Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[Goodtwin]

Outside of making drastic changes that would really negate everything that was promoted as making this the true nextgen AC game, then I kind of doubt there will be substantial improvements. Your talking about a 20% improvement in performance needed to go from 24fps to 30fps, and far more than that for those big dips down into the teens. I hope they can do it honestly, even though I wont be playing it, there are tons of people who paid good money for this game, and as it stands, its seems like Ubisoft really let down their fans. The shady part is the deception game they played. Not allowing reviewers to post reviews prior to launch was pretty tacky. Unity probably wont suffer much, but this could put a cloud over the series going forward. Its really unfortunate. When you really think about it, the crowds seem to big for reality. Everyone in the entire city seems to be congregating outside filling the streets. Who knows though, perhaps this games problems stem from a plethora of issues. We assume its just the crowds, but perhaps there is far more to it than that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Perhaps.

It's curious they don't expose an NPC density option.

Fingers crossed modders can do that.

 

[pjbliverpool]

True, but from my own tests increasing aa when cpu limited makes little to no difference, as does increasing resolution.

Both consoles could go for 1080 p 4xmsaa and still be in the same ballpark they are now.

4x MSAA has a massive performance impact if you're not CPU limited:

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...hmarks-and-analysis-of-its-poor-performance/2

I've also heard similar reports of small drops in resolution (e/g/ from 1080p to 900p) making big differences to frame rate. I'd say if you're not seeing any frame rate change when making those adjustments you must be very CPU limited.

I'm fairly sure that if the console were capable of running at 1080 and/or 4xMSAA with little to no performance impact then they would be (well the XBO would be anyway).

What I do find interesting about teh GPU benchmarks posted above is that while Maxwell and GK110 perform well ahead of their usual AMD counterparts, Kepler is performing as expected or perhaps even a little slower in comparison to it's AMD counterparts. I wonder if we're seeing the effect of heavy GPU compute being used?

 

[Scott_Arm]

I doubt they'd be able to patch the consoles to get to a steady 30 fps, but they might be able to mitigate some of the worst drops, or something like that. Who knows.

 

[Arwin]

I doubt they'd be able to patch the consoles to get to a steady 30 fps, but they might be able to mitigate some of the worst drops, or something like that. Who knows.

I think they will find some room to improve, especially with the motivation of that 9% stock drop ...

But I also have to say, after having played the game, and just walking around for an hour enjoying digital Paris, man, what the game accomplishes is really amazing. This is by far the most impressive stuff I have seen since Uncharted 3. The graphics are just stunning at times, and I even the amount of bugs isn't bad - I haven't experienced a single bug in 3 hours apart from that framerate drop in that particular location in that Church.

A bit more performance would be fantastic and I hope they get it, but this is a truly impressive game, and I have definitely seen AC games that performed worse on PS3. Performance is actually pretty good most of the time.

 

[rekator]

Somebody to test?
http://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscr...g_your_ps4_offline_fixes_the_framerate_issue/

 

[TheWretched]

There's talk on Reddit and Gaf that disabling online on your console (and maybe even on PC) will raise the framerate by a considerable margin. Given that this game has a lot of online stuff it needs to check (microtransaction, "companion app", online play, etc...) this might actually be one culprit here. Though I haven't tried it yet.

EDIT: Beaten^^

 

[pjbliverpool]

There's talk on Reddit and Gaf that disabling online on your console (and maybe even on PC) will raise the framerate by a considerable margin. Given that this game has a lot of online stuff it needs to check (microtransaction, "companion app", online play, etc...) this might actually be one culprit here. Though I haven't tried it yet.

EDIT: Beaten^^

DF have confirmed that their initial performance analysis was done in offline mode so whatever this fixes, it doesn't sound like it's going to provide better results than what DF displayed. A bit scary that actual performance might actually be worse though!

 

[TheWretched]

I experienced that suspending the game (i.e. loading the Youtube app) and restarting the game on PS4 will make the game run like ... well ass. Restarting the game will fix this issue.

 

[DavidGraham]

What I do find interesting about teh GPU benchmarks posted above is that while Maxwell and GK110 perform well ahead of their usual AMD counterparts, Kepler is performing as expected or perhaps even a little slower in comparison to it's AMD counterparts. I wonder if we're seeing the effect of heavy GPU compute being used?

Well, when Ryse first came to PC, performance on AMD GPUs was so far ahead of NVIDIA, that even Titans and Maxwells were left to bite the dust, all because Crytek used a lot of compute techniques for the visuals. It took a driver and a patch update to fix the situation. So I wouldn't rule that out.

http://pclab.pl/art60277-5.html
http://pclab.pl/art60277-6.html

 

[DJ12]

DF have done some tests Online v Offline

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...d-unity-online-vs-offline-performance-gallery

I think their conclusion is wrong though, clearly when the AI doesn't really get involved (Roof traversal etc or minimal NPCs) the framerate is consistently higher in their screenshots in offline mode.

Some users on the Reddit section claim rebuilding the database helped, wonder if DF can check that.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Some users on the Reddit section claim rebuilding the database helped, wonder if DF can check that.

What database is this?

 

[DJ12]

PlayStation 3 and 4 have a database that can be repaired through safe mode, not exactly sure exactly what it holds but it can impact performance.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

PlayStation 3 and 4 have a database that can be repaired through safe mode, not exactly sure exactly what it holds but it can impact performance.

A secret sauce performance database.

Ok.

 

[DJ12]

Don't be so dramatic. It affects performance in some situations.

 

[rekator]

A secret sauce performance database.

Ok.

It's "like" Cache on 360, so sometime this help, if it's a problem of streaming content from HDD due to "fragmentation".

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It's "like" Cache on 360, so sometime this help, if it's a problem of streaming content from HDD due to "fragmentation".

Thanks. Interesting..

 

[Scott_Arm]

What kind of software fail would cause the framerate to increase by putting your console "offline." I mean, who the hell would make a core game thread with a blocking condition that was reliant on a network connection/network latency etc.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I mean, who the hell would make a core game thread with a blocking condition that was reliant on a network connection/network latency etc.

Ubisoft?

 

[AlNom]

Diablo 3 pc?