John from Digital Foundry: "Having replayed PS3/XB360 games, I do think image quality is worse now in some ways" (2023)

erek

erek

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even with DLSS 5, graphics just don't seem to be improving that much.. we've hit diminishing returns and even regressions in some instances

"...some discussion of bluriness and noisiness of recent games. The sharpest moment at 1:47:22 timestamp: "Having played old PS3/XB360, I do think image quality is worse now in some ways. Playing a 360 game with MSAA vs. a modern game with reconstruction...""


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsBw1galvPY


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zdQiy_UdZs

https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckTAA/comments/17kk710/john_from_digital_foundry_having_replayed/
 
I'm just glad that developers finally give a damn about framerate after the 30fps doldrums we had to deal with for a while. I'll take things that look objectively worse in stills if that means gaming at 60, 90, 120, etc. frames per second vs. something that looks like a million bucks at 30fps.
 
Domingo said:
I'm just glad that developers finally give a damn about framerate after the 30fps doldrums we had to deal with for a while. I'll take things that look objectively worse in stills if that means gaming at 60, 90, 120, etc. frames per second vs. something that looks like a million bucks at 30fps.
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30 fps due to console / ports? or what
 
erek said:
30 fps due to console / ports? or what
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Developer choices I'd assume. They seem to be mostly talking about consoles in these videos. Up until really recently, console games were targeting 30fps from the PS2 era through the PS4.
 
Yea I also felt the plateau start at around the ps3 to ps4 transition.

The regression IMO is mostly due to lack of advancement in ANIMATION, which just brings attention to the fact that the more realistic models/textures don't align with a more realistic movement.
 
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are closed said:
Physics.

We need PhysX.
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This has been a huge regression in modern games that I'm always wondering why many objects don't have basic physics applied to them.

I've also noticed that even in an age of RT being in most games now, mirrors in games are constantly broken or blurred just so they don't have to reflect anything. I remember many games of the PS3/360, and even previous PS2/GC/Xbox gen had this figured out for the most part. I know it's somewhat expensive to do, but it's weird to see in games that already have RT reflections in glass and water, but can't have them on mirrors. The most recent examples I've seen are the Silent Hill games; SH2 Remake and Townfall both do this with the exception of the iconic mirror scene at the very beginning of SH2 Remake.
 
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T4rd said:
This has been a huge regression in modern games that I'm always wondering why many objects don't have basic physics applied to them.

I've also noticed that even in an age of RT being in most games now, mirrors in games are constantly broken or blurred just so they don't have to reflect anything. I remember many games of the PS3/360, and even previous PS2/GC/Xbox gen had this figured out for the most part. I know it's somewhat expensive to do, it's weird to see in games that already have RT reflections in glass and water, but can't have them on mirrors. The most recent examples I've seen are the Silent Hill games; SH2 Remake and Townfall both do this with the exception of the iconic mirror scene at the very beginning of SH2 Remake.
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Cyberpunk, smh. Completely ruins the immersion for me when I see V shaped holes in reflections.

But yeah, for years it has felt like games look blurry/smeared. I'd say with modern DLSS though it isn't NEARLY as bad now.

Also that video is ~2~ 3 years old. Before the transformer model for DLSS. Idk if they would say the same thing today.
 
are closed said:
Physics.

We need PhysX.
Click to expand...
T4rd said:
This has been a huge regression in modern games that I'm always wondering why many objects don't have basic physics applied to them.

I've also noticed that even in an age of RT being in most games now, mirrors in games are constantly broken or blurred just so they don't have to reflect anything. I remember many games of the PS3/360, and even previous PS2/GC/Xbox gen had this figured out for the most part. I know it's somewhat expensive to do, but it's weird to see in games that already have RT reflections in glass and water, but can't have them on mirrors. The most recent examples I've seen are the Silent Hill games; SH2 Remake and Townfall both do this with the exception of the iconic mirror scene at the very beginning of SH2 Remake.
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remember Havok and also HL2?

what about EAX hardware sound?

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erek said:
what about EAX hardware sound?
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We can do a lot better in software these days. Audio processing is cheap, compared to video processing, and so it makes sense to go all software. Things that used to be intense are trivial now. A good example would be convolution: This is the process by where once you've captured an impulse of a real space, or guitar cab, or whatever you can reproduce it precisely. Convolution reverb gives you extremely realistic reproductions of rooms, if captured with good impulses. It is a well understood mathematical process (used in things like RADAR), but for a long time wasn't usable in real time for audio. The first device that allowed for it to do reverb on CD quality audio was the Sony DRE S777 in 1999. This was a dedicated unit filled with DSPs costing over $10k. Some time later, computers got the ability to do it with AltiVerb which used SIMD extensions on the G4 chips to do it but it took nearly all your CPU to do it. You could have one of the inserted and use it as a send, and that was it.

Now? I can drop convolution reverb freely on tracks, it takes like 1-2% of one CPU core. This very computationally expensive effect (it was something EAX never did, all algorithmic reverb there) you can just use freely more or less.

The reason to do it in software, and the reason why most professional audio effects have gone that way, is the flexibility. If you use EAX you have to use its reverbs, its choruses, its resamplers, etc. If you don't like how that works for your game, well tough shit, the hardware is what it is, hope it is better in the next version. In software you have a lot more flexibility, you can implement the algorithms you want, in the way you want, and so long as there's sufficient CPU time, you can do it.


Ultimately we'd like to do graphics the same way, there's just not the CPU power nor will there be any time soon, if ever. But if you can do with in software, without dedicated hardware, that's the better solution. More flexible, and not limited by specialist hardware limitations.
 
Sycraft said:
We can do a lot better in software these days. Audio processing is cheap, compared to video processing, and so it makes sense to go all software. Things that used to be intense are trivial now. A good example would be convolution: This is the process by where once you've captured an impulse of a real space, or guitar cab, or whatever you can reproduce it precisely. Convolution reverb gives you extremely realistic reproductions of rooms, if captured with good impulses. It is a well understood mathematical process (used in things like RADAR), but for a long time wasn't usable in real time for audio. The first device that allowed for it to do reverb on CD quality audio was the Sony DRE S777 in 1999. This was a dedicated unit filled with DSPs costing over $10k. Some time later, computers got the ability to do it with AltiVerb which used SIMD extensions on the G4 chips to do it but it took nearly all your CPU to do it. You could have one of the inserted and use it as a send, and that was it.

Now? I can drop convolution reverb freely on tracks, it takes like 1-2% of one CPU core. This very computationally expensive effect (it was something EAX never did, all algorithmic reverb there) you can just use freely more or less.

The reason to do it in software, and the reason why most professional audio effects have gone that way, is the flexibility. If you use EAX you have to use its reverbs, its choruses, its resamplers, etc. If you don't like how that works for your game, well tough shit, the hardware is what it is, hope it is better in the next version. In software you have a lot more flexibility, you can implement the algorithms you want, in the way you want, and so long as there's sufficient CPU time, you can do it.


Ultimately we'd like to do graphics the same way, there's just not the CPU power nor will there be any time soon, if ever. But if you can do with in software, without dedicated hardware, that's the better solution. More flexible, and not limited by specialist hardware limitations.
Click to expand...
It's too bad games don't seem to leverage audio tech now. There has been some decent positional audio and room/material-based reverb in games (The Hunt Showdown, Battlefield, etc.) but nothing on the level of Thief using A3D2 back in 2000.
 
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