Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

[milk]

#BringBackVaseline

Kindo of yes. I don't mind the vaseline too much, conceptually. the problem is in the 360 gen they were often heavy handed, and not well implemented either. You cant do a cheap box blur over am extremelly aliases base image. It only amplifies the shimmer. Same for bloom, its not really worth it if the base image is not reasonably stable at first.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A lot of the post effects, like CA, when done right, do elevate graphics to something more believable. It's like how off-screen visuals taken at game shows always looked better than the same game seen on your own console.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

A thousand times YES. I'm all for some TASTEFUL and SUBTLE softness over game graphics and CGI. Sure, make your algos be as precise as possible internally, but its ok to not show every perfect pixel your engine rendered with perfect clarity. Let go. The objective is to sell an illusion, not pixels. Leave some holes for my imagination to fill in.

While I understand where you're coming from, that's not something I enjoy as it does all kinds of weird things to my eyes and generally causes me undue eye-strain. Hence, I always immediately turn of any form of DoF or motion blur no matter how well implemented. And if I can't disable them, then I just don't play those games. Same goes for games where the image isn't as sharp as what I generally see in real life.

Might be one of the various reasons I've always been predominantly a PC game player even when I owned a PS1, PS2, Xbox, and X360. Gaming on CRT TVs was always too "soft" and blurry compared to the sharpness you would get from a PC monitor, even with component video. Console gaming got better (and worse) when flat screen HDTVs became widely available (generally clearer and sharper, but that came with more display lag, especially during PS3/X360 gen).

We'll see, perhaps there will eventually someday be a game released which is both deliberately soft and well done that it won't make me wish I was doing anything at all that didn't involve looking at the game for an extended period of time.

BTW - don't take this to mean that I feel like most people have the same issues with softness of image that I do.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, I wonder if that's part of the reason I never watched as much TV as many of my friends?

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hmmm, now that I think about it, I wonder if that's part of the reason I never watched as much TV as many of my friends?

That was the obvious follow up - does watching TV/cinema give you the same eye-strain?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That was the obvious follow up - does watching TV/cinema give you the same eye-strain?

Unfortunately, not a question I can really answer as most of my TV watching was back in the 70's and 80's. Mostly in the 70's before I got glasses. That kind of makes sense as I was incredibly myopic and so everything was blurry to me until I got glasses. And thinking back, I do believe that my TV watching hours dropped quite drastically once I got glasses.

Regards,
SB

 

[Phantom88]

• Framerate is tied to dynamic resolution scaling with no way to turn it off unless using mods.
• Some texture options are very lack luster and don't add much to the visuals.
• High end systems have frametime issues
• DX12 seems to be the cause of major frametime issues.
• Running the game in forced DX11 seems to fix most frametime issues, still not a perfect solution. Some frametime issues still exist, but the FPS is significantly improved.
• 30FPS mode has frametime issues too, so putting that on won't help.
• Running DX11 breaks the vsync but can be enabled at the driver level.

 

[pjbliverpool]

• Framerate is tied to dynamic resolution scaling with no way to turn it off unless using mods.
• Some texture options are very lack luster and don't add much to the visuals.
• High end systems have frametime issues
• DX12 seems to be the cause of major frametime issues.
• Running the game in forced DX11 seems to fix most frametime issues, still not a perfect solution. Some frametime issues still exist, but the FPS is significantly improved.
• 30FPS mode has frametime issues too, so putting that on won't help.
• Running DX11 breaks the vsync but can be enabled at the driver level.

A good article and great find about the DX11 mode. Crazy that the developers haven't enabled that by default in the end game.

 

[BRiT]

Written Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...fantasy-7-remake-intergrade-pc-barebones-port

Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC is a disappointing, barebones port
And there are performance problems too.

Nearly two years after its debut, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is finally available for PC. It's a port of the PlayStation 5 'Intergrade' version that came out earlier this year and as you may have seen from the headlines, it's a contentious release to say the least. While Square-Enix's conversion retains all of the graphical features of the PS5 game, it's a barebones release, plagued with awful hitching and stutter problems and one of the most basic options screens we've seen in years from a major release.

In terms of its qualities as a PC port, we've not got much to say that's positive about this game but it is important to point out that the game itself truly is great. Character models are the highlight here, with superb definition and lighting. It's rather reminiscent of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, the 2005 CG film, although of course rendered in real-time. Cutscenes are absolutely stunning, with well-realised characters, storytelling and action. Battles look superb as well, with smooth animation work and vibrant GPU effects. Environments are at times less impressive, with spotty geometric density in places, along with low resolution baked shadows, but the game is a visual showcase overall. The Intergrade release delivers enhancements to lighting, textures, volumetrics and performance - in addition to new content.

...

 

[London Geezer]

Ouch. What's up with these rubbish PC ports these days?

 

[BRiT]

Ouch. What's up with these rubbish PC ports these days?

Greed. Time is money. Can't spend money to make a good product.

 

[Davros]

Lazy Devs

 

[cheapchips]

Isn't it super lazy to not have settings on a UE4 game?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Greed. Time is money. Can't spend money to make a good product.

That only works if people are dumb enough to buy rubbish products. Sadly, the gaming populace has shown considerable willingness to throw cash at crap, creating a market where the smart business choice is minimal effort.

 

[cwjs]

Based on what I've learned from b3d posters, I'd guess this means the ps4 is just way more powerful than a PC, and that PC architecture is not suited for ue4 games.

(really though -- great game and great looking game. Disappointing that this port didn't get a lot of polish, but it's cool that non ps owners have a chance to play it at a all)

 

[Allandor]

• Framerate is tied to dynamic resolution scaling with no way to turn it off unless using mods.
• Some texture options are very lack luster and don't add much to the visuals.
• High end systems have frametime issues
• DX12 seems to be the cause of major frametime issues.
• Running the game in forced DX11 seems to fix most frametime issues, still not a perfect solution. Some frametime issues still exist, but the FPS is significantly improved.
• 30FPS mode has frametime issues too, so putting that on won't help.
• Running DX11 breaks the vsync but can be enabled at the driver level.

Seems like the developer has still problems managing the memory, which dx11 does by itself (more or less). But hey, it runs so they can sell it.
Wonder why they didn't force it into the dx11 mode. Why does the dx11 mode exist at all? There is no hardware on the market that can run this game that is not dx12 compatible.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That only works if people are dumb enough to buy rubbish products. Sadly, the gaming populace has shown considerable willingness to throw cash at crap, creating a market where the smart business choice is minimal effort.

Thankfully, I lucked out again. Epic Games Store saved me. After using the store launcher, I will never again install that POS. So, if it'd been on Steam I would likely have pre-ordered it and likely be cursing myself for pre-ordering it. Thanks, EGS for saving me from a bad port.

Hopefully like many other badly ported or buggy games that have been EGS timed exclusives, by the time it gets to Steam, maybe the bugs and performance will be fixed.

Regards,
SB

 

[PSman1700]

Based on what I've learned from b3d posters, I'd guess this means the ps4 is just way more powerful than a PC, and that PC architecture is not suited for ue4 games.

(really though -- great game and great looking game. Disappointing that this port didn't get a lot of polish, but it's cool that non ps owners have a chance to play it at a all)

Same is still happening over at another thread. Happened 2019 aswell with the UE5 demo We have to live with it, just as they have to live with biases from other people. Its ok, just keep it civil and friendly.

 

[Remij]

Based on what I've learned from b3d posters, I'd guess this means the ps4 is just way more powerful than a PC, and that PC architecture is not suited for ue4 games.

(really though -- great game and great looking game. Disappointing that this port didn't get a lot of polish, but it's cool that non ps owners have a chance to play it at a all)

Not more powerful, but definitely more optimized. The game runs as it should on PS4... same can't be said about PC.

And no it's not cool that PC gamers have to settle for "having a chance to play it at all"... because to me, that sounds exactly like SquareEnix's thinking with regards to this port. "You should be happy you get the game at all".. and I'm not down with that.

 

[pjbliverpool]

And no it's not cool that PC gamers have to settle for "having a chance to play it at all"... because to me, that sounds exactly like SquareEnix's thinking with regards to this port. "You should be happy you get the game at all".. and I'm not down with that.

While it's a terrible porting job obviously, the outlook for PC gamers isn't quite a doom and gloom as the current chatter suggests.

If you do force DX11 mode which is a pain, but easily done, the stutters are virtually eliminated. DF do point out there are still seemingly rare and minor stutters, so worse than the PS5 in that regard, but it seems that if you have a 3070 level GPU or above you can comfortably get the benefits of both PS5's performance mode (60fps) and its quality mode (locked 4k) combined, and you get better NPC draw distance on top. I'd argue that's a positive trade off if you have a large high res screen. And 120fps is also possible at performance mode like resolutions.

The PS5 controller prompts are indeed laughable though.

 

[Remij]

While it's a terrible porting job obviously, the outlook for PC gamers isn't quite a doom and gloom as the current chatter suggests.

If you do force DX11 mode which is a pain, but easily done, the stutters are virtually eliminated. DF do point out there are still seemingly rare and minor stutters, so worse than the PS5 in that regard, but it seems that if you have a 3070 level GPU or above you can comfortably get the benefits of both PS5's performance mode (60fps) and its quality mode (locked 4k) combined, and you get better NPC draw distance on top. I'd argue that's a positive trade off if you have a large high res screen. And 120fps is also possible at performance mode like resolutions.

The PS5 controller prompts are indeed laughable though.

I should make a video.. because no, there are still terrible stutters in DX11.. and running through areas multiple times doesn't show the true experience your first time through.

I doubt ANY of these people are deleting their shader caches between runs either.

I'm not interested in an experience that "improves over time"...and I'm no longer accepting it.