Hynad said:
Kynes said:
theprof00 said:
Slimebeast said:
Hynad said:
When did Epic say that, exactly?
That article is misleading and missed something really important in Digital Foundry's analysis.
A nice update directly from Epic themselves:
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."
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So yeah, this article is bullcrap, and fishing for clicks at the expense of integrity.
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No it's not. It's a perfectly valid conclusion to draw when you realize what features are missing from the PS4 demo compared to the PC demo, and your quoted statement by Epic shows they were unable to deny that. Instead it confirms exactly those missing features that Epic, just like all gamers, had high hopes for:
* lack of SVO global illumination
* and less particles on the PS4 version
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See bolded
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Non real time global illumination is always more efficient, but much less realistic. It's not a good thing having to use pre-baked illumination, it's used because it has much less performance penalty, not because it is better visually. That alone tells us that the performance difference is there, but anyone with hardware knowledge could have said it before any tech demo.
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Yet GI can look just as good as SVOGI depending on what the content is and how it is implemented. SVOGI is neat, but not having it in games isn't a game breaker. Games will still look gorgeous. In fact, I don't think most people will notice any significant difference between the 2 methods.
And the judge is still out on whether or not that feature is possible on the PS4 down the line. When engines for the console get mature.
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I am going to have to go with Spin on Epic part. You take out a feature that does add a level of visual fidelity better than GI then because people have disected your demo, you need to make some type of comment as damage control. I watch the PC and PS4 demo a lot and the SVOGI just looks better. Not enough to make any real difference but a noticable difference.
In the end who really cares, the PS4 looks good enough and as people have stated by the time the PS4 catch its wind it probably will be able to meet the PC level or better in that demo. I guess the key thing is, that the PS4 does not have that much headroom where it can grunt through unoptimized code.
