Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2016 - 2017]

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Gears of Wars 4, Forza and Horizon, Quantum Break, and most of te "big" games that have been released since Battlefront (ReCore is presumably DX11.x tho.. ) now are those games based on engines specifically build for DX12? Nope. besides maybe ForzaTech. (UE4 doesn't seem so bad too given that the DX12 path was actually mainly developed by Microsoft themselves when developing Fables Legends along with the sync Compute support and other things )

Forza doesn't use DX12 : http://wccftech.com/turn-10-studios-excited-dx12-utilizing-forza-6-xbox/

Also, its not always clear if DX12 is only available on the PC version.
 
We don't know the reason. ExecuteIndirect and it's derivatives can still be in play as it's available to all three platforms, Taking advantage of XBO microcode was not used.

Anyway, they didn't say a word about DX12... and the usual gap still continues with other MP games.

VGTech : "Pixel counts indicate that the Call of Duty Infinite Warfare beta on Xbox One runs at a native resolution of 1344x1080."
 
Some people seem very defensive about this...

Yes PS4 hardware is more powerful but questions remain about the api's. Does it have features that are in Mantle/Vulkan/DX12...?

If increasingly DX12 is being implemented in game engines and developers are gaining experience because it is used on PC/Xbox it's possible that further optimizations happen.

The gap may close a bit if those same techniques cannot be implemented to the same degree on PS4.
 
Some people seem very defensive about this...

Yes PS4 hardware is more powerful but questions remain about the api's. Does it have features that are in Mantle/Vulkan/DX12...?

If increasingly DX12 is being implemented in game engines and developers are gaining experience because it is used on PC/Xbox it's possible that further optimizations happen.

The gap may close a bit if those same techniques cannot be implemented to the same degree on PS4.

GNM should, and likely does. Pretty sure they are sharing similar code bases and doing similar things. XBO and PC have been playing catch up.
 
GNM should, and likely does. Pretty sure they are sharing similar code bases and doing similar things. XBO and PC have been playing catch up.

It's not just a matter of sharing code bases if the api doesn't have the features built in. How much do we know about GNM? Has Sony adopted features of Mantle/Vulkan into GNM?
 
Some people seem very defensive about this...

Yes PS4 hardware is more powerful but questions remain about the api's. Does it have features that are in Mantle/Vulkan/DX12...?

If increasingly DX12 is being implemented in game engines and developers are gaining experience because it is used on PC/Xbox it's possible that further optimizations happen.

The gap may close a bit if those same techniques cannot be implemented to the same degree on PS4.

Well, i'm not defensive... i sincerely thinks that DX12 is sold as a marketing argument for the XB1.

I have the impression that some people want to believe false things.

It's not just about DX12, i'm always suspicious about any "miracle" thing... i really believe that consoles always have low level API as a standard. It's the well-known difference compared to the PC.

I'm still waiting for the evidence showing that the gap is closing... since the beginning of the gen we are in a 1080p/900p scenario and, apart from rare exceptions, the situation is exactly the same today.

The true abnormality was the 720p/1080p difference but it was rare and no longer exists today.

I'm simply realist. Honestly, i would be happy to be proven wrong but with solid evidence at least...

How many times did we hear that the gap is closing while it was not true ? We heard that for Destiny, we heard that for GTA5, etc.

I think that we should be more reasonable and that we should base our judgment on longer observations... or the illusion some people got with Destiny will repeat indefinitely...
 
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I'm still waiting for the evidence showing that the gap is closing... since the beginning of the gen we are in a 1080p/900p scenario and, apart from rare exceptions, the situation is exactly the same today.

No-one is saying that gap is closing in all games. Or even in most games. Or even more than a handful of games. Or even more than 1 game.

What we are investigating is why the gap closed so significantly in BF1. 1 title. Stop dragging other titles into this, it doesn't help the discussion in any way.

Regards,
SB
 
Could it be we are seeing general improvements that typical when a gen matures but the devs are no longer interested in pushing the PS4 to its limits? The PS4 is no longer the top console hardware wise. That distinction belongs to Neo and eventually Scorpio, so there maybe no need to push the gap between the PS4 and xb1.

Devs are going to need to support 4 devices across the PS4 and xb1, any real desire to push the hardware may be limited to the top tier hardware going forward. Pubs may be surmising that the hardcore is going to move to the newest iterations of the hardware and the current hardware will be mostly owned by those who aren't so gung ho about graphics. So, what's the point of providing anything beyond a standard experience between the two consoles?

Dev on the Xb1 while maxing the hardware, port to the PS4 and from there optimize upward on the Pro and Scorpio .
 
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Dev on the Xb1 while maxing the hardware, port to the PS4 and from there optimize upward on the Pro and Scorpio .
Possibly, but the question then is "what's lost in translation?" What optimisations are performed on XB1 that aren't carried over to PS4 such that it can maintain its advantages?
 
Possibly, but the question then is "what's lost in translation?" What optimisations are performed on XB1 that aren't carried over to PS4 such that it can maintain its advantages?

The gap discussion seems harder to discuss because it's easy to chalk that type of thing to a bad port, or to have its performance patched and improved later. Or perhaps OG XBO will not fair as well at all, In which the gap doesn't move. Overall I avoided this topic because it didn't seem worthwhile to pursue without more data points.

I'm more interested in how this late into the game DICE managed both fidelity and resolution increases on both consoles.
Normally we expect the resolution to stay locked and fidelity and graphical complexity to increase, often at the detriment of resolution. But here we have a scenario of both increasing. This is mind blowing to me, and it's a huge boon to both console owners; that even with the upcoming mid generation refresh we can see the OG consoles still have more life in them yet.

The rate of maturity is something we should discuss. As graphics continue to increase in scene complexity, It would appear that it's quite possible both consoles are becoming CPU bound, something that ExecuteIndirect/multiDraw is meant to resolve. If they have not yet integrated ExecuteIndirect into heavy usages, we should expect that they will for their next title. How else can they continue to increase fidelity without a CPU to drive it. This to me is the logical next step, so we have much to look forward to here.

Then comes the question of the advantages offered by XBO for this type of work and whether developers will adopt a separate ExecuteIndirect pass for XBO. I suppose much testing still needs to be done for XBO to see if it's compatible with their code.

What comes after though? I assume even more async compute? I guess I see the reason now why MS may not have required so many ACE units; perhaps Async compute units may be capable of submitting ExecuteIndirect submissions, which the rest of the work would be spawned on the GPU.
 
Not spent much time on platform specific stuff, the XB1 has a capable DMA engine the PS4 lack.
Both API are comparable.

Different texture quality, screen resolution... maybe ?
 
No-one is saying that gap is closing in all games. Or even in most games. Or even more than a handful of games. Or even more than 1 game.

What we are investigating is why the gap closed so significantly in BF1. 1 title. Stop dragging other titles into this, it doesn't help the discussion in any way.

Regards,
SB

Fine.
 
So Battlefield 1 on XO uses DX12? Is there any other game that uses it on XO besides BF1 & Battlefront?
All games on XBO will only use either DX11.3X or DX12.X now; I forget at which point this occurred, I'll need to look around to see where I read about it. Memory is really hazy on this front.
All I recall clearly is that DX11 Fast semantics has been officially deprecated by DX12 for XBO.
 
It's not just a matter of sharing code bases if the api doesn't have the features built in. How much do we know about GNM? Has Sony adopted features of Mantle/Vulkan into GNM?
The hardware is the same, for the most part, (aside some custom additions here and there) and since Sony owns GNM, Sony can expose the hardware however they like without fear of compatibility issues within this generation. Any features missing can be bolted on, provided the feature does not require an API restructure. I do recall AMD indicated that Mantle and GNM are pretty similar to each other, I could be wrong though.

Hence, why developers are telling the truth when they said that DX12 would not shorten the gap between XBO and PS4, as they have the same feature set. Nice part is seeing games mature enough to get to that point.

If we give both consoles until 2019, I think we'll see some more innovation yet before both consoles reach their limits.
 
The hardware is the same, for the most part, (aside some custom additions here and there) and since Sony owns GNM, Sony can expose the hardware however they like without fear of compatibility issues within this generation. Any features missing can be bolted on, provided the feature does not require an API restructure. I do recall AMD indicated that Mantle and GNM are pretty similar to each other, I could be wrong though.

Hence, why developers are telling the truth when they said that DX12 would not shorten the gap between XBO and PS4, as they have the same feature set. Nice part is seeing games mature enough to get to that point.

If we give both consoles until 2019, I think we'll see some more innovation yet before both consoles reach their limits.

Ok, but you are not taking into account that XBOX ONE can use features that no other gpu can use. For example can use executeindirect with different PSO per draw.

Look at seb answer:

Z1qGZKh.png


Could that large cache be the sram on XBOX ONE?
 
Ok, but you are not taking into account that XBOX ONE can use features that no other gpu can use. For example can use executeindirect with different PSO per draw.

Look at seb answer:

Z1qGZKh.png


Could that large cache be the sram on XBOX ONE?
I agree its worth investigating, but not on this thread, probably need some more clarity on what its doing as well.
We don't know if it's a performance boost of a developer shortcut. a little too early to call this a must have feature, but we'll have a better idea of its capabilities in 2-3 years.
esram could be a good use case, but this feature isn't going to be deadly effective if it's tied to esram. That would imply that this customization would never make it mainstream outside of exclusives; XBO exclusives I should say.
tldr; for a feature that hasn't seen the day of light, we shouldn't be discussing it in a post-game performance review thread. On this thread we should be keeping to what we know, and we know that feature isn't included.
 
I agree its worth investigating, but not on this thread, probably need some more clarity on what its doing as well.
We don't know if it's a performance boost of a developer shortcut. a little too early to call this a must have feature, but we'll have a better idea of its capabilities in 2-3 years.
esram could be a good use case, but this feature isn't going to be deadly effective if it's tied to esram. That would imply that this customization would never make it mainstream outside of exclusives; XBO exclusives I should say.
tldr; for a feature that hasn't seen the day of light, we shouldn't be discussing it in a post-game performance review thread. On this thread we should be keeping to what we know, and we know that feature isn't included.

Yo are right, I apologize.
 
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