Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

Status
Not open for further replies.
No traversal stutter and no shader compilation stutter? That would be impressive.

Oliver showed that in the video the PS5, XSX, and XSS have traversal stutter and he showed an obvious one going up the stairs in the police station. You manage to reproduce that one on PC?
There was traversal stutter for me in the demo. That said, I did find it very slight, compared to most typical examples. It was essentially like a little hitch you'd get when a game quick saves.
 
In my mind any traversal stutter is just Robocop's POV glitching out and is purely intentional. Stairs have never been kind to robots.

This immediately made me think, "hold on, Robocop's not a robot, he's cyborg". But then his name is deliberate obfuscation from OCP anyway, the scamps!
 
No traversal stutter and no shader compilation stutter? That would be impressive.

Oliver showed that in the video the PS5, XSX, and XSS have traversal stutter and he showed an obvious one going up the stairs in the police station. You manage to reproduce that one on PC?
He didn't show any traversal stutters on PS5. Only regular drops based on scene complexity.
 
Over on another forum someone has got a settings file from the pc I assume and it had some console settings in it. If they are correct the ps5 is using a setting called r.materialqualitylevel while the xsx isn't and this is why the xsx ground looks worse. I found some info in the old ue4 documentation about it but couldn't seem to narrow it down in the ue5 docs. the ue4 docs seem to suggest it turns on/off higher quality shaders for performance/bandwidth reasons, here it looks like a bump map or pom being on/off.

Does anyone know exactly what it does in ue5 and what the reason would be for it not being the same on the ps5/xsx? surely the xsx isn't havn't bandwidth problems?
 
Over on another forum someone has got a settings file from the pc I assume and it had some console settings in it. If they are correct the ps5 is using a setting called r.materialqualitylevel while the xsx isn't and this is why the xsx ground looks worse. I found some info in the old ue4 documentation about it but couldn't seem to narrow it down in the ue5 docs. the ue4 docs seem to suggest it turns on/off higher quality shaders for performance/bandwidth reasons, here it looks like a bump map or pom being on/off.

Does anyone know exactly what it does in ue5 and what the reason would be for it not being the same on the ps5/xsx? surely the xsx isn't havn't bandwidth problems?
Sometimes we see differences just due to mistakes. Other times it could just be that they didn’t have enough time to bake series consoles, as it is the smaller of the 2. They can get away with porting PC dx12 to console because of how much they share, but it may not be optimal, but it gets the product out the door.

Seeing traversal stutter however, is a sign that they could do more in a post patch. At least iron out those issues.
 
No traversal stutter and no shader compilation stutter? That would be impressive.

Oliver showed that in the video the PS5, XSX, and XSS have traversal stutter and he showed an obvious one going up the stairs in the police station. You manage to reproduce that one on PC?
Will there be a PC video coming? It's SUPER impressive looking on PC, minus the character models
 
It's good that the Nvidia performance is much better now, but the lead AMD still has is not uncommon at this point. We've seen this kind of gap in games before. Just cuz a 2070S is typically faster than a 5700 on average doesn't mean it inherently should be in any game and that if it isn't, then something is wrong.

As for a performance mode for Series X at 60fps, it does seem like it should be possible now(even if it doesn't hit a consistent 60fps), though the graphical hit of a lower target resolution along with FSR2 will sting.
 
As for a performance mode for Series X at 60fps, it does seem like it should be possible now(even if it doesn't hit a consistent 60fps), though the graphical hit of a lower target resolution along with FSR2 will sting.
Hopefully in this version of the Creation Engine Bethesda have completely divorced key game systems (gravity, physics etc) from the framerate, which has caused issues in previous games. If so, then even if they can't hit a solid 60, embracing VRR, or a a solid 40fps on a 120hz panel might be options.
 
No traversal stutter and no shader compilation stutter? That would be impressive.

Oliver showed that in the video the PS5, XSX, and XSS have traversal stutter and he showed an obvious one going up the stairs in the police station. You manage to reproduce that one on PC?
Not that I have noticed but I'll try again later on tonight.

But it's so smooth to play.
 
Does anyone know exactly what it does in ue5 and what the reason would be for it not being the same on the ps5/xsx? surely the xsx isn't havn't bandwidth problems?
Checked it quickly and it basically passes a variable into materials that lets the material do different things based on whether it's low/high. i.e. it can do whatever arbitrary thing based on how the game sets up its materials from nothing to completely changing everything. Not very useful to us for analysis I know, but effectively looks like a game specific content switch...

Some more info: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/...ty/ScalabilityReference/#materialqualitylevel
 
Last edited:
I've just tried the insane quality mod for Robocop and it's not that good.

It claims to get rid of all the fizzle but it's still there.
 
Last edited:

Great video. Hopefully we’re on the verge of a massive increase in baseline fidelity. Nanite and VSMs are the stars of Robocop, they look really really good. Not sure why Ollie is so accepting of the reflections quality though, they look really poor especially when transitioning to/from SSR. UE5 has definitely raised the bar though. Now let’s see what Frostbite, Anvil, Snowdrop etc can do to match.
 
With Robocop, I doubt the texture issues the Xbox has is really going to affect performance if they ever fix it. As for the lower resolution on the Xbox.. I assume their dynamic resolution implementation isn't working properly and not scaling up properly when it has headroom.
 
It's good that the Nvidia performance is much better now, but the lead AMD still has is not uncommon at this point. We've seen this kind of gap in games before. Just cuz a 2070S is typically faster than a 5700 on average doesn't mean it inherently should be in any game and that if it isn't, then something is wrong.

As for a performance mode for Series X at 60fps, it does seem like it should be possible now(even if it doesn't hit a consistent 60fps), though the graphical hit of a lower target resolution along with FSR2 will sting.
Other than Modern Warfare 2 and now 3 (which are the same game) - what other games do you know of where the 2070S is bested by the base RX 5700? My measurement is 5%+ in favour of the RX 5700 in the bench scene there.

AFAIK it is an outlier.
 
Other than Modern Warfare 2 and now 3 (which are the same game) - what other games do you know of where the 2070S is bested by the base RX 5700? My measurement is 5%+ in favour of the RX 5700 in the bench scene there.

AFAIK it is an outlier.
Maybe AC Valhalla, F1 2023, Apex Legends, Far Cry 6, Hogwarts Legacy, the recent Total War games are some that I think I recall AMD having a solid lead in.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top