Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2011]

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kagemaru said:
Psssst, that's why it's called an opinion.

I know other people that think Reach looks better, but I know them in person, my surprise was just seeing someone post it in a forum. Usually comments like that aren't seen since the "masses" generally jump on said individuals.

Reach and KZ are too different in design approach to be compared evenly. Both are tech rich games so I have no issue with anyone saying either one looks better.

That's cool man, I think Reach is one of the most gorgeous shooters too. :smile:
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I don't get why we have to choose one game between the two...both games look amazing, both games do things differently in terms of level design/structure and number of enemies on screen and both games are on different hardware - comparing any game in terms of particle or skybox quality with Reach is almost unfair, the game is stunning to watch when hell breaks loose or when looking at the sky.

Yesterday I played the last two levels of Reach with some friends over Live and then played the SP demo of Killzone 3 and honestly the only thing that came to my mind is how beautiful both games look especially if you consider how old is the hardware..and that is the key word both dev teams did an amazing job considering the specs of both systems.

That being said I can't wait to see how the console versions of BF3 and Rage will look like. :)
 
Barso said:
Sorry for going OT but can anyone explain why bayonetta on PS3 runs so poorly compared to 360 version?
I bought it today on sale and I can't believe the difference.
I understand the devs farmed it out to sega to port but why?
I have never seen such a big performance difference between two versions.
The 360 version is one of my top ten games of all time and I can honestly say the PS3 version may well be one of my bottom ten.
Is this an example of bad dev tools or a game that truly shows the difference between these two consoles?
Thanks and sorry for taking the discussion OT.
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It's already been discussed earlier in the thread (somewhere around page 12-14 it starts IIRC) but basically all the transparency effects in the game don't sit well with the PS3. All that overdraw eats up fillrate, which killed the ps3's performance, even after cutting things back in an attempt to keep performance as close as possible between the two. The game was originally meant to be a 360 exclusive before Sega stepped in to port it. So little thought was taken to how the game would perform on multiple platforms.

Kameradschaft said:
I don't get why we have to choose one game between the two...both games look amazing, both games do things differently in terms of level design/structure and number of enemies on screen and both games are on different hardware - comparing any game in terms of particle or skybox quality with Reach is almost unfair, the game is stunning to watch when hell breaks loose or when looking at the sky.

Yesterday I played the last two levels of Reach with some friends over Live and then played the SP demo of Killzone 3 and honestly the only thing that came to my mind is how beautiful both games look especially if you consider how old is the hardware..and that is the key word both dev teams did an amazing job considering the specs of both systems.

That being said I can't wait to see how the console versions of BF3 and Rage will look like. :)
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I agree 100% and even said the same thing somewhere in the last few pages.

However it seems most gamers have to look at things in absolute terms, so there must always be a #1. I really don't get it either. :p
 
kagemaru said:
Psssst, that's why it's called an opinion.

I know other people that think Reach looks better, but I know them in person, my surprise was just seeing someone post it in a forum. Usually comments like that aren't seen since the "masses" generally jump on said individuals.

Reach and KZ are too different in design approach to be compared evenly. Both are tech rich games so I have no issue with anyone saying either one looks better.
Click to expand...

You aren't the only one. I also found Reach far more impressive technically and artistically than KZ2, but never came right out and said as much since I realized all the PS3 fans in the forum would immediately jump all over me.

I understand why some people might prefer KZ2 above and beyond the fact that it's exclusive to the PS3 and respect their opinion. It just doesn't reflect my own opinion. And I'm fine with that.

What I find the most annoying is how KZ2 was always immediately paraded around as if it was one of the greatest graphical achievements ever whenever there is discussion about any other game in a thread dedicated to that specific game.

KZ3 address many of the shortcomings about KZ2's graphics that I absolutely hated, but it still keeps the low res effects which drive me absolutely batty. Those effects make me feel like my eyes are out of focus because they are so blurry. And it's made so much worse because now it's in contrast to an overall image that is sharper and generally more detailed than KZ2. So those low res effects stand out even more.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
Those effects make me feel like my eyes are out of focus because they are so blurry.
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Yet Halo Reach's sub-HD Temporal AA blur does not bother you?
You're free to like whatever you want, but calling out people who disagree with you as PS3 fans is really pushing it. The general consensus is that KZ2 looks magnificent, and it's one of the best looking console games out there.
 
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I've always thought art direction is of course subjective when comparing games...where as the technology, running in the background, that pushes these games shouldn't be to a degree. Maybe I'm being narrow-minded here. Basically when comparing, one game is most likely pushing more tech than the other, "graphics" wise.
 
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2real4tv said:
It funny because you guys call LoT idiots for comparing two different games but guys are doing the same exact thing.
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This is what you call a strawman argument. People call LoT idiots because when they speak in technical jargon, most of the time it's completely wrong ;)
 
Actually, I also think the low res particles in Uncharted 2 and KZ3 beta detract from the visual experience. Reach definitely has some gorgeous looking particles and explosions, but I really don't think people would say it looks better than KZ2/3, my brother walked into the room when I was playing KZ3 and was genuinely impressed by how good it looks - and he plays Reach for hours each day.

But perhaps it's mainly down to art, rather than tech? I know Bungie's art is a bit iffy, some of their character designs and materials don't look great - Epic is definitely way ahead of them in this regard, and I hope having Kenneth Scott at 343 will see an improvement for Halo 4.

Reach also supports a lot of AI characters and vehicles (perhaps a benchmark for a console shooter?) And KZ2/U2 mostly had a dozen to 20 enemies on screen at once, (the SPUs aren't great at branching code like AI correct?). The gameplay recording, armor customisation might will also have some overhead.

Also, I found it interesting that in ND's comments on how they couldn't do Uncharted on the 360, the main reasons for that were not the SPUs but rather Blu-ray and the standard HDD on every PS3.

If Guerilla was making KZ3 for 360, assuming they could now use higher res transparencies, what things couldn't be done or would have to be pared back to work on 360?
 
Afrikan said:
I've always thought art direction is of course subjective when comparing games...where as the technology, running in the background, that pushes these games shouldn't be to a degree. Maybe I'm being narrow-minded here. Basically when comparing, one game is most likely pushing more tech than the other, "graphics" wise.
Click to expand...

Generally you'd have to use a qualifier like arguably or probably when comparing technical prowess. Some comparisons are made a bit easier because one game has realtime GI and the other does not. Or a game has a lighting cycle and whereas the other does not. But very few games are like GTA and Crysis. Something on a more level playing field like Castlevania: LoS and God of War 3 is tougher. You could make a good case for both.
 
(((interference))) said:
Also, I found it interesting that in ND's comments on how they couldn't do Uncharted on the 360, the main reasons for that were not the SPUs but rather Blu-ray and the standard HDD on every PS3.
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Didnt they said that about high quality per pixel motion blur and DOF that they do on SPU's?


Barso said:
But I have not played one single PS3 game and thought this couldn't run the exact same or better on xbox360.
Sorry but I just don't believe the Sony hyperbole about RSX CELL hype.
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And what about GT 5? Its great technical achievement.
And I havent seen any console game that looks like God of War 3 or Killzone 3. Castlevania comes close to GoW 3, but still has smaller environments, less character on screen, worse lighting, worse framerate [almost double] and no AA at all.
 
I recently saw the Dead Space 2 comparision and saw the PC 1920x1080, 360 upscaled to 1920x1080 image comparision. Though I have to point it is really flawed becouse since the PC shot is native 1920x1080 it contains way more data than 1280x720 upscaled. However the PC shot is horribly compressed having a size of 200KB and 360 shot the same size!

200KB is average to below average JPEG quality even for a 1280x720 image. And the more detail is present in image (less bluriness due to use of AF or highres textures/mapping, more color variation) the bigger the filesize will need to be.

I put it like this for good JPEG quality shots. Really if anything atleast PNG should be used for proper IQ comparision.

1280x720 - 300-400KB
1680x1050 - 500-700KB
1920x1080 - upwards 1000KB or more
 
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It's relative to amount of detail in pic. What is blurred (DOF for example or motionblur) size could be smaller while mantaining good IQ. Then amount of detail textures, use of AF, color diversity etc. But yeah 250-300KB generally though since I take shots from PC games there is full 16xAF and usually high frequency detail and that makes JPEGs land around 300-400KB when taken in 1280x720 res (90-95% JPEG quality). Generally when taking shot for PC screenshot thread I'll use 95% as lower starts to loose out detail and get grainy vs original PNG capture.

Still surprised DF has so high compression rate for the comparision pics in Dead Space 2 article. 200KB for a native 1920x1080 capture is just plain bad unless whole image is blurred out. Makes IQ analysis worthless.
 
Barso said:
Sorry but I just don't believe the Sony hyperbole about RSX CELL hype.
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Your post barely deserves an answer - this subject has been discussed more than plenty on these forums, and really, as we use to say here in the Netherlands, 'you can save your beliefs for Church'.
 
KKRT said:
Castlevania comes close to GoW 3, but still has smaller environments, less character on screen, worse lighting, worse framerate [almost double] and no AA at all.
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But the environmental detail and vistas littered throughout the game is really good. Top tier engine. They're not far off in terms of post process, dynamic lights, etc. I guess the shadowing system is where they really lose out and the fixed camera gives them luxury with the scene budget. I forgot what the argument was about why this didn't apply to GoW, but I remember that thread. So yeah they could've scaled back and added some AA and performance, but they want to give us a beautiful slideshow. Didn't finish the game because I grew tired of the combat, but it looked nice! :D
 
corduroygt said:
The general consensus is that KZ2 looks magnificent, and it's one of the best looking console games out there.
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I don't think anyone argued it wasn't one of the best looking console games out there, heck in some ways I even think it looks better than KZ3 :p
 
chris100 said:
Great article,thanks grandmaster.

@grandmaster

It is interesting to see the poor hard disk performance of 40GB(seagate) SKU has been revealed from developer. Could we have the performace comparison between 60GB SKU and 40GB (seagate) SKU in the future ?
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Interesting and follows about how I would expect things to go. And nice to see things go almost exactly as I said they probably would in the other thread with the person who put an SSD into his PS3. That being that the huge speedups with GT5 was due almost entirely to the pathological use of an incredible number of very small files.

As well with regards to the Seagate Hybrid drive, it probably does relatively better with games in W7/Vista as there is specific support in the OS for caching certain types of files and activities in low capacity flash cache in addition to a larger mass storage device.

And nice that he brings up a problem that has existed in the PC space for quite a while. Fragmentation of games on smaller hard drives over time as games are installed and uninstalled.

Perhaps future consoles will feature automatic defragmentation at set intervals similar to Win7/Vista, where as long as users don't disable the feature, fragmentation is a virtual non-issue.

Regards,
SB
 
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