Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2016 - 2017]

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Agreed, I'm still waiting before purchasing a Switch myself, and I'm both sad and happy to see the patch, sad becaue I expect flawless games from Nintendo, happy because I'll have a better experience having waited ;) [And Nintendo listening to customers is good]
 
Cue Lazy Devs / Horrible Ports mantra...

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Some depth is lost with the removal of ambient occlusion, while shadow detail is significantly reduced (in this respect, the Switch looks closer to the original Wii U release) but this is only really an issue when viewed close-up. Reflection quality is also pulled right back on the new Nintendo machine, to the point where the effect also compares unfavourably to the original Wii U game.

However, the reductions in quality are well handled and not overly noticeable - two more cutbacks in the visual presentation are more of an issue. Firstly, Switch has less memory onboard than its current-gen competitors, and this translates directly into some textures displayed at a lower resolution. Secondly, the developers cloud far off detail in a depth of field effect - it's a nice bokeh-like effect on PS4 and Xbox One, and this gets downgraded to more of a subtle blur on Switch. It doesn't do many favours to overall image quality, but the presentation is 'crisper' as a result with less blended detail.

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In terms of the living room experience, we'd take PS4 as our preferred way to play, very closely followed by Xbox One. Switch falls behind owing to less consistent performance as opposed to its visual downgrades - clearly it's still a good-looking title. However, the Switch game is indeed playable as a full-blown handheld experience, something the other consoles can't deliver.
 
Digital Foundry: Lego City Undercover on Switch holds up well against PS4
Significantly revamped over Wii U, with higher resolution than Xbox One.

:runaway:

Switch performed better than expected honestly. Even with a few compromises compared to the Wii U build, the upgrades were far more significant, and being rendered at 1080p is impressive. Even though the Switch build is the weaker version, when looking at the hardware its on, the Switch build is the most impressive. On Switch its pretty inline with what you would expect from a Tegra X1.
 
Digital Foundry: What Remains of Edith Finch is great on PC, needs work on PS4
Super-smooth on one platform, performance issues on the other.

Guess which! :nope:

It's good that Digital Foundry continues to make note of games with bad frame pacing. More noticeable with the PS4-P, as you can more easily note bad frame pacing when you have more stable capped FPS. PS4/XBO it'd be more easily missed with more variable frame times. Are there any other console gaming sites that make note of whether a game has bad frame pacing or not?

As much as stable FPS is very important to satisfying gameplay, frame pacing is equally important. On PC, this is taken care of by game design and display drivers, but this wasn't always the case. Until a few years ago when a few sites around the net started to draw attention to it, it was just something people had to suffer without knowing why games would still feel jittery even when locked to 60 FPS.

Hopefully, if sites continue to draw attention to it on consoles, it'll get more fully addressed there as well. Whether by the developers or by the console makers (similar to fixing bad frame pacing issues in graphics drivers on PC).

Regards,
SB
 
Really interesting. Lets hope game developers goes in this direction... fix 60 fps and variable resoultion (maybe helped by checkerboarding... if supported on an hw level even better)
 
Really interesting. Lets hope game developers goes in this direction... fix 60 fps and variable resoultion (maybe helped by checkerboarding... if supported on an hw level even better)
do you mean on consoles or on the PC? PC wise I think many people stick to the visuals they like and leave Ultra aside because sometimes the difference doesn't pay off or it adds unwanted extra effects.

Additionally, super shadow quality is very taxing and I have a friend with a GTX 1070 who says that he prefers shadows on low because they look better to him. Heck we got used to 2D games on arcades and consoles with characters having a round circular shadow below them and that was it.

Some typical Ultra effects like motion blur and so on don't always look good for some people, and at 1080p and above some demanding AA techniques are almost useless --say in Skyrim. I also don't like things like grain filter. One of the worst looking effects that was enabled by default in some games (Mass Effect 2), which fortunately you could disable.

I am currently playing Diablo 3 on a Ryzen 1500X and a RX570 and I set the quality of shadows to low despite the fact that the game runs very well and the fans doesn't spin faster unlike in some more taxing games. I do that because it looks good to me. Most of the other effects are set to the highest setting, I think. I enable VSync too because the framerate goes quite high and my screen is 60Hz so it makes no sense. It never drops below 60 fps and the CPU and GPU run it pretty relaxed, no temperature increase.
 
WipEout at 4K 60fps is PS4 Pro at its best

Bundling WipEout HD, Fury and 2048 into one 4K60 package - complete with beautifully reworked visuals - this Omega Collection packs plenty in to justify a re-release. On PS4 Pro you have the option of playing in the following ways:

Motion blur enabled:
-4K output: 2160p with checkerboarding
-1080p output: 1080p with 4x SSAA

Motion Blur disabled:
-4K output: Native 4K with 4x8 EQAA
-1080p output: 1080p with 4x SSAA
 
Lack of WipEout in VR is such a massive disappointment. This thing was practically made for the tech. It's a racer. It's essentially a PS3 game which more or less met all the resolution and framerate requirements a decade ago. It's also a game with a very clean art style, meaning it would have looked very pleasant on a low res head mounted display.
 
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