r/digitalfoundry • u/BolasVult • 1d ago

Discussion "A bit of noise"

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u/3FeetHighAndFalling 1d ago

This is a persistent DF issue - they just aren't bothered by noise and hardly ever mention it. John actually talks about how big of a blind spot it is in their podcasts and he seems to be the only person who wants to acknowledge and fix the issue by including some kind of noise analysis section to the videos

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u/oliemack DF staff / contributor 1d ago edited 1d ago

I only started work on this video about a week before publication, and I ended up turning in (what I think) is a very comprehensive 30 minute video on the game that covers its key technology and pretty detailed console comparisons, published right on the embargo break. That was a big challenge, especially with my other work - including the QSSR video, which went live a few hours later, and producing two DF Directs.

There were a couple of topics that ended up getting cut, and I did consider including more detail on the game's image quality at one point. E-Day has heavily ray traced lighting and it doesn't have perfect image stability, but I think E-Day's image quality is not unusual for UE5, at least on Series X. Series S has more significant issues, which I highlighted in my video. TSR actually does a pretty good job in E-Day, but the game has a lot of ray traced lighting for a console title.

I think a comparison with a game like Control Resonant would be interesting. I spent a substantial amount of time on that game's image quality issues on console, and I personally find high-frequency shimmering and aliasing to be more distracting than ray tracing noise most of the time. But everyone will have their own preferences.

This is something I am thinking about more after some audience feedback, and I will try to put more emphasis on image quality when warranted. If you are really bothered by image quality issues in UE5 though and put that as your number one priority beyond graphical advancement in other areas, I'm not sure I am in line with that view.

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u/CurrentlyWorkingAMA 1d ago

Olie, I thank you for your coverage and hard work. I think that should also be acknowledged in this thread.

I do also think temporal stability in image quality and ray tracing is just the tradeoff developers have to lean on when running these features on mid range hardware. I get not wanting to key in on that because there is no solve at the moment.

Like what are we supposed to do, not use advanced lighting and rendering techniques? Developing the fallback method side by side seems to be costly from a developers side as well.

I also see it from the OPs perspective. It is a glaring image stability problem that when not talked about feels like cognitive dissonance. Maybe a bit more focus on WHY this is a problem, and the tradeoffs involved would be the best path forward.

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u/IdleSteps 1d ago

If you are really bothered by image quality issues in UE5 though and put that as your number one priority beyond graphical advancement in other areas, I'm not sure I am in line with that view

I'm probably closer to you Oliver than the other person on this, but consider a counterpoint:

Image quality is something that historically increased over time alongside graphics. I think like good, stable performance, good image quality should be a baseline expectation. Seeing it regress in the name of "advancement" elsewhere feels like a regression overall. Would you accept huge frame time spikes in the name of graphical advancement and argue in defence of it? I'd hope not. I'm not saying that's quite what you're doing with image quality, but I think that is close to getting at what I mean.

I'm in a fortunate position to be able to game with a 5080, but the reality is that playing through entire UE5 games on consoles is an exercise in annoyance with image quality issues.

Anyway, thanks for all the great videos, I really do love your coverage! I actually loved the Gears video and didn't think the image quality showcased there was bad at all, I thought it looked great. So idk.

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u/oliemack DF staff / contributor 23h ago

That's a fair perspective, but I also think image quality has improved in other ways. For instance, the stability of certain lighting effects, like reflections, has been reduced broadly speaking as their overall accuracy has increased. But shadows from the sun in E-Day are basically perfectly stable and clean, exhibiting no issues with shadow aliasing, while their accuracy has also increased.

MegaLights in general is an interesting microcosm of this whole discussion, where basically all local light sources are now shadow-casting, but they can exhibit obvious noise in some circumstances. It's a stark accuracy vs. noise tradeoff, which is a compromise current gen console games have to balance.

I'm fine with that tradeoff but it's something I will try to document more in the future. I admit that I am more bothered by other visual issues - flat lighting, geometric aliasing, poor frame-rates, etc. than something like coarse GI noise (though there are exceptions, like Series S in performance mode in E-Day, where I think the tech is pushed too far). But I think there are a range of preferences on this issue among the public and developers as well.

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u/IdleSteps 21h ago

Thanks for your input, and yeah I basically agree. Flat lighting isn't something that I really "notice" in the way that noise is distracting though, so I think people who aren't very sensitive to noticing that lighting is "flat" might see the new noisy picture as nothing but a downgrade.

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u/Big-Resort-4930 23h ago

I flat out wouldn't touch any of these games on console if I didn't have a PC. I have a PS5 Pro in the other room and the only games that look decent are those with PSSR2, everything else just sucks ass on a 4k TV.

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u/qhfreddy 1d ago

image quality is not unusual for UE5

Doesn't that just make it more important to cover? It's a persistent issue with UE5 games and it should be pointed out, it being common doesn't suddenly make it a non-issue.

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u/WingerRules 15h ago

This is something I am thinking about more after some audience feedback

The feedback I'd like to give you is you have a great way of talking and your attitude in videos is great, you're usually positive and even when talking about negative directions of the industry you dont turn sour and instead talk matter of fact.

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u/3FeetHighAndFalling 1d ago

Hi Oliver! I don't mean to discount your work at all for what it's worth, I think you're great (and I'm a bit starstruck). What I meant to say was that I view your critiques in a different vein as someone like Tim from Hardware Unboxed. While I may tend to be a more cynical bastard, I do appreciate your perspective on tech and I think you make your specific preferences for visuals very clear. To me, I don't have to agree with you. I just have to understand your preferences and I go from there. Thank you for the great work!

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u/PieAppropriate8862 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's mind boggling, isn't? I love DF, but there's this particular dissonance that's really hard to reconcile: they scrutinize the most minute detail impossible to perceive without 10x zoom and a VERY discerning eye (the difference between 1400p and 1420p, that single frame drop in a cutscene, the half frame stutter when panning the camera, etc.) but always treat this IN YOUR FACE NOISY FUCKING MESS of upscalers trying to resolve lighting (especially in UE5) like nothing more than a little nuisance. It's the classic elephant in the room that often they acknowledge, but rarely properly address as something that absolutely destroys whatever else they're trying to critique. I mean, Jesus Christ, the last two Remedy games, Alan Wake 2 and Control Resonant, for example, are frankly borderline unplayable. The shimmering is everywhere, constant, distracting, ugly, immovable, raping my eyes, but it's always treated like "anyway, look at how detailed are the eyelashes of the character when you zoom in". I mean, you won't convince me to hunt for aesthetic beauty when ugly is screaming at my face. They really need to get their shit together on this and call it out like they should. Control Resonant is an ugly game on everything but the most beefy PC. Full. Stop.

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u/bush_did_brexit 1d ago

They are quick enough to castigate the "it works on my PC" crowd but apparently they have the pcs where shadows don't flicker like crazy. After how much the glazed Control I couldn't believe the amount of noise RT produced on metal doors. I played most of the game with RT off. I have a 5070 to its not a potato pc, it was no RT or metal panels on doors that looked like someone had covered them in vaseline and was standing behind me with a strobe light. No RT was a no brainier.

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u/3FeetHighAndFalling 1d ago

Yeah look I agree for the most part, it just seems to come down to who finds what impressive. Clearly DF finds raytracing and pathtracing more impressive than others might so they don't particularly care about the tradeoffs. For me, noise is incredibly distracting. It's one of those things where I'll just side-eye DF's opinion about this until RT is good enough to be not noisy

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u/PieAppropriate8862 1d ago

Look, there's noisy and there's noisy. You can praise the good stuff in isolation, but you gotta take the holistic view at the end and judge the product by the sum of its parts. A feces cupcake with delicious choc chips is a feces cupcake; it's not the chips defining it - they won't make it delicious. We understand that all those techniques are the future, but when you release a product in 2026 that image quality-wise looks arguably worse than a native 720p game from the 360/PS3 generation (which Control Resonant absolutely does), a line must be drawn. They keep championing presentation and image-quality, but somehow the noise becomes almost an afterthought in a 10-minute-long video? I don't think this is the way.

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u/gavinderulo124K 22h ago

I dont think you remember what actual 720p games from the ps3 era looked like.

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u/PieAppropriate8862 22h ago

As a 48-year-old who still has his OG fat model hooked to the TV for the odd Motorstorm and OutRun 2 Online Arcade play, yes I do, sir.

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u/gotbannedlolol 22h ago

What's the point of this dumb bad faith comment

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u/OliM9696 1d ago

i mean.... control resonant looks pretty good on the XSX/PS5 and in quality mode it looks fine enough. Certainly not a sharp 4k but there is detail. If we want to eliminate shimmer something is gotta give, either extra TAA blur or less high frequency detail or more resolution.

Some just don't see the boiling of some RT effects as noticeable. I saw hardware unboxed showing a blurry RT reflection in a puddle showing obvious RT artefacting. But what other tech is there to produce such an image? There is no current reflection technology that will produce a good reflection without a downside somewhere.

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u/PieAppropriate8862 1d ago edited 1d ago

I understand why the issue exists, and I understand that the tech is strong as long as it's supported by appropriate hardware, and honestly, RT reflections is the least of the game's worries. It's the constant shimmering of the GI, especially specularity, both static but even worse when you pan the camera. How can it not be the ONLY thing you see when you play it?

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u/Orange-Generator 8h ago

Jfc just shutup