Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2014]

[Shifty Geezer]

It's not because of QA standards. It's because complexity in games has increased massively.

It's both. The cost of QA prior to PS3 was much lower and the cost for significant faults much higher (couldn't update a broken game so HAD to release it in working condition). Now software is more complex with more opportunities for faults, which testing and refining that prior to release is more expense that publisher care to spend, and the option to patch after release means they can save on QA costs and use new owners as free beta testers.

 

[AlNom]

Certainly don't mind multiplayer beta... although having them less than a month from retail release seems a bit crunchy.

 

[taisui]

usually they are there to test server loads (and also to hype up the game)

 

[joker454]

On the PC you have many of the same bugs, and more on top of those thanks to the huge amount of different configuations.

I dunno, I haven't seen that 90% loading bug affect pc. Have you? Whatever the case may be, we're no longer at "insert game, play" on consoles. It might be play, can't connect to server. Or play, save game gets corrupted. Or play, and stuck at loading screen. Or play, game ends due to scripting bug. Or play, console locks up during boss battle. Or play, get kicked out of online game. Either way, it shows that gamers be they on pc or console are willing to accept a certain amount of crap to get more elaborate and prettier games. Dealing with "issues" isn't a uniquely pc gamer thing anymore, software failure has become an accepted norm even on console.

 

[-tkf-]

I dunno, I haven't seen that 90% loading bug affect pc. Have you? Whatever the case may be, we're no longer at "insert game, play" on consoles. It might be play, can't connect to server. Or play, save game gets corrupted. Or play, and stuck at loading screen. Or play, game ends due to scripting bug. Or play, console locks up during boss battle. Or play, get kicked out of online game. Either way, it shows that gamers be they on pc or console are willing to accept a certain amount of crap to get more elaborate and prettier games. Dealing with "issues" isn't a uniquely pc gamer thing anymore, software failure has become an accepted norm even on console.

No, and I think you know what I meant. The gameplay bugs are usually universal and on top of that you have the classic pc issues. End result is a worse experience on the PC until the patches gets around and fixes the bugs. Then they are equally bad/good.

 

[kalelovil]

They should just fix the bloody game before they release it. Considering the supposedly power surplus the PC should have no issues running this game.

According to Digital Foundry the issues seem to be with the ultra graphics setting in particular, you can run it at 1080p on the console-level high setting with something as midrange as the Geforce GTX 750 Ti (although I assume Digital Foundry was using an otherwise high-end system).

Dropping down to the GTX 750 Ti gave us the same experience at the high quality level - effectively a match for PS4, but with a full 1080p resolution.

 

[RedVi]

I haven't played watch dogs, but wasnt Far Cry 3 exactly the same? At ultra settings it would stutter on all PC's. Playing around with the frame buffering made a difference, but it was never flawless. Seems like ubisoft just like to brute force everything for their 'ultra' settings and pay little regard to efficiency.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Yay, another opportunity to play with the settings and experiment!

This is kind of my whole point. I don't want to do this. The PC argument is always, 'you can have what performance you are willing to invest in' (and tweak) and while that's entirely true and while I actually quite liked doing it when I was younger and single and had more time than I knew what to do with, I don't anymore. So spending time tweaking and testing settings, experimenting how far I can overlock the CPU and GPU mean less game time, which is already limited.

The answer for me is a console - I let the developers balance and tweak for a set piece of hardware. The answer for others may be different.

As you say this is a matter of preference. It's not even a time thing, I'm neither single, nor spend a lot of time on combined tweaking/gaming. However I actually enjoy the tweaking as much (if not even more in fact) than the gaming itself. Having this all done for me out of the box is my definition of a boring experience.

That's why even though GeForce Experience does exist on the PC which will do all this for you (somewhat mitigating the argument that you HAVE to spend time doing this on the PC) I personally don't go near it.

And back on topic, has anyone actually tried the GF Experience defaults in this game?

From the sounds of the DF article the only way to get a truly smooth experience is to lock the game at the same 30fps that the consoles use via 2 frame vsync.

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

I don't think console gamers have become more tolerant. In the old days QA assured you of virtually zero bugs because patches weren't an option. Now games can and do ship with bugs and you've little choice but to put up with them same as PC gamers. The alternative is to basically boycott gaming altogether, or at least wait a year before playing anything to ensure you get the bug-fixed version, which is a practice that'd kill the current gaming industry if everyone followed it!

I've had console freezes and PC freezes over the past years - neither platform is perfect. I'd probably say Win 7 crashed less than my PS3 though, as outside of Skype a while back (which could blue screen Win 7), it's been very stable. But that's mostly because I can close individual frozen apps. I still get app crashes but they don't take down the whole machine like a console game will.

Console crashes have gone up considerably since network communications came into the equation in my experience. Games seem to have really poor handling of poor network connections. I've lost count at the amount of times I've seen a console crash/hang at the same time my Internet has been flakey. Frequently pulling the network connection from the console would cause it to spring back to life. I would probably expect a console crash once every month or two. I'd actually say the PS4, this early in it's life is less error prone than the 360 was at the end.


Back on topic, Ubisoft make absolutely no sense in their communication. "More than 3GB vram is needed for ultra settings/the NG consoles use more than 3GB for video", and in the same breath "We're working on a patch to improve performance".

 

[Rangers]

Yeah I noticed that, Ubisoft said next gen consoles can use 3+ GB for VRAM in Watch Doge.

When I first learned next gen had 8GB RAM, I thought something like geez, PC cards have a long way to go to catch up. You'd probably need to buy a 6-8GB PC card to futurproof against console ports. Which, 12 months ago were even more rare/expensive.

Turns out you have only 5GB usable in the consoles, and 1-2GB+ will probably be for system code. So a 3GB AMD card, which is fairly standard, is probably fine. It turned out far from the horror it looked like.

 

[DavidGraham]

Consoles have 80% of PC problems, they need OS patches, game patches, application patches, they hang, stutter, pause and reset, on top of that not immune to hardware faults. The only extra thing PCs have over consoles is DX/VC++/drivers errors, and those are mitigated by keeping your PC up to date. or by having other applications do it for you, like Steam or Geforce Experience.

And back on topic, has anyone actually tried the GF Experience defaults in this game?

I did, it gets everything right except for the texture settings, it insists on me using Ultra textures because I have 3GB of VRAM, and we all know Ultra textures are unusable right now even with more than that.

From the sounds of the DF article the only way to get a truly smooth experience is to lock the game at the same 30fps that the consoles use via 2 frame vsync.

Only with Ultra textures, with High textures it is very smooth except for the occasional stutter here and there.

 

[-tkf-]

According to Digital Foundry the issues seem to be with the ultra graphics setting in particular, you can run it at 1080p on the console-level high setting with something as midrange as the Geforce GTX 750 Ti (although I assume Digital Foundry was using an otherwise high-end system).

Well this is what they wrote, and i have to admit i haven't bought this game since the reviews doesn't warrant my money.

Only by lowering texture quality from ultra to high did we improve matters, and even then the stutter wasn't completely eliminated. We also factored out graphical quality presets too by dropping down to medium settings - and yet still we saw dips in overall performance. Additionally, we were running the game from SSD on a SATA3 connection.

So even though they drop the settings to what might be BELOW console levels, stu stu stu stuttering is still present. They stream from a SSD disk, hardly basic hardware, and afaik they run it on a 6 Core i7

And the AMD owners are even more screwed.. sucky software on the PC platform, just waiting for the patch to fix it all, i would guess it will take several patches, at least one round of driver updates..

Welcome to PC gaming..

 

[pjbliverpool]

So even though they drop the settings to what might be BELOW console levels, stu stu stu stuttering is still present. They stream from a SSD disk, hardly basic hardware, and afaik they run it on a 6 Core i7

That's not how I read it. As far as I can tell - especially when you take into account the videos DF posted they are referring only to 1 frame vsync when talking about the stuttering issues. And in that scenario the stuttering appears to be coming from frame times fluctuating between 16ms and 33ms.

With a 60hz monitor you can apply 2 frame vsync to lock the game at 30fps (like the consoles) and get a completely consistent 30fps frame rate assuming your able to hit every frame in under 33ms. Check out the 290x vs 780Ti video. Especially when textures are at high, neither ever goes over 33ms. If prevented from going below that with vsync it should result in a perfect (albeit 30fps) framerate.

Here's what DF specifically say about it:

One element of the PC version that does deserve praise is the inclusion of what Ubisoft Montreal calls a two-frame v-sync. Assuming you have a 60Hz display, this is effectively a 30fps cap, with proper frame-pacing (that is, a cadence of a unique frame followed by a duplicate). You're limiting your maximum performance level of course, but there's a reason why most console developers cap at 30fps: it ensures a consistent gameplay experience,

 

[SeeNoWeevil]

Consoles have 80% of PC problems

That doesn't correlate with what you see in any support forum for any current multi-platform game. Here's the current front page of the WD one. Also factor in the much smaller install base of PC users. Same thing goes for the Wolfenstein forum, 3 pages of PC support threads, 1 for PS4.

 

[pjbliverpool]

That doesn't correlate with what you see in any support forum for any current multi-platform game. Here's the current front page of the WD one. Also factor in the much smaller install base of PC users. Same thing goes for the Wolfenstein forum, 3 pages of PC support threads, 1 for PS4.

That's extremely unrepresentative for several reasons. First, there's no specific evidence that the install base of PC users is "much smaller". The purchased copies on the PC include both retail and digital for which there are no reliable figures but in addition to that, while it's completely wrong, there will be a huge amount of pirated copies which are also driving those support threads.

In addition, PC gamers on average are significantly more net savy than console gamers (fair enough, geeky!) and are thus much more likely to start support threads related to specific games.

 

[djskribbles]

That's extremely unrepresentative for several reasons. First, there's no specific evidence that the install base of PC users is "much smaller". The purchased copies on the PC include both retail and digital for which there are no reliable figures but in addition to that, while it's completely wrong, there will be a huge amount of pirated copies which are also driving those support threads.

In addition, PC gamers on average are significantly more net savy than console gamers (fair enough, geeky!) and are thus much more likely to start support threads related to specific games.

That may all be true. But PS4 also has digital sales (admittedly probably a much lower percentage), and they had exclusive marketing rights. I'd wager that the PS4 version outsold the PC version by around 2:1 or more.

 

[pjbliverpool]

That may all be true. But PS4 also has digital sales (admittedly probably a much lower percentage), and they had exclusive marketing rights. I'd wager that the PS4 version outsold the PC version by around 2:1 or more.

I don't doubt it. But I mentioned a couple of other reasons why the support forums may feature more PC issues than consoles issues that aren't really related to which platform SELLS more.

Not good reasons mind you, but real reasons nontheless.

 

[djskribbles]

I see your point, and I mostly agree. But I do think that console games generally have less issues. Less variables etc.

Only read the last couple of posts in this discussion, so forgive me if I'm OT.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I see your point, and I mostly agree. But I do think that console games generally have less issues. Less variables etc.

Only read the last couple of posts in this discussion, so forgive me if I'm OT.

I agree. But the difference is much less than it once was.

 

[Arwin]

May be true, but I must say, my PS4 experience so far has been near flawless, gaming wise.