Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[techuse]

There are some rare occasions where this still happens (such as approaching some settlements), but in the majority of gameplay I haven't seen this. Certainly nothing at all like what Alex showed in his DF video. Do you have it on PC?

There is one very annoying aspect for gamepad players on PC that was never fixed though, and that is the activation zone for holding the button for picking up items is significantly smaller than the PS5. Basically if you're jogging/running and you're approaching an ammo/consumable you want to grab, on the PS5 you can hold down the pick-up button well before the object is highlighted, and Deacon will whip out his arm and grab it without breaking stride, or automatically snap to the area to nab it - on the PC you basically have to stop moving and hover over it to grab. Luckily, it still works when running towards the bike to jump on it which is the most crucial when being chased, but for every object it ignores the button press unless the glyph has appeared on the screen. Bloody obnoxious. But that, and the broken vsync which produces stutters (force it from the CP) are about the only issues I still see with it.

No I just recall the video by Alex and him stating a few years later that it was never fixed. I haven’t played the game.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

No I just recall the video by Alex and him stating a few years later that it was never fixed. I haven’t played the game.

Yeah there are some cases where I can see it, but it's exceeding rare ime and I'm extremely sensitive to that sort of thing. I've certainly never seen it as bad as it was in the DF video though, but it may be processor-specific - perhaps something that rears its head with more than 6 cores.

Also a game that could sorely benefit from DLSS.

 

[dobwal]

Pencil me in as another who really liked Days Gone. To me it was TLOU with a lighter attempt to evoke emotions and more of the freedom that open world provides.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Matching DLSS2 would be a big ask - it's matured to be a pretty amazing technology. But simply providing something better than FSR2's balanced or high performance modes might be a lot more doable.

There are games like Ratchet and Clank where DP4A accelerated "basic" cross platform XeSS seems to be coming in ahead of both FSR2 and ND's in house upscaler. It's nothing like the jump to DLSS, but it's a sign that better than FSR2 might be doable in general on a system like XSX/XSS or PC RDNA2+ hardware.

Problem is, Nvidia aren't going to release a software optimised version of DLSS to run on consoles, and Intel want to maintain a large advantage for their hardware XeSS and so won't open sauwce a version of XeSS not optimised for lower end GPUs (like their integrated stuff). The fact that some people prefer XeSS to FSR even on Steam Deck is probably a sign that more could be done with the hardware we have.

The gap between balanced/performance DLSS and balanced/performance FSR is so big that I think there's room to use the mixed precision formats on XSerises to improve upscaling even if you never reach DLSS quality.

Considering that we have seen it running on the Steamdeck, anyone wants to bet that we haven't seen XeSS at all on Xbox because of some type of AMD exclusivity deal? I see the use of the technology on the Xbox as a trojan horse to its use in a wider variety of PC games, and I'm surprised that we have not heard of it being added to the GDK.

 

[SmooTh]

 

[iroboto]

Only DX11 and Vulcan and The lack of DX12 on PC seems to provide some insight into why it’s not ready for Xbox.

 

[davis.anthony]

Only DX11 and Vulcan and The lack of DX12 on PC seems to provide some insight into why it’s not ready for Xbox.

Does DX11 not work on Xbox?

 

[iroboto]

Does DX11 not work on Xbox?

It’s going to lack the performance needed to be effective.

 

[davis.anthony]

It’s going to lack the performance needed to be effective.

How so? And doesn't Doom Eternal use Vulkan? That's also an option for the Xbox version.

 

[iroboto]

How so? And doesn't Doom Eternal use Vulkan? That's also an option for the Xbox version.

Xbox doesn’t support Vulkan IIRC. Only DX11 and DX12 Xbox editions.

I’m just pointing out that if you didn’t make a dx12 version, you’re going to have a larger lift porting it to Xbox.

 

[techuse]

PS5 supports Vulkan? I thought it was only
Gmn and Gmnx.

 

[iroboto]

PS5 supports Vulkan? I thought it was only
Gmn and Gmnx.

you are correct.
To me, it’s a point I want to make of how much lift Larian has to do for the consoles. It wasn’t just porting PC to Xbox being straight forward, whereas other companies are just taking their dx12 and making it optimized for console. They actually need to write it all in separately from ps5 and PC.

 

[SmooTh]

 

[Riddlewire]

I wonder how well the Xbox One S/X hdmi input upscalers compare to the Retrotink 4k.
I never had any reason to use those inputs on my Xboxes.

 

[see colon]

I wonder how well the Xbox One S/X hdmi input upscalers compare to the Retrotink 4k.
I never had any reason to use those inputs on my Xboxes.

I thought mine was broken because I tried to run an Evercade VS through it and it couldn't detect a signal. Turns out it's just weirdness with the output from the VS.

 

[Caayn]

Interesting insight into how Dolby Atmos is implemented on the PS5. But the implementation does sound a bit different than "conventional" Dolby Atmos where the AVR is mapping audio objects to channels. It sounds like the PS5 already does the channels translation which means that it'll still need to be made aware of the physical speakers locations and specs for it to properly assign audio objects to a channel, which is a downside imo. And that the PS5 will be limited to 7.1.4 although I can hardly imagine that many people will have larger speaker set-ups.

If this is the case might this also explain why the PS5 doesn't seem to have additional latency for interactive content?

 

[Seanspeed]

It sounds like the PS5 already does the channels translation which means that it'll still need to be made aware of the physical speakers locations and specs for it to properly assign audio objects to a channel,

You cant do this. It's exactly why you cant really have non-headphones proper 3d audio, even if you had accurate HRTF profiles for individuals.

 

[eastmen]

So is this the first time that Digital foundry has tested Dolby Atmos on the xbox consoles ? Hasn't it been avalible for almost 7 years ?

 

[DieH@rd]

So is this the first time that Digital foundry has tested Dolby Atmos on the xbox consoles ? Hasn't it been avalible for almost 7 years ?

They talked about it for years. John yells at MS all the time for this latency issue.

But now the competitor has Atmos as well in games, so most likely there will be some movement to fix it.

 

[milk]

They actually need to write it all in separately from ps5 and PC.

I wouldnt be surprised if most games are just running with a Vulkan to GNM wrapper under the hood.