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[Kronark]

Do you understand the difference between making an engine and a team of hundreds using it to make a game with time and budget constraints?

Do you understand that games go through stages and there's a ton of pre-production planning / work that doesn't involve hundreds of people or burning piles of money? You can have teams of engineers working on engine features / tools / etc independent of your game or for your next game. You can have small dev teams prototyping before burning piles of money on content that just won't make it into the final product.

Better management and decision making can absolutely avoid waste and scope creep. I don't know why you think lighting money on fire has to be part of the process.

He's also wrong about almost all tech issues he's barking about in UE5. Check the reddit dev reply in my post. Read it if you have to.

Devs have called him out but he fake copyright claims them multiple times.



...

The TI dude even has alts to reply to his own videos And he keeps talking in third person.

...

Who's to say his youtube fanbase is even real at this point. You can even fake that.

I mean if you want to have this dude the saviour of graphics, by all means..

So no technical breakdown examples? Just a general go check reddit where I'll find devs saying "I'm a dev and this guy is full of shit" with no further clarification?

Also all this stuff about copyright strikes and bot accounts might make him a shitty person... Which sure I'll acknowledge? I don't like his general aggressive attitude. It doesn't make him wrong about devs prioritizing computationally expensive bullshit in their games though.

Remedy dev puts it on the table, nobody in a rendering team is making things to shit up performances.

TI criticized a lot Alan wake 2 for the non path tracing fallback, which is irrelevant. Remedy was trying to maximise visual fidelity FOR path tracing, their deal is with Epic on PC first. Remedy had to make a lot of sub-optimal decisions for the raster fallbacks on consoles. Expecting game devs to optimize for every possible graphic settings and still push fidelity is an almost impossible task. He doesn't understand this because he's never had to deal with this. He wants games to run on his 1060 and rages at anything with a ray bounce.

Alan wake 2 is still the best looking game of 2024 and is quite optimized for the fidelity of the graphics, geometry, instant scenery change and various tricks for the dark world AND path tracing. Do I have to remind peoples what visual fidelity we had for path tracing in games just a few years ago?

None of this matters to me... At the end of the day Alan Wake 2 runs like dog shit because Remedy tried to push fidelity so hard they backed themselves into a corner. That's all that matters.

Being the best looking game of 2023 doesn't matter when the frame rate dips to 30-40 while you're being attacked if you don't turn on DLSS, on a video card I paid $1200 for.. That experience feels like shit. I want developers to stop chasing frivolous technical details that don't matter and cut performance in half. Yes I will call this shit decision making.

We're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars pushing fidelity so high that if you're a gamer on a budget you better not even think of trying to buy our product, btw help us the industry is sinking! It's fucking lunacy and there needs to be a counter movement telling technical devs fetishizing minor visual details to knock this shit off. We used to get sequels after 1-2 years. Look at how much shit came out during the PS2 / Gamecube era. Now you're lucky if you can get a sequel to game 7 years later and it only seems to be getting worse. Of course this shit is unsustainable but it's the devs and game directors who brought us here.

Nothing here is in the scale of downloading a megalight demo and tweaking settings in an engine made for public. You can even go and do that yourself.

Sure? And so could any dev... But they don't... And they keep making unoptimized games. So I'm not sure what your point is here?

His point with all that was that there was no reason that demo needed to run as badly as it did. He demonstrated that it could be optimized to perform multiple times faster while maintaining a visual quality with minor differences no customer would genuinely give a shit about or notice.



Look the core point I'm making is thats games used to be made faster, with smaller teams, smaller budgets, while selling far fewer copies and everyone enjoyed them. Sure to some extent inflation is going to drive wages up, there's obviously economic shifts that have to happen but I don't understand where this insane drive for fidelity is coming from. I keep being told it's the gamers who demand better but when I look I see millions and millions of people happily playing fortnite and minecraft without ray tracing. I see millions of people playing Stardew valley with it's pixel art. I don't buy this arguement that gamers demand fidelity. It's artists and tech devs pushing this shit internally or to some extent video card manufacturers and console makers because they need you to buy the next box. It's cancer to the industry. It feels like these so called gamers demanding fidelity are the exclusive few 5090 owners and everyone else can suffer with blurry DLSS / and frame gen latency.

We're at a point now where visual gains are so minimal that art direction matters 10x more than visual fidelity on the lighting engine and yet I have "professional" developers out here telling me games just can't run like they used to. It's horse shit that they're feeding you. I don't give a shit about 16k by 16k textures on every surface, I don't care about the pores being visible on character's faces. None of that shit is FUN. None of it makes games more FUN. All the horse power wasted on high fidelity bullshit could be driving larger more dynamic worlds.

Instead we're worried that a sphere looks slightly more realistic because of a splashed light source on the left side. Isn't that fun? Are you having fun? That'll be $2000 for your 5090 btw.

 

[Dacvak]

I’m a big fan of DF, primarily John’s retro content. But I enjoy their weekly podcast every so often too.

 

[DR3AM]

This is the same guy who emailed game sites on how to review XCX

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

As a

idk. I played the game and it is clear to me they went over their heads with the tech rather than just baking it like tlou or uncharted.
They are not making any use of that rt-like lighting they have. it just adds grain. Even worse in motion
idk what culling and meshlet is, if the result is grainy fucking ass surfaces, grainy motion blur and bad performance.
From a studios that made reflections in max payne 1 and 2 20 years ago, to a studio that did this with no rt available on console... and pro is only a bit better

From a studio that knew how to do everything on the cheap, they transformed into a studio that does their stuff long way around for no apparent effect.
And I bought the game twice lol. I kinda like it and ps5 version is a bit better. Still no shot compared to tlou part1 for example.
There are plenty enough of other games on a console that have 30fps and way better motion blur and image quality...


Since when you need to be a dev in order to critique a game?
he can critique all the way he wants.
if everything he says is bullshit, I am sure he will stop soon enough because he is a lunatic.
But ever since quantum break, Remedy games are too heavy for how they look in my opinon

Damn, the PS5 version looks ugly.

On my PC I can see RT reflections on pretty much any reflective surface in this game.

reflections on the fridge to the right

Motion blur has some noise on screenshots when I turn the camera quickly, but it's not something I really notice during normal gameplay

quick turn with motion blur filter

and quick turn without motion blur filter

Alan Wake 2's graphics have some inconsistencies in certain places, but overall I thought the graphics looked very good and I can't complain about the frame rate either because DLSS allowed me to play this game smoothly even with path tracing at 1440p DLSSQuality + FGx2.

 

[Fafalada]

The whole YT vs. drama nonsense aside (it's just pots and kettles calling each other black, there are no good actors in there, sorry to say), the OP video makes 'some' relevant points, biggest one being the 'assumptions game'.
DF has significantly veered into this over the years to the point where most of their videos are just speculations - it was one thing when they're talking about future they may not have info yet (or can't talk about because of NDAs - though I have to say that's a pretty nasty conflict of interests for a channel that's supposedly about analysis), but now it's just the baseline for all their content.

And it's not like they are alone - lots of YT content does this - because clearly, it generates clicks and for established channels, people are willing to go along with it on reputation alone, but it doesn't make it interesting tech analysis, let alone particularly useful source of info anymore.
The part I do find disheartening is that many such speculations 'can' and 'should' be validated if you are serious about the mission of tech analysis. HW channels (the better ones) have been doing it for decades, and software only has MORE tools at their disposal. When it comes to 'comparing' say - TAA/upscalers that are in public domain, doing so by looking at blackboxes in retail games and assuming things ad-nauseum is well - not useful and certainly not reliable as an 'analysis'.
To be blunt - if we project the same approach backwards to when DF started, it'd be equivalent of frame-counting VHS video captures by eyeballing and claiming that as 'framerate-analysis' in 2008.

 

[AGRacing]

This guy is fighting an unbelievable war on the front lines of his mind.

But just for fun… let’s just shove all of them in a steel cage and see how it shakes out.

 

[kevboard]

As a

Damn, the PS5 version looks ugly.

On my PC I can see RT reflections on pretty much any reflective surface in this game.

reflections like these shouldn't even be RT reflections (also look how dogshit they look even on PC there due to them being too stupid to add the correct material there. instead of a glass mirror this material looks like polished silver or some shit).

that's another just awful development as of recent years.
developers refuse to hand place render-to-texture reflections in bathroom mirrors or generally important spots in the game. leaving the mirrors looking like absolute dogshit without RT enabled, and still worse than Render-to-Texture reflections would look even with RT enabled.


here is last gen title Hitman 2, without any raytracing, having better looking reflections than that bathroom scene in Alan Wake 2


(notice it running often above 120fps at a native 1440p with multiple realtime reflections happening on large glass surfaces, all on a mid range PC)

Remedy however can't be arsed to add render-to-texture reflections in such situations... they just slap the RT bandage on it, even when it's not only unnecessary, but also lower quality than render-to-texture. and if you turn RT off you are stuck with a ridiculously ugly screen space reflections fallback (see the PS5 screenshot you quoted) that looks more like a graphics glitch than an actual feature.

another great example of what is going wrong with modern video game graphics, and why this way of abusing modern graphics engine features shouldn't be praised but always criticised.
if a game has a static world with no dynamic daytime system, but uses RT GI, it should not be praised... if a game has bathrooms with blank mirrors unless you turn on RT, it SHOULD NOT BE PRAISED... instances like these should be a CON not a PRO

Remedy should be laughed at for the way these mirrors look (both with and without RT)... they should be called out for it... this is laughable... FUCKING MAX PAYNE 2 HAD RENDER-TO-TEXTURE MIRRORS IN 2003! Deus Ex had them in 2000! it's a fucking joke

 

[rofif]

As a

Damn, the PS5 version looks ugly.

On my PC I can see RT reflections on pretty much any reflective surface in this game.

reflections on the fridge to the right

Motion blur has some noise on screenshots when I turn the camera quickly, but it's not something I really notice during normal gameplay

quick turn with motion blur filter

and quick turn without motion blur filter

Alan Wake 2's graphics have some inconsistencies in certain places, but overall I thought the graphics looked very good and I can't complain about the frame rate either because DLSS allowed me to play this game smoothly even with path tracing at 1440p DLSSQuality + FGx2.

That’s the point. Of course it looks better on pc. The point is that on ps5 they had no backup solutions or the backup solutions are wear like grainy ssr. They created a problem for themselves which other games on the same console don’t have.

 

[Black_Stride]

Batman Arkham Knight and Halo 5 come to mind. Decade old games that look and run better than their modern sequels.

Suicide Squad looks and runs better than Arkham Knight.
The world isnt wet all the time so it isnt shiny and shit, but from a technical perspective its better than Arkham Knight through and through.
Say what you will about the artstyle or gameplay, but from a graphical perspective it dusts Arkham Knight.

And I recently played both games.
The real stand out being Suicide Squads cutscenes......such a shame so much talent was wasted on that game.





A good way to compare the games is to just play through the intro of the games.
The intro of Suicide Squad is very Arkham in style and you can already see the leaps and bounds the team has made from a technical perspective.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I'd say there is a reason to return currently, especially since current hardware can't utilize the new tech without hallucinating frames and using stone age resolutions. It would be a different story in a decade or so though.

Batman Arkham Knight and Halo 5 come to mind. Decade old games that look and run better than their modern sequels.

Halo 5 does not look or run better than Halo Infinite. Its multiplayer is better and that's it

 

[SimTourist]

reflections like these shouldn't even be RT reflections (also look how dogshit they look even on PC there due to them being too stupid to add the correct material there. instead of a glass mirror this material looks like polished silver or some shit).

that's another just awful development as of recent years.
developers refuse to hand place render-to-texture reflections in bathroom mirrors or generally important spots in the game. leaving the mirrors looking like absolute dogshit without RT enabled, and still worse than Render-to-Texture reflections would look even with RT enabled.


here is last gen title Hitman 2, without any raytracing, having better looking reflections than that bathroom scene in Alan Wake 2


(notice it running often above 120fps at a native 1440p with multiple realtime reflections happening on large glass surfaces, all on a mid range PC)

Remedy however can't be arsed to add render-to-texture reflections in such situations... they just slap the RT bandage on it, even when it's not only unnecessary, but also lower quality than render-to-texture. and if you turn RT off you are stuck with a ridiculously ugly screen space reflections fallback (see the PS5 screenshot you quoted) that looks more like a graphics glitch than an actual feature.

another great example of what is going wrong with modern video game graphics, and why this way of abusing modern graphics engine features shouldn't be praised but always criticised.
if a game has a static world with no dynamic daytime system, but uses RT GI, it should not be praised... if a game has bathrooms with blank mirrors unless you turn on RT, it SHOULD NOT BE PRAISED... instances like these should be a CON not a PRO

Remedy should be laughed at for the way these mirrors look (both with and without RT)... they should be called out for it... this is laughable... FUCKING MAX PAYNE 2 HAD RENDER-TO-TEXTURE MIRRORS IN 2003! Deus Ex had them in 2000! it's a fucking joke

Hitman is cool and all but that feature is only used on that one level which is pretty small compared to others and doesn't have npcs or much going on. Not excusing Remedy here, but planar reflections like that are expensive as shit and need to be used carefully not to tank performance.

 

[Vaquilla]

I'm gonna watch them even more now to spite this loser

 

[Esppiral]

I just hate how that guy talks and looks at the camera so narcissist.

 

[Doctor Hades]

The way the guy from Threat Interactive presents his videos makes them hard to watch even if he does come across as knowledgeable. He sits there, barely moving and staring into the camera barely blinking and appears to be reading from an autocue, speaking in monotone and just slightly too fast. If someone told me this guy was an AI or robot then I would not disbelieve them as he just appears so stiff, uncomfortable and unnatural in his videos! He needs to learn how to relax a bit and appear more human and less robotic.

Not a channel I would ever subscribe to personally but I have watched a couple of his videos before albeit I have not found them them particularly well presented.

 

[Thief1987]

me to play this game smoothly even with path tracing at 1440p DLSSQuality + FGx2.

lol, low resolution, fake pixels, fake frames
jacket trained you good, eh?

 

[Filben]

Did I miss something? Where does all the DF negativity come from?

Some people don't like how they come off but most who dislike them simply dislike what they say. And often interpret way too much into it.

Typically DF provides data, like frame times, range of dynamic resolutions, compare different graphic settings, point out technical flaws or positives. It becomes spicy, though, when they bring consoles into it.

For people wanting to know the difference between platforms (e.g. mostly when they own more than one platform or want to know what settings/visuals they can expect with their hardware or what it takes to run console settings/graphics) it's a great source of information.

For people being prone to drama it fuels their imaginative console war and they start hating.

 

[Fafalada]

planar reflections like that are expensive as shit and need to be used carefully not to tank performance.

They really aren't not computationally anyway. Some engines really suck at this, but there's nothing inherently expensive about planar reflections, especially compared to Raytraced.

 

[SimTourist]

They really aren't not computationally anyway. Some engines really suck at this, but there's nothing inherently expensive about planar reflections, especially compared to Raytraced.

You're rendering the scene twice or even thrice in that hitman example, of course it's expensive. That's why it's relegated to simple controlled scenes. Turning it on can half your framerate easily. Raytracing has a flat cost and works on every surface and object, so you can have reflective surfaces everywhere and not worry about performance, see Hitman with RT.
From UE website

While Planar Reflections offer some very realistic reflections, this features does have a number of limitations which are listed below.

• Planar Reflections cause your entire scene to be rendered twice, so you'll want to budget half your frame time for it on the Rendering thread and GPU!
• Limit the number of Planar Reflections placed in the world. Often times, one will still be too much.
• Size it appropriately, which enables it to be culled when not visible.
• The cost to render the Planar Reflection Actor comes directly from what is currently being rendered in the level. Scenes that are triangle and draw call heavy will suffer the most performance issues when this feature is enabled because those costs don't scale with Screen Percentage.

 

[Breakfast at Noon]

Which mods...?

Anyway, I've merged your accounts and given you your original username back.

Thank you dude

I've no idea which mods, my memory works on about 4 days before it has a reinstall.

 

[Breakfast at Noon]

it's alright dude, i get where you was coming from, i'd of come to the same conclusion.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

That’s the point. Of course it looks better on pc. The point is that on ps5 they had no backup solutions or the backup solutions are wear like grainy ssr. They created a problem for themselves which other games on the same console don’t have.

I haven't played the PS5 version, but I think it might use FSR3. That always contributes to the shimmering and grainy look. Alan Wake 2 also use dynamic GI even in raster mode and that's also adding some noise. In HW RT mode lighting looks more stable especially with the latest ray reconstruction.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

This used to be a pain because it took time to create the lightmaps. Nowadays you can bake those on the fly since modern machines can literally calculate real lighting on run-time. It'd only take time if you decided to calculate a large world all at once, instead of only small segments of it at a time according to what you're tweaking, but that'd be a stupidity problem.

For ScHlAuChi if he's working in the Unreal Engine back in the day he had to place all those lights inside of a level which in itself was ridiculously time consuming. Also, even editing an asset by repositioning it in the level for something like a gameplay iteration he will then have to go back in and fix the lighting, god forbid if the machine crashes. I can't even imagine working like this in a modern day game that requires a way higher level of fidelity.

 

[Fafalada]

You're rendering the scene twice or even thrice in that hitman example, of course it's expensive.

You're rendering a subset of the scene, with often just a tiny fraction of the pixels and optionally a dramatically simplified scene.
Basically it has all the same cost/optimisation parameters as realtime RT reflections, the only difference is 'number of pixels hit' (where RT is more flexible/faster with large coverage) and 'cost of said pixels' (where it's often dramatically cheaper than RT).
Hell even the acceleration structure problems are roughly equivalent (less complex than RT, but also less standardized, hence so many engine sucking at this).

That's why it's relegated to simple controlled scenes. Turning it on can half your framerate easily.

Again - that has absolutely nothing to do with the approach itself - just (botched) implementation in particular tech-stacks.
There's no reason for a mirror that takes 10% of the screen to take more than 10% of the framerate with planar R2T (and often it'll be less if you do it right).

Raytracing has a flat cost and works on every surface and object

Yes it's massively more flexible, that's never been a debate, ever since RT was invented 40 years ago everyone understood that.
The flat cost is false though (with sw/hw we use today) - acceleration structure updates alone are scaling with scene complexity just as badly as everything else in traditional raster (arguably worse on certain architectures).

 

[Fafalada]

For ScHlAuChi if he's working in the Unreal Engine back in the day he had to place all those lights inside of a level which in itself was ridiculously time consuming. Also, even editing an asset by repositioning it in the level for something like a gameplay iteration he will then have to go back in and fix the lighting, god forbid if the machine crashes. I can't even imagine working like this in a modern day game that requires a way higher level of fidelity.

The misconception here is that any of that is uniquely tied to baked (or even decoupled) lighting - it's not.
Eg. : you don't switch to manually placed lights because of baking - it was because the workflow wasn't GI enabled in the first place - the same problem applied to fully realtime lit games that 'simulated' GI with many virtual lights (and yes, there were a fair number of those 15 years ago - including some of DFs tech favourites).

Or more to the point the other posted had - you could literally use the existing realtime pipeline to bake-out your lighting in 'just-in-time' fashion, so you retain the response times close to fully realtime workflow, but without the runtime costs associated with it.

 

[jufonuk]

Been a fan of Richard since mean machines and c&vg

 

[Spiral1407]

Suicide Squad looks and runs better than Arkham Knight.
The world isnt wet all the time so it isnt shiny and shit, but from a technical perspective its better than Arkham Knight through and through.
Say what you will about the artstyle or gameplay, but from a graphical perspective it dusts Arkham Knight.

And I recently played both games.
The real stand out being Suicide Squads cutscenes......such a shame so much talent was wasted on that game.

A good way to compare the games is to just play through the intro of the games.
The intro of Suicide Squad is very Arkham in style and you can already see the leaps and bounds the team has made from a technical perspective.

We aren't talking about the technical perspective genius. Obviously SS would be better on that side. Arkham knight looks far better to the eye though, thanks in part to the artstyle and night time setting.

Halo 5 does not look or run better than Halo Infinite. Its multiplayer is better and that's it

Halo 5 runs at a pretty much locked 4K60 on XSX and looks like this:

Much better than Infinite's bland grassy fields. You'd be insane to think that game looks better.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

you could literally use the existing realtime pipeline to bake-out your lighting in 'just-in-time' fashion, so you retain the response times close to fully realtime workflow, but without the runtime costs associated with it.

I’m not currently up to date on modern day game engine workflows for lighting. Is the Unreal Engine 5 using this concept in your post? If not then why is that the case if it’s as simple as you make it out to be, Fafalada?

 

[yamaci17]

alan wake 2 looked incredible to me and probably has one of the best graphics I've ever seen. also keeps talking about how optimize days gone is but that game is so outdated with its baked graphics it is not even funny

for these, I can't take him seriously for anything he has to say

 

[Black_Stride]

We aren't talking about the technical perspective genius. Obviously SS would be better on that side. Arkham knight looks far better to the eye though, thanks in part to the artstyle and night time setting.

In like for like scenarios Suicide Squad looks better than Arkham Knight.
When it rains at night SS looks better.
It most certainly runs better too.....basically a locked 60.

Every in engine cutscene looks better than everything in Arkham.
When it rains at night Suicide Squad completely dumps on Arkham Knight.
Hell id say most environments look better than Arkham Knight especially the indoor ones, character models and animations are generationally better.
So which part of Arkham Knight looks better than Suicide Squad exactly?

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

reflections like these shouldn't even be RT reflections (also look how dogshit they look even on PC there due to them being too stupid to add the correct material there. instead of a glass mirror this material looks like polished silver or some shit).

that's another just awful development as of recent years.
developers refuse to hand place render-to-texture reflections in bathroom mirrors or generally important spots in the game. leaving the mirrors looking like absolute dogshit without RT enabled, and still worse than Render-to-Texture reflections would look even with RT enabled.


here is last gen title Hitman 2, without any raytracing, having better looking reflections than that bathroom scene in Alan Wake 2


(notice it running often above 120fps at a native 1440p with multiple realtime reflections happening on large glass surfaces, all on a mid range PC)

Remedy however can't be arsed to add render-to-texture reflections in such situations... they just slap the RT bandage on it, even when it's not only unnecessary, but also lower quality than render-to-texture. and if you turn RT off you are stuck with a ridiculously ugly screen space reflections fallback (see the PS5 screenshot you quoted) that looks more like a graphics glitch than an actual feature.

if a game has bathrooms with blank mirrors unless you turn on RT, it SHOULD NOT BE PRAISED... instances like these should be a CON not a PRO

Remedy should be laughed at for the way these mirrors look (both with and without RT)... they should be called out for it... this is laughable... FUCKING MAX PAYNE 2 HAD RENDER-TO-TEXTURE MIRRORS IN 2003! Deus Ex had them in 2000! it's a fucking joke

There's a reason why developers dont use planar reflections in modern games. You need to render the same scene twice and on modern GPUs like mine that's even more expensive than RT reflections. Also planar reflections are extremely limited and can be only used for razor sharp reflections, whereas RT reflections can be used for both sharp and diffused reflections (pretty much for all materials).

Alan Wake 2 has razor sharp reflections, just not on every surface.

Sometimes developers still use planar reflections, for example I saw planar reflections in "the last of us 1 remake", but these reflections were only used in very very tinny rooms. In the open levels, Naughty Dog had to make use of distracting SSR reflections (reflections were fading in and out as you move), and if you looked at the puddles directly screen space information wasnt there and I saw extremely low quality (pixelated) cube maps. TLOU1 remake would look much better with RT, but it was a game developed for the PS5 console, and that's why the developers had to compromise with poor raster gimmicks.

On PC RT reflections are much better choice than SSR, cube maps, and even planar reflections. Below my comparison in cyberpunk. It turned off RT lighting (because that's the most expensive RT effect) and just use RT reflections. Notice framerate with RT reflection on and off. On my PC it's just 0.9% relative difference and I'm using the same settings (DLSSQuality + FGx2, ultra settings) on both screenshots. RT reflections look amazing compared to raster gimmicks and performance is still amazing. I dont even know if it would be possible to use planat reflections for moving objects like cars, but even if it would be performance would tank, because entire scene would need to be rendered twice.

On the next screenshit I used old DLSS (CNN model) instead of DLSS4 (transformer) and peformance with RT was even better compared to raster. 212fps raster vs 215fps RT reflections.

another great example of what is going wrong with modern video game graphics, and why this way of abusing modern graphics engine features shouldn't be praised but always criticised.
if a game has a static world with no dynamic daytime system, but uses RT GI, it should not be praised...

I can see what RT GI does even in games with static TOD. I would have to be clueless about lighting to ignore that moving objects (characters for example) do not match the scene lighting and appear to float instead of being grounded in the scene.

Samuel Drake is standing in the shadow, but he is still well lit.

A fool lying on the ground appears to be floating.

Without dynamic GI, lighting can often look flat because objects like vegetation does not cast indirect shadows, RT GI would definitely take the graphics in Uncharted 4 to the next level.

 

[Spiral1407]

In like for like scenarios Suicide Squad looks better than Arkham Knight.
When it rains at night SS looks better.
It most certainly runs better too.....basically a locked 60.

Every in engine cutscene looks better than everything in Arkham.
When it rains at night Suicide Squad completely dumps on Arkham Knight.
Hell id say most environments look better than Arkham Knight especially the indoor ones, character models and animations are generationally better.
So which part of Arkham Knight looks better than Suicide Squad exactly?

Sorry, nothing in that game even comes close to this imo

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

lol, low resolution, fake pixels, fake frames
jacket trained you good, eh?

What GPU you are using? People who complain about DLSS usually cant even used these features.

I can play Alan Wake 2 with PT even without FG (60fps is already good enough for me), but DLSS FGx2 improves my experience, so I so reason to play without it. FGx2 boost my framerate to 120-200fps and I get insane smoothnes and motion clarity. The game looks closer to real 120-200fps than 60fps.

Also DLSS SR (especially in it's quality mode) is very usefull, becasue it nearly doubles my framerate it PT games and still offers amazing image quality. Alan Wake 2 also use the latest ray reconstruction, so RT effects have little to no noise. But please tell me why I should complain and refuse to use DLSS SR?

At 4K I can use DLSS performance and the game still is perfectly playable to me 80-130fps. Even DLSS balance (70-110fps) is still usable.

All screenshots with 4K DLSS balance + FGx2 settings.

Shame on you Jensen Huang (nvidia), you improved my gaming experience and I hate you for that . I would still prefer to play games with blury TAA with lower framerate, because AI generated frames are pure evil and no one should use this useful technology.

 

[Black_Stride]

Sorry, nothing in that game even comes close to this imo

The textures look like shit, the resolution is low, the geometry is low poly, the shadows and ambient occlusion are clearly last gen.....hell look at that board next to the batmobile......where are its shadows?.
But oohhh my gosh its wet and we have reflections!!!!!
Best graphics ever!!!!

Please.
This would be impressive when the game released.....today not so much.
And Suicide Squad does everything better.

I dont actually own the game so I would have to visit my mate to get screenshots, but when I played Suicide Squad my initial reaction was this look worse than Arkham Knight......until I got home and booted up Arkham Knight.
I was like ohhh.

 

[RodriGames40]

Sorry, nothing in that game even comes close to this imo

Art direction means a lot today, this image does look more pleasant but it's a custom UE3 game. SS is indisputably technically superior, this is all but proof that it still takes talent to get everything to sing together.

 

[Spiral1407]

The textures look like shit, the resolution is low, the geometry is low poly.
But oohhh my gosh its wet and we have reflections!!!!!
Best graphics ever!!!!

Please.
This would be impressive when the game released.....today not so much.
And Suicide Squad does everything better.

I dont actually own the game so I would have to visit my mate to get screenshots, but when I played Suicide Squad my initial reaction was this look worse than Arkham Knight......until I got home and booted up Arkham Knight.
I was like ohhh.

I literally just told you that idgaf about the technical perspective. None of that matters when the final product is much greater than the sum of its parts and therefore still looks better to my eye. It's kinda like how say...Sonic Unleashed looks better than the recent Pokémon games, even though the latter would be better from a technical perspective thanks to the decade long gap.

You're the kind of person who probably loves those ugly minecraft texture packs because of "muh 8k textures" or some other BS.

And where is your proof of suicide squad's visual prowess btw, don't give me excuses. I dug through my old PS4 screenshots to get this.

 

[ScHlAuChi]

Or more to the point the other posted had - you could literally use the existing realtime pipeline to bake-out your lighting in 'just-in-time' fashion, so you retain the response times close to fully realtime workflow, but without the runtime costs associated with it.

Yes that is correct, you could do all that, and yet no dev is doing that! So either they are all incompetent or there is a very good reason not to do it!
But you would know that reason if you ever opened an editor and tried it out yourself!

 

[keefged4]

The guy does have some valid points but my god he's insufferable. Alex B is in the same boat, insufferable. Let them fight.
John is the best thing about DF, DF retro in particular, I remain subscribed for that content alone.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

Threat Interactive has struck again. Apparently now targeting Digital Foundry for unsavory practices with monetization and how they make certain comments regarding the industry. The way Threat Interactive comments on DF's content. It is clear that the audience for this are likely game developers, which I am not. So as not to misrepresent Threat Interactive's positions, I ask that you review the video, vote and discuss your reasoning.

Threat Interactive is a troll. All he does is bark and attack real and successful developers for no good reason. Well, maybe he's got a good reason, because Youtubers can get paid for talking crap.

Casual gamers might think threat interactive really "reinvented the wheel" and knows something that most developers don't, but only a naive person would believe that a developer with no real experience can optimize UE5 better than the engineers at Epic who have decades of experience.

Threat Interactive keeps telling people that nanite is a waste of resources. If that's the case I want to see tech demo that proves his claims. Can he create a tech demo that can match the fidelity of Hellblade 2 and run at better framerate than this game?

In hellblade 2 even simple ground surface is incredibly detailed and I have never seen anything comparable in games that doesnt run on UE5. Threat interactive constantly praises PS4 era games for their graphics and says modern games look no better, but here's my screnshots from RDR2, a game he prise the most. Ground surface in this game use low resolution texture with small amount of POM, to fake small rocks. Hellblade 2 however has an uncountable amount of small rocks and other details and dont need to fake them with POM.

 

[ScHlAuChi]

Threat Interactive is a troll. All he does is bark and attack real and successful developers for no good reason. Well, maybe he's got a good reason, because Youtubers can get paid for talking crap.
Casual gamers might think threat interactive really "reinvented the wheel" and knows something that most developers don't, but only a naive person would believe that a developer with no real experience can optimize UE5 better than the engineers at Epic who have decades of experience.

We have seen this sort of M.O. many times before:
- genius inventor that promises to do things much better than anyone else (water powered car, Theranos etc...)
- claims of having a way deeper understanding than others and wanting to fix a problem
- claiming that the industry is against them for exposing some dirty secret
- asking the public to fund their revolution
- ultimately failing to deliver anything and making off with the money
Over and over again, people never learn!

 

[Team Andromeda]

We aren't talking about the technical perspective genius. Obviously SS would be better on that side. Arkham knight looks far better to the eye though, thanks in part to the artstyle and night time setting.

Halo 5 runs at a pretty much locked 4K60 on XSX and looks like this:

Much better than Infinite's bland grassy fields. You'd be insane to think that game looks better.

 

[Team Andromeda]

We aren't talking about the technical perspective genius. Obviously SS would be better on that side. Arkham knight looks far better to the eye though, thanks in part to the artstyle and night time setting.

Halo 5 runs at a pretty much locked 4K60 on XSX and looks like this:


Much better than Infinite's bland grassy fields. You'd be insane to think that game looks better.

Halo 5 might have more variety in its environments but it does not look better than Infinite, and that's to look over how Halo Infinite maps are like 4 times the size in a far more open world with far happing

 

[poppabk]

I'm not subscribed to DF and never plan to - but this guy is a massive dick for trying to get people to unsubscribe from them. I mean who does that?

 

[yamaci17]

Halo 5 might have more variety in its environments but it does not look better than Infinite, and that's to look over how Halo Infinite maps are like 4 times the size in a far more open world with far happing

halo infinite looks great at 4K, really has great software GI solution imo
problem is that game is incredibly blurry at 1440p/1080p to a point you can't make out anything

also runs close to native 4K at 60 FPS on series x from what I recall. even has a decent 1080p-1440p/120 FPS mode. of course being an xbox one game probably helped in that regard

I enjoyed my time with halo infinite in terms of graphics. its problems were elsewhere, the overall map design, lackluster story etc.

it also had incredible textures by the way. especially for its time

 

[adamsapple]

Halo 5 might have more variety in its environments but it does not look better than Infinite, and that's to look over how Halo Infinite maps are like 4 times the size in a far more open world with far happing

Infinite looks really good. But expect someone to post the craig face as a hilarious gotcha any moment.

 

[tylrdiablos]

It was an interesting video, not gonna lie. It's just a shame he excels at coming across as an absolute insufferable prick. (Alex Battaglia1, meet Alex Battaglia 2.)

I hope DF address the video content. They could learn from it.

 

[Spiral1407]

Halo 5 might have more variety in its environments but it does not look better than Infinite, and that's to look over how Halo Infinite maps are like 4 times the size in a far more open world with far happing

Yeah I'm not a fan, everything looks desaturated and oversharpened in infinte. Combine that with the bland environments and I just can't see it looking better than H5.

 

[Jigsaah]

Loving how this thread has evolved into the screenshot-pocalypse. Good discussions, I'm actually learning a bit.

 

[kevboard]

Hitman is cool and all but that feature is only used on that one level which is pretty small compared to others and doesn't have npcs or much going on. Not excusing Remedy here, but planar reflections like that are expensive as shit and need to be used carefully not to tank performance.

that's not true.
literally all mirrrors in all 3 hitman games use render to texture reflections.
enemies can see you in mirrors too.

in the dubai stage in Hitman 3, the entire outside part of the skyscraper uses render to texture reflections, as well as the guant glass floor inside it.

and where would it be easier to add render to texture reflections than inside a bathroom? literally 4 walls and a few simple assets inside them l.

 

[Disco Dave]

I haven’t watched or interacted with DF since the Hogwarts Legacy incident. A game that scales from Switch to PS5/PC and everything in between and not a fucking squeak from the PC Police Officer, Alex Battaglia.

And then you have John Linneman, a man with such a huge yellow streak up his back that he didn’t want to be kicked off Resetera for breaking the boycott, so he thought he would just hide behind the children’s bullshit comment as a reason to not cover the game.

And then he posts this on BlueSky…

Not to mention the fact that Linneman has covered MANY open world games and “children’s games”. In fact, I think he covered Klonoa 2 just after this comment.

Don’t piss up my back and tell me it’s raining.

Fuck DF.

Richard Leadbetter is cool though.

 

[kevboard]

There's a reason why developers dont use planar reflections in modern games. You need to render the same scene twice and on modern GPUs like mine that's even more expensive than RT reflections.

RT also renders parts of the scene twice.
it might be more efficient culling unused parts of the scene, but that's it.

also, I'm not saying they should use them everywhere, what I am saying is that it should be ridiculed and laughed at when a tiny and empty room with a mirror looks like what we see in Alan Wake 2.

there's no environment where adding planar reflections would be easier than in a closed off bathroom.

Also planar reflections are extremely limited and can be only used for razor sharp reflections, whereas RT reflections can be used for both sharp and diffused reflections (pretty much for all materials).

which are arguably the most important ones to look right.
if you look at a diffused reflection and the details don't look perfectly right, you'll not notice it nearly as easily as when you look into a bathroom mirror and are greeted with that shit we see in those Alan Wake 2 screenshots.

lan Wake 2 has razor sharp reflections, just not on every surface.

that's great, that doesn't change the fact that Remedy was too stupid to chose the correct material for their bathroom mirrors (same in the talkshow changing room)

Sometimes developers still use planar reflections, for example I saw planar reflections in "the last of us 1 remake", but these reflections were only used in very very tinny rooms. In the open levels, Naughty Dog had to make use of distracting SSR reflections (reflections were fading in and out as you move), and if you looked at the puddles directly screen space information wasnt there and I saw extremely low quality (pixelated) cube maps.

yes, tiny rooms like that one in Alan Wake 2

TLOU1 remake would look much better with RT, but it was a game developed for the PS5 console, and that's why the developers had to compromise with poor raster gimmicks.

no it wouldn't. you know what we would see if they used RT?
constant RT boiling, RT ghosting, light slowly fading in and out when the lighting changes in unnatural ways, and lower render resolutions due to GPU stress.

it would look worse.

On PC RT reflections are much better choice than SSR, cube maps, and even planar reflections. Below my comparison in cyberpunk. It turned off RT lighting (because that's the most expensive RT effect) and just use RT reflections. Notice framerate with RT reflection on and off. On my PC it's just 0.9% relative difference and I'm using the same settings (DLSSQuality + FGx2, ultra settings) on both screenshots. RT reflections look amazing compared to raster gimmicks and performance is still amazing. I dont even know if it would be possible to use planat reflections for moving objects like cars, but even if it would be performance would tank, because entire scene would need to be rendered twice.

On the next screenshit I used old DLSS (CNN model) instead of DLSS4 (transformer) and peformance with RT was even better compared to raster. 212fps raster vs 215fps RT reflections.

I agree, RT reflections are the best choice if the hardware power is there.
that doesn't change the fact that in games where it's not viabe to have RT reflections everywhere (because they are on console for example), it should be expected that a bathroom mirror doesn't look 10 times worse in a game from the 2020s, than in a game from the year 2000.

Bathroom are often the simplest environments in a game, with almost nothing there aside from a few flat walls and toiled bowls.

I can see what RT GI does even in games with static TOD. I would have to be clueless about lighting to ignore that moving objects (characters for example) do not match the scene lighting and appear to float instead of being grounded in the scene.

Samuel Drake stands in the shadows yet it's well lit.

A fool lying on the ground appears to be floating.

both of these could be fixed without RT, and indeed have looked better than this in other games before. using enough light probes for example that dynamic objects are affected by can fix this

but even so, I take this over RT GI boiling artifacts any day.

RT GI is just ugly as fuck. I haven't seen a game where it doesn't have obvious issues.
all you do is trade one kind of issue with another one, all while killing performance.
so absolutely not worth it.

Without dynamic GI, lighting can often look flat because objects like vegetation does not cast indirect shadows, RT GI would definitely take the graphics in Uncharted 4 to the next level.

4 letters: HBAO