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Digital Foundry: Assassin's Creed Mirage - DF Tech Review - PS5 & Xbox Series X/S Tested at 30FPS/60FPS

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?


Ubisoft delivers a more tightly focused Assassin's Creed title with Mirage - and while technological innovation this time around is somewhat limited, we're looking at a polished release that looks and runs well on all current-gen consoles. Tom Morgan has the full lowdown on the three machines, plus analysis on each of their performance and quality modes. Is 60fps the best way to play? Spoilers: yes.
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
adamsapple adamsapple - 3 minutes and no summary? What the hell?!

jack griffo nick GIF by Nickelodeon
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
- Originally meant as a DLC for AC: Valhalla, expanded to full game running on Valhalla's tech.
- Smaller world but crammed with detail.
- Character details, however, don't hold up.

- Current consoles all launch with 2 modes, Quality and High Frame Rate (30 vs 60)
- Randomized time of day, NPC distribution etc makes getting perfect like for like difficult.

Visuals:
- PS5/SX Quality is DRS 2160p with lowest tested seen 1944p.
- Series S: DRS with 1620p with lows of 1512p seen in testing.
- PS5/SX have visual settings parity.
- Series S has slight reductions. Geometry and tree quality in far distance lower than SX when seen from elevated locations (towers)
- In general runs it's barely noticeable.
- SS has lower shadow quality which drops even lower in Performance mode but, again, these are hardly noticeable in general plays.

- Performance mode: 1800p dynamic with 1440p low DRS seen on PS5/SX
- Series S: DRS 1080p with 864p lows. Series S's softer image quality is more easy to notice here compared to Quality mode.
- PS5/SX sees a little hit in geometry and tree LoD getting reduction over Quality mode.
- Other settings like texture quality, NPC count etc same between Performance and Quality

Performance:
- Quality mode: All 3 are 'water tight 30' without a single blip seen. No frame pacing issues either.
- In 60 FPS mode: 99% locked to 60fps but rapid camera motion from sky to city can cause tearing and single frame drop (when DRS is stressed quickly)
- Both PS5/SX can suffer this, anecdotally SX prone to tear more in this scenario.
- Fixed 60 FPS in all scenarios and above scenario is 'an outlier'.
- Series S more or less the same. 'Extremely playable at 60' with occasional flashes of tearing.
- The anvil engine has no issues scaling to Series S for a good 60 FPS output during gameplay.
- Series S locks cut-scenes to 30 FPS where PS5/SX run them at 60 in Performance mode. This is the biggest difference.

Conclusion:
- Sticking to 60 FPS on all 3 is recommended.
 
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King Dazzar

Member
Worth a try. With AC Valhalla on XSX, the vertical pan tear could be resolved by playing the 60fps mode, with the global 120hz console setting enabled, without having to enable VRR. PS5 never suffered as much as the XSX and it appears with AC Mirage, Anvil again runs a touch better on PS5.
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
OK that is interesting.

Hopefully adamsapple adamsapple can cover that analysis since he does do a good job with DF.
It was covered in this thread. https://www.neogaf.com/threads/ign-...s-ps4-vs-xbox-one-performance-review.1662044/

2% is during cutscenes maybe, but in the former video we can see >10% performance delta in some GPU bound scenes. It could be bigger actually as PS5 being locked 60fps the whole way. So basically we can still see the same performance difference in this game as in Valhalla.


FFXVI - 'Kill'
wjZcp5c.jpg
cc: diffusionx diffusionx ^^
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I don't watch DF now, so I'm not sure how much they showed. But IGN and NXGamer showed up to 11% frame rate advantage on PS5. So it's pretty one-sided, I'd say.

I'm not one of those "DF are Xbox shills" types but omitting something like that would be pretty weird.


Neither DF, nor NXGamer made any note of performance difference beyond an extra tear or two. (or a less than 2% difference in NXG's video)

That video which showed the difference has seemingly been discredited by some members like Lysandros Lysandros as being unreliable for their metrics, similar to ElAnalistaDeBits.

I think it's just splitting hairs when the games look 100% identical and perform 99.9% identical.
 
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King Dazzar

Member
Neither DF, nor NXGamer made any note of performance difference beyond an extra tear or two. (or a less than 2% difference in NXG's video)

That video which showed the difference has seemingly been discredited by some members like Lysandros Lysandros as being unreliable for their metrics, similar to ElAnalistaDeBits.

I think it's just splitting hairs when the games look 100% identical and perform 99.9% identical.
I think your dismissal is a touch disingenuous, but I agree with both running well. I've time stamped Gaming Tech's experience:
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I think your dismissal is a touch disingenuous, but I agree with both running well. I've time stamped Gaming Tech's experience:


You're calling my dismissal disingenuous over a momentary drop to 58.4 fps.

Which give or take the same, or less than the 2% NXG talked about.


Staring Episode 2 GIF by The Office
 
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King Dazzar

Member
Another game (with third person view) where a 40 FPS mode would be a fantastic middle ground. With a few exceptions, only Sony developers care enough.
I just wish they'd fix the vertical pan tear and then for me the 60fps mode would be pretty much perfect. Its like they're almost there, but just missing that extra bit of polish.

On a sperate note. I didn't hear any mention from DF of the apparently excessive use of Chromatic Aberration. Anyone know what that's like on console?
 

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
I just wish they'd fix the vertical pan tear and then for me the 60fps mode would be pretty much perfect. Its like they're almost there, but just missing that extra bit of polish.

On a sperate note. I didn't hear any mention from DF of the apparently excessive use of Chromatic Aberration. Anyone know what that's like on console?
It's pretty bad on console too and it kinda made me stop playing. Hopefully they'll address the CA issue soon.

 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
I don't watch DF now, so I'm not sure how much they showed. But IGN and NXGamer showed up to 11% frame rate advantage on PS5. So it's pretty one-sided, I'd say.

I think your dismissal is a touch disingenuous, but I agree with both running well. I've time stamped Gaming Tech's experience:

GamingTech says the difference is about 1% in favor of the PS5 and that the Series X can drop very briefly if you pan the camera up and down rapidly. The worse dip in the section you timestamped is 58.4fps for a split second, a 3% difference. I'd say all three arrived at the same conclusion, no?
 

King Dazzar

Member
GamingTech says the difference is about 1% in favor of the PS5 and that the Series X can drop very briefly if you pan the camera up and down rapidly. The worse dip in the section you timestamped is 58.4fps for a split second, a 3% difference. I'd say all three arrived at the same conclusion, no?
That depends on what you're trying to paint their collective conclusion as. I'll simply give my own take:

So the panning camera up and down is actually on both, to my understanding, not just XSX. It can happen on PS5 too. Also, as I mentioned previously, the XSX may have an advantage, if you lock the console into its 120hz mode - it helped with Valhalla and eliminated the vertical pan tear. However, as I see it today, without getting my own hands on, the XSX tearing is more prominent in some busier sections of the city. Which is an additional issue on top of the vertical pan tear. For me I don't care whether those frame drops are 1%, 5% or 10%. With Anvil since Valhalla, due to its (I'm assuming) adaptive vsync implementation, those drops present a tear, not just a tiny stutter or hitch. It annoyed the hell out of me with Valhalla, until it was patched and improved. So make of that what you will. But having played many hundreds of hours on Valhalla. I thinks its disappointing that they havent fixed the vertical pan tear and also that the XSX has additional tearing in some areas. Tiny frame drops wouldn't annoy me anywhere near as much as tearing does.

I hope that helps clarify.
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
So why does the SX tear more?

A GPU thing which would be odd.
Is it a GPU thing? We can't simplify this when it comes to consoles because we're comparing entire systems, not just one component. On PC, it's easy to isolate this. You got one PC, swap out one part and test again. Same APIs, same CPU, same OS, same everything. On consoles, there are thousands of factors at play so I often find those discussions trying to simplify performance drops or bottlenecks to a specific component is ignoring the realities of the complexities of those machines. PS5 could just be a better engineered machine overall or it could be a GPU thing as you say. No real way to know for sure like on PC.
 
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Is it a GPU thing? We can't simplify this when it comes to consoles because we're comparing entire systems, not just one component. On PC, it's easy to isolate this. You got one PC, swap out one part and test again. Same APIs, same CPU, same OS, same everything. On consoles, there are thousands of factors at play so I often find those discussions trying to simplify performance drops or bottlenecks to a specific component is ignoring the realities of the complexities of those machines unproductive. PS5 could just be a better engineered machine overall or it could be a GPU thing as you say. No real way to know for sure like on PC.

Usually tearing is more of a GPU thing but I could be wrong. I know the two GPUs are different so maybe that's why the engine doesn't tear as much on the PS5 for this title.

But overall I consider both versions identical if that makes any sense. That tiny difference doesn't make one vastly superior than the other.
 
Maybe its just the needs of the engine. I wouldn't worry about the difference since its tiny. It sure isn't because of broken tools that's for sure.
I'm not worried but we are seeing these 2 machines being under utilised game in game out. It's apparent we won't see true next-gen visuals from either machine till late 2024/25.
 

King Dazzar

Member
Is it a GPU thing? We can't simplify this when it comes to consoles because we're comparing entire systems, not just one component. On PC, it's easy to isolate this. You got one PC, swap out one part and test again. Same APIs, same CPU, same OS, same everything. On consoles, there are thousands of factors at play so I often find those discussions trying to simplify performance drops or bottlenecks to a specific component is ignoring the realities of the complexities of those machines unproductive. PS5 could just be a better engineered machine overall or it could be a GPU thing as you say. No real way to know for sure like on PC.
Usually tearing is more of a GPU thing but I could be wrong. I know the two GPUs are different so maybe that's why the engine doesn't tear as much on the PS5 for this title.

But overall I consider both versions identical if that makes any sense. That tiny difference doesn't make one vastly superior than the other.
PS5 lead platform is probably why, this engine is a last generation engine that's not using any next-gen graphics technology.

So apparently, some have said the vertical tearing is due to how the game isn't changing its dynamic resolution efficiently enough. Maybe its connected to that for the other dips too - it wouldn't surprise me if its just an OS/software based issue on how it runs the Anvil engine. But that's just conjecture on my part. If it is GPU maybe the clock speed differences affect things on this specific engine. Or as Negotiator says, maybe its just platform focus - but it did present itself in a similar fashion on Valhalla. Who knows.

Maybe its just the needs of the engine. I wouldn't worry about the difference since its tiny. It sure isn't because of broken tools that's for sure.
The problem is, without VRR, with Anvil any of these minor dips, present themselves as a tear though.
 
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