Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[Globalisateur]

Sub-20s framerate drops confirmed for Titanfall XB1:

As they now limit the scale to 20fps minimum we will never know the exact number.

 

[Boxercide]

Honestly, I am kind of shocked. And as far as the 50 GB install on PC...Wha???

 

[zed]

Oh this is the game from the other thread, WTF

Its low res, the FPS is pretty bad, and has tearing. To be honest it looks worse than a lot of ps360 titles graphically.
How could such a well funding title get it wrong so baddly, even the PC version on 'insane' graphics quality looks like a turd.
Of course due to gaming journalism being nonexistant these questions wont get asked, Surely theres a place on the web for at least one gaming website with integrity

edit - just googled pics of COD:MW2 on the xbox360 (*) this was made by the same guys 5 years previously on the xbox 360, comparing those with these you've gotta wonder WTF happened

(*) go ahead and do it

 

[Shortbread]

Next-Gen Face-Off: Titanfall
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-titanfall-next-gen-face-off

This game should have remained in the PC space, then received the original treatment Respawn planned for it.

 

[Inuhanyou]

i keep coming back to the question...if they were so dead set on 2xmsaa(which i don't see as worth it in this case), why insist on the slightly higher resolution too?? You need all the resources you can muster and that 792p isn't anywhere near of a jump away from 720p to be justified. And they are talking about increasing it? Please.

The game should just have just been 900p without AA, that's enough of a compromise, or 720p with FXAA. Atleast your getting more resources dedicated to performance

 

[Davros]

Honestly, I am kind of shocked. And as far as the 50 GB install on PC...Wha???

35gb of that is audio, 13gb is game data

As for Dark Souls 2, This is from the guys who didnt know how to program multiple resolutions.

 

[Cyan]

Next-Gen Face-Off: Titanfall
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-titanfall-next-gen-face-off

A disappointing article where an immature console like the Xbox One is compared to what they call "the PC", a mature system, not specifying What is that PC, only made in a way so the fans of other consoles can rejoice.

Using the sentence "it is a more satisfying experience on the PC" instead of the correct one which would be "it is a more satisfying experience on our PC from the NASA" kinda says it all.

The article *forgets* to mention the game is evolving on the Xbox One, and also that the game might need some extra 6 months of development.

Still a very little gain from the powerful PC Digital Foundry used when the game looks as good on the Xbox One at a marginal cost compared to that PC and with a much better sound technology, not to mention Kinect -although not used in this game, okay-.

The only thing that truly disappointed me is the presence of the black crush. Still... I wonder if DR are using the proper Limited Range or the much inferior Full Range.

They don't mention what they are using, but the console has a very useful calibration tool which wholeheartedly recommends using Limited Range, for a reason.

 

[Davros]

not specifying What is that PC,

Guess I just imagined them saying AMD FX-6300 with a GeForce GTX 760

Still a very little gain from the powerful PC Digital Foundry used

They didnt use a "powerful pc"

when the game looks as good on the Xbox One

Sorry but seeing as the video does not show the game running as good as possible on the pc. Eg: they limited the resolution to 1920x1080 how can you possibly make that claim.
and Digital foundry themselves disagree with you

but still a clearly noticeable improvement over Xbox One.

at a marginal cost compared to that PC

Its an £80 cpu and a £175 gpu total £255 you could complete the rest of the pc for not a huge amount more than the cost of an xb1. To say that the cost of the xb1 (£400) is marginal compared to the pc df used is laughable.

and with a much better sound technology,

Granted but they did choose a pc that has bottom of the barrel sound hardware (aka onboard sound)

much inferior Full Range.

Lets get something straight having more colours is not inferior, blame the game/system/monitor for not being able to handle the full range

The article *forgets* to mention the game is evolving on the Xbox One, and also that the game might need some extra 6 months of development.

I really hope your not pointing to that as an example of something good ? If the game needs 6 months work on it it shouldnt of been released.

Seems like your hurt the game is better on the pc so youve made a bunch of stuff up to defend the xb1.

 

[HTupolev]

A disappointing article where an immature console like the Xbox One is compared to what they call "the PC", a mature system, not specifying What is that PC, only made in a way so the fans of other consoles can rejoice.

In the sense that consoles can benefit from being "mature" systems versus "immature", the PC can hardly ever be considered "mature" compared to them. Sometimes more raw power, sure.

Also, they specifically point out in the article that one thing that they found surprising is that "that PC" doesn't have to be all that much more expensive than an XB1 in order to exceed it visually. DF is usually pretty safe with this stuff; in the past, when doing direct performance comparisons, they've historically pointed out exactly what their PC was. (And, after having done so, gotten tons of criticism for deliberately gimping the PC versions of games.)

The article *forgets* to mention the game is evolving on the Xbox One, and also that the game might need some extra 6 months of development.

They're not pretending to be reviewing anything other than the game as it exists today, and they're the same source we got the "it's still evolving" information from.

 

[Rangers]

I wish DF would go back to providing average framerates across clips as well. i dont care what they say, I find it a useful tool.

It would be nice to be able to know Titanfall averages 52 FPS or whatever the case may be. Of course we know that doesn't tell the full story, but it's nice info.

 

[Alucardx23]

I wish DF would go back to providing average framerates across clips as well. i dont care what they say, I find it a useful tool.

It would be nice to be able to know Titanfall averages 52 FPS or whatever the case may be. Of course we know that doesn't tell the full story, but it's nice info.

Agree, it's useful to know what the average framerate is, you have the video to show you under what context does the framerate fluctuates, so it's not like other publications that only show the average framerate without any context.

 

[pjbliverpool]

A disappointing article where an immature console like the Xbox One is compared to what they call "the PC", a mature system, not specifying

Because developers have spent the last couple of years learning how to specifically optimise their games for FX6300 / GTX 760 based systems with the benefits of a low level and low overhead API. Oh no wait...

and with a much better sound technology

In hardware no doubt, but the PC has a ton of spare CPU power to burn so any advanced game audio that the One might implement on SHAPE can probably be replicated by the PC's CPU.

 

[I.S.T.]

35gb of that is audio, 13gb is game data

As for Dark Souls 2, This is from the guys who didnt know how to program multiple resolutions.

Uncompressed audio no less. Why? Apparently dual core CPUs were having too much trouble decompressing the audio.

Which I call all of the bullshit on. All of it. It has to be some sort of bizarre loading times optimization.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The thing that you guys are all missing is that if you sit down and play Titanfall, it performs very well most of the time and it's really fun. You can look at a graph all day, but the severe frame drops are not frequent and the game is one of the best shooters in a long time.

I'm not going to sit there and say the graphics are amazing, or that the frame rate is beyond reproach, but in the end the game is fanstastic and fun to play.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Wish there was a demo so I could try it out. I missed the beta

 

[Billy Idol]

The thing that you guys are all missing is that if you sit down and play Titanfall, it performs very well most of the time and it's really fun. You can look at a graph all day, but the severe frame drops are not frequent and the game is one of the best shooters ...

I'm not going to sit there and say the graphics are amazing, or that the frame rate is beyond reproach, but in the end the game is fanstastic and fun to play.

What has 'fun to play' to do with a tech comparison?

 

[function]

Those with tunnel vision will always be looking for a single figure ("1080p") or single stat ("20 fps min") to reduce a game to a number they think they understand and can use as a cudgel or as a trophy.

DF is great and I'm glad it's there, but it's open to the same abuse as anything else, I guess.

The frame latency graphs that PC gaming sites have started to use are more useful and less easy to use as a polarising filter. I'm sure that DF are looking at ways to expand the breadth and depth of information that they can easily put across to their readers too.

DF are super, but not everyone wants to use the information and analysis they provide in a holistic fashion.

 

[Jedi2016]

So much for the "framerate is everything" argument. Seems like they were more concerned with not catching any flak about being 720p that they gave up their 60fps holy grail to do it.

 

[DrJay24]

Now I'm interested in the 360 version, mature tool chain might help play catch up.

 

[Scott_Arm]

What has 'fun to play' to do with a tech comparison?

Because people are making it seem as if the game plays poorly because of the occasional frame drop. They're looking at that number and passing a judgement that is not correct. The framerate never drops too low for too long.

The game is not a tech showcase. There seems to be a lot of room for improvement. I would prefer stable 60hz over resolution or anything else. Hopefully their second effort will be better.