Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[iroboto]

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water either.



Looking at the comparison, DF choose to steer the outcome to what we all expect it to be based on known capabilities of each machine.



Never stop questioning, you just cheat yourself.

Nice, this comes shortly after I finished watching the COSMOS series with Neil Degrasse Tyson. How true it rings, scientific theory is the only way to go. We must question even in the face of our own biases and have others reproduce our efforts to know it is true.

This is something we haven't really done when I think about it. (The reproducing results bit).

 

[Scott_Arm]

If you're not sensitive to framerate then you're less likely to notice a framerate that drops, or is somewhat inconsistent when unlocked - unless it's truly bad or jarring. It's like saying "I can't tell a good wine from a bad wine, but this wine seems fine to me!".

I was referring to the frame pacing bug. I have no idea what it is or what it's supposed to look like. I can't see it.

 

[Rurouni]

I was referring to the frame pacing bug. I have no idea what it is or what it's supposed to look like. I can't see it.

It would stutter. Ideally, on a 30fps games, every new frame will be outputted at exactly every 33.33ms (1second/30), but in this case, a frame could be rendered faster or slower than 33.33ms, thus uneven frame rate -> stutter. It's similar to unlocked frame rate, but on a much smaller scale. If this happening infrequently, then it shouldn't matter too much.
Basically if the game run perfectly at 30fps, it doesn't mean that the game is smooth. There can be variance inside a second.

 

[Boxercide]

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water either.

Looking at the comparison, DF choose to steer the outcome to what we all expect it to be based on known capabilities of each machine.

Never stop questioning, you just cheat yourself.

They quite simply reported the streaming issue on both consoles. then misterx takes this and their words out of context. Then this...person runs straight here to try and fan fanboy wars. It has no place here and your implication is frankly, stupid.

Right there on that screenshot you can see the XBOne framerate falls below that level in about 1 second. Furthermore, as Dsoup correctly pointed out, DF said 'nigh-on' and misterx and people who swallowed his garbage are trying to twist that.

Stop. This is not the place for that. Neither is it the place to try and improperly impugn anyone's honor/integrity by pretending they said something they didn't or deliberately twisting their words to fit an agenda.

 

[shredenvain]

They quite simply reported the streaming issue on both consoles. then misterx takes this and their words out of context. Then this...person runs straight here to try and fan fanboy wars. It has no place here and your implication is frankly, stupid.

Right there on that screenshot you can see the XBOne framerate falls below that level in about 1 second. Furthermore, as Dsoup correctly pointed out, DF said 'nigh-on' and misterx and people who swallowed his garbage are trying to twist that.

Stop. This is not the place for that. Neither is it the place to try and improperly impugn anyone's honor/integrity by pretending they said something they didn't or deliberately twisting their words to fit an agenda.

I agree with you in part. I am tired of people from both sides of the war calling DF bias.
Infact we have had posts that fit this criteria from both sides on the last two pages of this thread. I dont agree with trying to tell a poster what they can post and from where.(As long as it is relative) Infact from the images posted above in Starx post the only way you would possibly know where this info came from is if you are visiting the offending site yourself.

 

[joker454]

DF does have a thankless job really. If they do it right then they piss off half the gamers. If they play neutral then they piss off people who will think they are on the payroll of one of the console companies. If they miss something then they are deemed to have bias. Tough gig to be sure because no matter what they do people will be annoyed with them.

 

[-tkf-]

DF does have a thankless job really. If they do it right then they piss off half the gamers. If they play neutral then they piss off people who will think they are on the payroll of one of the console companies. If they miss something then they are deemed to have bias. Tough gig to be sure because no matter what they do people will be annoyed with them.

And the best approach in that case is being brutally honest and not trying to sugar coat anything, nothing is gained anyway.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Digital Foundry: Hands-on with Bayonetta 2

Article up on Eurogamer.

It's fair to assume that some of the performance problems faced by The Wonderful 101 stem from the large crowd of characters that you're tasked with controlling but that doesn't always account for its more severe dips in frame-rate - simply moving from scene to scene can trigger massive drops below 60fps. With Bayonetta 2 the large crowd of The Wonderful 101 is seemingly traded for significantly more detailed actors, better shadows, flashier effects, more open stages with a free camera system and better overall performance. Both games put a lot of effects on screen but it's clear that they've found a better balance with Bayonetta 2 that allows for plenty of spectacle without tanking the frame-rate. Whether it's through more efficient coding or better management of performance bottlenecks, the result is a game that feels more optimised overall.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

DF does have a thankless job really. If they do it right then they piss off half the gamers. If they play neutral then they piss off people who will think they are on the payroll of one of the console companies. If they miss something then they are deemed to have bias. Tough gig to be sure because no matter what they do people will be annoyed with them.

As long as it makes money, I don't think Richard et al really give a shit. He's not going to be losing sleep over trying to keep everyone happy.

I think that's what it takes in this industry now. We have Notch saying he wants rid of Minecraft because he gets too much grief over it. We have 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' examples all over the shop (see 'should devs push consoles or aim for parity' discussion). As the vocal, unwashed masses aren't the people you're selling to, there's no point paying them any attention. Focus on the response from the silent majority. Are you getting clicks/sales? If so, carry on. If not, change things. Pay no heed to opinions sent your way, or at least accept opinions with a considerable confidence and willingness to refuse to shift view just because some people tell you to.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

As long as it makes money, I don't think Richard et al really give a shit. He's not going to be losing sleep over trying to keep everyone happy.

Websites directly benefit from controversial articles, particularly if they have a comments section. More views and activity from comments is more ads served.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That may be true, but he/they don't go out of their way to generate controversy to generate hits. There's a DF style that they stick to, and the controversy, whatever it may be, comes from the findings.

 

[Arwin]

Yes. Their job is to find differences, and so they do. And when they do, of course people run with those findings left and right. But who cares? There's little that keeps publishers, platform holders and developers honest in a more fact-finding way than this.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

That may be true, but he/they don't go out of their way to generate controversy to generate hits. There's a DF style that they stick to, and the controversy, whatever it may be, comes from the findings.

Veering a little off topic but this certainly happens in tech journalism. From outright click bait to articles and stories that are designed to attract the pro/con crowd of the subject matter, written purely to attract clicks but containing no new information or analysis.

I wouldn't put Digital Foundry articles anywhere near to this because they do a lot information but the effect is much the same. These articles, as well as attracting the technically curious, is like light to a moth for fanboys.

 

[mosen]

Starx, do not bring misterx's bullshit to this site.

I don't understand why you think he is Misterx (as you called him Misterx in your next comment several times). Also I can't understand why you are acting like this. His native language isn't English (just like me) so he thought DF article is saying that there is no drop on PS4. Is he really deserves reactions like this?

 

[Boxercide]

I don't understand why you think he is Misterx (as you called him Misterx in your next comment several times). Also I can't understand why you are acting like this. His native language isn't English (just like me) so he thought DF article is saying that there is no drop on PS4. Is he really deserves reactions like this?

It is quite simple to see somebody's posting history. He has posted bogus info from the misterx blog multiple times.

Not exactly a difficult investigation.

And I didn't call him anything. I called out his 'source'.

 

[Lalaland]

I don't understand why you think he is Misterx (as you called him Misterx in your next comment several times). Also I can't understand why you are acting like this. His native language isn't English (just like me) so he thought DF article is saying that there is no drop on PS4. Is he really deserves reactions like this?

MrX grasp of English is quite capable of finding obscure meaning in seemingly straight forward statements when it serves his agenda. MrX and his theories are a source of never ending amusement to anyone who does as he says and reads through his 'research'. To post the images as presented is to reproduce a baseless allegation, a more honest move would be to ask the question 'I thought DF said there were no fps drops on PS4?' to which the simple answer is 'that's not what was said, the meaning is...'.

Back OT DF articles will always attract the lunatic fringe partisans as they are the most trusted source. Everyone wants the most trusted source on 'their' side.

 

[mosen]

It is quite simple to see somebody's posting history. He has posted bogus info from the misterx blog multiple times.

Not exactly a difficult investigation.

And I didn't call him anything. I called out his 'source'.

My bad, I don't visit misterx site frequently but I found those screenshots on his site (thanks to you) and clearly he suffers from the same problem (he didn't understand what "nigh-on" means).

Also I investigated Starx post history and I didn't find any direct link from misterx site on them but I can't say anything about other content of his posts, since I don't read everything that misterx writes on his site.

 

[Starx]

Thanks mosen.
When I read the article strongly think it was written:

It's a rare blip common to both platforms, and otherwise Sony's hardware puts out a perfect 30fps line in the campaign.

But apparently after a short period They (maybe) modify the article:

It's a rare blip common to both platforms, and otherwise Sony's hardware puts out a near-perfect 30fps line in the campaign.

I didn't know that word means (nigh-on) and with the concept of the previous entries that post got submitted with those pictures I found on misterx blog and this is not a very difficult issue that I got to share it to see others comments.
In any case I'm not a frequently visitor of misterx blog and in most cases my visits are limited to seeing pictures of comments.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But apparently after a short period They (maybe) modify the article

The "nigh-on perfect" text was in the original article, I quoted it minutes after the article went up in this post.

But perhaps everybody can move on

 

[iroboto]

Guys this shouldn't be a witch hunt. The source is no good; it can happen to anyone and I don't know a single person who has not cited a poor source at least once in their lives. Let's move on.