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[Stuart360]

EPIC always build their new Unreal Engines with the upcoming consoles in mind, and i still think they designed UE5 around 30fps on consoles. You have to remember this is the first gen, this many years in, where the majority of games have been 60fps. All past 3D gens the majority of games have been 30fps, with the odd 60fps game here and there.

You just have to look at the sacrifices needed to get 60fps with UE5 on these consoles to see thats probably the case.

 

[SidViscous]

I do wonder how much better (if anything) FSR 3.0 would look in these situations. Well, I'm sure that's going to be the future over the next few years as more Unreal 5 games come out.
Not surprised with Series S - and I bet majority of S owners wouldn't be either. Isn't that the point of the console. Drop image quality as low as necessary to get the game to run. You buy the cheapest console you get the cheapest quality...?

The problem with the Series S here is that it's running at such a low base resolution that the information for reconstructing a higher pixel count just isn't there, scaling was really designed to help 1080p and 1440p target a full 4k output, the moment you start getting down to 720p or in this case, 436p - then it's almost pointless even trying to scale that up to 4k as it's having to make up like 80-90% of the pixels, at this point you might as well just bilinear stretch it up.

 

[Portugeezer]

UE5 should be a 30fps engine on consoles. I haven't seen a 60fps showcase using it on console which looks overly impressive.

I personally don't even think the resolution looks bad due to some decent reconstruction, but it's clear devs are struggling with UE5 performance, and anything trying 60fps takes a shit on what people expect in terms of IQ.

 

[Dane]

Ouch on these artifacts, also wouldn't upscaling on Series S to 4K even worse than 1080p? They even had possibly a margin to run at XSX levels to increase the internal res a bit.

And Nanite really didn't do much with this game, a lot of enviroments outside of forrests and stonecraft are really last gen, but the performance gains for using such massively higher polycount is huge, so it might not be that taxing, but Nanite is definetely very very demanding. It is a very interesting case of making both features it working on consoles with results, but it needed more optimization, DSO tried out and it still has the typical GPU Bound, CPU issues thing.

 

[sendit]

Unreal Engine 5 pushed hard? I'm playing this now on a 3090, it looks like a PS4 game.

 

[charles8771]

We back to ps3 level of IQ, great. Give me ps4 pro era crisp image quality pelase

You know how games ran in 7th gen consoles?

 

[SKYF@ll]

Tom "Curiously it's also noted that PS5 resolves with a sharper image overall, despite sharing the same base resolution with Series X - a point that possibly suggests a different post-processing treatment between the two.","slight change to ambient shading on PS5"

The PS5 version seems to have slightly higher graphics Quality, but the 720p resolution isn't enough.
Here's an image of the part Tom mentioned.

 

[Kakax11]

Taking a guess here: 720p again?

 

[Eotheod]

Is it actually PS2 quality or are we going full hyperbole? Because from what I remember of PS2 quality, trees did not look that good. Heck I remember FFX being a blurry mess on some landscapes.

 

[Lysandros]

Tom "Curiously it's also noted that PS5 resolves with a sharper image overall, despite sharing the same base resolution with Series X - a point that possibly suggests a different post-processing treatment between the two.","slight change to ambient shading on PS5"

The PS5 version seems to have slightly higher graphics Quality, but the 720p resolution isn't enough.
Here's an image of the part Tom mentioned.

What does he mean by "slight change to ambient shading on PS5"? Is it of higher quality, is it lower? What's different exactly?

 

[sendit]

Unreal engine 5 was a mistake

I still haven't seen a single game on that engine that makes me go "yep, worth it for the performance you have".

The engine is a fucking hog. I hope studios keep to inhouse engines and didn't jump feet first into UE5.

Yep, not impressed. However, I'll reserve my judgement until a triple A studio uses it. Ascent Studio is a new team, not in the same league.

 

[Buggy Loop]

I don’t care. I’ll take 60fps at whatever low resolution they give me.

We're on the way to this soon :

 

[Crayon]

PS5 version is noticeably different even on YouTube. DF is smoking rocks.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

It's hilarious that 'graphical showcase' games are 720p.

For reference the original Xbox in 2001 hardware had 720p games. Even taxing games like DooM 3 could be forced to run it native 720p with extra RAM.

Dont want to be anal and all that. And not singling you out... But I hope this is something we don't turn into a habit.

It's disingenuous, ignorant, pervasive...whatever ee you can think to use to describe it, calling these games 720p.

 

[SportsFan581]

720p to 4K means ‘Ultra Performance’ Mode. Not even DLSS can pull that off cleanly. DLSS can do pretty good job in ‘Performance’ mode, but FSR2 really isn’t acceptable until you get to ‘Balanced’, which would be 1270p base resolution when targeting 4K.

Now I don’t have a problem with the devs including this as an option for 60fps play as long as they also have and option for 30fps Quality mode.

It would be interesting to see a more detailed comparison of the game at different resolution outputs (1080p, 1440p, 4k). From this video the 1080p FSR quality output didn't seem to look any better than the 4k output. Though I would have liked to have seen the comparison of the motion artifacts and the image breakup.

I'm sure the game looks much better in motion than it does in stills.

Most of the games that use reconstruction look worse in motion than in stills, and this one doesn't seem to be an exception. The flicker and breakup around moving objects is noticeable.

 

[SHA]

DF also gives blurry details, it's like making a messy long video not specifying when this case occur and for how long, DF literally resembles the verbal reviews that's written to p people off but visually.

 

[sendit]

I'm sure the game looks much better in motion than it does in stills.

But there should at least have been an optional "Quality" mode at 30 FPS for the pixel-freaks.

This game looks like ass in stills and in motion.

 

[Salz01]

I‘m hoping Lords of the Fallen is a better representation of Unreal 5. This game has always looked mediocre.

 

[proandrad]

It's definitely the target of 60fps making this game look bad and not that shit ass engine. I guess Horizon:FW, Rift Apart, and Returnal are all works of black magic.

 

[SABRE220]

You might take a double take. Iq was not too good before taa existed.
But games you highlighted were good looking

I definitely checked while you could find games that had bad aa, most of the decent studios had very decent antialiasing and most of the games developed by above average studios had signifigantly better image quality than the 720p upscaled mess we are getting recently. Infamous for example used smaa and yet is much sharper. Drive club and bloodborne are outliers with exceptionally bad image quality.

God of war, death stranding, uncharted, shadow of the collosus I could go on and on and they all had signifigantly better image quality than the 720pish ue5 games in image quality even with reconstruction. I mean the bare minimum target for reconstruction should be 1080p to preserve a decent level of image quality but even then frs2 is rather inconsistent in results and has a habit of hampering image quality in every other game.

 

[rofif]

I definitely checked while you could find games that had bad aa, most of the decent studios had very decent antialiasing and most of the games developed by above average studios had signifigantly better image quality than the 720p upscaled mess we are getting recently. Infamous for example used smaa and yet is much sharper. Drive club and bloodborne are outliers with exceptionally bad image quality.

God of war, death stranding, uncharted, shadow of the collosus I could go on and on and they all had signifigantly better image quality than the 720pish ue5 games in image quality even with reconstruction. I mean the bare minimum target for reconstruction should be 1080p to preserve a decent level of image quality but even then frs2 is rather inconsistent in results and has a habit of hampering image quality in every other game.

the fsr crap is going to doom us all. It's not too bad but image stability suffers

 

[sendit]

Reconstruction was a mistake.

Wrong.

 

[Romulus]

Dont want to be anal and all that. And not singling you out... But I hope this is something we don't turn into a habit.

It's disingenuous, ignorant, pervasive...whatever ee you can think to use to describe it, calling these games 720p.

Wait, so XSS doesn't hit 720p? I thought they were at least reconstructed.

 

[Killer8]

Dont want to be anal and all that. And not singling you out... But I hope this is something we don't turn into a habit.

It's disingenuous, ignorant, pervasive...whatever ee you can think to use to describe it, calling these games 720p.

People just don't get how amazing reconstruction is. They just see the label '720p' without any context and throw themselves into a frothing rage.

These are two screenshots I just took of Cyberpunk 2077. First one is 720p native scaled bilinearly to 1440p for the purposes of comparison. Second is running the game in 1440p with DLSS performance mode, so the effective internal res is still 720p.

Slider comparison: https://imgsli.com/MjAxMDM3

Someone would have to be legitimately blind or using a mobile phone to view the images or some shit to claim to not see a difference.

The second image also looks very good on my 4K TV.

 

[Zathalus]

Tom "Curiously it's also noted that PS5 resolves with a sharper image overall, despite sharing the same base resolution with Series X - a point that possibly suggests a different post-processing treatment between the two.","slight change to ambient shading on PS5"

The PS5 version seems to have slightly higher graphics Quality, but the 720p resolution isn't enough.
Here's an image of the part Tom mentioned.

I think the PS5 version is using AMD CAS and it's not enabled on Xbox. Everything appears to be sharper on PS5 but I'm not seeing any increase in pixel information, especially around tiny things like particles and grass.

That's just a guess though.

 

[LostDonkey]

People just don't get how amazing reconstruction is. They just see the label '720p' without any context and throw themselves into a frothing rage.

These are two screenshots I just took of Cyberpunk 2077. First one is 720p native scaled bilinearly to 1440p for the purposes of comparison. Second is running the game in 1440p with DLSS performance mode, so the effective internal res is still 720p.

Slider comparison: https://imgsli.com/MjAxMDM3

Someone would have to be legitimately blind or using a mobile phone to view the images or some shit to claim to not see a difference.

The second image also looks very good on my 4K TV.

Until it moves...

 

[Killer8]

Until it moves...

The alternative to using these techniques is that when it moves it will look like a slideshow.

 

[Audiophile]

Part of me is wondering if this is a game built around FSR3 and it's just not announced/enabled for it yet (total conjecture).

 

[Zathalus]

People just don't get how amazing reconstruction is. They just see the label '720p' without any context and throw themselves into a frothing rage.

These are two screenshots I just took of Cyberpunk 2077. First one is 720p native scaled bilinearly to 1440p for the purposes of comparison. Second is running the game in 1440p with DLSS performance mode, so the effective internal res is still 720p.

Slider comparison: https://imgsli.com/MjAxMDM3

Someone would have to be legitimately blind or using a mobile phone to view the images or some shit to claim to not see a difference.

The second image also looks very good on my 4K TV.

Yes, DLSS looks great and holds up perfectly in motion as well. Problem is that consoles are using FSR and that just breaks down in motion. Take the same screenshots but using FSR and some object motion (or small particles) and it doesn't look nearly as good.

 

[rofif]

720p to 4K means ‘Ultra Performance’ Mode. Not even DLSS can pull that off cleanly. DLSS can do pretty good job in ‘Performance’ mode, but FSR2 really isn’t acceptable until you get to ‘Balanced’, which would be 1270p base resolution when targeting 4K.

Now I don’t have a problem with the devs including this as an option for 60fps play as long as they also have and option for 30fps Quality mode.

Maybe even fsr is doing It better than dlss from 720p. Dlss gets all smudgy and fsr pixelated. I tried ultra performance in re4 and looks decent.

I admire them not adding any modes but in this situation? The resolution should be dynamic so next consoles benefit

 

[SHA]

I think it's time I start looking at getting a PC.

Me too.

I definitely checked while you could find games that had bad aa, most of the decent studios had very decent antialiasing and most of the games developed by above average studios had signifigantly better image quality than the 720p upscaled mess we are getting recently. Infamous for example used smaa and yet is much sharper. Drive club and bloodborne are outliers with exceptionally bad image quality.

God of war, death stranding, uncharted, shadow of the collosus I could go on and on and they all had signifigantly better image quality than the 720pish ue5 games in image quality even with reconstruction. I mean the bare minimum target for reconstruction should be 1080p to preserve a decent level of image quality but even then frs2 is rather inconsistent in results and has a habit of hampering image quality in every other game.

3rd person games are made to hide technical limitations, people usually play these games and forget about the tech behind it, fps games are different.

 

[SlimySnake]

Anyone wanna take a crack at the summary? I am indisposed for a few hours and can't watch the video at the moment.

Tell Phil no booty call tonight.

 

[adamsapple]

Tell Phil no booty call tonight.

 

[ReBurn]

If this is what UE5 is going to do to games I don't want it.

 

[Audiophile]

What amazes me is folks still think there's no need for mid-gen refresh consoles. Not just "I'm not interested" but adamant that there shouldn't be and others shouldn't even get the option...at the end of next year?!

Even if this is a particularly poor example, getting good image quality with non-ML/AI reconstruction on a reasonably sized 4K TV pretty much requires ~1440p as a base. Now if you want that with a few good quality RT elements, nanite/lumen and solid performance; all while pushing more complex game worlds..... We need something better.

 

[Pedro Motta]

What amazes me is folks still think there's no need for mid-gen refresh consoles. Not just "I'm not interested" but adamant that there shouldn't be and others shouldn't even get the option...at the end of next year?!

Even if this is a particularly poor example, getting good image quality with non-ML/AI reconstruction on a reasonably sized 4K TV pretty much requires ~1440p as a base. Now if you want that with a few good quality RT elements, nanite/lumen and solid performance; all while pushing more complex game worlds..... We need something better.

This. And let’s not forget about DF’s faces of disgust of even mentioning a PS5 Pro, and saying that it’s completely unnecessary.

 

[SportsFan581]

the fsr crap is going to doom us all. It's not too bad but image stability suffers

On console the results haven't been great when they've used it, though the exception to that is CP2077 which seems to get a boost with the inclusion without much downside for the image.

I think that maybe some of these games should use the default UE5 option because the Matrix demo was actually really sharp still, even on the XSS where the base res was like 530p or something upscaled to 1080p. It was nowhere near as smeared as what this appears to be, though there is a significant resolution reduction here. I don't think 720p is a good baseline for the XSX or PS5, get that up to at least 1080p. So far everything with a base resolution of 720p has looked bad.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Let's be brutally honest here, Unreal Engine was always very unoptimsed for performance. It looks like that trend has continued.
Hopefully not every devs drops their inhouse engines for this.

 

[Pimpbaa]

Let's be brutally honest here, Unreal Engine was always very unoptimsed for performance. It looks like that trend has continued.
Hopefully not every devs drops their inhouse engines for this.

Very true. There are a few that heavily modify UE to get much better results like what Rocksteady and Netherrealm Studios did. It’s funny that a game like Batman: Arkham Knight which uses a heavily modified UE3 achieved better results than most UE4 game. Days Gone uses UE too, although I’m not sure if it’s UE3 or UE4 but it’s obviously heavily modified considering that games resolution, performance and environmental detail is again better than most UE4 games.

 

[ckaneo]

lol you guys bitch about 60 fps and now your complaining about all the stuff needed to actually achieve it.

 

[akaFullmetal]

Well I am just hoping this is just a developer not knowledgeable about the engine or has the resources to get the most out of the current gen machines. A lot of developers will probably use UE5 in the future and hope we're not running into trouble with upcoming games.

 

[ckaneo]

Well I am just hoping this is just a developer not knowledgeable about the engine or has the resources to get the most out of the current gen machines. A lot of developers will probably use UE5 in the future and hope we're not running into trouble with upcoming games.

Once developers recondition people into accepting 30fps the results will be much closer to what people expect. This is a game attempting to do to much to reach 60 fps. It's a first person game so its understandable but they should have given us a 30fps mode for those of us who dont care.

GTA 6 is probably the first domino

 

[ckaneo]

This. And let’s not forget about DF’s faces of disgust of even mentioning a PS5 Pro, and saying that it’s completely unnecessary.

lol, yall gonna be shocked when the console refresh doesnt solve all these issues. Half of the problem is FSR

 

[hlm666]

Looks like the counts I did and came to 720p myself was spot on, 720p ~40fps in heavy scenes just as I said in the other thread.

Perfect chance to be a petty asshat about ue5 and expected console performance based on tech demos, but no one deserves to be kicked when they are down with timmy tencent dry humping them.

 

[Imtjnotu]

Happy to see Series S with the throwback nod to PS2 and it's resolutions. Honestly that's really nice of EA to consider 2001

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

FSR's trash, specially from low native resolution, nothing new here

Then why the hell are these dumbass developers all doing this? They HAVE to know how bad FSR is when using such pitifully low resolutions yet they do it anyway. All because its the latest trend and theyre too lazy to optomize their games to find a better compromise between graphics settings and image quality.

Now I know why Sony's games are all cross gen and underwhelming. They know that the consoles can't handle next gen engines/next gen graphics better than anyone. But that begs the question ..why didn't design more powerful systems that would be capable of next gen standards? It always comes down to $$. In the ps2/ps3/360 eras the console makers used to take a bigger loss on each unit. Now, the most ive heard is a $50 loss on hardware.

 

[charles8771]

Unreal Engine 3 games have constant pop-in in 7th gen

Then later were like "Oh, this must be an Unreal Engine 3 game"

 

[Heisenberg007]

Cataferal 12 minutes ago

Hello! Sorry absolutely right, it is sharper on PS5. I've updated the article here to reflect the point - it's a fair criticism, and my fault for leaning on the numbers too much.
The data is correct (both are 720p native in every shot tested), but the figures only really explain so much. It could be any number of factors: different post processing, AMD's CAS, or even VRS. I'm now asking the team what the reason is for the difference.

Curiously it's also noted that PS5 resolves with a sharper image overall, despite sharing the same base resolution with Series X - a point that possibly suggests a different post-processing treatment between the two. Even more notable is the state of Xbox Series S. Again this version targets 60fps - and resorts to FSR 2 scaling to get there. The base resolution here though comes in at around 768x436, resulting in a much blurrier image, and even more pixel breakup than the other two machines.

A comparison gallery for your viewing pleasure. While Xbox Series X and PS5 are effectively identical in their native resolutions it appears PS5's final frame resolves to sharper image overall. Meanwhile the axe comes down hard on Series S in terms of both resolution, detail and settings.

Lunatic_Gamer - this should be added to the OP. Courtesy Mr Moose

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

I definitely checked while you could find games that had bad aa, most of the decent studios had very decent antialiasing and most of the games developed by above average studios had signifigantly better image quality than the 720p upscaled mess we are getting recently. Infamous for example used smaa and yet is much sharper. Drive club and bloodborne are outliers with exceptionally bad image quality.

God of war, death stranding, uncharted, shadow of the collosus I could go on and on and they all had signifigantly better image quality than the 720pish ue5 games in image quality even with reconstruction. I mean the bare minimum target for reconstruction should be 1080p to preserve a decent level of image quality but even then frs2 is rather inconsistent in results and has a habit of hampering image quality in every other game.

Spot on! Iq was so much better when the pro consoles released than the shit show FSR upscaled messes we're seeing this gen. I refuse to buy any more games where the devs are too incompetent to realize you can't pair FSR with 1080p and lower resolutions.

Perfect example is the last two COD's. Modern Warfare 2019 looks gorgeous and has beautiful iq on a One X whereas Vanguard and Modern Warfare 2 running on machines 2.5x as powerful as Xb1x look anywhere from "about as good as mw 2019" to "wtf is with this aliased mess im looking at here?"

There's no excuses for devs at the top of the AAA mountain to make these kind of mistakes but it keeps happening- dead space, nfs unbound, re4, mw2, remnant, jedi survivor, immortals all have had major image quality issues.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Very true. There are a few that heavily modify UE to get much better results like what Rocksteady and Netherrealm Studios did. It’s funny that a game like Batman: Arkham Knight which uses a heavily modified UE3 achieved better results than most UE4 game. Days Gone uses UE too, although I’m not sure if it’s UE3 or UE4 but it’s obviously heavily modified considering that games resolution, performance and environmental detail is again better than most UE4 games.

Same with the Coalition. Infact, some of the changes they made have been adopted by Epic for the main engine.

Apparently Jez Cordon has seen Gears 6, and it is mind blowing.