Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]

[Silent_Buddha]

For what it's worth, the PC Resident Evil Village edition loads in about 3-4 seconds (from the game menu, to hitting F prompt, to actual play) on my NVMe raid drive, depending on the last save location. And ~5 seconds on a standard NVMe setup. Not that big of difference between the raid and non-raid setup to complain about.

That would certainly indicate some rather large issue with how the game is loading in data on the XBS systems. At worst it should still be relatively close to PC loading times, but as it is, there's a relatively large difference in load speeds.

Regards,
SB

 

[Globalisateur]

That would certainly indicate some rather large issue with how the game is loading in data on the XBS systems. At worst it should still be relatively close to PC loading times, but as it is, there's a relatively large difference in load speeds.

Regards,
SB

There is no issue. It's cheap cacheless 2.4 GB/s SSD with puny Zen 2 at 3.6ghz vs super expensive twice or more faster NVMe or raid setup with a ~5ghz or so CPU core (dynamic clocks etc).

 

[see colon]

There is no issue. It's cheap cacheless 2.4 GB/s SSD with puny Zen 2 at 3.6ghz vs super expensive twice or more faster NVMe or raid setup with a ~5ghz or so CPU core (dynamic clocks etc).

I haven't timed them, but I have an NVME (gen 3) drive and a SATA SSD, loading time between them is unnoticeable in most games.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

There is no issue. It's cheap cacheless 2.4 GB/s SSD with puny Zen 2 at 3.6ghz vs super expensive twice or more faster NVMe or raid setup with a ~5ghz or so CPU core (dynamic clocks etc).

It's slower or similar to a 500 MB/s SATA SSD on virtually any CPU. There's a problem there whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

Regards,
SB

 

[dobwal]

It's bonkers some people will be upset at having to wait 8.5 seconds. I mean, how the hell are you going to fill 8.5 whole seconds??? Clearly the agony of multi-minute load times from last gen are already fading in people's minds...

I am @$@$ing annoyed. I usually had some time to grab a snack, take a phone call or hit the toilet real quick (with GTA 5 I could get in a #2). Now my multitasking game skills are moot and I am forced to eat 8 seconds of dead time.

 

[Arwin]

Still enough time to read a couple of whatsapp / signal messages ...

 

[BRiT]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...lages-pc-port-is-disappointing-and-needs-work

Resident Evil Village's PC port is disappointing and needs work
Bugs, glitches and stutters take the sheen away from a great game.

We loved Resident Evil Village on consoles, but unfortunately, my opinion of the PC port isn't quite so positive. On the one hand, I love what the RE Engine is doing technologically and the game itself is fantastic, but on the other hand, I'm genuinely puzzled and disappointed by some of the design choices, bugs, glitches and performance problems. This conversion really isn't where it should be right now.

It starts with the game's menu system and settings which are both excellent and awkward at the same time. In terms of features, the graphical options are great: there's plenty to tweak, along with preview imagery showing you what the settings actually do and some rough idea of the performance implications. The problem comes in how the user navigates through the menu. Scrolling through the options is so, so slow and while keyboard works, you can't actually leave a sub-menu without pressing the right-button on the mouse (and no, ESC doesn't work). It's all counter-intuitive to the point where remarkably, menu navigation is actually a lot, lot quicker using a controller.

...

 

[snc]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...lages-pc-port-is-disappointing-and-needs-work

Resident Evil Village's PC port is disappointing and needs work
Bugs, glitches and stutters take the sheen away from a great game.

We loved Resident Evil Village on consoles, but unfortunately, my opinion of the PC port isn't quite so positive. On the one hand, I love what the RE Engine is doing technologically and the game itself is fantastic, but on the other hand, I'm genuinely puzzled and disappointed by some of the design choices, bugs, glitches and performance problems. This conversion really isn't where it should be right now.

It starts with the game's menu system and settings which are both excellent and awkward at the same time. In terms of features, the graphical options are great: there's plenty to tweak, along with preview imagery showing you what the settings actually do and some rough idea of the performance implications. The problem comes in how the user navigates through the menu. Scrolling through the options is so, so slow and while keyboard works, you can't actually leave a sub-menu without pressing the right-button on the mouse (and no, ESC doesn't work). It's all counter-intuitive to the point where remarkably, menu navigation is actually a lot, lot quicker using a controller.

...

vrs tier 2 downgrade image in noticable way in this game, quite high settings on cosnoles

 

[Deleted member 86764]

vrs tier 2 downgrade image in noticable way in this game, quite high settings on cosnoles

Dsappointing PC port, pretty nice console performance.

 

[PSman1700]

So it was a so-so pc port afterall.

 

[Globalisateur]

vrs tier 2 downgrade image in noticable way in this game, quite high settings on cosnoles

Not a surprise. We already saw this in Dirt 5. Hardware RDNA 2 VRS reminds me of Quincunx on PS3. It was great theoretically on paper but eventually all multiplat devs stopped using it because the image was too downgraded compared to others modern AA like FXAA.

 

[mr magoo]

vrs tier 2 downgrade image in noticable way in this game, quite high settings on cosnoles

vrs is broken in this game

from the article

I've also got issues with the graphical presets themselves. To begin with, I was excited to see support for Tier 2 Variable Rate Shading (VRS) - which looks so good in Gears 5 and Wolfenstein Youngblood, and effectively gives you free performance with no perceivable visual drawbacks. AMD's FidelityFX implementation is used here and it's immediately obvious that something has gone badly wrong with it. Detail is lost and you don't need to eyeball screenshots or zoom in at 400 per cent to see the issue. The fact it's the AMD implementation is doubly disappointing: you'd expect a standardised solution from the vendor to produce good results but that's not happening here. It really needs to be looked at and fixed.

 

[Jay]

vrs is broken in this game

Not the only thing that could've been done better.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

vrs tier 2 downgrade image in noticable way in this game, quite high settings on cosnoles

vrs is broken in this game

from the article

I've also got issues with the graphical presets themselves. To begin with, I was excited to see support for Tier 2 Variable Rate Shading (VRS) - which looks so good in Gears 5 and Wolfenstein Youngblood, and effectively gives you free performance with no perceivable visual drawbacks. AMD's FidelityFX implementation is used here and it's immediately obvious that something has gone badly wrong with it. Detail is lost and you don't need to eyeball screenshots or zoom in at 400 per cent to see the issue. The fact it's the AMD implementation is doubly disappointing: you'd expect a standardised solution from the vendor to produce good results but that's not happening here. It really needs to be looked at and fixed.

So, it's interesting that it appears to be AMD's FidelityFX usage of VRS tier 2 that is strangely broken.

As pointed out, other developers when they utilize their own code for VRS tier 2, the results are fantastic with no perceivable loss of quality. And the improved render times means that those savings can be used to increased overall IQ.

In other words when used properly, VRS tier 2 results in an increase in visual fidelity (with equal frame times) compared to not using VRS tier 2.

It's just really strange that AMD's usage of their own hardware feature is so bad.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

As pointed out, other developers when they utilize their own code for VRS tier 2, the results are fantastic with no perceivable loss of quality. And the improved render times means that those savings can be used to increased overall IQ.

I think only Gears and Wolfenstein technically applies to this. No other 3p developer has rolled their own T2 solution yet. Most others that have are T1. I'll be honest in thinking that Wolfenstein is t1.

But yea I agree, it seems AMD fidelity VRS is fairly suboptimal to what it could be. Perhaps an issue with having a generic VRS t2 system versus a dedicated one for your engine.

You get the plug and play, but you get nothing else. The others are plumbing VRS into the appropriate stages of their rendering engine to get performance results while reducing the loss.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think only Gears and Wolfenstein technically applies to this. No other 3p developer has rolled their own T2 solution yet. Most others that have are T1. I'll be honest in thinking that Wolfenstein is t1.

It kind of makes me wonder if it's purely because of The Coalition's experiments with VRS that led to MS implementing their own MS specific modifications to VRS (changes on top of what VRS Tier 2 brings) in the XBS SOC. And on PC, rather than leaning on that hardware support in the SOC, they are instead using software code for it in combination with VRS tier 2. Less efficient than having hardware support perhaps, but on PC you can just throw more hardware at it.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

It kind of makes me wonder if it's purely because of The Coalition's experiments with VRS that led to MS implementing their own MS specific modifications to VRS (changes on top of what VRS Tier 2 brings) in the XBS SOC. And on PC, rather than leaning on that hardware support in the SOC, they are instead using software code for it in combination with VRS tier 2. Less efficient than having hardware support perhaps, but on PC you can just throw more hardware at it.

Regards,
SB

I think it really just comes down to plumbing imo. The fidelity fx VRS is a black box applied at only 1 stage of the rendering pipeline, thus it looks bad. If a developer really wants to do significant plumbing of VRS, you are applying it per buffer (variably per buffer) so that when the buffers come together for the final output its extremely difficult to notice the end result.

Where as fidelity fx is just running what appears to be on post processing step, so it's basically a bolt on solution. And I think that's where we are seeing a dramatic difference in implementation, one is significantly more involved than the other.

 

[Cyan]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...lages-pc-port-is-disappointing-and-needs-work

Resident Evil Village's PC port is disappointing and needs work
Bugs, glitches and stutters take the sheen away from a great game.

We loved Resident Evil Village on consoles, but unfortunately, my opinion of the PC port isn't quite so positive. On the one hand, I love what the RE Engine is doing technologically and the game itself is fantastic, but on the other hand, I'm genuinely puzzled and disappointed by some of the design choices, bugs, glitches and performance problems. This conversion really isn't where it should be right now.

It starts with the game's menu system and settings which are both excellent and awkward at the same time. In terms of features, the graphical options are great: there's plenty to tweak, along with preview imagery showing you what the settings actually do and some rough idea of the performance implications. The problem comes in how the user navigates through the menu. Scrolling through the options is so, so slow and while keyboard works, you can't actually leave a sub-menu without pressing the right-button on the mouse (and no, ESC doesn't work). It's all counter-intuitive to the point where remarkably, menu navigation is actually a lot, lot quicker using a controller.

...

on a GTX 1080 there is no problem, but I also tested it on a 1060 3GB and the game while looking better than say Resident Evil 2 Remake, it's not leap and bounds better. A puny 1060 3GB can run RE2R at 60fps 1440p no problem, but with similar settings on RE8, the framerate can go as low as 13-20fps most of the time. Even the sound starts clipping.

 

[Cyan]

additionally, the HDR is broken in RE8 PC. It doesnt look great. You're better off disabling it in-game (also it forces you to use Fullscreen, I prefer borderless) and let Auto HDR or SpecialK do its job.

 

[pjbliverpool]

additionally, the HDR is broken in RE8 PC. It doesnt look great. You're better off disabling it in-game (also it forces you to use Fullscreen, I prefer borderless) and let Auto HDR or SpecialK do its job.

HDR won't even activate on my monitor - it's greyed out. Works fine on the TV and all other games work on the monitor so no idea what the problem is.