Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2025]

[Shifty Geezer]

Taking in 2 minutes of that video, they look very alike in terms of overall presentation and feel to me.

 

[Karamazov]

Baked lighting can look just as good or better, but since it's baked from offline rendering, it's completely static and takes a huge amount of space.
Unity also has pretty horrible LoD transitions on NPCs.
With RTGI everything looks cohesive and grounded in the same world.

 

[Charlietus]

Finished Split Fiction and I won't say what happens at the end, but on a technical level it does what

Spoiler

Ratchet and Clank wanted to do but on a whole different level.

Incredibly impressive.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Baked lighting can look just as good or better, but since it's baked from offline rendering, it's completely static and takes a huge amount of space.
Unity also has pretty horrible LoD transitions on NPCs.
With RTGI everything looks cohesive and grounded in the same world.

For example, Unity has a 50GB install size on PC - this is an 11 year old game. Only can guess how big it would be with modern materials/textures, even if the size of the city remains the same.

Still, damn if there was just an NPC LOD fix (tbh just went to nexusmods to see if there was one, gave up - my god wtf did they do to that site's UX?!?)

 

[trinibwoy]

Unity also isn’t a completely static environment. You can open doors. Guess what happens to baked GI when you change the amount of light coming through a doorway? Absolutely nothing! Dynamic GI is another one of those things that will take a while to get used to and then 20 years from now some ppl will finally notice baked GI’s limitations.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

00:00 Overview
00:23 The VRR Stutter Problem Explained
06:53 Unaffected Games
09:36 Alex’s Experience
14:48 Conclusion and Recommendations

Great deep dive into this.

Due to my hypersensitivity to frame pacing I would prob have noticed this if I had a VRR display hooked up my PS5 (and would be bitching about it nonstop. ).

Damn though Sony has kinda struggled with VRR - the delay in any implementation, still no LFC, and now this. This doesn't affect every game with VRR mind you (albeit quite a few), and some very specific circumstances have to be engaged top see it (like it not starting until after 20 minutes of play!).

Edit: As they're hypothesizing this is some sort of expected refresh rate/timing issue, this reminded me of a PC game which had a somewhat similar issue albeit not with VRR - Bayonetta. For years, Bayonetta on the PC had this very small, hard to detect stutter issue that most probably couldn't see - but once you did, you can't unsee it. After ~30 minutes of play, playing Bayonetta on PC (at least on a fixed refresh rate display) would result in a tiny frametime flip after a few rotations of the camera. It was finally fixed late last year by a modder.

 

[Malo]

From the comments in the video, Alex's possible explanation seems to make sense:

You mention the numbers are weird, NTSC being 119.88hz, if the console for some reason thinks it's supposed to be 120hz, then there is a 0.12hz discrepancy. at 120hz, it would take 1,000 cycles for this to go out of sync, or 8.33 seconds. The numbers do add up, as that's about how long you said the stutters are paced.

Weird that it only starts occurring after 20 minutes or so.

 

[Pjotr]

The 20 second mark reminds me of bugs that occur because of floating point precision issues, they get less accurate when they are bigger. Wonder if the problem gets worse if you let it run for like a day or so.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As per the comments, why has DF not noticed this before? Could do with a response, plus explanation on displays tested as brand and model is being questioned in the comments.

From the comments in the video, Alex's possible explanation seems to make sense:

Seriously, the world needs some major updating. Ditch fractional framerates! Ditch PAL. Record everything at 24, 48, 60, 120 FPS exact and solve all this nonsense!

 

[Jupiter]

Baked lighting can look just as good or better, but since it's baked from offline rendering, it's completely static and takes a huge amount of space.
Unity also has pretty horrible LoD transitions on NPCs.
With RTGI everything looks cohesive and grounded in the same world.

Better than what? Baked lighting is less accurate in games than RT. For me, baked lighting is more a technique from the past.

Unity looked very good back then. I played it 2 or 3 years ago and the graphics were too outdated for me. Shadows is much more advanced. The predecessors of Shadows looked outdated too.

 

[oliemack]

As per the comments, why has DF not noticed this before? Could do with a response, plus explanation on displays tested as brand and model is being questioned in the comments.


Seriously, the world needs some major updating. Ditch fractional framerates! Ditch PAL. Record everything at 24, 48, 60, 120 FPS exact and solve all this nonsense!

In terms of testing, speaking personally if I do test VRR it's typically going to be for sessions that are shorter than 20 continuous minutes - and I've only reviewed 1 or 2 games with unlocked frame-rates with VRR since the issues started being reported (December-ish).

In my own personal use, I tend to stick with locked frame-rate modes even when playing with VRR. I also often keep VRR off, just so I can be more aware of frame-rate dips to communicate that to our audience.

Obviously going forward, this is something I am going to test in any applicable games I review on PS5.

I tested on a Samsung QN90D, Tom tested on an Eve Spectrum, and Alex tested on an LG Ultragear OLED, and we were all able to replicate the issue.

And we also mentioned most of this in the video I believe!

 

[Below2D]