Encyclopedia Brown & The Mysterious Case of the PS4 and the Missing Anisotropic Filtering

That's really interesting. Why is the PS4 having trouble? It doesn't cost that much in framerate if I ramp up the AF on a pc game like Crysis.

 

TCP packet drops or something if they're talking about online. Maybe the motion tweening was accidentally borked and will be patched?

 

Why don't we have an explanation for the missing AF in PS4 games yet?

Did any dev ever commented on this? Is it hardware or software related?

What about AF in The Order for instance?

 

Most of the 1rst party game will have AF. After I remember after Thief programmer of the ICE Team said on twitter there is no reason to not have AF on a PS4.

 

So we can add CryEngine 3 in the list of 3rd party engines (like Unreal Engine 3 and Chrome engine 6) that don't provide AF on PS4.

Source of Evolve using CryEngine 3 (moderator in 2K forum):
http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php?528366-What-engine-Evolve-use

Now what about CryEngine 4 (Everybody's gone to the rapture, co-developed and published by Sony) and Unreal Engine 4 (next Batman)?

 

Missing on a hand full of games.

 

The PS4 can do it. There are multiplatform games that do it on PS4, even games developed alongside PC/DX versions.

It has to be a performance thing. Surely...?

 

Haven't we already had this discussion?



You tell me they deactivated AF on one ridiculously low quality oblique texture on a 2.5D game like Strider because of performance reason? Seriously?

 

It must be a performance thing. I'm looking at the DF video, and besides AF, they are missing a bunch of environmental shadows:
Link to the video :

Very noticeable missing shadows at:
1:07 (no self casting shadow on monster)
1:16 (rails barrels etc)
1:28 (tree)
3:41 (no self casting shadow on monster)
AF problems very noticeable at
2:58

 

But Evolve on PS4 has also better resolution, slightly better performance and Higher quality ambient occlusion than the XB1 game so the performance reason is still not valid like it wasn't with Dying light which had also better resolution and better performance on PS4.

PS4 even with better res has some room to spare (in those 2 games at least) so why not use it to activate AF at low level like it's done on XB1?

By the way I laughed watching the DF comparative video. Almost only showing contrasted and lighted areas (it's a generaly very dark game), they slowed down the video speed, with the view towards the ground texture where the AF difference is easily noticeable...Good job as usual.

 

They aren't there, the shadows just aren't there. This isn't about being fooled by ambient occlusion, they not exist.. at all.

 

The discussion keeps happening because PS4 games with different engines from different developers keep shipping games with reduced or missing aniso.

Not sure what trying to make this discussion about Strider again will achieve.

We know the hardware can do aniso. We know multiplatform games can do aniso, even when developed alongside a D3D version. We know developers value aniso because they're sometimes using it in the Bon version. So why aren't they using it on PS4?

There is something going on, and Strider doesn't make this go away, or mean it's not happening.

 

Perhaps because the performance hit isn't considered worth it, because there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere that would hide the cost.

 

Maybe AF is more developer dependent on the PS4, than XB1? Both PS4/XB1 have shi**y AF at times... GTA V being one of those games.

Anyhow, it doesn't seem to be a widespread of an issue with Sony's internal developers, nor most 3rd party developers. At the end of the day, both systems have their quirks and limitations. PCs as well...

 

Huumm what the heck

 

Gotta hit that 1080p!!

Edit: with 32 rops vs 16 that's either a bug or a performance issue. Like aniso, shadow buffers will use additional BW.

 

Shadows are far from free.

 

Well, I'll take shadows at 900P over no shadows at 1080P any day of the week!

 

I would guess this is a bug... not even the fence to the left is casting a shadow on PS4 (as the tree behind the player might be culled for performance reasons).

EDIT: Does this game have time of day?

EDIT2: Way to be disingenuous...

The subtitle to the pic above is:

Changing lighting and environmental conditions results in variable light and shadow positions across all three platforms.