Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

[Shortbread]

Created by a core staff of just 12 developers, The Ascent is a visually stunning title shown in various forms as a next-gen showcase - but it's actually built to straddle the generational divide, and to deliver ray tracing via DX12 on PC! See how this game looks running on all Xboxes and PC in John Linneman's tech review.

 

[cwjs]

I always really admire these games where AAA pedigree artists branch out to make something that looks much more expensive than it is. Watching the video now -- not expecting amazing performance

edit: nope, pretty impressed!

 

[Davros]

The game reminds me of Expendable
Famous for supporting Matrox's (at the time) EMBM

 

[mr magoo]

Playing on XSX right now and it’s very impressive. Hard to believe it was made by such a small team, everything on screen is so rich in details. It’s pleasure to watch, lots and lots of objects on screen, beautiful lightning and particle effects, dark cyberpunk atmosphere. Great music and sounds and most important it’s fun to play.

 

[PSman1700]

Playing on XSX right now and it’s very impressive. Hard to believe it was made by such a small team, everything on screen is so rich in details. It’s pleasure to watch, lots and lots of objects on screen, beautiful lightning and particle effects, dark cyberpunk atmosphere. Great music and sounds and most important it’s fun to play.

And this is what Joej seems to talk about.... small devs being able to pump out impressive looking games like that on a nice budget and time frame, running on more then just highest end hardware`.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Unfortunately, DX12 issues still exist in the launch version on PC. Some streamers have gone back to DX11 mode even though DX12 mode looks better just because performance is so inconsistent in DX12 mode at the moment.

Also, loading times when starting a new game for XBO-X about 2:47, for XBS-X about 0:27. Thank goodness no HDDs in the next gen consoles as well as massively faster CPU cores for processing what is being loaded.

Regards,
SB

 

[Allandor]

Playing on XSX right now and it’s very impressive. Hard to believe it was made by such a small team, everything on screen is so rich in details. It’s pleasure to watch, lots and lots of objects on screen, beautiful lightning and particle effects, dark cyberpunk atmosphere. Great music and sounds and most important it’s fun to play.

I'm even more impressed, that this small team has delivered the game running well (except for some loading times) on all Xbox consoles. Well the dx12 mode on PC is another thing, but I really didn't expect the game running on xb1 and looking so good.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I was just playing and with ray tracing and ultra settings it looks incredible, but the stutters can be very jarring. I'll probably have to play dx11 or wait on it to get patched.

 

[zed]

Hats off to the guys it looks very nice, Im jealous, yes isometric does make it easier to get something looking good but still they have chosen well to go this route. Loading does seem slow though (nearly 30 secs), that would be my only complaint.
D3d12 is a joke though, its now 6+ years and still its not widely used (In the same time we went from d3d3, d3d5, d3d6, d3d7, d3d8, d3d9) , I are also stuck on d3d11 cause d3d12 just aint fully ready. I havent been following it but what is the cause of the holdup?

 

[techuse]

Hats off to the guys it looks very nice, Im jealous, yes isometric does make it easier to get something looking good but still they have chosen well to go this route. Loading does seem slow though (nearly 30 secs), that would be my only complaint.
D3d12 is a joke though, its now 6+ years and still its not widely used (In the same time we went from d3d3, d3d5, d3d6, d3d7, d3d8, d3d9) , I are also stuck on d3d11 cause d3d12 just aint fully ready. I havent been following it but what is the cause of the holdup?

Getting good performance on Nvidia GPUs continues to be problematic for developers. DX11 is also much less dev effort in general.

 

[Kugai Calo]

Hats off to the guys it looks very nice, Im jealous, yes isometric does make it easier to get something looking good but still they have chosen well to go this route. Loading does seem slow though (nearly 30 secs), that would be my only complaint.
D3d12 is a joke though, its now 6+ years and still its not widely used (In the same time we went from d3d3, d3d5, d3d6, d3d7, d3d8, d3d9) , I are also stuck on d3d11 cause d3d12 just aint fully ready. I havent been following it but what is the cause of the holdup?

Some applications just don't need the flexibility of D3D12, like submitting GPU commands from multiple threads or explicitly manage EVERY GPU resource by yourself. To use the newer features they may use D3D11on12.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Remember the game was made by 12 people, or something. I think they’re really relying on UE4 to provide good performance etc. Hopefully they can iron it out, but it’s not a big AAA. I’m willing to cut a bit of slack.

 

[mr magoo]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1420838790449483781

 

[zed]

Getting good performance on Nvidia GPUs continues to be problematic for developers. DX11 is also much less dev effort in general.

OK , I have a nvidia GPU, so if I had AMD then I would see better performance with D3D12. Seems weird cause usually nvidia seem to be more on top than AMD WRT drivers (though truth be told I havent been following this since about 2013)

 

[PSman1700]

OK , I have a nvidia GPU, so if I had AMD then I would see better performance with D3D12. Seems weird cause usually nvidia seem to be more on top than AMD WRT drivers (though truth be told I havent been following this since about 2013)

He’s stuck on gcn vs kepler still. You can either choose to ignore it have that somewhere else.

 

[techuse]

OK , I have a nvidia GPU, so if I had AMD then I would see better performance with D3D12. Seems weird cause usually nvidia seem to be more on top than AMD WRT drivers (though truth be told I havent been following this since about 2013)

I cant speak for this game in particular WRT AMD, but Nvidia performs worse using DX12 in the majority of games with API choice. AMD performs better using DX12 in the majority of games with API choice.

 

[mr magoo]

holy cow RT in this game looks excellent!

 

[trinibwoy]

holy cow RT in this game looks excellent!

Looks really nice. Will play in a few years once all the bugs are worked out.

 

[zed]

holy cow RT in this game looks excellent!

Its decent, but I can't see any RT GI ( just reflections, decent GI is a lot more expensive, so I assume thats why they havent added it ) and this game is screaming out for them, it would be a perfect showcase with all the flashing lights from the weapons, explosions etc in the game.
I wonder if they added the rain, cause they added RT reflections?

 

[cwjs]

And this is what Joej seems to talk about.... small devs being able to pump out impressive looking games like that on a nice budget and time frame, running on more then just highest end hardware`.

I might be mischaracterizing what joej says, but what I've read has an emphasis on machine learning and hands off generation -- the ascent is kinda the opposite tack (and the one I personally believe in) -- everyone there is an expert.

The industry paid these artists a lot of money to cultivate impressive skillsets on the AAA games they worked on (bulletstorm, the new wolfensteins, gears of war...) and they branched off own their own to hand craft something amazing looking. There's heavy procedural generation in the ascent, but it's the kind where a skilled artist/engineer spends several days and codes a tool to generate the perfect staircase from scratch, not the kind where you turn a few knobs and get something kinda realistic looking.