Disingenuous drivel that you should have read twice before posting. The point that many have tried to make is that the world is not black and white. The reality is much like the benefit you get from Mantle drivers: It's contextual, and It varies. I dare you to dig up a tangible "pc gaf lore" (what the fuck is this anyway..) consensus saying there is no overhead.
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DF: Leadbetter interviews 4A's Oles Shishkovstov about current gen consoles + PC
- Thread starter stryke
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Disingenuous drivel that you should have read twice before posting. The point that many have tried to make is that the world is not black and white. The reality is much like the benefit you get from Mantle drivers: It's contextual, and It varies. I dare you to dig up a tangible "pc gaf lore" (what the fuck is this anyway..) consensus saying there is no overhead.
I was with you until that last sentence. Although I do think that building scalability into what you're doing reduces this 'inefficiency' of designing for an open platform like PC.
Also, its quite wrong to say that high-end PC's aren't ever fully used. Its true that you could probably do more with the raw graphics of a game if you designed for high-end, but that doesn't mean all that extra power is being wasted. Many console games only run at 30fps, so extra power can be used to run games at a decent level of performance. You can run higher texture quality, higher resolutions, better AA techniques, things like PhysX, and all manners of post-processing effects. That power can always find a good use.
Not to mention that getting into VR, high-end PC's are going to go from seemingly 'super powerful' to 'ok, I could really use more power' in a hurry.
Dictator93
Member
They are not talking about whole performance of games. And everyone should know this, because there isnt even one example confirming this claim, even from both of those guys.
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Marginally? By running games in 1080p on higher setting and in higher framerate?
CRYSIS 2
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Or 32 multiplayer match in Battlefield 3 in 50-60fps on higher settings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzW8eS9AZNs
Thats not marginally, it destroyed past gen consoles even in the end of their cycles.
Haha Mantle. You see the difference between multiplatform and exclusive console games? It's not about API you know. You can improve efficiency by having a better "translator", yes, but the difference as a whole resides in what is targeted, a range of hardwares or one. But you are indeed in the right by implying that it's fully contextual, for example a PS3 open world game (even built around his targeted hardware) will likely expose the flaws of his platform (and lack of UMA) than shines versus much better configurations for this kind of games.
angular graphics
Banned
Alexandros' stance has been pretty consistent. And I agree with him. Not everyone is Carmack and not even Carmack might be willing (fake edit: oh wait he's not even a game dev anymore) to spend $$$ to get the most out of console HW for a multiplatform game anymore.
For every Uncharted there are tens more games that have not been finely tuned to the intricacies of a console's specific hardware.
And even these optimizations will only help you so much. Not 200% over the board for every single thing.
If Epic/Microsoft re-released Gears of War today on 360 it wouldn't magically be in 1080p and 60fps just cause they know their HW inside out by now compared to years earlier. It would perform better for sure. But don't expect miracles.
Exactly. It's one of the advantages of bruteforcing things. You can highly improve what is scaleable. It's why high end PC gaming is so great for enthusiasts. You always can experience the best version of any multiplatform game.
But I don't see any option being better than the other. For me, experiencing a gen as a console gamer is much more enjoyable because you can just forget "performance" and enjoy what games really are. But that's just me.
I don't understand platform wars.
It very much reads like they are talking about real world performance in games. How do you get to this different conclusion? I think its pretty obvious that a fixed platform combined with low-level access can have great benefits. If several well respected game engine wizards say its about 2x then I'll believe them.
Man your PC elitism is really rather grating. Could you tone it down a notch? I've been enjoying the thread.
Why not? Explain to us.
This was always my take away from that quote. Because we don't really have the evidence that you require a system that is 2x as powerful as a console to play a game at the same quality and performance.
It'd be silly to argue that there aren't benefits from the console model in terms of performance, but I think what I, and many others are saying when we argue against it is not that these don't exist, but they're greatly exaggerated.
Example! Give me an example of this. I gave an examples of a GPU two times faster than past gens that is running high end games in late cycle two times faster than them, so how is that quote true? Where are those gains, where they are no visible in any game developer for a last 10 years?
And what engineer would allow for 50% efficiency?
Also why Metro:LL runs about the same on HD4000 as on past gen consoles where in terms of performance they are on the same level?
"...most GPU commands are just a few DWORDs written into the command buffer" reads pretty low-level to me.
vpance
Member
Well said. I've posted similar sentiments around here in the past. That's why I've ditched PC for multiplat gaming and stuck with consoles. At the end of the day its all spruced up console games. Go back 10 years and it'd be switched around for me.
GameSeeker
Member
EuroGamer said:
A very good interview.
It's interesting to hear that they will target 30fps on their next console game. I think this will become more common as the generation matures. I was surprised when Naughty Dog said they were targeting 60fps for Uncharted 4 because the visual hit will be significant. Maybe ND goes back to 30fps for TLoU 2. Similarly, while MGS V was 60fps, perhaps Kojima-san goes back to 30fps for Silent Hills or MGS VI.
As always, 60fps will the correct choice for some games, 30fps for others. On fixed hardware platforms tradeoffs always have to be made.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
I would like to buy a tome filled with this PC Gaf Lore.
Wait, I'm not sure I follow. If you're saying that you chose the console road because it's only there that first parties will be able to take full advantage of the hardware, well, what is that really getting you in the end? I mean, on the PS4 there are, what, 6 known AAA first party titles available through 2015; meanwhile, the majority of most people's gaming time will be spent on multiplats, where, as you say, power is king. So aren't you kind of gimping your multiplat performance for the handful of titles which will actually take full advantage of your hardware?
icecold1983
Member
you picked crappy multiplatform games by devs who consistently release games that are coded like shit
gundamkyoukai
Member
Yep somethings will be more somethings will be less .
It does not mean you need twice the PC power to get the same results like some people seem to think.
Well unless the PC port\version is totally trash .
The best way to counter is to provide evidence.
What? Crysis 3 is more ambitious game from technological standpoint than TLoU.
Its basically next-gen game scaled down to past-gen.
It has bigger scale, more enemies and more physics than TLoU, so i dont know what You exactly mean.
BF 4, GTA 5, Far Cry 3/4 are also much more ambitious games than TLoU in terms of tech.
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Hahaha? Crysis 2, Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3 are crappy multiplatform games in terms technology? Are You kidding me?
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
Crytek and DICE did god's work on getting those games up and running on last gen console. There are maybe only a handful of games that look as good as Crysis 2/3 on the previous gen consoles.
but apparently they can't code for shit? huh?
With the whole "metal" discussion, basically, on the one hand you have half-understood and inappropriately generalized appeal to authority, on the other hand you have all the actual, objective data it is possible to gather.
Pick whichever you prefer.
Pick whichever you prefer.
This, on the other hand, really gets on my nerves. Fight your platform wars, worship your proprietary box, but don't belittle the accomplishments of highly capable development teams just because they don't support your preconceived notions.
icecold1983
Member
crysis 2 and ME3 both suck in that regard yes, cryteks optimization is a joke on the pc and its just as bad/worse on gen 7 consoles. the bf3 video you posted is a blurry mess and its running on a processor many times faster than the gen 7 consoles which is making a huge difference. ps3 exclusives are what should be used since they were in a different league entirely from every multiplatform game excluding gta 5
Both together to talk about gain factor but can be splitted to better understanding.
Low level access allow to achieve specific solution to specific problem being fully optimized for the specific hardware. A general API that provides access to various hardware technologies may not be as optimal for any of those hardwares. If that API includes a solution to that problem, will be used perhaps affecting the performance. The possibility of generate more drawcalls using lowlevel apis in a console cpu is not a big improvement agains pcs because almost every desktop cpu is much more powerful than the consoles cpu. So what looks like a big point in favor becomes only a balancing point.
The "fixed platform" point affects in 'how I can tune my game to achieve the perfect balance'. That's a difficult point to achieve in pc games for developers. But, in this case, is something that lands in the user side. So an expert pc user can tune his specific game to performance a lot better in his specific computer. Do you have a weak cpu but strong gpu? lower your shadow resolution and geom lods. Do you want to downsample but don't like motion blur? make an exchange and manage your power where your preferences are. Do you prefer framerate over resolution?... and so on.
Stock settings for games could be not really optimized for every pc, but a good custom config in one game will improve greatly the experience in your pc for your specific taste.
In short, considering that pcs use brute force in some aspects and that users have the ability to customize the look of their games (according to theirs tastes and the available hardware), gain factor on consoles (applying lowlevel access and fixed platform optimization) is not a great advantage, but a necessity.
I'm (obviously) not Carmack, so I can't show you my internal engine benchmark tests. I simply trust those guys to not bullshit me. The DF interview reads pretty non-bullshitty
.An engineer who does not know the details of the platform the code is running on. On PC your code/library has to work on numerous different configurations. You would have to carefully analyze all of them and write special code for each case to get the most out of each config. With abstraction comes overhead and automatic optimization can only do so much (albeit it can be pretty good at least in single thread scenarios). But optimizing in a multithreaded environment seems like black art to me. So I'll believe the guys who actually tried it.
I have no idea, but I'm also not the one who wrote the code. As are you.
They have Abstraction layers to go through and use similar tools to develop the games. They are more alike than they are different. Time and money generally dictate that multi platform games aren't going to be attempting to go deeper than the tools allow, and terms like "metal" are inaccurate and have been for a long time. Maybe inaccurate is the wrong word... But are all these game developers coding in ASM? No. That isn't "PC elitism", but as has been discussed multiple times in this thread already, it isn't wise to take those words as exactly as they seem.
Its so false. Crytek optimization is godlike on PC. And managing to run Crysis 3 on past-gen is extraordinary an achievement.
boredandlazy
Member
When was the last time you developed a game for the PS4 and XBOne?
Optimizing code in multithreaded environments is my day job, and has been for 6 years. Do you "trust" me?
Regardless of your answer, the point is you shouldn't. You don't need to "trust" anyone. "Trust" in this context is nothing more than an appeal to authority.
Simply look at the data.
Like I said here: http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=127286051
No, i just don't run after performance anymore. I just want good games and I'm happy with consoles because I don't expect anything so high end about them. And I'd say that escaping the whole power issue is a big breath of fresh air for an old gamer like me. I wanted to say I choose consoles because I don't have to mind if I can experience my game better on another system, there is always another system running your game better. At least with consoles it's fair, there is game made for the console and other that everyone can enjoy. Great.
Not what I said at all. I said it's totally normal that you wouldn't see a 2x performance advantage in a multiplatform (PC and consoles) game and i used Crysis3 as an example. In the sense where, for the devs, PS3 was just another platform to support that was certainly a pain in the ass to develop for.
You'll see that 2x performance advantage (not really because 2x doesn't mean anything, let's say "a performance advantage") in a specific game built around a particular hardware compared to what it would be being multiplatform.
That whole argument isn't really PC versus consoles (that's just system wars), it is about exclusive versus multiplatform (aka building a software around the advantages and flaws of an hardware versus targeting a range of hardwares where you should expect the same kind of experience where the lowest common denominator has a word to say).
So yeah, we should expect a game built for one console to take advantage of the hardware better than a game built for a set of hardware. The same difference you can see between multiplatform and exclusive console games. It's a gap that does exist and yes it can be a 2x or whatever gap.
gundamkyoukai
Member
This gen it should be rather easy to do test .
Just buy the parts that closest to the consoles and see if the game run the same as the consoles version .
gaf should put together some money for it lol .
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
They get shit on because of Crysis 1, which theyve admitted to having aimed way too high when that game came out.
Every game they've put out since then has been a graphical treat met with wonderful performance.
Wait, this is a thread discussing the tech behind Metro Redux and the current gen's technical capabilities. Why are you talking about what games are holding candles on the PS3?
who the hell even holds candles anymore?
icecold1983
Member
yes we all know everything crytek does is godlike according to you, yet their games cant hold a candle to any of the top ps3 titles.
Dictator93
Member
No, Cryteks per-computer scaling is pretty much the best there is out there for the visuals you get.
You are completely wrong and stop your ad hominem attacks.
That's kinda why I didn't understand the last sentence. Just personal satisfaction knowing their hardware is being used efficiently for a small minority of games? :/
I don't have a problem with people choosing console. But the justifications for doing it often make me scratch my head a bit. Now, Alej did later seem to clarify that he just doesn't care for 'thinking about performance', and that's fine. But don't pretend that every game you play on console is some model of incredible efficiency and that you can rest easy knowing that the most was made out of the games you play. What it really comes down to is eating what's put in front of you, even if you might not like some of the stuff on the plate or the chef just isn't very good.
oO. Are you comparing PS3 titles with Crytek PC games?
Oh i think you compared the PS3 Crytek games with other PS3 titles.
Playing through Crysis 3 (PS+) atm and while the framerate is often not the best, the game looks really good on PS3/XBOX360.
icecold1983
Member
im comparing ps3 exclusives to cryteks ps3 versions of crysis. back to the original topic tho, what level of cpu/gpu do you think it takes to match the graphics of the best looking ps3 titles?
So what is your experience? How much does multithreaded code benefit from your hand-tuned optimizations and how big of an influence does a fixed platform have in your opinion? I honestly don't know your take on this.
I don't have any data. Therefore I would need to be an engine programmer that takes an existing multiplatform title and completely rewrites it for one specific platform.
Yes. Doubly so; Both the cost to make the huge die, the costs of having lower APU yields in the end (more to go wrong with a bigger APU).
The real issue is the slower bussed DDR3 memory that led to the ESRAM bandaid, which doesn't work well for the "HD era". It worked fine last gen, but scaling it up was never going to work well unless you were betting on more casual games and "others".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHWPGmf_A_0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NvrXJFDJTE#t=190
Now what?
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Check out Digital Foundry articles. They've done that already.
In this analogy, the core benefit of the console is hassle-free knowledge that you will be served for the extent of the generation with a relatively low initial investment (i.e. whatever about efficiency across multiplats, you do tend to get good bang for buck, and relatively brilliant bang for buck in the higher investment exclusives). It's low risk, with a known support window (i.e. the entirety of the generation), and there's no comparison envy within the scope of that platform. My PS4 bought now will play games just as well in 5 years time as a PS4 bought then. It's just all low low risk and stability, relatively cheap, and that's all very attractive to a lot of consumers. Consoles are popular for good reason.
icecold1983
Member
the first video is running at what seems to be 15 fps, 2nd video at a claimed 20 so its probably even lower in reality.
gundamkyoukai
Member
Got a link i read some DF stuff but i can't say i remember seeing it .
Still Durante a fair amount of that data makes no sense using it.
If people really want to see the effect of API can have on a game compare to consoles the PC spec must be as close as possible.
Turin Turambar
Member
Don't overgeneralize. I'm a pc gamer since ms-dos 5.0 and I will say, of course console games are more optimized! :
-less overhead with a lean OS designed for gaming, instead of general OS
-way less overhead in graphical API because it doesn't have to be compatible with different OSes and two dozens of GPUs from different companies
-way more optimization than in pc because fixed hardware. It isn't the same having to optimize code without knowing where it will run (slow cpu, fast cpu? how many cores? who know what bandwidth limits?) than a hardware with fixed cpu, gpu, ram, bandwidth channels, etc.
I mean, how do you believe ancient hardware like 360 or ps3 could move 2011-13 games? Even at <720p resolution and flaky fps as they have, it would be impossible on pc with equivalent hardware.