Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

[Shifty Geezer]

wonder how it does look vs a native 1080p screen then.

Identical. It'd only look different VERY close if you can see the subpixels, where a 1080p pixel will be more visible than four 2160p pixels.

Still, imho, the smartest solution to having 2 monitors in one, and I mean it literally

I don't understand how that is physically possible. From your images, you have just a single panel that is fed different signals and letterboxed, which is the only way to do it. 2 Monitors in one would require two discrete panels. You could place them side-by-side and have two 1080p screens left and right, or one 3840 x 1080 screen, but that's no different to having a single 3820x1080 panel and displaying two separate feeds on it.

You have to enable Game mode and source as PC and there you have it, 4K or 32:9 resoluton. In fact Windows set 3840x1080 as the recommended resolution.

For me is a win win 'cos I always used 2 displays and now I don't use them anymore. So less energy needed, a single screen and both native 4K 16:9 and native 32:9 (3840x1080).

Again, isn't that a 3840 x 2160 panel that's just letterboxing? I guess this is a novel 'supported resolution' - lots of displays support lots of resolutions and aspects and letterbox.stretch the image to fit the display. I guess Sammy are adding 3840 x 1080 alongside 1980 x 1080 and native 3840 x 2160.

 

[Cyan]

Identical. It'd only look different VERY close if you can see the subpixels, where a 1080p pixel will be more visible than four 2160p pixels.

I don't understand how that is physically possible. From your images, you have just a single panel that is fed different signals and letterboxed, which is the only way to do it. 2 Monitors in one would require two discrete panels. You could place them side-by-side and have two 1080p screens left and right, or one 3840 x 1080 screen, but that's no different to having a single 3820x1080 panel and displaying two separate feeds on it.

Again, isn't that a 3840 x 2160 panel that's just letterboxing? I guess this is a novel 'supported resolution' - lots of displays support lots of resolutions and aspects and letterbox.stretch the image to fit the display. I guess Sammy are adding 3840 x 1080 alongside 1980 x 1080 and native 3840 x 2160.

right, the TV is letterboxing. This means that it saves a lot of energy not having to light those pixels and also, being a 50" TV, it is like having two 1920x1080p screens side by side (3840p).

Sorry if I didn't explain myself correctly. It is letterboxing, sure, but what I mean, the TV becomes an ultrawide display, with its own sound, and with enough space for displaying the equivalent to two displays at the same time, instead of the "Extend these displays" feature. It's much simpler, you just split the windows in two.

I will be honest, that's a beyond price feature. Many people want a 4K screen, but those who want an ultrawide display, are also many. With a Samsung TV with a feature like this, you get 2 displays in one when it comes to productivity and the good things of ultrawide gaming, plus native 4K if you need to -for certain productivity tasks, or for games that don't support ultrawide-.

When in game you just see 16:9 4K or ultrawide 32:9, but in the desktop it looks like this;

Two browsers side by side, 175% scaling:

Same at 100% scaling:

 

[Reynaldo]

right, the TV is letterboxing. This means that it saves a lot of energy not having to light those pixels and also, being a 50" TV, it is like having two 1920x1080p screens side by side (3840p).

Sorry if I didn't explain myself correctly. It is letterboxing, sure, but what I mean, the TV becomes an ultrawide display, with its own sound, and with enough space for displaying the equivalent to two displays at the same time, instead of the "Extend these displays" feature. It's much simpler, you just split the windows in two.

I will be honest, that's a beyond price feature. Many people want a 4K screen, but those who want an ultrawide display, are also many. With a Samsung TV with a feature like this, you get 2 displays in one when it comes to productivity and the good things of ultrawide gaming, plus native 4K if you need to -for certain productivity tasks, or for games that don't support ultrawide-.

When in game you just see 16:9 4K or ultrawide 32:9, but in the desktop it looks like this;

Two browsers side by side, 175% scaling:

Same at 100% scaling:

You can do that with pretty much any 4k tv and a custom resolution. I've done it with my LG B9 setting a custom ultrawide resolution in the Nvidia control panel. And with it being an OLED the letterboxing is perfect since the black bars are pitch black.

 

[Cyan]

You can do that with pretty much any 4k tv and a custom resolution. I've done it with my LG B9 setting a custom ultrawide resolution in the Nvidia control panel. And with it being an OLED the letterboxing is perfect since the black bars are pitch black.

you are a lucky boy. How is the experience and how do the games play on it? Which size is your TV? Any incompatibility? For what's worth, I never ever had any issue with that. Sure quite a few games don't accept ultrawide resolutions, but that's not a problem at all, you just set a 16:9 resolution back and no issues at all.

I don't have a nVidia GPU. Gotta check if Intel has something like that. (didn't check tbh)

That would free me up from having to use the PC mode or the Game setting, which would give me the opportunity to use the Movie setting, or Natural, etc, which I calibrated time ago, and it worked wonders.

Not that you can't calibrate in PC mode, but there are less options available, plus I'd LOVE to have Lossless Scaling working along with the Black Frame Insertion -BFI is unavailable on the PC mode- of the TV and see what happens. That might be a sight to behold with all those extra frames created from everywhere xD

 

[DavidGraham]

 

[Remij]

I didn't test it that much but didn't notice any issues, at least running on my high-end PC.

Unfortunately I can confirm that the game does indeed have shader compilation stutters. Happens when you get into your first fight on the rooftop and do your first attacks, as well as with every new skill/persona animation.

Bummer. I just can't believe that there's still companies using this engine and not pre-compiling.

Refunded.

 

[Shortbread]

After a vast, extended period of development, Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has finally released - and of all the Digital Foundry team, it was John Linneman with the most reservations about the game based on its pre-launch campaign. But you know what? While there are a range of caveats, he's come away having had fun with the game. The PC version though? It REALLY needs work...

00:00 Intro
01:30 After Arkham
02:14 Character Rendering
05:19 Environmental Details
10:27 PS5 vs Xbox
14:02 Performance Analysis on Consoles
16:05 The PC Version Has Issues
21:09 What About Steam Deck?
25:35 The Wrap-up

 

[Remij]

00:00 Intro
01:30 After Arkham
02:14 Character Rendering
05:19 Environmental Details
10:27 PS5 vs Xbox
14:02 Performance Analysis on Consoles
16:05 The PC Version Has Issues
21:09 What About Steam Deck?
25:35 The Wrap-up

It's excellent that John demonstrates the issues of the PC version when using an uncapped framerate (or a higher fps cap than you can achieve consistently, showing the wildly fluctuating frametimes, but he should also show how the experience would feel when capped at 60 to give the players some idea of how smooth or consistent it would be with it engaged at the same level as consoles.

Again though, another bad Unreal Engine stutterfest. This traversal stuttering BS should be extremely high on priority for Epic especially. Like John said.. almost every game that has these traversal hitches is not ever fixed... and it's really on Epic to fix fundamental issues with how their engine works.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@Remij UE5 has a new streaming system called World Partition. I have no idea if any games are using it besides probably Fortnite. Most of the UE 5 games that have been released started as UE4 and may be using level streaming. Unless someone has already dug in and confirmed these details you can’t really make assumptions.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

This is the reason I and many others expressed disappointment that Epic's stuttering 'solution' to UE4 was...UE5 (eventually?). Knowing game development times that just means there are going to be plenty of games released with UE4 for years to come. Something more substantial needed to be done to assist developers in mitigating UE4's issues. Perhaps traversal stutter is just impossible without the wholesale change to UE5, but think PSO gathering/compiling could have perhaps gotten a bigger boost somehow...?

Unfortunately I can confirm that the game does indeed have shader compilation stutters. Happens when you get into your first fight on the rooftop and do your first attacks, as well as with every new skill/persona animation.

Bummer. I just can't believe that there's still companies using this engine and not pre-compiling.

Refunded.

Refunded?! Why, it's great! Plenty of people are reporting it runs smoothly!

 

[pjbliverpool]

It's excellent that John demonstrates the issues of the PC version when using an uncapped framerate (or a higher fps cap than you can achieve consistently, showing the wildly fluctuating frametimes, but he should also show how the experience would feel when capped at 60 to give the players some idea of how smooth or consistent it would be with it engaged at the same level as consoles.

Definitely agree with this. I cap most games on the PC as it's generally better to have a completely consistent frame rate / frame times than higher but unstable performance (within reason of course).

It was a little strange as the review used a 60fps cap in the intro and noted it worked basically perfectly, then seemingly removed the cap for the main game and noted it was a stuttering mess. The obvious solution of retaining the cap (and lowering settings to meet it if necessary) didn't seem to be addressed.

 

[Remij]

This is the reason I and many others expressed disappointment that Epic's stuttering 'solution' to UE4 was...UE5 (eventually?). Knowing game development times that just means there are going to be plenty of games released with UE4 for years to come. Something more substantial needed to be done to assist developers in mitigating UE4's issues. Perhaps traversal stutter is just impossible without the wholesale change to UE5, but think PSO gathering/compiling could have perhaps gotten a bigger boost somehow...?

Refunded?! Why, it's great! Plenty of people are reporting it runs smoothly!

View attachment 10740

I understand that Epic can't go back and change things, or change which version of the engine game developers use. Obviously it will take time for engine improvements to hit production read games, and further yet, actual releases. I'm also quite understanding of traversal stuttering in many cases. If a developer develops their game around these very well known limitations, then at best you can either have a seamless experience because the devs will mask the stuttering with a transition element, or it will happen at a point where it's not going to affect the gameplay at that moment in time. Eg.. a room connecting two bigger areas.

That.. is understandable. I can forgive that. Having your game stutter constantly while moving around an environment during active gameplay is not. It just shows a lack of regard for the player experience. I also can't forgive games which compilation stutter any time you see some new graphics or effect.

I get it, games will have to hitch from time to time, and the best developers are masters at hiding it and working that limitation into the game design.. and they take very careful considering about the player experience.. but far more release without that consideration IMO, at least when it comes to PC where it's imperative that they do so.

Unreal Engine 4 and stuttering has been a well known thing for many years now, and while I do believe Epic has done a lot of work behind the scenes, of which we're not yet really seeing the effects of.... we're also still seeing studios/pubs/devs (whoever you want to blame) for not doing the bare minimum of properly collecting PSO caches and pre-compiling.

@Flappy Pannus Oh, it does run smoothly.. except for when you do any attack/persona/skill for the first time. I'm just tired of it. I've only refunded games a couple times in my entire 19+ years on Steam. But it sends a clearer message than making just a forum post which gets drowned out by people claiming "not on my PC" and not ever seen by the devs.

I have 0% faith that Atlus will fix the issue. And this concerns me, because I see this remake as a potential trial for switching development of the series over to Unreal Engine completely.. and thus meaning that future games will have this same issue unless people actually speak up about it right now.

 

[Remij]

Definitely agree with this. I cap most games on the PC as it's generally better to have a completely consistent frame rate / frame times than higher but unstable performance (within reason of course).

It was a little strange as the review used a 60fps cap in the intro and noted it worked basically perfectly, then seemingly removed the cap for the main game and noted it was a stuttering mess. The obvious solution of retaining the cap (and lowering settings to meet it if necessary) didn't seem to be addressed.

Yeah. Though to be fair I get the impression that due to Alex being sick John kind of shoehorned this into his video. Perhaps I'm wrong. He may have been short on time, or just wanted to show what to expect from basically the best hardware you can get, when the game was unlocked, essentially.

It is what it is though, can't do everything all the time. Someone did ask him on twitter about it, since they had the same thought we did, and he said it still stutters more than the console versions when capped at 60.

 

[Remij]

@Remij UE5 has a new streaming system called World Partition. I have no idea if any games are using it besides probably Fortnite. Most of the UE 5 games that have been released started as UE4 and may be using level streaming. Unless someone has already dug in and confirmed these details you can’t really make assumptions.

I haven't seen anything that suggests World Partition is going to solve traversal stuttering. I could see it making a difference for ease of development.. but the underlying issues with how the engine manages loading on threads and parallelization is still there in UE5.. at least the early versions. Hopefully 5.4+ will help solve some of that stuff.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

The problem with 'stuttering', at least when presented by outlets like DF who I trust to correctly identify it, is that the frametime disruptions are far in excess of individual frames - this is why VRR can't smooth out the console framedrops, the ms disruption may only present as brief blip on the realtime framerate counter, but the actual 'feel' of the drop is far more drastic.

I play all my games on a 60hz TV and I've never had a game that has known traversal/shader stuttering be rectified by just having a 60fps cap. For the sake of covering any angle yeah it probably should have been mentioned, but aside from the camera stutter I doubt a framecap would really materially affect the actual stuttering issues of the game.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I haven't seen anything that suggests World Partition is going to solve traversal stuttering. I could see it making a difference for ease of development.. but the underlying issues with how the engine manages loading on threads and parallelization is still there in UE5.. at least the early versions. Hopefully 5.4+ will help solve some of that stuff.

It reorganizes the data and how it's streamed, so it has to make a difference. But there is also the cpu threading stuff they're working on, and hopefully that will also lead to some improvements in traversal stutter.

 

[Cyan]

Why, it's great! Plenty of people are reporting it runs smoothly!

while I don't have the game, I thought, from other people's opinion, that the game isn't as good as Batman Arkham Knight, but I am glad that this is not the case. The Very Positive reviews on Steam kinda surprise me though, 'cos of the stutter.

Gotta say that I thoroughly enjoyed Gotham Knights. It was fun and loved playing the campaign with Batgirl, specially taking into account I am not into super heroes tbh, save maybe Superman

 

[Remij]

The problem with 'stuttering', at least when presented by outlets like DF who I trust to correctly identify it, is that the frametime disruptions are far in excess of individual frames - this is why VRR can't smooth out the console framedrops, the ms disruption may only present as brief blip on the realtime framerate counter, but the actual 'feel' of the drop is far more drastic.

I play all my games on a 60hz TV and I've never had a game that has known traversal/shader stuttering be rectified by just having a 60fps cap. For the sake of covering any angle yeah it probably should have been mentioned, but aside from the camera stutter I doubt a framecap would really materially affect the actual stuttering issues of the game.

I don't think anyone is claiming that a 60fps cap will rectify those types of stutters though. We're talking about the "stuttering" or "jittering" which happens due to frametime fluctuations happening at the lower ms intervals like this:

The experience will obviously be much more consistent overall if you cap it to 60 in this case.

But yes, there's an issue with how all of these things are defined differently by different people. There's all sorts of different things which people attribute to "stutter" and I think it would be good type of video for Alex to put out and do a "tech focus" kind of analysis of.. to help kind of shape and define the terminology that DF uses and hopefully get more people on the same page as well.

We have "stutter", "hitching", "jitter", "camera animation update mismatch", "lack of interpolation", and so on... It can get confusing because some people when talking about "stuttering" can be referring to any number of issues. It can be the slight jittering perceived as a result of camera animation, or mouse input update, or can be literal hitches from the main thread stopping until PSOs/Shaders are compiled, or a vsync issue..

I think it would be great to have people be more precise instead of just using a blanket term when describing issues.. also would help people understand Digital Foundry better when they speak about different types of issues with frametimes and stutters, IMO.

 

[Cyan]

gotta wonder when FSR3 FG makes it into consoles, mods aside, via AMD drivers. How people are going to notice when a game is maybe capped to 30fps internally but running with FSR3 enabled?

 

[Remij]

It reorganizes the data and how it's streamed, so it has to make a difference. But there is also the cpu threading stuff they're working on, and hopefully that will also lead to some improvements in traversal stutter.

It optimizes when things load more so than how the engine handles *how* those things load... still resulting in stutters when the engine has to load them. It's not fixing the root issue by itself.

Yes, hopefully the threading stuff they're working on will help solve this issue.. but how many games will release between now and whenever that may possibly happen? Sad to think about.

Epic should have been working on this stuff far earlier than they did. And the reason why I believe they weren't.. is because they were more focused on being the bridge between film production and real-time graphics, than they were about being the best optimized video game engine it could be. I hate saying that as I'm sure Epic employees would disagree and I'm obviously not privy to the realities of their plans... but that's certainly what it feels like as a gamer, watching the industry adopt this engine en mass, while games with issues inherent to the engine have carried on for multiple generations now.

These issues are what you'd expect an engine more focused on production would have, over an engine focused specifically on games and optimization.

I have a much clearer understanding now of why Hideo Kojima and his team opted to use Decima over Unreal.