Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

[PSman1700]

Never heard of last guardian before, looks impressive (for 8th gen then) game. SotC style of gameplay, going to try this on the ps5.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Always appreciate when they focus on these, helps to put the spotlight on them and may put a little pressure out to get a proper patch, or a pseudo-PS5 patch that just unlocks the framerate like Jedi Fallen Order got.

 

[HLJ]

well less than a frame though -- a light milisecond is 300,000 meters. At 120 fps, that's 2 400 000 meters a second -- 1491 miles. How many times do you think it's going to (perceptibly) bounce? Compared to lumen which takes actual seconds to accumulate.

(also note, the horizon is about 3 miles away, so even in a wide open field with mountains far away you should get hundreds of bounces in a 'frame' irl)

c (the speed of light) only happens in a total vacuum...something both Sci-Fi and people forget all the time...just to nitpick.

 

[Allandor]

Didn't remember that the Last Guardian ran that bad at last-Gen machines. I thought the 30fps patch was running with stable 30fps.

 

[Shortbread]

Wow, that came out of nowhere! Respawn Entertainment has updated Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to tap into the extra horsepower of the Xbox Series X and S consoles, plus of course, PlayStation 5. It's 'back compat plus' as Rich calls it, so relatively limited compared to a native next-gen app - but here's how it looks and plays on all three systems.

Article: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-star-wars-fallen-order-next-gen-patch

The patch is also interesting in that Respawn Entertainment released patch notes that tell us almost everything we need to know about the technical enhancements. Frame-rates are increased across the board, post-processing quality is improved and resolutions are increased. The actual range of upgrades actually varies from machine to machine for reasons that aren't quite clear, but we would expect that this has something to do with the capabilities of Sony and Microsoft's cross-generational SDKs as opposed to the capabilities of the machines themselves.

Xbox Series X appears to get the more fully featured range of upgrades. Of the three consoles, it is the only one to retain both the quality and performance modes of the last-gen versions - and both are improved. Quality mode targets 30fps with a dynamic resolution window of 1512p to 2160p, delivering the cleanest image quality and highest consistency of any console version - albeit with a lower frame-rate cap. Its performance mode aims for 60fps, achieving it for the most part with a 1080p to 1440p dynamic resolution range.

By constrast, PlayStation 5 gets a single mode, targeting 60fps and doing so at a locked 1200p with 1440p post-process buffers. It's a more limited upgrade bearing in mind that standard back-compat on the existing last-gen code delivered 1080p, but the extra pixel count and post-processing precision is certainly welcome. Finally, there's Xbox Series S - it's a huge upgrade over the One S version, again targeting 60fps. No resolution metrics are provided in the patch notes, but we're seeing a dynamic resolution window in the range of 720p to 900p, leaning into Unreal Engine 4's temporal upscaling to give the perception of a higher pixel count, most effective in more static scenes.

Those are the baseline specifications of the patch, but how do they play? Well, Fallen Order always had some issues in terms of asset streaming, causing hitching and stuttering. This is something that happened on all versions of the game, even on the PC version, and it's interesting to see that in the 60fps modes, there are still some problems here on all systems. To be clear, overall performance in-game is relatively consistent at 60fps, but hitching is most noticeable in traversal and occasionally in cutscenes. PlayStation 5 does seem to be perhaps a touch smoother overall, but all versions show the issue. For its part, Series X is capable of delivering the highest resolution visuals and if the stutter is a problem for you, the 30fps quality mode does clean up most of it. As for Xbox Series S, it's the least stable rendition of the game - in addition to the streaming challenges, it has areas where it seems to be GPU-limited too. It's still a marked improvement over the unlocked frame-rate of the performance modes found in PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, but it is the least impressive upgrade of the bunch.

 

[Riddlewire]

That cutscene on Kashyyyk that they mention stutters heavily on every platform. Xbox, Playstation, last gen, current gen, PC.
I expect the Switch port to finally get it right!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Article: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-star-wars-fallen-order-next-gen-patch

Interesting, so the game code prevents it from locking to 60 fps on any console.

Regards,
SB

 

[Jay]

Interesting, so the game code prevents it from locking to 60 fps on any console.

Regards,
SB

Looks like a bug in the underlying streaming code that's shared across all platforms.

Shame PS5 and XSS didn't get multiple profiles, especially XSS with a 30fps resolution/graphics mode.

 

[Allandor]

Article: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-star-wars-fallen-order-next-gen-patch

I get the strong feeling that the BC Mode of PS5 has the memory limit of the PS4 Pro. While the Xbox can use all the available memory if patched. That must be why they have just added the 60 fps mode for the PS5. You don't need more memory for 60 fps, just faster one. And at around 1200p it might just max out the available memory of the BC mode.
The game was always demanding. Just dynamic 1440p on the Xbox one x in the 30 fps mode and even on pc, 4k 60 needed much stronger hardware.

Question is why. The game looks good but not that good. And the visible areals are relative small. It uses the unreal engine which is normally quite efficient.

 

[jlippo]

I get the strong feeling that the BC Mode of PS5 has a memory limit of the PS4 Pro. While the Xbox can use all the available memory if patched. That must be why they have just added the 60 fps mode for the PS5. You don't need more memory for 60 fps, just faster one. And at around 1200p it might just max out the available memory of the BC mode.
The game was always demanding. Just dynamic 1440p on the Xbox one x in the 30 fps mode and even on pc, 4k 60 needed much stronger hardware.

Question is why. The game looks good but not that good. And the visible areals are relative small. It uses the unreal engine which is normally quite efficient.

Baked lighting can be part of the reason, lightmaps can get quite big on UE.

The shot showing temporal upsampling on series s was nice and gives a reason why they told rendering resolution and post processing one.
Post processing one is the target resolution for temporal upsampling and all post processing after it.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I get the strong feeling that the BC Mode of PS5 has the memory limit of the PS4 Pro.

According to people familiar with the three BC modes (NXGamer for one), the modes are about ensuring new GPU logic consistency with previous GPU logic and clockspeeds but maybe there is some memory access logic in there as well.

 

[AlNom]

Doom Eternal on Switch

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...om-eternal-switch-the-most-ambitious-port-yet

In docked mode, Doom Eternal maxes out at 720p - just like those other titles - but can dip just under 540p when taxed. In comparison, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus dropped as low as 360p when docked, so this is an improvement. In portable mode, 360p is a possibility while 612p is the maximum pixel count.

The downside is that the Switch just doesn't have the memory to support this approach without sacrificing asset quality and that's precisely what has happened here. Texture resolution is reduced throughout leading to less nuanced surfaces with more visible bilinear blur. Level of detail transitions are also more aggressive in spots and the volumetrics - as usual - are of a lower precision.

Another loss, from my perspective, is the complete elimination of per-object motion blur and other post-processing effects such as depth of field.

Despite all this, the density and complexity of the maps themselves has been retained. Considering the sheer volume of geometry on display and the size of the map data, this is a remarkable achievement. It also ensures that the entirety of the game is intact. Animation quality is also retained as are the alembic animations used in certain areas.

The target frame-rate is, of course, reduced to 30 frames per second, as expected for the hardware, but unlike prior releases, Doom Eternal maintains this frame-rate most of the time. I played through around 50 per cent of the entire game content and found only one area with any noticeable drops to the target frame-rate - which is a huge improvement over prior ports. Mobile mode isn't quite as solid overall, but still holds up really well - the main compromise being letterboxed, locked 20fps cutscenes.

 

[PSman1700]

Impressive, ive said it before but scaling between hardware has never been this good. Its the way going foward.

 

[Rootax]

It's impressive for the hardware, kudos to the devs.

 

[Karamazov]

now make a quest 2 version !

 

[Shortbread]

One of two PlayStation 5 Sony first party exclusives to benefit from a 60fps upgrade for PlayStation 5, Days Gone benefits tremendously from the upgrade, with the vast majority of standard gameplay holding steady at 60fps - but can it survive the 300-strong onslaught of the Horde in challenge mode? NOTE: An error in this piece - while Days Gone, The Last Guardian and God of War are a part of the PlayStation Collection, Ghost of Tsushima is not.

 

[snc]

Good performance just for bc, still bizzare lack of patches for other games like gow and lou2

 

[Shortbread]

Good performance just for bc, still bizzare lack of patches for other games like gow and lou2

Physical disc giveth 60fps and digital patch taketh away.

 

[snc]

Physical disc giveth 60fps and digital patch taketh away.

yes and thats a prove it's almost no work for devs to bring 60fps for ps5

 

[Flappy Pannus]

I actually though Days Gone had gone native 4k with dynamic - party due to the way the tweet below was worded, and because it looked so sharp, at least relative to my memory of it on the PS4 Pro, so to hear it's still using checkerboarding is a little surprising. Just goes to show how different implementations can vary in quality, as I find it excellent - not every reconstruction technique has to be DLSS to produce good results.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1325948741715697664

I accept that when doing these comparisons early on at games release that there's not enough time to get deep into the storyline, but a little disappointed that performance metrics are concentrated around the early part of the game now, as that's not been where the frame drops predominantly occur ime with this on the PS5. When you get to Lost Lake and especially further in the game, you see quite a number of frame skips occurring during traversal - hordes aren't actually a big problem, it's just the more varying scenery as it gets more complex (?). Not a huge deal as it's likely still 60fps 95% of the time, but they certainly do become more frequent.