Assassin's Creed Unity Runs at 900p Resolution to "Avoid All the Debates" - Updated

Lightknight

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pilar said:
I'm never convinced when PC users say that it's cheaper in the long run: sure it is, if you're willing to hold off another 6 months on the games you've been excited about for two years.
And look at all the games coming out next year: MGSV: Phantom Pain, Order 1886, Uncharted 4, Witcher 3, Bloodbourne, Final Fantasy XV, The Division, Until Dawn, Dying Light, No Man's Sky, etc...
Eh, you have to understand, pc gamers buy their titles from Steam months after they come out except for special titles. They get AAA games for $20 or less regularly. That's how it gets cheaper over time. Also, once you've built the first machine then a lot of components are upgradable without throwing away the old machine entirely. So my power supply and tower? Those are sunk costs for future upgrades of the box. Likewise, my CPU isn't getting any abuse for games so that can come along and my RAM is 32GBs so that has legs left. So what do I do for the next generation besides slap in a new GPU and that's it?

That being said, I actually prefer my PS4. It's easy plug and play tech that I just enjoy playing in my living room. Keyboards and mouses get unwieldy there and non-cabled controllers have crazy latency issues. It just isn't worth the effort for me. As one of the people who can afford both, I can say that both have their advantages and disadvantages.
 

pilar

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Lightknight said:
pilar said:
I'm never convinced when PC users say that it's cheaper in the long run: sure it is, if you're willing to hold off another 6 months on the games you've been excited about for two years.
And look at all the games coming out next year: MGSV: Phantom Pain, Order 1886, Uncharted 4, Witcher 3, Bloodbourne, Final Fantasy XV, The Division, Until Dawn, Dying Light, No Man's Sky, etc...
Eh, you have to understand, pc gamers buy their titles from Steam months after they come out except for special titles. They get AAA games for $20 or less regularly. That's how it gets cheaper over time. Also, once you've built the first machine then a lot of components are upgradable without throwing away the old machine entirely. So my power supply and tower? Those are sunk costs for future upgrades of the box. Likewise, my CPU isn't getting any abuse for games so that can come along and my RAM is 32GBs so that has legs left. So what do I do for the next generation besides slap in a new GPU and that's it?

That being said, I actually prefer my PS4. It's easy plug and play tech that I just enjoy playing in my living room. Keyboards and mouses get unwieldy there and non-cabled controllers have crazy latency issues. It just isn't worth the effort for me. As one of the people who can afford both, I can say that both have their advantages and disadvantages.
For me, it comes down to which games am I most hyped for -- and that happens to be SONY's exclusives, while 3rd party Witcher 3 and The Division are more like fillers in between.
What no one talks about when it comes to quantity of titles on a PC is that games like The Division, No Man's Sky, Far Cry 4, Witcher 3 and Bloodborne can easily absorb 1 Month+ of gaming bliss because of their depth.

Which platform would you use to play these kinds?
 

Lightknight

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pilar said:
Lightknight said:
pilar said:
I'm never convinced when PC users say that it's cheaper in the long run: sure it is, if you're willing to hold off another 6 months on the games you've been excited about for two years.
And look at all the games coming out next year: MGSV: Phantom Pain, Order 1886, Uncharted 4, Witcher 3, Bloodbourne, Final Fantasy XV, The Division, Until Dawn, Dying Light, No Man's Sky, etc...
Eh, you have to understand, pc gamers buy their titles from Steam months after they come out except for special titles. They get AAA games for $20 or less regularly. That's how it gets cheaper over time. Also, once you've built the first machine then a lot of components are upgradable without throwing away the old machine entirely. So my power supply and tower? Those are sunk costs for future upgrades of the box. Likewise, my CPU isn't getting any abuse for games so that can come along and my RAM is 32GBs so that has legs left. So what do I do for the next generation besides slap in a new GPU and that's it?

That being said, I actually prefer my PS4. It's easy plug and play tech that I just enjoy playing in my living room. Keyboards and mouses get unwieldy there and non-cabled controllers have crazy latency issues. It just isn't worth the effort for me. As one of the people who can afford both, I can say that both have their advantages and disadvantages.
For me, it comes down to which games am I most hyped for -- and that happens to be SONY's exclusives, while 3rd party Witcher 3 and The Division are more like fillers in between.
Sony exclusives have simply blown me away over the past several generations of consoles. In fact, this is the first generation that I only have one console (I'll probably pick up a WiiU towards the end of its life cycle and scoop up all the exclusives then) because the ps3 generation of exclusives completely won me over with the 360 exclusives being little more than rehashings of FPS and Third Person Shooters that I'd already had my fill of in the first year of the console.

What no one talks about when it comes to quantity of titles on a PC is that games like The Division, No Man's Sky, Far Cry 4, Witcher 3 and Bloodborne can easily absorb 1 Month+ of gaming bliss because of their depth.

Which platform would you use to play these kinds?
Well, it kind of depends. Unless it's a game I'm planning on playing immediately, I'll sit back and wait for reviews and comments on the game. I'm generally a bit more likely to play single player games on the computer and pretty much any indie titles (even if they're available on the console). I'm not going to lie to you though, which platform I get the game on is largely on a whim. I'm not a keyboard/mouse advocate or a controller advocate (though the PS4 controller is damn near perfect). While my computer is absolutely stellar in performance I'm also not really a graphiophile and am just as happy on medium settings as I am on ultra in most cases. If it's a game like Skyrim where I can modify it heavily then I'm going PC on those titles all day long every day. But something like Far Cry 4? Hmm... I'd lean a little more towards pc. COD? I'd go console. GTA? Console.

Like I said, they simply have their strengths and weaknesses without any clear winner. A non-trivial amount of how those are evaluated is subjective.
 

igor2201

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Lightknight said:
igor2201 said:
What people often forget is that Sucker Punch flat out stated they had basically hit the roof of what the ps4 was capable of doing even with those tricks.
Cite this please. Sucker Punch IS Sony. I could see non-Sony entities stating that they'd hit a wall on Sony hardware but I don't think any Sony employees are that keen on losing their jobs.

I will say this, though, inFamous Second Son looked absolutely beautiful. I've got no regrets if that's the pinnacle. Then again, I can always just wonder over to my PC for any graphiophilic needs that crop up. But from what I've seen there's still plenty of work to be done to take advantage of the GDDR5 and some of the other non-traditional hardware. We won't see the kind of optimizations we saw in the past with proprietary hardware but the should be plenty meat left on the bones than a comparable pc thanks to standardized hardware, the API, and the particularities they decided to go with.
http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04/02/how-infamous-second-son-used-the-ps4s-8-4-5-gb-of-ram-cpu-and-gpu-compute-to-make-our-jaws-drop/

They flat out state they used the 4.5gb of ram and the 6 of the 8 cpu cores. They couldn't do 1080p@30fps on infamous second son without major frame drops (this is why they added the option to unlock the framerate in a update and said it wont go above 30 fps but should cut down on jerkiness during major fights like DUP raids where the rate has a tendency to drop), which everyone forgets. There is no more hardware resources available to devs. The rest is reserved. So yes, reading between the lines, they hit the roof.

We are talking about hardware that is years old, and fully understood. There are no tricks coming like there was in past generations, that produce mind blowing visuals and experiences that no one believed possible on the hardware. They may be able to optimize a bit and squeeze a bit more out of the consoles this gen, but really we have seen what there is to see.

I guess I could have phrased my original post better, but the point stands. x86 dev is not new. Essentially we are talking about pcs that were underpowered before they hit shelves. I personally don't care because (as a game collector I love gaming on console where I'm not locked into any BS like origin or steam and have actual physical copies of my game that are the entirety of the game not tied to some account) the differences between 900p and 1080p rez and 30 fps and 60 fps framerate don't matter to me at all, tho I would prefer 900p with a stable fps of 30 over 1080p @ 30 fps with major drops anytime a lot of action happens on screen. I just get sick of the uninformed whining and putting forth completely ridicules conspiracy theories about Ubisoft, when a bit of research would have revealed all this.
 

Lightknight

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igor2201 said:
Lightknight said:
igor2201 said:
What people often forget is that Sucker Punch flat out stated they had basically hit the roof of what the ps4 was capable of doing even with those tricks.
Cite this please. Sucker Punch IS Sony. I could see non-Sony entities stating that they'd hit a wall on Sony hardware but I don't think any Sony employees are that keen on losing their jobs.

I will say this, though, inFamous Second Son looked absolutely beautiful. I've got no regrets if that's the pinnacle. Then again, I can always just wonder over to my PC for any graphiophilic needs that crop up. But from what I've seen there's still plenty of work to be done to take advantage of the GDDR5 and some of the other non-traditional hardware. We won't see the kind of optimizations we saw in the past with proprietary hardware but the should be plenty meat left on the bones than a comparable pc thanks to standardized hardware, the API, and the particularities they decided to go with.
http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/04/02/how-infamous-second-son-used-the-ps4s-8-4-5-gb-of-ram-cpu-and-gpu-compute-to-make-our-jaws-drop/

They flat out state they used the 4.5gb of ram and the 6 of the 8 cpu cores. They couldn't do 1080p@30fps on infamous second son without major frame drops (this is why they added the option to unlock the framerate in a update and said it wont go above 30 fps but should cut down on jerkiness during major fights like DUP raids where the rate has a tendency to drop), which everyone forgets. There is no more hardware resources available to devs. The rest is reserved. So yes, reading between the lines, they hit the roof.

We are talking about hardware that is years old, and fully understood. There are no tricks coming like there was in past generations, that produce mind blowing visuals and experiences that no one believed possible on the hardware. They may be able to optimize a bit and squeeze a bit more out of the consoles this gen, but really we have seen what there is to see.

I guess I could have phrased my original post better, but the point stands. x86 dev is not new. Essentially we are talking about pcs that were underpowered before they hit shelves. I personally don't care cause I love gaming on console and rez and framerate don't matter to me at all, tho I would prefer 900p with a stable fps of 30 over 1080p @ 30 fps with major drops anytime a lot of action happens on screen. I just get sick of the uninformed whining and putting forth completely ridicules conspiracy theories about Ubisoft, when a bit of research would have revealed all this.
Very cool link, thanks for giving it. Utilizing everything at your disposal doesn't mean you scraped the bottom of the barrel. They weren't cramming things in but scaling things up. There are several things you can scale up to use nearly all resources available, especially just with the physics components. So it's not like we can't technically use 32GBs of Ram and such right now if we really wanted to.

Now, to the rest of your comment, underpowered by whose standards? These were decent steps above average PCs and for $400. Did you want them to be cutting edge? I'd far rather have paid $400 for a machine that is 10 times more powerful than the already impressive looking PS3/360 generation than paying $800 for something that is 15 times them that will only extend the lifespan by maybe 1 or 2 yeas. Look, I've gone through several of the $400 PC builds and not only are they usually not as powerful as the people think but they usually miss several items that are necessary for PC gaming.

You're right that x86 isn't new. The GDDR5 is potentially interesting and we do know that what the GPU essentially is. But there are still optimizations to be had when all of the hardware is standardized simply from knowing the strengths and weaknesses involved. The API will also leave a bit of meat on the bones for getting closer to the metal but I'll admit that's nowhere close to what we saw in proprietary hardware days.

But you are wrong. There are SOME tricks coming. It shouldn't be as severe as in previous generations caused by developers not understanding the hardware but as companies stop producing for both generations and start leaning more on this one we'll get to see gaming physics engines built from the ground up that utilize this kind of hardware more effectively. There's a lot of room to be made now that the vacuum has been created by all the supporting components that may have been scalable for developers but weren't optimized for higher available RAM. But honestly, graphics have already been pretty damn impressive. In my opinion, the 7th generation was the first generation that I could go back and play a five year old game and not want to gouge my eyes out. I'm not saying this generation has crossed the bridge to "good enough" but it's a pretty significant step to a world where games live or die on their content and not mere graphics. While there's not as many tricks coming this time around (just like we can rightly say most every generation before), there should be enough to make this a solid generation of gaming.
 

igor2201

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@Lightknight:
You may not know this but AMD has been making very similar APUs without the gddr5 for use in tablets, so it really is underpowered all things considered. There are also other considerations to account for, like the fact that once again the psu is inside the console, meaning that running the APU under full load could have unintended consequences, such as excess heat. But really, the final stone in the "hitting the roof" bucket, is that the game doesn't run stably, it does suffer from frame rate drops. Sometimes they are really bad depending on whats going on on screen. In a game that only populates its NPCs when the visual distance is cut down drastically, and WAS built from the ground up with gen 8 ps4 exclusivity in mind and diredt support from the engineers who designed the boards and specs. Tho I don't really think we are at odds and it has been fun talking with you.

@ everyone else:
All I am really saying is that NO ONE is in any position to claim Ubisoft is gimping anything by their new target of 900p@30fps. If we can't expect Sony to make a game that runs stably at 1080p and 30fps on their own console that's exclusive and with direct engineer support, its completely unrealistic and unreasonable to expect ubisoft to do it on a multiplatform game.

None of us know what the future holds for sure, But please people stop buying into the medias game of using rez and framerate and console parity for clickbait. Even the article that started this discussion thread was part of it with the authors comment about wiiu at the end.

In the end its completely reasonable that ubisoft settled on their final specs for technological reasons and we should be more then willing to accept that if it means a superior gaming experience.
 

pilar

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Lightknight said:
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pilar said:
Lightknight said:
pilar said:
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What no one talks about when it comes to quantity of titles on a PC is that games like The Division, No Man's Sky, Far Cry 4, Witcher 3 and Bloodborne can easily absorb 1 Month+ of gaming bliss because of their depth.

Which platform would you use to play these kinds?
Well, it kind of depends. Unless it's a game I'm planning on playing immediately, I'll sit back and wait for reviews and comments on the game. I'm generally a bit more likely to play single player games on the computer and pretty much any indie titles (even if they're available on the console). I'm not going to lie to you though, which platform I get the game on is largely on a whim. I'm not a keyboard/mouse advocate or a controller advocate (though the PS4 controller is damn near perfect). While my computer is absolutely stellar in performance I'm also not really a graphiophile and am just as happy on medium settings as I am on ultra in most cases. If it's a game like Skyrim where I can modify it heavily then I'm going PC on those titles all day long every day. But something like Far Cry 4? Hmm... I'd lean a little more towards pc. COD? I'd go console. GTA? Console.

Like I said, they simply have their strengths and weaknesses without any clear winner. A non-trivial amount of how those are evaluated is subjective.
I can count on exclusives because they should be (and they usually are) very good no matter the genre. I like how Adam Sessler once said that SONY sets a considerable budget toward ideas that Ubisoft and EA would never invest in. SONY knew that Shadow of the Colossus and Beyond: Two Souls would never sell 5 million copies a piece -- they still haven't even broken 2 Million. But they were willing to explore those very niche concepts for the sake of variety.

I got a Playstation 3 for Final Fantasy XIII. Didn't much care for it, but I was sold on the hardware because of Uncharted 2: a AAA title done premium.

So many PC users hate major publishers because of the quality of ports they get and immediately think that it's the same for SONY and their exclusives developers. But they have no idea the quality of Uncharted and Infamous. They don't know how good it can get when SONY gives a bag of $$ to a developer then stands back, arms up and says, "go make a great game". You get NaughtyDog & SuckerPunch. No need to cut corners. Journey's developers delayed the game over and again and SONY never sent the suits their way -- they just waited and believed in the product.

I'm not saying SONY's product is superior, but it's just different and quality. I personally hold Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2 up there with Uncharted 2 even though both of those games came with plenty of glitching.

If SONY bought the rights to a 3rd Party Franchise for their exclusive developers to tackle, which one would you want it to be?
 

pilar

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igor2201 said:
SONY exclusives next year are going to blow you and the industry away with how superior they are to Witcher 3 and Dragon Age & High settings. I think this argument ends with Order 1886, which is at a lesser 900p resolution, but will look better than any 3rd party contemporary, at least until Uncharted 4 comes out.

You keep saying the console is under-powered and yet whether it's Shadow of Mordor or Wolfenstein, the differences between the two platforms at High settings are so minimal that you could easily mistake them being played live with a $800 build and a $400 PS4. A 760 barely runs SOM at High Textures 1080p30 locked frame rate, just like a PS4, but with slightly better settings.

Look up every recent AAA 3rd party title on Digital Foundry's analysis page: the results are always startlingly close between a PS4 and a mid-range gaming PC packing an i5 and a GTX 760.
 

igor2201

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pilar said:
igor2201 said:
SONY exclusives next year are going to blow you and the industry away with how superior they are to Witcher 3 and Dragon Age & High settings. I think this argument ends with Order 1886, which is at a lesser 900p resolution, but will look better than any 3rd party contemporary, at least until Uncharted 4 comes out.

You keep saying the console is under-powered and yet whether it's Shadow of Mordor or Wolfenstein, the differences between the two platforms at High settings are so minimal that you could easily mistake them being played live with a $800 build and a $400 PS4. A 760 barely runs SOM at High Textures 1080p30 locked frame rate, just like a PS4, but with slightly better settings.

Look up every recent AAA 3rd party title on Digital Foundry's analysis page: the results are always startlingly close between a PS4 and a mid-range gaming PC packing an i5 and a GTX 760.
I said it was underpowered 2x, and really that was in regards to what Ubisoft stated about a cpu bottleneck, my comments are meant to be read together. I am not slamming the ps4 at all or it's games (there is a reason I own more ps4 games then xbox one games after all), simply trying to show that Ubisoft's claims make factual sense. Which is all I am really trying to do.
 

Strazdas

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Lightknight said:
Modern software development does not target the CPU for processing except for very specific and minor things. It will always hit RAM and GPU first. If your CPU is getting taxed by software then it's likely because the GPU/RAM have maxed out performance. The CPU simply isn't all that good or specialized for video processing. SoDDR3 is specialized at transferring smaller amounts of data (keeping track of a large number of small objects) and GDDR5 is specialized for transferring larger amounts of data. Sony did something interesting by reducing the latency GDDR5 usually suffers in order to make it competent at performing both functions. If programmers lean heavily on the GDDR5 RAM as video ram then the performance of the GPU can be greatly augmented.

The CPU portion of the APU? The laptop bit that you're complaining about? That really shouldn't get hit and should not matter except as the method to direct traffic.

Not sure about how the XBO is going to cope.
Im aware of how consoles work. The problem is, the GPU is already hit at the limit and at least in Xbox Case the devs have complained about the CPU portion not keeping up.

thats also a huge if for developers to change their ways to code for PS4 specifically. almost as big as expecting them to code for Cell of PS3. worth remembering - noone managed to do that. not even Naughty Dog exploited that fully.

pilar said:
Digital Foundry's written analysis of the three platforms [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-shadow-of-mordor-face-off] on Shadow of Mordor. Their 760 2GB managed a stable High Textures (like the PS4) @ 1080p30 locked; they needed a $400+ 780ti to max the game out.
Hmm... A $400 GPU to max out + $60 Shadow of Mordor, which isn't really saying a lot beyond a double frame-rate and High vs Ultra Textures.

I'm never convinced when PC users say that it's cheaper in the long run: sure it is, if you're willing to hold off another 6 months on the games you've been excited about for two years.
And look at all the games coming out next year: MGSV: Phantom Pain, Order 1886, Uncharted 4, Witcher 3, Bloodbourne, Final Fantasy XV, The Division, Until Dawn, Dying Light, No Man's Sky, etc...
you are implying that the 760 runs the game on par with a console. it doesnt. you already mentioned its higher resolution. also the effects, lighting, ect is better on PC. so PC does much more for same price. yes, you need expensive hardware to max it. thats good. this means that people with expensive hardware can put it to use, meanwhile people with cheaper hardware can play it on lower level. a thing you seem to be missing is that you dont need to max out a game, you dont evne need high settings for most games, to be on par with consoles. if you compare same graphical performance you find that the 750gtx will do just fine. and that one is 70 dollars last i saw it.

Well lets see, Shadow of Mordor was 45 dollars at launch (on plenty of sites actually, even escapist ads had this), thats 15 dollars cheaper even at launch. Also while i can understand some peopel buying everything at launch, personally i havent done that in years. theres just SO MANY games to play that one simply does not have enough time to keep up with them all. so waiting till next sale to get it isnt going to leave me bored.

Ah yes, a large list of cripped games. you do know that The Division is pretty much universally hated now because it told its fans that they are stupid to want 60 fps?

Also do you really want me to start listing PC games coming out next year? because your not going to win that one. PC has more exclusives than all consoles have games put together.

pilar said:
SONY exclusives next year are going to blow you and the industry away with how superior they are to Witcher 3 and Dragon Age & High settings.
Sorry, i just had to stop and point out how ridiculous this statement sounds. you are prophecising for games that are not released or anything properly known about them to be somehow superior than games already out. all you do is pull things out of your ass here unless you actually work on programming all those games, which i doubt.

Sony exclusives will not be able to blow anything out of the water graphically, that at least we know. because PS4 is simply incapable of doing so. as far as other aspects of the games go - we will jsut have to wait and see.
 

pilar

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Strazdas said:
pilar said:
you are implying that the 760 runs the game on par with a console. it doesnt. you already mentioned its higher resolution. also the effects, lighting, ect is better on PC. so PC does much more for same price. yes, you need expensive hardware to max it. thats good. this means that people with expensive hardware can put it to use, meanwhile people with cheaper hardware can play it on lower level. a thing you seem to be missing is that you dont need to max out a game, you dont evne need high settings for most games, to be on par with consoles. if you compare same graphical performance you find that the 750gtx will do just fine. and that one is 70 dollars last i saw it.

Well lets see, Shadow of Mordor was 45 dollars at launch (on plenty of sites actually, even escapist ads had this), thats 15 dollars cheaper even at launch. Also while i can understand some peopel buying everything at launch, personally i havent done that in years. theres just SO MANY games to play that one simply does not have enough time to keep up with them all. so waiting till next sale to get it isnt going to leave me bored.

Ah yes, a large list of cripped games. you do know that The Division is pretty much universally hated now because it told its fans that they are stupid to want 60 fps?

Also do you really want me to start listing PC games coming out next year? because your not going to win that one. PC has more exclusives than all consoles have games put together.

pilar said:
SONY exclusives next year are going to blow you and the industry away with how superior they are to Witcher 3 and Dragon Age & High settings.
Sorry, i just had to stop and point out how ridiculous this statement sounds. you are prophecising for games that are not released or anything properly known about them to be somehow superior than games already out. all you do is pull things out of your ass here unless you actually work on programming all those games, which i doubt.

Sony exclusives will not be able to blow anything out of the water graphically, that at least we know. because PS4 is simply incapable of doing so. as far as other aspects of the games go - we will jsut have to wait and see.
Point being that when Digital Foundry maxed Shadow of Mordor [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-shadow-of-mordor-face-off], comparisons with the consoles were either matched or fell slightly short of Ultra PC -- gap is starting to close :D

[HEADING=2]PC has more games, blah-blah-blah[/HEADING]

MGSV: Phantom Pain, Witcher 3, Bloodbourne, Final Fantasy XV, The Division, No Man's Sky, AC Unity, Far Cry 4 etc... each of these, for a person with an actual life, should easily provide a month or more of gaming bliss, not to mention SONY's exclusive linear campaigns.

[HEADING=3]Witcher 3's Analysis[/HEADING] [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-the-witcher-3-tech-analysis] "Super-powerful PCs will be able to achieve higher resolutions, and they might run the game a bit faster," he explains, "but the plan is to make the experience the same for all gamers and treat everyone equally." & ...speaking with executive producer John Mamais earlier at E3, an ultra setting is still on the cards for PC owners, which should embellish the game in subtle ways over the high grade settings intended for Xbox One and PS4.
Paraphrased, "nothing will be downgraded for the PC, but there's just no reason for us to push the hardware" [http://www.pcgamer.com/cd-projekt-promises-no-visual-downgrade-for-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt/].
 

Lightknight

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igor2201 said:
@Lightknight:
You may not know this but AMD has been making very similar APUs without the gddr5 for use in tablets, so it really is underpowered all things considered. There are also other considerations to account for, like the fact that once again the psu is inside the console, meaning that running the APU under full load could have unintended consequences, such as excess heat.
That's not entirely true about the APU. From the articles I've read it's basically an HD 7870 successfully implemented in silicone that may perform, at worst, like an HD 7850 which is NOT "underpowered" even now. It isn't a Titan, sure. But since when did anything but the top of the line qualify as "underpowered"? The CPU is indeed what you've been seeing in laptops and tablets but not the GPU. The entire point of this particular CPU is that it's extremely bandwidth sensitive and scales well with higher bandwidth RAM. So, once again, I've got to stress that while yes, the CPU is certainly nothing special in terms of processing power, it no longer matters as much as people think. It's still 8 cores and decent enough to handle the tasks that it's actually supposed. Please remember, it was the available RAM that the developers utilized, not the full CPU.

Here, this article did the best reverse engineering job on it I've seen.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171375-reverse-engineered-ps4-apu-reveals-the-consoles-real-cpu-and-gpu-specs

So when you're talking about a CPU that scales well with various RAM, saying that it has appeared in laptops or tablets really isn't saying all that much. Especially when developers aren't really developing software to hit the CPU as anything but basic process direction. There was a day when CPUs were the work horse. Yeah, that wasn't even two decades ago. But that day has passed with significantly cheaper and more specialized work to be found in RAM and GPUs. I think Sony made the good call on price/performance there

But really, the final stone in the "hitting the roof" bucket, is that the game doesn't run stably, it does suffer from frame rate drops. Sometimes they are really bad depending on whats going on on screen. In a game that only populates its NPCs when the visual distance is cut down drastically, and WAS built from the ground up with gen 8 ps4 exclusivity in mind and diredt support from the engineers who designed the boards and specs. Tho I don't really think we are at odds and it has been fun talking with you.
I should mention that while I'm not an expert on hardware I am part of development cycles. Particularly QA engineering and testing. There are a lot of reasons why a game could fail to run in a stable state on a machine that should be capable of rendering the environment. As the available processing increases, there's a significant temptation to let less optimal code slide by in the development process. The opportunity for bugs increases as the complexity of the environment increases (think Bethesda games that create massive worlds in minute detail, their games are glitchy because they are massive and complex, not because of any overt faults to be found in the developers). There's generally a tradeoff between complexity and scale of environments and when we start getting to the point where both are possible then the demands on QA and developer turnaround on bugs skyrockets. Especially on a new graphics engine.

The jump from having been limited to less than 512MBs to 4.5 GBs alone is going to present significant overhaul issues too. The first engine you create isn't going to be perfect. The next one will get a lot better and the last one will be darn near perfect.

This is the biggest difference between generations. The creation of new graphics and physics engines that are well suited for those environments. What's really exciting is that this will likely mean that Indie developers are going to start getting their hands on new tools as well (since they're usually about a generation behind unless Valve throws them a bone).

So the final stone or whatever is when the appropriate actions have been taken and it's no longer enough. You have to scale back significant things rather than just reducing the physics processing (which, as I said, can easily scale to use all processes). We aren't close to that point. x86 isn't new, but creating dedicated engines for this much hardware is. Games that require more than 4GB RAM are only just starting to come out (Watchdogs) and those aren't particularly optimized either as we clearly saw.

@ everyone else:
All I am really saying is that NO ONE is in any position to claim Ubisoft is gimping anything by their new target of 900p@30fps
If they can get it to run at that rate on the XBO then they should be capable of at least rendering in 1080p on the PS4. We do know that the PS4 is 50% more powerful than the XBO even without counting possible optimizations that may be available for a console that has so much GDDR5 and has managed to reduce its latency to allow it to run as both video RAM and regular ol' DDR3 RAM.

My guess is that Ubisoft built an x86 graphics engine with both consoles in mind to kick off the next gen and made minor modifications for each console's specific hardware. If that's the case then they are really just getting started. You can't expect a company that releases their games on every available console to cater to one system so specifically right out the gate. I think Ubisoft was telling the truth, that creating a universe in an environment with this much more resources was something they had to work up towards. Again, in the console arena this is a jump in resources by ten times. The next jump could be five times (barring huge breakthrough advances in computing) and that will also be huge because exponential growth is still a lot even when tapering when you've got large values.

But seeing as Ubisoft is basically EA's little brother when it comes to how they consider the customer I'm not really opposed to people accusing them as actively deciding not to specifically cater to the PS4 just yet. That's the most likely reason since they didn't state limitations of the consoles as the factor. I don't think that's them necessarily being bad. I just think that's them making a calculated business decision to start out small and see what other companies do well in their graphics engines and then implement the good processes themselves when they go more specific. The game is still going to look great.
 

Lightknight

Mugwamp Supreme
Nov 26, 2008
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pilar said:
I can count on exclusives because they should be (and they usually are) very good no matter the genre. I like how Adam Sessler once said that SONY sets a considerable budget toward ideas that Ubisoft and EA would never invest in. SONY knew that Shadow of the Colossus and Beyond: Two Souls would never sell 5 million copies a piece -- they still haven't even broken 2 Million. But they were willing to explore those very niche concepts for the sake of variety.
Yeah man, couldn't be happier with anyone's exclusives. I used to think that Nintendo was the best first-party ever until I realized that several of my favorite developers were actually Sony-owned but not commonly known as Sony developers. Santa Monica isn't really that commonly known as Sony Santa Monica, Team ICO doesn't have the name "Sony", same with Sucker Punch Studios, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, and Media Molecule. They really seem to invest in great studios that keep me entertained.

I got a Playstation 3 for Final Fantasy XIII. Didn't much care for it, but I was sold on the hardware because of Uncharted 2: a AAA title done premium.
Oh man, I played Uncharted 2 and 3 shortly after Uncharted 3 came out on PS+ (I'd purchased 2 but never got around to playing it) and couldn't believe how epic the game felt. Like I was really going to exotic places and just barely escaping hairy situations (that airplane scene in Uncharted 3 whoa, and that giant sacrifice puzzle in 2...)

So many PC users hate major publishers because of the quality of ports they get and immediately think that it's the same for SONY and their exclusives developers. But they have no idea the quality of Uncharted and Infamous. They don't know how good it can get when SONY gives a bag of $$ to a developer then stands back, arms up and says, "go make a great game". You get NaughtyDog & SuckerPunch. No need to cut corners. Journey's developers delayed the game over and again and SONY never sent the suits their way -- they just waited and believed in the product.

I'm not saying SONY's product is superior, but it's just different and quality. I personally hold Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2 up there with Uncharted 2 even though both of those games came with plenty of glitching.

If SONY bought the rights to a 3rd Party Franchise for their exclusive developers to tackle, which one would you want it to be?
That'd depend on the studio they put in charge of it. For example, while I liked Killzone I don't think they have as good a grasp on science fiction as Bioware or Bungie. But they could surprise me with a solid IP to work around. I'm also not entirely sure how they'd handle the humor in a game like Fallout 3 and I actually wouldn't want to take the game away from Bethesda or Obsidian who are doing a perfectly fine job on their own.

As of now, with all these unknowns, I'd love to see them grab a title that is being ruined by its owners right now and let them see what they can do with that. Something like Final Fantasy that Square has turned into a hodgepodge of unrecognizable characters that dressed themselves based on what a clown threw up after an infinite handkerchief bit gone wrong. Silent Hill or Resident Evil could be an interesting foray into horror but RE isn't necessarily dead I guess... something in between. Fable if they could handle the humor. Maybe a nearly completely dead title like Earthworm Jim with the same preface could be well done but not as an all-out 3D platformer.
 

Lightknight

Mugwamp Supreme
Nov 26, 2008
4,860
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Strazdas said:
Im aware of how consoles work. The problem is, the GPU is already hit at the limit and at least in Xbox Case the devs have complained about the CPU portion not keeping up.

thats also a huge if for developers to change their ways to code for PS4 specifically. almost as big as expecting them to code for Cell of PS3. worth remembering - noone managed to do that. not even Naughty Dog exploited that fully.
Yep, the XBO creators dun' messed up when they settled on the specs for the XBO. Thankfully, Sony created a console that was 50% more powerful than the XBO even without any optimizations to account for the GDDR5 RAM. 10 times the previous generation which was already able to produce decent eye candy.

Sony exclusives will not be able to blow anything out of the water graphically, that at least we know. because PS4 is simply incapable of doing so. as far as other aspects of the games go - we will jsut have to wait and see.
I disagree only because ps3 titles released by Sony Exclusives did just that and towards the end of the generation well after PCs have hopped skipped and jumped past those settings. How The Last of Us and the Uncharted Series looked the way they did on 512MBs of RAM is beyond me.

So, while I'm sure they could do better with a PS4 that is twice as powerful, I think we're going to see incredible graphics that will more than appease gamers. This past generation was the first generation I've seen where I could pick up games made at the start of the generation (I played Bioshock 1 for the first time in 2012, for example) without wanting to gouge out my eyes. This generation is only going to make that better. I'm still impressed with the likes of character modeling in Uncharted 3 and the Last of Us' environments graphically from the ps3 generation.

I'm sorry, but unless you are absolutely the most diehard graphiophile then I'm not seeing the problem. This is a legitimate and solid step towards the day when graphics are as good as you want them to be and none of this matters. There should be a day where PCs can process games the same way we can process word documents now (used to be a time where word documents would max out the specs of a computer).

Here's a great resource comparing the four generations of Sony consoles by game genre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQgogxMgcpA

Platformer, FPS, Racing, open world and RPG. It's significant (though they cheated on their PS4 RPG one). What's more is that all the examples they picked for the other consoles were end-generation except for a few. The ps4 is all first year stuff and that WILL improve even though it's x86 as people produce new engines to cater to 10x the resources the previous generation saw.
 

DirgeNovak

I'm anticipating DmC. Flame me.
Jul 23, 2008
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Given Ubisoft's recent history (why hello there Watch Dogs), it's safe to assume that "response" statement is pure grade-A bullshit.

In any case, it reflects badly on Ubisoft. If they're doing it to avoid making the Xbone look worse than it already does, it means they're intentionally and willingly giving us an inferior product than they would normally have made, and if they genuinely can't reach 1080 on PS4, they can't code for shit. They just can't win with that attitude.
 

pilar

New member
Jul 7, 2014
59
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Lightknight said:
pilar said:
Yeah man, couldn't be happier with anyone's exclusives. I used to think that Nintendo was the best first-party ever until I realized that several of my favorite developers were actually Sony-owned but not commonly known as Sony developers. Santa Monica isn't really that commonly known as Sony Santa Monica, Team ICO doesn't have the name "Sony", same with Sucker Punch Studios, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, and Media Molecule. They really seem to invest in great studios that keep me entertained.

Oh man, I played Uncharted 2 and 3 shortly after Uncharted 3 came out on PS+ (I'd purchased 2 but never got around to playing it) and couldn't believe how epic the game felt. Like I was really going to exotic places and just barely escaping hairy situations (that airplane scene in Uncharted 3 whoa, and that giant sacrifice puzzle in 2...)

That'd depend on the studio they put in charge of it. For example, while I liked Killzone I don't think they have as good a grasp on science fiction as Bioware or Bungie. But they could surprise me with a solid IP to work around. I'm also not entirely sure how they'd handle the humor in a game like Fallout 3 and I actually wouldn't want to take the game away from Bethesda or Obsidian who are doing a perfectly fine job on their own.

As of now, with all these unknowns, I'd love to see them grab a title that is being ruined by its owners right now and let them see what they can do with that. Something like Final Fantasy that Square has turned into a hodgepodge of unrecognizable characters that dressed themselves based on what a clown threw up after an infinite handkerchief bit gone wrong. Silent Hill or Resident Evil could be an interesting foray into horror but RE isn't necessarily dead I guess... something in between. Fable if they could handle the humor. Maybe a nearly completely dead title like Earthworm Jim with the same preface could be well done but not as an all-out 3D platformer.
Final Fantasy XIII was an interesting fantasy, but it was so bogged down by its Japanese creators. I hope SquareEnix one day splits it's company into a mobile arena with developers working on straight up old school RPG's like early Final Fantasy: they could literally releases two or three of those a year and make bank!

The thing is, SONY brings in developers. But I don't know what qualifies a studio to become SONY exclusive. Some of those developers have a history with the guys running the PlayStation division, but thatgamingcompany went to SONY for support -- and got it. And those developers have their own vision. I was actually surprised that SONY didn't nab Bioshock's Ken Levine and his new Co. of developers after they departed Take-Two Interactive or however that went down. Ken's vision seems to suit SONY's artistic exploits. And Ken apparently had to argue his way through plenty artistic-vision issues with Take-2, so...

I think Killzone survived into this generation because SONY doesn't want to introduce a new AAA FPS exclusive in an already FPS saturated market. Maybe later on they bring in something like Titanfall or their very Destiny, but they'll probably just wait until the PS4 has around 30 Million consoles -- and which should be around sometime next December :D
 

NuclearKangaroo

New member
Feb 7, 2014
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"We could be running at 100fps if it was just graphics, but because of AI, we're still limited to 30 frames per second."

bullshit AI processes are not that taxing, unless you are simulating like, thousands of entities, in which case the act of rendering them would still be far more taxing

what a load of crap
 

NuclearKangaroo

New member
Feb 7, 2014
1,919
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pilar said:
gap is starting to close :D
please dotn tell me you actually believe this, is like saying you will eventually get older than your parents, it wont happen, its a fact, in the next 7-8 years, the hardware of the consoles wont change, while the hardware of PC will keep improving more and more, the gap will never close

and right now, even top of the line PCs beat consoles, im not trying to act mustard rice or anything, is a simple fact
 

pilar

New member
Jul 7, 2014
59
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NuclearKangaroo said:
pilar said:
gap is starting to close :D
please dotn tell me you actually believe this, is like saying you will eventually get older than your parents, it wont happen, its a fact, in the next 7-8 years, the hardware of the consoles wont change, while the hardware of PC will keep improving more and more, the gap will never close

and right now, even top of the line PCs beat consoles, im not trying to act mustard rice or anything, is a simple fact
[HEADING=3]Optimization[/HEADING]
Second Son vs Digital Foundry [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-vs-infamous-second-son].
"Second Son delivers a visual presentation that belies its status as a first generation PS4 title - a remarkable achievement so early in the next-gen console's life-cycle."

"Texture quality is also of extremely high quality with signs, billboards and surface textures alike all exhibiting extremely sharp, high-resolution textures throughout without any evidence of texture streaming issues."
Second Son choked the Playstation 4 for every ounce of power it could use and pulled off a Very High Quality. Again, this is an APU we're talking about.

Ridiculous!
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
8,407
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pilar said:
Point being that when Digital Foundry maxed Shadow of Mordor [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-shadow-of-mordor-face-off], comparisons with the consoles were either matched or fell slightly short of Ultra PC -- gap is starting to close :D
funny, considering there is no Ultra in Shadow of Mordor until you download the texture pack (free). there is a setting, but it does not do anything unless the texture pack is installed. so they were comparing high. Also they do not provide a comparison. what they provided was a youtube link, which is useless as youtube compression lowers the graphical fidelity of BOTH versions. youtube is THE WORST place to go for comparisons.

pilar said:
[HEADING=2]PC has more games, blah-blah-blah[/HEADING]
you were the one that started listing "upcoming games".

MGSV: Phantom Pain, Witcher 3, Bloodbourne, Final Fantasy XV, The Division, No Man's Sky, AC Unity, Far Cry 4 etc... each of these, for a person with an actual life, should easily provide a month or more of gaming bliss, not to mention SONY's exclusive linear campaigns.
according to study done in UK a single game is played on average for 2 weeks. so half that of a month.

The graphical gap will increase now because consoles are done, their limit is reached and you wont see much more.

Lightknight said:
I disagree only because ps3 titles released by Sony Exclusives did just that and towards the end of the generation well after PCs have hopped skipped and jumped past those settings. How The Last of Us and the Uncharted Series looked the way they did on 512MBs of RAM is beyond me.
we will have to disasgree here. TLOU and Uncharted looked like something PC gaming had in 2008 or so. they were only graphically great for consoles who could not do as much. Also its worth mentioning that the reason it looked so great is because Naughty Dog - the one that made both of those - actulally tried to use the power of Cell Processor. altrough not fully, they probaby did it best. Its worth noting that first processor on PC that would beat Cell in raw power was i7 970k, so thats a pretty powerful processor there in PS3 if they knew how to use it. sadly noone did. though i have to say there was one good looking thing in TLOU and that was jeans. and i got a jeans fetish so i notice.

Here's a great resource comparing the four generations of Sony consoles by game genre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQgogxMgcpA
comparing on youtube = stupid. yuotube compression does not allow graphical comparison.

NuclearKangaroo said:
"We could be running at 100fps if it was just graphics, but because of AI, we're still limited to 30 frames per second."

bullshit AI processes are not that taxing, unless you are simulating like, thousands of entities, in which case the act of rendering them would still be far more taxing

what a load of crap
Ai processing was a very taxing problem in previus gen consoles. because AI processing mostly relies in RAM and they had very little. nowadays though it really isnt a problem in resources but in design.

pilar said:
Second Son choked the Playstation 4 for every ounce of power it could use and pulled off a Very High Quality. Again, this is an APU we're talking about.

Ridiculous!
ha.

cough, cough, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Infamouse: Second son was graphically horrible. it is now best known as that PS4 game that had worse texture poping than 20th century games.


If that is your example of "Very high quality" then ill be happy knowing PC games from 2007 beat it with ease.