Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

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Another game (Atomic Heart) that runs worse on XSX when compared to PS5.

XSX has been out for over 2 years now, how long are we going to be blame the software side before we start to look at the hardware being the issue?

Considering we have substantial collection of software where it runs better on XSX now, I'd say that clearly points to it landing on the software side.

EDIT: Additional info from DF 2022-06-30:

More info - here's what I've done back to the start of the pandemic in early 2020. So over the past 28 months or so, I've done 15 platform comparisons. For console warriors, Xbox took the top spot 8 times, 5 were a draw or broken everywhere and 2 went to PS5.

 
That's unintuitive. Isn't the whole point of PBR to derive lighting based on material parameters in a uniform "physically correct" model? Having to code distinct models per material doesn't seem very "physically based" to me.
Just because games use an ad hoc approach to implement PBR doesn't mean that they're necessarily incorrect and note that the term is "physically based" rendering rather than "physically exact" or "physically correct". Trying to always compute the most complex BRDF in it's full generality when often not needed will often lead to poor occupancy/performance. Simpler BRDF models and special case approximations of more complex BRDF models depending on the surface properties at hand can work and be accurate enough for an artists use cases ...

UE for example has several different "shading models" like Unlit/Default Lit/Subsurface/Preintegrated Skin/Clear Coat/Subsurface Profile/Two Sided Foliage/Hair/Cloth/Eye/Single Layer Water/Thin Translucent and then we have the monstrosity like "From Material Expression" where you can combine the different aforementioned shading models which is a footgun waiting to go out of control. As far as I'm concerned, permutations is a feature of an optimized (special casing) and flexible material system and not a bug. Why waste performance on having 1 uber-shader material model to rule them all ?
What's preventing games from pre-compiling all of the permutations at install time? Are there runtime parameters that generate even more permutations?
It can't be feasibly done at installation time because driver updates can interfere with the way the shader compiler will do codegen. Implementing compilation during installation time would be a very minor improvement when the user can change drivers or hardware at will easily thus compilation may inevitably get triggered again at bootup or during gameplay. Can you imagine how annoying it would be to have new driver xyz just after you finished installation and before you even booted up the game to have to wait again ?
 
As far as I'm concerned, permutations is a feature of an optimized (special casing) and flexible material system and not a bug. Why waste performance on having 1 uber-shader material model to rule them all ?

That makes sense.

Can you imagine how annoying it would be to have new driver xyz just after you finished installation and before you even booted up the game to have to wait again ?

Would be annoying sure if it was forced but having the option to precompile and wait would be nice.
 
Considering we have substantial collection of software where it runs better on XSX now, I'd say that clearly points to it landing on the software side.

EDIT: Additional info from DF 2022-06-30:

There shouldn't be any game where PS5 "wins"

And it shouldn't be happening now 2+ years in to this generation.

And their wins are also subjective as they've given XSX a win when PS5 had the better frame rate.

Also I forgot they tested DMC 5, did PC ever get RT added?
 
No wonder they didn’t launch with RT. Tons of metal and glass everywhere. Some of the interiors would be a showcase for RTXDI and RT reflections. Performance will probably be terrible of course.

I don't think it wil be to be honest, Oliver said he can get 120fps at 4k with DLSS Quality mode (So native 1440p) so there's a lot of head room.
 
There shouldn't be any game where PS5 "wins"

Welcome to the reality where fallible humans are involved where vastly different levels of time and effort are allocated for different platform development and optimizations.

You should also keep in mind that this Atomic Heart is the very first game made by this developer. They seem to be doing alright given how many different platforms they have released on.
 
There shouldn't be any game where PS5 "wins"

And it shouldn't be happening now 2+ years in to this generation.

And their wins are also subjective as they've given XSX a win when PS5 had the better frame rate.

Also I forgot they tested DMC 5, did PC ever get RT added?
ive seen some games go beyond the average ps5 vs series x performance like the touryst going full 8k 60 on ps5 with added features and while only 6k on series x and the monster hunter rise port on ps5 has higher resolutions than series x and higher fps, i dont think its a coincidence or that devs just focus on one machine more than the other at this point, somethings fishy in terms of series x hardware or software, cant just be ''lazy devs''
 
Welcome to the reality where fallible humans are involved where vastly different levels of time and effort are allocated for different platform development and optimizations.

You should also keep in mind that this Atomic Heart is the very first game made by this developer. They seem to be doing alright given how many different platforms they have released on.

And yet the DX12 PC version is very competent and optimised, so why isn't XSX which also uses DX12?
 
ive seen some games go beyond the average ps5 vs series x performance like the touryst going full 8k 60 on ps5 with added features and while only 6k on series x and the monster hunter rise port on ps5 has higher resolutions than series x and higher fps, i dont think its a coincidence or that devs just focus on one machine more than the other at this point, somethings fishy in terms of series x hardware or software, cant just be ''lazy devs''

The Tourist released as a launch title November 10, 2020 for Series consoles and then 10 months later September 9, 2021 on PS5. Development tools at launch and much of the first year were rough for Xbox. The devs also stated they rewrote the engine for the PS5s low level graphics APIs.

It seems like there is a different level of effort involved between the two versions.
 
I can say that I am happy that PS5 and series x have wash comparisons or can go one way or another. Makes less fanboy wars about power and tflops. Rather, they are close enough that the differences aren't important with optimal ports
 
The Tourist released as a launch title November 10, 2020 for Series consoles and then 10 months later September 9, 2021 on PS5. Development tools at launch and much of the first year were rough for Xbox. The devs also stated they rewrote the engine for the PS5s low level graphics APIs.

It seems like there is a different level of effort involved between the two versions.
i can see that but even according to the developer interview they said they particularly could achieve 8k 60 due to ''ps5s memory design'' and ''low level api'', something's just off here like why did they only choose ps5 and also what about other games like monster hunter, elden ring that keep higher fps and res on ps5, even when raytracing is involved like gta v raytracing port performs better on ps5, callisto protocol even after being patched on xbox it still has blurry reflections on series x, cod performs similar on both consoles but has vsync on ps5 and tearing on xbox, just got me questioning really it cant just be devs prioritizing one over another.

I think the overall design of this consoles is more complex than just the numbers on paper
 
I can say that I am happy that PS5 and series x have wash comparisons or can go one way or another. Makes less fanboy wars about power and tflops. Rather, they are close enough that the differences aren't important with optimal ports
I think to the contrary it's even worse when both consoles are this close, there is a constant fight over a few fps and a few more "p" from both sides, Cerny genius or wait for tools etc...
Sometimes i wonder if those more active fanboys even play games at all.
 
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Would love to know how they generating those shaders - are they also rendering assets in the background or just relying on UE4's PSO gathering? I would assume a combination, albeit there are apparently a few missed instances. Incredibly minor through all things considered, in terms of consistency one of UE4's best showings on PC. It can be done folks!

Also, kudos for not only including the shader compilation, but adding in UI elements to indicate what it's doing and relative time to completion. Bugs me a little when this step is patched in but it's not communicated to the user what it's doing so you just have extremally choppy opening videos/menus, tell me what you're doing and how long I should expect to wait please!
 
There shouldn't be any game where PS5 "wins"

And it shouldn't be happening now 2+ years in to this generation.

And their wins are also subjective as they've given XSX a win when PS5 had the better frame rate.

Also I forgot they tested DMC 5, did PC ever get RT added?
I disagree with this. In some games having a higher clock is helping I really believe that. Monster Hunter is a Switch first game. A console that doesn't even have geometry shaders. It's not going make full use of the extra 16 CUs in the Series X. In the case of that game I think the higher clock helps. Microsoft does have to look deeper into some of the issues especially with UE4. Surprisingly enough UE4 games lately seem to be performing better on PS5 than the Series X.

The Tourist released as a launch title November 10, 2020 for Series consoles and then 10 months later September 9, 2021 on PS5. Development tools at launch and much of the first year were rough for Xbox. The devs also stated they rewrote the engine for the PS5s low level graphics APIs.

It seems like there is a different level of effort involved between the two versions.

Wish people would stop brining this one up. You would expect them to make improvements to a late port. Sticking to games released around the same time is fair game.
 
No wonder they didn’t launch with RT. Tons of metal and glass everywhere. Some of the interiors would be a showcase for RTXDI and RT reflections. Performance will probably be terrible of course.

I suspect it's more of a stuttering issue. We know RT has more problems with scs so perhaps they just wanted time to perfect that before launching. I doubt it's a raw performance issue because it's easy to scale performance up and down with RT (if you're a dev!)
 
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