Digital Foundry - Dirt 5

[DonFerrari]

Ryuu96 said:

DonFerrari said:

My point with Unreal Engine 5 is that devs had access to them almost 18 months prior to official launch, some even prior to formal reveal. That is why even if the devs don't have the final version of GDK they still received alpha version of it and targets long ago (just look at interview). Also not sure, but if the GDK was in a poor state wouldn't it be more likely that third party devs would use the XDK tool that they were already used to? If it was useable by Gears 5 it also should be useable to 3rd party I guess.

Next gen is always interesting because we have so much question marks waiting to be answered. And if the interview saying the tool despise hot was not behind PS5 isn't factual and he just wanted to expose himself against MS, we now have two questions, when will  the first games with the full and satisfactorely matured GDK will release and how close will be multiplat performance when they do, will the PS5 mature more? So let's say from 6 months in the future, will we still have PS5 ahead by 12-25% in performance, virtual tie or will we get something closer to what specs suggest 15-20% in favor of Xbox or what Colt Eastwod said about VRS and ML putting a 40-50% advantage become true? I have no idea.

I see, yeah, they have 'alpha' versions and whatnot but the current version doesn't meet the targeted specs and has missing features. I'm honestly not sure the exact state the SDK is in, we just know it is behind, came in hot, is new and missing certain features for now, it requires developers at the very least to adapt to something different and work around certain bugs/optimisation issues and missing features which may result in some weird things we're seeing.

But the differences haven't been that drastic until Dirt 5's 120hz mode, which I do believe for the most part is due to something unintentional like a bug. I mean, the developers straight up called it an "issue which will be fixed" which doesn't imply it was intentional at all. Given how close the consoles are, the other modes being near identical except only the 120hz mode, the drastic difference doesn't make much sense and I think it is more likely to assume it is either unintentional or a bug.

Digital Foundry are now confident it is a bug too.

Yeah, OK. Except...IT IS. When it's fixed, I will return to this post to shame you.

— John Linneman (@dark1x) November 22, 2020

Follow the thread. The tech director and official Dirt 5 account replied and supported our findings. That link you posted? That person does not work for us. I suggest you apologize now.

— John Linneman (@dark1x) November 22, 2020

(Hey look, an Xbox fanboy attacking Digital Foundry too).

I think we should just wait and see, not jump to conclusions after only 12 days of the console being released, the developers worked their asses off to meet launch during a pandemic, some stuff is gonna be fucked, the consoles are near identical, I personally tend to avoid these types of threads but the accusations of bias towards Digital Foundry were annoying me more than anything.

I'm not sure why they wouldn't just use the XDK Tbh. Regarding why Halo MCC uses XDK instead of GDK...Idk, I just assume it's not worth the effort swapping an old game over and I'm assuming Gears 5 is still on the XDK. I don't have a clue when the SDK will be matured (or I guess, when it can be considered as 1.0), hopefully before Halo Infinite releases, Lol.

PS5 DK will also improve, yeah, though from what I've read, it seems like the PS5 DK is an upgrade to the PS4 DK, so developers are very familiar with it, it's optimised well, making development easier on PS5 in comparison to SX, I imagine the gap will close, PS5 DK is more mature but the SX DK will probably have bigger growths simply because it is so far behind, PS5 DK doesn't need to be in a rush to upgrade anything whereas the SX does.

Colt is a fanboy, Lol, 40-50% is not happening. I'm expecting most of the comparison to virtually be a tie, SX beats in some areas, PS5 beats in some areas, pretty boring and I'll be out of these threads when that happens because I CBA to debate over small differences.

I'll start saying I totally agree DF isn't biased as a whole, but certainly some of the employees can be biased (we all are), and sure they certainly are trying to avoid using terms that will fuel console war unnecessarily (although their work in itself is fuel for it) and make their supporters angry. So it is understandable that when they see something that is different between the consoles they use softer words instead of what we fans would use to perhaps exaggerate the differences.

Now that is off the table let's go back to the tools. Yes I can see the tools missing features or being hot (still if the dev in interview wasn't lying, it wasn't that much different than PS5, with PS5 also having what xbox fans and DF was complaining - the variable frequency for GPU and CPU that would make devs work harder, even if Cerny said it would be automatically and devs doesn't need to worry) making Xbox games not being well optimized. And agree we don't have no idea on how much the patch will improve or how much the 1.0 version of the GDK will help on the next batch of games. Any idea on when we are seeing the next wave of crossgen titles?

It may be tools or bugs, but DMC also had issues on 120hz on Xbox, do you remember at one point the PS5 holding 120hz fairly well (I think dropped to 110 at most) and for some odd reason Xbox dropped to near 60 (I think 67). It may be the GDK, it may be bug, it may be multi threading, it can be so much things that since we aren't there we can't be sure. And the strange part is that on the 120hz for Dirt 5 it seems like Series X still have tearing and some drops in frames with the lower profile, so not sure how using another profile will affect the performance.

We didn't see much of Halo, but outside of the plain models and seemly IQ, the performance was quite stable right? So don't know if XDK or GDK and how much will change on the tools and Halo itself. But this is a game I have confidence that since MS delayed it they will be sure to make it the best they can.

Agree on the PS5 supposition. If we go from the dev interview he said both came in hot but emphasized that experience with the tools could vary (so yes we can speculate that means DirectX12 experience, XDK or PS4 tools, and what Codemaster team is more experienced with, but PS5 having the better version of the game it is fair game to suppose they had more experience or familiarity with PS5 tools). And I do agree that from the first set of games Sony has less urge to improve the tools than MS at least from where we can see.

Sure if Xbox to PS5 comparisons arrive to where we were expecting before launch, 15-20% advantage to Xbox on resolution, framerate being quite similar (one or the other winning depending on the load), PS5 having some advantage in textures and geometry we can certainly claim virtual tie since those differences will be irrelevant most of the time. The only real problems I have seem on the 5 games compared wasn't even the IQ (as that we get used quite fast and isn't that profound, except this Dirt 5 120 mode that I wouldn't use anyway), but the tearing and drops in the 60fps in Xbox, and that certainly will improve along gen.

mutantsushi said:

DonFerrari said:

If it is a bug then it should just be a matter of correcting it, if it brings performance to erratic sub 120fps than it is pretty clear it wasn't a bug.

I would say it sounds like the settings are not optimized to fully utilize XSX, perhaps recycling ones from other version. Which isn't technically a bug as it's just those settings working as they are supposed to, even if everybody would prefer different settings that fully utiliize XSX. But I think it's fair to say many people don't always speak intending the precise sense of words they use, and so there probably isn't much point in interrogating "bug" vs "not a bug", if "this is bad and something that can be changed in an update" is fine.

I do think this whole thing underlines what I think is significant weakness of Series as platform, which isn't about a weakness in XSX hardware or XSS hardware individually, but the fact the platform is split like this from Day 1... And it seems unavoidable that devs under time/budget pressure will choose to optimize for "least common denominator" using combined bottleneck of both SKU's in order to trivially scale between both SKUs, because that is easier than optimizing 2 different versions with 2 different bottlenecks, even though it imposes constraint that doesn't exist for given SKU.

How this play out involves alot more stuff though. If MS really is in acquisition binge mode, would that mean they aren't in money hatting 3rd party exclusivity mode? (I would assume any 1st/2nd party exclusives would do adequate optimization) Then there is MS Game Pass. If that is extremely successful, it stands to reason 3rd party sales on Xbox would decline, since the audience is saturated with other games to play... Which would make double optimization work for 2x XboxSKUs even less enticing for 3rd party devs, pushing them further to "least common denominator" approach.. While Sony isn't undercutting conventional game sales with Game Pass and have larger market with unified performance target not divided by SKU, for cheaper development with more payoff.

Yes on the bug or not bug I agree. And well depending on how long Codemaster takes to patch it, they may improve the profile/assets quality and still keep it stable at 120hz (sincerely in consoles there is a big tradeoff that anyone wanting to play at 120 should accept, for me even 60fps is to much tradeoff in some games).

I would say it isn't even the split among 2 platforms, but MS ambition of gen free and platform agnostic. Their tools is to theoretically support X1, X1S, X1X, XSS, XSX and PCs at once. That level of abstraction certainly takes a little away from optimization and performance. Because if the devs need to optimize each version individually then you lost the ideal of simplicity in the scalability and uniformity in the tools.

The real crux was really MS marketing bragging since X1X that they have the most powerful console in the world, and doubling that down with Series X. Then they had 3 events where they didn't really show their exclusives releasing soon and in a good state (the only one expected to launch with the console was in poor state and needed delay), the multiplats were all show running on PC with "target rendering", then come launch they look and play considerably worse than PS5 that have been mostly silent (the most they said was that they tried to make a very balanced console and focused on removing bottlenecks, and the advantages of going with less CUs at higher speed, but despise seeing proud of what they achieved it didn't sound arrogant or bragging). So it is much more fault from marketing than developing team and tools possibly being to close to launch.