DF Direct Weekly

[@marklarz4399]

Digital Foundry soon: "How well does Ratchet & Clank run from an USB drive?"

[@Labib-dw1lk]

😂

[@callumdointhings5]

Steam Deck SD card let's gooooo

[@HansWurst-ht3jh]

How well does Ratchet And Clank run from an old vinyl disc?

[@Labib-dw1lk]

@@HansWurst-ht3jh how optimized is it for pregnancy tests?

[@duEprocEss_]

a* USB drive

[@MrBandaforce]

52:14 Richard's reaction to John's statement was hilarious.

[@florianwalch5639]

Love seeing Dark Alex enter his gritty revenge arc against the stutter struggle

[@deepblue8143]

Lol

[@BaronVonHaggis]

A well crafted comment, some might call it bespoke.

[@megaseppohovi789]

Stutter is taking its toll.

[@walter_the_wobot2349]

He’s definitely on a journey

[@shaecouture7480]

Punished Alex

[@F1MOSES]

I would love to see what happens if you try to play ratchet and clank on a hdd

[@deftestaphid2026]

Well you'll probably have alot of texture streaming issues like how control has massive texture pop in problems on Hdd.

[@sirbirbton]

@@deftestaphid2026 Control has texture streaming issues on every type of storage to be fair

[@IgorBozoki1989]

I will inform you. All my games are on hdd

[@bearpuns5910]

In Cyberpunk textures load in much slower and you can fall through the world. I wonder if the same stuff would happen in R&C

[@DavidAlfredoGuisado]

Now Loading

[@merk2364]

I'm concerned that there is no putting arkane austin back "on the right track" if 70 percent of the staff did actually leave. Not that they couldn't potentially still make a good imsim, but if that figure is true it really isn't the same team anymore.

[@calumbeattie5337]

Agreed. At this point Arkane Austin are close to being the Game Developer of Theseus.

[@omarsabeur9039]

Redfall 2 gonna be 🔥

[@terrythegnome2408]

yeah this game killed that studio. That is the way these things work. Great studios are being destroyed by bad management.

[@omarsabeur9039]

@@terrythegnome2408 you misspelled Microsoft

[@Doge10YT]

Reminds me of Bioware

[@balaam_7087]

I love KZbin’s closed captions, especially whenever Richard talks about ray tracing. For whatever reason youtube cannot parse what he’s saying-I’ve seen the caption read as “raid facing”, “right facing” and @15:40 in today’s video we got a new one: “weight facing”. Praise be to your epic British accent, Richard.

[@onepunchdave3216]

funny how it cant understand an English man talking English

[@orijimi]

Auto captioning can't handle non-rhotic speakers.

[@rawsnake]

Haha youre right, its the new thing "weight-facing" 🤣 Edit: Or even better "weight-racing"

[@thegoopagoop]

i think ur seeing the cultural biases of algorithms written by people from all over the world with different, often very general and transatlantic that are often ignorant of specific accents/modes of speech, like Richard's specific soft Rs and regional English accent

[@victorn1291]

@@thegoopagoop KZbin uses AI algorithms to generate the captions, which themselves can be biased yes based on the datasets the devs use to train it, but are not human in the first place. Or... DF generated the captions themselves and are just trolling us lol. From google support: KZbin can use speech recognition technology to automatically create captions for your videos. Note: These automatic captions are generated by machine learning algorithms, so the quality of the captions may vary. We encourage creators to add professional captions first.

[@trevrice436]

I only bought Prey because I played the demo! I never buy games day one but pre ordered Prey straight after playing the demo on Xbox. It's such a underated game it's so good!

[@melxb]

more like overrated

[@carn9507]

@@melxb more like overpreyted.... i dunno what i'm doing.

[@FranzKafkaRockOpera]

@@melxb It's bizarre to see people now calling Prey "overrated" because a cult formed around it and praise for it started seeping through to the mainstream several years after it came out (to lukewarm reviews and limited commercial success). It definitely is niche, though.

[@melxb]

@@FranzKafkaRockOpera idk i always seen praise for it, same for dishonored, but couldn't really get into either or understand what the fuss was about, but to each their own

[@michaelsteffensen6844]

Well it's one of the few examples of a modern immersive sim that actually lives up to the name. What I enjoy about this style of game is that it not only encourages you to think creatively about how to solve a problem, but also rewards you for doing so, instead of punishing you and trying to keep you on a predefined path, which is how most games are designed. People who enjoyed Prey 2017 really need to check out Ctrl Alt Ego. It's a awesome immersive sim that released last year and completely flew under my radar until a few months back.

[@Lilbee730]

Great episode as always guys! Worth noting to whoever is editing these (presumably Audi?) that rich's audio has a resonant ringing this week. Worth keeping an eye on in future. One way to fix this is to notch out the ringing frequency band, but a better fix is Rich moving his mic in a bit closer. He sounds roomier than usual, which means his untreated room is reverberating and he isn't making enough use of the proximity effect to overwhelm how much reverberation is perceived by the listener. :) Found it a bit distracting. But aside from that, great episode! Always a pleasure hearing you guys chat

[@thanosthemadtitan5518]

Damn this guy knows his stuff

[@SilverSai]

This looks like something my dad would write.

[@StatusQuo209]

Or just run the audio through Nvidia denoising

[@nockawa76]

Concerning Redfall, you guys didnt mention that the founder of Arkane Studio, Raphael Colantonio also left the company shortly after Prey, this guy was at the center of many good things that happened at Arkane...I'm sure the studio wasn't the same anymore after his leaving.

[@thanksbetotap]

That may be both important and true, but one should generally be cautious about hero worship.

[@birms3287]

Harvey Smith, co-creative director at Arkane who is more than capable of carrying on without Colantonio, is still at the studio.

[@TruckermanJS]

It sounds like management was an issue, and his missing direction is still worth noting. That being said I hesitate to put the problem on one man, especially when he was known for a different style of game. 70% turnover sounds like a much bigger issue.

[@Wobbothe3rd]

​@@thanksbetotap 70% of the staff left between the start of Redfall and by the time the game came out, but pointing out the importance of leadership isn't "hero worship." Individuals matter.

[@nockawa76]

@@birms3287 But in the French one... the two studio operate almost independently of each others

[@julianorozaa]

It'd be interesting to test Ratchet & Clank with a PS4-like PC, using the default HDD, a 750ti and a 8 core / 8 threads chip.

[@McScrubington]

always love to start my week with the Digital Foundry boys

[@deepblue8143]

Same, I always look forward to Mondays now thanks to this show. It feels like hanging out with friends.

[@Lishtenbird]

​@@deepblue8143 That's called a parasocial relationship.

[@jjforcebreaker]

Arkane is such a sad story. I was hoping for another single player epic. Well, (fairly) recent PREY with DLC is a very hight note to end on.

[@Door_Into_Summer]

At least it's not the main studio. The Dishonored studio still has something big in the oven! Hopefully Zenimax's obsession with live services has ended after Youngbloods, Fallout 76, and Elder scrolls online!

[@zaneplatt3533]

The reality is that their games have largely underperformed financially. They needed to move away from what they were doing to some extent. The issue is that they should have been given an I.P. ( like Spider-Man with Insomniac) rather than a multiplayer title to do. Blaming marketing for Prey's meh sales is odd because none of their games have been massive successes as they are inherently not that appealing to the average gamer, unfortunately. They make mostly great experiences gameplay wise, but their storytelling is just ok (world building is great, though). BioShock had the benefit of top-tier storytelling as well as good gameplay (the locations were also more eye-catching than Arkanes games).

[@thelittledetailscr7231]

LOVED Prey

[@kennymccormick8295]

Prey was boring.

[@wile123456]

​@@Door_Into_Summergod young blood was so awful. Loved wolfenstein as a franchise and a coop shooter could be cool, but forcing it to be a live service looter shooter doesn't fucking work. It should just be wolfenstein 3 but coop and maybe more open levels. I wonder what machine games are working on now because they got a well deserved slap after that last failure

[@5persondude]

I’m interested to see how Ratchet and Clank on Steam Deck. I have to travel for business the week it releases, and it’s much more practical to bring my Deck than lug around a big desktop

[@Solegor]

With SSD it wouldn't be an issue but i expect CPU will just get HAMMERED on there. Maybe if there is aforementioned toggle for GPU decompression - then maybe it could work

[@Secret_Takodachi]

The redfall news that cause 70% of the Arkane Austin staff to leave actually makes me hopeful that those people will go on to work with other newer studios that can actually generate the focus and vision necessary to create the next big i-sim. I'm not expecting that kind of game from whoever is left at Arkane because Arkane's problems are bigger than dev level issues.

[@cezarstefanseghjucan]

They left with Raphaël Colantonio to form WolfEye Studios that released Weird West.

[@Dale-jr7oj]

They left after prey lol

[@jakedill1304]

I wish when you're talking about old display technology, you would go into the pitfalls of it's quality degradation over time, and what you should be looking for and what you should be avoiding. Especially with CRTs, especially with computer CRTs, given that some parts on it are irreplaceable, and have a limited lifespan. I remember having difficulty finding a quality refurbished CRT in 2009, I can only imagine how difficult that could be in 2023 where supplies for the components that die with regular use can only be that much more finite... if my understanding is correct plasma displays have all sorts of issues that can crop up as well, and I can only imagine how difficult it could be to suss that out unless you're buying locally and can test it.

[@spht9ng]

CRTs are so heavy and bulky. I would only ever buy them locally. Shipping is insane for those things especially for larger displays.

[@hughJ]

Yep. I have plenty of desk room so space wasn't what got me to finally give up my CRT (I ran a 19" trinitron + 24" LCD on my PC until 2010), but rather it was the degradation of the picture. I would totally have bought a FW900 at that point, but buying a 10 year old used monitor like that is like buying a used BMW -- it's not something you want to buy sight-unseen no matter how cheap it is. Fast forward to today and you're pretty much shopping for a unicorn, and flat panel displays aren't stuck at 60hz 15+ms response like they were 15 years ago.

[@modermonkula]

Loved my Pioneer 1080p plasma, had it for 9 years before it died. Also doubled as a room heater, r.i.p

[@Vincornelis]

The fact that 70% of the staff at Arkane left is actually the most hopeful news for the future of gaming. It shows that developers are creative people who won't be forced into making things they don't want to. They'll either leave the industry or regroup in a new studio where they can make games they actually want to make.

[@panic_diver]

If 70% percent of Arkane's developers left, then its not Arkane anymore. Name of a studio doesn't make a game, its the creative and talented people who make up that studio that do. Just like all the Bioware veterans who made DA Origins and ME trilogy left then it was not bioware anymore and ME Andromeda was made by a different team even if they still branded the name of Bioware. People get attached to a company's name but its the PEOPLE who make the game, never forget that. Always look for who is the project lead, game director, creative director, level designer, writer, quest designer because some of the lower level artists who make assets and code are fairly replaceable because the guys who are leading the project have certain expectations which everyone working under them will be expected to meet. But if most of them are no longer there then they might as well change the name of the company. And the fact that 70% people turned over is frankly appauling.

[@TheOldest]

I never lost faith in what developers could produce, the consist hurdle for many questionable decisions. Indie and AA games have been carrying the torch showing what can work when devs can be creative and not driven to chase trends and poorly optimize their work.

[@cosmosofinfinity]

True, at least they were empowered enough to leave a shitty job they didn't want to do, instead of stay on it out of desperation

[@Daniel189HLL]

Obviously didn't want to work for MS

[@May1stBurst]

I will be interested to see the section in rift apart where you hit the crystals to switch dimensions. In an interview the devs said they are not keeping both dimensions in memory, they are loading the new one during the flash to white. I expect this game to use all the memory your pc has. I will say if anyone can pull it off it would be nixxes.

[@frederikgoogel5611]

Didnt they test that game on slower drives? I think spider man for example didnt load more than a sata ssd in any instance. I think normal 3.5gig is just fine for ratched.

[@May1stBurst]

@@frederikgoogel5611 yeah I think most SSDs will be just fine. Mechanical drives? That's a tall order

[@12coco100]

​@@May1stBurst The speed of the PS5 ssd is not the only reason that world loads in and out quickly. The IO does a ton of work. This IO does not exist on PC so they're probably doing it differently on PC so it can scale across all platforms and with alot of ram.

[@Dale-jr7oj]

@@12coco100 lol the speed of the ssd in a ps5 isn’t special Jesus Christ Jimmy Ryan has fooled you

[@12coco100]

@@Dale-jr7oj I literally said the opposite

[@guitarsimon1]

GT7 on PC would be great for the sim racing crowd, given that's where most of them are.

[@Mene0]

Been using Dolphin for years, but it's hard to imagine why they thought Valve would ever accept them lol

[@crestofhonor2349]

It's not on Valve though. They have keys in dolphin that shouldn't be there. It's why Retroarch is on Steam and not Dolphin

[@joesterling4299]

The DMCA forbids using anything to circumvent encryption protections. (A specific list of exceptions keeps growing in amendments to the act.) While a Nintendo cryptographic key may not in and of itself be copyrightable, its unauthorized use to decrypt game ISOs I believe would run afoul of this draconian law.

[@willianjohnam]

It's about time people understand that what makes a studio amazing are the people within it. Arkane died when most og devs left. They've built a new studio which developed a game called Weird West. That game is a really good immersive sim.

[@AJ-xv7oh]

It's not really good. It's widely regarding as an average game at best and can hardly be classed as an immersive sim.

[@G360LIVE]

@@AJ-xv7oh Yeah, I agree. What I've noticed is that when the creative people leave a studio and go their separate ways and work on their own, they tend to produce games that aren't as good. That tells me that it was specifically those people, together, who made a great game. It wasn't one person in the lead position or two people in high positions; it was the entire group. So, unless they can get the band back together, they won't get the same results.

[@goloth]

Rift Apart could've been on a PS4. It'll have no problem on PC. Other games like Dishonored 2 and Titanfall 2 have done the same instant world switching thing on previous gens. They'd only have to cut out RT.

[@Oryon7]

I don't know if we'll EVER see the full capabilities of the PS5's I/O system. Definitely not in terms of constantly streaming in/populating entirely new worlds, to be specific. It's not that the PS5 isn't up to the task, but we are STILL limited by our current storage devices - their paltry space isn't nearly enough for that specific design case. That's how you can tell that R&C:RA does NOT dump and refill the ENTIRE RAM with unique data(let's assume 10-12 GB or so) each time those rifts occurs. Even with compression, the game would blow that disc space budget REALLY quickly! The PS5's I/O(or even Xbx's) is up to par, but it's overkill for our current storage limits. At 5 GB/s, you can, in theory, blow through 500 GB worth of (uncompressed) data in little over 1.5 minutes! That hypothetical* situation is already 5-10 times larger than some of today's biggest games, data-wise. We lose our sh*t at anything above 50 GB, so just imagine. Obviously, devs would use compression, but the point is that PS5's I/O under the most EXTREME use case scenario, is SEVERELY held back by how large our games files are realistically allowed to be. Download speeds are still lagging in many regions, current storage densities are dated, and solid-state storage is expensive. All these are hurdles the gaming industry will HAVE to cross before we can ever truly see the FULL effect super-fast I/O system can have on our games. That's NOT to say they won't have a significant impact on how games are made, and what they'll allow devs to do, but the industry has much work ahead in some other weaker areas.

[@JayJayYUP]

John, If you need a proper video playback, try MPC-HC (the open source continuation of a once great video player in it's time). Lots of options, and if that doesn't work, then I'm lost as to what could possibly suffice.

[@JohnStrauss]

Mpc hc with madvr gives me amazing results! I must recommend anyone trying it for proper video playback on pc

[@JayJayYUP]

@@JohnStrauss I reached one John :-]

[@JohnStrauss]

@@JayJayYUP Yup!

[@belzebub16]

1:15:52 I have a Yoga 7 with an OLED that supports HDR and I have it turned on all the time with only very little hit on battery life. Because as you say, only when the pixels are lit very brightly they consume more power, which is only seldom the case on most videos as they are not HDR and therefor tone-mapped. Also when gaming it of course looks spectacular with very little battery hit, as you don't have bright elements all the time, but it just looks much better.

[@jakedill1304]

My biggest issue with OLED HDR is the maximum brightness in a full window always seems to be set significantly lower than maximum brightness in SDR.. which leads to automatic dimming not controlled by the picture or the content, rather the display itself.. In SDR, my C1, if configured correctly has a very acceptable maximum brightness in a full window that I can just set it to... Thus, I don't have to deal with large bright images causing the screen to dim and then brighten again to a much higher level when less of the screen is taken up. For some reason, and I really can't figure out why.. the HDR mode is somewhere between 100 to 50 nits dimmer in its maximum full screen.. and unfortunately it's a difference that is not acceptable, and somewhat difficult to set to... I wish I could just have the HDR mode full screen out to what the SDR mode does, because as it stands it makes it kind of unusable and I just I don't quite understand why.. like if there's a maximum brightness that you're allowing full screen to be in one mode.. why would you make it lower in another mode?

[@jorismak]

57:30 basically every video format after Mpeg2 is variable refresh rate in nature. Every frame has a time code. That doesn't needs to be a specific interval. It can be perfectly captured no problem, by writing the timecode for every frame. Yes, playing that back (specially on NONE vrr hardware ) is a problem. But getting a plot of when new frames are actually written or not is possible FOR YEARS now . This was even a thing when recording dvb-t or dvb-c streams , because when the signal dropped you had to account for stuff.

[@AndyGilleand]

I think AI NPCs could be useful, but not for the reason they're discussing here. While AI generated quests may be something to think about for the future, I think right now it would be possible to simply make game dialogue more interesting. How many times are you playing a game, only to hear characters repeating the same lines over and over again? They could record the base set of dialogue with the voice actors, and then use AI to expand on that, generating lines that serve a similar purpose, but feel more unique to that exact moment, and are actually think you haven't heard them say before. The first lines you'd hear in the game would always be the written lines performed by the actual actors, and the AI lines would only be used if you end up going through all the actual recorded lines. That being said, being able to train an AI to do that so well that it doesn't generate things you don't want those characters to say is INCREDIBLY difficult.

[@thorstel531]

XMP is just one part of it. With Windows 22H2 now having stuff like Core Isolation and other security features enabled by default, some not toggleable, you are losing 10-15% CPU performance vs 21H2 with Core Isolation disabled right off the bat. Then XMP is 10-15%, overclocking the CPU, ring and memory with subtiming tuning is another 15-25% depending on the game, and like Alex showed in Redfall for example, there are games that have pretty significant performance penalties from having too many threads, typically also double-digit percentage loss once it happens. Typically the increase in CPU gaming performance from normal PC with XMP enabled on mid-range memory kit to fully tuned and overclocked PC is around 20% on average, assuming the same CPU and same OS, and it is a lot of work on tuning, expensive cooling and so on, so it is within some reasonable margin, but if someone doesn't even enable XMP and also unknowingly takes the penalties from all the security nonsense that Windows now shoves by default, this margin can easily reach 40-50%.

[@layton101101]

Man I love you guys man. Love this show, keep up the excellent content boys

[@AceParty]

I just finished last week episode and DF is LIKE: "HERE ANOTHER ONE BUDDY" haha. I don't mind as I love your episodes, never missed one ❤

[@mbsfaridi]

29:13 Great discussion about Nvidias ultra low motion blur.

[@JagsP95]

its so good on the pg27aqn im surprised this much value came out of a firmware update lmao

[@LogicalError007]

AI can be given parameters to work within those that could be set by the developers that could guide players to stuff that is available or can be generated. This is basically a way to generate unique dialogues. Could work in a game which have developer hand made as well as periodically generated stuff. But yeah, it still has time to go mainstream.

[@Ayoul]

It does open the door for bad or even straight up incorrect/misleading dialogue. Does the unique lines remove the hand crafted nature people love in stories? At what point do these parameters just either make all NPC's sound the same or are just another way to make variations of baked content that's randomly picked like we already see. The only real added benefit I guess is the input from the user. If instead of pre-made dialogue choices, people can just input whatever and the game leads you to specific lines of dialogue (not necessarily AI generated), it already adds to the immersion.

[@deschain1910]

Yeah, this is what I was thinking. I think they would still be operating within parameters of varying degrees of freedom, but it just allows the player to speak naturally to NPC's instead of selecting speech options. That's the only change. I don't even think it would need to be that complicated, relatively. Like, it wouldn't have to be ChatGPT and try to have a relevant and knowledgeable response to literally anything you might say.

[@conmanjones]

I forgot all about Milo. Solid blast from the past, John

[@galakstiv]

AI generated dialogues in game are really promising. I've seen a demo from Straight4 (the new indie studio from the devs of Project CARS after Slightly Mad Studio was acquired by Codemaster) where you can talk quite freely to your engineer through the radio while driving to get relevant data. It was impressive, despite being limited to a very specific subject.

[@wile123456]

For that stuff it makes sense. But as soon as its used to fire voice actors and writers and save money for the main story and cutsscenes and side quests, that's when it becomes trash and loses all emotion and character so important in delivering a good narrative. For emmergant system driven gameplay it makes sense, but for the traditional stuff it will always be worse

[@jfolz]

Weird to hear this much negativity about the concept. I can absolutely envision character designers essentially writing a small bio for characters (or getting an LLM to do it for them) and simply defining the gist of what they want to achieve in a conversation. Whether that be giving a quest, befriending the player, starting a fight, etc. That would speed up development immensely. What's important in this context is that even big studios like CDPR reportedly are hitting a wall in terms of size and complexity of the game world. This could be a way to push past that wall and create bigger, more immersive experiences. Combined with voice synthesis you would never hear the same line repeated by the same voice actor over and over while you play.

[@Chasm9]

Of course it's the future. Some people just have a hard time embracing change and innovation for some reason. It was the same story when first automobiles came out, or first airplanes. "Experts" at that time were writing books on "how man can't fly", you can look it up. Even Thomas Edison said that movie camera is a "passing fad". He was wrong. Don't look for answers from experts, they work with limited frame of reference, which is often times too conservative to even conceive of radical shift of a given paradigm.

[@awsomeboy360]

@@Chasm9 When it start to replace people's job, it becomes a problem. Simple as that. It won't be use JUST as a tool for additional stuff.

[@JDisclmd]

@@Chasm9 yeah people losing their jobs is a good thing. Imagine being this stupid thinking companies will use this to be creative 😂 they’ll abuse it and make shortcuts to making games

[@zengamer21]

I could see that AI driven facial animation being very useful in VR games where you speak to other players and your avatar animates perfectly with your speech. Even VR chat rooms or VR meetings.

[@NeovanGoth]

Apple literally showed this today for FaceTime video calls while wearing the AR headset. Looked far less ridiculous than Zuck's legless avatar VR hell scape.

[@DavesChaoticBrain]

Prices for GPUs NEED to get to sub $500 prices...Too many people just simply cannot afford $1700 for a GPU.

[@ffrisby]

Starship Titanic tried to take the parser/speech inputs to the ultimate extreme.... and it was still lackluster with Douglas Adams hand writing some 1000s of responses..

[@MisterK-YT]

Excited to see their thoughts on Apple’s new AR headset and their new Game Porting Toolkit next week

[@hansolo6831]

Oh yeah thatll be lit

[@garethsmith6611]

DF, nor anyone ive seen yet has actually realised how big of a deal ratchet and clank on pc is. It's the first ever time a ratcht and clank game will be on a pc platform.

[@bravebiird]

ai COULD be nice for like, the absolute most bare minimum of npcs, like the nobodies walking on a street but i'm not about to do quests/content in a game directed by AI. if i'm playing a game, i want it to be made by someone and designed to be fulfilling in some way; i don't want to waste my time on machine-generated content, just the most base form of content for profit

[@AG-ld6rv]

I think a living game as a service is a lot harder to code than just a regular game. I'd predict some left due to interests and others left due to the work becoming too difficult and stressful.

[@8Paul7]

Still using my 10 year old Panasonic 55" ST50 plasma for everything - playing high end PC games, retro games, movies, watching DF retro and typing this comment. Nothing that I have seen yet has convinced me to replace it, not even 65 LG OLED a friend has.

[@cruise0074]

Yeah I’m still using 58inch Panasonic v10 model. The motion clarity is so good. It feels like a waste if I replace it with the picture quality I’m getting at 1080p and the fact it’s cost when it first came out

[@paul1979uk2000]

There are many ways that Ratchet & Clank can scale on the PC, texture quality is one area, resolution of the textures is another, dumping more of the game into memory is another option, especially as 32GB of system memory is dirt cheap nowadays. The real interesting thing is what they do on the SSD front, and clearly PC's can perform much faster than a PS5 with the PCI Express 4.0 drive, but for me, I'll be interested in seeing if they use Direct Storage, I'll be surprised if they don't, but only 1 games uses it yet and even then, it doesn't use hardware decompression, so it will be interesting to see if it supports Direct Storage and will it use gpu decompression. Another thing of interest will be the minimum specs, I'm sure I've heard that they said this game will run on the Steam Deck, if so, I'm assuming it will be the Steam Decks with a SSD in them, so not the lower end model. Also, assuming the game is a good port, which isn't a given just yet, it will be interesting to see what DF can do with scaling the game down to weaker hardware, whiles not reducing the quality, so basically seeing what performance is needed on the SSD, or if it does use more ram, how much more.

[@machinefannatic99]

i dont think the hdd is big problem for ratchet on pc the engine will simply use alot of ram on that game

[@halxen]

26:16 Alex is on the right thread here. Star Citizen is a good example of where this tech could be well utilized. Both on the dialog side as in the demo, as well as on the "quest giver" side of things given the intention of how that should work in Star Citizen. What they are attempting with their Quantum simulation, and leveraging that to generate probability volumes for the types of encounters or missions you see would be ripe for feeding those details into a generative AI with core pieces of the encounter / mission fed into the AI with weights based on the probability volume in order to have the "flavor dialog" about the mission be more unique and from that AI's (the NPC character not the generative model) perspective of the world based on the information that AI NPC has available to them. The end goal/result is a game world that has a substantially higher level of dynamicism which makes it feel "real" or "alive".

[@CptPakundo]

All this talk about how passthrough isn't useful, and I'm just left to wonder: Why not? Do we not have any means to record the screen using any arbitrary resolution and framerate? The recording itself HAS to be on the capture card itself? Whatever happened to using software like OBS for screen/window recording?

[@hiyasuamv9776]

regarding the video playback stuff, potplayer + madashi video renderer is as smooth as they come

[@alyx4436]

I think the idea with the AI, is that you would train it on all the information of the game including the hand made quests. So he/she will be able to direct you to quest locations or points on the map through conversation. Different NPC's would have different levels of knowledge so you would speak to a child and they might not be able to tell you much but then you talk to a shop owner and he knows alot about the town he is in etc etc.

[@RobVee.]

played and finished ratchet and clank on ps5 with RT performance. it was amazing. will play on PC too to see how it will stack up! can"t wait

[@AosZ]

It was mentioned that it might be good in the future for the CPU to do the decompression. That sounds like a lot of latency and unnecessary bus saturation. Drive -> small data footprint -> PCIE bus -> CPU/RAM -> large data footprint -> PCIE bus-> GPU/VRAM

[@vzerby]

To be fair on the AI generated quest there's something that exist in Skyrim that can facilitate the "generated" nature of the concept. It picks a random place on the map for you to go find and explore and clear out. If they did that and then had the AI character just take over the detailed stuff it could work how they showcase it.

[@HalfpennyTerwilliger]

It's called the Radiant AI system. Its devellopment started with Oblivion. Variants have been used in Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4.

[@dan_loeb]

radiant quests are terrible though. this system could improve dialog for them, but i'd rather not have that kind of filler content to begin with.

[@ParadoxalDream]

57:29 mpv is the only video player on PC I managed to get smooth playback with.

[@aggies11]

As for the dolphin emulator issue, it's actually a subtle but annoying one. While it wasn't a DMCA request that took down the emulator from steam, the legal issue at hand is still a violation of the DMCA itself. Specifically the draconian measure they put in that makes it illegal to decrypt a copy protected work (ie game). So it's not the decryption key itself that is protected but the very act of decryption in the first place. Which would technically make emulation for any game system that used encryption of it's games (ie all modern systems) prohibited. Simply distributing the emulator without the keys might not be enough to get around this.

[@steel5897]

But if they could build a case on that, why wouldn't they use it to get rid of Yuzu and Ryujinx? You know Nintendo is 100% seething about those, they hit them right where it hurts the most.

[@cosmosofinfinity]

Just make the keys downloadable separately from the emulator software download. I also heard someone say decryption could be built into the rom files themselves, but that would possibly mean making a new format. Probably a pipe dream, but just talking theoretical strategy here

[@DonovanMcNabb5]

Its a relief to hear thar Ratchet Rift Apart might be actually be another great pc port

[@nasser_almashjary]

OMG LOL you got me with the Pam Pam Puram. I forgot all about it till now 😂

[@alandiegovillalobos]

Love Mondays thanks to you.

[@PetrisonRocha]

NVCP doesn't have refresh rate per game control, it only lets you toggle between "maximum" and "application controlled". There is a framerate cap per game, but it's not the same thing.

[@FreakEkyth]

Tune in to your weekly show where -John preaches CRT and low persistance image with no blur -Alex begins to wonder if it is not the games that stutters, but instead his own vision, or even life itself -Richard is there as always as moral support for his 2 sons

[@hbala24]

DF Sitcom

[@blakegriplingph]

I think the issue with Nintendo going after the common keys are they _may_ be indefensible in court as such trade secrets have been spread far and wide enough, at least according to ReactOS devs when asked about leaked Windows source code. Another thing to consider is the Texas Instruments signing key controversy where they tried to DMCA various people and websites for disclosing the factored keys used to sign custom OS images into TI calculators. The EFF came to the hackers' aid and stood up for them pro bono. TI saved face and apparently did not pursue further action.

[@mjc0961]

I tried black frame insertion once. I could immediately see the black frames/flickering, it instantly gave me a headache, I had to turn it right back off. It's never been back on since. If there's some other way to improve motion clarity, I'm all for it, because BFI ain't it for me.

[@mjc0961]

35:26 - yeah, a lot like what gets described here. It was very nasty. I was on a C2, not a CX, but I wonder if it was possibly the same bug. 🤔 Maybe I will risk turning it on one more time...

[@beardalaxy]

i would love to see rift apart played on a ps4-spec equivalent PC, just to see what happens. i know it probably won't be great, but it would at least be interesting and show off nixxes' proficiency.

[@RageRaccoon]

i never thought sony would ever port one of their gems like Ratchet and Clank to pc. fingers crossed for GT in the future

[@WolverineBatman]

Ratchet is less popular than God of War and Spider-Man yet those two got ported anyway, so personally I never doubted Ratchet would get ported too. Plus that Nvidia leak hasn't missed yet and it included Ratchet.

[@stephensanders2104]

I HOPE WE GET The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery A REMAKE :)

[@TheAciditty]

Having Direct Storage in a game that I actually want to play would be nice.

[@DarqStalker]

Regarding the Xbox Showcase, it was recently revealed that there will be no CG trailers for 1st party titles. Which is going to be awesome.

[@Gravy1255]

I mean I'd hope not. They showed basically all their games in development in CG format ages ago.

[@DarqStalker]

@@Gravy1255 they'll have actual gameplay videos so that's better than CG IMO. We'll get to see what the games actually look like.

[@Gravy1255]

@DarqStalker I mean yeah that's great. At this point I'd just expect Xbox to show gameplay since 90% of their games were shown in CG in like 2019-2020.

[@G360LIVE]

@@Gravy1255 Exactly. The games they'll show have already had CG trailers, so Microsoft is basically promising nothing new and Xbox fans are clapping because they have short memories, I guess.

[@Secret_Takodachi]

I will never to stop picturing Nintendo's legal department as existing without a giant Klaxon that blares every time they see anything tied to Nintendo on the internet. That would explain why they're so quick to DMCA their own approved footage on approved videos lol

[@stephensanders2104]

THE 7TH GUEST IS GETTING A REMAKE WOW

[@mancbiker17]

That Nvidia A.I stuff would be awesome for npc’s in huge worlds where characters like shop keepers, bar staff etc just have different stuff to say whenever you engage with them.

[@voxk790]

you guys have made youtube more exciting

[@3Dant]

As much as I'd like to experience gaming low persistence/blur for the first time since CRTs were the norm, it seems like something that's unattainable for me with my mid-range budget. And by the sounds of ULMB2, it's going to stay that way for a bit longer. Maybe if frame generation gets really good then low blur will become more mainstream, because I don't see graphics cards capable of pushing 120+ FPS with high settings in games like TLOUP1 being affordable any time soon.

[@Judie-Nator]

One interesting use case could be a mix of prerecorded voice lines and AI generated voices for these NPCs. Like main quest lines are given immediately, but you can ask questions afterwards and it'll give you real time responses

[@Gillhawk]

About the Capture card, as you guys discussed, if it is not going to be used by a mass market, why not approach a custom company to make one for you? Maybe even Nvidia will help if you want to make specific videos showing off their technology. Maybe reach out to viewers and get a small number made.

[@discodan2265]

I'm optimistic we will soon have optimisations on the optimised optimisation.

[@hofter7483]

18:11 But many PS3 games were ported to PS4 and after to PC. Uncharted 1-3 were ported to PS4, Last of Us 1 was ported from PS3 to PS4 and improved.

[@retrosean199]

Mass Effect series had the hilarious/bad-on-purpose "VI" terminals complete with pre-baked dialogue of Shepard giving it a hard time. Now imagine that but for real run by a chat bot. Could be good, could be terrible.

[@xfunkypicklex]

I do agree with John that Prey 2017 was marketed poorly, however I disagree on his take on the section chosen for the demo being a poor one. I was absolutely mesmerized and so intrigued, that I had to purchase it day one. I have since replayed that game so many times. Can't praise it it enough, one of my absolute favorites and it all started with the demo.

[@billschannel1116]

It's US Robotics 56K but it's with MNP!

[@Compusemble]

Very interested in testing this game. I have a couple of Gen5 SSDs, including the Crucial T700, and I've been able to hit 33 GB/s with GPU decompression in a recent video I've published. You probably won't need anywhere close to that in R&C, but it will be interesting to see if there is any difference between Gen5, Gen4, and Gen3, and then seeing how it runs on SATA and HDD.

[@BurritoKingdom]

Yeah. I can imagine this being the first game to require a NVMe drive. That or having a NVMe cuts the RAM usage in half.

[@cellardoor9882]

Will be very interesting if it's going to work on HDD at all

[@Compusemble]

​@@BurritoKingdom maybe, but I don't see it being a requirement. Perhaps strongly recommended. Remember that DirectStorage works on all drives, and you could still get the benefit of GPU decompression on SATA and HDD.

[@evostu7814]

I have corsair mp700 gen 5 & have not noticed any difference so far over my samsung 990pro for gaming.

[@strangestecho5088]

@@cellardoor9882 There's no chance the game works properly on a HDD. Modern games require a ton of developer effort to run on an HDD and none of that was put in for Rift Apart on PS5. They knew they had the speed and decompression power, so everything was brute-forced.

[@ZacDonald]

I really appreciate Digital Foundry takes edgy questions like "Are we in a downwards spiral of declining developer output and GPU stagnation?" and has a reasonable and in depth take.

[@thanosthemadtitan5518]

Hardly edgy

[@TruthIsKey369]

Why try to make a pc game when you can make something interesting on a console? It is much more likely to be picked up by Xbox and earn something than being ripped off by Steam.

[@cosmosofinfinity]

That's not how the question asker themselves phrased it, that's just what DF listed it at in the chapters for brevity

[@igorthelight]

@@TruthIsKey369 Because publishing on any PC platform is much easier that on consoles.

[@stephensanders2104]

I AGREE I AM GLAD IT IS ONLY ON PLAYSTATION 5 FOR Ratchet & Clank NOT PLAYSTATION 4

[@austin_shock]

Growing up, our family room was huge, 45ft x 125ft with a 15ft long fireplace. We weren't wealthy, just that room happened to be too big for one room lol. Anyways, the only tvs big enough were rear protection tvs, and they were great, except for the bulbs burning out. But playing games on them while sitting on the floor close up as a kid was just the best! It was like having a personal IMAX screen lol

[@imniallg]

I would love to see a much more impactful generational leap with PC, similar to what we've seen with consoles. We've only seen more powerful GPUs/CPUs that use more power but take up more space. We've seen more modern motherboards but there layout is always the same. We've not seen anything that makes pc build easier, or compact with better results and more efficient. There's been nothing that makes your CPU and GPU work together and more efficiently that is actually of a substantial benefit. Obviously we have intel ARC and AMD SAM, but neither is worth it.

[@dannystaten5701]

Redfall was a reall no-win situation for Microsoft. Bummer situation for gamers.

[@svartholstjornuson6215]

3:29: Consoles pushing PCs further ahead technologically? My how the tables have turned. 6:00: Very relatable, John. I wish the PC would get more AAA 3D adventure collectathon titles in the vein of LBP or Ratchet and Clank. • Ratchet and Clank (2016) uses the same engine as Rift Apart and Spider-Man/Miles Morales, so why couldn't they bring it over? I'm confused. 22:37: That would be the perfect place to shoe AI interaction into a game, during those non-critical moments, and Bethesda should be the one to pop that cherry in their next Elder Scrolls title; because if it's absolute dogshit it'll blend in with the rest of the janky ass-game just fine-can't be any worse than, "Another wanderer, here to lick my father's boots. Good job." Or, "Do you get to the Cloud District very often? Oh, what am I saying, of course you don't." 44:13: Like a scene from a Tom Clancy movie. Gabe: Mr. President? [Shiggy Mi spins his chair around, hands clasped like Gendo Ikari] Miyamoto: Take us to JOYCON 1. 1:11:08: I'm jealous, John. When large OLED displays were a pipedream the Kuro was my Holy Grail.

[@10whiten99]

Would be interesting to hear DF’s thoughts on the newest Mac Pro in next week’s show. Obviously has some insane specs, and the inclusion of PCIe ports is quite interesting though I do not know what they’ll support. No Man’s Sky has gotten an Apple Silicon release and Death Stranding is due to be ported over too later in the year.

[@emlyndewar]

It’d maybe be interesting if those games do actually release. Just now, it just doesn’t seem like it’d be worth it.

[@10whiten99]

@@emlyndewar yeah, and the price you are paying is extremely high compared to consoles or PCs in order to get a comparable experience on the few games that even support Apple silicon

[@Kim-NT]

Tech things aside. Ratchet and clank rift apart is really good! loved it on ps5. So if pc players get to enjoy it as well, that is a good thing if you ask me

[@Ijsje1979]

Great show as always guys, All that talk about video capture and video playback...would you guys consider doing a more in depth look at mediaplayers i.e. a deep dive in the use of Kodi , Plex ,VLC, KMplayer , ..... Maybe even a look at HTPC/mediacenter setup possibilities/advice ? I know you guys are probably busy as is ,and it is a bit off-topic from the typical channel content but ; maybe this would be a fun project for the future when/if you have some spare time on your hands ? John must have more things to say on these topics, looking at the setup in the background and considering the things he has been mentioning repeatedly when it comes to tv's and monitors😉 Anyways,.... keep up the great work , Greetings from Belgium.

[@artemisDev]

Hi-Fi rush is probably one of the best example of good ol single player games being very viable. Microsoft published it at that, while Tango Gameworks was allowed pretty much all the leeway.

[@steel5897]

Lack of overseeing their studios does give creative freedom, but it also means a lack of quality control. That approach produced both Hi-Fi Rush and Redfall.

[@G360LIVE]

@@steel5897 ...and allowed 343i to run Halo into the ground.

[@sheldonspider86]

Almighty Digital Foundry uploads their videos in freaking 1080p??? Come on guys.

[@VariantAEC]

It's a podcast not a tech analysis I save the bandwith and watch at 144p.

[@sheldonspider86]

@@VariantAEC Yes because theres no such thing as a 4k podcast

[@VariantAEC]

@@sheldonspider86 I just saw your comment less than a minute before posting that 4K video podcast link, so it's not like I tried very hard I literally went to the top of the page searched 4k podcast and found plenty of examples in English and other languages from all over the world (I was expecting Joe Rogan's show to pop up, but maybe he doesn't upload in 4K). There are plenty of 1 plus long video podcasts that exist on YT in 4K.

[@tiernanmccarthy]

Quest 3 is interesting to me. Developing on Quest 2 you can honestly push a lot out, if you're mindful of its restrictions. They claim twice the brunt, so I'm looking forward to trying its limits.

[@revolutionrespawned]

encryption keys are not protected by copyright as far as im aware, mostly dmca though is about circumvention which is still an annoyance

[@itsd0nk]

Yeah why the hell is it so impossible for properly smooth video playback to happen on PC? Even on Mac OS, this is still an issue in almost all cases. It’s baffling to me that this hasn’t been achieved by some dev team dedicated to this goal.

[@godzillagorilla986]

@1:12:00 I cannot emphasize how gorgeous my Dreamcast looks via VGA on my Panasonic Vera plasma. The wide screen mode is unbelievable.

[@lgolem09l]

I think designing true ai chars will be very exciting for quest designers. They can feed them not only information,but also character traits, and if humans behave like assholes to them,they will just get annoyed reactions like from a normal human. And i think they can also pretty easily solve the problem of persistence.if there is one thing that LLMs are good at,it's summarizing information. So at the end of each conversation, a current short summary of the relationship with the player could just be saved as text to be fed to the model at the beginning of the next conversation. The design process of prompts will be very interesting there. I also think that character voices can be custom made. Just let a voice actor invent a character that talks a certain way, make some trainign data with general or specialized phrases, and there willl still be a lot of human intent. They could even make up characters not for a specific game,but just to sell as assets. I think this development is pretty much inevitable, just not in the next 10 years probably. But after that? Sure. By that point people will probavly be so used to talking to ai avatars that choosing dialogue options in high budget games will seem archaic

[@spookyman9994]

the video is like 30 min , how did you comment 2 days ago ?

[@lgolem09l]

@@spookyman9994 patreon early access

[@jfolz]

Persistence really isn't an issue. All they need to save is the conversation in text form. That can then be replayed to get the model into the same internal state as before. And I think 10 years is too long. After the big push with GPT versions that got insanely big, we're already seeing models get smaller again, to the point where you can run llama quantized on a laptop CPU. Right now the performance impact is probably too big to run in the background, while also running a game at the same time, but it's not that far off.

[@fensoxx]

For us old school CRPG gamers who grew up on D&D in the 80s, I can imagine a perfected game where that bartender does indeed meander in his conversation. And you could indeed spend an hour blabbing about nothing. But if your roll playing some adventurers in Baldurs Gate or some other city you could say “Hey, any work around for someone not afraid to get their hands dirty?” And things could organically spiral out from there. That is a game I have dreamt about for a very long time. If it could be pulled off in line with the quest design it would be incredible.

[@GodisFrisky]

Favorite time of the week. Keep up the great reporting, DF Team.

[@ErenTheWarcriminal]

Who put the Snapchat filter on John lmao

[@wiltisdabest]

what was the chances I randomly scrubbed to y'all talking about my favourite vocal group Boyz II Men

[@romefox]

The only reason for Dolphin to be on Steam was for the Steam Deck, I believe. They shouldn't have tried to release on Steam anyway, not worth the scrutiny and potential law suits, all for steamOS. I mean, were they gonna charge for it? What was the goal aside from making the few existing steamOS users happy, if that even was a motive.

[@cyberrb25]

43:35 for those saying that the emulation makes the case because the Switch isn't strong enough - many of the computers that are used for Switch emulation are many times more expensive than the Switch itself. Most mid-range computers can maintain the whole TotK game IN RAM for Christ sake! Of course computers will be stronger and look better than the Switch, provided they don't do some weird hardware tweaks that make process execution hard to BC in the future, therefore making subsequent hardware generations non-compatible (or hard/expensive to make it so) with Switch games.