Watch Dogs 2 PC performance thread

Shari said:
Yes, it works, go through thailand.

Edit: I see some people having trouble with it.

1. Close uplay
2. FlyVpn => thailand
3. Open uplay, you should see Download and right under, "locate game folder", click there and find your preload folder
4. Verification/Repair
5. Launche game and once its open close VPN.

Bare in mind Uplay will update game status once you quit VPN, so if you close the game you will have to do the process again.
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Weird- this does not work for me at all.
 
dr_rus said:
Notice that this is with Temporal Filtering On as well so it's actually less than 1080p native
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Oh I know I've seen as much in action. Seem to be able pull 4K30 so might stick with that as 1440p seems off the cards.

Have we any idea what preset the consoles are running at?
 
That Nvidia guide seems to gush quite a lot over temporal filtering, saying that it's almost impossible to notice unless you're holding your face close to the screen in a nearly static scene. Is this technology really that good? I want to run the game at 1440p with as much detail as possible, and if the tradeoff for temporal filtering is as small as Nvidia claims, it seems like a no-brainer compared to the benefits I'll get from being able to turn up so many other settings and still maintain 60+ fps.
 
Herr Starr said:
That Nvidia guide seems to gush quite a lot over temporal filtering, saying that it's almost impossible to notice unless you're holding your face close to the screen in a nearly static scene. Is this technology really that good? I want to run the game at 1440p with as much detail as possible, and if the tradeoff for temporal filtering is as small as Nvidia claims, it seems like a no-brainer compared to the benefits I'll get from being able to turn up so many other settings and still maintain 60+ fps.
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If I understand the amount of MSAA samples it uses, since you are actual using the native resolution of geometry samples... you will get good looking geometric edge detail even in motion. It is just transparencies and inner surfaces that will look worse in motion / resolve differently when still.

It could be worth the image quality minuses if you are already at a high pixel density.
 
Jaw-dropping Ray Marched Volumetric Fog can cost up to 30 frames per second when it rolls in. At other times, however, you might see a lower-density fog or a mere haze, and these range in cost from a few frames per second to 10 or 20 frames per second.
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expected lol. how often does it get foggy though?
 
It appears it went from a DX12 title to a Nvidia (DX11 +gameworks) title.

The guide is very adamant about overclocking your CPU, which makes sense being single core draw calls. Not sure how I feel about this. May just stick with the PS4 version.
 
AndyBNV said:
I've played the final version for 13 hours so far and not seen the full-on fog once. Have had several instances of other fog types though.
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got any footage of it? Your tech trailer is nice, but im not even sure you can get a decent overhead view of the fog in game?

Does watchdogs 2 have planes and helicopters?
 
Jeffrey said:
got any footage of it? Your tech trailer is nice, but im not even sure you can get a decent overhead view of the fog in game?

Does watchdogs 2 have planes and helicopters?
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You can go up the Golden Gate bridge like in the trailer; haven't encountered any helicopters or planes. Inside the fog it is as you'd expect: you can't see anything.
 
IcyRhythms said:
Seems NVIDIA recommends much higher than what Ubisoft had put out a few weeks ago.
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Always the same problem: What frame rate, resolution and settings was ubisoft aiming at with their system requirements?
Nobody knows.
Most probably not even Ubisoft.
 
Damn those card recommendation are much higher than the ones Ubisoft put out. Jeez, I mean I have a 1080 but still. I told a friend his 770 should be ok to play since it said 780, but now I'll tell him to wait. Who knows how the older cards will actually perform.

Or I guess since it's NVIDIA of course they promote their new series of cards.
 
Woah, this game cannot be maxed out with current hardware, I knew those requirements were way too optimistic.

Temporal filtering or death.
 
Guy LeDouche said:
based on this:

http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-co...ce-gtx-performance-temporal-filtering-off.png

I should be able to do ultra settings locked at 30 on my 970? Sounds good. I've been playing Hitman at locked 30 with all the visuals cranked up and its been good so I'll try the same with WD2
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no, thats an avg of 34. highly unlikely the min fps isnt below 30. youll need to enable temporal filtering or lower some settings. i wonder how low the settings have to go to hit a locked 60 or at least very close to it. almost seems off the table for a 970. other than temporal filtering there doesnt seem to be much scaling at all if you dont have nvidia shadows and/or hardware aa enabled.
 
This must be the game with the best use of Temporal Filtering yet. I can't spot an immediate difference in this picture for example http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/watch-dogs-2/watch-dogs-2-temporal-filtering-1920x1080-interactive-comparison-001-on-vs-off.html

What's better is that you can downscale to 1440p with temporal filtering and get a better picture and performance than 1080p with no temporal filtering: http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/watch-dogs-2/watch-dogs-2-temporal-filtering-2560x1440-interactive-comparison-002-25x14-vs-19x10-tf-off.html

Seems i'll be enabling this option on my 1070.
 
icecold1983 said:
no, thats an avg of 34. highly unlikely the min fps isnt below 30. youll need to enable temporal filtering or lower some settings. i wonder how low the settings have to go to hit a locked 60 or at least very close to it. almost seems off the table for a 970. other than temporal filtering there doesnt seem to be much scaling at all if you dont have nvidia shadows and/or hardware aa enabled.
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45.8 fps for the GTX 970 with temporal filtering on, and 56.9 fps for the GTX 980.
A solid overclock on the GTX 970 with a few settings dropped should get it to 60 fps.

Running Very High or High Shadows with Ambient Occlusion options set to SSBC or HMSSAO should keep it pretty close to 60 fps.
 
If you have a card like a 970 you're probably better off at least trying the temporal filtering option, provided the screenshots in the Nvidia guide aren't misleading.
 
Sky87 said:
This must be the game with the best use of Temporal Filtering yet. I can't spot an immediate difference in this picture for example http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/watch-dogs-2/watch-dogs-2-temporal-filtering-1920x1080-interactive-comparison-001-on-vs-off.html

What's better is that you can downscale to 1440p with temporal filtering and get a better picture and performance than 1080p with no temporal filtering: http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/watch-dogs-2/watch-dogs-2-temporal-filtering-2560x1440-interactive-comparison-002-25x14-vs-19x10-tf-off.html

Seems i'll be enabling this option on my 1070.
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There is some noticeable stuff like e.g. the splashing water near the columns, finer details in the background or the leaves. But overall, yes it seems to work surprisingly well.
 
Initial impressions of the Temporal Filtering were really strong. It's super impressive. However, the amount of aliasing it introduced and dithering on every shadow edge just killed it for me when I got past the opening mission. It was great when standing still but in motion I noticed it quite badly. Maybe there's an ideal shadow setting when using it?

Running at 3440x1440 with an overclocked gtx 1080, I've found my "pretty much" 60fps setting without using TF.

AA: None (Far less aliasing when not using TF, didn't need to resort to MSAA)
Post-AA: SMAA
Screenspace reflections: Off (20fps boost in a lot of areas, and it looks really dodgy on a lot of the cars. The normal reflection setting does a decent job.)
Shadows: Very high
Headlight shadows: Your Car
And the rest on ultra.

The most incredible thing about this port really is how smooth the cursor is regardless of whether the framerate is 45 or 75.
 
Sky87 said:
This must be the game with the best use of Temporal Filtering yet. I can't spot an immediate difference in this picture for example http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/watch-dogs-2/watch-dogs-2-temporal-filtering-1920x1080-interactive-comparison-001-on-vs-off.html

What's better is that you can downscale to 1440p with temporal filtering and get a better picture and performance than 1080p with no temporal filtering: http://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/watch-dogs-2/watch-dogs-2-temporal-filtering-2560x1440-interactive-comparison-002-25x14-vs-19x10-tf-off.html

Seems i'll be enabling this option on my 1070.
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Looks better on, to me
 
Chris_Rivera said:
It was originally DX12/AMD title, then Nvidia paid Ubisoft to use DX11 w/ Gameworks.
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Lol, that's why i am asking. I remember reading about DX12 and AMD tech and now boom it's Nvidia title. Well i am not surprised, it's Ubisoft after all. I guess Nvidia offered more $.
 
icecold1983 said:
no, thats an avg of 34. highly unlikely the min fps isnt below 30. youll need to enable temporal filtering or lower some settings. i wonder how low the settings have to go to hit a locked 60 or at least very close to it. almost seems off the table for a 970. other than temporal filtering there doesnt seem to be much scaling at all if you dont have nvidia shadows and/or hardware aa enabled.
Click to expand...

I glossed over the the temporal filtering stuff because... well I don't know exactly, but reading about it closer it sounds pretty great, so I guess I'll just do my usual - use the one-click optimize in the Geforce app and then fiddle with a few things if necessary.
 
dr_rus said:
watch-dogs-2-nvidia-geforce-gtx-recommended-graphics-cards.png

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/watch-dogs-2-dead-rising-4-steep-game-ready-driver
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Oof, my 770 am cry.
 
TehGoomba said:
Is temporal filtering similar to what was in Quantum Break?
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Something like that, although Rainbow Six Siege features a significantly better implementation of checkerboard rendering.

From what I've seen of it in Rainbow Six Siege is that it does a really good job and you gain a significant amount of performance from using it without impact the image quality much.

Digital Foundry have some comparisons in this article here: We built a PC with PlayStation Neo's GPU tech

Ubisoft is using dual techniques here, utilising 2x MSAA in combination with a temporal anti-aliasing technique to quadruple output resolution. It's an absolutely fascinating upscaling algorithm - and the great news is that we can enable and disable the technique on the PC version and run it at any resolution we want. Benchmarking Polaris 10 at Neo clocks at 3200x1800, we're still some way off the pace compared to the older Radeon running at 1080p (though curiously mid-way through the bench, you'll note that performance equalises) but when we re-run the sequence without the MSAA upscale in effect, frame-rates nose dive. In this case, the upscale technique is increasing performance by 55 per cent.

But what about the quality? Well, there is a slight softness in motion and hard aliased edges have an interesting dither pattern, reminiscent of a clutch of old PS3 titles that used MSAA upscaling. But the overall quality level holds up very well indeed and it's no surprise to see that Ubisoft opted for this technique as the default across all versions of Rainbow Six Siege. In and of itself, it does not solve the challenge facing Neo developers in producing a good-looking 4K presentation, but it shows fascinating results that could bear fruit further into the future. At the base level, a 1080p framebuffer with 2x MSAA clearly puts far less stress on the GPU than a straight 3840x2160 resolution.
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There's also more information about it here: Graphics and Performance Guide

Temporal Filtering

If you're interested in graphics technology, you've probably heard a lot of talk about "checkerboard rendering" in relation to the PlayStation 4 Pro in recent weeks. This new, upgraded PlayStation 4 is promoted as being capable of 4K graphics, and given a lower-fidelity game it most certainly is. In high-fidelity games, however, it has to use a clever workaround called "checkerboard rendering" to achieve a higher-resolution image without tanking the framerate.

In simplified terms, checkerboard rendering upscales the resolution from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160, and uses data from the previous frame to create new detailed pixels that fill in the blanks between the pixels that were upscaled, avoiding the blurriness that would otherwise occur. The result is then further improved with other techniques, and smoothed out with anti-aliasing.

This same principle was already achieved in a similar fashion in last year's Rainbow Six Siege, which introduced us to what Ubisoft calls "Temporal Filtering". This first-take on the idea rendered the same number of depth samples as a full-resolution 1920x1080 picture, but only a quarter of the shaded samples, improving performance at the expense of image quality. This manifested as a reduction in the quality and visibility of Ambient Occlusion shadowing, increased shader aliasing, decreased lighting and shading fidelity, and a loss of fidelity on smaller game elements, such as leaves, grass, visual effects and minute pieces of geometry.

In the year since Ubisoft has greatly improved their implementation of the technique, avoiding almost all of the previously-observed pitfalls. Such is the level of improvement, in fact, and the performance of the game with Temporal Filtering enabled, you can increase the resolution from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440 whilst simultaneously benefiting from a faster framerate and improved image quality.
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