This might be one of those things you'd have to plan/budget for early in development on consoles with regards to bandwidth, unlike on PC where you can freely enable/brute-force it with minimal performance impact.
PS4's AF issue we need answers!
- Thread starter pixlexic
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This might be one of those things you'd have to plan/budget for early in development on consoles with regards to bandwidth, unlike on PC where you can freely enable/brute-force it with minimal performance impact.
magnumpy
Member
haha, so what is the explanation for why many PS4 games seem to lack AF? if you want an explanation, well I just gave it to you in my last post. if you won't accept that explanation and are still wondering why some of your PS4 games don't have AF, well I don't know what else to tell you. you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
I think he both knows and doesn't care if the PS4 is capable, he just wants these games to have native res, AF and AA etc. On his PC he can achieve that as it is important for him (providing his card is good enough) -- whereas devs compromise image quality for other things on consoles.
They will give us soft shadows over native res and other nonsence because they assume players aren't really going to have per-pixel displays anyway or notice how important it is when CoD last gen sells so well while not giving a shit.
I think the problem with what he says is that he expects this will ever change. Devs will fight over "the most beautiful game" title and compromise IQ to do it. That's why AAA big-budget games won't be 1080/60, they will, for the most point, prefer to have really good foliage or something.
Look at literally any other face-off except the games from the OP to see identical AF levels between platforms.
Here's the most recent face-offs:
BF:Hardline beta
The Crew
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Far Cry 4
GTAV
AC Unity
COD Advanced Warfare
Now would anyone like to comment on why these games match the X1 if there is an issue with the console and not the dev?
who notices these things while playing a game?
it is like taking your eyes off the road while driving
were you having fun before you sat there and noticed a still image had a slight difference?
David Ricardo
Member
I don't think this applies to all cases. Ddr3 is 66GB/S and I think I remember ESRAM could provide up to 140 GB/S with certain tasks. Maybe AF is one of the tasks that better suits ESRAM.
Also, I think I saw some graph stating that the more bandwith PS4 gives to CPU reduces the bandwith available for the GPU in a bigger scale. CPU using 15 GB would reduce the peak bandwith available for the GPU in more than 20 GB/s.
I am no expert in hardware, so I would be thankful if somebody here who is knowledgeable in this matters would confirm or dismiss this.
Then explain the clear majority of games that have identical AF on both platforms, even when the PS4 is running at a higher resolution.
The Shogun
Banned
Its a damn good question and from a hardware perspective I have no idea what could be causing it. There are enough titles now with lack of AF on PS4 while it being present in the same PC / Xbone versions for it to be for sure a trend.
Really interesting issue honestly
Really interesting issue honestly
These questions should be directed to the handful of developers whose games' are in question, regarding AF.
Clearly, the PS4 is capable of 1080p + AF, as seen in numerous games already.
Portugeezer
Member
There is no issue.
Stealthcobra
Member
Aren't you still waiting on milo? Lol. Or a fable that does what he says..
Guys please, there is NO hardware reasoning for this. This isn't about capability.
Find me a list of Xbone games that don't have AF.
If people weren't so overly defensive over the PS4's capability you would be able to actually get this to stop instead of dismissing that you are missing out on good far away textures for no real reason.
There is no bandwidth issue here, AF doesn't take a substaintial amount of memory. It is not as if textures are downgraded into the RAM if they are to appear futher away.
Find me a list of Xbone games that don't have AF.
If people weren't so overly defensive over the PS4's capability you would be able to actually get this to stop instead of dismissing that you are missing out on good far away textures for no real reason.
There is no bandwidth issue here, AF doesn't take a substaintial amount of memory. It is not as if textures are downgraded into the RAM if they are to appear futher away.
Khalifa Jayy
Banned
Oh wow, a legitimate "TIL" moment for me lol
Pocky4Th3Win
Member
Strider isn't an AF issue, I believe the game had issues loading textures in fast on the ps4 at launch. AF would not cause the complete lack of a texture.
As is always an after thought in console development, he'll lastgen we rarely got it at all. I'm sure most console developers are just not use to enabling it since even on PC the user usually has to force it when it could/should always be on since the frame rate impact is minimal.
As is always an after thought in console development, he'll lastgen we rarely got it at all. I'm sure most console developers are just not use to enabling it since even on PC the user usually has to force it when it could/should always be on since the frame rate impact is minimal.
This is what I'm thinking, it's simply an effort/reward issue where reward is measured in sales vs development time to add it.
You're looking at textures on flat planes stretching away from the camera, like the ground. A good level of AF, or anisotropic filtering, will ensure the texture remains sharp farther away from the camera. A low level will cause the texture to blur closer to the camera.
geordiemp
Member
Look at literally any other face-off except the games from the OP to see identical AF levels between platforms.
Here's the most recent face-offs:
BF:Hardline beta
The Crew
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Far Cry 4
GTAV
AC Unity
COD Advanced Warfare
That's not fair, posting pics of games by devs who make an effort
(lol at unity)
ESRAM is tiny I'm sure devs have a better use for it.
I have a feeling that AF missing is the result of tired crunching devs working late who need to find a couple of fps from somewhere and quick to hit a ship date. It must be a tempting easy switch to flick for 0.5 fps or so under those conditions.
Simple as that.
The Shogun
Banned
Oh really? Thats interesting and could explain it
drotahorror
Member
AF is not taxing at all though. People are just curious as to why it's being omitted in some ps4 games.
This was from an interview or something that came up a while back, cannot remember who it was with though.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
AF is hardly CPU bound. AF means fetching more and more texture data per fragment from the GPU texture caches and some additional math ops (run on fixed function HW in the GPU's texture units).
Fetching a lot of texture data might require round trips to video memory requiring more optimized shaders to cover the additional latency added by cache misses. If you have a low latency memory to cover texture cache misses (and you can efficiently stream the visible textures in and out of it) then you might have an easier time with it as you will need to hide less bubbles of this kind. It does not mean the problem is not solvable, but it requires the develop to focus on it.
PS4 does have a lot more texture units than Xbox One, but they are not there to cover texture data, they essentially cover the role of the load/store units for the GPU itself and thus they are also needed to keep the huge sea of shader processors fed.
SMOK3Y
Generous Member
Trend? It's like 7 games out of 100+....
you are taking this too personally but to answer your question.
When they are the same we don't know if they are both good or both bad. It is only when they are different do we know that one is better than the other.
Like FarCry4 clearly has better overall texture resolution on PS4 than XBONE. but AC unity is the same.
That doesn't mean AC unity uses the best textures it can on both platforms. it just means they at least went with the lowest common denominator.
Never underestimate hyperbole and assumption. We could post pictures of games which have the effect and spam the thread but it wouldn't serve much purpose.
An aside: wow the Dying Light shot really shows how horribly ugly the game is as standard.
Can't see how AMD has been doing AF for many years, they must have the means to enable AF easily in their part of the sdk.
It's pretty clear its down to the individual games/devs. But clearly some folks have an agenda to consider while others simply make no effort to read the thread.
But to recap:
The question has been asked and the answer was "there's mo hardware issue"
Majority - let's say that twice, majority - of games have AF on PS4 with no issues
A small sub set do
The conclusion is obvious, the code base/engine on those games is the culprit probably in combination with performance Optimization decisions.
All it takes is one game of PS4 to have good AF to prove it can't be the hardware and there are many.
Edit: the question is therefore why did those devs miss it? Code issues? Did they skip it while balancing performance at 1080p while finding it easy to leave in place at 900p on XB1?
But to recap:
The question has been asked and the answer was "there's mo hardware issue"
Majority - let's say that twice, majority - of games have AF on PS4 with no issues
A small sub set do
The conclusion is obvious, the code base/engine on those games is the culprit probably in combination with performance Optimization decisions.
All it takes is one game of PS4 to have good AF to prove it can't be the hardware and there are many.
Edit: the question is therefore why did those devs miss it? Code issues? Did they skip it while balancing performance at 1080p while finding it easy to leave in place at 900p on XB1?
Personally lol, I just love having a heated debate on a gaming forum about the games I play with other game lovers.
Do you have an agenda? this is the second time you mention this
Yeah good point. Fingers crossed something is sorted in the future
Well we people of the internet know very well how game graphics work at this point in the gen, it's pretty common knowledge now, so of course it's down to 2 possible causes :
Possibility 1 : Lazy devs (we have evidence of devs being lazy a lot at the moment if you've been following the internet of course, for example that's the reason why no games have a simple "resolution - framerate" slider which would be so simple to implement and allow everyone to set its own preference for graphics)
Possibility 2 : Stupid Mark Cerny doesn't know shit. (I mean clearly he sucks at programming consoles in a lot of way I can tell that and I'm not even an expert really!!).
(if you don't know Mark Cerny he's the guy who built the PS4 at Sony so that's why).
That's the 2 reasons we're let down with graphics this gen and can't have 1080p60HZ with 4xMXAA, that and of course secret parity moneyhats.
Possibility 1 : Lazy devs (we have evidence of devs being lazy a lot at the moment if you've been following the internet of course, for example that's the reason why no games have a simple "resolution - framerate" slider which would be so simple to implement and allow everyone to set its own preference for graphics)
Possibility 2 : Stupid Mark Cerny doesn't know shit. (I mean clearly he sucks at programming consoles in a lot of way I can tell that and I'm not even an expert really!!).
(if you don't know Mark Cerny he's the guy who built the PS4 at Sony so that's why).
That's the 2 reasons we're let down with graphics this gen and can't have 1080p60HZ with 4xMXAA, that and of course secret parity moneyhats.
There must be some technical reason for this, could it just be poor optimisation on the PS4?
I think it's this. I remember hearing a while back Sony had a team in house that was going to start haloing devs.
You know...
If you compare this thread to the black crush threads on Xbox One, you can actually see the general consensus of how much people needlessly feel defensive over PS4 but find it easier to laugh at issues on Xbox One.
If those issues were swapped around and PS4 has the black crush issue and such, I wonder if the tone would be the same.
Lack of AF and black crush are both things are shouldn't be difficult and should be free to have. Talk of how powerful the hardware is really moot when you consider how taxless AF is. We can think of why, but I think "lazy dev" should refer to whether or not the dev cares about AF at all.
If you compare this thread to the black crush threads on Xbox One, you can actually see the general consensus of how much people needlessly feel defensive over PS4 but find it easier to laugh at issues on Xbox One.
If those issues were swapped around and PS4 has the black crush issue and such, I wonder if the tone would be the same.
Lack of AF and black crush are both things are shouldn't be difficult and should be free to have. Talk of how powerful the hardware is really moot when you consider how taxless AF is. We can think of why, but I think "lazy dev" should refer to whether or not the dev cares about AF at all.
yeah my agenda is to bring attention to this issue until its not an issue anymore.
If it is just devs being lazy then if we bring attention to it maybe they wont be so lazy in the future.
If it is a engine issue maybe the engine makers will take note and it wont be an issue in t he future.
If its a sony sdk issue then maybe sony will take note and it wont be an issue int he future.
The worst possible thing we can do its act like it doesn't exist.
You're looking at textures on flat planes stretching away from the camera, like the ground. A good level of AF, or anisotropic filtering, will ensure the texture remains sharp farther away from the camera. A low level will cause the texture to blur closer to the camera.
Much obliged.
magnumpy
Member
the GPU in the PS4 is more powerful than the GPU in XB1, that's the explanation. in some corner-cases where it's very close the PS4 can gain a few additional FPS by lowering the level of AF applied. bing bang boom, the mystery is solved.
Both have it, just that Photomode has more.
I very strongly disagree. Lack of AF was one of the primary reasons for shitty IQ last gen.
140GB/s was the actual usage peak of a certain task.
Theoretical peak bandwidth of the ESRAM is over 200GB/s, albeit that number refers to something less versatile than it normally would, and only applies over a small pool.
That's a normal bus contention thing. It's unknown how significant the effect is for XB1's DDR3 bus, but it would still happen.
That doesn't make any sense. Especially in the PC space with split memory, for the CPU AF should pretty much just be a setting to inform the GPU of.
All meaningful costs of AF should show up on the GPU memory bus BW, GPU caches, and TMUs. (Or, assuming hypothetical ultra-sophisticated texture streaming, possibly also GPU memory).
I was referring to last gen PC hardware. On consoles it was a joke.
This gen hardware shouldn't have an issue at all.
Lack of AF for "me" is horrible and I ALWAYS notice that shit. So what I meant was, if I was playing a game on PC and I couldn't max it out, I would lower res to just to increase AF if I had to last gen (on pc).
Sony will never respond to this.
Crushed blacks were in every game on x1, which is why Micorosft were to blame, hence the reason why they rectified it, because it was their fault
What I don't understand is why the blame is directed at Sony with no evidence whatsoever, 7 developers chose not to increase AF in their games on PS4, they should be the ones who are held accountable.