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Digital Foundry Face-Off: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PC/PS4/XB1)

tuxfool

Banned
NX is good with video too. I wish I had a nice accent and a good speaking voice. :p

If you want to hear me curse like a sailor and become enraged, though, you can always watch this thing I did while trying to play Skynet for the first time last year. 90 minutes of Skynet, baby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf3q7PNPKmg

I think you sound absolutely fine. I don't think your voice is in any way a blocker for doing good videos. British accents aren't at all magical, regardless of their portrayal in american media.
 

kitch9

Banned
Weren't people saying that it is still smoother on PS4 yesterday in another thread. I think they were using gamersyde video.

The patch will just cap the Xbox version so v sync and better frame pacing can be enabled, the dips will still happen.
 

ultrazilla

Gold Member
So Neogaf, what version do I get? I have a Nvidia EVGA 2gig 960 SC in my PC
and a PS4. I'm leaning towards the PC version but honestly, the PS4 version looks really damn close to the settings I'd probably have to play at on the 960 anyways. Did the recent patch help the PC version pull farther ahead then the consoles? Thanks for the tips/recommendations.
 

Handy Fake

Member
We must have a different idea of what 'halo' means, I suppose.

tumblr_inline_n2jrvfp0Ad1sohk3w.gif
 
So Neogaf, what version do I get? I have a Nvidia EVGA 2gig 960 SC in my PC
and a PS4. I'm leaning towards the PC version but honestly, the PS4 version looks really damn close to the settings I'd probably have to play at on the 960 anyways. Did the recent patch help the PC version pull farther ahead then the consoles? Thanks for the tips/recommendations.

Definitely PC.
 

scitek

Member
So Neogaf, what version do I get? I have a Nvidia EVGA 2gig 960 SC in my PC
and a PS4. I'm leaning towards the PC version but honestly, the PS4 version looks really damn close to the settings I'd probably have to play at on the 960 anyways. Did the recent patch help the PC version pull farther ahead then the consoles? Thanks for the tips/recommendations.

Well, if you can run it on your PC at similar settings to the PS4 now, I'd recommend the PC version.

Looking ahead, if you ever want to play it again, it'll: a) look and run better after the next time you upgrade, and b) be available right there without having to bring out an old console at some point.
 
So Neogaf, what version do I get? I have a Nvidia EVGA 2gig 960 SC in my PC
and a PS4. I'm leaning towards the PC version but honestly, the PS4 version looks really damn close to the settings I'd probably have to play at on the 960 anyways. Did the recent patch help the PC version pull farther ahead then the consoles? Thanks for the tips/recommendations.

That 960 will run it a lot better than the ps4 version
 
Are we at it again?

My take:

* HBAO+ is a must for all gaming. Or use the capsule tech that ND uses. The lighting needs this in order to be convincing and without it, you just get terrible lighting -- especially in shadowed areas.

The-Order_noAO_in_shadow-1024x576.png


Notice his hand on the wall.. no contact shadowing at all.

* Hairworks -- as much as I want to like this feature, it's really not worth the GPU cycles. It looks great in motion because of it's fairly accurate collision detection and animation but it still looks terrible because of the lack of self-shadowing, occlusion, transparency and a proper hair shader. This leads me to believe we are still a few generations away from seeing good hair in realtime.

* Dynamic TOD -- pretty much the best in a game to date. This is so so important to get right and CDPR nailed it. It's the overall best feature in the game IMO.

* PBR -- absolutely excellent use of physicall based materials. Rivaling The Order and AC:Unity. Excellent use of fading 2 different shaders over time when the rain hits. I don't think I've seen this used before.

* SSR -- they use it on the water and it looks great and it's dynamic to boot!

* Tessellation on the terrain -- probably there. But I'd need verification from a dev that is there.

* POM -- used in dungeon floors and open ways for the towns. NX never commented the use of this feature in the video.

* Dynamic shadows -- almost on every light source, but not all.. still very convincing especially the time of day shadows that refresh very smoothly.

All in all, the most technically driven open world game to date. CDPR was always known for brute-force rendering algorithms that basically bring graphics cards to their knees. They've done it again here. Even with my Titan X, I have to turn some options down to get a locked 30fps @ 4k. The amount of information going on in 1 frame is just mind-blowing, especially when you add rain, fog (from Foglets), TOD lighting reflection, near a swamp with SSR on the water, hairworks as he's moving, foliage with several layers of alpha masked sprites, wind blowing the deforming trees all in one given frame. It's an incredible achievement actually.
 
* POM -- used in dungeon floors and open ways for the towns. NX never commented the use of this feature in the video.

* Dynamic shadows -- almost on every light source, but not all.. still very convincing especially the time of day shadows that refresh very smoothly.

Do you have a screen of this?

And yeah, the game only has dynamic shadows (makes sense). Quite impressive that basically every light casts them as well (not just shadowless point-lights everywhere like most games).
 

ultrazilla

Gold Member
Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I double dipped.

Got the PC version coming from GMG when they get the key situation figured out and went ahead and bought the digital download for PS4. I plan on upgrading my video card again in less than a year so I'll have that to look forward to with the PC version.
 

Noobcraft

Member
Anyone saying it's butter smooth is just ignorant or flatout lying. Period.
Or they haven't made it to Velen. Gamersyde put up footage of Velen swamps running at sustained 20 fps on the PS4 version.
http://www.gamersyde.com/hqstream_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_swamps_1_03-34759_en.html

Are there also videos of xbone at Velen? I'm on mobile currently :-(
Yeah here's the Xbox One footage of the same area.
http://www.gamersyde.com/hqstream_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_xb1_fps_analysis_swamps_1_03-34750_en.html
 

TronLight

Everybody is Mikkelsexual
Are we at it again?

My take:

* HBAO+ is a must for all gaming. Or use the capsule tech that ND uses. The lighting needs this in order to be convincing and without it, you just get terrible lighting -- especially in shadowed areas.

The-Order_noAO_in_shadow-1024x576.png


Notice his hand on the wall.. no contact shadowing at all.

Funny that you use The Order as a bad example of AO because it uses the same technique as The last of Us.
 

jett

D-Member
Analysis


Features:

Originally Dx9 based but has adopted many Dx11 features
Tessellation is in (ground, rocks, bridges)
SSR on water
Weather effects
Global illumination emulation
Dof effects on camera due to weather
Game uses image based lighting
Also uses dynamic point lights which reflects on the environment's objects including geralts armor etc..

I've seen this guy several times making shit up about a game's technical features. TW3 has no tesselation of any sort outside of hairworks and water.
 

omonimo

Banned
Are there also videos of xbone at Velen? I'm on mobile currently :-(
The problem it's ps4 used double buffer and when goes below 30 fps for too much it stays to 20 fps. That's a terrible tech choice of CD which is really incomprehensible.
 

Stare-Bear

Banned
Looking at both swamp videos on gamersyde, the Xbox one version has a better average framrate, although it still drops a bit. Do we know if this is due to the double buffering on the ps4 version? And if so, is this something that could be remedied?
 
Do you have a screen of this?

And yeah, the game only has dynamic shadows (makes sense). Quite impressive that basically every light casts them as well (not just shadowless point-lights everywhere like most games).

No shadows. You can tell when you get out of the main light source (i.e. moon or sun).

witcher3%2B2015-05-30%2B11-32-56-22.png


witcher3%2B2015-05-30%2B11-33-31-89.png


Here is what "looks" like POM (I could be wrong though):

witcher3%2B2015-05-30%2B11-42-31-62.png


I don't know what to make of the edge of this wall though. POM would not show a silhouette edge. Geometry perhaps?

witcher3%2B2015-05-30%2B11-45-32-88.png
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
I've generally enjoyed NXGamers vids but the one for Witcher 3 is his worst I've watched. Lots on inaccuracies that even I, who isn't nearly as knowledgeable as many, can point out.
 

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
I've been avoiding play this for awhile because of all the issues, but decided to try the 1.03 patch on PS4. It definitely seems to be running smoother with no downgrades as far as I can tell. Not sure what all the fuss has been about, game is great.
 

i-Lo

Member
Or they haven't made it to Velen. Gamersyde put up footage of Velen swamps running at sustained 20 fps on the PS4 version.
http://www.gamersyde.com/hqstream_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_swamps_1_03-34759_en.html


Yeah here's the Xbox One footage of the same area.
http://www.gamersyde.com/hqstream_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_xb1_fps_analysis_swamps_1_03-34750_en.html

Pretty fucking disappointed in PS4 version. It's either time for another patch with either a downgrade in features or native or time for Sony to increase the core clock speed to match xbone's 853MHz (although whether the performance gain would be notable at the cost of reliability is a different matter).
 

MacBosse

Member
Pretty fucking disappointed in PS4 version. It's either time for another patch with either a downgrade in features or native or time for Sony to increase the core clock speed to match xbone's 853MHz (although whether the performance gain would be notable at the cost of reliability is a different matter).

Yeah in those videos the PS4 framerate is on average 5-7 fps lower than X1. And its not like X1 has any kind of awesome performance there ...
 

Stare-Bear

Banned
Yeah in those videos the PS4 framerate is on average 5-7 fps lower than X1. And its not like X1 has any kind of awesome performance there ...

As people have mentioned many times in this and other threads, the ps4 version appears to use a method of double buffering which cause the framerate to drop to 20 and stay there at points, there is a good chance that without this the frame rates would be a lot more comparable.
 

tuxfool

Banned
Got any pics of tessellated terrain?

I've seen it pre-release but looks to be disabled/not working.

You ignored the other poster that replied to your post, providing links to evidence...

All good points. Only regarding the bolded - if you lower tesselation factor in drivers, the ground will look much flatter. So at least the terrain uses a lot of tesselation. You can see the difference on the second ingame picture here:

http://pctuning.tyden.cz/multimedia...ky-hon-rozbor-hry-a-nastaveni-detailu?start=9

Move your cursor on the pic to see the switch.
Pretty stark.
 
It specifically uses tesselation for terrain generation (Battlefield 3 and 4 style), which we have known for about... 2.5 years almost now?

It used it at one point, in R & D testing, for characters (was scrapped). It never, due to any evidence, used it for displacement mapped micro details or silhouettes on singular meshes.

It looks all like normal geometry to me (the silhouettes are angular and normal POM cannot silhouettes correctly). The hardest one to tell though is the floor from the dungeon (which I also noticed when playing)... It could be... but you would need to look at oblique angles to see better as well as test with AMDs tesselation controls to see.
 

R_Deckard

Member
It specifically uses tesselation for terrain generation (Battlefield 3 and 4 style), which we have known for about... 2.5 years almost now?

It used it at one point, in R & D testing, for characters (was scrapped). It never, due to any evidence, used it for displacement mapped micro details or sillouhettes on singular meshes.
At least spell it right, it's tessellation and it uses it in the game... What is your point?
 

tuxfool

Banned
I have all I see is tessellation which was linked to as being in the game?

Interesting piece! The only points I might disagree with are...


The game never featured a full GI system (ie - it doesn't model light bouncing). It didn't in 2013 and it doesn't now.

The main difference in 2013 was that each scene was hand built (outside of an open world environment) with lots of hand placed lights and an attention to detail that wasn't possible on a large scale.


I believe the developers have stated that tessellation is reserved exclusively for water simulation (well, and hair works, I suppose). Not 100% on this, though.


I really really doubt this. With the amount of color used in the game, 16-bit color depth would have produced severe dithering artefacts. I mean, 16-bit color was one of the biggest issues with GameCube games back in the day versus, say, PS2 which often stuck with 24-bit color instead.


That's obviously a matter of opinion but HBAO+ is always worth it, I feel. It makes a tremendous difference. That said, I haven't actually seen how it performs on AMD hardware so it may not be worth using there.


There is this. I will add that tessellation is indeed used for terrain, but not other features such as rocks etc.

Then there is the nonsense with claiming 16 bit colour. That is so much BS, one has to wonder who in their right mind would/could claim such a thing.
 
The link above your post says it is in the game on the terrain?

Yes, for terrain generation. Not for micro details (like you would see in Crysis 3, Metro LL, etc...). He claims its used for rocks and game objects (micro detail). They are two completely different things.
 
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