Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2015]

[Clukos]

The verdict is don't talk about it because apparently there is no problem and people on B3D get mad every time you mention AF and Ps4 in the same sentence

What i believe is that it's API related and requires more effort to implement, no matter how easy it is, and that's why we see games not using AF. Ubi is not really known for producing quality ports later on anyway...

 

[Nesh]

PS4 version is 1080p and XB1 900p again?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What was the verdict in our discussion?

Lazy devs. Complicated issues between documentation, API, and developer requirements. Broken AF hardware on PS4.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

The game actually has 30fps and 60fps modes. Nice timing I guess.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Reportedly CPU bound with identical visuals, which isn't quite what was being asked in user selectable modes.

 

[Karamazov]

with that 30fps cap couldn't they bump the xbox one version to 1080p in hunter mode ?

 

[iroboto]

The verdict is don't talk about it because apparently there is no problem and people on B3D get mad every time you mention AF and Ps4 in the same sentence

What i believe is that it's API related and requires more effort to implement, no matter how easy it is, and that's why we see games not using AF. Ubi is not really known for producing quality ports later on anyway...

It's super unfair to claim every single time PS4 has lower AF settings that it's an API/BUG problem.

AF's not free man
Halo 5 Guardians, flagship game for XBO. Missing that high quality AF.
AC:BF and AC:U have the same AF to all platforms across the board - all of a sudden they have forgotten how to do AF again?

R6 Siege uses AnvilNext engine.
AnvilNext powered the following games:
AnvilNext 2.0 game engine[edit]

• Assassin's Creed Unity (2014) -> perfectly matched AF both games 900p
• Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015)
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (2015) 1080p v 900p
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands (2016)
• For Honor (2016)

We have no insight into the bottlenecks of the engine, but I can safely say from AC:U to R6:S using the same engine: the issue cannot be a bug, API, documentation issue, broken PS4 hardware. It can be just a mistake or performance.

 

[Clukos]

That theory would hold if the games having no AF on Ps4 and getting patched (DmC/Dying Light) had any performance loss after the AF patch, but that is not the case.

 

[hesido]

That theory would hold if the games having no AF on Ps4 and getting patched (DmC/Dying Light) had any performance loss after the AF patch, but that is not the case.

I'll then happily volunteer for work-from-home duty where I set AF flags for PS4 games.

 

[iroboto]

That theory would hold if the games having no AF on Ps4 and getting patched (DmC/Dying Light) had any performance loss after the AF patch, but that is not the case.

ok fair, there can be mistakes as I agreed on earlier.
But we're talking about this particular scenario here R6 Siege. And then my followup question would be is as simple as: how do you know when a game is actually bottlenecked and when it's experiencing a mistake?

If the answer is you'll never know, then lets stop with this discussion.

 

[AlNom]

AF's not free man

It's because PC folks can turn it on for "free", but bottlenecks are kinda different when you've got a PCI-E bus adding latency.

idk @Graham correct me pls.

 

[Clukos]

It's simple, it's voodoo magic. That or MS using the power of the cloud to erase anisotropic filtering from Ps4 games.

On a more serious note, that's why i said i believe it's an API issue because that's the most logical explanation from an outside perspective, and the people who know what is the issue are probably under NDA so we'll never know what's what.

 

[iroboto]

It's because PC folks can turn it on for "free", but bottlenecks are kinda different when you've got a PCI-E bus adding latency.

idk @Graham correct me pls.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=159898951&postcount=1851

not anecdotal, but i imagine performance impacts vary title to title

 

[iroboto]

It's simple, it's voodoo magic. That or MS using the power of the cloud to erase anisotropic filtering from Ps4 games.

On a more serious note, that's why i said i believe it's an API issue because that's the most logical explanation from an outside perspective, and the people who know what is the issue are probably under NDA so we'll never know what's what.

hmm . yes.

well, it is the topic that keeps on giving

 

[Globalisateur]

Come one guys, not this again. I thought it was settled. (How naive I was! )

Almost all AAA multiplat titles that have low AF on PS4 have being patched without any performance penalty.

Most small, low rated and or not demanding multiplat titles (ridiculously including PS4 & PS3 Unfinished Swan game ) that have lower AF on PS4 have never being patched.

There is one multiplat XB1 game that has lower AF and has never being patched. (Sniper Elite 3)

Except driving games where the situation (low AF or trilinear) is similar on both platforms all PS4 AAA exclusives have high level of AF (InfamousSS, TLOUR, KillzoneSF, Uncharted 1,2,3,4, Bloodborne) when all AAA XB1 exclusives have low AF or trilinear (Halo MCC, Halo 5, Tomb Raider 2).

Gears remake has high level of AF on XB1 but surprisingly runs at only 30fps in the SP compared to PS4 TLOUR and Uncharted Collection running at 60fps and high levels of AF enabled.

IMO it's in fact the XB1 hardware that has real problems with high level of anisotropic filtering.

 

[Davros]

Whats considered a high level of af in console land

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Whats considered a high level of af in console land

On

 

[nightshade]

Jokes aside most games that he mentioned as "high level AF" have it between 4x to sometimes 8x....I've rarely seen one use 16x.

 

[hesido]

Anybody willing to explain how advanced AI can cause a game to run 30fps instead of 60? (It may seem like a silly question but, can't the AI work in its own thread, decoupled from frame rate? Just let it do the big chess game in its own thread, making the big decisions every few seconds instead of every second? If they are using line of sight / path finding etc. on the GPU that may be to blame the fps loss, can't they time slice it or reduce workload so the decisions could be made in a few more frames?

 

[iroboto]

Anybody willing to explain how advanced AI can cause a game to run 30fps instead of 60? (It may seem like a silly question but, can't the AI work in its own thread, decoupled from frame rate? Just let it do the big chess game in its own thread, making the big decisions every few seconds instead of every second? If they are using line of sight / path finding etc. on the GPU that may be to blame the fps loss, can't they time slice it or reduce workload so the decisions could be made in a few more frames?

I don't think you can decouple AI from the update. Even on another thread there needs to be a point in time where the threads syncs up. You could use GPU compute for AI, but that wouldn't affect frame rate that badly since during post process part of the GPU on frame n-1, your compute code for AI should be free to go through.

In any event if you mange to somehow decouple AI in the way you describe, i believe you'll have race conditions, I think the AI would be inconsistent or just terribly behind or terribly optimized.