Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]

DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfo...e-new-radeon-upscaler-is-genuinely-impressive

AMD Fidelity FX Super Resolution 2.0: the new Radeon upscaler is genuinely impressive
FSR 2.0 vs native resolution rendering - and DLSS.

AMD's Fidelity FX Super Resolution 2.0 has arrived and the first title to sport the technique is Arkane's wonderful Deathloop, a game already shown to benefit immensely from reconstruction-based upscaling. Reconstruction is what separates FSR 2.0 from its less complex 1.0 predecessor: rather than interpolate out extra detail from the current frame with variable but often unsatisfying results, FSR 2.0 is similar to other modern temporal super-sampling techniques, injecting/reconstructing detail from prior frames into the current one to improve quality while adding anti-aliasing properties too. FSR 2.0 is also open source in nature, meaning that developers can slot it into their games free of charge, with minimal development time.

While we've seen techniques similar to FSR 2.0 in the console space for many years, the quality is such that it can rightfully take its place amongst the most recent second generation upscalers, such as Unreal Engine's Temporal Super Resolution (TSR), as seen in UE5. While the likes of DLSS 1.0, checkerboard rendering, and older forms of TAA upscaling aim to produce native-like image quality at roughly half the internal resolution, FSR 2.0 and other second-gen techniques target similar quality from just a quarter of the resolution, with a 4K output from a 1080p base image often put forward as the sweet spot. DLSS and Intel's upcoming XeSS utilise machine learning via specialised onboard hardware but FSR uses the compute power of the GPU itself, meaning that it should on run any modern graphics card. As you'll see, we successfully ran FSR 2.0 on the venerable Radeon RX 580 and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060.

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Something for the SSD/NVME/DirectStorage topic as well @ https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfo...-ssd-interview-pcie-50-directstorage-and-more

The Kingston SSD interview: PCIe 5.0, DirectStorage and more
Talking about next generation.

It's an exciting time in the PC hardware space. While we've been spending our time testing DDR5 memory and 12th-gen Intel processors, we're also on the cusp of some interesting storage innovations. Microsoft's DirectStorage API was released just a few weeks prior, and as PCIe 4.0 SSDs have become increasingly affordable, PCIe 5.0 has debuted on Intel motherboards, soon to be replicated with AMD's next generation platform. With that in mind, we had plenty of questions ready when we were approached by storage giant Kingston to speak to one of their longest-serving executives on the SSD side of the firm.

What follows is an interview with Tony Hollingsbee, EMEA Business Manager - SSD at Kingston. He's been at the company for two decades, and therefore had a hand in the transition from hard drives to SATA and then NVMe SSDs. We asked him about what the next big storage technologies would mean for gamers, whether Kingston would be up for creating SSDs for the Xbox, not just the PlayStation 5 and PC, and what kind of testing drive manufacturers do when preparing their latest products for the public - and reviewers - to test out. Enjoy!

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DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2022-trek-to-yomi-tech-review

Trek to Yomi: stunning aesthetics but performance falls short
PS5 and Xbox Series consoles tested.

Trek To Yomi is a fascinating, extremely stylish release. Its aim is to emulate classic Japanese samurai movies, with Kurosawa and Kobayashi the clear influences. Everything from the letterboxed, monochromatic presentation right down to the film grain and shot framing are clearly inspired by Japanese cinema, with Unreal Engine 4's post-processing pipeline used to render this stylised, cinematic experience. This isn't a massive blockbuster title but there's a deep fidelity to the source material here and a brilliant sense of aesthetics.

There's an immediate sense that the developers have tried to really achieve something special here and that starts with the camera work: most of the game's cinematics use a mix of stationary shots and slower panning shots, typical of early Japanese film. Camera framing takes a lot of inspiration from this work as well; a lot of care has been taken with shot composition, with carefully framed foreground, midfield, and background detail. The camera ends up being quite fundamental to the game itself, and it's semi-fixed during gameplay - there's no direct player control over this element, and most shots simply follow the player's movement by scrolling or panning.



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Whole lot of PC Market discussion spun off to have a life of its own @ https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/pc-gaming-market-breakdown-or-something-spawn.62857/