Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[Inuhanyou]

I am happy. Alex agreed with me on the idea that inherently targeting the PS5 as the core platform is still the best option compared to say targeting lower spec PC hw as some people have suggested. They just need to use more PC appropriate equivalents when porting.

The conversation for many has been about the PC port not playing well on older hw, but that's the wrong thing to focus on.

The actual problem is the game not playing well on hw atleast comparable to PS5 for no good reason when the PS5 plays the game very well. Which leads to the conclusions of bad optimization

 

[Jay]

I am happy. Alex agreed with me on the idea that inherently targeting the PS5 as the core platform is still the best option compared to say targeting lower spec PC hw as some people have suggested. They just need to use more PC appropriate equivalents when porting.

The conversation for many has been about the PC port not playing well on older hw, but that's the wrong thing to focus on.

Have to admit I've not followed all the threads, but I've yet to see anyone suggest any of that in here.
The point is that the port is bad and given what is being done has no reason to not scale better to lower end hardware.

Example lower quality textures should not be that bad.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Have to admit I've not followed all the threads, but I've yet to see anyone suggest any of that in here.
The point is that the port is bad and given what is being done has no reason to not scale better to lower end hardware.

Example lower quality textures should not be that bad.

Not really here but elsewhere a lot

 

[gamervivek]

Lower texture settings mangling up the image quality is not really new. RDR2's texture settings below ultra are distinctively worse and I remember it being brought up after the PC launch.

Here's a thread trying to run Ultra textures with 3GB VRAM by reducing the LoD by modifying the config files.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PCRedDead/comments/lgfbbj

 

[davis.anthony]

The conversation for many has been about the PC port not playing well on older hw, but that's the wrong thing to focus on.

80%+ of the conversation in this thread has ben about its use of VRAM which affects both new and old hardware.

In all of my play through I didn't see a single ounce of pop-in or textures streaming in properly (which is a good thing) so they're obviously keeping everything in RAM/VRAM.

My question is how much are they keeping in memory?

If you're at the start of a level how much of it is in memory? Are they keeping the whole thing in memory? If so why? Can that reduced?

 

[troyan]

I am happy. Alex agreed with me on the idea that inherently targeting the PS5 as the core platform is still the best option compared to say targeting lower spec PC hw as some people have suggested. They just need to use more PC appropriate equivalents when porting.

But would this be possible? They would have to rework textures, assets, design of the world, streaming etc. TLoU is unplayable on anything less than 8GB in 1080p. To archive ~60fps on a 6GB card like the 1660TI or 2060 players have to play in low with low to medium textures.

This is how that game looks on a GTX1660TI with playable settings:

And this is the emulation of the PS3 version of the same scene in 1080p:

 

[Overstander]

Not really here but elsewhere a lot

I think lately in this thread , ( since df video) i was quite vocal and pASsiOnAtE about "PS5 First then max out PC"
He even used a similar phrase like ~ "thats the way for quality"- but doesn't matter. He for sure not writing down quotas from this thread for his DF Direkt Videos.
But he said the right thing

Iam sure that there will be a patch wich shifts streaming around a bit to make it more performant on PC.
But if nothing else comes out of this port for PC , then at least People and PC Players get a little bit more insight on how potent PS5s I/O Block realy is.
PS5 CPU is living the sweet life while calculating along.
In the World of PS5s CPU, decompression is not a thing.

 

[MCharta]

But if nothing else comes out of this port for PC , then at least People and PC Players get a little bit more insight on how potent PS5s I/O Block realy is.

The only thing we can get from this specific example if it really comes from this i/o block advantage is that here it helps them to not bother for a result not that more impressive than other equivalent games
I'm really not sure we should be happy about this.

 

[Inuhanyou]

As far as ports are concerned it makes it a big hassle. But as far as making it easier to "fire and forget" for PS5 only development, it's quite a good solution that makes it easier for them

 

[Overstander]

The only thing we can get from this specific example if it really comes from this i/o block advantage is that here it helps them to not bother for a result not that more impressive than other equivalent games
I'm really not sure we should be happy about this.

Oh wait for second wave first party titles.. Spiderman 2 for example..
And we have already an example wich shows things we don't see on other games (on pc) - Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart

 

[davis.anthony]

But if nothing else comes out of this port for PC , then at least People and PC Players get a little bit more insight on how potent PS5s I/O Block really is.

If the PC port was as optimised as it could be then a realistic comparison could be drawn up but as it stands TLOU doesn't show how potent anything is in PS5 compared to PC hardware.

Spiderman which loads insanely fast on PS5, loads just as fast on a old Quad Core PC CPU, the problem on PC isn't the decompression, it's everything that comes after it.

 

[Overstander]

If the PC port was as optimised as it could be then a realistic comparison could be drawn up but as it stands TLOU doesn't show how potent anything is in PS5 compared to PC hardware.

Spiderman which loads insanely fast on PS5, loads just as fast on a old Quad Core PC CPU, the problem on PC isn't the decompression, it's everything that comes after it.

You with your PCMasterRace Bigotry completely missed the point.
Sure the port is unoptimized. But that was not my point. It is quite clear that naughty dog for some reason tryd to mimic PS5s I/O with pure brute forcing.
And it revealed the perfect example as to why the I/O Block of PS5 is so smart .
According to Cerny the Kraken Decompressor Chip equates to 9 "additional" Zen 2 CPU Cores.
What difference that makes is visible on TLOU on PC.

 

[davis.anthony]

You with your PCMasterRace Bigotry completely missed the point.

Seems we have a console warrior trying to defend his consoles superiority.

Sure the port is unoptimized. But that was not my point.

And my point is your point made no sense considering the state of the port.

It is quite clear that naughty dog for some reason tryd to mimic PS5s I/O with pure brute forcing.

Pure speculation on your part.

And it revealed the perfect example as to why the I/O Block of PS5 is so smart .

More speculation on your part

According to Cerny the Kraken Decompressor Chip equates to 9 "additional" Zen 2 CPU Cores.

And RAD Game Tools who made the I/O block disagreed with his wording in the blog they did on PS5.

A quad core i7 4770k from 2013 kept up with PS5 I/O block in Spiderman, explain?

What difference that makes is visible on TLOU on PC.

In what way exactly? CPU's that are years old do 60fps in the game perfectly fine.

 

[Remij]

But if nothing else comes out of this port for PC , then at least People and PC Players get a little bit more insight on how potent PS5s I/O Block realy is.

The only thing coming out of this port for PC is that Naughty Dog and Sony did a piss poor job of porting it. It speaks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the PS5's I/O block. Nothing.

 

[iroboto]

You with your PCMasterRace Bigotry completely missed the point.
Sure the port is unoptimized. But that was not my point. It is quite clear that naughty dog for some reason tryd to mimic PS5s I/O with pure brute forcing.
And it revealed the perfect example as to why the I/O Block of PS5 is so smart .
According to Cerny the Kraken Decompressor Chip equates to 9 "additional" Zen 2 CPU Cores.
What difference that makes is visible on TLOU on PC.

So as I've noted earlier, there are various themes being mixed here:
1) Divergence and differences in how consoles are being optimized relative to PC
2) The quality of a Port, which means adapting a game from 1 platform to run on another platform
3) The quality of the release, which means bugs and stuff.

No one has any issue with discussing point (1) as being true, and this is worth discussing as to the effectiveness of running a unified system.

But I would not mix point (1) with point (2). If you are porting to PC, you should adapt the game to run efficiently on PC. This is largely a software problem, but while I agree we are going to see greater divergence, between the two, this is the cost of a unified system vs a system that is individually parted but powerful. We could easily make something that would break consoles that runs perfectly fine on PC and look absolutely horrendous.
(3) well, we can all agree, the quality of the release is poor, there are bugs everywhere, and things run very slow, textures are bad.

On point (2), if you're going to sell, you should take the time to ensure it runs well on PC architecture, I don't think there should be a complaint there. The idea that this game is beyond PCs with similar spec as PS5 is what appears to be a sticking point for both sides. The reality is, it just comes down to how well it was ported, and I think it's pretty clear from some examples of games using significantly less resources but being able to put up equal or better performance, is grounds for saying the port is far from completed - and many people are comparing the performance of a perfectly optimized game on 1 platform vs an incomplete port on another platform.

We will need a year or so worth of patches to really get this game to be where it should be, that much is clear before people start having any real discussions about what the hardware and architecture is capable of.

 

[DavidGraham]

Steam has now removed TLOU1 from the cateogry of titles that support the Steam Deck.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1643150020961599488

 

[chris1515]

I think tlou part 1 was a "simple" job. They brute forced the game on PS5 to get the job done with the same tech they had to spend years optimizing to work well for PS4.

And then they were asked to port that code directly to PC without realizing how much of a hassle it would be to have to decouple everything they used on PS5 to a PC equivalent.

It seems like they use a lot of io streaming to take the load off of other parts of PS5 which they did not properly account for on PC port

Kurt Margeneau told for Uncharted Legacy collection, they ditch all PS4 streaming system. I suppose they iterate on the technology for TLOU Part 1.

The interview is translate to french.

EDIT: Comparing Spiderman to TLOU Part 1 is not the best things to do. TLOU Part 1 is not a cross gen games. For example Spiderman geometry out of character is clearly PS4 level. Same on the for Overstander, we have no idea what's going on on TLOU Part 1 side, wait maybe one or two months and we will have a better idea of what's going on seeing the improvement of the PC version.

 

[troyan]

But there are 10s of these characters on screen and the engine has to render them outside the viewport and behind walls, too. You can swing in any directions at any time and the lod is barely visible on the PC - even at 100FPS+. I would think this is more complicated than rendering a linear game in which the player can only move forward...

 

[BRiT]

For the sake of having civil discussions, can we please not do the this-for-that style of discourse that goes line by line? It usually ends up isolating others from the discussion.

 

[chris1515]

But there are 10s of these characters on screen and the engine has to render them outside the viewport and behind walls, too. You can swing in any directions at any time and the lod is barely visible on the PC - even at 100FPS+. I would think this is more complicated than rendering a linear game in which the player can only move forward...

We know the CPU problem comes from data decompression. What is important is the data they need to stream and decompress during the game. And at least on geometry part TLOU Part 1 and Spiderman are not at the same level at all. ND probably fucked up data decompression, time will tell but the process is different on PS5 and PC.