Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2011]

[joker454]

It's pretty impressive that the 360 managed to keep up with the PS3 in the end - despite all the effort they put into optimising it for PS3.

I was quite surprised - I predicted that the PS3 version would have the advantage in terms of visuals with them offloading shading to the SPUs and their fully deferred setup.

Maybe people will finally accept just how bottlenecked the ps3 is due to rsx...or maybe they will just bin Dice as not having used the ps3 properly like 100's of other developers before them over the past 6 years. In any case, I think I can shed my charlatan title now

 

[djskribbles]

there are things that look better to me on ps3, but they are pretty minor.

I dunno how much effort was put into both versions, but rather than call dice lazy, I applaud them for their efforts. I think BF3 is arguably the best looking MP game and they both look virtually the same. And judging by the performance, the engine seems to be stressing both systems almost equally (albeit in different ways).

 

[Schaden]

It's pretty impressive that the 360 managed to keep up with the PS3 in the end - despite all the effort they put into optimising it for PS3.

I was quite surprised - I predicted that the PS3 version would have the advantage in terms of visuals with them offloading shading to the SPUs and their fully deferred setup.

From where I'm sitting, the PS3 does have better visuals in this game. It's not a mind blowing difference, but I'm looking at a picture on this page that illustrates they don't look on par with each other.

And for the people casting aspersions on LOT's capturing method, DF's video shows the same lack of effect on the 360 ! Hilarious.

 

[_Enigma_]

Richard seems a little bit biased. PS3 has some advantages that if were present in the 360 version, he would recommend the latter

 

[Rangers]

think even lens of truth called out the missing motion blur on 360..... thought ppl don't really trust them most of the time.

Isn't this only one one scene, which is basically a cutscene type thing? Lens made a big deal out of it but it seemed pretty stupid to me, honestly thought 360 version looked better in that scene.

If we are talking about this: http://i43.tinypic.com/mvq2dw.jpg

 

[(((interference)))]

Yeah that's true actually - why didn't DF mention the missing blur filter on 360

http://www.lensoftruth.com/head2head-battlefield-3-analysis/

Perhaps it was just a rendering bug and wasn't reproduced in DF's analysis (They did pick up on the light banding on the flashlight on 360)

But I still don't see how the "PS3 has some advantages that if were present in the 360 version, [DF] would recommend the latter"
Since it's just a few effects missing in the cutscenes and the usual gamma differences between the two.
If anything BC2 had more of a visual advantage on PS3 given DICE made some ridiculous artistic decision to use A2C on all the transparencies giving them a screen door look.

 

[assurdum]

Maybe people will finally accept just how bottlenecked the ps3 is due to rsx...or maybe they will just bin Dice as not having used the ps3 properly like 100's of other developers before them over the past 6 years. In any case, I think I can shed my charlatan title now

I never understood why your stealth trollish post about rsx & ps3 are so tolerate here after so many years. I mean, your opinion about the ps3 hardware it's pretty clear even out of beyond3d, I don't understood why you are never tired yet to say the same thing again & again Could be pretty interesting to see the same behaviour in the opposite side, just a personal curiosity too see the things to an another perspective. My apologies for the ot, I'm too sensitive sometime . By the way this engine it's excellent & push ps3 over its limits. Pretty glad how work DICE, I just hope crytek or any others developer in the console area who has problem on the ps3, take how example this achievement to give something more.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I never understood why your stealth trollish about rsx & ps3 are so tolerate here after so many years.

There's nothing stealth-troll about it. Unlike almost everyone else on this board, Joker was actually involved in the game industry and got to see the hardwares from the development side and discuss it with other developers. His personal opinions on the quality of PS3's hardware design are at least informed unlike most, and he's entitled to express them especially as a counter-argument to those expressing the opposite opinion.

 

[assurdum]

There's nothing stealth-troll about it. Unlike almost everyone else on this board, Joker was actually involved in the game industry and got to see the hardwares from the development side and discuss it with other developers. His personal opinions on the quality of PS3's hardware design are at least informed unlike most, and he's entitled to express them especially as a counter-argument to those expressing the opposite opinion.

I pretty know that, I don't said otherwise. Personally I never expressed an opinion about the quality of an hardware because I know my limits. But I beg to differ about the behaviour, even if it's an expert I can't to avoid to notice that, I'm sorry but it's what I think (& I'm not the only honestly who thinking that but I can't to avoid to be sincere here) . My apologies for the ot.

 

[kagemaru]

I think Driver SF also have the same problem on PS3. Sub pixel smoothing isnt in the PS3 version. PS3 might be running a older version.

IIRC Driver used a lower quality FXAA on the ps3 version, so you could be right.

P.S.:
Only a thing I have missed previously:
AFAIK the quality of MLAA differs from game to game, so it could very well be MLAA. Why would they bother turning off subpixel smoothing from only one version?

Sorry what is it AFAIK ? Did you know the difference to FXAA & MLAA to cover the jaggies? It's not just only matter of 'quantity': FXAA blurry with contrast the jaggies edges, MLAA adds triangle of pixels in the aliasing lines. You could to implement FXAA a la MLAA on the ps3 to make the things more easy & faster (I suppose it's what is happened in DE imho), but if works how FXAA nvidia imho it's a FXAA filter. DE shows blend of pixels blurried, we can to notice that watching the long linear edges: indeed a regular long line we see a 'curious' wave in the jaggies.

AFAIK = As Far As I Know.

Also no, MLAA does not add triangles from everything I've read on the technique.

think even lens of truth called out the missing motion blur on 360..... thought ppl don't really trust them most of the time.

LoT also said the 360 version suffered from "z-fighting" issues if I remember correctly.

From where I'm sitting, the PS3 does have better visuals in this game. It's not a mind blowing difference, but I'm looking at a picture on this page that illustrates they don't look on par with each other.

And for the people casting aspersions on LOT's capturing method, DF's video shows the same lack of effect on the 360 ! Hilarious.

The minor difference of two quick scenes and a slightly bigger bloom is enough for you to claim superiority?

Richard seems a little bit biased. PS3 has some advantages that if were present in the 360 version, he would recommend the latter

Yeah that bias is especially obvious in all of the PS3 exclusive tech analysis articles.

Really now, some of you PS3 fans are the worst at times. Either a dev is lazy, writer is biased, or some other kind of petty claim, all because some of you fail to get over this superiority complex on your platform of choice.

I pretty know that, I don't said otherwise. Personally I never expressed an opinion about the quality of an hardware because I know my limits. But I beg to differ about the behaviour, even if it's an expert I can't to avoid to notice that, I'm sorry but it's what I think (& I'm not the only honestly who thinking that but I can't to avoid to be sincere here) . My apologies for the ot.

It's simple, he comments on the weaknesses of the hardware and some of you take issue with any negative claim over the PS3.

I can entirely see where Joker comes from, to some people on these forums the words "can't" and "PS3" written in the same sentence is taboo. When some people make hyperbolic claims, and he has enough experience to bring reality back into most discussions. Nothing wrong with it IMO.

/long post/rant

 

[Arwin]

Maybe people will finally accept just how bottlenecked the ps3 is due to rsx...or maybe they will just bin Dice as not having used the ps3 properly like 100's of other developers before them over the past 6 years. In any case, I think I can shed my charlatan title now

I think most people have accepted by now that RSX has a vertex bottleneck that can be alleviated by SPEs?

Your charlatan title imho comes not from correctly pointing out some of the weaknesses, but in your one-sidedness. Perhaps Shifty is right and you're just doing it to balance stuff out, but in that case it could be refreshing if, say, you'd also recognise that Battlefield 3 could be a good example of how games are being held back by not being optimised for streaming from the HDD, or that creating a pipeline optimised for multiple cores, streaming and good use of SPEs also leads to better performing 360 games, as many have argued and very rare multi-platform developers have argued and shown (say, with Burnout Paradise).

Mind you I can see through that by now, and value all your contributions generally, but I can also see where Assurdum is coming from.

Anyway, hopefully we can leave this part of being off-topic, and focus on the really interesting things.

 

[assurdum]

IIRC Driver used a lower quality FXAA on the ps3 version, so you could be right.



AFAIK = As Far As I Know.

Also no, MLAA does not add triangles from everything I've read on the technique.



LoT also said the 360 version suffered from "z-fighting" issues if I remember correctly.



The minor difference of two quick scenes and a slightly bigger bloom is enough for you to claim superiority?



Yeah that bias is especially obvious in all of the PS3 exclusive tech analysis articles.

Really now, some of you PS3 fans are the worst at times. Either a dev is lazy, writer is biased, or some other kind of petty claim, all because some of you fail to get over this superiority complex on your platform of choice.



It's simple, he comments on the weaknesses of the hardware and some of you take issue with any negative claim over the PS3.

I can entirely see where Joker comes from, to some people on these forums the words "can't" and "PS3" written in the same sentence is taboo. When some people make hyperbolic claims, and he has enough experience to bring reality back into most discussions. Nothing wrong with it IMO.

/long post/rant

About MLAA I know works in this way, just explain me what do you mean for MLAA; probably I'm talking of MLAA sony method I imagine, I can wrong. About ps3 & limits, honestly I don't remember a single time where I'm substain its superiority or claims its no limits, I invite anyone to find otherwise even in the past post. Perhaps I'm just polimized when the multiplat aren't on par on 360, but I never pretend to see miracolous superiority of ps3 here. I'm the first who hates the limits of RSX in the transparancies & vertex and I'm pleasant surprise how good has solved DICE this bottleneck headache, with an artigianal & smart move; please, don't lean the discussion everytime in this way when someone contradict a negative criticism on the ps3, isn't is exactly that my reason. I think it was clear what I means; everyone can said what does he want about an hardware, but there is method & method... to me seem pretty evident some method can only to cause flame or console war even with reason. I just said I can't find correct a redundant provocatory behaviour even with logic concept, at least to have a pleasant discussion. You can beat someone with reason, but not to change the method to give your reason, it's uncorrect. My last post about the argue, too much ot, my fault, sorry.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Six years in, and we're just seeing more and more that the two consoles are relatively equal, with some minor advantages and disadvantages for each. Seems the multiplatform devs are able to produce tech-heavy games that are up there with the best. Early in the gen, everyone, myself included, thought the first parties would eventually be able to put out tech that the multiplatform devs couldn't reproduce. It's been pretty interesting to see, through Digital Foundry, how parity (roughly) has become more the norm, and the 3rd parties are pushing the systems just as well as anyone else.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Your charlatan title imho comes not from correctly pointing out some of the weaknesses, but in your one-sidedness.

That can be said of lots of posters, but as that's a topic of human behaviour and not computing technology or business or games, it's a subject for an entirely different board to Beyond3D. There's no need to ever talk about the posters here.

 

[Nesh]

That can be said of lots of posters, but as that's a topic of human behaviour and not computing technology or business or games, it's a subject for an entirely different board to Beyond3D. There's no need to ever talk about the posters here.

His CPU appears to be bottlenecked by some form of data bias which prevents certain type of information to pass through the cache whereas some other type of information are processed and rendered successfully in the network of synapses (aka cerebral cortex) which are later outputted in written form in the forum board

There.

Jokes aside he does provide some very informative posts, although he often points towards the RSX bottlenecks which makes me wonder if this could be less of a bias and more that the hardware as a totality is truly and relatively more bottlenecked or less capable compared to competitive hardware (also as a totality).

For example is Battlefield 3 pushing harder the PS3 or the 360? If the game was produced exclusively on a particular console to take advantage of all the individualities which one would have had the most additional performance to squeeze out and in what areas?


Someone can point to a particular exclusive title to showcase the competence of a particular console, but usually the technical objectivity gets lost in the subjectivity of the art contribution which allows often some bias to be expressed.

And things dont help when we rarely have a developer in these forums who have actually developed for such a shocased title to shed some light, which again can be questioned by some as "bias" with the argument that he is going to support the project he worked on.

edit: Is it also possible that the real nature of the bottlenecks and hardware incompetence is not expressed often(if at all) by developers/gaming media due to NDA and/or to satisfy political purposes of the gaming industry? Such as not to dissatisfy one of the big console players? To avoid consumer complaints? To not affect the success of a particular product?
Not that the PS3 didnt get lots of media attacks during its initial launch and especially when the parity was non-existent between the two. It was hard to hide the problems developers were facing at the time to get the PS3 up and running satisfactory

 

[Scott_Arm]

...
For example is Battlefield 3 pushing harder the PS3 or the 360? If the game was produced exclusively on a particular console to take advantages all the individualities which one would have had some additional performance to squeeze out and in what areas?
...

The correct answer is that both consoles are being pushed to the absolute limit of their capability. There's nothing left. At this point, it's a question of finding new algorithms and making trade-offs. There aren't any spare cycles left. There is no "untapped power." They have come up with customized tech and solutions for each console, even though the final result looks the about the same on each one. What's happening behind the scenes is different. They shaved a tiny bit of vertical resolution that was most likely wasted by overscan, just to have a slightly smaller framebuffer. That's the point devs have gotten to. They're fighting over small tweaks here and there, just to fit everything in.

And please, no one respond with "... But game x looks better!" The answer is trade-offs.

 

[Scott_Arm]

...
edit: Is it also possible that the real nature of the bottlenecks and hardware incompetence is not expressed often(if at all) by developers/gaming media due to NDA and/or to satisfy political purposes of the gaming industry? Such as not to dissatisfy one of the big console players? To avoid consumer complaints? To not affect the success of a particular product?
Not that the PS3 didnt get lots of media attacks during its initial launch and especially when the parity was non-existent between the two. It was hard to hide the problems developers were facing at the time to get the PS3 up and running satisfactory

I don't think anyone is suggesting incompetence. PS3 and 360 just went different directions in how they balanced their CPU vs GPU. They both ended up with relatively the same thing, so I'm not sure how either one was incompetent. Joker is saying RSX is at times a bottleneck. Every system has a bottleneck. From his perspective, on PS3 that bottleneck happens to be the GPU. Having talked to him before, there is a frustration in dealing with people that have unreasonable expectations for PS3 and like to throw out terms like "lazy dev" or talk about the untapped power that's waiting to be unleashed. There is a mindset, among some, wrongly, that if the 360 version is roughly equal to the PS3 version, then the devs must have done something wrong. That would get pretty annoying if you were working on a PS3 title, right?

 

[Arwin]

The correct answer is that both consoles are being pushed to the absolute limit of their capability. There's nothing left. At this point, it's a question of finding new algorithms and making trade-offs. There aren't any spare cycles left. There is no "untapped power."

I disagree. Games are still continuously showing that there is untapped power out there, even if only sometimes they are related to clock cycles (but more often than you think). If anything, Battlefield 3 shows that there is still untapped power, because there are a few things that are unique to what they do, and that means other games aren't doing them.

We are definitely reaching a phase where better algorhithms are going to yield more and better results than just better clock optimisation though, no question about that. But I can hear that not all games are pushing the hardware as much as others just from listening to the fan. And while this may sound unscientific as high fan noise can just mean being inefficient with the clock cycles, it still means that games that do not have the fan running at max speed are very likely not to use all the cycles.

 

[joker454]

Perhaps Shifty is right and you're just doing it to balance stuff out, but in that case it could be refreshing if, say, you'd also recognise that Battlefield 3 could be a good example of how games are being held back by not being optimised for streaming from the HDD

I would have mentioned that except saying anything negative to ps3 means having to defend yourself for days so I never bothered. But since you asked, yes you are 100% correct games are being held back by not being fully optimized for hdd streaming. But you can never fully optimize for hdd because of the ps3. On 360 you can do what Dice did, strip the performance back a bit for dvd only guys and for everyone else they install it on hdd and enjoy the full experience. But you can't maximize the use of the hdd because only the 360 lets you install the entire game to hdd, ps3 doesn't. Therefore your lowest common demonimator when it comes to hdd streaming is the ps3 which basically enforces that no matter what some assets will always have to be streamed from the slow bluray drive and you will have to design the game around that.

or that creating a pipeline optimised for multiple cores, streaming and good use of SPEs also leads to better performing 360 games, as many have argued and very rare multi-platform developers have argued and shown (say, with Burnout Paradise).

I've mentioned that many times actually.

Mind you I can see through that by now, and value all your contributions generally, but I can also see where Assurdum is coming from.

My frustration is reading quotes from him and others how of course said game must not be optimized for ps3, that's why it doesn't peform better. Yes, him and many others still post stuff like that in 2011. We now have 6 years of cumulative evidence (games), 6 years of time to have console tech documents widely leaked, 6 years of head to head comparisons, and 6 years of comments from developers. I expect websites like N4g to be festivals of imbecility, but I'd have though people here would have sorted it all out by now and come to the obvious conclusion. Instead we still hear in 2011 how the media is all biased, the planet is on the Microsoft payroll, and how every developper is an idiot with Crytek and Carmack being the latest tossed into the pile of mediocrity and some people attempting to do the same with Dice. One has to wonder what will it take for people to sort out the obvious answer, but then again people even here still refuse to believe that the ps3 has less memory even though that's been said by countless devs publicly so maybe there is little hope. I'd have thought that bf3 would finally have put this all to bed given how it was designed from day one with the ps3 in mind but I guess not, instead the true answer is that DF is now apparently on the Microsoft payroll as well.

There is a mindset, among some, wrongly, that if the 360 version is roughly equal to the PS3 version, then the devs must have done something wrong. That would get pretty annoying if you were working on a PS3 title, right?

And then people are shocked when devs won't comment publicly on anything. Look at what happened to Repi, they put the ps3 first and foremost and yet they got slandered by the sdf nutcases. Carmack's been vilified but he's rich so he doesn't care anyways, he still speaks his mind. Most others though will avoid these forums like the plague because of dumb backlash. I used to post because I never really cared, I'll speak my mind and that's that even if it got me into trouble (which it has even at game companies). But most devs are not like that. If you guys want any chance of devs posting here then crap like "biased devs", "not using the ps3", etc all need to go away. It's not like devs avoid Beyond3d, you can see many of them and other very sharp people in the graphics industries or elsewhere posting regularly in other forums on B3d. You'll note though how by and large they avoid the console forum. Why do you think that's the case?

 

[djskribbles]

Who is slamming DICE? As a PS3 owner, I praise them.

And was it really confirmed that the PS3 was given higher priority, or are people assuming so given the fact that the PS3 was the one used to showcase the console version?

I think for the most part, people are aware of the situation - that the PS3 and 360 are essentially the same in terms of performance.

In all honesty, it does seem like you give your 0.02 of the PS3 hardware every chance you get, and the tone of your posts suggests that you have a real hate towards the hardware. Maybe it's just in response to the few that still do believe that the PS3's hardware is on another level. But that's just what I get from reading your posts.