Digital Foundry Analysis Video Mortal Kombat 11: Switch vs PS4/Pro/Xbox One/X - From Handheld To 4K!

[Mr Puggsly]

Pemalite said:

Mr Puggsly said:

I believe the texture quality on Switch is more about RAM. This game was designed for consoles with 5GB to work with, maybe 3GB for Switch? Either way, certainly less than what the game was designed for. Memory often plays a bigger role on texture quality versus other resources like GPU and CPU. I mean the reason X1X has better textures is a massive memory increase, while PS4 Pro textures are generally the same.

One thing I noticed about some of the final ports to 7th gen games was the texture quality became very poor. I suspect that was likely due to the more memory demanding games/engines so the compromise was low quality textures. Some have said limited storage is the problem but I don't buy that.

The base X1 version looks fine, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Based on the video its somewhere below 900p to 1080p, with little compromise to graphics settings. You're understating the disparity between X1 and Switch.

Ram is a big part of it, not just capacity but bandwidth as well.
So is the Texture Mapping Units on a GPU too... And so many other factors.

In short the Switch has 1/3rd of the texture mapping units as the Xbox One... But each unit as it's Maxwell derived should be vastly more efficient than what the Xbox One has, granted the Xbox has a much larger amount of them to make up for it.

When it comes to rendering it's very difficult to just point to a single aspect and claim it's the sole culprit, typically the issue is a top-to-bottom problem, there are so many stages that introduce limitations in a GPU's design.

As for the 7th gen taking a hit with texture quality is actually rather simple to explain... As we entered the 8th gen, game engines started to employ dynamic lighting and shadowing effects rather than having those details as part of the texture work.
So when the games were back-ported to the 7th gen, they would cull the lighting and shadowing as the 7th gen hardware just wasn't capable enough, but some developers didn't go back to rework the textures to include those details in the texture maps to allow the 7th gen hardware to truly shine.

*****

I should have made myself a bit clearer. The base Xbox One game does look fine, when compared to other base Xbox One games... But I am pretty intolerant of anything sub-1080P, which the Xbox One spends the majority of it's time at... And often drops below even 900P. Ouch. That means the image is going to look very soft.
Rendering resolution is something I have always been vocal about, even during the 7th gen, this is nothing new.

And then you have the per-object motion blur which is a bit of a step down as well, which is an issue it shares with the Playstation 4 as well, but at a lower rendering resolution it takes a little bit of an extra hit.

In short, to me it looks like a dogs breakfast. - Thankfully the Playstation 4 Pro and Xbox One X resolves the bulk of those issues entirely, even if it doesn't manage a full fat 4k 100% of the time... But I guess that is why I am a PC gamer?

I really don't buy either of your explanations. The Switch is capable of better textures, other 8th gen ports have demonstrated this. Wolfenstein 2 and Doom for example aren't quite that bad, while Hellblade is pretty bad. In this case I blame RAM primarily.

As for the 7th gen ports of 8th gen games, I really doubt its lighting making those textures look so muddy. That doesn't even make sense. That was also years before we saw such advanced lighting in the 8th gen. Meanwhile games like Battlefield 4/Hardline and Wolfenstein: The New Order actually had good textures because those engines were simply better designed to work on 7th gen specs.

Oh please, in the ballpark of 900p is not soft for the average consumer and it also depends on the method of AA used. However, I think its fair to be critical of the UE4 games only doing 720p and soften the image as AA, that looks bad. Those same games tend to be about 900p on PS4.

If MK11 on X1 look like a dogs breakfast, which is a dumb analogy by the way, then you must think the Switch version look like a dog's abortion? Sorry, I'm not very good at analogies either.

I have the X1X so I'm playing games in glorious 1440p - 4K. But I'm not gonna pretend MK11 on X1 looks particularly bad, actually I still play games in 1080p if there is a 60 fps option.