Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

see colon said:
20% higher framerate is more important than 20% higher resolution.
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Didn't make a great deal of difference for games either way. Although I'd argue more res was that little more useful for smaller/clearer UIs. I guess NTSC was marginally less flickery.
see colon said:
Plus, 60 is divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30, and 60. 50 is only divisible by 1,2,5,10,25,50. This give a bit more leverage when updating below the refresh, especially when you miss an update.
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Yet ironically not divisible by 24 so movies had to use a 3:2 pulldown, whereas for PAL movies were just run that bit faster at 25 fps.

None of which matters, as the reason for the different update rates was the power system, not a technical decision to choose better framerates or anything. Europe ran on 50Hz AC so the electronics sync'd to that, and NA and much of RoW ran at 60 Hz and sync'd to that.

Once displays decoupled from the power supply, 60 Hz was the more established refresh rate so the one electronics were built for. No particular technical reason. This then affected EU TV content shot at 50 fps trying to be displayed on 60 fps screens. TBH I don't even know if 'PAL' is still a thing. Hopefully not! So we then had the worst of all worlds, juddery TV and juddery movies. But now displays can sync to all sorts of content, it's not an issue. Yay.

/history.

Davros said:
Part of the problem for consoles is once upon a time everyones tv had the same resolution ntsc or pal now thats no longer the case
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Well I'd say it's still either a choice of 1080p or 2160p.
 
troyan said:
Why blame game developers and not the engine provider? Game uses UE5.
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Because the engine can't limit what developers do with it to hit a framerate! Take any engine and add more and more stuff and it'll buckle. It's down to the devs to optimise their game and intentions. The existence of just one decent-quality title on an engine is enough to prove the engine is not the limiting factor, at which point the issue is how people are using it.
 
troyan said:
UE5 base performance is very low. So what we see is an engine problem. What do you expect from these game developers? They can not fix UE5.
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Nobody was forcing the developers to implement frame generation in this way. How it's been implemented is harming the experience, it doesn't have anything to do with unreal.

As an aside, I wish developers would add secret options to the game where you get PC style options in console games. If I want to run the game at low settings, let me do it. Just hide it deep in the options so that casual gamers don't find it.
 
troyan said:
Why blame game developers and not the engine provider? Game uses UE5.
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Customers buy the game and not the various underpinnngs. You're a customer of the developer/publisher.

The developer (or I guess publisher) chose to use UE5 and implement it that way.

If UE5 is inherently not suitable the developer should not use it or complain as a customer if they were sold false promises.
 
Last edited:
Once again, the PS5 Pro (which doesn't exist apparently) dominates the news, with RDNA 4 ray tracing features revealed - said to be integrated into the upcoming Sony console... but what do these features actually do? Meanwhile, PS5 Pro (which isn't real) has a settings profile in the new No Man's Sky update, so how is Hello Games utilising the enhanced console's hardware? Beyond that, John's enthused about a CRT 'overclocked' to run at 700Hz, Rich and Alex are wondering just what on Earth is happening in the PC CPU space - and the epic Fallout London mod is finally released.
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0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:05 News 01: Potential PS5 Pro RT enhancements leaked
0:11:52 News 02: PS5 Pro settings leaked for No Man’s Sky
0:20:07 News 03: Modder reaches 700Hz on CRT monitor
0:33:50 News 04: Old Xbox Ones suffer from update issues
0:45:23 News 05: Intel seeking to address CPU failures
0:54:47 News 06: Super Monkey Ball 50Hz physics tickrate fixed
0:58:21 News 07: Fallout London launched!
1:05:51 News 08: Castlevania: Rondo of Blood headed to Mega Drive
1:12:49 Supporter Q1: Should Valve provide community settings templates for games on Steam Deck?
1:20:31 Supporter Q2: Will Nintendo launch multiple discrete Switch 2 variants at launch?
1:25:07 Supporter Q3: How can Microsoft deliver a capable Xbox handheld while keeping price in check?
1:30:59 Supporter Q4: Could Microsoft offer generic Xbox emulators to sidestep licensing issues?
1:36:06 Supporter Q5: How would the PS4 have fared if it only shipped with 4GB of RAM?
1:41:55 Supporter Q6: What do you think of stereoscopic 3D on PS3?
1:49:25 Supporter Q7: Have PC ports improved since Alex’s “13 Ways to End Lousy PC Ports”?
 
arandomguy said:
Customers buy the game and not the various underpinnngs. You're a customer of the developer/publisher.

The developer (or I guess publisher) chose to use UE5 and implement it that way.

If UE5 is inherently not suitable the developer should not use it or complain as a customer if they were sold false promises.
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But they dont buy games twice the price. Consoles are to slow and on the PC better performance is offloaded to the GPU.
 
see colon said:
20% higher framerate is more important than 20% higher resolution.
Click to expand...

As we're seeing with games with 30, 40, 60 and 120 fps modes resolution and frame rate are a tradeoff. I don't think 60 is inherently better than 50 + higher resolution (plus PAL was better for horizontal detail too, in additional to vertical resolution and colour).


see colon said:
Plus, 60 is divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30, and 60. 50 is only divisible by 1,2,5,10,25,50. This give a bit more leverage when updating below the refresh, especially when you miss an update.
Click to expand...

Why do you think 50 can't be divided by 3 or 4? It absolutely can. Update every field, every 2 fields (frame), or every 3 fields. That it doesn't given you an integer number is completely irrelevant to the display device. It doesn't care - and neither does the console.

Off the top of my head, Zelda OoT on N64, and Panzer Dragoon and Daytona USA were 20 fps games in NTSC land, but ran at 16.67 fps in PAL land, updating once for every three hz/fields on the tv.
 
troyan said:
UE5 base performance is very low. So what we see is an engine problem. What do you expect from these game developers? They can not fix UE5.
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According to DF, the base performance is fine.

"To the game's credit, the 30fps fidelity mode runs remarkably well. I've only seen a few single frame drops under 30 in my testing on both PS5 and Series X, with the worst case scenario being one streaming hitch on the first mission - plus, again, single dropped frames during any camera cut in cutscenes."

"As for its actual performance level, PS5 and Series X do reap the rewards for dropping the resolution bounds, with a relatively stable 60fps in most scenarios."

www.eurogamer.net

The First Descendant tech review: broken frame-gen, an unstable RT mode, and performance issues on top

Thomas Morgan tests out the first outing of FSR 3 Frame Generation on console in The First Descendant. Is it an effective tool within a huge option list?
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

The issue is with frame drops with camera cuts in cutscenes, traversal hitches and dropped frames when enemies spawn in. Are these known issues in other UE5 titles?
 
function said:
Why do you think 50 can't be divided by 3 or 4? It absolutely can. Update every field, every 2 fields (frame), or every 3 fields. That it doesn't given you an integer number is completely irrelevant to the display device. It doesn't care - and neither does the console.

Off the top of my head, Zelda OoT on N64, and Panzer Dragoon and Daytona USA were 20 fps games in NTSC land, but ran at 16.67 fps in PAL land, updating once for every three hz/fields on the tv.
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Yeah, you are right about that. I was thinking backwards to force an integer, but that's why Doom always had judder on 50/60hz consoles.

Random trivia, Daytona and Panzer Dragoon, and probably most Saturn games, have 2 framerates. The VDP's update independently, and I believe Panzer Dragoon and Daytona have some elements that update at 60fps or 30fps while others are limited to 20. That's probably not important to those 2 games (The skybox running at a higher framerate isn't such a bug deal in Daytona, and the ground/water on Panzer Dragoon not matching the polygon objects is barely noticeable when everything you are shooting and the reticle are locked at 20), but there was a game, maybe it was Street Racer, that used a scrolling playfield that ran at a higher framerate than the sprite/polygon objects, but the gameplay still feels smooth because turning and movement is smooth. I'm not 100% sure it was Street Racer, but a game like that makes sense because the cart's position doesn't really change on screen, and the ground is what is moving smoothly, so the perception would be that the cart is moving smoothly, even though the sprites and polygons are updating at a lower rate.
 
troyan said:
UE5 base performance is very low. So what we see is an engine problem. What do you expect from these game developers? They can not fix UE5.
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You cannot use ue5 stock if you make an ambitious game, even fortnite (epic games) doesn't run on vanilla ue5.
 
@Dictator Unfortunately I think we need to start making a bigger fuss about Shader Compilation again. SquareEnix is such a shitty company sometimes. The new Visions of Mana demo that released yesterday or the day before has dreadful stuttering all over. It's just completely not acceptable and quite frankly needs to be called out.
 
Wardious said:
You cannot use ue5 stock if you make an ambitious game, even fortnite (epic games) doesn't run on vanilla ue5.
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Define "stock". Are you claiming that developers of ambitious games need to make their own tweaks to the UE5 source code, or merely that they can't leave the engine on default settings?
 
raytracingfan said:
Define "stock". Are you claiming that developers of ambitious games need to make their own tweaks to the UE5 source code, or merely that they can't leave the engine on default settings?
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Tweaks to the source code on how unreal handles physics, lighting, artificial intelligence and so on.
 
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