Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[Inuhanyou]

UE5 uses virtual texturing which is far more forgiving on memory requirements than traditional texturing systems. It should make more efficient use of VRAM, not less.

People should stop hyping up ue5 with all the things it can do. not for overhyping reasons, but because I can't wait to see what devs come up with with the technology when they are fully utilizing it and your comments aren't helping

 

[chris1515]

People should stop hyping up ue5 with all the things it can do. not for overhyping reasons, but because I can't wait to see what devs come up with with the technology when they are fully utilizing it and your comments aren't helping

We will have two Bloober teams UE5 game soon Layers of fear next month and if Bloober Team comment are true Sillent Hill Remake is probably a 2023 game or at worst a Q1 2024 game.

 

[davis.anthony]

You enjoy most games much more if they have higher frame rates. This has been settled.

Casuals prefer pretty graphics over frame rate. Settled denied.

 

[davis.anthony]

Layers of fear

Demo is out today and graphics are massively disappointing.

 

[Remij]

I think that console users having tasted 60fps standardized modes will definitely be unreasonable about devs having a breaking point. It's an "expectation" now.

I was one of the minority of people who was against graphical options introduced in the last iterative cycle and especially at the start of this gen because it was easy to see that it would become a problem when devs didn't have headroom like that to fall back on to make it "easy" to unlock the fps and gain automatic performance.

I also made the argument then that whether it was 60 or 30, it was critical that devs set expectations early on for a singular performance metric. But then insomniac added 60fps mode for spiderman. Then a 60fps balanced mode. Then a 40fps mode. It's surely easier if your only working on one sku. But that doesn't apply to third party developers.

More powerful upgrades will only further complicate the situation for not much gain.

Yea. I know a few anecdotal twitter posts don't mean much in the grand scheme of things, but I know quite a few people who are now "60fps or bust".. and we've seen the reactions some gamers with regards to 30fps modes, although a lot of that pushback rightly stems from misguided expectations... which is another thing the industry needs to work on. It's hard to go back once you open these cans of worms. People's expectations begin to change, and that can lead to disappointment.

At the end of the day though, there are developers who have the budget, time, and can manage all these different modes, and put out high quality products despite all the work it adds... and like it or not, these companies are all competing with each other so that adds pressure on teams to perhaps take on a bit more than they can chew.

But yes, the key is setting proper expectations early. If you can add an additional mode post launch, then that's great... and it also has the potential benefit of getting your game back into the news cycle.

And yea, I was thinking about how these mid-gen upgrade consoles could have negative consequences on all this stuff.. When you have much more powerful consoles, there's less necessity or incentive to truly optimize for the platform. You can just bump res, framerate, and visual settings... but you're just brute forcing that stuff with more powerful hardware, ala PC. Whereas without mid-gen refreshes, developers would really be incentivized to optimize as much as possible to continue to evolve their games visuals/performance.

To me that is much more exciting. I loved seeing how much developers like Naughty Dog would improve their engine and their understanding of the hardware over the course of a generation for example. They REALLY pushed everything they could out of the PS3 that generation.. and going from UC1 to UC3 or TLOU was crazy. I wish we'd see more stuff like that.

Now, all that these mid gen upgrades do for me, is lower the impact that the next generation truly has.

 

[function]

Casuals prefer pretty graphics over frame rate. Settled denied.

I mean to some extent yeah, but also, I know PC enthusiasts that run Cyberpunk with RT enabled.

I also know console gamers that go with the 120 fps mode on their OLEDs in anything first person. Responsiveness and immersion they say.

If you can get console gamers to stick with 60 over 30 for a while I suspect most of them will end up preferring it, even if they don't know why. Assuming it's a good 60 fps mode. That doesn't stutter and freeze like Jedi Survivor.

[[Attempting area traversal:]]

 

[davis.anthony]

Mods - Can we have a goat as the forum mascot?

 

[digitalwanderer]

You like to think, but most people probably do not know what they are experiencing. They might notice it, but do not have the vocabulary nor the experience to express it.

How does that make 20 fps fine?

 

[snc]

Casuals prefer pretty graphics over frame rate. Settled denied.

Im quite sure performance modes are more popular than quality (tough I usualy take 40fps if exists)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You like to think, but most people probably do not know what they are experiencing. They might notice it, but do not have the vocabulary nor the experience to express it.

Oh, they notice, they just don't know what it is, however.

/me looks over at some friends who have destroyed monitors and TVs by throwing their controllers at them because they died due to low frame rate hitting at an inopportune time causing them to rage out of control.

Same friends who don't want to listen when I start talking about framerate because it's too "technical" and everything should just work on their PC that they bought for 2k+ USD 5-10 years ago.

Regards,
SB

 

[I'mDudditz!]

As Remij says - the amount of post launch patches radically improving the visual quality of Games on 8 GB GPUs shows that the issues lies on the development side. PC versions get the obvious short end of the stick for time and money investment (with Xbox not too far behind) and the PC crowd including myself are not going to just sit there and be happy with poor quality.

PC Games need to scale regardless of what consoles are - that is the point. These console focused multiplatform Games are not Crysis or something, they are Not so utterly ground breaking unheard of technical masterpieces that necesseitate only the best and most expensive Hardware to run and look good. Getting angry at manufactures long after the fact is a useless endeavour and does nothing to change the situation. Demanding better ports from ISVs actually changes things. Imagine if instead of focusing on #Stutterstruggle as a problem I just made videos about how MS, NV, Intel and AMD are to blame for having different hardware. That would bring 0 progress in anywhere near the next 5 years - games would still launch with even more PSO issues than before and Unreal most definitely would not have had initiative to improve it so utterly in UE5.

The problem is an ISV problem.

So we now pretend to live in fairytale land where the extremely difficult balancing act of prioritiztion between optimization, budgets and shipping deadlines outside of developer controls no longer exist? The nature of port optimizations in and of itself really hasn't changed. Historically, PC vendors manufactured hardware that easily bested the console counterparts. This was the solution and has been the status quo historically. The fact of the matter is consoles have closed the gap considerably this generation and these same PC vendors have NOT stepped up their price to performance offerings in response. THAT is the problem. So now that they have failed to do so, you and others seem to want to change the status quo and place blame squarely on the software developers, as if they don't have their own distinct priorities as mentioned above. Guess what, as it relates to console ports, you will always get the short end of the stick as a PC player because you are simply not their core market. You are literally an afterthought, supplemental income, and I don't mean this in a condescending manner, I am attempting to inject a healthy dose of reality in this conversation. Vice versa applies to PC centric developers/games that get limited console attention (Cyberpunk) or none at all (Star Citizen). For you to suggest that any grievances levied against PC hardware vendors aka NVidia is quite frankly very shocking. You should complain so that they don't dare bring to market another 3070 situation in the future. That is exactly who you should be hooting and hollering to. If you really think the tone you've taken with developers is going to make the port situation better for PC players, then you're in for a long and disappointing generation.

 

[Scott_Arm]

So we now pretend to live in fairytale land where the extremely difficult balancing act of prioritiztion between optimization, budgets and shipping deadlines outside of developer controls no longer exist? The nature of port optimizations in and of itself really hasn't changed. Historically, PC vendors manufactured hardware that easily bested the console counterparts. This was the solution and has been the status quo historically. The fact of the matter is consoles have closed the gap considerably this generation and these same PC vendors have NOT stepped up their price to performance offerings in response. THAT is the problem. So now that they have failed to do so, you and others seem to want to change the status quo and place blame squarely on the software developers, as if they don't have their own distinct priorities as mentioned above. Guess what, as it relates to console ports, you will always get the short end of the stick as a PC player because you are simply not their core market. You are literally an afterthought, supplemental income, and I don't mean this in a condescending manner, I am attempting to inject a healthy dose of reality in this conversation. Vice versa applies to PC centric developers/games that get limited console attention (Cyberpunk) or none at all (Star Citizen). For you to suggest that any grievances levied against PC hardware vendors aka NVidia is quite frankly very shocking. You should complain so that they don't dare bring to market another 3070 situation in the future. That is exactly who you should be hooting and hollering to. If you really think the tone you've taken with developers is going to make the port situation better for PC players, then you're in for a long and disappointing generation.

LOL.

The hardware is already easily capable enough. The issue is the quality of the software delivered. Some issues are related to the pc environment that require consideration, like compiling shaders. Some of the issues are frankly just games that have architecture issues so they cannot leverage hardware efficiently. Those issues are not necessarily as apparent on console because the bar is much lower and people will accept 30 fps gameplay, or unstable 60.

 

[davis.anthony]

So we now pretend to live in fairytale land where the extremely difficult balancing act of prioritiztion between optimization, budgets and shipping deadlines outside of developer controls no longer exist?

If a developer decides to port their game to 'x' platform it's very much on them do to their due diligence checks on these 'outside controls'

The nature of port optimizations in and of itself really hasn't changed.

It's changed massively.

Historically, PC vendors manufactured hardware that easily bested the console counterparts.

And?

This was the solution and has been the status quo historically.

It's never been a solution or the solution, it's merely been a natural benefit of having faster hardware.

The fact of the matter is consoles have closed the gap considerably this generation

What?

In 2023 the gap has never been larger, within 2 years of consoles releasing top end PC GPU's are 5-6x faster than the console GPU's at ray tracing.

Not even PS3/360 were left that far behind after 2 years.

Ray tracing is a next generation feature.

and these same PC vendors have NOT stepped up their price to performance offerings in response.

Depends on what metric you use, for ray tracing they absolutely have.

So now that they have failed to do so, you and others seem to want to change the status quo and place blame squarely on the software developers, as if they don't have their own distinct priorities as mentioned above.

The TLOU port, in the space of 6 weeks has seen a 2GB reduction in VRAM, better medium textures added and all stutter eliminated for 95% of users....In just 6 weeks.

So is it still AMD/Nvidia's fault TLOU performed so poor at launch or the developers?

Guess what, as it relates to console ports, you will always get the short end of the stick as a PC player because you are simply not their core market.

PC is the largest market, always will be.

You are literally an afterthought, supplemental income, and I don't mean this in a condescending manner,

Is PC and afterthought when it comes to ray tracing and path tracing?

I am attempting to inject a healthy dose of reality in this conversation.

You're injecting something, and it's not reality.

Vice versa applies to PC centric developers/games that get limited console attention (Cyberpunk) or none at all (Star Citizen).

Both of said games won't run on the consoles using the setting developers are aiming at.

If consoles could run CP 2077's path tracing mode you could bet your ass it would be available on console.

For you to suggest that any grievances levied against PC hardware vendors aka NVidia is quite frankly very shocking.

You should complain so that they don't dare bring to market another 3070 situation in the future.

What's wrong with the 3070?

If you really think the tone you've taken with developers is going to make the port situation better for PC players, then you're in for a long and disappointing generation.

The hash tag stutterstruggle is already been used by developers on Twitter so it would seem he's doing a fine job.

 

[DavidGraham]

Overclocking Switch memory from 1600MHz to 1850MHz, completely eliminated the fps drops.

 

[Dictator]

If you really think the tone you've taken with developers is going to make the port situation better for PC players, then you're in for a long and disappointing generation.

I have gotten multiple messages from developers at the places of the games I am criticising, and places of games I am not criticising, saying my feedback in videos is having an absolute and direct impact on game development...so yeah I would say the tone I have taken is making changes.

As an example: a big party in multiplatform game dev just recently held an internal summit on how to deal with Shader Compilation Stutter with its teams. I definitely would say DF PC videos played a big part in making that a big deal at all.

 

[pjbliverpool]

So we now pretend to live in fairytale land where the extremely difficult balancing act of prioritiztion between optimization, budgets and shipping deadlines outside of developer controls no longer exist? The nature of port optimizations in and of itself really hasn't changed

This is why your whole argument is flawed. Game optimisation in general has changed significantly this generation. Its widely understood and accepted that game development effort has ballooned in the last few years due to both the size and scope of modern games as well as the increasing number of SKUs being targeted. That has a big impact on developers ability to optimise properly in time for launch which we're seeing not only in the PC space, but the console space too.

Add to that the now accelerating use of low level APIs in the PC space (due to their requirement for many "next gen" features) and porting games to PC has never been more challenging.

The hardware situation itself isn't that different at all. PC's still have much faster GPU's and CPU's and memory capacity isn't dissimilar at all to last gen where Pascal didn't make 6-8GB the high end standard until about this point (2.5 years) into the last generation. Prior to that we had Maxwell with a 2-4GB being the standard even at the high end.

 

[Remij]

I have gotten multiple messages from developers at the places of the games I am criticising, and places of games I am not criticising, saying my feedback in videos is having an absolute and direct impact on game development...so yeah I would say the tone I have taken is making changes.

As an example: a big party in multiplatform game dev just recently held an internal summit on how to deal with Shader Compilation Stutter with its teams. I definitely would say DF PC videos played a big part in making that a big deal at all.

Anyone who is paying even the slightest bit of attention to PC and gaming tech can see a correlation of the time you and DF really started talking about and pressing this issue, to the increase in discourse surrounding it and the resulting attention/commentary/action from developers.

I just laughed when I read his post.

 

[Shortbread]

You enjoy most games much more if they have higher frame rates. This has been settled.

Because I have 120Hz panel, I'm starting to drift away from 60fps gaming when possible. Don't get me wrong, I don't see nothing wrong with 30 or 60 fps targeted games, but you're right, higher framerate games are far superior in that respect.

 

[Below2D]

Anyone who is paying even the slightest bit of attention to PC and gaming tech can see a correlation of the time you and DF really started talking about and pressing this issue, to the increase in discourse surrounding it and the resulting attention/commentary/action from developers.

I just laughed when I read his post.

Yeah, I definitely think DF and other tech channels brought a lot of attention to the discourse surrounding performance. I'm not even convinced 60fps modes would be so common if it weren't for all the noise that DF and the rest raised during the 8th generation of consoles. Now, performance has taken the front seat and is even more important than visuals. It used to be that all people cared about was how a game looked with little regard for how it ran but we're seeing the opposite these days. It seems even casual gamers prefer smoother gameplay over eye candy.

This could also be due to the fact that graphical leaps aren't as noticeable as in times past so people are much less forgiving of poor performance.

 

[Sonic]

People seemingly care more about fps this generation than prior ones. When my 8 y/o nephew refuses to play horizon forbidden west at 30 fps because performance mode is smoother it says a lot. And it's his friends as well. Though that could be because their parents are possibly gaming enthusiasts so those kids they're more exposed. But still, hearing kids talk about performance mode being best tells me fps matter to them more than the shiny graphics.

It may be that 1% are the most vocal. They're also highly influential in getting others to take care and notice. Maybe not all others but enough to warrant us having this discussion on the forum.