Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]
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Tom is smart enough to wait for final release code before diving into the reasons.
There's no clear reason here, PS5 has a significant ROP performance over XSX, and it can't hold 60 either. He's right to wait - he brings up rapid traversal with horses being 10fps higher on XSX. There's no reason for that, and if fill rate was an issue, then why is PS5 underperforming?
He does make mention that PS5 outperforms XSX by 10fps in a heavy transparency section of the forest. So I think that is his nod here. That being said, it may not be ROP based. It could be culling/triangle discard as well. It could even be CPU based. There are many reasons here that could be causing this that I wouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly.
Wait for optimizations to finish, there is a lot of optimization work as they near release.
Need an explanation on this one, as these types of frame rate dips to remind me of DMC Remastered. There was an empty room in DMC 5 Remastered and it couldn't hold 40fps.
XSX all over the place in frame rate yet not showing anything at all and neither can PS5 hold it's locked 60.
Heavy Alpha Effects:
Makes no sense as to why XSX is ahead here. So Tom is correct to wait imo.
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davis.anthony
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I think it's important to remember with DF's video's is while they try their hardest to match scenes they're not always matched perfectly which does throw results out and can make gaps appear larger then they are.
RT mode in RE:8 is a big example of this during the water monster scene - XSX is ~2 seconds a head of PS5 so the scenes aren't exactly matched, if you run the video at 0.25 playback speed and compare both while trying to match them there isn't as large a gap as the video makes it seem (XSX is still a head though)
RT mode in RE:8 is a big example of this during the water monster scene - XSX is ~2 seconds a head of PS5 so the scenes aren't exactly matched, if you run the video at 0.25 playback speed and compare both while trying to match them there isn't as large a gap as the video makes it seem (XSX is still a head though)
I want to talk about the temporal reprojection pass done in Vanguard. Now if you remember the summary I have done about the checkerboard rendering done in Dark Souls Remastered we could see how the ID Buffer could remove the ghosting effects created by the temporal reprojection that can typically be seen in CBR (and possibly many TAA methods). So I thought ID Buffer (hardware or software) could be used in others games using CBR and others reconstruction methods with a temporal pass, like COD Vanguard, and looking at ghosting (or lack of it) could be a good way to tell. So I have looked for it and immediately noticed a difference between Xbox Series and PS5 using the image comparison tool (first pic) in the Digital Foundry article.
Ghosting (very likely due to a temporal reprojection pass) is as far as I can tell totally removed on the PS5, and is surprisingly still there in both Xbox Series versions. Now it could be due to the fact that is has being somehow deactivated in that scene on Xbox, I doubt it, but we'd need more scenes to be sure.
If that ghosting is caused by a temporal pass they probably use some kind of ID Buffer on PS5 (and Pro version). The fact that it's only used on PS5 could be explained by the custom hardware (being on Pro) still present on PS5 cause if they used software ID Buffer they would logically also use it on Xbox Series (like they do in Dark Souls Remastered).
I think plenty of games with TAA methods could highly benefit from ID Buffer (hardware or software). For instance Kena on PS5 has plenty of ghosting due to the temporal anti-aliasing (TAAU) used in that game.
EDIT: removed reference to CBR done in Vanguard. They use their own custom reconstruction method which is AFAIK not CBR.
EDIT: as pointed out by @Allandor The ghosting is only reduced on others soldiers. But this is not conflicting the ID Buffer theory as it doesn't necessarily work perfectly on all parts.
Ghosting (very likely due to a temporal reprojection pass) is as far as I can tell totally removed on the PS5, and is surprisingly still there in both Xbox Series versions. Now it could be due to the fact that is has being somehow deactivated in that scene on Xbox, I doubt it, but we'd need more scenes to be sure.
If that ghosting is caused by a temporal pass they probably use some kind of ID Buffer on PS5 (and Pro version). The fact that it's only used on PS5 could be explained by the custom hardware (being on Pro) still present on PS5 cause if they used software ID Buffer they would logically also use it on Xbox Series (like they do in Dark Souls Remastered).
I think plenty of games with TAA methods could highly benefit from ID Buffer (hardware or software). For instance Kena on PS5 has plenty of ghosting due to the temporal anti-aliasing (TAAU) used in that game.
EDIT: removed reference to CBR done in Vanguard. They use their own custom reconstruction method which is AFAIK not CBR.
EDIT: as pointed out by @Allandor The ghosting is only reduced on others soldiers. But this is not conflicting the ID Buffer theory as it doesn't necessarily work perfectly on all parts.
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Interesting area of investigation. Does DF have access to the technical documentation? They should be able to confirm, one way or another.
Don't know why this soldier has no ghosting artifacts, but if you watch on the original source on DF, you can clearly see the ghosting on other soldiers (e.g. next to the 41m mark). So it is still present. Maybe just a problem when the screenshot was made. E.g. a few frames later or earlier or something like that.I want to talk about the temporal reprojection pass done in Vanguard. Now if you remember the summary I have done about the checkerboard rendering done in Dark Souls Remastered we could see how the ID Buffer could remove the ghosting effects created by the temporal reprojection that can typically be seen in CBR (and possibly many TAA methods). So I thought ID Buffer (hardware or software) could be used in others games using CBR and others reconstruction methods with a temporal pass, like COD Vanguard, and looking at ghosting (or lack of it) could be a good way to tell. So I have looked for it and immediately noticed a difference between Xbox Series and PS5 using the image comparison tool (first pic) in the Digital Foundry article.
Ghosting (very likely due to a temporal reprojection pass) is as far as I can tell totally removed on the PS5, and is surprisingly still there in both Xbox Series versions. Now it could be due to the fact that is has being somehow deactivated in that scene on Xbox, I doubt it, but we'd need more scenes to be sure.
If that ghosting is caused by a temporal pass they probably use some kind of ID Buffer on PS5 (and Pro version). The fact that it's only used on PS5 could be explained by the custom hardware (being on Pro) still present on PS5 cause if they used software ID Buffer they would logically also use it on Xbox Series (like they do in Dark Souls Remastered).
I think plenty of games with TAA methods could highly benefit from ID Buffer (hardware or software). For instance Kena on PS5 has plenty of ghosting due to the temporal anti-aliasing (TAAU) used in that game.
EDIT: removed reference to CBR done in Vanguard. They use their own custom reconstruction method which is AFAIK not CBR.
btw, thx to the unsharp presentation of the series s, the fire on the left (car) looks best on the screenshot (IMHO) ^^. It is much to clear on the other consoles for fast moving fire .. but that is just a coincidence.
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Good investigation, I urge you to continue to find more examples in this title and others.
Interesting. Indeed I don't have access to original DF source. Can you provide us with a high resolution screenshot of that moment at 41mn?
By the way the ID Buffer strategy to remove ghosting doesn't necessarily work perfectly well on all parts of the image. But like I wrote in my post we need more content indeed to have more cases.
It is directly on the page you linked
Just scroll down to the 4-picture-box and click the first.
Yes, OK I see it now. But we can see the ghosting here has actually being reduced compared to XSX. I already talked about that in my summary that ID buffer could also only reduce the ghosting. Seems it's also the case here.It is directly on the page you linked
Just scroll down to the 4-picture-box and click the first.
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on this note: size of ghosting could also be a symptom of frame rate, missed frames/lower frame rate could make ghosting worse etc.
you'll need to cross reference the size of ghosting vs whether it held a perfect 60.
not surprising that the ps4 does much better than the xbox one. It shows the age of these systems with the Xbox one original at 900p with enemies updating at 15fps. You can see the Series S while it has a slight resolution deficit the rest of the image makes it a solid upgrade over the one x and a huge upgrade over the one. I mean the series s is 12.33 seconds to load vs the 22.58 seconds of the one.
I really think Microsoft needs to develop some teams that go around and help developers optimize for the series consoles. I think they would be able to get a lot of bang for their buck
That's not a cheap. And without knowing what the performance issues are, the upgrade costs to a higher performing engine could be considerable.
I'm not saying for the companies to upgrade to a new engine. I am saying MS should have a team that goes around and helps to optimize the current engine for their systems. I am pretty sure they have a ton of software that figures out bottle necks nad issues in the engines. Didn't they speak to that when they designed the xbox one x ?
MS should send out a team , profile the game and run their ai on it to figure out what they can improve in the engine. Then help optimize the engine for their system. I would understand that going from say crytek to unreal 5 would cost a lot and require a lot of rework.
I'm saying, to maximize the hardware of said console, could require significant deviations of how they currently do things resulting in a lot of changes in the engine to squeeze more performance out of it. If moving to a new engine is cheaper than doing it in house, you will see some go that direction. They are likely more interested in just shipping a game as they do not have the budget luxury of optimization.
This happens everywhere and a lot. Instead of absorbing the cost to optimize, they push the requirements onto the hardware and push consumers to buy more powerful hardware if they want a better experience.
The question we need to ask is whether their title is known for the best graphics, and if doesn't result in additional sales, why bother.
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it could be , but at the same time there can be a lot they can do to enhance performance without a new engine. That is what the team is for, to decide if there are improvements they can help implement. No dev is going to take an almost complete game and switch to a new engine. But a dev can implement some changes before a game ships
Or provide the tools to developers, which I'm sure they do.
Do you know how many games are being released and in development. Not a small amount.
If a developer needs help I'm sure if they reach out xbox provides it.
What MS needs to do is keep improving the dev environment, tools and produce good POC's etc.
Something I have been thinking though.
MS needs their own DF team for internal studios that advocate for technologies, analyse in development games, pretty much exactly what DF does.
in my experience they offer this already. They develop examples and tutorials of how to leverage things. Large Publishers are generally the ones providing additional support in the way you are describing. It's rare that MS will send their own teams to resolve issues unless there is profitable reason to do so.
ie XGS will do this for their own first party titles, but are not likely to engage in 3P support in this manner unless they are invested.
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