Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2013]

[(((interference)))]

In BF3?

BF4 is pretty similar to BF3 so 60 fps in both.

 

[zed]

It was the "best AA ever" because it made people think it was bullshot, pre-rendered.

Yes I think I mentioned the same thing on these forums when the first screens were shown

Yes MLAA on GOW3 is absolutely brilliant, the first time on these forums I saw the ingame screen shots with it, I accused them of doing highres supersampled bullshots!
I was wrong

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1524637&postcount=90

 

[pjbliverpool]

BF4 is pretty similar to BF3 so 60 fps in both.

No its not, BF4 is a far greater performance hog, probably by around a third. The PS4 version of BF4 performs almost exactly in line with a PC version of the same GPU specs so you can argue its as optimised as the PC DX11 version from the GPU side although CPU optimisation may be a fair bit better (on account of the API overhead).

There's no reason to expect BF4 not to be pretty well optimised for GCN. Dice have been working with the architecture for years and this is the second game they've built on it.

The mantle comparisons will be interesting though, they may paint the console optimisations in a worse light.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well then, that was achieved this gen. WarHawk at least at 4xMSAA. No transparency AA, but it didn't have transparent surfaces.

http://www.preshweb.co.uk//wp-content/uploads/2008/12/warhawk51.jpg

OK, the edge AA is definitely decent in that. But why is the overall image so "soft". Were they also layering Quincunx over it? There's actually a fair amount of transparent textures (the vegetation) in that scene as well, but as mentioned everything is so blurry that I can't tell WTF is going on with them. Perhaps the image is just overly compressed.

Would be interested in watching the actual game in action on a PS3, but unfortunately, no one I know IRL owns it.

thanks, great reading it again.

It was the "best AA ever" because it made people think it was bullshot, pre-rendered. there is not a greater compliment to realtime graphics and or AA methods.

Yeah, I can't believe people actually thought that was the "best AA ever" without some serious qualifiers. Best AA ever on consoles up until that time, perhaps. Best compute based AA, perhaps. But it was still overall not terribly good.

Regards,
SB

 

[Shifty Geezer]

OK, the edge AA is definitely decent in that. But why is the overall image so "soft".

Compressed to death, I think. The actual game is extremely sharp and clean, and why I bought an HD set. It's not doing anything fancy in the visuals but high AA and framerate makes for a good game. It's extremely slow by modern standards though! A couple of seconds to turn around is laughable. There are other 4xMSAA games out there. It's just that devs favoured pixel quality over IQ in most games.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Compressed to death, I think. The actual game is extremely sharp and clean, and why I bought an HD set. It's not doing anything fancy in the visuals but high AA and framerate makes for a good game. It's extremely slow by modern standards though! A couple of seconds to turn around is laughable. There are other 4xMSAA games out there. It's just that devs favoured pixel quality over IQ in most games.

Yup, I appreciate clean edges. Due to how my sight works (equal or more priority given to anomalies in peripheral vision than what is being focused on) and how my brain prioritizes visual cues, aliasing is significantly more distracting to me than most of the people I know. Especially when it is in motion.

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

OK, the edge AA is definitely decent in that. But why is the overall image so "soft". Were they also layering Quincunx over it? There's actually a fair amount of transparent textures (the vegetation) in that scene as well, but as mentioned everything is so blurry that I can't tell WTF is going on with them. Perhaps the image is just overly compressed.

Would be interested in watching the actual game in action on a PS3, but unfortunately, no one I know IRL owns it.

Perhaps these are decent enough? Haven't watched myself, but it's gamersyde at least.

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_warhawk_omega_dawn_exclusive_video-5601_en.html

I always loved the game much more for its gameplay than its graphics though, which for me primarily just didn't get into the way of the fun. But it had some cool stuff, like volumetric clouds and 4 screen split-screen allowing you to even play online with all four of those on one account (players would then be suffixed -1, -2, etc.)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Perhaps these are decent enough? Haven't watched myself, but it's gamersyde at least.

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_warhawk_omega_dawn_exclusive_video-5601_en.html

I always loved the game much more for its gameplay than its graphics though, which for me primarily just didn't get into the way of the fun. But it had some cool stuff, like volumetric clouds and 4 screen split-screen allowing you to even play online with all four of those on one account (players would then be suffixed -1, -2, etc.)

Bummer they no longer allow downloads without signing in, and I'm not going to sign up just for that. And I can't stream their video as whatever advertiser they use, I have blocked so their stream won't start.

Regards,
SB

 

[Globalisateur]

Have you seen this Digital foundry recent tweet about COD Ghosts on PS4:

We're pretty sure now that this isn't an issue in the patched version where stutter does come from dropped frames.

And the Eurogamer DF article update stealth update:

Update: Having reviewed the patch captures, there's an odd issue with tearing which caused some confusion, but we're fairly convinced now that in the revised version of the game at least, any judder is down to frame-rate drops and not the game running faster than 60Hz.

www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-whats-fixed-and-whats-not-in-the-cod-ghosts-ps4-patch

2 days after publishing their article where they said there was still an anormal judder problem, Richard Leadbetter finally discovered, only today, that they messed up and the patch was finally (suddenly?) working as intended.

Finally the game has just regular framerate drops now? What was the point to make such a negative article in the first place? I found the whole drama suspicious. I mean COD is the most sold game on both next gen consoles...Whatever.

What a mess, anyway.

 

[Arwin]

It's fairly unprecedented to have judder from too many frames rather than too few. Some confusion should be forgiven?

 

[chris1515]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-23-digital-foundry-vs-forza-motorsport-5

Digital Foundry against Forza 5

 

[BoardBonobo]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-23-digital-foundry-vs-forza-motorsport-5

Digital Foundry against Forza 5

I found the entire article to be really shallow. They didn't have anything really positive to say and avoided any negativity entirely, which didn't leave an awful lot for the content. The only feeling I got from it was that though 5 is here it's actually 6 they're waiting for.

 

[function]

2 days after publishing their article where they said there was still an anormal judder problem, Richard Leadbetter finally discovered, only today, that they messed up and the patch was finally (suddenly?) working as intended.

Finally the game has just regular framerate drops now? What was the point to make such a negative article in the first place? I found the whole drama suspicious. I mean COD is the most sold game on both next gen consoles...Whatever.

Leave the dumb DF conspiracy theories for other message boards please. The article you linked to wasn't even written by Richard Leadbetter (it even tells you this at the very top and bottom of the article).

And frame drops don't have to result in motion "judder" (none linear time represented by updates) if the game predicts a frame drop and calculates a simulated update period that matches the actual update period.

Judder is crappy. So is low frame rate. Thank goodness DF aren't just blindly cheerleading "1080p".

 

[RudeCurve]

Judder is crappy. So is low frame rate. Thank goodness DF aren't just blindly cheerleading "1080p".

+1..

 

[Billy Idol]

Killzone tec article:


http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-making-of-killzone-shadow-fall

Super impressed...

 

[Arwin]

Just read it, cool stuff and some surprising things, like the memory cleanup CU task! The audio info is interesting in light of our recent discussions too.

 

[SlimJim]

Killzone tec article:


http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-making-of-killzone-shadow-fall

Super impressed...

Great read, though.. KZ:SF clearly is a first generation title. A lot of people at Beyond3D are awaiting the completion of new 3d techniques for the sequel, like PORSL* as well as better parallax occlusion mapping.

*Particle occluded realtime shoe-lacing ( )

edit:

"The game is incredibly big compared to the previous game... we had to turn the entire company into a massive render farm. When people left their computer at night at 5pm it would say, 'hey, do you want to enter the render group?' and if you didn't respond, or didn't opt out, you'd opt in - and at night the entire company would become a render farm, and still we had three guys pushing the renders through. The quality is most important - the atmosphere in the game."

 

[Billy Idol]

Sound difference is fantastic imo, but KZ always had pretty good state of the art effects to me.

It is also quite interesting for me to learn that a lot of development and research goes into improving and streamlining the workflow...

 

[KKRT]

Killzone tec article:


http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-making-of-killzone-shadow-fall

Super impressed...

I'm a little disappointed by the article. It has great stuff in it for sure, but i thought that they would make total systems walkthrough, but it only has some described.

MADDER sounds great, but seems a little too heavy on dev time with all those materials and angles set ups. Seems worth though.

 

[Billy Idol]

I'm a little disappointed by the article. It has great stuff in it for sure, but i thought that they will make total system walkthrough, but its only has some described.

MADDER sounds great, but seems to a little heavy on dev time with all those materials settings and angles set ups.

What do you mean with system walkthrough??

PS: they even showed their profiling...I wish more devs out there would be so open as GG, good service to us fans!!