Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

[Jupiter]

Hellblade 2 is quite static and the lighting is not high-end and not comparable in quality to Indiana Jones or Outlaws. It looks great, but of the games mentioned, the game world impressed me the least. Yes, it runs relatively well but this is also due to the simpler lighting tech, When it comes to character rendering it leads the way of course.

Flight Simulator 2024 looks better than anything in its category. What's more, it has assets that surpass even modern action games in the natural environment, such as trees, bushes and the detail of the airplane models. But most importantly, it has absolutely awesome graphics when flying in the clouds.

Overall, the most visually spectacular game of the generation for me.

I haven't played this game yet but from what I've seen the lighting was too inconsistent. Technically, however, it is very ambitious and could have been mentioned. Maybe it just runs too badly on the PC at the moment.

 

[Dampf]

I don't get why John puts Indy higher than Hellblade 2 for scalability. Indy needs a ton of VRAM and if you don't have that, it's going to be unplayable. This alone makes it a game that scales terribly. There's a lot of 6 GB and even 4 GB cards that can't run Indy but can run HB2 flawlessly.

Also Indy is not a good overall graphics package, because the characters look terrible. And the asset quality is not that great compared to Nanite driven titles.

 

[Cyan]

Nvidia is quite easily surpassable. We're almost at the great equalizer which is the rapid slow down in performance gains via node shrinks. We have like 2 left after 3nm and then it'll be stagnation for a while. That will give competitors a long time to catch up. As for the effect on consoles, I don't think it matters too much at all. Consoles never use the high-end. Amd just needs to meet the performance targets set by Sony and Microsoft. If they do that, the lack of high end doesn't matter.

Amd's problem is that they're kind of like Spirit airlines but, they're trying to charge prices like Lufthansa/Delta(Nvidia). There's nothing wrong with being spirit airlines but they need to evolve their business model to be more like Ryanair. Learn how to be profitable by offering cheap products at large volumes. If they do this, they can be wildly profitable. I don't know if it's an ego thing with them or what, but their path to success in the gpu space is so clear. They need to aggressively press Nvidia at the prices points with the most volume and offer significantly more value. Nvidia likes 60% margins but Amd needs to learn to be happy with 20% or less. Let Nvidia do the R&D, then just copy their philosophy without infringing on the patents. At this stage, Nvidia cannot afford to get into a pricing war with other gpu vendors because their stock will collapse. Since they already have a majority of the market, there's nothing to be gained through lower priced volume sales other than lower annual revenue.

read that 3nm was going to be the limit for semiconductors for a long time -this will benefit AMD to catch up with nVidia-, since from 2nm and 1nm onwards heat dissipation problems skyrocket in order of magnitude, apart from the fact that quantum tunneling effects start to generate noise.

In that sense, what Intel and other companies were investigating to create 3D "wafers" is more interesting, instead of the brute force solution that AMD and nVidia pursue.

 

[Below2D]

I don't get why John puts Indy higher than Hellblade 2 for scalability. Indy needs a ton of VRAM and if you don't have that, it's going to be unplayable. This alone makes it a game that scales terribly. There's a lot of 6 GB and even 4 GB cards that can't run Indy but can run HB2 flawlessly.

Also Indy is not a good overall graphics package, because the characters look terrible. And the asset quality is not that great compared to Nanite driven titles.

I heard the full ray tracing option doesn't even show on 10GB cards.

 

[Dampf]

I heard the full ray tracing option doesn't even show on 10GB cards.

Yes, that is correct.

This is AFAIK the only game with such a limit, in other titles you could atleast turn it on even if it is slow. And this is also the only game to not run well at all on my 6 GB GPU.

Where's the scalability?

 

[VFX_Veteran]

1. Black Myth Wukong
2. Hellblade 2
3. Silent Hill 2
4. Astro Bot

I also think a game like Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't belong anywhere in this conversation. Indiana Jonas outside of the ray tracing is utterly unimpressive to me.

Astro Bot doesn't push tech graphics forward.

Dragon's Dogma 2 in PT mode looks amazing but it's too bad that they haven't worked far enough to eliminate the noise.

Saying Indy looks unimpressive outside of ray-tracing is defeating the argument before it's begun. All these games do RT and without them, they would all be last-gen tech. Games NEED RT in order to remove the old tricks that didn't look impressive at all (i.e. GI probes and SS tricks) and push the industry forward. Rasterization is at it's peak limits.

 

[Below2D]

Astro Bot doesn't push tech graphics forward.

Perhaps not, but everything looks cohesive and fantastic. It doesn't have many blemishes and is consistent.

Dragon's Dogma 2 in PT mode looks amazing but it's too bad that they haven't worked far enough to eliminate the noise.

I think it looks ulgy as sin with terrible character models, foliage, and textures. It reminds me how awful and outdated the PS360 version was visually as well.

Saying Indy looks unimpressive outside of ray-tracing is defeating the argument before it's begun. All these games do RT and without them, they would all be last-gen tech. Games NEED RT in order to remove the old tricks that didn't look impressive at all (i.e. GI probes and SS tricks) and push the industry forward. Rasterization is at it's peak limits.

I would say things like Nanite and Metahuman are current-gen technologies. Senua's Saga doesn't use hardware-accelerated ray tracing, but the granular details, effects, and character models aren't things that were seen or are possible on last-gen consoles. Ray tracing isn't the sole advancement graphics technologies have made in the past few years and it doesn't automatically elevate a game to an exceptional standard if the rest isn't up to par. I find the texture work in Indiana Jones often poor, the character models middling, the animations stiff, and the overall presentation very last-gen like. The geometric density is nowhere near a game like Hellblade 2 or BMW. If you look closely at small objects such as fruits in Indiana Jones, they look similar to what we had in Uncharted 4. In Senua's Saga or BMW, however, tiny details and objects look pristine.

 

[cheapchips]

I'm glad John called out the camera lens as a high point in Senua. It's really good. I'm not sure there's a better example in games.

 

[troyan]

I would say things like Nanite and Metahuman are current-gen technologies. Senua's Saga doesn't use hardware-accelerated ray tracing, but the granular details, effects, and character models aren't things that were seen or are possible on last-gen consoles. Ray tracing isn't the sole advancement graphics technologies have made in the past few years and it doesn't automatically elevate a game to an exceptional standard if the rest isn't up to par. I find the texture work in Indiana Jones often poor, the character models middling, the animations stiff, and the overall presentation very last-gen like. The geometric density is nowhere near a game like Hellblade 2 or BMW. If you look closely at small objects such as fruits in Indiana Jones, they look similar to what we had in Uncharted 4. In Senua's Saga or BMW, however, tiny details and objects look pristine.

Indiana Jones combines state of the art geomtry fidelity with the best lighting system available. It is easily a step above any other game released this year. Making a 4 hour walking simulator with limited different settings is not the same as a game with multiple different locations and very high quality indoor sections. UE5 is best when you just need to render stones and other geomtry objects. But combine everything in a constant package is not possible with the limitation of the engine.

 

[Below2D]

Indiana Jones combines state of the art geomtry fidelity with the best lighting system available. It is easily a step above any other game released this year. Making a 4 hour walking simulator with limited different settings is not the same as a game with multiple different locations and very high quality indoor sections. UE5 is best when you just need to render stones and other geomtry objects. But combine everything in a constant package is not possible with the limitation of the engine.

It’s not a step above Black Myth Wukong or Hellblade 2. It has glaring visual shortcomings and the geometry is much less impressive than in either of those games.

 

[davis.anthony]

'Geometry fidelity' and 'Indiana' aren't two things I would use in the same sentence.

 

[mr magoo]

After spending some more hours today with Indy i have to say that i can totally understand why its nr 1. It shows why they choosed GI to be standard in this game, exploring catacombs is such an eye pleasure. I dont even play full PT as my gf cannot handle it and its already looking just amazing. The locations, art how the light set the scene is fantastic.

 

[mr magoo]

'Geometry fidelity' and 'Indiana' aren't two things I would use in the same sentence.

Comeone now, the game has very dense geometry and is full of objects that have fantastic quality. All the sculptures, art pieces marbles and so on are done with such attention to details and there are so many of those.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I would say things like Nanite and Metahuman are current-gen technologies. Senua's Saga doesn't use hardware-accelerated ray tracing, but the granular details, effects, and character models aren't things that were seen or are possible on last-gen consoles.

That's a good argument, but RT isn't possible on last-gen even moreso.

Ray tracing isn't the sole advancement graphics technologies have made in the past few years and it doesn't automatically elevate a game to an exceptional standard if the rest isn't up to par.

But it is. RT is the core of how rendering is designed in the first place. There are so many challenges that can't be overcome due to rasterization. It looks ugly to me to see last-gen games using GI light probes -- even in the cutscenes without a local light source to hide no occlusion. I'd rather have RT than Metahuman and Nanite. Most games don't exhibit polygonal edges anymore. Yes, the detail in HB2 is insane but it's still not implementing the lighting properly.

I find the texture work in Indiana Jones often poor, the character models middling, the animations stiff, and the overall presentation very last-gen like.

Indy Jones texture work is very high for the most part. I'm actually surprised at how good it holds up compared to the iD games (which do have low res textures). Animations, etc.. are very good while in-game. The soliders drop in all kinds of realistic ways that make the game funny to laugh at. It doesn't look last-gen at all.

The geometric density is nowhere near a game like Hellblade 2 or BMW. If you look closely at small objects such as fruits in Indiana Jones, they look similar to what we had in Uncharted 4. In Senua's Saga or BMW, however, tiny details and objects look pristine.

No game has geometric density like UE5. That's going to be a big challenge for all other game developers if they don't want to steal the Nanite tech. This is something way above what anyone thought was possible and spamming polygons isn't going to perform right.. especially if the main engine is using PT.

Having said that, you can't overlook all the other games just because they don't have Nanite. I love how HB2's detail looks as well, but if you are including all the other advances in lighting - that weighs more to me than Nanite.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

After spending some more hours today with Indy i have to say that i can totally understand why its nr 1. It shows why they choosed GI to be standard in this game, exploring catacombs is such an eye pleasure. I dont even play full PT as my gf cannot handle it and its already looking just amazing. The locations, art how the light set the scene is fantastic.

Exactly. The game has the best kind of lighting that works extremely well with ALL materials. I'm sad they couldn't find time to do the local lighting importance sampling like Snowdrop engine with Star Wars. It would be incredible to see. But the materials look so good because of the path-traced direct/indirect with the Sun. All they have to do now is refine it to include local light sources. The engine has the bandwidth to do it with frame gen.

I'd love to see a 5090 with a patch that does local lighting at 60FPS.

 

[troyan]

Comeone now, the game has very dense geometry and is full of objects that have fantastic quality. All the sculptures, art pieces marbles and so on are done with such attention to details and there are so many of those.

Huh? Besides the landscape there are only small differences between BMW and Indiana Jones. And the Nanite landscapes is really low resolution when you look closer.

On the other hand i have to play with software Lumen to get the same performance. Which makes Indiana Jones at least on a 4090 a much better looking game with Pathtracing GI and RT shadows.

 

[troyan]

'Geometry fidelity' and 'Indiana' aren't two things I would use in the same sentence.

How many games released this year can beat this?

 

[davis.anthony]

How many games released this year can beat this?

Now show me a shot of the forest section, or a section outside.

Or show me those objects on the shelf up close.

As a whole, the game is nothing special in terms of geometry.

 

[davis.anthony]

Comeone now, the game has very dense geometry and is full of objects that have fantastic quality. All the sculptures, art pieces marbles and so on are done with such attention to details and there are so many of those.

It does, but it doesn't have "state of the art geometry fidelity" as stated above.

 

[eloic]

How many games released this year can beat this?

I won't say a thing about the game as a whole, because I haven't played it, but that specific picture... you don't need games released this year to equal or surpass that (if not technically, at least visually).