Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[Remij]

hopefully it's some bug/local issue, but it looks the same as what's in Alex's video. Look specifically in places where motion is overlapping *indirect* lighting. It's not going to be nearly as bad in places where there's primarily direct lighting contribution of course, since much less reconstruction/filtering is needed in those locations in the first place.

I literally just checked and noticed it right away lmao. And yes that's exactly where I saw it. I loaded into a save in an underground parking lot and was close to the entrance so there was some light bleeding in from outside.. Had my gun drawn and ADS'd at the wall and moved side to side.. it was extremely noticeable. I don't know why I never noticed it earlier in the morning.

Hopefully they can do something about it as you say.

 

[Below2D]

@Andrew Lauritzen @Remij Maybe try disabling sharpening. I think it makes it worse somehow. It creates a weird oil painting/smearing effects on faces. I had mine set to 40 because I thought the image was too soft but have since turned it off and it's not as bad.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm going to be honest with you guys, I've played a good 4 hours or so with this Overdrive update, and I never noticed ghosting like I'm seeing in those pics, or like in the video Flappy Pannus pointed out.

I'm going to have another look, because I would definitely notice that issue.

It's like I was talking about, for some people, they really don't notice it and they aren't just trying to gaslight. For some people, it's immediately noticeable and extremely distracting.

I literally just checked and noticed it right away lmao. And yes that's exactly where I saw it. I loaded into a save in an underground parking lot and was close to the entrance so there was some light bleeding in from outside.. Had my gun drawn and ADS'd at the wall and moved side to side.. it was extremely noticeable. I don't know why I never noticed it earlier in the morning.

Hopefully they can do something about it as you say.

And then when pointed out more people will see it but some will still not really notice it. Different people's vision is affected by different things. So I get that some people truely believe that DLSS is extremely good and maybe even perfect for them. Then for some people like me, DLSS is really horrible and unusable in the majority of games. And then there's a spectrum of people between those poles where they each determine whether the potential benefits outweigh the visual artifacts.

Considering I play games to ... uh ... play the game. How it does in motion is of key importance. It doesn't matter if it looks absolutely fabulous in a still frame or when there's no motion. Far more important is how it performs with motion (especially fast motion) and how it deals with in game animations (minor, major, slow or fast, etc.).

Regards,
SB

 

[Remij]

It's like I was talking about, for some people, they really don't notice it and they aren't just trying to gaslight. For some people, it's immediately noticeable and extremely distracting.



And then when pointed out more people will see it but some will still not really notice it. Different people's vision is affected by different things. So I get that some people truely believe that DLSS is extremely good and maybe even perfect for them. Then for some people like me, DLSS is really horrible and unusable in the majority of games. And then there's a spectrum of people between those poles where they each determine whether the potential benefits outweigh the visual artifacts.

Considering I play games to ... uh ... play the game. How it does in motion is of key importance. It doesn't matter if it looks absolutely fabulous in a still frame or when there's no motion. Far more important is how it performs with motion (especially fast motion) and how it deals with in game animations (minor, major, slow or fast, etc.).

Regards,
SB

I typically notice ghosting and artifacts, but I do believe I'm more tolerant of certain artifacts more than some others, like yourself.

Guess I was just having too much fun

 

[Flappy Pannus]

And then there's a spectrum of people between those poles where they each determine whether the potential benefits outweigh the visual artifacts.

There's also those that take it on a game by game basis. There's a tremendous amount of factors that go into determining the 'success' of reconstruction in a game - the art assets themselves, the stability of the 'native' TAA implementation by comparison, and as Bryan Catanzaro brought up in that DF roundtable on DLSS 3.5, my pet peeve - games that don't properly segregate out post-process effects from reconstruction. That in particular was a large factor in my disappointment with DLSS for me when I first started playing it in older games, which thankfully has been handled much better in more recent titles.

On the whole, I'm positive about DLSS - but it's still somewhat conditional, I'm always looking to see what was missed when enabling it in a game. As the months go by though, it does seem to be trending to be more stable ime.

Also it's good to keep in mind whenever we're debating the worth of reconstruction, its competition isn't really TAA at the same output res as what you're targeting with when using DLSS/FSR, it's the intermediate resolution you'd have to use to get the same performance as reconstruction. So in that aspect, you can be critical of rendering artifacts that reconstruction can sometimes bring, but it's worth in actual gaming scenarios is more accurately judged by the equivalent resolution with TAA that you have to resort to in order to get that framerate. How solid a game can look at 4K TAA vs. DLSS isn't the choice I often have because I can't play at native 4K, it's more like how does DLSS 4K look compared to 1440p-1800p TAA.

Considering I play games to ... uh ... play the game. How it does in motion is of key importance. It doesn't matter if it looks absolutely fabulous in a still frame or when there's no motion. Far more important is how it performs with motion (especially fast motion) and how it deals with in game animations (minor, major, slow or fast, etc.).

Pretty much everyone here, and certainly DF in particular, evaluate reconstruction on how well it does in motion. There are many sites, particular early on, which judged reconstruction solely on static screenshots, but I think in general we're thankfully past that stage.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I generally push my framerate as high as I can by turning down settings and I think that goes a long way to reducing how noticeable the artifacts from dlss are. The smaller the difference from one frame to the next the better I think it works. That goes for TAA too. Unfortunately path tracing you’re likely not playing at 120fps or higher.

 

[pjbliverpool]

One problem I did notice is that NPC's leave weird colour trails near very dynamic lights which is extremely noticable. But it's still a small price to pay for what you're getting in return.

But it's the exact opposite and exactly what Alex reported in the video.

View attachment 9657

Look at how much ray reconstruction blurs the face. This is exactly what I'm experiencing and it's bad.

It is still present but with ray reconstruction, it's even worse.

For blurring faces? 100% worse.

hopefully it's some bug/local issue, but it looks the same as what's in Alex's video. Look specifically in places where motion is overlapping *indirect* lighting. It's not going to be nearly as bad in places where there's primarily direct lighting contribution of course, since much less reconstruction/filtering is needed in those locations in the first place.

That explains it then. I have also seen the same thing but didn't recognize it as the blurred faces being talked about above. It only occurring in indirect lighting makes a lot of sense though, that's why I couldn't see it when I went looking for it - because I was looking in the day on the open street.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I typically notice ghosting and artifacts, but I do believe I'm more tolerant of certain artifacts more than some others, like yourself.

Guess I was just having too much fun

Can you please not have fun while playing video games - it makes objective analysis that much harder. Thanks.

 

[iroboto]

 

[Jupiter]

When they spoke about graphics cards reviews I liked the comparison to late DirectX 7 times (18 minutes) where they also supported much fewer features than newer cards.

 

[Globalisateur]

When they spoke about graphics cards reviews I liked the comparison to late DirectX 7 times (18 minutes) where they also supported much fewer features than newer cards.

This game shows how bad RDNA2 VRS is compared to not having it in a game already using reconstruction. Here PS5 doesn't use it while XSX is. I thought after Dead Space fiasco developers got the memo but apparently not. Here XSX is supposed to have a slighty higher resolution but the results are not good...

 

[Riddlewire]

This game shows how bad RDNA2 VRS is compared to not having it in a game already using reconstruction. Here PS5 doesn't use it while XSX is. I thought after Dead Space fiasco developers got the memo but apparently not. Here XSX is supposed to have a slighty higher resolution but the results are not good...

As Oliver clearly stated, that was a paused frame in the middle of a whip-pan.
That is VRS working exactly the way it should.

 

[Karamazov]

 

[Opeth]

I'm personally not a fan of the washed out haze effect they utilize. Forza Horizon 5 looks more cohesive and overall better to my eye. This is much more my type of game though

 

[Jupiter]

For me, it's the other way around. Now it looks more coherent and natural. It's appearance is more realistic and less gamey. I was immediately convinced by the visual change.

 

[Cyan]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1707039487966990835

 

[Nesh]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1707039487966990835

Mark Cerny and Sony's engineers did an amazing job. It is quite impressive how, from expecting underformance when the specs were first revealed, the console managed to hold well next to its competitor

 

[Remij]

There's nothing amazing about this. Sony's console sells better, and it gets more love and care from developers. Not to say devs don't love and care the Xbox versions, but at the end of the day, they make their games around the Playstation.

The REAL failure comes from Microsoft's own studios supporting the device with AAA games which push production values. Yes, MS has games which look awesome.. Forza Motorsport/Horizon, Gears, MS Flight Sim, and there's some upcoming ones like Hellblade 2.. but they don't have a ton of studios making cinematic action adventure open world games that Sony does. If Microsoft had games really raising the bar for production values, then at least they could point to their own games and say, look how amazing our hardware is.. instead of relying on 3rd parties to push out somewhat higher resolutions and framerates to underscore the power.

Playstation 5 could lose every single 3rd party head to head, and yet they could still point to games like Horizon FW, or Ratchet and Clank, to show how capable their hardware is.

It's not easy for MS to get the edge over Sony now, considering how ingrained both of the main platforms (Xbox and PC) they support are when it comes to APIs and tools. They've got to make the lives of developers easier in any ways possible.. but they've got to start showing everyone what their most powerful console is capable of on their own. Redfall and Starfield aren't going to do it... I'm hoping Hellblade 2 is a lot deeper and more fleshed out gameplay-wise and that they really stick the landing with the visuals. I hope the next Gears looks amazing, and I'm sure the next DOOM game will probably be very technically proficient.

They gotta lead the way before things will get better for them. I think if they started selling more and doing better in other parts of the world, quality of ports would increase as well.

 

[function]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1707039487966990835

I wouldn't call burning lots more power on the GPU to achieve more or less the same results "more efficient".

Smarter, perhaps, but not more efficient in the physical sense.

Go for the low hanging fruit first if you're making a console. If you don't have market momentum behind you you're not going to be a priority for engine optimisation even if you have more features and more compute.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

There's nothing amazing about this. Sony's console sells better, and it gets more love and care from developers. Not to say devs don't love and care the Xbox versions, but at the end of the day, they make their games around the Playstation.

The REAL failure comes from Microsoft's own studios supporting the device with AAA games which push production values. Yes, MS has games which look awesome.. Forza Motorsport/Horizon, Gears, MS Flight Sim, and there's some upcoming ones like Hellblade 2.. but they don't have a ton of studios making cinematic action adventure open world games that Sony does. If Microsoft had games really raising the bar for production values, then at least they could point to their own games and say, look how amazing our hardware is.. instead of relying on 3rd parties to push out somewhat higher resolutions and framerates to underscore the power.

Playstation 5 could lose every single 3rd party head to head, and yet they could still point to games like Horizon FW, or Ratchet and Clank, to show how capable their hardware is.

It's not easy for MS to get the edge over Sony now, considering how ingrained both of the main platforms (Xbox and PC) they support are when it comes to APIs and tools. They've got to make the lives of developers easier in any ways possible.. but they've got to start showing everyone what their most powerful console is capable of on their own. Redfall and Starfield aren't going to do it... I'm hoping Hellblade 2 is a lot deeper and more fleshed out gameplay-wise and that they really stick the landing with the visuals. I hope the next Gears looks amazing, and I'm sure the next DOOM game will probably be very technically proficient.

They gotta lead the way before things will get better for them. I think if they started selling more and doing better in other parts of the world, quality of ports would increase as well.

We’re almost three years into the gen, it’s getting harder to accept that there isn’t some hardware explanation for the PS5 overperforming or the Series X underperforming. Series X has a clear computational and memory bandwidth advantage, but the PS5 is the one with higher average framerate in Cyberpunk 2077 despite not using VRS and at essentially equal resolutions.