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Forums - Sony Discussion - PS4 'isn't quite as powerful as Epic was hoping for,' Digital Foundry reports

ironmanDX on 04 April 2013

I can see how you reached that conclusion and it's actually somewhat valid. It is cherry picking though really, I don't think that it will matter by the middle of the Gen. It will be optimised more than once by then like this gen, it will be able to do things we just didn't think they could!


Now or then, depending on how you look at it, the article is redundant.



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enditall727 on 04 April 2013
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."

So yeah, this article is bullcrap, and fishing for clicks at the expense of integrity.


LOL @ the title of this thread XD



LiquorandGunFun on 04 April 2013

Hey april fools is over! and if it was really said then Nintendo is in trouble.



 

theprof00 on 04 April 2013
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."

So yeah, this article is bullcrap, and fishing for clicks at the expense of integrity.

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

See bolded



Conegamer on 04 April 2013

I don't think anything could be as powerful as Epic wants, really. But those expecting PC level graphics should look elsewhere. Like a PC.



 

Here lies the dearly departed Nintendomination Thread.

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J_Allard on 04 April 2013
Argh_College said:
People were really expecting Ps4 to beat 3000$ Pcs?

LOL

iTs all about Games not Power, Ps4 will bring much better ad enjoyable experiences to Gamers than Pc in the NExt 5 years.

Do you get your PC components gold plated or something? lol @ $3,000.



Hynad on 04 April 2013
J_Allard said:
Argh_College said:
People were really expecting Ps4 to beat 3000$ Pcs?

LOL

iTs all about Games not Power, Ps4 will bring much better ad enjoyable experiences to Gamers than Pc in the NExt 5 years.

Do you get your PC components gold plated or something? lol @ $3,000.


You understand very well what he meant. His point stands. A gaming PC that beats the PS4's performances is going to cost you a lot more than a PS4.



J_Allard on 04 April 2013
Hynad said:
J_Allard said:
Argh_College said:
People were really expecting Ps4 to beat 3000$ Pcs?

LOL

iTs all about Games not Power, Ps4 will bring much better ad enjoyable experiences to Gamers than Pc in the NExt 5 years.

Do you get your PC components gold plated or something? lol @ $3,000.


You understand very well what he meant. His point stands. A gaming PC that beats the PS4's performances is going to cost you a lot more than a PS4.

No, it doesn't stand. Because we don't know everything about the PS4 and everything about the PC market by the time the PS4 launches. Either way, $3,000 is crazy. You could do it for less than 1/3 of that.

Anyway more on topic, the fact that they had to remove SVOGI should pretty much confirm that the consoles were not as powerful as Epic had hoped for. Although, that's not neccessarily a bad thing. But it does suck that we're not even into next gen and it would appear that consoles are already holding PC's back again.



Kynes on 04 April 2013
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."

So yeah, this article is bullcrap, and fishing for clicks at the expense of integrity.

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

See bolded


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.



zumnupy10 on 04 April 2013

If Epic was expecting PS4 to match a GTX 680 power, they are fools.

It will be interesting to see how many PCs will run UE4 with the same level of detail of that demo. I doubt many people have Intel I7+ GTX 680 right now.