Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

[Deleted member 11852]

Fair enough but I did do so and with proof.

Apologies, I missed that. Grateful for a link to the the proof. Because in this post (yesterday) you conceded you don't know what the resource difference is between not needing to bake lighting into texture/maps and using a fully RT lighting scheme.

 

[Arwin]

I am interested to know why you said that ..

I guess this has already been answered now [emoji16]. However, we also shouldn’t exaggerate, as we are getting to the point where 3D art is really getting there. I was astounded by how beautiful Mortal Kombat XI can look for instance, and some scenes in God of War 3 gave me that same vibe of having beautiful 3D art that looked like it could be hand drawn at times. The Art in that game was so much better than the current God of Wat, really hope the next game does better.

Also interesting back in the day were some of the scenes in that platformer that also supported 3D, name escapes me, that looked better at times as something like Rayman Legend for instance, due to the great combination of art and lighting, and it was even more amazing in 3D.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I guess this has already been answered now [emoji16]. However, we also shouldn’t exaggerate, as we are getting to the point where 3D art is really getting there. I was astounded by how beautiful Mortal Kombat XI can look for instance, and some scenes in God of War 3 gave me that same vibe of having beautiful 3D art that looked like it could be hand drawn at times.

Yup, although I think the introduction of raytracing, whether for shadows and/or lighting may require a lot of things being revisiting.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I wonder what minimal requirement for ssd would be

Something that's fast enough or capable of matching or surpassing PS5 SSD/IO data prioritization management. If I remember correctly, PS5 SSD/IO has 6 levels of prioritization for IO commands, to essentially reduce as much latency as possible when streaming in large amounts of data.

Minimal requirement? I would assume nothing too extreme given PC games are designed to scale. The game still uses loading transitions between worlds (albeit very fast ones) so it wouldn't be game breaking for those to be longer on slower drives. Then there's texture resolution decreases etc... which can reduce the streaming requirements.

What you would need to match or exceed the PS5 experience would be interesting though. My guess is the DirectStorage might be a necessity along with a 5GB/s+ NVMe drive but the compression solution might be the deciding factor there.

As to the game itself, it clearly looks gorgeous. If they did release a PC version down the line I'd be very tempted to pick it up provided it was before the graphics get stale in comparison (or they add in RTGI - wishful thinking I know!). Is it the best looking game to date? I can certainly see why people would think that. I'm not entirely sure comparisons to other contenders make much sense though given the vastly different target styles. For me the obvious contenders are CB2077, FS2020 and Metro Enhanced, all of which are targeting a more photorealistic aesthetic making direct comparisons difficult. R&C looks more consistently outstanding than any of those though with the arguable exception of FS2020.

 

[Dampf]

For PS5 titles to be possible on PC, the PC's SSD likely does not need to match the speeds of the one in the PS5. PC has a ton of RAM to cache a lot more data, while the 16 GB on PS5 is heavily constrained due to shared memory config and OS reservation. Developers can implement some tricks to make use of that. For example, developers could place a trigger around the portal that caches some of the portal world data into RAM, which means the SSD has less data to stream during the transition to the new world, reducing needed bandwidth significantly.

In the worst case, you'd have maybe 1-3 secs longer portal loading times. I assume any NVMe Gen 3 drive + DirectStorage should be sufficient. Hell, maybe even SATA SSD depending on how much RAM your PC has.

 

[Shortbread]

R&C looks more consistently outstanding than any of those though with the arguable exception of FS2020.

There is no denying Flight Simulator 2020 is gorgeous, my top choice for graphics in 2020. The only area where the graphics start to break down is when flying closer to the surface (see video below). I remember one occasion when I was flying low, the streaming traffic was driving up a building as if they were Spider-Man.

 

[Karamazov]

we can't have a game the scale of FS2020 with the fidelity of CP2077 at street level. Not yet !

 

[Shortbread]

we can't have a game the scale of FS2020 with the fidelity of CP2077 at street level. Not yet !

Games are always going to have to make a certain amount of concessions. I'm hoping GTA VI really wows us...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

There is no denying Flight Simulator 2020 is gorgeous, my top choice for graphics in 2020. The only area where the graphics start to break down is when flying closer to the surface (see video below). I remember one occasion when I was flying low, the streaming traffic was driving up a building as if they were Spider-Man.

I'm just amazed there's even that much detail down at ground level in a flight simulator that has traditionally focused on how things look from 1000's of feet in the air. And that it's something that exists around the globe (assuming you're in an area where they have put in some attention). There's obviously remote places where things can look pretty bad, but it's overall pretty amazing the level of detail available in the title, even at ground level.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shortbread]

I'm just amazed there's even that much detail down at ground level in a flight simulator that has traditionally focused on how things look from 1000's of feet in the air. And that it's something that exists around the globe (assuming you're in an area where they have put in some attention). There's obviously remote places where things can look pretty bad, but it's overall pretty amazing the level of detail available in the title, even at ground level.

Regards,
SB

Yeah, from above everything is drop-dead gorgeous, ground-level it's so-so most of the time (but that's expected). The scale of the game is definitely on a whole other level. I wonder if Microsoft is going to allow external storage for streaming larger offline assets on XBSX.

 

[rabbit]

@Dictator hello!
How about this?

@Dictator why don't you want to measure the power consumption of consoles in multiplatform games?
That might be interesting and would show how efficiently the raw power of the consoles is being used at the moment.

We know that xsx and ps5 can consume at least 200-210 watts.
In Valhalla and Hitman 3 xsx only consumes ~165 watts (from Gamers Nexus)
How much does ps5 consume in these games?

Also, it would be interesting to see the Control measurements.

Computerbase.de says that xsx in Legion and Dirt 5 consumes 135 and 155 watts, while ps5 consumes 175 and 205 watts.
Is this true?
https://www.computerbase.de/2020-11/playstation-5-test/

I would not do this as I do not have the test equipment - but Rich does. So I will ask him.

 

[Shortbread]

Full PS5 support is added to developer Mihayo's surprise hit action RPG - a game with Unity engine at its core that struggled to deliver at 30fps on last-gen systems. The next-gen update promises full 60Hz gameplay, but there are more than a few catches to this based on testing at its launch.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

They also mention in a FAQ that the FidelityFX Super Resolution isn't compatible with their rendering technique: https://www.metrothegame.com/news/the-metro-exodus-pc-enhanced-edition-arrives-may-6th/

Some pretty interesting insights there about FidelityFX Super Resolution. For one they appear to have access to it suggesting that it's real and in an advanced stage of development (this may have been common knowledge already, I'm a bit out of the loop on this) and secondly they claim their own Temporal upscaling implementation is at least as good. That may suggest FFX SR is just a (fairly common now) temporal upscaling solution and in quality terms falls quite short of DLSS as per Alex's video. Still great to widen the reach of upscaling tech though even if the quality isn't quite on par with a ML based approach.

FSR has been in complete secrecy from the public and there's no info other than AMD banking on it to become an "industry standard" (open source + available to consoles + effective on AMD and Nvidia hardware).
Which makes that statement about their temporal upscaling being "equal or better" than FSR a pretty odd and bullish choice of words for a public statement.
I don't think AMD is happy about that choice of words and I wonder if 4A had access to the final FSR code to make a plausible comparison.

So there's an update to this.
Apparently 4A put the word "Super" by mistake. Considering FSR isn't available in the public FidelityFX toolkit, I guess what they compared their temporal reconstruction tech against was just RIS / Contrast-adaptive Sharpening.

4A Games has not evaluated the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution feature for Metro Exodus at this time. In our FAQ, we were referring to the AMD FidelityFX open source image quality toolkit which targets traditional rendering techniques that our new RT only render does not use, and noting that we have our own Temporal Reconstruction tech implemented natively which provides great quality benefits for all hardware, so do not currently plan to utilize any other toolkits.

4A Games is always motivated to innovate, evaluate, and use the newest technologies that will benefit our fans across all platforms and hardware.

 

[iroboto]

So there's an update to this.
Apparently 4A put the word "Super" by mistake. Considering FSR isn't available in the public FidelityFX toolkit, I guess what they compared their temporal reconstruction tech against was just RIS / Contrast-adaptive Sharpening.

make sense. They did previously support RIS and I suppose they removed that feature now.

 

[Shortbread]

DF Direct Weekly is - perhaps unsurprisingly - back! Over 92 minutes, the team cover the biggest gaming tech news of the week, with much of it generated by ourselves thanks to the amazing Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. Plus - Returnal... what a game!

Timestamp
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:16 We've relaunched our Patreon!
00:04:52 Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition world exclusive
00:16:22 Mortal Shell patch
00:23:05 Nier Replicant
00:28:32 Microsoft GameStack + DirectStorage
00:37:44 Genshin Impact PS5
00:41:21 Returnal
00:56:33 Patreon Q+A
01:20:30 Patreon discussion

 

[pjbliverpool]

Timestamp
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:16 We've relaunched our Patreon!
00:04:52 Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition world exclusive
00:16:22 Mortal Shell patch
00:23:05 Nier Replicant
00:28:32 Microsoft GameStack + DirectStorage
00:37:44 Genshin Impact PS5
00:41:21 Returnal
00:56:33 Patreon Q+A
01:20:30 Patreon discussion

Alex's explanation of SFS was great. I hadn't appreciated its relevance to streaming bandwidth before now but it can act as a multiplier there in the same way it can for vram capacity.

Does the PS5 have any equivalent of this? Even if its not 100% as effective? If not then I could imagine the XSX having a big advantage in titles that use SFS. Even the PS5's SSD speed advantage could be nullified.

 

[PSman1700]

If not then I could imagine the XSX having a big advantage in titles that use SFS. Even the PS5's SSD speed advantage could be nullified.

Was kinda what sources where implying all the time.

 

[manux]

Does the PS5 have any equivalent of this? Even if its not 100% as effective? If not then I could imagine the XSX having a big advantage in titles that use SFS. Even the PS5's SSD speed advantage could be nullified.

Same way it has been done in many games before. Engine predicts what is needed and fetches it ahead of time.

Issue I have with SFS is that it only helps after the miss happened. This means there is more popin effect versus algorithm that successfully predicted ahead of time what is needed. Also depending how much lag sfs adds it could end up into dog chasing it tail kind of situations. Being able to cancel requests would be nice. Likely best would be to have good prediction and help it out with SFS as needed. To me this also sounds like a machine learning problem. Wouldn't be surprised to see neural networks used to predict what resources are needed.

 

[t0mb3rt]

Alex's explanation of SFS was great. I hadn't appreciated its relevance to streaming bandwidth before now but it can act as a multiplier there in the same way it can for vram capacity.

I'm just curious as to what you thought SFS was going to accomplish because literally all of the language about SFS since the XSX specs were released has been about it's use as an SSD throughput multiplier and Alex didn't reveal anything that we haven't known for over a year.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Same way it has been done in many games before. Engine predicts what is needed and fetches it ahead of time.

Issue I have with SFS is that it only helps after the miss happened. This means there is more popin effect versus algorithm that successfully predicted ahead of time what is needed. Also depending how much lag sfs adds it could end up into dog chasing it tail kind of situations. Being able to cancel requests would be nice. Likely best would be to have good prediction and help it out with SFS as needed. To me this also sounds like a machine learning problem. Wouldn't be surprised to see neural networks used to predict what resources are needed.

Aren't you describing the functionality of the custom mip blending hardware in the Series consoles rather than SFS itself? The blending hardware is indeed only useful if a higher level mip isn't loaded in time and thus the hardware steps in to blend the transition from the lower mip to the higher mip. But SFS in general is beneficial outside of that scenario in that it reduces the amount of texture data that needs to be pre-cached in vram "in case" it's needed.

Microsoft say the reduction acts as a 2.5x multiplier so my question is, is that vs the current state of the art pre-fetching solutions (the game engine predicting what will be needed and fetching ahead of time) or is it vs a very naive pre-fetching approach that has already been bettered in the real world world? i.e. are we really looking at a 2.5x multiplier over the PS5 here or does the PS5 have ways to achieve something similar even if not fully as effective or requiring additional developer work.

I'm just curious as to what you thought SFS was going to accomplish because literally all of the language about SFS since the XSX specs were released has been about it's use as an SSD throughput multiplier and Alex didn't reveal anything that we haven't known for over a year.

I've not followed it too closely tbh but everything I've seen mentioned was more focussed on the VRAM multiplying effect. If I'd have stopped and thought about it I should have realised that would have the same impact on streaming/loading too, but tbh it never really dawned on me.