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Digital Foundry: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 - Digital Foundry Tech Review - The Next Big Leap For PS5?

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Now post the recent UE5.3 Build... oh wait you probably shouldn't do that since it blows it out the water.



The audio track is the sound of a bustling town, the visuals show what New York must have been like during the covid lockdown... :messenger_mr_smith_who_are_you_going_to_call:

As others have said: there's a huge difference between making a complete game and a 3 minute UE5 demo. Tens of thousands amateur 3D modelers can throw something impressive together using UE5, yet very few studios capable of making a complete game as impressive as Spider-Man 2. Pause and ponder on why this is before you post more UE5 demo videos you found on Youtube.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Is there such a thing as a twitter video that doesn't look like shit? I wonder sometimes if I'm missing a setting because I'm not a user, but, they always look like they're running 480p if even that when you go full screen. Made for cellphones only? Youtube is pretty bad, but leagues better. I don't understand why there would be any video promo on twitter with that quality.
 
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Tarnpanzer

Member
Judging by Sony's PC release schedule the PC version of Spider-Man will be released in Q3 2025. I just got a RTX 4090 so I prefer to buy PC versions of the games that catch my eye but I'm not going to wait two years for this game.

My backlog is full, no problem in waiting.
 

SolidQ

Member
lol tech demo on a 4090..
with that shitty reflections it was already running at 25fps on a ps5,
(not even mentioning it being a tech demo and missing any sort of game systems, that smal detail doesnt seem to compute for some)
UE5 is bad engine for now too heavy for console and have mediocre graphic.
Spider Man 2 RT looks cool, and don't need 4090 for those reflections. That mean good optimisation, other devs too lazy make optimisations

That simple game in 1440p, show how heavy engine if you have worse than 7900XT/4080
60089537702ec818b18868fd5be81212.png
 

Puscifer

Member
Peter Parker's Spider-Man has the best rendered male ass in gaming history. Best rendered female and ass overall still goes to Chloe Frazier in Uncharted 2 with Catwoman in Arkham City as a runner-up.
zangief from street fighter 6 does fun things to my mental tbh

 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
RT reflections within RT reflections are usually very expensive to render, and it wasn't present on the previous games so this is very impressive.

I remember a while back NXGamer mentioned that one of the reasons we don't see a lot of RT implementations in games is not only because of hardware limitations, but also because of lack of dev libraries and immature RT pipelines. Seems like we're finally seeing developers like Insomniac overcome this and I suspect there's more on the way from other studios.

It helps when you're on your 3rd PS5 game too. Insomniac are some of the best and most efficient developers on Planet Earth!!! Not only do they make great games, but their tech is top notch and they don't need 6 years to make one game.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Is there such a thing as a twitter video that doesn't look like shit? I wonder sometimes if I'm missing a setting because I'm not a user, but, they always look like they're running 480p if even that when you go full screen. Made for cellphones only? Youtube is pretty bad, but leagues better. I don't understand why there would be any video promo on twitter with that quality.
Embedded twitter links run at 480p. if you view it on twitter, they run at higher res. but you need to be a twitter subscriber to upload in 4k.
 

Mortisfacio

Member
Do the trees have different render modes depending on distance? Most the park areas look almost 2d in some of the traversal clips and clean up a bit when you land.
 

winjer

Member
He does not say that you see the BVH. He says that the different room interiors are stored in the BVH, so that the rays passing through the windows can trace into them. Why do you think this is not possible?

Those interiors are just a 3d mesh, with low poly count to keep the performance.
Since those interiors have no reflections, there is nothing to used in a BVH. And according to DF, this gam only uses RT for reflections.
The exterior of the town has it's BVH, but it's probably doing it on a lower quality LoD.
This reflection will show up on the glass, and then blended as a transparency with the interior.

But the thing I was talking about is that a BVH is not geometry.
A BVH is a bounding volume that encompasses geometry. And it has several levels, to have a finer bound over each object. Creating a tree of nodes.
BVHs work by quickly eliminating large portions of the scene from consideration when tracing a ray or detecting collisions.
When tracing a ray through a scene, the ray tracer would first check to see if it intersects the bounding volume of the root node. If it does, then the ray tracer would recursively check the bounding volumes of the child nodes, and so on.
If the ray does not intersect the bounding volume of a node, then the ray tracer would skip all of the objects in that node's subtree.
 
This is such a disappointing tech review. Not surprised since its John.
By not involving Miles Morale in the comparison and not actually doing real comparisons.
He's able to claim "leaps" that are simply NOT there.

For example traffic. The traffic in Miles is way denser than it is in Spiderman 1 (even remastered version).
The traffic in Miles and SP2 are very similar and not a "leap".

Disappointing "Tech Review".


The only disappointment is that he didn't compare it to the PS4 version instead, this is a sequel to that game not the remaster. The leap would have been much bigger had he focused on that vs a game that already got some PS5 upgrades to begin with.
 

Crayon

Member
If you've got to compare it to the matrix demo running on a serious pc then it obviously turned out looking pretty good. It's not mind blowing but I'm not so sure if we are going to see real games reaching even the low-res choppy level of the matrix any time soon. Maybe, maybe not.

This is insomniac. If there is any developer that knows what they are doing with this hardware, they are on the short list.

That's neither here nor there, though. As of now, matrix demo on a hot pc is the most popular comparison to SM2 and that's telling.
 
If you've got to compare it to the matrix demo running on a serious pc then it obviously turned out looking pretty good. It's not mind blowing but I'm not so sure if we are going to see real games reaching even the low-res choppy level of the matrix any time soon. Maybe, maybe not.

This is insomniac. If there is any developer that knows what they are doing with this hardware, they are on the short list.

That's neither here nor there, though. As of now, matrix demo on a hot pc is the most popular comparison to SM2 and that's telling.
Running on a hardware 4 times more expensive and consuming 3 times more energy. This is what's impressive in SM2.
 

darthkarki

Member
Comparisons to the remaster are definitely fascinating, but I'd love to see some comprehensive comparisons to the original Spider-Man running on a PS4 amateur. Did DF cover that at all in the video? I'm not going to watch till after I play the game.

I think we're a bit spoiled by the fact they were able to put out a mini sequel and a remaster of the original in the same timeframe we would normally go from a game to its sequel. Those had some very nice improvements, but also make the full impact of what Spider-Man 2 is doing less immediately noticeable. If we instead ignore those and pretend all we have is Spider-Man on the original PS4 and Spider-Man 2 on PS5, it's pretty remarkable:
  • Greatly improved graphics all around (assets, textures, lighting, ray tracing, animation, muscle deformation, spline-based hair, etc...).
  • Long loading screens (remember that? It wasn't terrible for the time, but the original had a lot of loading) completely removed.
  • From a single 1080p 30fps mode to a plethora of options allowing up to 4K or 80+ fps depending on your selection.
Would there be any complaints or half as much nitpicking if this was our comparison? Insomniac has done a fantastic job taking advantage of every tool at their disposal and their remarkably impressive productivity to give us:
  • Mid-gen PS4 Pro support.
  • Full next gen support via the remaster.
  • An entire extra game in Miles Morales.
And I feel like this is used against them to downplay each iterative improvement. I don't think Insomniac should be punished in the court of public opinion for doing exactly what we would want in their stewardship of this franchise.
 
It's not as impressive as the first Spiderman was at the time, you can see it's PS4 roots even though there are of course many improvements. Forbidden West is still way more impressive visually and that was cross-gen.
that tells you how everything....every single aspect of game has to come together to achieve "universal acclaimed"
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
This is how pathetic things have become.



Fanboys warring because of a 1 second button press lol. A programmer had to get out of bed to put this to rest. Some really wanted a gotcha moment to prove that the game has loadings. Pathetic. Even if it did, you basically don't even notice because it's less than 2 seconds.
 
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HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
It's not as impressive as the first Spiderman was at the time, you can see it's PS4 roots even though there are of course many improvements. Forbidden West is still way more impressive visually and that was cross-gen.
"Way more impressive"? Definitely not. Better looking characters? Perhaps (though Peter's hair looks better than just about any hair in FW), there is always raytracing on (Forbidden West isn't taxed like this), and SM2 has to deal with more npcs/traffic. Loading is also faster in SM2 (Forbidden West isn't a slouch, though)!

The bottom line is we can appreciate one without playing down the other, because both games are impressive and do things the other does not.
 
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ckaneo

Member
Well not 'click' they are obviously hiding the 2 or 3 second of loading in that little keep the button pressed bar, but it's so quick and carefully disguised that it looks seamless and instantaneous. Game looks very impressive hopefully it's only a year or so until the PC release.
Nope. Tech director confirmed that they aren't doing that and he wanted it changed because people would make this assumption but was overruled for usability
 

Senua

Gold Member
"Way more impressive"? Definitely not. Better looking characters? Perhaps (though Peter's hair looks better than just about any hair in FW), there is always raytracing on (Forbidden West isn't taxed like this), and SM2 has to deal with more npcs/traffic. Loading is also better in SM2!

We can appreciate one without playing down the other, because both games are impressive and do things the other does not.
Better textures, lighting, art direction. And we can definitely compare them because any new first party game will be compared to the reigning graphics champ on the system, and that is still forbidden west
 

setoman

Member
Good luck with that. If you haven't been paying attention to the Spiderman PC ports, you can expect severe CPU bottlenecks on the PC version of Spiderman 2. The speed of traversal, portals, and overall level of detail have no straightforward solution on PC and brute forcing it won't work either in terms of delivering smooth and consistent performance.

Everyone doesn't have a i9 13000 with an RTX 4090 PC. On PCs even 2-3x the cost of a PS5, performance will pale in comparison.
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
Better textures, lighting, art direction. And we can definitely compare them because any new first party game will be compared to the reigning graphics champ on the system, and that is still forbidden west
And Spider-Man 2 has better reflections, faster loading, and more happening on-screen. Both games do things the other doesn't, but that's because they are two very different experiences.
 
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Mortisfacio

Member
OK, after watching the Digital Foundry review I'm actually less impressed about the visuals. Lot of pop in, 2D environment textures and overall "flat" look to the city (primarily buildings). Even slower walking scenes, like at 19:35 you just watch the non-textured buildings pop in their textures bit by bit. Water and window ray trace reflections look good, at least.
 

Skifi28

Member
Impressive stuff. After months, fnally a game that impresses on consoles while not being a technical mess at launch. Almost tempted to buy day one to reward the effort.
 

setoman

Member
lol tech demo on a 4090..
with that shitty reflections it was already running at 25fps on a ps5,
(not even mentioning it being a tech demo and missing any sort of game systems, that smal detail doesnt seem to compute for some)
it was running 25fps on PS5 because it had unlimited traffic.
With traffic reduced its alot better. Secondly Lumen has gotten drastically more efficient in 5.3 than in 5.0 so no the fps will actually be better even with the new reflections.
 

Senua

Gold Member
OK, after watching the Digital Foundry review I'm actually less impressed about the visuals. Lot of pop in, 2D environment textures and overall "flat" look to the city (primarily buildings). Even slower walking scenes, like at 19:35 you just watch the non-textured buildings pop in their textures bit by bit. Water and window ray trace reflections look good, at least.
The buildings are what stick out to me the most
 

Skifi28

Member
it was running 25fps on PS5 because it had unlimited traffic.
With traffic reduced its alot better. Secondly Lumen has gotten drastically more efficient in 5.3 than in 5.0 so no the fps will actually be better even with the new reflections.
Do we have any actual numbers in our hands or just could/should/would? Majority of real UE5 products so far have been a disaster performance wise.
 

setoman

Member
The audio track is the sound of a bustling town, the visuals show what New York must have been like during the covid lockdown... :messenger_mr_smith_who_are_you_going_to_call:

As others have said: there's a huge difference between making a complete game and a 3 minute UE5 demo. Tens of thousands amateur 3D modelers can throw something impressive together using UE5, yet very few studios capable of making a complete game as impressive as Spider-Man 2. Pause and ponder on why this is before you post more UE5 demo videos you found on Youtube.

Come again, is this supposed to be an implication that its empty (Video below)? Anyway, I will play SM2 and enjoy it and yet be critical of its visual and tech in display. Another thing John didn't go into is the NPC characters in the street, from what i have seen, they are pretty lackluster. There's so many thing John just glossed over that would have added to the quality and depth of this video. Building textures, LOD pop in, geometry, etc.

Missed opportunity to clarify the visual fidelity of the game.

 
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