Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[vjPiedPiper]

I wonder if there is a way to make nanite streaming make use of the the SFS support on the Series consoles?
Like stuffing bit of the nanite geometry into mip maps or something?

I dont know enough about how SFS works, but it does strike me that SFS is a solution for a very similar problem.
ie. maximizing the efficiency of bandwidth that gets used in transfers to the GPU.
How much of SFS is linked specifcally to mip-maps and could it be modified to work with the streaming geomtry of nanite?

 

[Scott_Arm]

@cheapchips I read the article and totally forgot about that part. It’s interesting. Nice to think you can bring movie quality assets into games because the renderer can handle it, but you still have memory to worry about. Where I was going with my line of thinking was wondering if the asset quality in immortals had something to do with memory.

Purely speculation. The models could just be what the art team made, or there could be different performance considerations.

 

[troyan]

You've posted that a few times, but that's specifically from the "the path" sequence in the crazy dreamscape type world, right? If you look at the skybox there I can only assume the weird flat look is intentional. Could be some sort of bug but the same assets look regularly lit and fine when they are in the context of the real world.

Here is the section of the level:

GI doesnt work indoors. And there is no real "fallback" - everything has only one color and has no shadow at all.

 

[techuse]

Those textures wouldnt be out of place in a PS2 game.

 

[mr magoo]

memmory is funny thing. I remember all old games looking much better than they actually did. PS2 had turds not textures.

 

[techuse]

memmory is funny thing. I remember all old games looking much better than they actually did. PS2 had turds not textures.

Remove the PS2 artifacts and that's pretty much how the textures in Immortals look.

 

[Seanspeed]

Remove the PS2 artifacts and that's pretty much how the textures in Immortals look.

It's one thing to comment on this as a throwaway sort of exaggeration, but to genuinely insist the game has PS2-level textures is just nowhere even remotely in the ballpark of true.

 

[troyan]

You can not use an "upscaled" raw PS2 frame and compare it to something like DLSS Quality in 4K.
Upscaling is very good today. I play PS2 games on a PS3 and these are more than playable. Modern TVs are very good in upscaling. And PS2 games are very simple.

 

[Shortbread]

The analysis you've been waiting for. We're planning to deliver a much more in-depth technical review for Starfield but we're kicking off with answers to some of the big questions: how solid is performance? What about bugs and polish? How does Xbox Series S shape up bearing in mind we've seen nothing of the S version pre-launch? You have questions, we have answers.

00:00 Overview
01:20 Overall Rundown
02:58 Series X/S Graphics Comparison
08:16 Series X/S Performance
10:59 Analysis and Conclusion

 

[Karamazov]

turns out the little S is doing quite good here.
Nice.

 

[function]

Yep, Series S is a great little machine when the work is done. A demanding game, possibly the year's biggest release, and it seems to be handling it like a champ.

Series S is doing FSR2 somewhere between balanced and quality it seems (900 to 1440 would be an axis scale of x1.6). Series X should be using quality (x1.5).

 

[iroboto]

V R S

Let the games begin.

Edit: should steal EAs motto here

V R S
It’s in the game

 

[mr magoo]

V R S

Let the games begin.

Congratulation you just blow up internet.

 

[I'mDudditz!]

I see it differently - the HW spec delta between Series S and X should have resulted in much higher fidelity differential in favor of Series X. The two console versions look way too similar which makes me think Series X got the short end of the stick when it comes to optimization potental.

 

[Seanspeed]

I see it differently - the HW spec delta between Series S and X should have resulted in much higher fidelity differential in favor of Series X. The two console versions look way too similar which makes me think Series X got the short end of the stick when it comes to optimization potental.

Game still looks great, though.

Would be curious to maybe see how Series X would fare with slightly higher base resolution. If 30fps is a CPU limitation problem, they're probably somewhat safe on GPU overhead.

 

[function]

I see it differently - the HW spec delta between Series S and X should have resulted in much higher fidelity differential in favor of Series X. The two console versions look way too similar which makes me think Series X got the short end of the stick when it comes to optimization potental.

I think the information we have shows the game using Series X's extra potentially pretty well. Series X has over the Series S:

- 2.56x the base resolution, plus:
- higher quality shadows
- higher environment LOD
- higher vegetation LOD
- higher texture LOD bias
- 4x res of cubemap reflections (and generated dynamically rather than baked)

That'll account for differences in memory quantity, bandwidth, fillrate between the machines. Use of VRS probably indicates that they're pushing hard on the shader front too.

To me, Starfield seems to be a game that's been very well tuned for both the Series S and the Series X. It seems to be exactly the kind of outcome that MS had in mind when they were envisioning the Series S.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Here is the section of the level:

GI doesnt work indoors. And there is no real "fallback" - everything has only one color and has no shadow at all.

Right, that's exactly what I meant. That section is clearly lit to look super flat, for whatever artistic reason. There's obviously no inherent issue in the game around interior GI (even with the same assets in the prologue). It's always easy to pick individual shots out of context that look bad in even the prettiest games. Maybe I misinterpreted but you seem to keep posting that as if it's some sort of evidence of a technical limitation...

 

[I'mDudditz!]

I think the information we have shows the game using Series X's extra potentially pretty well. Series X has over the Series S:

- 2.56x the base resolution, plus:
- higher quality shadows
- higher environment LOD
- higher vegetation LOD
- higher texture LOD bias
- 4x res of cubemap reflections (and generated dynamically rather than baked)

That'll account for differences in memory quantity, bandwidth, fillrate between the machines. Use of VRS probably indicates that they're pushing hard on the shader front too.

I disagree. The game varies from mediocre to good looking but the variance between Series S and X has to be the smallest I've seen from any game released this gen, whether cross-gen or current gen only. Also, the term "higher" is subjective and I expected a difference of PC min vs PC Ultra between S and X. I'm just not seeing that here.

 

[eastmen]

memmory is funny thing. I remember all old games looking much better than they actually did. PS2 had turds not textures.

You have to remember what you compare them to. PS1 games had even worse textures lol so DC and PS2 looked amazing compare to that

 

[Flappy Pannus]

View attachment 9517

Excited to explore the Groundbreaker again.