But there is a clear distinction between the GNMX and GNM API, correct? The former is DirectX friendly (hence the 'X') but highly inefficient; while the second entices developers with the promise of greater performance, at the expense of more work, because they are forced to unpick and code things in a different way. This is where a PS4 port often differs from its Xbox One counterpart. And due to time constraints, or the experience of the team doing the port, some things fall through the cracks. It also helps to explain why PS4 exclusives have no problem in this area.
PS4's AF issue we need answers!
- Thread starter pixlexic
- Start date
But there is a clear distinction between the GNMX and GNM API, correct? The former is DirectX friendly (hence the 'X') but highly inefficient; while the second entices developers with the promise of greater performance, at the expense of more work, because they are forced to unpick and code things in a different way. This is where a PS4 port often differs from its Xbox One counterpart. And due to time constraints, or the experience of the team doing the port, some things fall through the cracks. It also helps to explain why PS4 exclusives have no problem in this area.
thelastword
Banned
This just shows that it's the developer which didn't bother to implement it. Unfinished Swan is pretty much a black and white game, strider is not too far off with it's bevy of grey levels and simplistic art. When games like Skylander has a good sample of AF, coupled with good textures, art and AA, it proves there's no issue with the hardware doing AF, just that some devs couldn't bother. Maybe Sony should make it mandatory that AF is implemented or make it easier to do so.The Unfinished Swan is probably the strangest case of reduced AF on PS4:
(thanks to nbnt in the console screenshot thread)
These days I'm not sure at times if you're serious. There is no performance cost. Also your last paragraph is ridiculous.
I can't delve into the differences between gnm and gnmx for obvious reasons but I can tell you AF
is not one of them.
I could wrong but Thief too on ps3 seems to have better AF compared to the ps4 version. To me it's not normal.The Unfinished Swan is probably the strangest case of reduced AF on PS4:
(thanks to nbnt in the console screenshot thread)
In console games - it's hardly ever the case for PC-centric development - where it's more a case of setting it once globally (or better yet, make the User set it) and forget about it.SappYoda said:
I could totally see anything leading on PC end up with console versions that don't touch granular AF meddling or fail to actually test for it (time constraints and all) and potentially end up with fun missteps like the faceoffs in the OP (because a console API may not provide a convenient global forcing of such settings).
After all - this is hardly the first time to see this - PS2 generation had games that would randomly use Point-Sampling on some surfaces for no particular reason - there was no performance benefits for such a thing since N64 - but it kept happening for years into the generation.
blastprocessor
The Amiga Brotherhood
It's certainly an interesting topic when even the most basic of games seem to have an issue. I hope Eurogamer start to dig further on this. I also hope devs chime in to explain as the comments seen so far are not good enough.
Cave Johnson
Member
Maybe the "AF" tab is lost in the UI in a sub-sub menu. No way how this can happen time after time from downloadable indie titles to AAA.
The Unfinished Swan is probably the strangest case of reduced AF on PS4:
(thanks to nbnt in the console screenshot thread)
this actually points to not being a lazy dev issue. a simple exclusive such as this wouldn't go back and turn off af.
Dictator93
Member
The Unfinished Swan is probably the strangest case of reduced AF on PS4:
(thanks to nbnt in the console screenshot thread)
Yeah this is bizarre and points to something else.
Canklestank
Neo Member
PS4 doesn't give A F***.
Pocky4Th3Win
Member
It is probably implemented different so the PS4 version does not recognize the PS3s method due to the systems being on different architecture.
Sony needs to enable AF in the SDK by default and make it the developers choice to disable it. It looks like MS already does this which is why games on the XB1 have AF while their counterpart on PS4 do not.
I wonder if Sony can force it through the firmware/OS level, similar to how PCs do it.
I'd like to see CA banned entirely by the console manufacturers, pop up a nice message for the devs:
"Hi, it looks like you're trying to implement chromatic aberration! This means you don't give a flying fuck about the people struggling to see your blurry mess of a game, so we can't allow you to make it."
Devkit should then suicide itself.
staticneuron
Member
The original dev did not port it to the PS4 and Vita. Armature Studios did the port.
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2014/10/23/unfinished-swan-graces-ps4-ps-vita-next-week/
Not calling them lazy, just stating that they might not have turned on something during the port or were under time constraints and did not make it a priority. But it is amazing that after a direct quote from an engineer, tons of games posted that have perfectly fine AF. That there are still some here that give the implication that this is a hardware issue instead of a dev issue.
Does that really have to be explained on a forum like this?
I think we all know by now, if the hardware doesnt do something automatically, theres a 75% chance the dev wont do it themselves. Sony probably just hasnt offered a systemwide implementation (and may add one on OS level later, I assume). Maybe they told devs not to worry about it since it will come later.
Pocky4Th3Win
Member
I doubt we will ever see it as an OS level option.
Going by a lot of posts here, yes.
yeah but its one game being ported to one console. It should have been done unless it is just not easy to do on ps4.
I absolutely agree, WE wont see it. Devs might. They will likely have a way to turn PS4's AF off, so that they can implement their own.
Yes AF is just too difficult for the Ps4. I'm sure this the answer you're looking for so why the thread if you think its too difficult.
It's not a good look either. I wonder if there is some kind of bandwidth issue? Apparently AF is not trivial on consoles like it is on PC, because of the amount of bandwidth it takes.I just wouldn't understand devs leaving it out for no reason at all, when it improves the IQ so much. Gotta be a reason for devs to be compromising. Something, otherwise I'm straight boggled.
clearly it is not as easy as it should be because if it were it wouldn't be missing,
and lets stop with the being offended because its your favorite console bs,
travisbickle
Member
It's obvious there are complications in some cases, but considering there are examples in both first and third party I don't think there's an argument that it's "not as easy". Like someone said on the last page "there's a million reasons".
But they dont, at least not high values, like 8x.
Oh, that explains it then. PS4 games lack AF because devilsadvocat isn't looking at far away textures when trying to kill a two story monster.
This is getting ridiculous.
What do you want a thread about, WHY DOES THE INFERIOR HARDWARE RUN GAMES WITH INFERIOR GRAPHICS?
When the superior console can't run something that shouldn't be demanding, then yes, that raises questions.
Should I create a thread complaining that my 680 can't run games as well as the 980 too?
What are you trying to imply here? Stop being defensive, it's a console, not your mother.
Crimson_Gold
Member
What? It isn't even near 5% of all of the titles released. We even had a Dev explain that it is a choice to implement. I don't get this narrative of it being a hardware limitation. ICE has already confirmed the ability to do AF 16x. I'm flabbergasted by these assumptions
I don't think it is hardware.
LordOfChaos
Member
edit: too slow
your reaction is somewhat exaggerated, i asked a question, if you are to answer it i dont think there's a necessity of reacting this way, this is the very reason the thread was created, to ask and find out what is the problem
Journey
Banned
So PS3, XB1, PC, 360 all recognize AF but the PS4 doesn't... sounds PS4 specific to me. This is exactly why we want answers, why does this happen to some PS4 games but not other systems?
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
95% of them have equal AF amount on both consoles, with all other usual things being better in ps4.
This game has:
Better resolution on ps4
Better framerate
Better AO
It's inconcievable to me that they'd consciously implement something so much more power hungry as HBAO instead of something so simple like AF on ground textures at least. It has to be an accidental omission, much like Fafalada suggested.
It is even more inconcievable that something so incredibly simplistic looking as strider or a unfinished Swan has better AF on PS3 than on PS4, while something like Far Cry 4 has good AF on PS4 - if this was some hardware power issue I mean.
here is another from evolve.
What....is this a joke?
Are these actually from 360/PS3?
Is Evole even cross gen?
were those games going from previous gen to the current gen like unfinished swan?
A game which is small ..not graphically demanding and a PS exclusive. There is something obviously not so automatic about AF on ps4 or something buggy with the default implementation.
If this thread some how gets noticed and it gets fixed then it will be totally worth the reactions from the offended crowd.
Those platforms you listed either have directX support or are 8+ years old. How many 360 or PS3 games had AF after two years on the market? PS4 is a bit different, and its new.
David Ricardo
Member
PS4 can do AF 16X, everybody knows that. The question is why some games don't have it. Is it because it would affect performance badly in certain engines?, or it just needs some work to apply it and the developers are time constrained and decide to pass on it to release the game on a certain date?
There must be a reason why certain games don't have it on PS4 but they do have it in inferior hardware. There even is a game that has af on PS3 and not in the PS4 version. That is certainly not because of lack of power, but there must be a reason they didn't include it.
Crimson_Gold
Member
Please see above. It appears to be more of a dev choice issue than anything else.
thelastword
Banned
On the money, nothing else needs to be said frankly.
Ricerocket
Member
I thought this was strange since back with Strider comparison. PS3/360/PC/X1 has AF, PS4 is the only one that doesn't have it. I don't think that game is demanding that AF had to be disabled completely.
Eurogamer said:
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
One case was ICO that appeared to mix some point sampled textures, but I still think it was a deliberate choice by the environment artist who textured that scene. In some cases, you get a sharp texture without too much surface aliasing when you cannot afford a very high resolution texture while relying on mip-mapping. Stop, maybe I am reading too much into it.
I agree, but all of this does point to the fact that Sony should either offer a very simple API to developers which enables AF globally (especially for small independent games which don't need fine-granular management for performance reason), or, if such an API is already available, communicate its existence better.
It's never as simple as a global switch for your typical game scenario, even disregarding textures you want to sample with point or bilinear filtering because of various valid reasons, there are cases where you want to disable it for performance.
I'll give an example that happened to me to illustrate: in our hair rendering pipeline on PS3, we had to render hair meshes several times for various passes. The problem with that kind of meshes is that they often have a ton of overdraw because of the number of layers. Tons of overdraw means a lot of texture samples. In this particular case, AF proved to be much too costly for the increase in quality (especially since most hair strands are usually close to parallel to the camera plane where AF isn't as needed) so once we agreed with the artists that the tradeoff was acceptable, we just disabled it explicitely for some of the hair passes and got a significant boost of performance.
What I'm trying to say (like several time already in this thread) is that apart from a mistake made by some artist, there can be instances where due to lacking time to optimize properly, cuts are made where it's the easiest. Now wether a dev should cut AF or another feature is always debatable and the final decision always lies with the dev.
David Ricardo
Member
Does that mean that in order to achieve higher res, better hbao, etc on PS4 developers sometimes choose to give up af to make everything else work efficiently?
I know that isn't a valid explanation for unfinished swan, but it may be for the games that are better in PS4 in many aspects compared to xbox one.
I really can't imagine that it's too costly for some of these indie games in any realistic scenario. I realize that consoles are different from PCs, but we aren't talking "AAA optimized-to-the-metal" first party titles here, and globally forcing 16xAF in such indie (or even "AA") multiplatform games on PC generally has a negligible performance impact.
If it was about rendering/performance cost, you wouldn't expect to have XB1 (and even PS3!) titles featuring superior filtering.