Support NeoGAF

[keram]

Interesting hiring application from Sony "We seek an engineer to develop compression and I/O-focused technologies for a wide range of games and internal systems."

https://boards.greenhouse.io/sonyinteractiveentertainmentplaystation/jobs/3153385

Reads like they want to improve their firmware or even create their own game engine focusing on the PS5 I/O and streaming, interessting.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Remember when he explained why the graphics in Halo Infinite doesn't actually look bad? That it was just flat lighting (or something like that..)

Yeah...

No lies detected. Lighting was the number 1 issue with that demo.

 

[existensmaximum]

No lies detected. Lighting was the number 1 issue with that demo.

Yes! Everything about that demo would have looked stunning and amazing if only the lighting had been good. Maybe with ray-tracing!

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Yes! Everything about that demo would have looked stunning and amazing if only the lighting had been good. Maybe with ray-tracing!

Never said it was the only issue, but it also accentuated other issues like textures.

 

[existensmaximum]

Never said it was the only issue, but it also accentuated other issues like textures.

Sure. But even if it had the greatest lighting in the world it still would look like ass and be incredibly disappointing?

Character models, animation, foliage, draw distance.. Do I need to go on? Everything about it was a complete embarrassment. Highlighting the lighting as THE issue is just mind-blowing to me. Everything was the issue.

 

[Pedro Motta]

No lies detected. Lighting was the number 1 issue with that demo.

Right, so the shitty artwork and boring gameplay had nothing to do with it?

 

[Rea]

For anyone who hasn't watched, this is 12 mins of uninterrupted gameplay preview.

 

[Rea]

Sure. But even if it had the greatest lighting in the world it still would look like ass and be incredibly disappointing?

Character models, animation, foliage, draw distance.. Do I need to go on? Everything about it was a complete embarrassment. Highlighting the lighting as THE issue is just mind-blowing to me. Everything was the issue.

I took a hassle and watch the demo again recently,
Man! the lighting is the least problem the game has. For me there's nothing wrong with the lighting. The most obvious thing that stood out to me was, that game has no atmosphere. There's no wind, Everything looks static, Everything just looks and feels fake. LoL.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

MS actually came out and told us exactly what their hardware decompression block is equivalent to. it's 4 zen 2 cores.

• Hardware Accelerated Decompression: Game packages and assets are compressed to minimize download times and the amount of storage required for each individual game. With hardware accelerated support for both the industry standard LZ decompressor as well as a brand new, proprietary algorithm specifically designed for texture data named BCPack, Xbox Series X provides the best of both worlds for developers to achieve massive savings with no loss in quality or performance. As texture data comprises a significant portion of the total overall size of a game, having a purpose built algorithm optimized for texture data in addition to the general purpose LZ decompressor, both can be used in parallel to reduce the overall size of a game package. Assuming a 2:1 compression ratio, Xbox Series X delivers an effective 4.8 GB/s in I/O performance to the title, approximately 100x the I/O performance in current generation consoles. To deliver similar levels of decompression performance in software would require more than 4 Zen 2 CPU cores.

Also, the PS5's DMA controller is equivalent to 2 zen 2 cores so the i/o block is more like 11 zen 2 cores.

What is interesting here is they actually "downgraded" the number of Zen 2 cores equivalent in this official article/blog post from the few months earlier DF tech deep dive:

"Plus it has other benefits," enthuses Andrew Goossen. "It's less latent and it saves a ton of CPU. With the best competitive solution, we found doing decompression software to match the SSD rate would have consumed three Zen 2 CPU cores. When you add in the IO CPU overhead, that's another two cores. So the resulting workload would have completely consumed five Zen 2 CPU cores when now it only takes a tenth of a CPU core. So in other words, to equal the performance of a Series X at its full IO rate, you would need to build a PC with 13 Zen 2 cores. That's seven cores dedicated for the game: one for Windows and shell and five for the IO and decompression overhead."

The newer blog says 'more than 4 Zen 2 cores' but now we know less than 5. In other words we're right back to the simplest equation from right at the beginning. 4.x cores = 4.8GB/s and 9 cores = 11GB/s. Add/stack whatever fancy multiplier to either and the bottom line will always end up ~2X difference between the two as the raw 2.4GB/s vs 5.5GB/s throughput showed.

 

[thewire]

I took a hassle and watch the demo again recently,
Man! the lighting is the least problem the game has. For me there's nothing wrong with the lighting. The most obvious thing that stood out to me was, that game has no atmosphere. There's no wind, Everything looks static, Everything just looks and feels fake. LoL.

I still remember the hype before the Xbox conference, every insider hyping it too the moon esp Halo, rdx talking about how halo was gonna look like a cgi movie, Xbox YouTubers saying after Sony conference Xbox executives were confident they were top that show, all those same youtubers giving the show a 8-9/10 and only to turn on twitter and see the Craig memes galore and meltdowns everywhere. Xbox era had to be created, rdx holding back tears whilst major nelson was speaking to them, this thread was hilarious during that time and most the xbox guys left, Alex getting put in his place by John in the digital foundry recap of the show.
How the fuck does management allow halo to be shown in that state? It looked god fucking awful and i feel the pressure must be overbearing at 343 to deliver a Halo that the meets to the standards that it had to during bungies time, back when halo was such a massive event everytime it launched.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

I took a hassle and watch the demo again recently,
Man! the lighting is the least problem the game has. For me there's nothing wrong with the lighting. The most obvious thing that stood out to me was, that game has no atmosphere. There's no wind, Everything looks static, Everything just looks and feels fake. LoL.

Bolded parts can be vastly alleviated with good lighting. As I said, it's not the only problem but it's the biggest one imo.

 

[PaintTinJr]

What is interesting here is they actually "downgraded" the number of Zen 2 cores equivalent in this official article/blog post from the few months earlier DF tech deep dive:



The newer blog says 'more than 4 Zen 2 cores' but now we know less than 5. In other words we're right back to the simplest equation from right at the beginning. 4.x cores = 4.8GB/s and 9 cores = 11GB/s. Add/stack whatever fancy multiplier to either and the bottom line will always end up ~2X difference between the two as the raw 2.4GB/s vs 5.5GB/s throughput showed.

I agree with the general gist of your post, but the part I bolded feels like you are counting the raw 2.4GB/s of the drive in that 4.8GB/s.
Surely 4.x cores is only adding 2.4GB/s IO via decompression, no? And the 9 cores+edram is adding ( 22Gb/s -5.5GB/s =) ~16GB/s above and beyond the RAW IO transfer, no?

That gulf in gain from CPU cores with and without ample edram suggests that the XVA is using main ram or a combination of main ram and L2 Cache on the CPU, as its source and sink data for decompression, because if it was using ample L2 cache then it should perform better than the IO complex, because as AFAIK on any given chip, L1 smaller but more bandwidth/lower latency than L2, an L2 cache smaller but more bandwidth/lower latency than LastLineofCache/edram, and edram smaller but more bandwith/lower latency than RAM.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

I agree with the general gist of your post, but the part I bolded feels like you are counting the raw 2.4GB/s of the drive in that 4.8GB/s.
Surely 4.x cores is only adding 2.4GB/s IO via decompression, no? And the 9 cores+edram is adding ( 22Gb/s -5.5GB/s =) ~16GB/s above and beyond the RAW IO transfer, no?

That gulf in gain from CPU cores with and without ample edram suggests that the XVA is using main ram or a combination of main ram and L2 Cache on the CPU, as its source and sink data for decompression, because if it was using ample L2 cache then it should perform better than the IO complex, because as AFAIK on any given chip, L1 smaller but more bandwidth/lower latency than L2, an L2 cache smaller but more bandwidth/lower latency than LastLineofCache/edram, and edram smaller but more bandwith/lower latency than RAM.

Honestly you have lost me here with the second paragraph!? Don't know where to start so will just look *confused*!

It is really rather simple this. Of course the 2.4GB/s is counted in the 4.8GB/s because it is that! 2.4GB/s plus multipliers/XVA/fairy dust = 4.8GB/s effective throughput as a baseline average. The decompression chip in the APU does its job that would *otherwise* take 'more than 4 Zen 2 cores' to do and this comparison to Zen 2 cores is just that, and it just makes it easy to understand (I think) just how powerful and useful the HW decompression is in these consoles. That's it. Apply the same logic/maths to PS5's system.

 

[Dodkrake]

MS comparing SFS to no PRT is like comparing a 50hp engine vs a 125hp engine and forgetting there's a mid range one with 110hp.

SFS is supposedly a net improvement over PRT, but PRT exists and has been in use for a while.

 

[Riky]

Bolded parts can be vastly alleviated with good lighting. As I said, it's not the only problem but it's the biggest one imo.

It's also an open world 4k 60fps game, we've now seen so far this generation that expectations were a bit higher than the reality of what has been delivered so far.

 

[keram]

It's also an open world 4k 60fps game, we've now seen so far this generation that expectations were a bit higher than the reality of what has been delivered so far.

You might be right, now my question would be does Halo need to be a open world game at all? If that's the excuse for the underwhelming presentation.

Or could it be, because the game was build in mind of the LCD which is the original Xbox One?

Mhhh ....

 

[PaintTinJr]

Honestly you have lost me here with the second paragraph!? Don't know where to start so will just look *confused*!

It is really rather simple this. Of course the 2.4GB/s is counted in the 4.8GB/s because it is that! 2.4GB/s plus multipliers/XVA/fairy dust = 4.8GB/s effective throughput as a baseline average. The decompression chip in the APU does its job that would *otherwise* take 'more than 4 Zen 2 cores' to do and this comparison to Zen 2 cores is just that, and it just makes it easy to understand (I think) just how powerful and useful the HW decompression is in these consoles. That's it. Apply the same logic/maths to PS5's system.

I was just thinking your post was comparing xsx ssd+xva to ps5 ssd raw, so my post was just trying to compare the xva to the io complex in terms of effectiveness, and then I speculated at the hw reason why the 4 cores of xva offer an extra 2.4gb/s (theoretical) vs an extra 16gb/s ( theoretical) bandwidth of ( the 9 cores equal to) the io complex.

Looking again, the effectiveness of the xva may just be hampered by a ~2. 3x reduction in raw ssd feeding it and another 2.5x less compute (which would then be 13.75 v16.5gb/s in theoretical effectiveness).

What it probably does show is that the xva 4.8gb/s figure is as unrealistic as io complex's 22gb/s figure for average throughout IMHO.

 

[Rea]

I still remember the hype before the Xbox conference, every insider hyping it too the moon esp Halo, rdx talking about how halo was gonna look like a cgi movie, Xbox YouTubers saying after Sony conference Xbox executives were confident they were top that show, all those same youtubers giving the show a 8-9/10 and only to turn on twitter and see the Craig memes galore and meltdowns everywhere

Well, xbox studios games Do look like "CGI" during that show except for Halo.

 

[thewire]

It's also an open world 4k 60fps game, we've now seen so far this generation that expectations were a bit higher than the reality of what has been delivered so far.

It’s not open world and that still isn’t an excuse considering how Miles morales launched on ps5/PS4. Sony would be roasted to pieces if they showcased an major ip of theirs like halo, can Xbox fans here get some standards & be honest.
Most halo fans were not happy with what was shown and they have standards cause they remember the days of bungie making Halo.
Btw rachet & clank seems to be delivering just fine with next gen expectations for everyone.

 

[Riky]

It’s not open world and that still isn’t an excuse considering how Miles morales launched on ps5/PS4. Sony would be roasted to pieces if they showcased an major ip of theirs like halo, can hardcore Xbox get some standards & be honest.
Most halo fans were not happy with what was shown and they have standards cause they remember the days of bungie making Halo.
Btw rachet & clank seems to be delivering just fine with next gen expectations.

It's more open world than any other Halo and several times larger, 4k 60fps and 120fps multiplayer on top, who else is offering that? I was happy with how the gameplay looked like a throwback to the original game and hopefully they have improved the visuals the last twelve months, it's still a cross gen game after all.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

I was just thinking your post was comparing xsx ssd+xva to ps5 ssd raw, so my post was just trying to compare the xva to the io complex in terms of effectiveness, and then I speculated at the hw reason why the 4 cores of xva offer an extra 2.4gb/s (theoretical) vs an extra 16gb/s ( theoretical) bandwidth of ( the 9 cores equal to) the io complex.

Looking again, the effectiveness of the xva may just be hampered by a ~2. 3x reduction in raw ssd feeding it and another 2.5x less compute (which would then be 13.75 v16.5gb/s in theoretical effectiveness).

What it probably does show is that the xva 4.8gb/s figure is as unrealistic as io complex's 22gb/s figure for average throughout IMHO.

I suspect along with many people you have been blinded by Microsoft's penchant for long, rambling and acronym strewn blog posts about their tech. It really doesn't need such detailed/confusing explanations as it is impressive in its own right at the basic level. Apply K.I.S.S.

Just look at how long and rambling this blog is! https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/07/14/a-closer-look-at-xbox-velocity-architecture/

On Sony's side we got a pithy, ASMR Mark Cerny and Sony corp just walking along whistling. The tech speaks for itself (or others/devs/games do it for them).

 

[Rea]

Bolded parts can be vastly alleviated with good lighting. As I said, it's not the only problem but it's the biggest one imo.

Eh, dude you're kidding right? I'm talking about atmosphere of the planet, the wind, the global weather, the volumetric fog, the movement of foliage, etc. The planet looks dead. These are nothing to do with light. Light doesn't moves objects. No, the lighting is not the biggest issue with the game, that lighting excuse is a lame excuse came up by Alex Bugaga. That game wasn't even look like a playable demo for the big event, it looks like one of the prototype created during pre-production.
I'm not gonna discuss this and derail thread anymore before i get warned by mods.

 

[NeroDaGod]

Alex Bugaga I’m dead

 

[jroc74]

Interesting hiring application from Sony "We seek an engineer to develop compression and I/O-focused technologies for a wide range of games and internal systems."

https://boards.greenhouse.io/sonyinteractiveentertainmentplaystation/jobs/3153385

Yeah, Sony not messing around, lol.

So the plan is to optimize it even more....

 

[LiquidRex]

AMD Super Resolution patent drops.

And this drops Temporal Downsampling, another gaze related patent...

WIPO - Search International and National Patent Collections

 

[thewire]

It's more open world than any other Halo and several times larger, 4k 60fps and 120fps multiplayer on top, who else is offering that? I was happy with how the gameplay looked like a throwback to the original game and hopefully they have improved the visuals the last twelve months, it's still a cross gen game after all.

It’s not open world though, nor does it excuse a high end pc showing the game in an horrific state, open world game on a base ps4 looked better than halo last year ffs. Heck compare it to Spider-Man miles morales an actual open world game, with 3 modes; native 4k 30 with ray tracing (best on any console currently), dynamic 4k 60 & dynamic 1440p 60 w rt & no ones complaining about Spider-Man’s visuals. Halo on a next gen console and high end pc should look better than any last gen game, that’s not a tough ask and should be the bare minimum. None of us care for screenshots esp after all those fake in engine trailers the years before, we’ll be waiting to see the e3 re-reveal to judge it and it needs to deliver.

 

[SportsFan581]

Yes! Everything about that demo would have looked stunning and amazing if only the lighting had been good. Maybe with ray-tracing!

If you compare the much improved screenshots that have leaked out recently to the horrible promo shots released last year, almost all the improvements appear to be in lighting and shadows. So, yeah, that can have a big impact.

Biggest issue they had last year was nothing looked grounded to the world, especially in the specific shots they chose to highlight. It honestly seemed like they picked some of the worst ones.

 

[ksdixon]

I still remember the hype before the Xbox conference, every insider hyping it too the moon esp Halo, rdx talking about how halo was gonna look like a cgi movie, Xbox YouTubers saying after Sony conference Xbox executives were confident they were top that show, all those same youtubers giving the show a 8-9/10 and only to turn on twitter and see the Craig memes galore and meltdowns everywhere. Xbox era had to be created, rdx holding back tears whilst major nelson was speaking to them, this thread was hilarious during that time and most the xbox guys left, Alex getting put in his place by John in the digital foundry recap of the show.
How the fuck does management allow halo to be shown in that state? It looked god fucking awful and i feel the pressure must be overbearing at 343 to deliver a Halo that the meets to the standards that it had to during bungies time, back when halo was such a massive event everytime it launched.

I need to find this thread. Which event was it again?

 

[ksdixon]

Sony's whole thing is cutting down speed and latency, right? Weather it's the io/ssd, or some of those new bandwidth/streaming patents.

Considering they bought a license for every ps4/5 for oodle compression, and just bought EVO, it's time for Sony to buy NRS and CAPCOM, get MK, DC, MARVEL, CAPCOM under one house, and implement netcode for all series.

... What do you mean I've had enough to drink?..

 

[thewire]

I need to find this thread. Which event was it again?

Just go back to probably around page 2500 of this thread too see post ms showcase shenanigans

 

[Riky]

It’s not open world though, nor does it excuse a high end pc showing the game in an horrific state, open world game on a base ps4 looked better than halo last year ffs. Heck compare it to Spider-Man miles morales an actual open world game, with 3 modes; native 4k 30 with ray tracing (best on any console currently), dynamic 4k 60 & dynamic 1440p 60 w rt & no ones complaining about Spider-Man’s visuals. Halo on a next gen console and high end pc should look better than any last gen game, that’s not a tough ask and should be the bare minimum. None of us care for screenshots esp after all those fake in engine trailers the years before, we’ll be waiting to see the e3 re-reveal to judge it and it needs to deliver.

Halo has never been the best looking game, Reach looked quite good on release but it's never been about a benchmark setting graphical showcase.
I was there on launch Xbox midnight with Halo, so I qualify as a fan since day one. What I want to see is a return to the original game in art style and gameplay, they did that. Then it has to run well so framerate is king, that actually appeared fine but it was on PC so I can't take too much from that.
The meat of the game is multiplayer which has been the case since Halo 2 and we haven't seen that yet running, but 120fps makes me think they got the right priorities. Leave the graphical benchmark to The Coalition.

 

[existensmaximum]

If you compare the much improved screenshots that have leaked out recently to the horrible promo shots released last year, almost all the improvements appear to be in lighting and shadows. So, yeah, that can have a big impact.

Biggest issue they had last year was nothing looked grounded to the world, especially in the specific shots they chose to highlight. It honestly seemed like they picked some of the worst ones.

I'm not overly interested in screenshots, and I wouldn't judge the game until I saw some actual gameplay in motion. The game could have the best lighting and textures in the world, but if they don't change some of the art/world/enemy design/models and improve the animation greatly (among other things), the game will still look very dated and embarrassing in my opinion.

Obviously you don't need to agree though.

 

[SlimySnake]

Yes! Everything about that demo would have looked stunning and amazing if only the lighting had been good. Maybe with ray-tracing!

I dont know about everything, but that was one time where I completely agreed with Alex on something. Halo looked dated for several reasons (small skirmishes instead of big epic scale battles from Halo 3 being the main culprit) but when you are trying to show off a next gen showpiece, you can easily get away with shoehorning RT. If not just to say that hey look we have RT in our launch exclusive! Sony did that with Spiderman. Those RT reflections got a lot of mileage from places like DF and fans all but forgot that it was a last gen game.

From what I understand, Halo Infinite has a realtime time of day system. So yes, RT lighting that handles all the lighting for you wouldve been an easy fix. It should just plug right in and work. It also completely takes the artists out of the equation who had to bake in the lighting to look like whatever they thought dusk is supposed to look like. Halo has always been a game with fancy explosions so RT lighting wouldve made every explosion light up the environments more accurately and made it look much more dynamic.

Add in RT reflections on all those armors and everything starts to pop a bit more. The game just looked very dull, and the worst part is that you cannot fix stuff like lighting like you would a few bugs here and there. It needed to be overhauled, and replacing it with RT GI wouldve been far easier than going back and retouching every single baked lighting condition in the game. I still expected the game to get delayed by a year so it was never going to be a quick fix, but utilizing XSX's RT hardware to 'fix' the visuals made complete sense to me.

 

[existensmaximum]

I dont know about everything, but that was one time where I completely agreed with Alex on something. Halo looked dated for several reasons (small skirmishes instead of big epic scale battles from Halo 3 being the main culprit) but when you are trying to show off a next gen showpiece, you can easily get away with shoehorning RT. If not just to say that hey look we have RT in our launch exclusive! Sony did that with Spiderman. Those RT reflections got a lot of mileage from places like DF and fans all but forgot that it was a last gen game.

From what I understand, Halo Infinite has a realtime time of day system. So yes, RT lighting that handles all the lighting for you wouldve been an easy fix. It should just plug right in and work. It also completely takes the artists out of the equation who had to bake in the lighting to look like whatever they thought dusk is supposed to look like. Halo has always been a game with fancy explosions so RT lighting wouldve made every explosion light up the environments more accurately and made it look much more dynamic.

Add in RT reflections on all those armors and everything starts to pop a bit more. The game just looked very dull, and the worst part is that you cannot fix stuff like lighting like you would a few bugs here and there. It needed to be overhauled, and replacing it with RT GI wouldve been far easier than going back and retouching every single baked lighting condition in the game. I still expected the game to get delayed by a year so it was never going to be a quick fix, but utilizing XSX's RT hardware to 'fix' the visuals made complete sense to me.

So wait.. maybe I'm reading way too much into your answer, but are you saying Spider-Man looked as bad as the Halo Infinite demo, but then looked great when they added RT for the PS5 version? I mean, the Halo demo looked infinitely (!) worse than pretty much all PS4 exclusives. I think Spider-Man still looks great on the PS4 today.

Or am I misunderstanding you completely?

 

[thewire]

Halo has never been the best looking game, Reach looked quite good on release but it's never been about a benchmark setting graphical showcase.
I was there on launch Xbox midnight with Halo, so I qualify as a fan since day one. What I want to see is a return to the original game in art style and gameplay, they did that. Then it has to run well so framerate is king, that actually appeared fine but it was on PC so I can't take too much from that.
The meat of the game is multiplayer which has been the case since Halo 2 and we haven't seen that yet running, but 120fps makes me think they got the right priorities. Leave the graphical benchmark to The Coalition.

A graphical benchmark, is not looking better than the best PS4 games last gen, it’s just looking better than last gen, it’s not a tough ask and I’ve been a halo fan since the first halo on the og Xbox, still one of the greatest shooters ever made and both halo 1 & 2 were showcases on the OG Xbox, 343 have utterly mismanagement and killed my hype for the franchise since they took over with halo 4 (halo 4 was a visual showcase though).
Most games have 4k 60fs options for single player this gen and a game having 120 fps for multiplayer isn’t impressive this gen either, this doesn’t justify poor graphics, animations, textures, particles, draw distance, etc esp as the game was running on a high end PC where they can max most the setting out with ease. COD launched with both options and looked far better than halo and battlefield 6 will launch with these options too and I guarantee it won’t look like poor like Halo did last year. Expecting a good looking halo game for the series X & high end PC isn’t a big ask, it’s requisite.

 

[SportsFan581]

So wait.. maybe I'm reading way too much into your answer, but are you saying Spider-Man looked as bad as the Halo Infinite demo, but then looked great when they added RT for the PS5 version? I mean, the Halo demo looked infinitely (!) worse than pretty much all PS4 exclusives. I think Spider-Man still looks great on the PS4 today.

Or am I misunderstanding you completely?

Halo Infinite is a cross-gen game with X1, not PS4. That 50% performance difference between X1 and PS4 really comes into play here. Making a sudo open world game on X1 at 60fps is going to bring limitations with it, and you can see that in Halo Infinite, and that will remain. The gameplay looked fine the way it was, it was just classic Halo (if you aren't interested, you just aren't interested in Halo).

 

[Riky]

A graphical benchmark, is not looking better than the best PS4 games last gen, it’s just looking better than last gen, it’s not a tough ask and I’ve been a halo fan since the first halo on the og Xbox, still one of the greatest shooters ever made and both halo 1 & 2 were showcases on the OG Xbox, 343 have utterly mismanagement and killed my hype for the franchise since they took over with halo 4 (halo 4 was a visual showcase though).
Most games have 4k 60fs options for single player this gen and a game having 120 fps for multiplayer isn’t impressive this gen either, this doesn’t justify poor graphics, animations, textures, particles, draw distance, etc esp as the game was running on a high end PC where they can max most the setting out with ease. COD launched with both options and looked far better than halo and battlefield 6 will launch with these options too and I guarantee it won’t look like poor like Halo did last year. Expecting a good looking halo game for the series X & high end PC isn’t a big ask, it’s requisite.

You show me those 4k 60-120fps PS4 games I'd love to see them. Saying 120fps isn't impressive shows me you're just trolling.

 

[SlimySnake]

So wait.. maybe I'm reading way too much into your answer, but are you saying Spider-Man looked as bad as the Halo Infinite demo, but then looked great when they added RT for the PS5 version? I mean, the Halo demo looked infinitely (!) worse than pretty much all PS4 exclusives. I think Spider-Man still looks great on the PS4 today.

Or am I misunderstanding you completely?

Nah, I am coming at this from a marketing perspective. MS was trying to sell the XSX when they showed off Halo Infinite, and as long as you utilize the tech in your fancy new next gen console, people will either give you a pass for being cross gen or focus on those new tech advancements. See the new Metro Exodus update. I personally think it looks worse in everyway compared to the original but Alex and even this forum is mostly focused on how accurate the lighting is due to the RT tech.

TBH, i dont think Halo Infinite looked all that bad especially considering it is aiming to be a 60 fps open world title on last gen hardware.

I dont think it looks infinitely worse than PS4 exclusives. Not as good maybe, but not bad by any means.

They shouldve just cancelled the last gen versions. Or at least the x1s version and made the x1x version a 1440p 30 fps base. Have XSX target 1440p 60 fps with ray tracing.

 

[Sinthor]

Well, I bet this is impressive. This game was so technically smooth and good already. If I could stand playing thru the game again, I'd definitely play it on PS5! This will be a great technical experience for anyone who tries it for the first time as well.

 

[TrebleShot]

I have a sneaky feeling AMD style DLSS will never come to the current gen, it will be teased, people will look at patents etc but ultimately it will never come.
PS5 pro most likely if ever.

 

[SlimySnake]

Well, I bet this is impressive. This game was so technically smooth and good already. If I could stand playing thru the game again, I'd definitely play it on PS5! This will be a great technical experience for anyone who tries it for the first time as well.

Played it some last night and apparently I had left it one of the aquarium flashbacks. I almost quit right there lol.

But I am glad I didnt because the very next section is this forest night scene they first showed off at the Paris Games Show in 2017, and it's by far my favorite cutscene in the game. The lighting and visuals look out of this world at 1440p 60 fps. PS5 lets you capture 4k 60 fps videos if you start the recording manually so I figured i'd give it a shot, and it looks phenomenal on youtube at 4k 60 fps.

 

[Sinthor]

Played it some last night and apparently I had left it one of the aquarium flashbacks. I almost quit right there lol.

But I am glad I didnt because the very next section is this forest night scene they first showed off at the Paris Games Show in 2017, and it's by far my favorite cutscene in the game. The lighting and visuals look out of this world at 1440p 60 fps. PS5 lets you capture 4k 60 fps videos if you start the recording manually so I figured i'd give it a shot, and it looks phenomenal on youtube at 4k 60 fps.

Yes, that is a really nice section. They did SO great with this game on the technical level. I mean, I don't recall seeing clipping or other odd graphic artifacts during my play through. Might have been some...but I sure didn't notice. It was very smooth and the lighting and effects were all really well done, IMHO.

 

[LiquidRex]

How will Crysis 2 & 3 push gen 9 hardware... Remasters are coming.

Looking forward to seeing the building colapse sequence from Crysis 2 with Gen 9 magic added... RT, fast loading, improved sound and particle effects.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

I have a sneaky feeling AMD style DLSS will never come to the current gen, it will be teased, people will look at patents etc but ultimately it will never come.
PS5 pro most likely if ever.

If AMD's new method requires dedicated hardware, e.g. Tensor cores, then sure it will never come to the PS5/XSXS consoles.

If it's purely done in software via GPU compute, then it will definitely be used on consoles or a derivative developed by the game developers themselves. Devs don't need to wait for AMD, they can develop their own models to do it in software.

The real question is, can it be done in a way that provides a sufficient enough performance boost? I personally don't think so.

Non-DL based temporal upsampling techniques will only get better and provide a much faster alternative on current consoles.

 

[yewles1]

If AMD's new method requires dedicated hardware, e.g. Tensor cores, then sure it will never come to the PS5/XSXS consoles.

If it's purely done in software via GPU compute, then it will definitely be used on consoles or a derivative developed by the game developers themselves. Devs don't need to wait for AMD, they can develop their own models to do it in software.

The real question is, can it be done in a way that provides a sufficient enough performance boost? I personally don't think so.

Non-DL based temporal upsampling techniques will only get better and provide a much faster alternative on current consoles.

According to scuttlebutt, FSR is hardware agnostic and will even work with CPU's as well, depending on the game.

 

[DarkMage619]

Halo Infinite is a cross-gen game with X1, not PS4. That 50% performance difference between X1 and PS4 really comes into play here. Making a sudo open world game on X1 at 60fps is going to bring limitations with it, and you can see that in Halo Infinite, and that will remain. The gameplay looked fine the way it was, it was just classic Halo (if you aren't interested, you just aren't interested in Halo).

100% this. I thought the video showed a fun game. It didn't look amazing but I don't think Halo was ever an amazing looking game like Riky said. The funny thing about the 'Craig' memes was that it was a .2 sec snippet of the video that was blown out of proportion. Next month is e3. If the game looks the same or worse then people can complain. I'm willing to let the game come out before trashing it.

 

[Zathalus]

The real question is, can it be done in a way that provides a sufficient enough performance boost? I personally don't think so.

It totally can, look at DLSS 1.9 that was running on regular compute units. Sure, it did not look as good as DLSS 2.0, but Turing couldn't do INT8/INT4 like RDNA2 can (on compute units that is).

Will it be as performant as having dedicated Tensor cores? No. Will it still provide a substantial performance boost? Yes.

 

[JTCx]

If the game looks the same or worse then people can complain.

Nobody is asking for your permission.

 

[SportsFan581]

100% this. I thought the video showed a fun game. It didn't look amazing but I don't think Halo was ever an amazing looking game like Riky said. The funny thing about the 'Craig' memes was that it was a .2 sec snippet of the video that was blown out of proportion. Next month is e3. If the game looks the same or worse then people can complain. I'm willing to let the game come out before trashing it.

Some of the noise about the showing last year was caused by a few of the twitter "insiders" that really overhyped Halo without ever seeing it. From my own perspective, when you read that from sources that are purported to be credible you do tend to believe it and then when the showing was far different than what was described there is a bit of disappointment. The newer shots I've seen have all been more what I expected to start with, so, hopefully they are more careful with what they put together this time. The marketing people at 343 were just particularly bad last time, the official screenshots they chose to promote looked like they were designed to illustrate the shortcomings more than anything else, which was super weird.

 

[jroc74]

Some of the noise about the showing last year was caused by a few of the twitter "insiders" that really overhyped Halo without ever seeing it. From my own perspective, when you read that from sources that are purported to be credible you do tend to believe it and then when the showing was far different than what was described there is a bit of disappointment. The newer shots I've seen have all been more what I expected to start with, so, hopefully they are more careful with what they put together this time. The marketing people at 343 were just particularly bad last time, the official screenshots they chose to promote looked like they were designed to illustrate the shortcomings more than anything else, which was super weird.

Not gonna lie, I swear some folks with info were trolling.

Some said there were gonna be mic drop moments, lol.