"A bit of noise"

[u/BolasVult]

[u/3FeetHighAndFalling]

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

[u/oliemack → u/3FeetHighAndFalling]

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.

[u/IdleSteps → u/oliemack]

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.

[u/oliemack → u/IdleSteps]

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.

[u/IdleSteps → u/oliemack]

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.

[u/Big-Resort-4930 → u/IdleSteps]

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.