The Great PS4 Missing AF Mystery *spawn

AF is truly taking over B3D. I guess that's why people never wanted to talk about it in the first place...
 
London-boy said:
Surely the only option to get a real understanding is to speak to those developers who released games without AF, then patched them to include it seemingly "for free". Only they would know why AF wasn't there in the first place, and why they were able to add it without affecting performance.
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Yes this is what I've been saying forever, surely its obvious to everyone, so why is it not obvious to DF?
Ask the developers, even if they reply 'no comment'
 
Look how long it took for 'Cell is a pain in the ass' to become more than just received wisdom. I have no doubt the question has been asked but if there is an architectural reason for it being the first to piss in Sony's pool is unlikely to be rewarded. If the answer for any given studio is 'screw AF, who cares' who wants to be first to dance into the the No Man's Land of the console wars right now with a mesage that says 'both sides are nuts for focusing on this'. I hope we do get an answer eventually but I think assuming DF just decided to write this up without asking devs is a bit much.
 
The article has been updated, an actual developer reached out DF and, QED, he actually knows what he is talking about.
 
Is what he says is true then perhaps the real question is "if AF is so resource heavy, why does it have such a small impact on PC frame rates, even on low end hardware?
 
pjbliverpool said:
Is what he says is true then perhaps the real question is "if AF is so resource heavy, why does it have such a small impact on PC frame rates, even on low end hardware?
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It can have enough of an impact, since AMD's marketing benchmarks that put Fury X over the 980 Ti at 4K frequently set AF off, and upon further review there were spots where some were surprised at the level of variation it introduced.

I'm not entirely sure AF's impact ever fully went away for the PC, but we are far from the days where just turning it on had to be weighed against AA or dropping below 800x600 res or something to get above 30 FPS.
As other bottlenecks started to encroach like CPU limitations or porting problems, it seems to have been partly obscured until we went and decided to do things like quadruple the resolution.
 
The last issue is the one of most concern, difference between platforms, and the claim is it's API difficulty. How hard can it be to enable to AF? Is it really a case of switching on the AF flag in DX on XB1, but having to do more in PS4 so it's overlooked? I guess we'll never get a fully transparent answer to that will have to take it on faith.
 
In the case of being able to set weights and enable AF for specific surfaces, per the DF update, it could be harder or just different.
If there were gaps in documentation, or if the Xbox One's protocol for doing is more consistent with tools the developers are familiar with, it might be that they are able to set up AF or encounter fewer issues when under time pressure, even if in isolation the PS4 methods are not themselves significantly more difficult.
 
Paging MJP, MJP please share you knowledge about PS4 API, we all know you know, just make us happy...B3D members will pay you if when you lose your job at RAD ;)
Or maybe Micro$oft will ;)
 
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Perhaps it's more time consuming if it has to be done per texture type (i.e. albedo, specular, normal, roughness/smoothness texture maps. etc) instead of an all-encompassing switch :?:
 
Shifty Geezer said:
The last issue is the one of most concern, difference between platforms, and the claim is it's API difficulty. How hard can it be to enable to AF? Is it really a case of switching on the AF flag in DX on XB1, but having to do more in PS4 so it's overlooked? I guess we'll never get a fully transparent answer to that will have to take it on faith.
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At least the idea of a SDK bug is ruled out. Developers rushing to meet deadlines is common place. If they just needed more time to put it in, then that would explain the post-patch.
 
Cjail said:
The article has been updated, an actual developer reached out DF and, QED, he actually knows what he is talking about.
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Obviously AF costs something but from 0xAF to 2x or 4x the cost is negligible in most cases and perfect bang for buck ratio performance / image quality. That's what the dev wrote I believe that 4x was ideal in most cases.

And anyways for The Order they (probably MJP) already explained why they used 0xAF in most oblique textures (notably ground): to avoid specular aliasing the AF creates that was not worth it. It's in the slides.

But purposefully choose 0xAF instead of 2xAF or 4x when the cost from 0x to 2x (or 4x) is negligible * on a capped game with solid fps and brings a lot of IQ improvement?

* That's what a real PS4 dev told me along with the most probable cause of the AF missing on the handful of PS4 ports; when the DF Shadow Warrior dev writes
At the beginning of the console generation when documentation is a bit lacking it's easier to make mistakes using an unfamiliar API
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my source calls it differently (and vehemently) with the #LazyDevs theory :runaway:, which is not my opinion BTW.
 
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