Sony titles have all been built with tech firmly rooted in PS4 level rendering. The visuals on display here are a big leap over anything Sony has released to date.
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
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It has become defacto the new normal for PS5 players.
Some game look blurry, true, but so does Hellblade 2 and at only half the framerate. But the point is framerate and diminushing returns that is starting to be noticed by a big amount of players even by mainstream gamers. When in motion 30fps gaming looks like sh** and more and more players (that start buying 120hz TVs) are noticing this. 30fps gaming is dead and the few 30fps only games released this gen bombed bar maybe one (Starfield).
This is true for some but not the others. Demon's Souls? Spider-man with impressive RT reflections still unmatched? Horizon on PS5 received tons of improvement and is one of the best looking game on those consoles according to the experts. The one game that look the most cross-gen is GoW Ragnarok that is a PS4 game but the PS5 version still looks sublime with super clean IQ (thanks to the quite high resolution) and super sharp assets that are... upscaled by AI, so quite not so cross-gen actually in its core.
Chromatic aberration was strong on this one,
I would say all the games you listed are wholly PS4 level rendering tech with RT bolted on in a select few. Demon Souls, Forbidden west and a few others push some of the graphics settings up but the tech in almost every aspect of rendering is firmly rooted in the prior gen. It's hard to imagine anyone could play this game side by side with any PS5 exclusive and not consider this much better from a visual perspective. 30 FPS is completely justified by the visuals on display. I hope future Sony games finally push visuals far enough to make the same sacrifice.
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Riddlewire
Regular
If Oliver had said the game reaches a maximum of 2.5K Ultrawide resolution, it's exactly the same as reporting "964p". But one version can be (and has been) weaponized online, and the other can't (or likely wouldn't).
Mod: This is a DF technical analysis thread, not a State Of The Internet discussion. What happens elsewhere is not a topic for discussion. Please keep talk technical about the findings of game performance.
Yet Tears of the Kingdom was one of the most universally praised games of last year played by tens of millions of gamers. Only 30fps. I just finished playing it myself. Genuinely never thought about the lack of framerate while playing once. Fantastic experience.
I get OLED TV's are becoming more popular, but they're still not mainstream and vast majority will be on traditional LCD's where 30fps is still entirely fine.
No, 30fps gaming very much isn't dead and is still the standard on consoles. It's not like devs target 60 and then add things until they bottom out at 30. The target frame rate on consoles is almost always 30 and they lower resolution and other graphical effects to hit 30. 30 is pretty much always guaranteed except for the usual genres like sports or fighting, otherwise, 60 is the added mode, no the other way around.
Flappy Pannus
Veteran
The Order had quite a good number of post-processing effects for the time though, it's integral to its presentation. It of course doesn't have the entire scene-warping elements of Hellblade as that's purposeful to represent Senua's wavering grasp on reality, but The Order had plenty of Dof, bloom, heavy film grain, strong motion blur and TAA combined with an advanced FXAA. There were definite complaints about how 'soft' it looked too but that was by design to give it that filmic look.
e/fb by @Dictator
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Charlietus
Regular
I wish more games offered a 21/9 aspect ratio mode. I played death stranding like that on PS5 and it had locked 60 performance with the same pixel density as native 4k.
But people are going to give it a negative connotation just because the order was a short game and "games aren't movies". Why do I even bother reading comments on the internet sometimes.
But people are going to give it a negative connotation just because the order was a short game and "games aren't movies". Why do I even bother reading comments on the internet sometimes.
I have a crazy idea guys... how about we just report both the horizontal *and* vertical resolution when it's not 16:9. Hell we could even report it when it is 16:9 for clarity!
I'm only being partially sarcastic here. It's stupid that people have fallen entirely into this marketing trap of "one number" from TV manufacturers, even to the point slavishly still putting "p" after everything. It's tolerable when we're talking specifically about the marketed TV resolutions but there's really no reason we should have propagated it into talking about render resolutions, especially in cases where there's any aspect ratio ambiguity.
I'm only being partially sarcastic here. It's stupid that people have fallen entirely into this marketing trap of "one number" from TV manufacturers, even to the point slavishly still putting "p" after everything. It's tolerable when we're talking specifically about the marketed TV resolutions but there's really no reason we should have propagated it into talking about render resolutions, especially in cases where there's any aspect ratio ambiguity.
This is actually a great point.
People playing in 60fps/Performance modes on consoles are often doing so with a reasonably hefty hit to image quality, especially for any proper next gen titles. It's nice they have that option, but if they didn't, you know full well the standard release would still be 30fps with the higher image quality expected of 'next gen'(though I think ray tracing would be removed in plenty of instances when they offer such little visual benefit).
We also dont really know what people are choosing to play on average. The loud, vocal communities online may make it sound like 60fps is the preferred choice, but we also know perfectly well the online gaming community is not remotely representative of the average gamer. Either way, it says nothing about how well people would adapt to a game that's 30fps only, with no option to even know what 60fps would look/feel like in comparison. Perfectly fine in most instances, from my experience.
EDIT: I also want to point out that Steam Deck is a super popular device, where people are often only able to play heavier games at like 30-40fps. I think this proves that even PC gamers are fine with lower framerates when it comes down to it. We can like and prefer higher, but it's not essential to enjoy gaming at all.
I mean, stating the literal resolution is useful for some discussion, but I think most people think of resolution in a 'pixel density' sort of way, so I think it's perfectly reasonable to say something along the lines of "The Order is 1080p but with letterboxing". Sure, technically it's not 1080p and they actually save some rendering costs with this, but essentially, it's still the same image quality as 1080p which is what most people are concerned with.
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Johnny Awesome
Veteran
30 fps is fine. It isn't stopping people from playing BG3 (game of the year), Starfield or Dragon's Dogma 2. It's funny how that works. If the game is good enough, people can live with 30 fps.
Nah. You were fine. Andrew’s response below yours hits the nail. We should be reporting on both. It’s fair and more encompassing of the full result.
I like it the way it is right now. Most devs give gamers a choice of 30 fps with prettier graphics and a 60 fps with better performance with lesser graphics. There will be a time when the current gen machines can't hold 60 fps, but I do believe the needle has moved closer toward 60 fps being desirable for a great mabt console owner. But yes, 30 fps will be played if it's the only option available. A great game is a a great game after all.
Why all the fuss over resolution of letterbkxed games?
Why all the fuss over resolution of letterbkxed games?
cheapchips
Veteran
Presumably it's the residual trauma of owning a PAL console back in the day.
Personally I don't care about resolution so much as aspect ratio. It seems pointless for a game designed to target a TV. The Order and Hellblade devs cross a line of amazing attention to cinematic authenticity into being a bit wanky.
I think this game has the unfortunate curse of needing these new effects otherwise it just wont work as the devs envisioned it. I think we are going to see this happen more and more as devs use more advanced rendering features that rdna 2 simply can't handle. It will really come to a head a year after ps5 pro is released.
Both Companies need new hardware if we want to see what the ps5 and series x are really capable of ironically. It will only be when devs have the options of saying there go buy that more expensive console if you want your 60fps
Of course will hell blade its day one on the pc. So if you want to play it at 60fps or even 240fps you have options. Personally while the game looks really beautiful it isn't really interesting to me as a game. I'm going to wait for some previews but since its on game pass I will likely at least give it a whirl
The upside to this idea is clarity. The downside is loss of brevity which people naturally gravitate towards. "1080p" or similar explains what's happening for 99% of titles. 1920x1080 doesn't add anything but doubles the amount of communication bandwidth. When your audience is very much the layman rather than an engineer reading a technical document, choice of language will tend towards the vernacular.
This is why despite my petitioning, 4K is always presented as 4K and not 2160p, even though 4K isn't even defined. It's assumed to be 2160p. No-one targeting the average Joe is going to choose '3920 x 2160' over '4K' in describing an output resolution.
If you want accurate data in an article like this, you need to wrap it in a language-friendly presentation, meaning concise. You could do things like give a number as a percentage of 3920 x 2160 pixels drawn and quality.
"Hellblade 2 renders 0.20 work and 0.25-0.35 drawn"
Brief and informative, meaning 20% as many pixels of a 3920x2160 display are calculated and 25% to 35% of the pixels are drawn. However, that doesn't read nicely without being 'trained' to read it, whereas "xxxxp" is now naturalised.
I doubt a site making something up on their own and trying to normalise it won't get very far, and I doubt it can be considered worth the effort to try. The negatives of short-form reporting using the current language are fairly niche and most people don't care. The fact console-warriors weaponise data isn't DF's responsibility so long as they aren't deliberately (mis)representing the data to help gain hits from eager console warriors looking for ammo.
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