Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2016 - 2017]

[Clukos]

DF are saying the image is relatively stable when stationary but has aliasing during motion, could very well be something with their AA or how they reconstruct the image. The result is very blury but it seems to be stable and aliasing free for the most part.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Quantum Break 740p 30 fps on Xbox One

Do you mean 720p?

 

[chris1515]

Do you mean 720p?

720p

 

[orangpelupa]

Hopefully it's worth the resolution sacrifice.

720p is completely fine to be upscaled to 1080p. Most video I watched are 720p and it's still looks great.

 

[Billy Idol]

But the source of the 720p videos you watch might be 1080p or higher and then down sampled to 720p, thus supersampled?? Upscaling in this case should work better than upscaling a source res of 720p, right?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

720p is completely fine to be upscaled to 1080p. Most video I watched are 720p and it's still looks great.

Yup. I think people get obsessive about the numbers but it's the end result that matters. Quantum Break looks incredible. I don't care what coding voodoo they did with numbers smaller than 1080 if the end result looks that good.

 

[Clukos]

Numbers matter when it comes to image quality though, even if it's not the only factor. I agree that QB ends up looking better than any 720p title, their AA is really good in 95% of the footage shown so far (the other 5% being jittering artifacts and visible ghosting in high contrast areas). Performance might actually be a bigger problem than resolution in the later parts of the game, the game can't hold it stable in these relatively quiet initial first 2 chapters.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Numbers also matter when it comes to bandwidth. You need to nip and tuck where you can to make things happen at all.

 

[orangpelupa]

But the source of the 720p videos you watch might be 1080p or higher and then down sampled to 720p, thus supersampled?? Upscaling in this case should work better than upscaling a source res of 720p, right?

Hmm from the DF article, the anti aliasing in QB is good enough.

Sure in 720p video there is no aliasing. But if QB can deliver the awesome overall visual quality, with good enough AA, 720p can be good looking.

Sure it will be even better if it's also high res and luckily, people do able to experience it as long as they have awesome pc.

Btw real life looking stuff is more tolerant to low res than artificial stuff with sharp edges.

Human video at 720p still looks nice in 1080p display. But 720p anime looks blurry in 1080p display.

But there also other factor.. Different upscale method give fast my different result.

720p anime when upscaled using EVR or madvr (forgot the settings), still looks awesome in 1080p.

So. If QB have good enough visual quality, including decent AA, it could look good in 1080p when upscaled using proper algorithm.

From the trailers, looks like QB nailed it.

 

[London Geezer]

Not the video@720p vs videogames@720 talk again?

Video at 720p looks good because it's pretty much downsampled from the original render at INFINITE RESOLUTION [emoji769] - reality.

Rendering at 720p is different.

 

[orangpelupa]

It still looks good though

 

[steveOrino]

Maybe the highest quality footage available from the final build of QB as well!

Yeah, no kidding. All the previous footage I have seen of the game looks like its been re compressed 5 times over.

I mean the game looks good enough for resolution output (a bit too soft for my liking) but other rendering elements like shadow draw distance/resolution, texture filtering, low resolution reflection and pop-in hurt the overall consistency of the visuals. Frame buffer size is the least of its issues imo.

But then again the gameplay elements of the time mechanic interest me more than the graphics of QB.

 

[London Geezer]

It still looks good though

Oh it looks amazing, just making a point

 

[nightshade]

Sometime last year or the year before there was rumor going on that QB runs at 720P. Then later people started saying it's more around 900P. Now we have a final pixel count and seems like the rumour was true after all.

What I find disappointing is that the shadow draw distance and texture filtering are poop, eventhough it's running at that resolution and has dips in framerate.

 

[Starx]

I can't find any edge on DF pics to appropriate for pixel-counting!

http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_1.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_2.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_3.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_4.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_5.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_6.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_1.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_2.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_3.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_4.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_5.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_6.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1

 

[Starx]

Further adding to the visual quality is ambient occlusion adding self shadows and depth to edges, contact parts of a scene. The team use a screen space solution here Line Sweep Ambient Occlusion which works from the depth buffer and looks to be a pretty good solution with again some signs of it screen space process when occluded but this is true of pretty much all ambient occlusion methods but it looks good here. Geometry is handled separately and more inline with HBAO techniques with it all calculated at 720p (as many portions of a games render are made up of various resolutions) to help reduce its cost down to less than 1.4ms on the XboxOne GPU, this is also where some got confused with the game rendering at 720p which it does not, at this point 1080p is the games target output.

http://nxgamer.com/previews/quantum-break-technical-preview

 

[Ike Turner]

I can't find any edge on DF pics to appropriate for pixel-counting!

http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_1.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_2.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_3.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_4.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_5.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/2/QB_6.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_1.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_2.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_3.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_4.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_5.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1
http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/1/9/2/0/3/QB_6.bmp.jpg/EG11/resize/1920x-1

Yeah can't figure how DF pixel counted 720P. Maybe they should have waited for an answer from Remedy before..but it's admittedly a slow week end..so they needed those clicks..
Anyway some of the press who attended the preview where told that QB was 1080P on Xbox..lets wait for an official word..

 

[Clukos]

If the game is indeed running at a native 1080p it's the softest looking native game by far. Like, it makes The Order look sharp soft. DF contacted Remedy though so if the game is indeed running at 1920x1080 we should know very soon!

A few example shots of The Order, which was criticized and dismissed by some for its "soft" look

 

[powdercore]

EG even showed the Remedy presentation on how they do lighting. The lighting and other effects are done at a resolution of 720p but the game itself runs at 1080p. Isn't this typical of game development?

It's even stated in the presentation. NX Gamer says the effects are done at 720p but the final render is 1080p native. EG clearly caused a ton of confusion with this 720p revelation just weeks before the game is launched. Heck, they could've done this analysis a long time ago and asked Remedy a long time ago but nope let's do an article on 720p with two weeks from release. They effectively poisoned the well with a very good looking game. Yes it's soft for certain people, but the AA is so good that even EG is having a hard time finding aliasing edges.

And I have no idea how they concluded 720p based on the the pictures that they provided. So it seems they concluded on 720p based on the lighting and the softness. Don't forget The Order 1886 looked pretty soft and that was rendered in native 1080p.

 

[powdercore]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-hands-on-with-quantum-break

Quantum Break 720p 30 fps on Xbox One

My understanding is the final render is 1080p native but the lighting are done at 720p. I think this is typical of game development to use different resolution for different render targets but the final output is 1080p native. Anyway, I think EG did a poor job of communicating this. They just say the image is too soft to be 1080p and the pictures they showed I couldn't tell since there's no aliasing. Picture softness doesn't mean the final render is not 1080p native as can be seen with The Order 1886.