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Forums - Gaming Discussion - UE4 Scaled down to run on PS4, why not Wii U?

S.T.A.G.E. said:
Nsanity said:
RenderMonk said:
The main differences between the PC version and PS4 version is the lighting and particle effects. Where an extremely top of the line PC (or custom rig for the demo) will be able to pump out a bit more in both the lighting and particle effects department, that's not a "Huge Difference." It's minor. The difference between PS4 and WiiU is the RAM, which is a crucial part in getting the lighting (like bloom, light scatter etc) and particle effects to run right and run smooth. This is more than likely than main reason why it's not ideal to run on WiiU. But the differences at the moment between PS4 and PC are negligible at best. And as the PS4 devs get better accustomed to the coding environment for PS4 it will keep up with most high-end PC's with, again, negligible differences.

There's a whole lot more: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-unreal-engine-4-ps4-vs-pc


It says it underneath the comparison video that the lighting and effects are the only major difference. 

I'm not talking about the video and if you scrolled through the article you would have noticed the cut backs they had to make.



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Nsanity said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Nsanity said:
RenderMonk said:
The main differences between the PC version and PS4 version is the lighting and particle effects. Where an extremely top of the line PC (or custom rig for the demo) will be able to pump out a bit more in both the lighting and particle effects department, that's not a "Huge Difference." It's minor. The difference between PS4 and WiiU is the RAM, which is a crucial part in getting the lighting (like bloom, light scatter etc) and particle effects to run right and run smooth. This is more than likely than main reason why it's not ideal to run on WiiU. But the differences at the moment between PS4 and PC are negligible at best. And as the PS4 devs get better accustomed to the coding environment for PS4 it will keep up with most high-end PC's with, again, negligible differences.

There's a whole lot more: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-unreal-engine-4-ps4-vs-pc


It says it underneath the comparison video that the lighting and effects are the only major difference. 

I'm not talking about the video and if you scrolled through the article you would have noticed the cut backs they had to make.


Then, if you scrolled, you should have noticed that part, right?

Update: Brian Karis, senior graphics programmer at Epic Games adds some more insight in the comments below, explaining some of the more obvious differences - particularly in terms of the very different lighting schemes. At the technical level, the two demos are closer than it seems:

"The biggest changes actually came from the merging of two separate cinematics, the original Elemental and the extended Elemental we showed at PS4's launch event. Each had different sun directions and required some compromises to join them. This resulted in some major lighting differences that aren't platform related but were due to it being a joined cinematic. Another effect, in the original you could see the mountains through the door where in the merged one we made the view through the door white since the mountains outside were no longer the same. Same deal with the mountain fly by. The old mountain range doesn't exist in the new one. These changes from the merge make direct comparisons somewhat inaccurate.

"Feature wise most everything is the same, AA resolution, meshes, textures (PS4 has tons of memory), DOF (I assure you both use the same Bokeh DOF, not sure why that one shot has different focal range), motion blur.

"Biggest differences are SVOGI has been replaced with a more efficient GI solution, a slight scale down in the number of particles for some FX, and tessellation is broken on ps4 in the current build which the lava used for displacement. We will fix the tessellation in the future."



Nsanity said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
Nsanity said:
RenderMonk said:
The main differences between the PC version and PS4 version is the lighting and particle effects. Where an extremely top of the line PC (or custom rig for the demo) will be able to pump out a bit more in both the lighting and particle effects department, that's not a "Huge Difference." It's minor. The difference between PS4 and WiiU is the RAM, which is a crucial part in getting the lighting (like bloom, light scatter etc) and particle effects to run right and run smooth. This is more than likely than main reason why it's not ideal to run on WiiU. But the differences at the moment between PS4 and PC are negligible at best. And as the PS4 devs get better accustomed to the coding environment for PS4 it will keep up with most high-end PC's with, again, negligible differences.

There's a whole lot more: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-unreal-engine-4-ps4-vs-pc


It says it underneath the comparison video that the lighting and effects are the only major difference. 

I'm not talking about the video and if you scrolled through the article you would have noticed the cut backs they had to make.


Yeah and you also read the part where it says the Direct X API 11 is very mature whilst the PS4 tools and API are in their initial stages of development. It was scaled down as they understand the capabilities thus far. This means as they further open up the power of the PS4 more will be able to be found.



Nsanity said:
 

I'm not talking about the video and if you scrolled through the article you would have noticed the cut backs they had to make.


Scroll down to the end of the article and read the update part:

Update: Brian Karis, senior graphics programmer at Epic Games adds some more insight in the comments below, explaining some of the more obvious differences - particularly in terms of the very different lighting schemes. At the technical level, the two demos are closer than it seems:

...

Feature wise most everything is the same, AA resolution, meshes, textures (PS4 has tons of memory), DOF (I assure you both use the same Bokeh DOF, not sure why that one shot has different focal range), motion blur.

Biggest differences are SVOGI has been replaced with a more efficient GI solution, a slight scale down in the number of particles for some FX, and tessellation is broken on ps4 in the current build which the lava used for displacement. We will fix the tessellation in the future

So basically, the older PC demo used a different dynamic global illumination system, the sparse voxels one, which has been cut from UE4 since and replaced with a static GI, and the two demos differ in how assets and lights are set up. At this point the biggest differences become a reduced number of particles and buggy tessellation for the lava.

I'm sure PS4 versions of UE4 games will be somewhat toned down when compared to end of 2013 high-end gaming rigs, but a side-by-side comparison is not that useful unless a PC version of the exactly same demo on same version of UE4 is provided. And even that won't be incredibly useful to evaluate how real games will look like. We need demos where CPU, i/O etc are stressed appropriately.

UE has always been a pragmatic solution, not an exotic one. I'm pretty sure if the WIIU sells enough, we'll see Epic coding a proper rendered aimed at it, maybe with a slightly different name for marketing reasons.



"All you need in life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." - Mark Twain

"..." - Gordon Freeman

WereKitten said:
Nsanity said:
 

I'm not talking about the video and if you scrolled through the article you would have noticed the cut backs they had to make.


Scroll down to the end of the article and read the update part:

Update: Brian Karis, senior graphics programmer at Epic Games adds some more insight in the comments below, explaining some of the more obvious differences - particularly in terms of the very different lighting schemes. At the technical level, the two demos are closer than it seems:

...

Feature wise most everything is the same, AA resolution, meshes, textures (PS4 has tons of memory), DOF (I assure you both use the same Bokeh DOF, not sure why that one shot has different focal range), motion blur.

Biggest differences are SVOGI has been replaced with a more efficient GI solution, a slight scale down in the number of particles for some FX, and tessellation is broken on ps4 in the current build which the lava used for displacement. We will fix the tessellation in the future

So basically, the older PC demo used a different dynamic global illumination system, the sparse voxels one, which has been cut from UE4 since and replaced with a static GI, and the two demos differ in how assets and lights are set up. At this point the biggest differences become a reduced number of particles and buggy tessellation for the lava.

I'm sure PS4 versions of UE4 games will be somewhat toned down when compared to end of 2013 high-end gaming rigs, but a side-by-side comparison is not that useful unless a PC version of the exactly same demo on same version of UE4 is provided. And even that won't be incredibly useful to evaluate how real games will look like. We need demos where CPU, i/O etc are loaded appropriately.


Exactly and they also stated that they haven't even figured out the true power of the PS4's tools and APi compared to the Direct X 11. This means theres plenty of time to see other developers outshine Epic in their findings of how to use the power of the PS4.



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Devil_Survivor said:

1.The Wii U has already been showned to be more powerful than the 360 and the PS3, by 1.5 0.5-3 times depending on who you ask.





S.T.A.G.E. said:
 


Exactly and they also stated that they haven't even figured out the true power of the PS4's tools and APi compared to the Direct X 11. This means theres plenty of time to see other developers outshine Epic in their findings of how to use the power of the PS4.

To be frank, I don't know how much "true power" you can find by digging closer to the bare metal as we're speaking of an architecture that is much more well known than say, that of the PS3 or 360 in its infancy.

You can probably pull out some nice tricks that give you a minor edge versus a higher level API, but that's not a job for a general purpose, cheap-ish engine as UE wants to be.

Deep customization is probably something only first party teams will indulge in... as raw baseline performance advances it makes less and less economic sense in multiplatform efforts.



"All you need in life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." - Mark Twain

"..." - Gordon Freeman

WereKitten said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:
 


Exactly and they also stated that they haven't even figured out the true power of the PS4's tools and APi compared to the Direct X 11. This means theres plenty of time to see other developers outshine Epic in their findings of how to use the power of the PS4.

To be frank, I don't know how much "true power" you can find by digging closer to the bare metal as we're speaking of an architecture that is much more well known than say, that of the PS3 or 360 in its infancy.

You can probably pull out some nice tricks that give you a minor edge versus a higher level API, but that's not a job for a general purpose, cheap-ish engine as UE wants to be.

Deep customization is probably something only first party teams will indulge in... as raw baseline performance advances it makes less and less economic sense in multiplatform efforts.


I was thinking first party would take advantage of it the most. Not just them but other companies. Epic doesn't exactly have the best looking games but they sure do try. Could be my taste vs the art direction of their demos.



keroncoward said:

After Mark Rein made his comments that UE4 will have to be scaled down to run on Wii U I decided to do my own research to analyze exactly what the PS4 version looks like. It appears the engine is also being scaled down to run on PS4 since there is a noticable difference in the effects and how much stuff they can put in the environment in real time. Obviously the Wii U version will not look better than the PS4 version but the question comes to mind that if the PS4 cant even run the engine to its full potential and Mark Rein did confirm that UE4 will be scalable to even Tablets and Smart Phones, Its pretty obvious UE4 should be able to run on Wii U with no problem. The only problem appears to be execs and developers (man power to work on porting the engine) interest in other systems since they believe it will be more profitable to make the kind of 3rd party games the engine is famous for (First Person Shooters). This makes sense since he made the statement that if anyone wants to port the engine to Wii U they can but they are not focused on it.

This is a business decision. Clearly, more supported platforms make an engine harder to maintain and the probability of bugs increases. Or in other words: development costs increasing. If the engine is built for multiplatform (and UE4 should have done this) the costs involved should be low, but they are existant. If Epic assumes, that WiiU don't get many UE-driven games to begin with (more often used by western devs, that are not so hot for Nintendo-platforms), then it seems the simple question of not getting enough royalties to make porting worthwile.

As I said before, it would be clever if Nintendo pays for the port.



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menx64 said:
it should be possible. Epic probably dont see the benefit of scaling UE4 to wiiU because they dont see a good business opportunity there.

This. And you can be sure Epic will port itself, if customers of Epic/UE sell their UE3-games a lot on WiiU and also want to sell UE4-games. But this is unlikely, that's why Epic didn't made it for WiiU in the first place.

Also, so far are barely any UE4-games, so it is not a big deal for now.



3DS-FC: 4511-1768-7903 (Mii-Name: Mnementh), Nintendo-Network-ID: Mnementh, Switch: SW-7706-3819-9381 (Mnementh)

my greatest games: 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

10 years greatest game event!

bets: [peak year] [+], [1], [2], [3], [4]