Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

They wanted to bring it to PC first, but are now looking at how and if to bring it to console.
The same will probably be with their next project (AoM?).

 

Is that confirmed or assumption?

It shouldn't even be if. Consoles support M&K, even if you can't get controller to work perfectly it should be on console.

 

He's not the only one.
I wouldn't say that I'm in the "overall issue" camp, but I also don't think it's unnoticeable when on. It's a quality decrease for a performance increase. I do, however, think the overall image quality is generally higher than decreasing the resolution 10% or more. It's just that the parts with lower rate shading stand out more, as opposed to the entire scene looking blurrier.

 

Definitely not the only one. I find VRS destroys image clarity so well that it makes it pointless to pay talented artists. It's BRUTAL on image clarity and quality.

 

which titles are you referring to here?

 

Of course its not unnoticeable, but is it better than lowering res or checkerboarding the whole screen? Sometimes (doom eternal, software vrs on recent cods) it clearly is.

 

Specifically Doom Eternal and Halo Infinite. Gears seemed to be the least intrusive. To my eye, I prefer lowering res to VRS as it currently exists. Is it on in FH5? I don't think it is, I haven't seen any evidence but I could be wrong.

 

hmm, thanks. Will check these two out to see what's happening. Anyone else have any other VRS titles that is immediately noticeable ?

 

I think it's using SFS, if you look at the video at 43:23 you can see the texture detail coming in, the detail doesn't pop in like you expect it too.

Instead the detail fades in like SFS was designed to do when the high res MIP was missing and it's blending between the two MIPS, the transition in detail is very smooth.

What does everyone else think?

 

seems like a rendering mistake, to unload such a large texture so close to a player, you could spin in circles and see that happen. I'm honestly not sure, but you be onto something. I'm not sure if it's necessarily SFS however

 

Considering that SFS on XBS consoles is designed to load in only part of a mip level texture, it shouldn't take so long to load in the texture. If you're just loading in KBs of a larger mip level texture, it should load in quite significantly faster than what we see in the DF video.

IMO, it's more of a bug than potential evidence of SFS. Although if it's using SFS and it's a bug in how they are using SFS, perhaps. But on it's own it appears to be either an obvious bug or something more related to legacy texture streaming than an artifact related to SFS.

Considering that the title started development before XBO-X launched, there's likely a fair bit of messy code in there that could result in odd behavior WRT rendering of any given scene/object/texture.

Regards,
SB

 

VRS, as with any tech used in rendering games, will always depend on the implementation. In Gears 5 and Doom, especially Gears 5, it is virtually unnoticeable unless you are told that it is been used. With Doom, you'd have to really zoom in to find it. That it is more easily identifiable in Halo: Infinite doesn't make it a bad tech. It just means that it wasn't implemented well enough, or it's more obvious because of the overall technical makeup of the game, etc. As with other innovations and tools in this space, it is used to make faster or prettier pixels where and when it matters.

 

Is it the UI? I cannot imagine playing any RTS game with a controller although I know quite a few of them are really popular.

 

VRS has always been a weird one for me, to get a 'noticeable' performance increase you have to degrade the image to the point where you can see VRS in action.

If you use VRS in such a way that you can't see it in action then the performance improvement stands on the realm of is it worth the effort?

 

That applies to just about anything though.

• If you can see checkboard rendering artifacts, is it worth using?
  • Just render at a lower resolution instead.
• If you can see temporal accumulation errors is temporal reconstruction worth using?
  • Just render at a lower resolution instead.
• If you can see errors with Screen Space Reflections, is it worth using?
  • Just render at a lower resolution and use a much more expensive reflection technique instead.
• If you can see errors with ambient occlusion, is it worth using?
  • Just use path tracing to get correct lighting and shadows instead.
• If you notice blur from temporal AA solutions, is it worth using?
  • Just use significantly more expensive forms of SSAA instead.
• If you can notice MIP boundaries are MIP level textures worth using?
• Etc.

3D rendering is full of techniques like the above that come with easily seen artifacts. Does that mean they aren't useful? Well, when the alternative is to spend a little or a lot more rendering time to do it better developers will choose a method that brings them what they believe is an overall best result.

If the artifacts are a part of a scene that is unlikely to be focused on when a person is playing a game, versus looking at still shots, then it's an obvious win to use that technique in order to boost performance such that you can then use that performance savings to boost areas of the image that will be noticed while playing.

Regards,
SB

 

If using VRS helps them maintain 60fps then keep it in. OK its not perfect 60fps but from the video its 99% of the time

Surprised they allowed, putting in the obvious dig at the graphics by comparing it to a 2013 title. MS will be furious
Though it does look fun to play


https://www.youtu be. com/watch?v=H4aMumgEW2w

 

At this stage vrs has some good examples it can gives performance boost without much visual degradation but probably more not so good implementation. Imo vrs degradation can be more visable than dynamic res because to have performance boost only impacting part of screen you have to downgrade it much more than when you target all pixels (also we look around where there is not much action and in this situation dynamic res is usualy at upper range)

 

You have completely missed my point.

A lot of your examples are worth the effort as the performance (for any given visible artefact) increase is more substantial then what VRS has offered in any game thus far.

Is it really worth degrading the image with VRS for 1-3fps? IMO, no it's not.

 

Yes if it gets them from 58fps to 60fps
Personally I think they should just decrease resolution but VRS is good its another tool in the developers toolbox to use

 

And that is the whole point of VRS. You don't see this while actually playing. E.g. Doom is such an example. The game is so fast I don't even really "see" the RT reflections. Total waste of performance IMHO, because I really don't see it when it gets hectic (where it should be mostly visible in stills/videos). SSR would be more than enough in that game.
But yes, there are some very bad VRS implementation examples on the market. There are also some very bad checkboard-examples on the market (e.g. red dead redemption 2) but also a few really good examples with minimal artifacts. In the end it depends how the developer uses it. It is just another tool in a big toolbox. And we haven't yet seen an engine build around that feature (VRS) so far. Even Halo Infinite is to old for that. Unreal 5 engine might be up to the task of really use that feature (that is available since Turing (on nvidia side)).