1 fps

"In Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition we do have Variable Rate Shading, a Tier 1 implementation that we use to reduce the actual number of pixels drawn for our transparent effects. That helps performance a little bit, but we haven't gone fully into Tier 2 VRS yet."
https://wccftech.com/metro-exodus-e...are-much-more-powerful-than-we-first-thought/

 

That would explain why I thought some of the dirt/rock textures looked slightly sharper at points on the PS5. And please no, this isn't a slight against VRS folks, hopefully, they can implement it more regularly on the PS5 (if the hardware logic is there to support it) so PS5 can maintain higher resolution boundaries with very minimal loss to pixel/texture quality.

 

Sure but all things being equal a stable framerate is often most costly than a higher resolution (with lower framerate). We have seen this notably with AC Valhalla when they improved XSX framerate by reducting the resolution (via DRS). The resolution cost of a more stable framerate was very high.

I also found the game actually looking sharper on PS5 in a same cutscene. But I think it's because of the gamma difference and the resolution is perceptibly the same in that cutscene.

Alex is talking only about resolution in the open world, but what about the resolution during shootings? In a very demanding shooting scene (starting at 10:25) I counted around 1080p on both machines. I think the min could be 1080p on PS5 too (maybe a hard limit). I think we'll get to the bottom of this with the high quality screenshots and analysis hopefully done by @VGA.

 

Sorry I don't get it. Are you implying that lowering resolution is more difficult than increasing it or something?
You get better framerate by lowering the resolution and it is pretty obvious thing I presume.

 

So is PS5 but using an MSAA hacked Variant, not Tier 1 API Variant. In practive though the exact same visuals. PS5 cannot do 2x1 or 1x2 degredations, and for some reason, they chose to do the same Level of degredations limitations on XSX or XSS. I imagine for parity reasons, same why they might not have done Tier 2 implementation on xbox or PC. Parity and time investmentdfor the release.

 

Thanks for the update. its the disadvantage of one console lacking features.

 

did they really only leverage it for particle effects? Seems like a minor addition, unless effects were really causing the consoles to lose performance.

 

It is all forward transparencies - hair, particles, glass, transparent layers like ice

 

(1728+1512)/2=1620
(1512+1296)/2=1404
(1620^2*1,777)/(1404^2*1,777)=1,33
33% res xsx advantage

 

I don't think your math is right -- these are only vertical resolutions. 1404p is 3504384 pixels, 1620p is 4665600 pixels. 25% difference.

(Not to mention that the high and low ranges in and of themselves don't imply an average -- one could hang out higher or lower within its range. We can just trust the number df gave)

 

So I started Metro Exodus and I finally understand why it looks good but not amazing, even with the super duper RT GI people have been raving about. It’s the textures. They just don’t look like PBR and so they make the game look a bit dated. Finally I get it. Wood is brown, bricks are brown, but wood doesn’t look like wood and bricks don’t look like bricks. It gives the visual a very last gen look, or even worse.

Shame cause the lighting is of course great, I just wish they had used better shaders cause right now a game like COD and many others look a lot more realistic simply due of much more realistic surfaces, without having to go full on RT.

 

It depends on how you count:
xsx has a 33% resolution advantage over ps5
(1620^2*1,777) / (1404^2*1,777) = 1,33
or ps5 has 25% lower resolution than xsx
(1404^2*1,777) / (1620^2*1,777) = 0,75

1620^2*1,777 = 4663558
1404^2*1,777 = 3502850

Just like with teraflops for example:
12 tf is more than 10 tf by 20%
but 10 tf is less than 12 tf by 16.7%.

 

16:9 for pixel count.
You typically would do x * y = Pixels
So x = 16/9* y
And y=y
So 16/9*y^2 = resolution
it’s correct math.