Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]

[troyan]

Like the previous version?

 

[OlegSH]

Yes. Though, the mirror character in the video is such a cheating, but must be funny to play if other characters can be reflected in it)

 

[trinibwoy]

The Sowftware Lumen is a definite a huge mprovement in Fortnite but that doesn't look better to me than some games with Voxel GI.

Which games have dynamic voxel GI?

Yes, because even mirrors in the game are designed with weird normal map and roughness to hide the low precision of SDFs and surface cache as well as the lack of skinned meshes, not even speaking of translucent surfaces, such as car's windows that completely lack reflections on UE 5.1 (quite disappointingly so). Imagine how fun it would have been from a gameplay point of view if the game had an area with distorted mirrors labyrinth full of players or bots all with HW RT and shading in hit points)

It’s not just that. Some reflections have completely blacked out areas because they’re sampling the surface cache for material info. The black areas are an indication that there is no Lumen card on that part of the reflected asset.

What’s bizarre though is the blacked out portion of the character’s reflection. The only option is to hardware trace skinned objects so it must be some kind of bug.

 

[OlegSH]

What’s bizarre though is the blacked out portion of the character’s reflection. The only option is to hardware trace skinned objects so it must be some kind of bug.

Skinned objects don't have surface cache, so no shading for them. The only option for them would be hit shaders that are not used even on the highest settings in the update.

 

[trinibwoy]

Skinned objects don't have surface cache, so no shading for them. The only option for them would be hit shaders that are not used even on the highest settings in the update.

Yes that’s why it’s bizarre. Why trace the character model BVH just to skip the hit shader?

 

[Jupiter]

Which games have dynamic voxel GI?

So far I haven't noticed dynamic voxel GI in any of them. They still need SSAO etc. and that doesn't look properly either.

At 21:44 min in the DF Fortnite video the car doesn't have the correct lighting as known from conventional games or with Voxel GI. On the other hand hardware ray traced lumen looks right.

 

[SmooTh]

 

[Cyan]

this has been a very fine day. New DF video, Skyrim mod supporting DLSS/XeSS/FSR2 is out and A Plague Tale Requiem mod now supporting XeSS for the PC Gamepass version which is the one I purchased time ago.

This video in particular is very nice, 'cos Richard shows what it is to be a PC gamer. I think he was a bit conservative at times, specially with RT, but optimisation is that, improving performance to achieve a better gameplay experience.

The only thing I missed is that he didn't try mods like XeSS mod in Doom Eternal or Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (RT Ultra 60fps locked), or A Plague Tale Requiem. With that the framerate is immaculate, specially at 60fps and RT. Right now I am in the process of locking Doom Eternal to 165fps and low power consumption from start to finish. Other than that nice video DF, a flawless victory.

 

[PSman1700]

This felt more like a A770/i5 is better than consoles video. While that may be true thats not what the title says

 

[Inuhanyou]

This felt more like a A770/i5 is better than consoles video. While that may be true thats not what the title says

I don't think rich is into platform warring I think it more broadly speaks to how competitive Intel seems to be out of the gate. And how much AMD and Nvidia needs a kick in the pants

 

[PSman1700]

I don't think rich is into platform warring I think it more broadly speaks to how competitive Intel seems to be out of the gate. And how much AMD and Nvidia needs a kick in the pants

Absolutely not i know, though some may take it like that. Excellent video, excellent product. A770 is what we need in the dGPU space, 349usd with ample raw raster performance, RT and ML acceleration teamed to generous 16GB vram.
Its up to fight the 4060/7600.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I wonder how long it will take to fully compete in high end space with Nvidia. They seem to start from strong foundation

 

[PSman1700]

I wonder how long it will take to fully compete in high end space with Nvidia. They seem to start from strong foundation

Well, they indeed have a strong foundation, going strong in RT and ML. Not sure about raw raster performance though, but we might see improvements for the current architecture with drivers. Not that theres anything to complain about, its basically 3060Ti performance there, however its a 20TF GPU.

 

[Cyan]

Absolutely not i know, though some may take it like that. Excellent video, excellent product. A770 is what we need in the dGPU space, 349usd with ample raw raster performance, RT and ML acceleration teamed to generous 16GB vram.
Its up to fight the 4060/7600.

it's not that cheap in real life though. It cost me 450€ at launch. Oddly enough, I decided to purchase it after watching DF video, but back then I was thorn, I could buy a brand new RX 6700 for 389€ -a steal- and a RX 6700XT for 479€ -super price too-. That being said, many people underrate the a770, it's not high-tier but with RT on it's a bit better than mid-tier and at rasterization..., well, it gets the job done.

As for the foundation, from Larrabee and so on, Intel has a lot of experience with raytracing research built up over the years. Quite a few professionals use the fast Intel Embree RT kernel and their denoiser. This is a video from 2010.

 

[SmooTh]

 

[Inuhanyou]

Graphics take significant downgrade from current gen, but they still hold up well in isolation outside of texture rendering problem due to lack of ram. The real problem is in performance on base Xbox one.

And, all last gen machines for some reason have actual capped 24fps cinematic segments by design not just cutscenes but any time control is taken away from the player. Who thought that was good idea?!


*Edit* @SmooTh just 3 seconds before I pushed post

 

[Riddlewire]

I don't believe I have any other games that attempt to lock to 24fps.
I wonder, if you play on Xbox One S/X with the system in 120hz mode, will the (cinematics) frametimes in this game be a consistent 41.66ms? That would certainly look better than the inconsistent frame pacing at a 60hz refresh rate.

 

[Globalisateur]

I don't believe I have any other games that attempt to lock to 24fps.
I wonder, if you play on Xbox One S/X with the system in 120hz mode, will the (cinematics) frametimes in this game be a consistent 41.66ms? That would certainly look better than the inconsistent frame pacing at a 60hz refresh rate.

It was no gameplay but Kena CGI cutscenes were 24fps before they replaced them with 30fps cutscenes. There were many rightfull complaints as those looked awful compared to gameplay or real-time cutscenes both running at 60fps.

EDIT: Why are they comparing 30fps old-gen vs 60fps PS5 game though in The Callisto protocol? They should have used the quality mode on PS5.
EDIT2: They did compared to PS5 quality mode at the end of the video though.

 

[Riddlewire]

It was no gameplay but Kena CGI cutscenes were 24fps before they replaced them with 30fps cutscenes. There were many rightfull complaints as those looked awful compared to gameplay or real-time cutscenes both running at 60fps.

I have no idea how that's related to what I asked.

 

[Inuhanyou]

EDIT: Why are they comparing 30fps old-gen vs 60fps PS5 game though in The Callisto protocol? They should have used the quality mode on PS5.

They did both in the video. But it's worth comparing the graphics of both PS5 modes to last gen. Even at 60fps and higher res PS5 is better than last gen visually