Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]

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Warzone 2.0 tested on all current-gen consoles: 60fps is a given, but what about 120?​

Crossplay gaming used to deliver precise, like-for-like testing on PS5 and Xbox Series machines.

Warzone 2.0 has arrived and like its predecessor, this free-to-play game is big in almost every sense of the word, with an expansive map inhabited by a massive playerbase. The game's based on the IW9 Engine, the same core technology that serves as the foundation for Modern Warfare 2, but here it's pushed to its limits to draw in a single huge environment while networking up to 150 players.

To put this latest battle royale to the test, the whole DF team combined forces to get simultaneous crossplay capture of each console - starting with PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S. How do each of these platforms stack up visually, what's performance like in the standard modes and how does the 120fps experience hold up for those with high refresh rate displays?

Before we get into the numbers, let's talk about what makes this game so challenging to play - and to run, even on powerful games consoles. As a battle royale, it's all about the giant new map. Al Mazrah is truly colossal, a joint production between multiple Activision studios that ranks as the biggest battlefield in the series' history. Tiny portions of Al Mazrah appeared in MW2's 6v6 and 12v12 modes already but the field of play also includes classic maps from 2007's Modern Warfare and 2009's Modern Warfare 2. It's a beautiful sight for long-time COD fans, and the map also adds new mechanics like boats and aquatic combat.

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TAA is better on PS5 as ghosting is almost completely removed on the Sony console (right side) compared to both Series consoles. Visible notably here and the ghosting is also easily visible in others Series footage like here. It strongly reminds me how using objects IDs on Pro version (using hardware ID Buffer) allowed ghosting reduction in Dark Souls remastered.

zt8JM8O.jpg


EDIT: Difference of TAA implementation is also quite obvious in the first image comparing 3 consoles in their article. But unfortunately here we are not 100% sure the PS5 pic has being taken in motion like the others even if they claim they compared versions using precise and like for like methodology.
 
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Not at such locked fps and especially not at double the default target fps

Point being that this game is cross-gen, you wont be getting 120fps/4k in current gen focussed games. We're not even getting 4k60, quite far from it with FW, rift apart etc, usually 1440p or lower if you want 60. And thats today.
Talking pure capabilities and not looking at RT, 10TF can only get you so far no matter what. Thats low end range in GPU space by now.
 
Point being that this game is cross-gen, you wont be getting 120fps/4k in current gen focussed games. We're not even getting 4k60, quite far from it with FW, rift apart etc, usually 1440p or lower if you want 60. And thats today.
Talking pure capabilities and not looking at RT, 10TF can only get you so far no matter what. Thats low end range in GPU space by now.
Low range? I think your letting 1600 dollar halo products only 1 percent of people can buy go too far to your brain as an example of something normal.

PS5 and Series X are still very powerful and capable hardware. Certainly not weak or underpowered. Even Series S which I would classify as that has enough major architecture advantage from the last gen that we are not even fully seeing utilized with cross gen gaming yet.

It still has run those coming experiences adequately which will have positive knock on effect of the more powerful consoles as well as all manner of PC to be scalable.



As for the current gen capabilities of my previous post, i wasn't talking about what your talking about to begin with. Even series S is pulling in a great result despite all the factors involved.

That shows the benefit of the hardware involved is what my point was. When a developer has a target they are dead set on achieving they can do good things still even with great fps and image quality be it less graphically intensive or more, and the new consoles show this is easier than ever.

No one here is talking about "next gen graphics", or native 4k120 or even 4k60 but you, which this game isn't even doing, nor is it doing native 4k/60
 
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Low range? I think your letting 1600 dollar halo products only 1 percent of people can buy go too far to your brain as an example of something normal.

RTX4090 is a high end ethusiast GPU from the latest generation. Consoles are in the 6600XT range or 3060/ti (the latter provides better RT vs the consoles).
These are in the entry range of last generation gpu’s (rdna2/ampere), bar 3050/6500. Its lower end range, in special by now, as a 4060 will surely be much more capable gpu.


PS5 and Series X are still very powerful and capable hardware. Certainly not weak or underpowered. Even Series S which I would classify as that has enough major architecture advantage from the last gen that we are not even fully seeing utilized with cross gen gaming yet.

Compared to last generation yes. Last gen was heavily gimped though, their cpus where very unimpressive and they didnt have sata ssd’s which came long before that generation of consoles.
Gimp a generation to make the next seem a larger jump in these areas.
Going from a sata ssd to a nvme, not that much a difference as going from a 5400rpm hdd to a m2 nvme drive.

No one here is talking about "next gen graphics", or native 4k120 or even 4k60 but you, which this game isn't even doing, nor is it doing native 4k/60

A cross gen game’s performance might not be representive of what to expect, 120 fps and 4k will go to 1440p drs and 30fps (ue5 at higher settings).
 
You are still misunderstanding me. The post you responded to wasn't in regards to future games having to have sacrifices compared to now, but my feelings on what the current hardware can pull out of current games being very impressive.

No one is arguing that 120 to 60 will go from 60 to 30 depending on the game the dev wants to make and their priority. But it's a merit of current gen that focusing on 60fps or even 120fps will still be doable and easier than ever even if you have to keep that in mind during game design as usual.

I would argue 8th gen and generations before that would not yield good results in general pushing them to ultra high fps like 120 and would likely not even be able to while producing games at acceptable fidelity. It is the power of current gen that the baseline of what games can do is risen dramatically as I said is my entire point.
 
RTX4090 is a high end ethusiast GPU from the latest generation. Consoles are in the 6600XT range or 3060/ti (the latter provides better RT vs the consoles).
These are in the entry range of last generation gpu’s (rdna2/ampere), bar 3050/6500. Its lower end range, in special by now, as a 4060 will surely be much more capable gpu.




Compared to last generation yes. Last gen was heavily gimped though, their cpus where very unimpressive and they didnt have sata ssd’s which came long before that generation of consoles.
Gimp a generation to make the next seem a larger jump in these areas.
Going from a sata ssd to a nvme, not that much a difference as going from a 5400rpm hdd to a m2 nvme drive.



A cross gen game’s performance might not be representive of what to expect, 120 fps and 4k will go to 1440p drs and 30fps (ue5 at higher settings).

Your UE 5 settings are not up to date, This is 1080p + TSR 60 fps + software lumen high settings or 1080p + TSR 30 fps + software lumen Epic settings or HW-RT with DRS if needed. They change the requirement after adding Temporal super resolution.

But I suppose Epic will continue to improve lumen and requirement will change again in the future. We will see many SW GI implementation in the next two years.

After it will depend of what the studios of Call of Duty want to do if they decide than framerate is the most important they can decide to stay with a 120 fps option. With Ps4 and Xbox1 120 fps wasn't an option at all.
 
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TAA is better on PS5 as ghosting is almost completely removed on the Sony console (right side) compared to both Series consoles. Visible notably here and the ghosting is also easily visible in others Series footage like here. It strongly reminds me how using objects IDs on Pro version (using hardware ID Buffer) allowed ghosting reduction in Dark Souls remastered.

zt8JM8O.jpg


EDIT: Difference of TAA implementation is also quite obvious in the first image comparing 3 consoles in their article. But unfortunately here we are not 100% sure the PS5 pic has being taken in motion like the others even if they claim they compared versions using precise and like for like methodology.
Why are TAA implementations different?
 
Low range? I think your letting 1600 dollar halo products only 1 percent of people can buy go too far to your brain as an example of something normal.

PS5 and Series X are still very powerful and capable hardware. Certainly not weak or underpowered. Even Series S which I would classify as that has enough major architecture advantage from the last gen that we are not even fully seeing utilized with cross gen gaming yet.

It still has run those coming experiences adequately which will have positive knock on effect of the more powerful consoles as well as all manner of PC to be scalable.



As for the current gen capabilities of my previous post, i wasn't talking about what your talking about to begin with. Even series S is pulling in a great result despite all the factors involved.

That shows the benefit of the hardware involved is what my point was. When a developer has a target they are dead set on achieving they can do good things still even with great fps and image quality be it less graphically intensive or more, and the new consoles show this is easier than ever.

No one here is talking about "next gen graphics", or native 4k120 or even 4k60 but you, which this game isn't even doing, nor is it doing native 4k/60
Consoles will still have advantages versus PC, as they are closed boxes. I came accross a guy who compared Warzone 2 on PS5 vs his high end PC and he says the PS5 version was much better as the game had an unstable framerate on his PC. We could say the same for many others games released this year.
Why are TAA implementations different?
If it's like Dark Souls remastered I am guessing they are using object IDs on PS5 to better reproject from the previous frame. Maybe the implementation is inherited from the Pro version (which we know has custom hardware helping doing exactly this) but this is just a wild guess. I am hoping we have similar comparison footage from the Pro and X1X version on next DF analysis focusing on old-gen consoles in order to see if my theory is sound.
Of course, our investigations don't end here - looking at the last-gen versions on PS4/Pro and Xbox One/X will be fascinating, and I can't wait to see how the original 2013-vintage Xbox One handles Warzone 2.0 - stay tuned.
Not sure if you saw the difference of TAA, I am talking about the ghosting on the gun that is seen only on Xbox.
 
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Consoles will still have advantages versus PC, as they are closed boxes. I came accross a guy who compared Warzone 2 on PS5 vs his high end PC and he says the PS5 version was much better as the game had an unstable framerate on his PC. We could say the same for many others games released this year.

If it's like Dark Souls remastered I am guessing they are using object IDs on PS5 to better reproject from the previous frame. Maybe the implementation is inherited from the Pro version (which we know has custom hardware helping doing exactly this) but this is just a wild guess. I am hoping we have similar comparison footage from the Pro and X1X version on next DF analysis focusing on old-gen consoles in order to see if my theory is sound.

Not sure if you saw the difference of TAA, I am talking about the ghosting on the gun that is seen only on Xbox.

Yes Id Buffer can help to reduce temporal ghosting and to build visibility buffer. GG said they can't use it for the Visibility buffer for deferred texturing because it is only on PS4 Pro and PS5.
 
Is this confirmation PS5 still has ID buffer HW then? If it was done in software, XBS could use it.

Yes confirmed by guerrilla games in deffered texturing presentation. I suppose it will be there to in PS6 at least for backward compatibility.

 
Hmm, why isn't it rolled into RDNA then? Pretty pointless keeping it exclusive as it won't be a sales feature for PS5 even if advertised, which it isn't! Seems a nice addition, unless it's a poor budget in the silicon? Guess it's superseded by ML type upscaling and has no value there? But surely it would benefit ML algorithms as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Hmm, why isn't it rolled into RDNA then? Pretty pointless keeping it exclusive as it won't be a sales feature for PS5 even if advertised, which it isn't! Seems a nice addition, unless it's a poor budget in the silicon? Guess it's superseded by ML type upscaling and has no value there? But surely it would benefit ML algorithms as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No idea basically Sony told if AMD is interested by something they can use it. And because of base PS4 it seems they use a geometry shader. Nanite use Visiblity Buffer, last COD, Dawn Engine and some other engine too, this is very strange.

pWDDXvZ.png



Decima already had a depth prepass, so we augmented this with an additional depth and visibility pass that wrote to the Visibility Buffer as well as the Depth Buffer.
For each pixel this pass needs to write out information about the triangle, instance and batch as a 32 bit primitive ID.
In theory we could use the dedicated hardware that’s in PS4 Pro and PS5 for this, but unfortunately this would leave PS4 Base out in the cold, as it doesn’t have a proper way to get a primitive Id without using a geometry shader.
 
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Yes confirmed by guerrilla games in deffered texturing presentation. I suppose it will be there to in PS6 at least for backward compatibility.

Very good find as it's very nice to finally have the confirmation PS5 also has ID Buffer hardware. It's also interesting to see ID Buffer can be useful for various things, not only CBR related.

EDIT: it also shows that Horizon 2 running on PS5 is simply a PS4 game using PS4 hardware up-resed and up-framed to run on PS5 as it it doesn't seem to use any PS5 (or even Pro) specific hardware. Guerrilla need to modernize their engine the way Insomniac did for PS5 hardware (for instance by using RT hardware for the PS5 versions of Spider-man).

I wouldn't be surprised if Insomniac used others PS5 specific tricks like the ID Buffer by seen how competent the TAAU is on that console.
 
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Nixxes has released a new patch which once again improves RT and some other details. They keep the good stuff coming, which is nice, I am completing Gotham Knights in the meantime.

Hey everyone,

A new patch for Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is now live. This update holds dozens of fixes and improvements. We addressed a bug that resulted in unintended air horn sounds being audible for some players and fixed a bug that caused some audio effects to be absent from specific cutscenes.

Furthermore, the game menu now has an option to skip Fast Travel animations, some missing ray-traced reflections on glass surfaces have been added and multiple visual fixes to ray-traced reflections and shadows have been implemented. The game now also checks for the NVIDIA GeForce Game Ready Driver for Miles Morales and warns if it is not installed.

In this patch we also addressed the bug that caused players having to press the Gadget wheel button twice to open it the first time when using a gamepad. Various fixes were made to UI elements, for example the waveform that is shown during audio calls now scales correctly on ultrawide screens.

When booting the game for the first time, or after updating your GPU driver, the game will load pipelines and cache shaders in the background. Depending on your system specifications, this process can take a while and a black screen will be shown. With this update we have improved this process by assigning more CPU power to make it faster and show the loading icon for a longer period.

Patch Notes

  • Removed unintended air horn sounds that could occur in some cutscenes for some players.
  • Fixed an issue that resulted in mission audio effects in certain cutscenes.
  • Added a menu option to skip Fast Travel animations.
  • Visual improvements to ray-traced reflections and shadows.
  • Added missing ray-traced reflections for some glass surfaces.
  • Improved the process of loading pipelines and caching shaders on first startup.
  • The waveform shown during calls and radio broadcasts now scales correctly on ultrawide aspect ratios.
  • Fixed a bug that caused edge blur to be visible on 32:9 aspect ratios when using certain upscaling settings.
  • Addressed a bug that could cause players to get stuck after using Fast Travel for the first time.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Crime Missions not to load under certain conditions.
  • Addressed a bug that caused players having to press the Gadget wheel button twice to open it the first time when using a gamepad.
  • Various UI bugfixes, including fixes for ultrawide aspect ratios.
  • Added gyro support on Steam Deck for gameplay segments that let players examine objects.
  • Improved stability and performance.
  • Various minor bugfixes.
 
Hmm, why isn't it rolled into RDNA then? Pretty pointless keeping it exclusive as it won't be a sales feature for PS5 even if advertised, which it isn't! Seems a nice addition, unless it's a poor budget in the silicon? Guess it's superseded by ML type upscaling and has no value there? But surely it would benefit ML algorithms as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It was only likely added to PS5 to ensure there were no issues when running PS4 Pro games that require it via BC.
 
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