Graphical Comparisons: Don't go Chasing Waterfalls or Throwing Rocks at Cars *bifurcation*

[higherARC]

What games? Technically X is only 42% better in gpu, but yes I understand you also have higher bandwidth on X.

But Forza doesn't help your argument because it is 1080p 4xMSAA on base hardware. If a game is 1080p on Ps4, logically it should be 900p on xbox one (at best, since ps4 is more asynchronous) if given the same level of optimization. So, you're talking about a game (forza) that runs at typical ps4 resolution, with the most expensive form of AA sans supersampling, and it's somehow as detailed as the big ps4 exclusives which are obviously pushing the hardware? Number one it's not I can see it with my own eyes, and then the numbers support this. I am not, however going to tell you you're wrong if you find forza horizon 4 the most visually pleasing to you.

The biggest improvement in forza going from base to X hardware are the night headlamp shadows which really looks great, but everything else is a relatively minor visual bump.

Shit, I think gears 4 looks amazing, and better than the god of war reboot, but i'm also not going to say it's pushing more detail than god of war because it can't.

It's 1080p 4xMSAA on base xb with settings and effects completely removed from it. That's why. Try running all ultra settings and see res drop

These are not minor visual bumps. They're actually extremely more computational. Many of the effects are double the quality over base. Some even 10x more. That's not a simple bump

• "in many games using SSR, there's a cut-off around the edges of objects in the way of a reflected surfaces...Xbox One X gets a 2x detail boost over the standard console"
• "The game runs with improved tessellation on deformable snow, rendered up to 10x the quality on Xbox One X compared to the representation on the base console."
• "SSAO is only enabled on Xbox One X in its quality mode"
• "motion blur rendering is boosted on Xbox One X"
• "dynamic night-time shadows from headlights are only an X feature while running at 4K and 30fps, and likewise for ambient occlusion"
• "textures get a boost on Xbox One X to take advantage of the system's extra memory"
• "To go alongside that, foliage density is increased by 50 per cent"

Again having more details isn't something the base console holds back on the X. Many games have already shown this with enhanced modes

 

[phoenix_chipset]

I get it, but I don't see the visual return to go along with those numbers. It's just an accumulation of assets already there in the base version (aside from night lighting), not something completely removed from the base game.

I remember when guerrilla said killzone 3 was pushing 4x the geometry of killzone 2 (they literally said this here's us talking about it, but of course the original news posting is gone like everything I bring up LOL https://www.gamespot.com/forums/sys...llzone-3-uses-100-of-the-ps3s-power-27570801/) but could you tell? Shit no. I can't say they were lying, buuuut... Actually they ruined killzone with that game visually and gameplay wise vs. KZ2 but i'm rambling.

I will just agree that 4H4 is impressive for both pieces of hardware and leave it at that.

 

[Recop]

Eh?

Tropical forest tend to be more dense, more diverse in foliage and with more complex plants. I would say it's more difficult to render in a game.

By the way it's a real picture higherARC.

What you and recop don't understand is that way of thinking is flawed. There are games that are 1080p on ps4 that run 4k native on X.

No... those games run at 1080p or a slightly lower resolution on XB1 too... there are no AAA third party games that run at 900p on XB1, 1080p on PS4 and native 4K on XBX*. Third party games that run at 1080p on XB1 usually don't push the PS4 to the max.

Some games run at native 4K on PS4 Pro too, but we all know those games aren't especially demanding.

There are many games that run 70%+ higher resolution over pro even though "theoritically" X is only 50% stronger.

Indeed, the PRO has a bandwith deficit comparatively to its GPU power, but it is not true for the PS4 and you still need a GPU that is over 7Tflops to output PS4 graphics at native 4K.

This is why many games simply run at 1440p on Pro which is lower than its GPU advantage compared to the PS4.

Another thing I don't see why anyone mention LOD a issue in FH4. DF states it's not remotely noticable and I haven't seen any during gameplay. Of course if you're looking at base console footage or the bug on pc that causes LOD and AF to be screwed you can say that but that's not the case in X/pc with no bugs. It's not any worse than you see in say hzd

Here's a footage from the X version in quality mode :

You see the details on the buildings constantly popping and it's just in front of you and the speed of the car isn't even very fast.

Edit* : actually, there's an exception and it's No Man's Sky but at the cost of worse performances than on Sony consoles and with screen tearing. Also, No Man's Sky is not quite an AAA game but still impressive though. And the game didn't launch at the same time on every console...

 

[higherARC]

Tropical forest tend to be more dense, more diverse in foliage and with more complex plants. I would say it's more difficult to render in a game.

By the way it's a real picture higherARC.



No... those games run at 1080p or a slightly lower resolution on XB1 too... there are no AAA third party games that run at 900p on XB1, 1080p on PS4 and native 4K on XBX. Third party games that run at 1080p on XB1 usually don't push the PS4 to the max.

Some games run at native 4K on PS4 Pro too, but we all know those games aren't especially demanding.



Indeed, the PRO has a bandwith deficit comparatively to its GPU power, but it is not true for the PS4 and you still need a GPU that is over 7Tflops to output PS4 graphics at native 4K.

This is why many games simply run at 1440p on Pro which is lower than its GPU advantage compared to the PS4.



Here's a footage from the X version in quality mode :

You see the details on the buildings constantly popping and it's just in front of you and the speed of the car isn't even very fast.

umm there's literally no pop in going on in the buildings. The youtube compression hurts it alot as well to see any clarity. But I'm in the city right now and there's no pop in going on. I'll post a vid of drone flying around

Thing about foliage in FH4 and hzd in fh4 all of it reacts and interacts with cars and wildlife. When a car drives over grass, it bends and stays bent. Where as hzd 90% of the foliage doesn't only the stealth bushes move with alloy model. The former takes a larger strain on memory to hold it's previous state

Far Cry 5 runs under 1080p at nearly 900p on base xb while ps4 runs at 1080p and X runs a 4k 99% of the time. Again your reason negates the fact bandwidth and memory allows the X's gpu to work more efficient running engines where it could be bottlenecked on ps4 while X can be easier to bypass.

 

[Recop]

Thing about foliage in FH4 and hzd in fh4 all of it reacts and interacts with cars and wildlife. When a car drives over grass, it bends and stays bent. Where as hzd 90% of the foliage doesn't only the stealth bushes move with alloy model. The former takes a larger strain on memory to hold it's previous state

Yeah, interactivity with foliage is quite limited in HZD and FH4 is certainly much better in this field. However, foliage is particularly well animated in HZD :

https://imgur.com/niKU6h8

And if this compromise allowed them to achieved better graphics or better performances, then it was a smart decision to me. Same with FH4 and its rather lifeless world. It's not a criticisim. We can't have everything and i like the way FH4 looks. So it was the right compromise to me. Spiderman has loading times for example and i'm fine with that because the game looks great.

Far Cry 5 runs under 1080p at nearly 900p on base xb while ps4 runs at 1080p and X runs a 4k 99% of the time. Again your reason negates the fact bandwidth and memory allows the X's gpu to work more efficient running engines where it could be bottlenecked on ps4 while X can be easier to bypass.

According to VGtech : "PS4 uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being approximately 1792x1008 and the highest resolution found being 1920x1080. PS4 Pro uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being approximately 2432x1368 and the highest resolution found being 2880x1620, and this is downsampled when outputting at 1080p. Xbox One uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being 960x1080 and the highest resolution found being 1440x1080. Xbox One X uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being approximately 3136x1764 and the highest resolution found being 3840x2160. All four consoles often render at or near their maximum resolution, but the base PS4 in particular rarely ever deviates from its 1920x1080 peak resolution. Xbox One X does appear to stick closer to its maximum resolution, on average, than PS4 Pro does."

1792x1008 vs 3136x1764 = 206% (smaller than the GPU gap = 226%)

960x1080 vs 3136x1764 = 433% (larger than the GPU gap = 358%)

In the most stressful situations, the X is able to outmatch the XB1 to an even greater degree than their GPU difference, but fails to outmatch the PS4 according to the difference in GPU power.

It is clear from this chart that the PS4 is clearly the console that has the most headroom in this game and it could easily go higher than 1080p when other consoles hit their max resolution since it almost never deviates from its max resolution and its lowest resolution is quite high compared to other console (relatively speaking).

Every data we have from third party games confirm that the X would fail to achieve what the PS4 is able to do at 1080p at native 4K.

And you need more memory bandwidth to feed a 6 Tflops GPU properly. As simple as that. I fail to see where's the advantage.

Not to mention that FC5 is an exception. Most third party games fail to achieve such a high resolution difference between the PS4/X. There are games with a very low difference between the Pro/X too (also exceptions).

And 1440x1080 is not 1600x900 even if both are close...

 

[phoenix_chipset]

Well one thing I would add is that x1x definitely has more memory bandwidth relative to the PS4 pro and their gpus. The bandwidth jump on pro is pretty small tbh and the x has a nice 384 bit bus. Soo yeah that is probably the reason why some multis have a larger than expected gap.

But no amount of bandwidth is going to let 1X run PS4 exclusives at native 4k.

 

[higherARC]

Yeah, interactivity with foliage is quite limited in HZD and FH4 is certainly much better in this field. However, foliage is particularly well animated in HZD :

https://imgur.com/niKU6h8

And if this compromise allowed them to achieved better graphics or better performances, then it was a smart decision to me. Same with FH4 and its rather lifeless world. It's not a criticisim. We can't have everything and i like the way FH4 looks. So it was the right compromise to me. Spiderman has loading times for example and i'm fine with that because the game looks great.

According to VGtech : "PS4 uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being approximately 1792x1008 and the highest resolution found being 1920x1080. PS4 Pro uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being approximately 2432x1368 and the highest resolution found being 2880x1620, and this is downsampled when outputting at 1080p. Xbox One uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being 960x1080 and the highest resolution found being 1440x1080. Xbox One X uses a dynamic resolution with the lowest resolution found being approximately 3136x1764 and the highest resolution found being 3840x2160. All four consoles often render at or near their maximum resolution, but the base PS4 in particular rarely ever deviates from its 1920x1080 peak resolution. Xbox One X does appear to stick closer to its maximum resolution, on average, than PS4 Pro does."

1792x1008 vs 3136x1764 = 206% (smaller than the GPU gap = 226%)

960x1080 vs 3136x1764 = 433% (larger than the GPU gap = 358%)

In the most stressful situations, the X is able to outmatch the XB1 to an even greater degree than their GPU difference, but fails to outmatch the PS4 according to the difference in GPU power.

It is clear from this chart that the PS4 is clearly the console that has the most headroom in this game and it could easily go higher than 1080p when other consoles hit their max resolution since it almost never deviates from its max resolution and its lowest resolution is quite high compared to other console (relatively speaking).

Every data we have from third party games confirm that the X would fail to achieve what the PS4 is able to do at 1080p at native 4K.

And you need more memory bandwidth to feed a 6 Tflops GPU properly. As simple as that. I fail to see where's the advantage.

Not to mention that FC5 is an exception. Most third party games fail to achieve such a high resolution difference between the PS4/X. There are games with a very low difference between the Pro/X too (also exceptions).

And 1440x1080 is not 1600x900 even if both are close...

X spends most of the time at 4k. PS4 spends most of the time at 1080p.

X lowest pixels very rare: 5531904
ps4 lowest pixels very rare: 1806336

3.06x difference

X pixel count majorly of the time: 8294400
Ps4 pixel count majorly of the time: 2073600
4x difference
1.8tf x 4 = 7.2tf

Just as you say ps4 can go above 1080p, I'm sure the X could go higher than 4k if allowed since majorly of the time it's comfortably at 4k with no issues. I only compare 1440x1080 and 900p since both push nearly the same pixels and base xb is going below that too. Either way this is going way off more than I want it to. But anyways just took some good pics will upload when done downloading

 

[higherARC]

I do like the animations of the grass in your shot of hzd. This is something I think both games will do better than rdr2 from what I've seen

You can also see the grass pop in 10ft from alloy too in that gif though

Here's grass animation in fh4

https://imgur.com/09xRRSQ

 

[Recop]

Just as you say ps4 can go above 1080p, I'm sure the X could go higher than 4k if allowed since majorly of the time it's comfortably at 4k with no issues. I only compare 1440x1080 and 900p since both push nearly the same pixels and base xb is going below that too. Either way this is going way off more than I want it to. But anyways just took some good pics will upload when done downloading

Not much higher than native 4K i guess.

XB1/X :

960x1080 vs 3136x1764 = 433%
1440x1080 vs 3840x2160 = 433%

It's exactly the same number...

PS4/X

1792x1008 vs 3136x1764 = 206%
1920x1080 vs 3840x2160 = 300%

So clearly, it's the PS4 that has far more headroom at its peak resolution... actually the situation should not be different from that of the XB1 and with uncapped resolution i'm certain we would find 206% in both cases.

And it's confirmed by VGtech : "but the base PS4 in particular rarely ever deviates from its 1920x1080 peak resolution."

Here's grass animation in fh4

It looks good. As i've already said, we're comparing some of the most polished game of the market. If one is better in one area, that doesn't necessarily mean the other looks bad.

 

[higherARC]

Not much higher than native 4K i guess.

XB1/X :

960x1080 vs 3136x1764 = 433%
1440x1080 vs 3840x2160 = 433%

It's exactly the same number...

PS4/X

1792x1008 vs 3136x1764 = 206%
1920x1080 vs 3840x2160 = 300%

So clearly, it's the PS4 that has far more headroom at its peak resolution... actually the situation should not be different from that of the XB1 and with uncapped resolution i'm certain we would find 206% in both cases.

And it's confirmed by VGtech : "but the base PS4 in particular rarely ever deviates from its 1920x1080 peak resolution."

Your percentages are throwing me off lol 4k vs 1080p is a 4x difference while you put 300%. Your percentage is implying it's only a 3x increase when it's 4x. I hate math. VGtech says X spends at 4k most of the time as well and DF had a hard time finding it drop so it's clearly at 4k majorly of the time

VGtech
"All four consoles often render at or near their maximum resolution,"

 

[Recop]

Your percentages are throwing me off lol 4k vs 1080p is a 4x difference while you put 300%. Your percentage is implying it's only a 3x increase when it's 4x. I hate math. VGtech says X spends at 4k most of the time as well and DF had a hard time finding it drop so it's clearly at 4k majorly of the time

Lol, i'm implying exactly the same thing than you. When you say the difference in resolution is often 70% between the Pro/X, it doesn't mean 0,7x but 1,7x. So 100% means 2 and so on. 433% = 5,3x.

VGtech says X spends at 4k most of the time as well and DF had a hard time finding it drop so it's clearly at 4k majorly of the time

Ok, but there's still a massive difference between the XB1/PS4. Once again, there's no reason to believe that the numbers should not be identical in both cases (just like for the XB1). The most reasonable explanation is that the PS4 is held back at 1080p, that's why the difference is 4x and not 3,06x.

Either way this is going way off more than I want it to.

Lol you're right, it's a little tedious.

 

[see colon]

Even if Spiderman doesn't have dymanic TOD, it is still a more demanding game than FH4 at equal resolution. Obviously, at a lower resolution than native 4K, FH4 could achieve a rendering complexity that is unmatched on XBX.

I'm not sure how demanding software is is relevant to a conversation about how pretty graphics are. I've coded "Hello World" in half a dozen languages and not gone farther in most, so as a terrible programmer I can confidently say that I could program a piece of software that's really demanding and produces terrible visuals. Mostly because I wouldn't be able to properly tune the software, thus putting more demands on the hardware.

The truth is we don't have exact metrics on the how demanding any game is, and there's a lot of stuff going on under the hood that can influence performance beyond what we can see. How accurate are the physics simulations in those games? Are they run on the CPU or the GPU? Which game's physics put more of a demand on the hardware? What about reflections? Spider-man uses a bunch of cube maps, while FH4 has many more screen space reflections. Those screen space reflections should be more demanding, right? But what if FH4's screen space reflections somehow leveraged ESRAM or some other Xbox specific hardware feature and are somehow less demanding on the hardware? On base consoles you could have a game that saturated the polygon setup engine on PS4 to 100%. That same piece of hardware is 10% faster on Xbox One, so it would only be 90% as demanding. In these hypothetical cases the arguments that because a game is more demanding on PS4 means that it can't be done on Xbox One is actually backwards, since they would be less demanding on Xbox and it would have an easier time with it.

At the end of the day, graphics comparisons should disregard all of the under the hood stuff and concentrate on results. Which produces a better looking image. It's an opinion, of course, but a game can be beautiful and not demanding at the same time, and certainly better looking than another game while also being less demanding, especially when comparing games from different genres.

 

[Recop]

Mostly because I wouldn't be able to properly tune the software, thus putting more demands on the hardware.

Right, but i think we can safely say it's not the case for well renowned developers such as Insomniac, especially in a big budget AAA exclusive game.

The truth is we don't have exact metrics on the how demanding any game is, and there's a lot of stuff going on under the hood that can influence performance beyond what we can see.

And the truth is that unless you're a very bad developer, you won't achieve less with a hardware with a substantial power advantage... and third party developers are here to confirm my point.

If the XB1 has some special features, we simply never see them in actual games... we're at the end of the gen and the difference in third party games is worse than ever. See the last AC game. By this time, you can't use the excuse that developers don't try to exploit the XB1 properly or they don't know its hardware.

When i say that a game is more demanding, it is in the sense that you can't achieve the same stuff at the same quality on the concurrent hardware. As simple as that. And third party games prove my point since the beginning of the gen... in other words, FH4 would run better on PS4 and Spiderman would run worse on XB1.

Obviously, you can achieve everything on the X at a higher resolution and better quality compared to any Sony exclusive game running on a PS4 Pro, simply not at native 4K. It's all what i'm saying.

And FH4 is certainly one of the most demanding of the market if we include the

 

[higherARC]

Right, but i think we can safely say it's not the case for well renowned developers such as Insomniac, especially in a big budget AAA exclusive game.



And the truth is that unless you're a very bad developer, you won't achieve less with a hardware with a substantial power advantage... and third party developers are here to confirm my point.

If the XB1 has some special features, we simply never see them in actual games... we're at the end of the gen and the difference in third party games is worse than ever. See the last AC game. By this time, you can't use the excuse that developers don't try to exploit the XB1 properly or they don't know its hardware.

When i say that a game is more demanding, it is in the sense that you can't achieve the same stuff at the same quality on the concurrent hardware. As simple as that. And third party games prove my point since the beginning of the gen...

Obviously, you can achieve everything on the X at a higher resolution and better quality compared to any Sony exclusive game running on a PS4 Pro, simply not at native 4K. It's all what i'm saying.

I think it could depending on engine and how it’ll work with Xs strengths. Hzd is 1080p in base ps4, checkerboard 4k on pro so I think there’s a strong chance it’ll run at native 4k on X since games that have been checkerboard on pro ran native on X. Rdr2 is said to be like this which would be very interesting

 

[Recop]

I think it could depending on engine and how it’ll work with Xs strengths. Hzd is 1080p in base ps4, checkerboard 4k on pro so I think there’s a strong chance it’ll run at native 4k on X since games that have been checkerboard on pro ran native on X. Rdr2 is said to be like this which would be very interesting

Those games generally run at an unusually high resolution on XB1. ROTR for instance... also, the PS4 Pro has some specific features that could help developers to hit higher resolution than 1440p with more optimization : dedicated hardware for reconstruction techniques + double FP16.

But games that run at straight 1440p on PS4 Pro usually have deceiving performances on XBX too. In some games, the X fails to achieve a resolution that is 4x higher too : DBZ, Injustice 2.

Sometimes, they just don't put a lot of work in the enhanced versions. The performance penalty is usually greater on Pro though.

 

[ultragpu]

FH4's details are in no way "average/low quality" like you say. They're extremely detailed. I have played both and FH4 impresses me more. The clarity in it is better over hzd (4k 4xMSAA) and all the details in the world is much more pronounced. I don't even need to list the amount of simulations going in FH4 to show it's top class stuff. I'll take some pics tonight of objects really close and textures. They're easily matches what you see above. X/pc ultra settings use ultra textures which take advantage of 12gb of ram so it'll have more details due to that

And the water is a whole other level above hzd

The density of foliage in FH4 is nowhere near HZD's, nor is the LOD, texture quality, mesh quality or the volumetrics. They're relatively detailed for a car game but once you go into close scrutiny you see flaws far more prominent, it's as if it's running at medium or low settings compared to ZD's. Also the world of ZD feels far more tangible due to the use of volumetric cloud that deforms in real time as well as casting shadows to the ground and reacting to the light. Whereas in Forza it feels like a cardboard cutout sometimes. And the water gif really doesn't impressive me much, it's just 2d textures overlay done with a shader, certainly not a level above ZD. What impresses me about FH4 is the lighting and PBR in terms of realism, sometimes supersampled photomode shots can look pretty indeed. The season change is also very nice. But everything else in terms of foliage, geometry, particle effects, volumetric sims, detail in general are far more impressive in HZD judging from all the pictures here.

 

[ultragpu]

Spiderman is probably a more comparable game to Forza in terms of streaming load at a given time. But even then I don't see how FH4 is coming close to the level of detail and density at least in the city. It's pretty much ghost town vs a living breathing world.

 

[Karamazov]

You can't fill up a racing game with npc cars etc... Or it will become unplayable.

 

[higherARC]

Spiderman is probably a more comparable game to Forza in terms of streaming load at a given time. But even then I don't see how FH4 is coming close to the level of detail and density at least in the city. It's pretty much ghost town vs a living breathing world.

The buildings in spiderman are very low detailed across the street. That's one thing about spiderman that's not that great. The buildings don't exhibit high enough detail in distance as you can see in your shot. The water is not a 2d texture with shader it's tessellated and uses the same tech as Sea of Theives. Water moves and creates wakes as you drive through it. Also textures/mesh is not low quality vs hzd. Ps4 won't be able to run it with them hence 12gb vs 8gb ram. PG took advantage using the extra memory to add ultra textures

I have to wait till spring/summer to get dense foliage shots. Right now in fall about to be winter

PS most of my shots aren't supersampled they're not even processed just taken from console screenshot function. Other than that being 4k won't change it looking any different supersampled to 1080p or not as it does it ingame too

 

[vipa899]

FH4 looks better then HZD overall to most ppl, fh4 is a recent game though. Personally dont like racing games so wont play it much, played it in a store besides spiderman and thougt fh4 impressed more graphically running on the one x. But they are complete different games? Shouldnt fh4 be compared to gt sport, how does gt sport hold up there.