Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2015]

[function]

That article isn't saying that resolution doesn't matter though.

 

[Scott_Arm]

That article isn't saying that resolution doesn't matter though.

Literacy doesn't matter.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The reference to the article was tongue in cheek.
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1832922/
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1832937/

 

[chris1515]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-bloodborne-performance-analysis

DF and Bloodborne. Some not frequent slowdown but a big problem of frame pacing. And long loading time.

 

[goonergaz]

yeah was watching streams last night - the loading is like ~50 seconds each death...pretty unacceptable IMO

 

[Billy Idol]

yeah was watching streams last night - the loading is like ~50 seconds each death...pretty unacceptable IMO

50 seconds?!?! Holy shit...that doesn't sound good in a game were one is supposed to die a lot

 

[Shortbread]

"The development team is currently exploring another patch for Bloodborne, seeking ways to improve load time duration, in addition to other performance optimisations and miscellaneous bug fixes," it reads. "We will provide more information as soon as possible."

 

[goonergaz]

yeah, I noticed it was taking a while so I thought I'd time the next one...like you say, for a game with regular deaths it's really bad. You also have a splash screen of the game title while you wait which isn't great (again, IMHO). I read on GAF someone mentioned a patch to help the laod times so fingers crossed!

edit - @ shortbread - this day one patch buisness seems to be getting out of hand, I guess it's not a broken game, but it's becoming a worrying trend

 

[Shortbread]

I agree about patches (multiple patches) becoming the norm and quite annoying on game consoles... but I rather have them - than not. Plus, being a PC gamer I'm use to the sh**. :/

 

[goonergaz]

yeah, and being the PS4 auto-patches it's all good - but I think it's more the releasing a game before it's ready...like I said, I suppose this isn't game breaking (tho the loading speed might be control breaking )

 

[Arwin]

In the old days, you'd have been stuck with those 50 seconds forever. Not so sure there would be many differences otherwise. Drive club could have gone either way, shipped even later with more features, shipped the same as now without patches, or perhaps may never even have been released in the first place.

 

[chris1515]

http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=157265677

Dark 10(John Linneman Digital Foundry)
tells framerate is not a big problem but framepacing and long loading are bad.

I think what you're not understanding here is the difference in performance between the two games. You can't throw them both under the "performance problems" umbrella without discussing just how much worse Assassin's Creed Unity actually is. The lowest reported frame-rate we have from Bloodborne so far (24 fps - something rather uncommon during gameplay) is faster than the typical average frame-rate of Assassin's Creed Unity. ACU spends a HUGE amount of time *UNDER* 25 fps. It is consistently choppy in a huge number of its scenarios.

Bloodborne basically holds ~30fps where fluidity is compromised by a bug. It is annoying and it does disrupt the fluidity but it is not even remotely in the same ballpark as the damn near unplayable ACU (especially on PS4).

Bloodborne actually runs SMOOTHER than previous Souls games on console, when you get right down to it, especially the insanely jittery Dark Souls 2.

Originally Posted by pixlexic
Also when Mario kart was literally torn apart for its one double frame at 60fps lol.

I also think that situation was a bit different (though blown out of proportion) and it centers on expectations. People expect Nintendo to deliver a certain level of performance with certain series. Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Super Mario games, etc are all 60fps experiences. Nobody expected the issue in Mario Kart 8 to appear and it took us all by surprise. It was an unexpected problem which is why I think people flipped out.

Like it or not, since last generation, FROM Software has struggled to put out games with smooth frame-rates. None of the Souls games ran all that well but they were still much smoother than the Armored Core series, for instance. Ninja Blade was also a huge mess on 360. That's how they roll. It sucks, but it's expected and people were able to enjoy the games regardless. Expectations are the key element here.

ACU was shit on so heavily for a few reasons, I think

1) The frame-rate was really really bad - possibly the worst we'd seen on current generation consoles, really. Something like Daylight might actually be worse but for a AAA release it was just awful.

2) It ran better on Xbox One. This was the real kicker and the thing that triggered the shit storm.

3) The game itself was just a buggy, broken mess.

4) UbiSoft had been slowly pissing people off with downgrades, Uplay, and DLC nonsense not to mention the huge number of tower climbing simulators.

 

[Globalisateur]

Strange because reading the DF article they made it sound like the games regularly runs at 24fps as they mention it as soon as they can in the article, very eagerly, so many people will naturally think the game often runs at that level, as they naturally ought to think.

But they did similar thing with TLOU RE, with their 44fps minimum number (they were very eager to mention in the article like here) and many people afterwards thought (and are still thinking as they should because the way the DF article was written) the game was a fluctuating ~45fps game...When the game reached that framerate once or twice in a ~20 hours game...

 

[AlNom]

Strange because reading the DF article they made it sound like the games regularly runs at 24fps

What are you talking about?

Across the breadth of our tests in both Central Yarnham and the Hunter's Dream hub area, genuine drops are infrequent, but a factor that drags performance down to brief lows of 24fps.

as they mention it as soon as they can in the article, very eagerly, so many people will naturally think the game often runs at that level, as they naturally ought to think.

Strange because reading many of your posts in the DF thread you care more about some strawman interpretation that's based on some fundamental comprehension/translation issue than discussing technical bits.

But they did similar thing with TLOU RE, with their 44fps minimum number (they were very eager to mention in the article like here) and many people afterwards thought (and are ...

This is eager?

Performance compared to PS3 is night and day. Infrequent drops to 50fps (with 46fps being the lowest on record) are the worst of it, most notably during the initial Bloater boss battle. There are occasional dips besides this around flooded inner-city areas, but the experience is predominantly on the 60fps line. Compared to the PS3, with its variable 20-30fps readout, we're looking at a frame-time reading that sticks largely to a sharp, responsive 16ms, while the PS3 routinely dips as low as 50ms.

It's just reporting what the low was. How do you misinterpret that the results were favourable?

-------

If you have a problem with the editorial, go e-mail the folks and just stick to the technical discussion here. Enough of your off-topic misinterpretations.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Glad to see on the whole the game is smooth sailing. I was dreading another blighttown incident, but it seems performance is the best From has put out yet outside of the frame pacing which seems to be a relatively easy fix and the loading times which i hope they can mitigate

 

[Globalisateur]

I can understand that people here take into account the importance of adjectives or adverbs when they read technical stuff and are not that much impressed with an exceptional minimal (or maximal) number that could mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

But unfortunately that's not how it (the understanding) works for most people reading technical articles.

Anyway sorry for being off-topic (again) here.

 

[HTupolev]

Gah, frame pacing. I wonder what the causes are. Strange correction of timing issues after a small spike occurs? Use of systems that hang up on some frames but let other frames get processed in reasonable time? In serious cases it can be quite annoying.

I can understand that people here take into account the importance of adjectives or adverbs when they read technical stuff and are not that much impressed with an exceptional minimal (or maximal) number that could mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

But unfortunately that's not how it (the understanding) works for most people reading technical articles.

No, it is. In the event that it isn't, they weren't actually trying to read the article for what it is anyway. That usage of those words isn't special to technical articles.

There absolutely are cases of things being written to be misread; Microsoft NPD PR is a great example of this, as demonstrated by the back-and-forth of silliness that can sometimes occur in the GAF threads. A recent case was the "with record January sales for Xbox One and more game sales per console than any other platform," where a lot of people read the second part as "more game sales than any other platform." I'm not seeing that DF's English has anything resembling that sort of twisting-about, though.

 

[shredenvain]

From what I have seen from ign's review commentary for Bloodborne. It seems that most of the frame drops come in when entering levels as a slight loading stutter.
They claim it doesn't really seem to happen much when your in actual combat.
They say it stems from broad camera movements. There are a ton of titles that have quick pauses or stutters in frame rate when they are background loading. Even some titles that maintain a steady 60 fps can have these issues.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The 50 second load penalty is a design choice - you really don't want to die!

 

[AlNom]

Gah, frame pacing. I wonder what the causes are. Strange correction of timing issues after a small spike occurs? Use of systems that hang up on some frames but let other frames get processed in reasonable time? In serious cases it can be quite annoying.

Yeah, I am not sure I understand it either, especially after a number of developers keep having the problem.

The destiny beta article mentions that the Bungie engineers "force" the current frame to be output a second time IIRC. I suppose that would imply that the renderer can still go faster than whatever naive frame rate limiter they have in place thus potentially spitting out a new frame @ the next 16.67ms interval.

So maybe (for example)....

11 23 34 45 56 77 88 89 99 etc.

Frame 1 - two intervals where the renderer could only complete one unique frame
Frame 2/6 - miraculously finishes within 16ms
Frame 3/4/5/7 - hits target rate
Frame 8/9 - take three intervals (or longer) to complete

(Not sure if I did this right, it's 5am )

edit: or... gah... then it has to catch up in more extreme cases (speed-up issue?) Vaguely recall some funny business in a TR article.