Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2015]

[Gitaroo]

don't understand why people are so surprised and shocked with this generation hardwares, every other console gen was outdated within the 6 months they launched, Geforce 2 > PS2. Geforce 8800 GT> 360. This gen is no different. I don't find it being out paced quicker than any previous gen, it is more or less the same. Console exclusives still look amazing than they ever were which is what consoles is really all about, thanks original Xbox that attract all pc developers to put their games on consoles so more people get to play them. And now PC gamers can thanks consoles exclusive devs to put what normally would be console exclusives on PC so PC gamers gets to enjoy them too.

 

[AlNom]

Geforce 8800 GT> 360. This gen is no different.

G80 came out a year after 360.

It was a small gap between 7800GTX & X1900 & 360 release.

I don't find it being out paced quicker than any previous gen, it is more or less the same.

Bonaire & Hawaii may have been the same year (architecture), but performance-wise this gen was outdated by years.

 

[Gitaroo]

guess I remembered wrong, I thought I got my 8800 GT a few months after 360, I remember running Lost Planet and Gears1 on PC with higher setting and res on that card.

 

[AlNom]

Both the Lost Planet and Gears windows ports also came in 2007.

RSX was certainly behind the curve though. Would say Xenos might have been the anomaly.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-star-wars-battlefront-face-off

Face-Off Star Wars Battlefront

Edit autocomplete shit

That was pretty interesting. One thing that caught my eye...

Now, while terrain rendering is of very high quality on consoles, it's clear that cutbacks were made in other areas. For example, the dense forest of Endor uses foliage placement that differs from all of the presets. More surprisingly, this is one area in which we discovered a difference between PS4 and Xbox One - there is more foliage rendered on Xbox while playing the Endor Survival map. Fortunately, there is still plenty of foliage to be found. We didn't actually notice the lack of foliage until comparing the two versions side by side, but it's fascinating to see how far DICE has gone to hit the 60fps target.

Evidently the drop from 900p to 720p for the XBO left some performance on the table in certain areas for certain things. They used that extra performance to add in some visual extras instead of a few more meaningless pixels which would have had a more deleterious effect on overall performance. Note - that doesn't mean there aren't areas where even with the drop in resolution that it still couldn't match the performance of the PS4.

Regards,
SB

 

[Recop]

Evidently the drop from 900p to 720p for the XBO left some performance on the table in certain areas for certain things. They used that extra performance to add in some visual extras instead of a few more meaningless pixels which would have had a more deleterious effect on overall performance. Note - that doesn't mean there aren't areas where even with the drop in resolution that it still couldn't match the performance of the PS4.

Regards,
SB

It's more a curiosity than something else : http://neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=186389573&postcount=191

 

[Shortbread]

It's more a curiosity than something else : http://neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=186389573&postcount=191

Bug.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Bug.

 

[DrJay24]

That was pretty interesting. One thing that caught my eye...



Evidently the drop from 900p to 720p for the XBO left some performance on the table in certain areas for certain things. They used that extra performance to add in some visual extras instead of a few more meaningless pixels which would have had a more deleterious effect on overall performance. Note - that doesn't mean there aren't areas where even with the drop in resolution that it still couldn't match the performance of the PS4.

Regards,
SB

Or it is like the infamous pipes in one BF4 shot, not all things are in the same place in all versions. I'm not so sure they would add or subtract one plant from a huge Forrest

 

[AlNom]

They should revive Starship Troopers with a Horde/Survival/Tower Defense + limb dismemberment.

and $2 Rico Packs.

 

[BRiT]

They should revive Starship Troopers with a Horde/Survival/Tower Defense + limb dismemberment.

and $2 Rico Packs.

I'd buy that for $1!

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'd buy that for $1!

Robocop vs Starship Troopers

 

[AzBat]

Robocop vs Starship Troopers

Tommy McClain

 

[Cyan]

We are constantly using virtual machines with VirtualBox for study purposes, and I wonder if Digital Foundry could create an article on the performance impact of a virtual machine on the Xbox One -I read fellow forumers here saying that the fact that X1 runs as a virtual machine can impact its performance- using VirtualBox on the PC and test to what degree it impacts performance.

 

[Shortbread]

We are constantly using virtual machines with VirtualBox for study purposes, and I wonder if Digital Foundry could create an article on the performance impact of a virtual machine on the Xbox One -I read fellow forumers here saying that the fact that X1 runs as a virtual machine can impact its performance- using VirtualBox on the PC and test to what degree it impacts performance.

I'm not to fimilar with all the workings of the XB1 hardware and OS... but from my understanding, the impact of the two vms and the hypervisor has very little (if any) impact on performance. The XB1 hypervisor is (should be) type-1 with direct access to the hardware... Vs. type-2 that is most commonly used in PCs/Servers running within the main OS environment. Maybe someone else can fill in all the gaps for you... but I'm fairly certain XB1 performance isn't taking a beating.

 

[Scott_Arm]

We are constantly using virtual machines with VirtualBox for study purposes, and I wonder if Digital Foundry could create an article on the performance impact of a virtual machine on the Xbox One -I read fellow forumers here saying that the fact that X1 runs as a virtual machine can impact its performance- using VirtualBox on the PC and test to what degree it impacts performance.

It's not like that. It's more like a VMware server. It's running a low-level hypervisor that's aggressively optimized for hosting two specific operating systems.

 

[Shortbread]

Sony unlocks more CPU power for PS4 game developers

Just one source then, but a compelling one. Over the weekend we consulted our contacts and can confirm that Core 6 has indeed been unlocked and is available for game developers to utilise. However, there are a couple of caveats here. First of all, it's highly likely that existing games will have no access to the additional CPU power by default - unless the developer in question decides to update the title via a patch to specifically add support.

Right now it's not entirely clear whether similar conditions are in place at all on PlayStation 4, but one source informs us that PlayStation 4's debugging and analysis tool - called Razor - "splits the activity on that core between user and system", which does seem to suggest that the seventh processing core is shared to a certain extent between the OS and game.

However, after that article was posted... http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=187268946

full core for gaming, sdk update 2 months ago, 1st party exclusive for now.

 

[iroboto]

Sony unlocks more CPU power for PS4 game developers
However, after that article was posted... http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=187268946

Pretty good. I guess they either worked really hard on optimizing that OS, or they decided that certain future features were no longer going to be used.

I know this is a PS4 thread, but anyone following the XBO dash updates, a large complaint is the removal of Kinect features in the OS. One of the big ones was the Kinect would deactivate controllers when you stopped holding onto them (to save battery life). This feature silently removed everyone has noticed considerably more controller drain. But I think a large part of that was removing that CPU reserve to have that type of functionality going. New controllers don't even have the infrared communicators! lol

Anyway, just an interesting footnote of how far these companies need to go to keep pushing.

PS. Thanks Richard Leadbetter

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm more than happy for Sony to surrender reserved resources to games but then I don't use my PS4 for anything other than games. If I'm in the UI it's because I'm starting it up, shutting it down or switching between games. I have other (and more capable) devices for everything else.

 

[goonergaz]

Well obviously, there's no one box that's best at everything - that shouldn't mean Sony just ignore the fact some of us either prefer less wires or a cheaper 'all-in-one' solution.