Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2013]

[Gitaroo]

sure, the right side of the video quality is terrible. you can tell by the stills. biased comparison.

Edit: Actually the video is lo Q on both sides, it's more the gaffer used PR pics vs LQ video stills I think.

I think the PC retail side of the video looks about as good to me. I see some differences but they seem more like art differences than tech ones. The foliage looks about the same quality.

lol, have you even play the PC version?

 

[Gitaroo]

I'm pretty sure they are running on PS4 hardware. If they were going to cheat their way out, we'd be sure to see it in the form of perfect fps (which didn't exactly happen, it was just very smooth between 29~30fps with imperfections) or some sort of obvious problems that we saw from things such as the BF4 showing.

It seems to me that developers aren't that good at hiding what their code is running on when they don't run them at what everybody expects them to run on.

even high end PC running a incomplete unoptimized games can still be at sub 30fps. Just because it doesn't run at 60fps doesn't mean its not running on PC.

 

[milk]

I think you missed my point, which is most gamers don't experience a game by analysing one frame to another. They just play the game. They don't see the ropey texture there, or compromised lighting there. They live in the 60fps world and focus on what the game does well.

And I still maintain that rendering resolution, quality of textures, quality of lighting and shadows, probably aren't perceptible to the greater majority. But things like trees that don't animate, well they look unnatural whichever way you cut it. Trees don't behave like that in the real world, nor in most games that have come out in the 360/PS3 generation. That stuff sticks out.

What I was trying to say is that Screen shots are not a bad reference point if you are comparing them to other screen shots.
Yet I understand and agree with your argument that the perception we get of a game when actually playing it and seeing it in motion is very different than that we get from screens. But that does not aply to this game really.
This is not a game that looks pretty good overall, and I just got disapointed by small details like a bad texture here and there.
This was a game that I had only seen in motion on a badly compressed live stream of e3, and it was looking pretty avarege then - to CURRENT gen standards!! - but I gave it the bennefit of the doubt, and thougt it might look better on better definition.
Seeing the screens I discovered I was wrong. Higher Def just shows more clearly how bad the game looks.
I'm not talking about sligtly blurry textures, or models that could use a couple more polys. I'm talking about the entire lighting and shaderwork being rudimentary at best. Their tonemaping and postprocessing is bad, their ambient lighing is bad, the direct lights look bad, all textures are bland, their normal-mapping lacks volume. This game's uglyness case is a bad one.

 

[Strange]

even high end PC running a incomplete unoptimized games can still be at sub 30fps. Just because it doesn't run at 60fps doesn't mean its not running on PC.

Given how Ubisoft is running with Watchdogs, Assassin's creed pretty honestly with PS4 hardware (and crashing one of the presentations, lol), and the fact that watchdogs had a frame rate quite like The Division, they leave me little reason to suspect that the machine running The Division is a high end PC.

 

[Gitaroo]

their track record tells me to only look at the final product.

 

[dagamer]

their track record tells me to only look at the final product.

Why should you Honestly look at anything else, regardless of the company?

 

[djskribbles]

Why should you Honestly look at anything else, regardless of the company?

Yes of course. But it needs to be said because some people are reading too much into the DF Watch Dogs article. Let's see how the finished builds compare. Even then, the fact that Watch Dogs is a launch title should be considered IMO.

 

[dagamer]

Yes of course. But it needs to be said because some people are reading too much into the DF Watch Dogs article. Let's see how the finished builds compare. Even then, the fact that Watch Dogs is a launch title should be considered IMO.

A cross generation one too.

 

[kots]

A cross generation one too.

Last year's E3 demo didn't look like a cross generation title

 

[dagamer]

Last year's E3 demo didn't look like a cross generation title

I'm more concerned with the fact that some of the development staff has to deal with the 360/PS3 versions which while Ubisoft promises they'll be on par with their next-gen cousins, we all know that's not true. And every team is working with limited resources, so it will have an effect, the question is how much.

 

[hesido]

I'm more concerned with the fact that some of the development staff has to deal with the 360/PS3 versions which while Ubisoft promises they'll be on par with their next-gen cousins, we all know that's not true. And every team is working with limited resources, so it will have an effect, the question is how much.

Current gen versions have a real chance of downgrading some gameplay elements. e.g. if they wanted to simulate a riot, for example, it'd be hard to do on current gen, so they may end up removing such scenarios.

 

[Gitaroo]

Why should you Honestly look at anything else, regardless of the company?

that is true but there are companies that work hard and show real stuffs right from the beginning then the final product ended being better. And then there are companies that show fake stuffs to impress ppl and the end product is just false advertisement. Ubi has a history of doing this much more than I can remember from any other company; not to say that they are the only one of course. Most recent one is Aliens.

 

[dagamer]

that is true but there are companies that work hard and show real stuffs right from the beginning then the final product ended being better. And then there are companies that show fake stuffs to impress ppl and the end product is just false advertisement. Ubi has a history of doing this much more than I can remember from any other company; not to say that they are the only one of course. Most recent one is Aliens.

Aliens: Colonial Marines was Gearbox, not Ubisoft.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm more concerned with the fact that some of the development staff has to deal with the 360/PS3 versions which while Ubisoft promises they'll be on par with their next-gen cousins, we all know that's not true. And every team is working with limited resources, so it will have an effect, the question is how much.

If Ubisoft say current gen will be on par with next gen, I'm certainly they are talking about gameplay and game mechanics. Ubisoft have said Watch Dogs runs on a new highly scalable engine called Disrupt, along running with Havok. I've been really impressed with what I've seen in Watch Dogs running on PS4 but equally I've not seen anything, gameplay-wise, thats sets it apart from what we've seen in GTA V.

360 and PS3 owners can likely expect :a lower resolution game, lower-poly models, lower-resolution textures, less DOF, perhaps less pedestrians and less impressive weather effects. No different to comparing Fry Cry on PC and the 360/PS3 versions.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Aliens: Colonial Marines was Gearbox, not Ubisoft.

That's why he said Ubsoft isn't the only company that does it, smart ass.

 

[GuestLV]

How The Crew was ported to PlayStation 4
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-how-the-crew-was-ported-to-playstation-4

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So it's unified memory but on two separate buses where you have to place the data in different memory locations depending on where you access it from? Sounds like it's as much faff as split RAM then!

 

[Arwin]

So it's unified memory but on two separate buses where you have to place the data in different memory locations depending on where you access it from? Sounds like it's as much faff as split RAM then!

From what I read it just means you have a choice to give information to the GPU from CPU in three different ways, where the main difference is how you use the cache. Yes, it sounds similar to split memory, but optimising cache use would be a factor regardless I assume, so it's still lowering complexity?

 

[hesido]

So it's unified memory but on two separate buses where you have to place the data in different memory locations depending on where you access it from? Sounds like it's as much faff as split RAM then!

I'm a bit let down by this. And from the looks of it, putting things in the wrong place (accessing things with the wrong bus???) poses a serious performance hit.

Can anyone clarify this? How is this different from 2nd gen Trinity APU that can access same memory areas but through GPU/CPU interconnects?

 

[GuestLV]

So it's unified memory but on two separate buses where you have to place the data in different memory locations depending on where you access it from? Sounds like it's as much faff as split RAM then!

So no HUMA then?