Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2025]

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Just want to add that I had an absolute blast with Robocop earlier this year, and that without Nannite and Lumen I don't believe it would have been possible for a mid budget game to so authentically capture the atmosphere of the movie.

My CPU is a 4790K from 2014 (wassup my DDR3 bros) while my GPU is a mighty RTX 3060 12GB.

Either the negativity around UE5 is exaggerated, or my ancient PC has chugged back 20 bottles of Skoom because my experiences with UE5 are positive.

 

[Pjotr]

I think there is some kind of survival bias with UE4/5. Studios that use their own engine are often more experienced and have more technical staff vs artists ratio that studios that use UE. So the ratio of bad UE games tends do be bigger.
Then there are more UE games coming out compared to games that use another engine because every AA-studio is jumping on UE. So if you just count by numbers you get an even worse ratio. There were plenty non-UE games with performance problems. Monster Hunter, Dragon Dogma, Wild Hearts spring to mind, BS3 was also underperforming in Act 3. We just kind of only remember the good releases.

 

[mr magoo]

AFAIR Avowed worked pretty great on all platforms wich is also Ue5 game and very(kinda) similiar to Oblivion, so i dont think this is UE issue. There could be multiple factors why Oblivion have issues, hopefully this is something they can fix or at least improve. So far i played only XSX version and to be honest with VRR and i cant complain.

 

[Below2D]

AFAIR Avowed worked pretty great on all platforms wich is also Ue5 game and very(kinda) similiar to Oblivion, so i dont think this is UE issue. There could be multiple factors why Oblivion have issues, hopefully this is something they can fix or at least improve. So far i played only XSX version and to be honest with VRR and i cant complain.

But it doesn't. Avowed has massive hitches and stutters.

I don't know what's with the last couple of posts. DF has multiple videos on UE5 games and even dreads when a game is made with it. Almost every time, it's the same story. Shader compilation problems and stutters on PC. Noisy/grainy image and poor performance on consoles. BMW, Lords of the Fallen, Avowed, Silent Hill 2, Immortals of Aveum, Ark 2 (skill issue on that one), Oblivion Remaster, Heart of Chernobyl, and I could go on. The list of games performing poorly outweighs the ones of those performing adequately 5:1.

At least, Alex always mentioning shader compilation stutters brought this issue to the forefront and it seems the UE5 team has taken steps to help developers with this issue. The only problem is that those fixes are for future iterations, so all the games that have major problems cannot be or won't be retroactively fixed.

I think there is some kind of survival bias with UE4/5. Studios that use their own engine are often more experienced and have more technical staff vs artists ratio that studios that use UE. So the ratio of bad UE games tends do be bigger.
Then there are more UE games coming out compared to games that use another engine because every AA-studio is jumping on UE. So if you just count by numbers you get an even worse ratio. There were plenty non-UE games with performance problems. Monster Hunter, Dragon Dogma, Wild Hearts spring to mind, BS3 was also underperforming in Act 3. We just kind of only remember the good releases.

I agree with this. UE5 does allow smaller teams with less budget to get good-looking games out much faster and at a reduced cost, but the tradeoff is the performance. Clair Obscure was made by a team of mainly 30 devs with some outsourcing. This wouldn't have been possible with an in-house engine.

 

[Cyan]

Same; I think it has effectively fallen victim to the general low-moderation internet problem... people only come to complain about things, and negative stuff takes less effort and gets more press/attention/clicks than trying to convince people of anything positive.

alas, that's human nature. I mean, the news outlets won't work if there weren't bad news. If you watch the news you might think the world is a mess -which isn't that far from the truth- but it isn't such a mess....

 

[Scott_Arm]

wrong thread

 

[Cyan]

In the case of Oblivion it seems like you have a large portion of the game running as it did in 2006(or maybe some later port), with the UE5 renderer on top

it's impressive how they managed to achieve that using two completely different engines. Even the weird stuff that lets you complete speedruns are there. It makes you wonder what's the point of Gamebryo and Skyrim's engine for TES VI and so on.

Plus, there are more like 200 unofficial mods for the game already. Which means that UE5 supports mods quite easily.

 

[Kaotik]

it's impressive how they managed to achieve that using two completely different engines. Even the weird stuff that lets you complete speedruns are there. It makes you wonder what's the point of Gamebryo and Skyrim's engine for TES VI and so on.

Plus, there are more like 200 unofficial mods for the game already. Which means that UE5 supports mods quite easily.

It's not two completely different engines, it's two completely different renderers. Remastered is still running "good" old Gamebryo for everything except the graphics which are UE5

 

[Below2D]

alas, that's human nature. I mean, the news outlets won't work if there weren't bad news. If you watch the news you might think the world is a mess -which isn't that far from the truth- but it isn't such a mess....

I don't think it's a balanced or reasonable way to look at things. We expect things to work or to be good. Therefore when they do, it isn't newsworthy. When they don't work, we understandably talk about it because it's not supposed to happen. When something goes above and beyond, sure, let's celebrate it, but when something meets expectations, why would it make headlines? It's doing what it's intended to. When it comes to games, it's no different. There's much more to be said about something that falls short of expectations than something that meets them.

When we see a somewhat competent port like Spider-Man on PC or the first God of War, we discuss it for a little and then move on because what else is there to be said? However, when something like TLOU Part I hits and is a complete fiasco, we spend months going on about it.