Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

Is that because of the 1080p dashboard that the Series consoles launched with?
And has that changed any now that they've upgraded to a higher resolution?

 

They are not going to reduce application memory for system function so, how ever they have managed to increase the resolution, it is independent of the current memory setup.

 

Depends whats meant by fix, but it will certainly provide a sharper image. The PC version has a CAS option built in and that definitely sharpens things. NXG also mentions in his video that the PC version with FSR enabled (which incorporates sharpening) is sharper than the console versions.

 

A shame that this game has another bad implementation of RT on PC. Mixing RT effects with non-RT effects (shadows and reflections in this case) just leads to an overall worse presentation than if you just went with full non-RT. That's because there is no consistency in the quality of say shadows. This makes both the "good" shadows and the bad shadows stand out far more than if it was only bad shadows. In other words, if it was just non-RT shadows you get used to it and your mind just kind of fills in detail or ignores bad details as it is just the norm. But with RT mixed with non-RT, your mind can never get to that point because it's constantly being reminded of the worse non-RT shadows by the inclusion of the better RT shadows. So overall with RT enabled it just makes the whole presentation so much worse.

This was the case with Metro: Exodus' lighting before the enhanced edition came out. By far the worst RT implementation when RT was first being implemented in games.

Thankfully on PC you don't have to run with RT on. And thankfully on console it's just not there in the first place, and if they put it in sometime in the future, hopefully there will also be an option to turn it off.

IMO, for if a developer is going to use RT for some effect in their game (like shadows, or lighting, or whatever), then make it universal for that effect or don't use it at all. Using it half assed on some effects (like shadows) but not other effects (shadows again) just leads to an overall worse presentation.

RT aside however, the game looks pretty good and I love that fire propagation is back. Games that have fire effects + vegetation but no fire propagation just look bad. And bonus that it also has an impact on gameplay rather than just being visual bling.

Regards,
SB

 

Why would the PS5 try to push the power budget if a game is constrained by VSync?

There's no way the framebuffer amount for the 4K dashboard has any meaningful impact in the available memory.

Not at all. Hybrid RT for reflections (RT + screen space where applicable) is just standard optimization on unreal engine, for example. The games not using it end up getting terrible performance like e.g. The Ascent.

 

I am a bit disappointed Alex didn't compare the texture packs on/off on consoles, and also compare them to PC. That'd be the most interesting, technical aspect of the game, given in other games like Control, Watch Dogs Legion and many more the consoles are just using medium textures compared to Ultra /w texture pack on PC on even 8 GB cards, indicating the weakness of a shared memory pool.

But this game is basically the opposite and the only example of it. @Dictator your video was excellent otherwise as always, but that's a crucial part in your analysis that's missing.

Sure, on PC it's using DXR and native 4K, while this does add some VRAM usage, the difference is a bit too drastic. It's probably a combination of these factors as well as the VRAM allocation bug you mentioned, Alex. But if its just a bug, why does Ubisoft themselves recommend 16 GB of VRAM?

This is indeed a curious case.

 

Sure it runs better, but in general it just plain looks worse. With reflections you can kind of get around it looking worse by being REALLY careful with where you use screen space reflections, but it's really easy for you to place a screen space reflection where the artifacts show up and then it's REALLY obvious and ends up looking worse, IMO than if every reflection were screen space instead of RT.

With shadows it's far far worse when you mix the two because it's easier to see non-RT shadows compared to RT shadows. It's not as bad if there is zero dynamic lighting, but most games nowadays have at least some dynamic lights. So it becomes really jarring if you have some shadows reacting correctly to dynamic lights and some not. Obviously this is a far larger problem for games that have dynamic global lighting like Metro: Exodus. Mixing RT and non-RT shadows in that game was an absolute disaster. Yes, it ran faster, but it just looked absolutely horrible in practice. Metro: Exodus EE was significantly better, but even there using RT for all lighting led to some situations where the presentation was worse than the non-EE version. Although on the whole the whole was much better because the lighting and shadows were consisten.

IMO - the best use of hybrid RT and rasterization is when you use RT for all of a targetted effect (all shadows or all reflections or all AO, etc.) combined with using rasterization tricks for everything else. Then you don't have a situation where you have inconsistent quality of effects. In this situation I would leave RT on if it didn't tank performance at the resolution I play at.

So for example, IMO, all RT reflections + rasterized lighting and shadow tricks. Or all RT lighting and shadows mixed with some form of rasterized reflection tricks. But situations where you have some RT lighting and shadows mixed with some rasterized lighting and shadows? Almost always crap, IMO. Mixing some RT reflections with some rasterized reflection tricks? Generally crap, but a really good developer might be able to get away with it if they are really careful and you never see the artifacts from non-RT reflections.

In situations like that, if I had the option to turn off RT, I'd just disable RT instead of having that inconsistent presentation regardless of how well the game ran with RT on.

So, in something like Deathloop I'd enable RTAO. In something like like Far Cry 6, I'd disable RT no matter how well it ran.

Regards,
SB

 

Isn't SSR used for on-screen objects in the reflection? Why would there be artifacts in that case?

 

It is just for comparison. But you have 2 consoles. Both push the same amount of pixels, effects and frame out. If one of the consoles wouldn't be pushing as much as it could (almost all the time) the developer wouldn't have limited the resolution to such a strange value. So my guess would be it is the PS5 that is pushing out as much as it could (well maybe it could do a little bit more but on average it shouldn't go much higher. Else the resolution limit wouldn't make sense. Yes it could also be the xbox that is limiting here, but that is not my guess
That is why I'm guessing, that the PS5 will hit its max power budget while xbox is far from it. But as the game is same for same, it is an excellent benchmark for this kind of test. And yes, I know there might be some things that are API efficiency bound.

 

It' isn't just the framebuffer size, but all the assets that are larger. Otherwise you get crisp text but all the game tiles will be blurry. So assuming all the assets are properly "4k", they would be 4x as big as the same size on screen assets as 1080p.

 

The most obvious artifact. Anything that isn't in screen space won't be show in a reflection. So, when looked at with the right angle screen space reflections look pretty decent. But they quickly break down as you move around them.

So, reflections behind the camera aren't reflected. Objects to the right or left of the camera view aren't reflected. Objects obscured by geometry (like something behind a tree, car, wall, etc.) won't be reflected.

So, if you strafe left and right reflections will break down as things "pop" into and out of the reflective surface. Likewise if something is obscured by an object, moving forwards or backwards will make that object "pop" into or out of the reflection depending on whether it's obscured to the camera even if the reflective surface should show that objects reflection regardless, like say a mirror on a wall.

It's a computationally cheap effect that generally looks "OK", but breaks down quite easily.

Regards,
SB

 

How does the ray tracing on consoles hold up in FC6 vs the pc implementation, DF going to cover that?

 

No Ray tracing on consoles, only tear tracing.

 

AMD exclusive tear tracing!

 

Aha says something about Ubisoft again, i wildly assume this form of ray tracing is kinda doable on the premium consoles atleast. Not much to miss out on anyways, it is graphically not all that inspiring neither its RT implementation.

 

they were already behind on development in that game. It was delayed heavily as it is. I don't think they were going to prioritize RT given the state of the game 1 year ago.