Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

Did you really think that somebody is going to stop playing PlayStation because GT8 or The Last of US III came out instead of Astrobot?
Both of those games won't be released before years and likely not before PS6. We know they aren't releasing big games before like the middle of next year. For this year there is not much point of owning a PS5, besides maybe waiting a few months to play AstroBot.
 
This talk above reminds me of a big group of people that says things like: "PS5 has no games". Not only is the PS5 compatible with PS4, but it also gets 98% of all major games. Do these people want Sony to make as many games as possible exclusive to the PS5 to reach some sort of quota? After just saying something like that, they would turn around and proclaim that exclusives are anti consumer, just to cover all bases.
 
Both of those games won't be released before years and likely not before PS6. We know they aren't releasing big games before like the middle of next year. For this year there is not much point of owning a PS5, besides maybe waiting a few months to play AstroBot.

This is not a bad year. And PS5 will have all third party games and have tons of games in 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028,

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There's not a lot of technical talk in those past few posts. If the talk is not technical discussion on Digital Foundry content, please self-moderate it elsewhere.
 

DF Direct Weekly #166: Summer Games Fest, PS5 '8K' Labelling, AutoSR Microsoft Upscaling!​


0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:20 News 01: Summer Game Fest: Lego Horizon Adventures
0:13:44 Metaphor: Refantazio, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
0:25:17 Sonic X Shadow Generations, Alan Wake 2: Night Springs, Phantom Blade Zero
0:40:53 Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, Slitterhead, Killer Bean
0:50:14 Black Myth: Wukong, Civilization 7
1:03:59 News 02: Sony removes 8K support from PS5 box
1:22:49 News 03: PS VR2 PC adapter detailed
1:32:58 News 04: Microsoft unveils Auto SR upscaling tech
1:46:20 Supporter Q1: How can you optimize Windows text rendering for WOLED displays?
1:50:03 Supporter Q2: Why do people suggest limiting your frame-rate to just below the display refresh rate when using VRR on PC
1:53:24 Supporter Q3: Would John recommend a PS VR2 or Meta Quest 3 for PC VR use?
1:55:33 Supporter Q4: Can you recall the first game that left you in awe of its graphics, making it hard to envision a better-looking game?
2:04:30 Supporter Q5: Are the consoles holding back RT use on PC?
2:10:25 Supporter Q6: What games do you wish you had first played on better hardware?
 
1:55:33 Supporter Q4: Can you recall the first game that left you in awe of its graphics, making it hard to envision a better-looking game?

I can't say I've ever felt this way, well at least not without certain caveats/restrictions. Even with the slowed pace of improvements now (including on the hardware side) compared to the past I still assume (and I guess take for granted) something will be better looking few years from now.

Now there's some specific cases though I can maybe put in here. Like for example I'm having a hard time envisioning much better than what Arc System was going for with Guilty Gear Xrd, at least not accounting for scope (eg. making a fully 3D free camera game that can achieve the same style and visuals). Or something like Chrono Trigger more in hindsight in that even now I don't think anything is much better looking interms of certain elements (eg. the overworld view was heavily hardware limited, so not counting that) for a pixel art style game.

Another aspect of this is prerendered content (including trailers) being put beside games you're just reminded how much further visuals could go. Especially in terms of how games actually look in motion and interactivity as opposed to static still shots.

But even those are improving so that's a moving target as well. I remember back in the 90s with the space of CD media allowing for those videos to be part of the games story telling and seeing things like Square's FF7 prerenders or Blizzards Starcraft ones and thinking it'd be so cool if games looked like that, but now if you look back that would be a pretty low bar.

2:10:25 Supporter Q6: What games do you wish you had first played on better hardware?

I played Deus Ex 2 The Invisible War on a 900mhz K7 and Geforce 3 Ti200. Now the problem here wasn't just the FPS but because of the level size design to fit the game on the Xbox (in fairness this likely let me run it in the first place) might the levels were much more segmented with loading screens, and the slow CPU really showed there. I think that was the last system (although not the last game) I tried to run games at minimum requirements (or lower). This shortly transitioned to the current stance of "max" (and real max, non this max-RT to make yourself feel better) or even higher before playing anything.

At the same time there's an interesting reverse here in whether or not there's some games that you appreciated more after playing on weaker hardware first, or maybe just appreciated the hardware upgrades. For instance I played the original UT on a Pentium 166 without a 3D accelerator initially, we're talking about 320x240 resolution on min settings to barely not quality as a slide show, and MP on dialup 33.6k (not even 56k) modem. Since that's a more replayable title, it was pretty amazing watching it scale up all the way up (and eventually with ADSL for MP) was pretty amazing.
 
1:55:33 Supporter Q4: Can you recall the first game that left you in awe of its graphics, making it hard to envision a better-looking game?
Many 2D games (or 3D with pre-rendered background) looked phenomenal in the past, with beautiful colors, amazing lighting and striking scene density and details. We lost almost all of that when we transitioned to 3D games, lighting became basic, scene details and clutter got lost completely. During these past few years, I think we did manage to reach the level of graphics fidelity of the best looking 2D games, with the advent of ray traced games/current gen titles, but it took many many years for us to be able to do this.
 

DF Direct Weekly #166: Summer Games Fest, PS5 '8K' Labelling, AutoSR Microsoft Upscaling!​



1:32:58 News 04: Microsoft unveils Auto SR upscaling tech
can't wait for DF video on Auto SR. That being said, as John said -I think it was him-, this is one of the cases where AI makes sense. But in other cases...

The AI washing has started, as seen in this video of Computex criticising this new tendency.

 
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can't wait for DF video on Auto SR. That being said, as John -I think it was him-, this is one of the cases where AI makes sense.

The AI washing has started, as seen in this video of Computex criticising this new tendency.

imagine when the gamer chair and LED people start with this crap
 
The AI washing has started, as seen in this video of Computex criticising this new tendency.
AI really doesn't mean anything. We've had AI for decades - it's just algorithms. A more specific term is needed. ML is more appropriate for the modern data-heavy matrix processing but sadly not as catchy as Artificial Intelligence, but now you'll have terms like "AI Overclocking" which is presumably just running a sane monitoring algorithm. Oh, yes:

... dedicated onboard microcontrollers track temperature and frequency telemetry to gauge the unique capabilities of your CPU and system cooling. The resulting data is then passed through an advanced algorithm coded by experts to provide overclocking results that newcomers and savvy veterans can rely on.
Pretty much any (weighted?) decision making can be considered artificial intelligence which eliminates any understanding of its use in the real world.

Business is the antithesis of science. :cry:
 
Microsoft's Xbox 2024 Showcase turned out to be an excellent presentation, with banger after banger. In this new DF Direct Special, John Linneman, Alex Battaglia and Oliver Mackenzie break down the show with their reactions to each of the key games before moving on to discuss the somewhat underwhelming hardware line-up - plus comments on Phil Spencer's latest remarks on the Xbox multi-platform strategy.

0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:17 Doom: The Dark Ages
0:11:05 Perfect Dark
0:20:42 Gears of War: E-Day
0:28:53 Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
0:40:39 Fable
0:49:43 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
0:59:18 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
1:07:17 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
1:15:54 Other games - Mixtape, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, South of Midnight, Atomfall, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, State of Decay 3, Age of Mythology: Retold
1:24:36 Updated Xbox Series consoles
1:31:35 Phil Spencer: more Xbox games are coming to other platforms
 
Stalker 2 looking solid, tried to keep my expectations down so as to not get disappointed but it's looking like I may not have needed to. Cautiously optimistic after that new footage, hopefully it's not as heavy as gray zone though.
 
Out of the 3 Stalker games released so far I thought the first one was the best, Not sure which of the other 2 were better but if it was Clear Sky that would indicate Stalker games are getting worse
 
Credit to Asus for being way ahead on that because their "AI overclock tuner" has been around for quite a number of years. My x58 Rampage mobo (circa 2008) has that.
Indeed, they've supplied AI Suite for a long time. Good the rest of the world is finally catching up...
 
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