Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[Dr. Nick]

 

[Inuhanyou]

This whole video is good. But their take on PS5 pro is just great. Couldent have said it better myself

 

[see colon]

What you wrote is perfectly true in classical rendering but virtual textures kinda change that since they should only keep in memory what's visible on screen.

True for textures, yes. But are models, animations and other assets handled this way? Not being cheeky, I honestly don't know if those things have been virtualized in the same way.

We are all assuming its memory related, could it be as simple as lack of bandwidth and fill rate?

Fill rate shouldn't really be an issue because you are drawing the same amount of pixels, just split between 2+ viewpoints. The same is mostly true for bandwidth assuming your render buffers are adjusted for the size of the output. Traditionally the things that increase with splitscreen RAM requirements (the render buffers and assets stored in memory could be higher), CPU load and sometimes polygon/vertex stuff. Since the CPU is roughly the same in the Series S, I don't think that would be the issue. Although, have we ever confirmed that the CPU cache on Series S is identical to X?

 

[Remij]

This whole video is good. But their take on PS5 pro is just great. Couldent have said it better myself

Haven't watched it yet, but my opinion about a theoretical PS5 Pro releasing within the next year or two is basically that it's a terrible idea. The simple fact of the matter is that by introducing another mid gen "Pro" console, it diminishes the impact that a future PS6 would have in 3 or 4 years from now. Tech isn't advancing fast enough anymore to make these mid gen updates make sense..

I think a much better idea is to iterate on the PS5, make it smaller, more cost efficient, more power efficient, extend the storage capabilities by perhaps adding another NVMe drive bay.. and then also throw in a Dualsense Edge. Do that for the best price possible... and call it the PS5 Elite or something and call it a day. Then focus on making the PS6 a much nicer more powerful console.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Haven't watched it yet, but my opinion about a theoretical PS5 Pro releasing within the next year or two is basically that it's a terrible idea. The simple fact of the matter is that by introducing another mid gen "Pro" console, it diminishes the impact that a future PS6 would have in 3 or 4 years from now. Tech isn't advancing fast enough anymore to make these mid gen updates make sense..

I think a much better idea is to iterate on the PS5, make it smaller, more cost efficient, more power efficient, extend the storage capabilities by perhaps adding another NVMe drive bay.. and then also throw in a Dualsense Edge. Do that for the best price possible... and call it the PS5 Elite or something and call it a day. Then focus on making the PS6 a much nicer more powerful console.

Pretty much!

 

[HolySmoke]

True for textures, yes. But are models, animations and other assets handled this way? Not being cheeky, I honestly don't know if those things have been virtualized in the same way.

I wouldn't count on it but I really have no idea. Those Renderdoc captures I made earlier include the index and vertex buffer sizes though and they seem fairly modest.

420 Textures - 1923.34 MB (1912.91 MB over 32x32), 67 RTs - 1049.60 MB.
Avg. tex dimension: 857.17x713.895 (1023.83x873.7 over 32x32)
961 Buffers - 210.18 MB total 64.51 MB IBs 65.78 MB VBs.
3183.12 MB - Grand total GPU buffer + texture load.

To put this in perspective, Doom Eternal has these numbers in the 700MB+ range.

 

[davis.anthony]

Fill rate shouldn't really be an issue because you are drawing the same amount of pixels, just split between 2+ viewpoints. The same is mostly true for bandwidth assuming your render buffers are adjusted for the size of the output. Traditionally the things that increase with splitscreen RAM requirements (the render buffers and assets stored in memory could be higher), CPU load and sometimes polygon/vertex stuff. Since the CPU is roughly the same in the Series S, I don't think that would be the issue. Although, have we ever confirmed that the CPU cache on Series S is identical to X?

But if the CPU is potentially having do to more wouldn't that mean the CPU uses more bandwidth which leaves less for the GPU?

 

[iroboto]

I am quite surprised he missed the resolution difference displayed on all ground textures from 7:29 between PS5 and XSX. I could immediately notice the difference on a compressed 720p youtube video! Like the shadows those textures are quite sharper on PS5.

PS5 is on the left:

I'm a bit surprised that this wasn't brought up as a possibility, but I think you're actually looking at the difference in bake quality, for textures, normals etc, or the same quality but compressed much better.
One is Kraken+Oodle (PS5), the other (Xbox and PC) is likely not to be. Since the license is paid for on PS5 and not on Xbox, they may have just gone with whatever is free on PC and Xbox.

I have been looking long enough between the photos and I don't see this as a texture resolution, or a AF issue. I believe this is straight up compression differences on the bake.
Worth noting for future titles and past titles like this.

 

[chris1515]

 

[BRiT]

...

I wondered if Private Division fixed their issues yet, but it doesn't seem so.

Further patches have been promised to fix the game's performance problems, but despite delaying our coverage to test patch 1.1 on PS5 you're still getting a pretty poor experience for the money. Xbox updates are due soon as well, but in fairness, Series X is already in a better place performance-wise than PS5 - not counting the hitches - and in its visual features.

As a paid upgrade, The Spacer's Choice Edition is best avoided for now. The visual tweaks are broadly speaking well done, but they do have a knock-on effect to the art direction that might prove divisive. Less debateable are the performance issues - the frame-pacing at 30fps and the highly variable frame-rate in performance mode need to be fixed. Certainly going by the results on PS5, updates beyond patch 1.1 still have a lot to address to justify that upgrade fee. And for those that have already bought in, I seriously hope it's possible to turn this release around soon.

 

[mr magoo]

Wow. I am speechless. Horrible simply horrible.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

The question is...why. It was always a middling game to begin with, but it already had 60fps modes on the new consoles. Sure, not as high resolution as they're capable of with a native port, but also the type of art style the game has just really doesn't do justice to the massive load the extra volumetrics and lighting is putting on this engine. It was always a cartoony world that looks lust as cartooney, but now with more smog. This isn't the Last of Us! It doesn't need a new lighting engine, I'm not being immersed more in this world consisting of characters with the exact same body and facial structure due to heavier volumetrics.

 

[see colon]

But if the CPU is potentially having do to more wouldn't that mean the CPU uses more bandwidth which leaves less for the GPU?

Yes,of course. But if the GPU is waiting for the CPU all the time that means it's also using less bandwidth.

 

[Dr. Nick]

They should have taken the opportunity to create a 40fps mode, IMO.

 

[BRiT]

They should have taken the opportunity to create a 40fps mode, IMO.

This was done by the publisher Private Division with a secondary developer to maximize profit. Putting in additional modes would require more effort.

If it was done by Obsidian it would have been a better showing. I'm certain The Outer Worlds 2 will be a polished release.

 

[London Geezer]

This was done by the publisher Private Division with a secondary developer to maximize profit. Putting in additional modes would require more effort.

If it was done by Obsidian it would have been a better showing. I'm certain The Outer Worlds 2 will be a polished release.

Well they took the time to put in other things and make bad choices, surely a 40Hz mode wouldn't take them that long? OR they could have made better choices to at least match the 60fps we already had?

Naive? Me? Never!

 

[assurdum]

This whole video is good. But their take on PS5 pro is just great. Couldent have said it better myself

They even knew what ps5 pro hardware would be about, but it's already "useless" because the pc components markes costs doesn't allow a significant boost in the specs...seems just a gossip chats to me than anything else and I'm not a fan pro models. If ps5 pro will be about better raytracing and hardware IQ reconstruction, I wouldnt' despise it at all.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

They even knew what ps5 pro hardware would be about, but it's already "useless" because the pc components markes costs doesn't allow a significant boost in the specs...seems just a gossip chats to me than anything else and I'm not a fan pro models. If ps5 pro will be about better raytracing and hardware IQ reconstruction, I wouldnt' despise it at all.

Yeah, I also thought their takes on mid-get consoles were really short sighted. This console is supposedly not coming out for another year and they're looking at today's game and tech, not forwards. No consideration for what AMD may have but have not yet revealed, no consideration for any bespoke hardware that Microsoft and Sony might want to drop in mid-gen.

We've seen games like Plague's Tale 2, Gotham Knights and the Matrix demo only run at 30fps on PS5 and Series X. The DF team made the point that games are running fine in the same breath as pointing out many games are cross-gen, which is why the current gen versions are probably fine. Not a single DF person spoke about developers making their second game for current gen consoles and thought to wonder about issues challenging developers now.

 

[SmooTh]

 

[Inuhanyou]

Yeah, I also thought their takes on mid-get consoles were really short sighted. This console is supposedly not coming out for another year and they're looking at today's game and tech, not forwards. No consideration for what AMD may have but have not yet revealed, no consideration for any bespoke hardware that Microsoft and Sony might want to drop in mid-gen.

We've seen games like Plague's Tale 2, Gotham Knights and the Matrix demo only run at 30fps on PS5 and Series X. The DF team made the point that games are running fine in the same breath as pointing out many games are cross-gen, which is why the current gen versions are probably fine. Not a single DF person spoke about developers making their second game for current gen consoles and thought to wonder about issues challenging developers now.

Meh. Using a tech demo, a game that was said by Alex to be able to run at 60 on console with some optimizations, and the absolute mess called Gotham knights that looks and plays significantly worse than a game that came out almost 10 years ago, is not any reasonable example of saying games don't run well on current consoles because of the hardware, when even getting 60fps for vast majority of titles at all is quite impressive. It's not the standard for generations past at all.

I don't see any upgrade in hw getting to 60 with the technology we know about. Is the PS5 pro gonna have a CPU twice as powerful? Or significant bandwidth upgrade? How strong is the GPU gonna be?