Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]
- Thread starter BRiT
- Start date
- Status
Silent_Buddha
Legend
This is an interesting one. The rare situation where neither the PS5 nor the XBS-X were the primary development platform. That would have been PC (Stadia), thus neither console version benefits from being the primary development platform.
Thus we see that performance and resolution are roughly where you might expect them to be given the hardware in each. And outside of what I'll assume is a bug (the missing god rays in many scenes on PS5), I'd say that owners of either PS5 or XBS-X would not be able to tell that their version is "better" or "worse" than the other version. In this case, even a side-by-side comparison (again ignore what is likely a bug with god rays) would likely prove difficult for most people to differentiate between the two versions. So, kudos to the developers on this.
Regards,
SB
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
Will be looking forward to DF's breakdown of Stray, hopefully Alex is well enough by then as unfortunately atm it looks like the PC port is a disaster, performance speaking. Yikes.
Some of this definitely sounds like DX12 shader compilation stutter, yet again.
Some of this definitely sounds like DX12 shader compilation stutter, yet again.
DF Article @ https://www.eurogamer.net/assassins...dates-are-transformative-on-ps5-and-series-xs
Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed Odyssey feature stunning open worlds based on Egyptian and Greek history, with a fanatical attention to detail - and now it's possible to experience those worlds on console at 60fps, double the frame-rate of the initial releases. Harnessing the power of the new machines for smoother gameplay definitely sounds appealing, but with the massive scale and complexity of these titles, is a stable 60fps really achievable?
Going back to test these 2017/2018 releases, Origins and Odyssey still visually impress. Lighting is beautifully saturated, with strong volumetrics and great global illumination, while while cutscenes feature a solid depth of field that cascades into beautiful bokeh shapes, all aided by a stable temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) that gives the titles a clean, filmic quality. Even against contemporary open-world titles, there's little to complain about - perhaps some spotty texture work in places, but that's a minor blemish on an otherwise spotless work by the developers at Ubisoft.
The move from 30 to 60fps is the headline feature here, and it is delivered with surprising reliability. In most circumstances, Series S, X and PS5 all hug that 60fps line perfectly, without any dips or deviations. There are some exceptions though, and curiously most of them apply to all current-gen machines, from the powerful PS5 and Series X to the more constrained Series S.
...
Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Origins 60fps updates are transformative on PS5 and Series X/S
Digital Foundry tests the 'next-gen' patches.Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed Odyssey feature stunning open worlds based on Egyptian and Greek history, with a fanatical attention to detail - and now it's possible to experience those worlds on console at 60fps, double the frame-rate of the initial releases. Harnessing the power of the new machines for smoother gameplay definitely sounds appealing, but with the massive scale and complexity of these titles, is a stable 60fps really achievable?
Going back to test these 2017/2018 releases, Origins and Odyssey still visually impress. Lighting is beautifully saturated, with strong volumetrics and great global illumination, while while cutscenes feature a solid depth of field that cascades into beautiful bokeh shapes, all aided by a stable temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) that gives the titles a clean, filmic quality. Even against contemporary open-world titles, there's little to complain about - perhaps some spotty texture work in places, but that's a minor blemish on an otherwise spotless work by the developers at Ubisoft.
The move from 30 to 60fps is the headline feature here, and it is delivered with surprising reliability. In most circumstances, Series S, X and PS5 all hug that 60fps line perfectly, without any dips or deviations. There are some exceptions though, and curiously most of them apply to all current-gen machines, from the powerful PS5 and Series X to the more constrained Series S.
...
After 20 minutes with the game, you can play it on PC. That guy's issues are particular to him, being capped at 50 frames for some reason on a 2080TI, thats not something that happens with this game, its something on his end. There ARE shader compilation issues, but they're pretty non intrusive. Seems to be a single short spike when you enter a new area, not when you're doing new actions. For example, in these pics:
Its completely fine as you move through all that enviroment. When you reach the end or you go somewhere new, you will have a single short frametime spike that lasts a fraction of a second, as you move the camera and thats it. Its for sure one of the shader compilation stuff thats the least harmfull to gameplay that i've seen so far. Get the game on PC confortably if you want, there's no major cat-astrophe here.
Also, when you're used to RT AO and shadows, such rendering really sticks out
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
After 20 minutes with the game, you can play it on PC. That guy's issues are particular to him, being capped at 50 frames for some reason on a 2080TI, thats not something that happens with this game, its something on his end. There ARE shader compilation issues, but they're pretty non intrusive. Seems to be a single short spike when you enter a new area, not when you're doing new actions. For example, in these pics:
Its completely fine as you move through all that enviroment. When you reach the end or you go somewhere new, you will have a single short frametime spike that lasts a fraction of a second, as you move the camera and thats it. Its for sure one of the shader compilation stuff thats the least harmfull to gameplay that i've seen so far. Get the game on PC confortably if you want, there's no major cat-astrophe here.
That's good, thanks for the report.
(Credit to Annapurna as well for pricing this accordingly, it's apparently short but I have little problem with that when it's priced half of full releases.)
Also, when you're used to RT AO and shadows, such rendering really sticks out
Or heck, just some screen-space shadows even. This was my main visual critique with Death Stranding, while overall a beautiful game the complete lack of any AO attempt on the vegetation gave this floating-pastel effect.
Not the best show on PC but I wonder how it would fair at 120fps (or simply unlocked on a gsync display) in terms of drops. I assume they would still be present but could the high frame rate mask them as it does in other cases? Locking the fps to 60 may make those drops more evident than they otherwise need to be on a very high end PC.
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
They would likely still be noticeable - the drops are above 30ms usually, but I only have a 60hz display so I can't confirm. There is also a problem with the vsync implementation in this game (at least on fixed refresh rate displays) which I rectified with Fast Sync, that at least least wouldn't be required on a VRR display. But yeah, how it holds up at 120+fps would have been good to know, a little more in-depth look at the PC version is why I generally prefer Alex to take the wheel on comparisons involving the PC. Still though, nice of Tom to take up the mantle of shaming UE4's shader stuttering for one video.
That being said, as mentioned in the video my experience as well is that the occasional hitching is not solely related to shader compilation. They're not constant, it's nothing like say, Elden Ring on release, but they are noticeable and can pop in random places.
Other than shadows Tom mentioned, one other difference from the PS5 and PC from what I've seen is the PC's highest 'effect' setting has a slightly higher quality version of AO that can be surprisingly expensive as well, at least on my system - putting this setting to High vs Medium invokes 20% more GPU usage on my 3060. So in basic settings it looks like the PS5 has Effects and Shadows at Medium, everything else at high (?).
The effect certainly isn't huge mind you, albeit there are some other examples I came across where the difference was more noticeable, but this at least was an easily reproducible scene as it's right at the start:
I bit the bullet with the intention of refunding if it was bad enough. Honestly, it hasn't been that bad at all. A couple here and there, but largely... very smooth.
That's the thing that pisses me off about this engine.. outside of those damn stutters, everything is god damn silky smooth in most games.
Hope they're able to fix whatever the issues may be, whether it's shader comp, or garbage collection, which is apparently another long standing issue developers have faced with UE.
Regardless, I'm glad to see sites, and reviewers calling it out, more and more. That's the only way things are going to change.
That's the thing that pisses me off about this engine.. outside of those damn stutters, everything is god damn silky smooth in most games.
Hope they're able to fix whatever the issues may be, whether it's shader comp, or garbage collection, which is apparently another long standing issue developers have faced with UE.
Regardless, I'm glad to see sites, and reviewers calling it out, more and more. That's the only way things are going to change.
davis.anthony
Veteran
The game runs DX11.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Mankind should have stuck to shading entire polygons!
Riddlewire
Regular
FIFY
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
Yes, as evidenced by all my other posts detailing my experience with the game on two platforms since that speculative one 4 days ago when it wasn't available.
Last edited:
- Status
Similar threads
