Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]

[Clukos]

Nice review, very detailed! Lack of async compute is probably hurting the 580 more than it does the 1060, and Nvidia D3D11 driver showing up again pretty strong in CPU limited scenarios.

Tbh I don't see any reason they'd go with D3D12 when it performs this well already, unless they wanted to somehow hack in RT it's a waste of dev time.

 

[Phantom88]

How God of War was brought from PlayStation to PC
A Digital Foundry tech interview.

After receiving review code pre-Christmas, Sony approached us asking whether we'd like to speak to the developers about the game and we eagerly took up the opportunity! In this tech interview, you'll find out what the goals of Sony Santa Monica and Jetpack Interactive were, why the choice was made to use the older DirectX 11 API as its foundation (other first-party Sony ports have favoured DX12), and how the team converted a game based on a single platform with a unified memory subsystem to the split pools used on PC.

In this interview, edited for length and clarity, we talk with Matt DeWald, senior manager for technical production at Sony Santa Monica, and Steve Tolin, a lead from Jetpack Interactive.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2022-god-of-war-pc-tech-interview

 

[PSman1700]

How God of War was brought from PlayStation to PC
A Digital Foundry tech interview.

After receiving review code pre-Christmas, Sony approached us asking whether we'd like to speak to the developers about the game and we eagerly took up the opportunity! In this tech interview, you'll find out what the goals of Sony Santa Monica and Jetpack Interactive were, why the choice was made to use the older DirectX 11 API as its foundation (other first-party Sony ports have favoured DX12), and how the team converted a game based on a single platform with a unified memory subsystem to the split pools used on PC.

In this interview, edited for length and clarity, we talk with Matt DeWald, senior manager for technical production at Sony Santa Monica, and Steve Tolin, a lead from Jetpack Interactive.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2022-god-of-war-pc-tech-interview

And thats how you do ports. Any game can be ported to any platform very well, even if its natively using that platforms unique features. It all depends on the efforts being put in from the developers/studios, and it pays off seeing the steam charts.

 

[Clukos]

Got a capture with Nsight and was a bit surprised to see they do a full depth pre-pass + somewhat traditional deferred afterwards, I guess they really didn't want any additional fragment processing at the expense of drawing geometry (at least) twice.

 

[Dictator]

A

Got a capture with Nsight and was a bit surprised to see they do a full depth pre-pass + somewhat traditional deferred afterwards, I guess they really didn't want any additional fragment processing at the expense of drawing geometry (at least) twice.

A Bit Like Quantum Break then,interesting!

 

[Clukos]

AA Bit Like Quantum Break then,interesting!

I think it's a bit different, in QB they did a light pre-pass and wrote some data into the GBuffer, then did another pass writing additional material data to it iirc. What GoW does is a more typical depth pre-pass, only writing depth without any RTVs to then use for depth testing in the GBuffer pass. Also probably explains why you don't see much (performance) benefit with DLSS in this game, as in other games. On my 3080 I've seen a 30% uplift in a GPU bound area by going from 1440p native to DLSS Ultra Perf (480p).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think it's a bit different, in QB they did a light pre-pass and wrote some data into the GBuffer, then did another pass writing additional material data to it iirc. What GoW does is a more typical depth pre-pass, only writing depth without any RTVs to then use for depth testing in the GBuffer pass. Also probably explains why you don't see much (performance) benefit with DLSS in this game, as in other games. On my 3080 I've seen a 30% uplift in a GPU bound area by going from 1440p native to DLSS Ultra Perf (480p).

That makes me curious how FSR does with the title as DLSS Ultra Perf doesn't look great so going FSR could potentially be an improvement or at least not much of a quality loss in comparison.

Regards,
SB

 

[Clukos]

That makes me curious how FSR does with the title as DLSS Ultra Perf doesn't look great so going FSR could potentially be an improvement or at least not much of a quality loss in comparison.

Regards,
SB

It's not that much different than other titles, DLSS is much better at resolving detail (especially the lower internal res you go) and more temporally stable. GoW does a lot of extra vertex processing, to avoid overdraw in the GBuffer, which in turn means these reconstruction techniques that try to alleviate compute/fragment processing cost by lowering internal res are a bit less impactful when it comes to performance. I still prefer DLSS quality over native though, it provides really good results in motion and a small performance boost

DLSS Performance

FSR Performance

Both are 720p internal res, FSR is running at 136 fps (7.35 ms), DLSS at 130 (7.69 ms).

 

[PSman1700]

Go with DLSS if you can, FSR if you dont have a modern nv gpu.

 

[techuse]

Is FSR better than the TAA scaler they have?

 

[Clukos]

Is FSR better than the TAA scaler they have?

I'd say yeah, they are comparable but their scaler tends to oversharpen everything.

FSR - In-game Scaler - DLSS

^ 720p internal res for all three.

 

[Dampf]

My big issue with DLSS in GoW is that the post processing effects do not render at full res, contrary to Nvidia's developer configuration recommendation (IDK why it keeps being ignored by devs). As soon as the game's DoF is used, you'll see its flickering terribly with DLSS on. You can already see it very well in the main menu before you start the game. I've made a short video showcasing it.

https://streamable.com/rey08y

If you look at the bushes in the background behind Kratos' axe, with DLSS on it flickers a lot, resulting in a very unstable looking image. The TAA Upsampling does not have this problem.

@Dictator you missed that in your analysis it seems. I really would appreciate if you can forward this to the developers, alongside your own findings. If they fix these issues, DLSS is close to perfection in this game.

 

[Jupiter]

DLSS has ugly ringing artifacts in God of War. An oversharped image can make me stop playing a game like I did with Battlefield 1.

Still the picture quality of Horizon Zero Dawn is much better with DLSS. Without DLSS it is a flickering mess. I saw it clearly since the original console release but it is strange that nobody else critizised the huge amount of flickering back when it was released on PlayStation 4.

 

[Remij]

My big issue with DLSS in GoW is that the post processing effects do not render at full res, contrary to Nvidia's developer configuration recommendation (IDK why it keeps being ignored by devs). As soon as the game's DoF is used, you'll see its flickering terribly with DLSS on. You can already see it very well in the main menu before you start the game. I've made a short video showcasing it.

https://streamable.com/rey08y

If you look at the bushes in the background behind Kratos' axe, with DLSS on it flickers a lot, resulting in a very unstable looking image. The TAA Upsampling does not have this problem.

@Dictator you missed that in your analysis it seems. I really would appreciate if you can forward this to the developers, alongside your own findings. If they fix these issues, DLSS is close to perfection in this game.

Yeah, you can really notice this when boating through fog too. Yea, seems like a good thing to bring up to the developers.

Another issue I have with the game is that sometimes the voice acting of NPCs/Atreus is too quiet depending on their position. I know it's supposed to simulate distance and positioning of the characters, but sometimes it way too quiet. Usually when I'm off exploring and Atreus is going on about something lol. If I didn't have subtitles on I would have never known that he even was saying anything.

 

[Shortbread]

Rich, Alex and Will take to the mics for DF Direct Weekly #44, talking about extended lifespans for last-gen consoles, a lacklustre patch for Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PC, more woes from the PC hardware market and an interesting solution for getting Fortnite back on iOS devices...

00:00:00 Introductions
00:00:38 Is Sony Dealing With PlayStation 5 Shortages by Making More PS4s?
00:04:59 Square Patches Final Fantasy 7 Remake PC
00:13:21 GeForce 3080 12GB: inevitable pricing and availability problems
00:21:16 Fortnite back on iOS via GeForce Now
00:26:42 DF Content Discussion: Will's Weird Tech
00:34:18 DF Content Discussion: Quake Remastered
00:37:17 DF Content Discussion: God of War PC discussion
00:45:30 DF Supporter Q1: Recent reports suggests Series S sales may be outpacing Series X. What does this mean for the future development environment of the Series X?
00:52:06 DF Supporter Q2: Hypothetically, if VRR was to become the norm and every modern display had support for it, what sort of frame rates do you think developers should target?
00:58:13 DF Supporter Q3: Hi DF, do you expect the continuing chip shortages to result in cross gen releases persisting for the majority of major releases through to the end of 2022?
01:02:43 DF Supporter Q4: Have you ever had discussions about colour grading in games with devs?
01:06:10 DF Supporter Q5: How plausible is Half Life Alyx on PSVR2 according to your crystal balls (of steel)? Any inside knowledge, rumor confirmation?
01:07:04 DF Supporter Q6: Why do more PC games not just do the shader compilation in advance?
01:12:00 DF Supporter Q7: Would the DF team consider exploring the topic of integrated graphics for gaming in a future episode?
01:15:04 DF Supporter Q8: What title coming out in 2022 are you looking forward to the most from a tech perspective?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

@Shortbread - thank you for putting the times stamps and links in! I don't have time to listen to hour-long podcasts but sometimes I want to listen to just a sliver..

 

[Silent_Buddha]

@Shortbread - thank you for putting the times stamps and links in! I don't have time to listen to hour-long podcasts but sometimes I want to listen to just a sliver..

Just in case he doesn't do it in the future, the YT Video itself is commented with the timestamps. You just have to click "show more" to see them.

Regards,
SB

 

[PSman1700]

Seems that cloud gaming might really take over local console gaming sometime.... DF was quite impressed versus the XSX with it.

 

[Jay]

Seems that cloud gaming might really take over local console gaming sometime.... DF was quite impressed versus the XSX with it.

If anything it's showing how bad it is on XSX.
They need to make sure devs are using their optimized dynamic latency api thingy.
Not only will it help console, but xcloud also.
After all their talk of streamlining every part of the end to end process, let's hope its just not fully being taken advantage of in cross gen titles.

Xcloud was pretty bad in December, probably with all the new GPU subscribers trying it out. Had really long queues.

 

[cheapchips]

Xcloud was pretty bad in December, probably with all the new GPU subscribers trying it out. Had really long queues.

I had to wait a handful of times. No more than 5 minutes though.