Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]

[iroboto]

But overall, I just haven't seen a pattern where DX12 should be the obvious choice if the game offers you DX11 as an option and you don't need RT.

I wonder if that just comes down to maturity. Many engines have been developing their DX for decades now. DX12 is the first time in PC space has seen an absolute new ground up API from MS. Over time as developers mature with dx12, and IHVs mature with dx12 drivers, you’ll see a reversal. If it doesn’t come by the end of this generation of console titles I would be surprised.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

It's not about if one is ok or not. It's about the impact to the player.
Single player game where 85% of the time you play it is a stutterfest is a lot different than 1 or 2 matches of a multi player game that then runs fine.
I'm not excusing it either, just highlighting that all things aren't equal.

Personally I think DF should just consider them broken and say as such and not invest time and effort analysing them.
Better things to be doing, and if someone else is prepared to do an analysis on a broken game, then good for them.

I wouldn't do follow up analysis on patches unless it said its fixed either.

I'll accept over the total time spent from your average fortnite player in the game, the stutters likely have a relatively minimal impact.

The point of concern though is not that Fortnite is 'ruined' because of this, it's not really a review of it as a game. It's that Fortnite is Epic's marquee product. It is an obscene cash cow, the one where you would expect they would devote their most care and attention, both in amount of resources and specific Unreal Engine developer expertise. It was ported to a variant of the engine that specifically laid out how it has addressed shader stuttering, both in its propensity to capture the PSO's to make the precompiling stage more complete, as well as being optimized to asynchronously handle them in realtime if need be.

And it still stutters.

 

[Remij]

Ii accept over the total time spent from your average fortnite player in the game, the stutters likely have a relatively minimal impact.

The point of concern though is not that Fortnite is 'ruined' because of this, it's not really a review of it as a game. It's that Fortnite is Epic's marquee product. It is an obscene cash cow, the one where you would expect they would devote their most care and attention, both in amount of resources and specific Unreal Engine developer expertise. It was ported to a variant of the engine that specifically laid out how it has addressed shader stuttering, both in its propensity to capture the PSO's to make the precompiling stage more complete, as well as being optimized to asynchronously handle them in realtime if need be.

And it still stutters.

Notice how Epic haven't really said or shown anything of this automated PSO gathering stuff in action, showing how it will supposedly improve things.


I think the reality is simply this. What started out as a PC focused engine, powering PC focused games... is now a console focused engine, powering console focused games, which is also pushing out into other non-gaming related markets.. which is driving it's entire design away from something that works well on PC.

I mean, it's pretty clear why we're getting tech demos on consoles now and not PC like before. The PS5 Nanite demo, the Matrix demo.... They'll just be stuttering messes on PC.

PC hasn't been the focus of Epic since the 360 days and Gears of War. That's when it all changed. And now they don't really give a shit. Console and movies make money. PC just makes problems.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

PC hasn't been the focus of Epic since the 360 days and Gears of War. That's when it all changed. And now they don't really give a shit. Console and movies make money. PC just makes problems.

I think the Epic store makes that somewhat questionable, but then again Sweeney also embarked on this pointless venture with the Apple store, so not sure of how coherent his 'strategy' is.

Also bear in mind a major avenue for Fortnite is mobile, which now means mostly Android - and it certainly has to deal with shader compilation.

 

[Jay]

Unreal Engine developer expertise. It was ported to a variant of the engine that specifically laid out how it has addressed shader stuttering, both in its propensity to capture the PSO's to make the precompiling stage more complete, as well as being optimized to asynchronously handle them in realtime if need be.

Maybe what they've been working on isn't ready yet, not sure was worth delaying this launch for it.
It's bad that they can't get their own title stutter free. And that's putting it lightly.
Especially as that seems to be the biggest PC issue at the moment.

I mean, it's pretty clear why we're getting tech demos on consoles now and not PC like before. The PS5 Nanite demo, the Matrix demo....

Wasn't they also on PC? I know the matrix one definitely is.

 

[chris1515]

Maybe what they've been working on isn't ready yet, not sure was worth delaying this launch for it.
It's bad that they can't get their own title stutter free. And that's putting it lightly.
Especially as that seems to be the biggest PC issue at the moment.


Wasn't they also on PC? I know the matrix one definitely is.

And Valley of the Ancient was only on PC.

 

[Globalisateur]

Maybe what they've been working on isn't ready yet, not sure was worth delaying this launch for it.
It's bad that they can't get their own title stutter free. And that's putting it lightly.
Especially as that seems to be the biggest PC issue at the moment.


Wasn't they also on PC? I know the matrix one definitely is.

The first PS5 UE5 demo showcasing nanite was never released elsewhere.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I'm sure you guys are right about the stuttering but I honestly didn't notice anything. Once I'd sorted out the settings the game was perfectly smooth for me even on a 1070. Unusually smooth if anything given I'm running roughly between the high 30's and high 40's with gsync.

I can clearly see the issues in the videos of Calisto and Sack Boy but there was nothing at all like that here.

 

[techuse]

Stuttering is pretty bad from the videos I have watched.

 

[PSman1700]

Console and movies make money. PC just makes problems.

PC makes enough money, probably more than a singular console platform does in special with these kinds of games. Which makes the shader compilation issue all the more weird, ofcourse.

I'm sure you guys are right about the stuttering but I honestly didn't notice anything. Once I'd sorted out the settings the game was perfectly smooth for me even on a 1070. Unusually smooth if anything given I'm running roughly between the high 30's and high 40's with gsync.

I can clearly see the issues in the videos of Calisto and Sack Boy but there was nothing at all like that here.

Neither here on a 3070m. However i can imagine it happening in singleplayer games using early UE5.1 builds.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Stuttering is pretty bad from the videos I have watched.

YT isn't a great way to determine game smoothness due to its fixed frame rate presentation. That video looks way chopper than what I'm seeing while playing the game, and I'm fairly certain a 4090 can play the game a lot smoother than my 1070.

I did note that when "connecting" the game goes crazy on my CPU with all cores occasionally hitting 100% on a 3700x which is something I've never seen before. So I assume its compiling shaders at that point.

 

[chris1515]

PC makes enough money, probably more than a singular console platform does in special with these kinds of games. Which makes the shader compilation issue all the more weird, ofcourse.



Neither here on a 3070m. However i can imagine it happening in singleplayer games using early UE5.1 builds.

The biggest platform for Fortnite is PS4 in 2021, nearly half of revenue. PS4 + XB1 revenue from march 2018 to July 2020 were 74.3 % of all revenue and third platform is Switch. Consoles make the bigger part of Fortnite revenue and by far. Other part are shared between PC and mobile. PC is fourth platform after it is IOS and Android. if we count the two together they are higher than PC. But this is not the problem, they need to solve the compilation shader problem but it seems it is improved on 5.1.

PlayStation is Fortnite’s biggest platform

Documents relating to the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Epic have revealed that PlayStation is in fact Fortnite's biggest platform.

www.vg247.com

 

[PSman1700]

The biggest platform for Fortnite is PS4 in 2021, nearly half of revenue. PS4 + XB1 revenue from march 2018 to July 2020 were 74.3 % of all revenue and third platform is Switch. Consoles make the bigger part of Fortnite revenue and by far. Other part are shared between PC and mobile. PC is fourth platform after it is IOS and Android. if we count the two together they are higher than PC. But this is not the problem, they need to solve the compilation shader problem but it seems it is improved on 5.1.

PlayStation is Fortnite’s biggest platform

Documents relating to the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Epic have revealed that PlayStation is in fact Fortnite's biggest platform.

www.vg247.com

Is that in player-count or pure revenue? I remember Fortnite having the largest install base on PC disregarding mobile, could have been Apex? It was one of these battle royale games. Even more surprising is Ios/Apple, that was supposed to be the largest install base.
Do playstation users spend more on ingame items?

Anyway, i was talking install-base (potentional target market), the most amount of players should atleast get a good treatment. However at the same time i dont see a huge problem regarding PSO stutter for Fortnite, its nowhere near what we see in UE4 SP games.

 

[techuse]

YT isn't a great way to determine game smoothness due to its fixed frame rate presentation. That video looks way chopper than what I'm seeing while playing the game, and I'm fairly certain a 4090 can play the game a lot smoother than my 1070.

I did note that when "connecting" the game goes crazy on my CPU with all cores occasionally hitting 100% on a 3700x which is something I've never seen before. So I assume its compiling shaders at that point.

The overlay has a frame time graph which shows consistent spikes every time he performs an action for the first time or looks at a new area. Takes quite a while for it to clear up.

 

[chris1515]

Is that in player-count or pure revenue? I remember Fortnite having the largest install base on PC disregarding mobile, could have been Apex? It was one of these battle royale games. Even more surprising is Ios/Apple, that was supposed to be the largest install base.
Do playstation users spend more on ingame items?

Larger revenue. IOS Apple is only 10% of the daily player.

 

[PSman1700]

Larger revenue. IOS Apple is only 10% of the daily player.

Yes revenue, i wonder what the install or user-base is though. Revenue doesnt tell the player count. Apple IOS users for example are a much and much smaller market than Android's, however the latter generates much less revenue.

 

[Remij]

Wasn't they also on PC? I know the matrix one definitely is.

Not really. The open world project assets were uploaded for the marketplace for developers to play with.. that's not the same as the actual tech demo that was released for the consoles for the public to test out and play.

The Valley of the Ancients is the same thing.

There's a reason why they don't put out executables of tech demos on PC anymore... because they're not going to waste their time making them when they know that the experience will be a stuttering mess and negatively impact the perception of the engine.

Epic are obviously real close to Sony these days. Everything you see come from Epic is marketed towards the PS5. That's where the effort goes... and it's fine, I get it. That's where all the money is apparently... but at some point, you have to deal with things on other platforms. If the engine on PC can't provide the basic functionality of running properly without massive stutters anytime something new is shown on the screen.. then they have to come out and address it. Tell people the damn truth. I don't care that your job is hard... that you might have to spend a lot more time and money... this and that... Doesn't matter one damn bit to me. Too bad.

In my honest opinion, it's at the point where they know this issue exists, persists, and will only get worse..... and yet they continue to act like there's nothing wrong here. Games releasing on this engine in a completely unacceptable broken state. And what also pisses me of is their priorities being Nanite and Lumen... when a massive part of your userbase can't even play last gen games properly on their $4000+ PCs due to constant stuttering. Like... what the actual hell is going on here?

Too many games use this damn engine now... and a line has to be drawn... either support the PC and release a quality damned product... or don't support the PC at all and get lost.

 

[The-Nastiest]

PC makes enough money, probably more than a singular console platform does in special with these kinds of games. Which makes the shader compilation issue all the more weird, ofcourse.

Is that in player-count or pure revenue? I remember Fortnite having the largest install base on PC disregarding mobile

Anyway, i was talking install-base (potentional target market), the most amount of players should atleast get a good treatment.

Links to back up your statements please.

 

[The-Nastiest]

Sometimes I wonder if expanding the dynamic resolution range (by lowering the resolution floor) would help the Series X version at least match the PS5 version in performance.

It would be extremely disappointing if it was that easy and devs choose occasional drops instead. A res difference of 1800p and 2016p is only noticeable on ~2X+ zooms.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Tried out Fortnite on my system (i5-12400, RTX 3060) - pretty brutal at any settings. Not sure if every stutter is related to shader stutter though, as I was still getting stuttering after ~20 mins of play in the same spots (such as when your team materializes), but even outside of that there were periodic small stutters just walking around.

Thing is though - DX11 with all nanite/lumen disabled was actually far worse, the massive stutters made it basically unplayable. Neither was a good experience mind you, but I was kind of shocked how bad DX11 is - was it always like this? I haven't played it in years but I don't remember it being quite this bad on a far weaker system I had at the time. I mean I don't know how even PC DIY sites, which don't take shader caching into account usually, could even get the benchmarks they're getting with this performance as you would have to play for a long time to get these shaders cached, swapping out cards and you would have the low 1% in the 20fps range if my experience was typical. So I don't know think we can really make any determinations yet of how the engine as a whole is going to perform on PC, just too many wildly different experiences out there right now.

Night and day on the PS5 though. Some drops from 60fps like when gliding into the map, but otherwise a locked 60. But at the moment, nothing comparable to how it struggles on my PC.