Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[Shifty Geezer]

Anyhow, I would like to know about the kind of equipment and methodology DF uses to count frames, anyone have a link? that would be greatly appreciated.

Search for Richard Leadbetter's posts on this forum. It was here that the method was discussed and finalised. There may have been some updates since then, of course, with increases in processing power enabling a better sample of points, although IIRC, the final solution was very robust and wouldn't really need improving.

 

[DavidGraham]

Couldn't find it sorry .. guess my forum search skills are quite lagging.

 

[taisui]

+1, quality of pixel, number of polygon, complexity of shader Ryse is only 900p but better visually than all the Wii U title at 1080p 60 fps...

Ryse is arguably 1 of the best looking titles out there on all platforms.

 

[Goodtwin]

+1, quality of pixel, number of polygon, complexity of shader Ryse is only 900p but better visually than all the Wii U title at 1080p 60 fps...

Being an active forum member on a few different boards, there is no question that too many people act as if 60fps and 1080p are indications of hardware performance. By themselves they do not tell the whole story. Its not like X1 cant do 1080p 60fps, but developers are choosing to push visual fidelity to the point where sacrifices in framerate, resolution, or both are required to obtain the fidelity they are aiming for. Would Ryse look better in 1080p than 900p if they had to sacrifice shaders and post processing effects to get there? Developers have eyes, and I am sure they are looking to see which gives the most impressive visuals, and more often than not, better shader effects are going to make more of an impact that a resolution bump.

 

[DavidGraham]

Ryse is arguably 1 of the best looking titles out there on all platforms.

Indeed :
1-Metro 2033/Metro Last Light
2-Crysis 3
3-Battlefield 4/Battlefield 3
4-KillZone Shadow Fall
5-Ryse

I put Metro at number 1 by virtue of it's brute force use of numerous shadows from all possible sources, as well as excellent overall use of Tessellation.

There others that trail those, like Medal Of Honor Warfighter, Far Cry 3, ArmA 3, Hitman Absolution, Batman City, BioShock Infinite, Witcher 2 ..etc but it's safe to say that those 5 are the most advanced as well as the most beautiful.

 

[Cyan]

Couldn't find it sorry .. guess my forum search skills are quite lagging.

Richard's nick is Grandmaster, IIRC.

On a different note, thanks Shifty, taisui and HpTupolev, I think I have a clearer picture on how the whole thing works, it all has to do with the framebuffer being updated 60 or 30 frames a second where you get the framerate, no need to study nor count the frames of sprites moving.

I hope I am not wrong. Am I?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Metro as best looking? Can't be serious. Art direction is practically nonexistent in that game.

 

[ultragpu]

Indeed :
1-Metro 2033/Metro Last Light
2-Crysis 3
3-Battlefield 4/Battlefield 3
4-KillZone Shadow Fall
5-Ryse

I put Metro at number 1 by virtue of it's brute force use of numerous shadows from all possible sources, as well as excellent overall use of Tessellation.

There others that trail those, like Medal Of Honor Warfighter, Far Cry 3, ArmA 3, Hitman Absolution, Batman City, BioShock Infinite, Witcher 2 ..etc but it's safe to say that those 5 are the most advanced as well as the most beautiful.

I agree with Laa-Yosh, Metro 2034 is borderline ugly, I honestly thought quite a few PS3 games looked better. In terms of best balance of tech and art, I would say Killzone shadowfall and Ryse look far better than the others on the list.

 

[MrSpiggott]

Why are we still trying to rank the quality of graphics with technical bullet points?

It would be ridiculous of me to say, after walking around the national gallery, the following.
"I've minutely inspected every picture here and I can say, without any hesitation, that this one right here has the most accurately drawn apples. Therefore it the best picture in the gallery. Fact!"

So why are we ranking the emotional effect of computer graphics on the quality of shadows, or whether tessellation has been turned on? Certainly these can help, but they're pretty low down on the list.

 

[DavidGraham]

Richard's nick is Grandmaster, IIRC.

I searched for his name with key words like "Digital Foundry" and "test method", but with no results .

So why are we ranking the emotional effect of computer graphics on the quality of shadows, or whether tessellation has been turned on? Certainly these can help, but they're pretty low down on the list.

Well, games are a lot different from still pictures, they are an interactive medium, the more tech you have in your game, the better your interactivity and sense of immersion. sure many games look fantastic with their art style alone, the likes of Uncharted, Heavy rain, Gears 3, but though these games are beautiful, their immersion has a higher chance of being broken due to a relative lack of tech underneath them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Richard's nick is Grandmaster, IIRC.

Good call; I forgot that.

I searched for his name with key words like "Digital Foundry" and "test method", but with no results .

Search for all posts by 'grandmaster', presenting results as threads. You find a "Framerate Analysis Thread" started by grandmaster, with a link to an earlier post describing his methodology.

 

[Boxercide]

Why are we still trying to rank the quality of graphics with technical bullet points?

It would be ridiculous of me to say, after walking around the national gallery, the following.
"I've minutely inspected every picture here and I can say, without any hesitation, that this one right here has the most accurately drawn apples. Therefore it the best picture in the gallery. Fact!"

So why are we ranking the emotional effect of computer graphics on the quality of shadows, or whether tessellation has been turned on? Certainly these can help, but they're pretty low down on the list.

Welcome to tech forums.

 

[MrSpiggott]

DavidGrahams argument wasn't that Metro has the best quality shadows in any game, which would be a perfectly acceptable topic for a tech forum.
No, he listed Metro as having the best looking graphics. Which must literally mean better than any game, ever written. The gold standard that all other art directors should aspire too. And the reason he gave for this conclusion was that it had nice shadows and tessellation. That makes no more sense than saying this picture is better than that one because it has the shiniest apples.

 

[AlNom]

What if it had Shifty's Bitch's shiny apples.

 

[MrSpiggott]

Well that would probably be classified as secret sauce.

 

[tuna]

Why are we still trying to rank the quality of graphics with technical bullet points?

I don't.
...

So why are we ranking the emotional effect of computer graphics on the quality of shadows, or whether tessellation has been turned on? Certainly these can help, but they're pretty low down on the list.

Nobody does this either. But don't you find this interesting?

 

[Cyan]

What if it had Shifty's Bitch's shiny apples.

xDDD Shiny! Chintz mercerising sheeny... that's how Shifty likes his games. xD

Now seriously, and on another note, I am very disappointed at Digital Foundry that they didn't make a tech analysis of my favourite Xbox One game, Powerstar Golf.

I am fine with the resolution of the game, framerate, etc, but I'd love to see DF input on the subject.

Pretty much every launch title on the Xbox 360 had its resolution listed, why not Xbox One's?

 

[London Geezer]

The other Shifty loves polishing my apples

 

[Globalisateur]

Why Digital Foundry didn't do a NBA 2K14 face-off? And what about Thief?

The last face-offs, Rayman and Strider, 2 games virtually identical in every points, weren't worthwhile.

 

[Rangers]

Why Digital Foundry didn't do a NBA 2K14 face-off? And what about Thief?

The last face-offs, Rayman and Strider, 2 games virtually identical in every points, weren't worthwhile.

Well, you cant not do face-offs just because you dont like the result. More to the point, they dont know what the outcome will be going in...

Thief is coming soon I imagine.

I've mentioned it before but it kinda bugs me how dependent we've become on DF. Literally nobody else is doing much face offs. IGN does these youtube vids without any analysis, better than nothing but a bit annoying. Lens of Truth (always subpar granted, but at least a second FPS source) has pretty much died off, though they claim they're coming back soon.

As always DF is amazing, so it's not a knock on those guys! It's just a bit scary when they're our only source, particularly for frame rate testing. But again they do a great job so they've earned it.

I think maybe they can turn it into great niche though, I have seen some of their youtubes have gone from when I used to watch them, almost no views, to now quite popular, over 1 million views on at least one comparison vid IIRC.