Fortnite is the most graphically impressive and most performant UE5 game so far. Oof. Got to leave it to Ninja Theory and The Coalition to be the first ones to make this engine shine.
EDIT: All those people saying the next Halo game should move to Infinite look silly to me now 
Just want to point out that ācoding to the metalā is largely a myth. It used to traditionally be associated with writing code in assembly but I would be surprised if any studio does that much, if at all, these days. Even when using C++, games are made up of millions of lines of code. Writing in assembly would make this already complicated task even that much more complicated.
2 Likes
Coding to the metal is simplyā¦ polishing a game on the target hardware instead of spitting out a semi playable mess riddled with visual & performance issues.
Starfield for example is probably ācoded to the metalā of the Series X, considering they had Xbox engineers help them for two years.
I meanā¦ if you want to redefine the terms. Itās coding to the metal because youāre doing so at the lowest level of abstraction allowable.
2 Likes
I donāt see the point of arguing here.
The material issue is too many games are released on very powerful consoles (like the Series X), yet their game engines & optimizations are completely ill adapted for the hardware.
Take the latest Jedi game for example: it runs horribly & has ugly resolution reconstruction which is bursting at the seams. People can explain this however they wish or excuse it for a myriad of reasons but the point remains EA & Respawn did not utilize the power of the current gen consoles efficiently.
We see this phenomenon is far too many games right now. Bad performance, pixelization due to low native res & shoehorned ray traced gimmicks for the purpose of marketing on the box.
3 Likes
Definitely wonāt argue against that, many games have come out the last few years with pretty crappy performance across all platforms.
I think itās just publishers pushing games out sooner than they should though. Weāre still in an era where many games have seen major delays (and blown budgets as a result) and publishers are likely inclined to get games out if they are good enough and try and patch things over time. Hopefully things get better sooner rather than later.
1 Like
How do you know this? Professionals need profilers to analyze this.
1 Like
Iām seeing a lot of dismissal of the fact that generations have always gone through technological stumbles the first couple years of the generation (which makes sense as tech has physically and metaphorically changed, tools change/evolve, etc.)ā¦ only this generation was hit with the delays that a massive recession and pandemic forcing a reality where cross-gen development (thus some of that tailoring you lot like to talk about, canāt happen) and entire development paradigms were shifted. What weāre seeing can literally be traced to specific games/devs/franchises throughout generational history - just look at the leaps between ME 1 and 3 on the same hardware of the Xbox 360. I have no idea why weāre seeing such concern - I could go on an Andrew Goossen-backed rant about why the mid-gen consoles just donāt make sense from a performance/cost perspective too, but thatās a whole different subject (and I even mean for Sony/Xbox to release it without charging an arm and a leg - Phil Spencerās recent comments about the cost of fab corroborates this as well).
Weāre entering the first year where some publishers/studios are finally, completely jettisoning last generation - both the PS5 and Series X/S are capable of soaring heights far above what theyāve been relegated to due to limitations of old hardware reqs.
Edit:
Furthermore, since when did we use a middleware engine as the benchmark for whatās possible on hardware? I know there are exceptions, as can be seen by The Coalitionās work with it, but overall itās going to be the next iterations of engines from the likes of a studio like Turn 10, Playground, Naughty Dog, or Insomniac to push the graphics bar. - as a random list of studios with their own engines/graphical prowess, that extends far beyond the four here. Additionally, the concern around graphics results on an engine with a well-documented history of inefficiencies and tech-debt (the latter of which, to be fair, applies to almost any engine in existence - but the iterative nature of UE, provides unique examples of such), just feels weird.
2 Likes
āWeāre entering the first year where some publishers/studios are finally, completely jettisoning last generation - both the PS5 and Series X/S are capable of soaring heights far above what theyāve been relegated to due to limitations of old hardware reqs.ā
I thought Halo Infinite looked fine in the single player. Forza Horizon 5 was gorgeous and Gears 5 was stunning. Add in Metro Exodus and graphically last gen at the end of itās cycle was stunning on weak technology.
If you want high settings for textures and shadows without ray tracingā¦ Xbox Series X games will look absolutely stunning in a few yearsā¦ Iām happy with that and a realist considering itās a Ā£430 box at launch.
I think that the architecture layer in a console is not really much to do with the situation we have here. The fact is we are experiencing diminishing returns coupled to almost all games being on PC at some point so our frame of reference always becomes a high end PC running it. Historically that wasnāt the case so games could look however on a console and weād not know any better or different.
The other issue is that developers are frequently making high framerate modes and optimising games across more hardware - especially given console and PC simultaneous releases nowadays,
The biggest issue is though economic. The scale you used to have with console manufacturing meant you could essentially build something on a power level equivalent to the best PCs at the time. So for a long while games would look best on console especially considering the difference in frame rates compared to the PC. Now we have a situation where costs have spiralled, yet critical mass cost points for consoles havenāt really gone up. And therefore when you release a console it already lags behind the better PCs at bestā¦in some cases itās lagging behind a higher mid range PC at release point.
Thatās the real issue. Unless people want to spend $1000 on their consoles or even more expect that consoles are going to lag behind pretty swiftly into generations. And itās only going to get worse next gen and the one after.
This should be a great one. Iāll watch this one I have several hours into it.
If anyone watches this, do they talk HDR at all? And compared to Direct, does it look pretty much the same, or even better or worse?
No talk about HDR, that might be mentioned by John though as he has a deep dive into the tech coming up.
Itās a quick overview of the state of the console versions and itās mostly very positive. Thing that stuck out was the Series S which at first glance is very comparable but if you look closely you can see the smart nip and tucks Bethesda has done.
It helps to demonstrate that the Series S, if given proper attention, can have really good versions of current generation games.
6 Likes
Sounds very good. Yeah I would have been surprised if X didnāt have noticeable differences with S aside from resolution, it being significantly more powerful.
Someone in the Starfield no spoiler thread said the HDR appears washed out for him and no settings to change it. Such a shame when this happens, especially with how well done many Xbox exclusives are with HDR. Psychonauts 2, Halo infinite when setting the sliders correct ingame, MSFS, FH5. Wish they had made use of auto HDR in this case.
Hopefully sliders that will let you fix it get added or they just fix HDR altogether. Itās not a big deal for everyone but if you have a fantastic HDR TV itās a real bummer, especially a sci-fi/space game like this.
I wonder how the settings and performance would compare between Series X and a similar spec PC. I hope they do that comparison so that we get a good idea about the console optimization, I guess I would like to see the 30fps was indeed a necessary cap due to how demanding the game really is, and not for lack of trying to optimize it through.
In any case Iām really liking hearing that it plays nicely at 30, it was as DF predicted from the Direct that they have implement techniques to make it smooth.
HDR black level raise is not a huge shock I guess, although youād hope for this to actually be proper. Butā¦ SDR black level raise? And zero brightness options? Bro come on. Skyrim and Fallout 4 were absolutely fine with that. Truly hope there is a day one patch fixing or adding that because wtf.
Yup, the settings for visuals are just motion blur, film grain and depth of field. Imo, itās a little to bright and needs at least a brightness setting soon.
I just hate that of all games this one had to be the one to āneeds patchesā for damn super standard stuff that should be in there right from the start. I despise the look of raised black levels in HDR but at least you knew you can rely on good ol SDR. How on earth did DF not notice this?
Better standard stuff than technical stuff that would put us off the game until itās fixed. FO76 was a game I enjoyed but stopped playing because of issues I was having with the game, I havent been able to jump back in and stay on the game since.
Iām going to try to use my TV settings and features to help out with the brightness for now.
Yeah, I will too next week if the day one patch doesnāt fix it. Or is the patch already installed?
The Direct footage looked fine to me and that was SDR, I donāt get it. And apparently when you make a screenshot on Xbox the image appears fine in terms of black levels.
Day 1 patch already came out.