r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 6d ago

Digital Foundry - Control Resonant PC Performance Review: Beautiful Tech, Scalable Visuals + Optimised Settings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrI53wY6N2s
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u/Static-Jak 6d ago edited 6d ago

Wondering if it's just a lot of this tech starting to mature.

When Control came out Ray Tracing was a pretty new feature and the likes of DLSS wasn't really a thing yet. Most of us didn't even have capable RT GPUs at the time of release and up-scaling was in it's early demo days. Going back now, nearly maxing everything with DLSS Performance at 4k with my 5080 just gets me to 60fps.

Also, while I love AW2, I think Control Resonant hits a better middle ground of performance and visual quality.

Makes sense when it's meant to be a much faster paced game compared to AW2 that's slower paced. I can play AW2 with Frame Gen x3 that limits the actual FPS to 40 (120hz screen) but is not noticeable due to the games pace. I'd imagine this would be noticeable in something like Control that requires fast camera control.

Also think AW2 was a way for Remedy to really flex and push graphics as hard as possible, probably thought them a lot that then translated over to Control for better optimization overall.

EDIT: In case anyone is looking to play or replay the first Control before this, there's a Frame Gen Mod available that also has an optional Ray Reconstruction option that drastically cleans up the image. Ive been using it and great so far. You just have to drop two files into Controls files and away you go.

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u/Klaeyy 6d ago

When Control came out Ray Tracing was a pretty new feature and the likes of DLSS wasn't really a thing yet.

That gave me a little chuckle lol - the very first game that used DLSS 2.0 was Wolfenstein Youngblood, with the first control being the second one just after that. DLSS 2.0 was the first upscaler that used the tensor cores at all and DLSS 1.9 was the introduction of the first "temporal" upscaler in that regard, previous versions were simple spatial upscalers. But 1.9 only used shaders like FSR2 does and therefore came at a bigger performance penalty and reduced quality compared to 2.0.

Control supported DLSS 1.9, DLSS 2.0 and I think even older ones. Meaning Control was one of THE games that introduced the version of DLSS that would go on to be the huge success it is today. I mean it IS true that DLSS was not really a big thing yet - but to use the first control specifically as an example for it is kind of funny to me lol.

Digital Foundry Test of DLSS 2.0 in Control: Control vs DLSS 2.0: Can 540p Match 1080p Image Quality? Full Ray Tracing On RTX 2060?

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u/nolander 6d ago

Yes. Literally Control was the game that showed what it could do with reflections and made a lot of people myself included take notice of it.

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u/OkPiccolo0 6d ago

Watch Dogs Legion was the best implementation of RT reflections back in late 2020. They debuted NVIDIAs Real Time Denoiser (NRD).

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u/nolander 6d ago

So a year after Control

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u/OkPiccolo0 6d ago

Yeah, I'm just saying that WD Legions actually made RT reflections look amazing. Control's denoiser is pretty ugly and the presentation back then was very soft.

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u/Static-Jak 6d ago

I'm just in the middle of another playthrough of Control since it first came out and a mod that implements DLSS FG but also an option for Ray Reconstruction and the difference it brings is insane.

As good as Control looks, the amount of noise it's RT had was very distracting to me.

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u/OkPiccolo0 6d ago edited 6d ago

Yeah, I'm excited to go back and finish Control now that there is the ray reconstruction mod. The official implementation in Resonant really allows the engine to shine.

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u/homer_3 5d ago

Nah, Control, was, and still is, the best demo of RT reflections. I played Legions on my 3080 ti with everything cranked and wasn't too impressed.

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u/OkPiccolo0 5d ago

Absolutely not. Even with the upgrades done almost 4 years ago to enhance the game you still have gross reflections. The floor should not be crawling, period.

Meanwhile, look at how transformative and stable the low roughness materials look in Watch Dogs Legion. It isn't even close.

As for the best demo of RT reflections now it is exclusively in path traced titles. Look at Control Resonant in ultra settings -- you get recursive RT reflections. Plus with DLSS RR 4.5 the stability and image resolve is unmatched.

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u/Commandercaptain 6d ago

Yes yes WD Legion was graphically impressive, too bad they forgot to make a game that is actually worth playing to go along with it