Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[HTupolev]

I'm surprised at how blurry the 360 version looks, and also how close the X1 version looks to 1080P, despite being ~1/2 the pixels.

Part of the closeness between the XB1 and 1080p is coming from the horrible jpeg artifacts. There are spots in the 1080p image where the compression didn't kill high-frequency details too badly, where you can tell that the source is significantly sharper than the XB1 image. Also, increasing your pixels by 85% over 792p might be a bit less impactful than 78% over the much lower 600p baseline (and that's especially true when you remove the nativeness advantage of the 1080p by jpeg'ing it, which at high compressions pretty badly screws with the idea of the original pixel grid).

Also, the 360 version uses very low-quality textures compared with the XB1 version and decent PC configurations, in addition to texture streaming.

 

[zed]

Yet to me the 360 version is very blurry

Judging by that shots its not the screen resolution thats making the difference by the texture resolution. Im guessing the 360 textures are 1/4 size or something

if you want to test resolution only (and not texture res) then something like this is better

seems about equal jumps 360 > xbone > pc

 

[DrJay24]

From someone who has actually played TF, I think Respawn did a great job, all things considered. Performance is good, graphics, while not mind blowing, are not bad at all, but most importantly, they pretty much nailed the game play. Overall, it's a damn good first effort. It's nice to see it selling well. It certainly deserves it.

I think objectively speaking it is not. They wanted 60fps ("frame rate is everything") and they did not get very close. The rest is subjective and not what the thread is about. If they had a few more months, which is what the game probably needed, they could have reached their target without sacrifices. They pushed this out the door a bit premature.

 

[NRP]

Frame rate isn't a problem with this game. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your typical narrative, but whatever. I hope you are at least consistent across all games/platforms in your condemnation of "missing PR check box targets".

 

[DrJay24]

Frame rate isn't a problem with this game. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your typical narrative, but whatever. I hope you are at least consistent across all games/platforms in your condemnation of "missing PR check box targets".

I'm glad we have something measurable rather than fan opinion for technical aspects of games. You simply can't wish away the bad frame rate and screen tearing no matter how much fun the game is.

 

[Wynix]

Frame rate isn't a problem with this game. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your typical narrative, but whatever. I hope you are at least consistent across all games/platforms in your condemnation of "missing PR check box targets".

The framerate is bad, don't get so emotional about it.

 

[TheWretched]

I'm glad we have something measurable rather than fan opinion for technical aspects of games. You simply can't wish away the bad frame rate and screen tearing no matter how much fun the game is.

But with this game you actually can... it does provide VSync via options...

If the screen-tear, inconsistent frame-rate and varying controller response is too much for you, Bluepoint has offered up an alternative - the ability to lock frame-rate at 30fps.

 

[Wynix]

^ Bluepoint do an excellent job.

 

[DrJay24]

But with this game you actually can... it does provide VSync via options...

We were talking about the XB1 version. But even if they patch in a 30fps cap, how does that help them reach their 60fps goal?

 

[TheWretched]

We were talking about the XB1 version. But even if they patch in a 30fps cap, how does that help them reach their 60fps goal?

Oh sorry... I assumed we were past the X0 version... it's been released several weeks ago.

 

[djskribbles]

Frame rate isn't a problem with this game. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your typical narrative, but whatever. I hope you are at least consistent across all games/platforms in your condemnation of "missing PR check box targets".

Performance is at least subjectively bad. Not everyone will think so, but 60fps when not much is going on and 30-50fps with heavy screen tearing when Titans are on screen could easily be considered bad by some.

 

[zed]

Frame rate isn't a problem with this game. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your typical narrative, but whatever. I hope you are at least consistent across all games/platforms in your condemnation of "missing PR check box targets".

I hope I am consistent across all platforms
The problem with titanfall WRT framrate is the devs have been saying for a long long time 'framerate is king, 60fps consistent very important etc'

yet they ship a game with massive amounts of tearing, and long patches of sub 60fps and sometimes sub 30fps.
They were nowhere near 60fps solid, so much for the 'framerate is king' idea.
If anything the media let respawn off lightly

 

[Goodtwin]

I think they did a good job. In a lot of ways, Titanfall on 360 is a more impressive feat than it was for X1. I think the ability to Vsync at 30fps is a phenomenal option, and honestly, I think perhaps 30fps should have been the target for the older hardware from the beginning. Imagine if they were to have aimed for 30fps, the game would probably look quite a bit better on 360 and would still maintain the 30fps Vsync most of the time.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I hope I am consistent across all platforms
The problem with titanfall WRT framrate is the devs have been saying for a long long time 'framerate is king, 60fps consistent very important etc'

yet they ship a game with massive amounts of tearing, and long patches of sub 60fps and sometimes sub 30fps.
They were nowhere near 60fps solid, so much for the 'framerate is king' idea.
If anything the media let respawn off lightly

Have you played Titanfall on X1 for any length of time? I'm just curious, because this keeps coming up.

The game stays above 50fps the vast majority of the time when you're a pilot. It's probably 60fps most of the time. When you're in a titan, that's when things slow down, but it's extremely rare that it would drop below 40fps. If you're going by the Digital Foundry video, you're basically watching a highlight reel of absolutely worst case scenarios, not regular play. 30fps is the situation where you have several titans around you, all firing rockets, everything is exploding, you're getting hit. It happens maybe once in a match. The framerate is not perfect. I would like for it to be rock solid 60fps, but it's still on average very good, and much better than 99% of games last gen.

 

[DrJay24]

Have you played Titanfall on X1 for any length of time? I'm just curious, because this keeps coming up.

The game stays above 50fps the vast majority of the time when you're a pilot. It's probably 60fps most of the time. When you're in a titan, that's when things slow down, but it's extremely rare that it would drop below 40fps. If you're going by the Digital Foundry video, you're basically watching a highlight reel of absolutely worst case scenarios, not regular play. 30fps is the situation where you have several titans around you, all firing rockets, everything is exploding, you're getting hit. It happens maybe once in a match. The framerate is not perfect. I would like for it to be rock solid 60fps, but it's still on average very good, and much better than 99% of games last gen.

Not according the DF. The frame rate dips into the 40s when one guy is on the screen and not much is happening. See around 1:00. This does not look like a waorse case video, it looks like a standard match. The frame rate rarely seems to reach 50 in combat, out of the Titan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihU3J4dZNzA&list=UU9PBzalIcEQCsiIkq36PyUA

 

[taisui]

All I'm gonna say is that some of you need to have ONE freaking standard if you are going to start arguing about "what the dev promised" and "what they actually delivered".

I see the same people bitching about not meeting the fps/resolution goal when it comes to games that you don't even own, and praised the other it comes to the games that you like.

Really...?

 

[Globalisateur]

For what I have watched and understood about the XB1 version, the game runs at 60fps locked as long as there are no Titans nearby. So the first minutes of each games the game plays like COD at 60fps.

But things change a lot when Titans come in play, then I think we could say XB1 and X360 version run at a similar fluctuating framerates. XB1 seems to have a slight average advantage but X360 seems more stable and has less sub-20fps dips.

But surprisingly on X360 video Digital foundry only measured the fps when Titans were already out in the map and never during the first minutes of gameplay (like in the XB1 perf videos) where, I assume, the game may possibly run at a locked 60fps because it even runs some short times at 60fps with Titans on the map on the X360 version.

 

[Lalaland]

For what I have watched and understood about the XB1 version, the game runs at 60fps locked as long as there are no Titans nearby. So the first minutes of each games the game plays like COD at 60fps.

But things change a lot when Titans come in play, then I think we could say XB1 and X360 version run at a similar fluctuating framerates. XB1 seems to have a slight average advantage but X360 seems more stable and has less sub-20fps dips.

But surprisingly on X360 video Digital foundry only measured the fps when Titans were already out in the map and never during the first minutes of gameplay (like in the XB1 perf videos) where, I assume, the game may possibly run at a locked 60fps because it even runs some short times at 60fps with Titans on the map on the X360 version.

This is more of a DF preview article as within the text he states "We have much more to cover for the Face-Off" so I'd imagine we'll get all that the. It seems like a very solid job at the moment though.

 

[DrJay24]

What technical reason would there be for a Titan on the screen making the engine work harder? I can see if they all fire at the same time and cause a bunch of transparencies, but what if they are just walking?

 

[Davros]

maybe its very high poly, they are supposed to be the star of the show after all.