DF Direct Weekly #87: Witcher 3 'Next-Gen' Reveal, Pokémon Violet/Scarlet Performance Problems

[@halo3boy1]

whats crazy about the pokemon situation is at some point during development, a group of people sat around a table and looked at the performance and technical issues and gave it a green light anyway.

[@gucky4717]

Same with Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 i suppose..

[@timytimeerased]

That doesnt work that way, armchair dev 😂

[@bulletpunch9317]

Im emulating it at 15fps. Its awesome.

[@BigBoss-kk4sr]

The same could be said about any game with shader stutter like sackboy

[@kierenbuckley370]

Nintendo gave them the green light because they want pokemon for every holiday regardless of how bad it is

[@goob8945]

I kinda want the Christmas episode to have everyone. Obviously that is a scheduling nightmare but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the entire team together

[@mmo5366]

That would be brilliant... even if it was just say ten minutes at the end or start or something. And they all talk about how über Biomutant is (again)

[@goob8945]

@@mmo5366 instead of BIOMUTANT WHEN? they can reminisce on BIOMUTANT THEN

[@mmo5366]

@@goob8945 ha ha perfect

[@MulliganSnicker]

Rich is a gem. This trio is undefeated

[@ThePropaneSalesman]

Only one can serve as his apprentice though.

[@ernestoherrera703]

A feature Rich trio.

[@aladdin8623]

They cover rtgi a lot, but again miss to mention the total underrated ray traced ambient occlusion. This effect is crucial to approach realistic graphics. Otherwise you get a lot of light in places, where it actually does not belong. This can be seen in Miles Morales Spider Man. Despite using global illumination and ray traced shadows, the shadowing is not correct but lit, where it shouldn't be. It is about time to replace SSAO and HBAO+ with a more natural looking technique. The minimum should be the more modern Distance field ambient occlusion at least.

[@maaax1173]

@@aladdin8623 Doesn‘t RTGI cover the areas that RTAO would? It‘s simulating bounce lighting, and the effect of Ambient Occlusion is exactly what GI would be doing anyway

[@alexsilva28]

Found Audi's alt

[@deadlyydude5522]

I believe CDPR brought on the modder who worked on the Witcher HD rework mod to work on the next gen update. The mod basically replaces the base game textures with higher quality ones, whether this is in the game or not for the update remains to be seen

[@NicolasSilvaVasault]

that's quite lazy tbh, i also heard about that too, if that's the case, how in the world took them so long to implement this patch if it was already done by someone else?

[@reecea5432]

​@@NicolasSilvaVasault Why is it lazy? Modders and hackers get hired all the time. Plus you're also assuming this is the only update based on this guys comment.

[@NicolasSilvaVasault]

@@reecea5432 and what else we're expecting? is a next gen patch, 60fps, 4k, better textures, ray tracing, something already done by a modder, nothing wrong or anything there, my complaint is that cd projekt is taking an stupidly long time to implement this patch, when has already been done by a modder

[@jemandetwas1]

@@NicolasSilvaVasault It was a texture mod, nothing more

[@reecea5432]

@@NicolasSilvaVasault It's probably more that they pulled resources towards cyberpunk. I am sure they have reasons as to why things have taken longer as opposed to just sitting there.

[@davemoore7808]

Alex made the seven proxies joke and nobody reacted. My heart goes out to Alex and all of Germany.

[@FeisarX]

Richard you kind of immediately shot down your own point at 32:00 by immediately bringing up AMD afterwards. The 7900XTX is launching at the same price as the 6900XT did. After ridiculous inflation.... and is being compared to a 6950XT in the numbers you've seen. It can be done.

[@Melontheyoutuber]

He clearly said the 7900XT is the 6800XT equivalent and it jumped from $650 to $900.

[@NGuy-kz2eh]

The difference is that last gen, for both AMD and Nvidia, the "2nd highest perf" cards were very close to the highest perf cards (within 10%) while being substantially cheaper with MSRPs around 700 (E.g 3080 vs 3090 and 6800XT vs 6900XT). This time, 700 dollars is not getting you anywhere near the top end of performance. With the 7900XTX AMD has certainly improved price to performance at the thousand dollar price point vs the 6900XT, just as Nvidia has done with the 4090 vs the 3090, but that's the thing... The 90 series last gen was not where the value was, they had very poor price to performance compared to the 80 cards. We'll have to see how things shake out but the 7900XT being a good chunk slower than the XTX despite only being a hundred cheaper isn't a good sign.

[@budthecyborg4575]

The cost of silicon has gone up, yes, but a 50% price increase on a $200 chip is not a 50% price increase on a $700 card, at worst the 4080 should be $800, not $1,200. At this rate it's more likely Nvidia is trying to raise their entire profit margin by 50%.

[@yellowblanka6058]

This - they're definitely taking advantage to artificially pump the price of their cards. They're going to steadily price people out of PC gaming altogether.

[@Vertignasse82]

@@yellowblanka6058 One of my friend was a massive PC elitist and snubbed consoles all his life. I saw him recently and he bought a Series S and a PS5. It was a money thing. He could no longer justify upgrading his PC for crap gains. So instead he bought two consoles.

[@Vertignasse82]

@@runningbear6391 I agree completely. I was born in the 80's and ever since the Snes generation I have had both a console and a PC at any given time (thanks to my parents). By my late teens and early twenties, I got into the habit of getting a console at launch, then upgrading my PC progressively during that console's lifecycle and sharing my play time between both platforms. Over the recent years, at a time where I earn enough money to buy any electronics I want, I find myself prioritizing my console setup (currently the PS5). I have a Sony A80J in the living room and that's where I do most of my gaming. I have a good ultra-wide, curved monitor on my PC, but that's mainly for work, apart from the odd RTS game.

[@AngelosONe]

The problem is not just that silicone has gone up….but everything around it. Inflation and shortages, plus disruptions in the global movement of goods. Everything just costs more to make and ship. Anyone that expected prices not to reflect this reality was living in delusions.

[@nimbydimby]

Everything has gone up by 10 - 25 percent YoY - it's called inflation. It's a pity tech YTers rarely mention it and care to explain it.

[@Mikechain97]

John hit the nail right on the head you seriously couldn’t sum it up better about Pokémon scarlet and violet. Someone higher up NEEDS to make the decision to have a dev team who’s primary focus is to work on the performance of these pokémon games, it has been a growing problem since their transition from sprites to 3D.

[@TheCentralScrutinizerAgain]

as an outsider to pokemon, it`s shocking to see such a huge franchise treated so shoddily.

[@fedeprati6]

The Pokemon franchise occupies only a SMALL part in Nintendo's business. Until the game doesn't cause crshes on the hardware, it's a Game Freak matter weather upgrading the game or not before its release... and appearently they won't have to do it if these games are going to be bought like the previous ones

[@PlasmaNugget]

@@fedeprati6 While I agree that it remains largely a Gamefreak problem, saying that the largest media franchise in the history of the world is a small part of Nintendo's business is naive. Remember that in Pokémon's limited existence (1996) it has made more money than Mario and Mickey Mouse in their entire existence, combined. The Pokémon games are big movers of Nintendo's consoles and have been for over 2 decades.

[@Synathidy]

@@PlasmaNugget It's one of the strangest contradictions in gaming. Pokemon, which has printed money unlike anything ever known in gaming, is somehow the most technically handicapped game franchise, consistently producing games that are 10 years behind the times in overall technology and don't even run their outdated software smoothly much of the time nowadays. There isn't really any excuse for it. I liked Legends: Arceus, but I don't foresee buying any other pokemon games for years. Their consistency in releasing good pokemon games has evaporated. I blame the fact that these games are made for kids and therefore there is no risk of ever losing their market. No risk, no standards.

[@Synkhan]

@@Synathidy Absolutely agree. Its one of the most negatively ironic things in gaming ever.

[@r.daneel.90]

Seems like people already forgot the downgrade of the Witcher 3. I would really like to see some of those details back.

[@xxx-pliskin-sniper-xxx8538]

Yeah ☹️ the initial reveal was gorgeous

[@brunomiiguel]

That engine doesn't even need an upgrade it looks next gen with mods really

[@r.daneel.90]

@@brunomiiguel not really, the Witcher is one of those games where the artistic vision compensates a tech muscle that was good, but it wasn't top notch.

[@Vincornelis]

Definitely agree on the baked vs dynamic time of day lighting. Games just look better when an artist controls the exact look of a scene and can place both the light sources and the objects in exactly the right place for maximum impact.

[@samza9622]

You obviously haven't seen Ray traced global illumination it's miles better looking then baked lighting trash.

[@Maryokutaizero]

Yeah, I remember seeing comparisons between, was it Spider-Man on PS4 and PS5? Most cutscenes looked better on PS4 because they lightning was custom tailored to every scene.

[@soulless_swede]

To each his own, my personal opinion is that it depends on the type of game. For games with linear levels and scripted set pieces I completely agree, but for big open world games where you can literally spend hundreds of hours in the same map the world would just feel much less alive if it's not dynamic. I can't imagine playing games like Skyrim or GTAV with a static time of day and no dynamic weather.

[@lynackhilou4865]

Well it depends on many many things , like type of game , the scene , the graphical effect , the amount of effort , the overall vision and intended look for the game...etc and i'd say the smaller the game and the more there is " a personal touch up ", the more likely it is for baked solutions to look the same or better , for example games with a fixed camera angle will probably look the same with baked lighting as they'd do a dynamic one , while with an open world game is more likely to suffer from baked lighting because its shortcomings will become noticeable like light leeking , improper shadowing and coloring and all that , plus what's more realistic isn't always artistically better , but you have control over the dynamic systems , so you can adjust them to look like the baked one Also it could be that people have different prefernces , for example metro exodus EE looks undoubtly better than the original release without RT but since the lighting is more realistic it made certain scenes brighter ( and some scenes darker ) and some ppl didn't like that change Also we have to keep in mind that many of these ports with enhanced graphics aren't always made by the devs themselves but rather a separate studio , so it's not really the problem with dynamic systems but rather to the porting team it may have looked the same because they didn't design the game and may not know the exact intent of the scene and why it looks a certain way

[@BerryBurgerMeister]

I sometimes wonder what a game could really look like if they made more it like old games super linear and less large levels. I feel like the instinct to make every thing more open world and huge has stunted us. Fidelity and Frame Rate should be less of an issue at that point as well. Edited: would to should.

[@Neoxon619]

Honestly, I wonder how mainline Pokémon would be in the hands of Nintendo EPD or MonolithSoft.

[@corey2232]

It would be basically unrecognizable in comparison. Biggest difference in development would be that if Nintendo realized their team was too small or lacked resources to accomplish their goals, they'd go out & fix that. Then if the time frame they set ended up didn't allow them to meet their standards, they'd delay it. Remember, pre-BotW the highest a Zelda game EVER sold was 8.5 million units. Yet the time, resources & dev teams invested in making the newest entry (BotW) the best it could be & dwarf what Pokemon gets, even though it can sell 15-25 million units with ease.

[@exileut]

Weird Xenoblade Chronicles 3 came out the same year.

[@kahp1072]

I think just the fact that Nintendo could actually develop Pokémon, would make a big difference.

[@voyddd]

W1 & W2 potion system was based on original books however it meant players were saving potions for "special" fights and it was hard to predict when you would need any. So many players would load game after hard fights to use potions in advance. That is why W3 introduced new potion system which maybe was not book accurate but was much more gameplay friendly.

[@sleepyatdawn7648]

Yeah, the potion system in W2 was pretty arbitrary and useless. How can you prepare for a battle you don't know its happening?

[@Vincornelis]

In terms of diminishing returns in the GPU market. I'm actually waiting for it. We've had too many technical revolutions at once. We've gone from 1080p 60fps rasterised being the standard to suddenly jumping up to 4K, up to 120fps. Introducing Raytracing, AI image reconstruction and AI frame generation. The market desperately needs cooling down and stop chasing the next thing and just make the current thing work at a reasonable price.

[@deviouslaw]

The power is there, we need devs to make more games that actually scale with the new cards other than resolution and framerate.

[@ZeitGeist_TV]

That's unfortunately not how the market works with generations though, especially in regards to the competition. Console generations as well have gotten longer and longer and this generation will be no different because two years in and there are very few games that showcase the true power of these consoles. Many games still ship on last generation making them single threaded games vs SMT having duplicate gaming assets that rely on platter based hard drives meaning they don't take full advantage of the NVMe SSD's of current generation. FSR 2.0 usage and Fidelity FX were just launched on current gen consoles the second year into the cycle. It's crazy how the market in regards to gaming is essentially play your last generation games much better which while I love it considering my backlog it's crazy is sad that it won't be until late 2023-2024 that we will see next generation as the platforms of choice vs cross generation. 2024 might be when we finally get a Switch successor which is what I've been waiting on even more.

[@joemarais7683]

The current thing will never be a reasonable price with Nvidia leading the market. They will continue to raise the price until they accommodate only the rich and the data center customers, and that’ll happen if there are advancements or not. What you’re asking for will only put more money into Nvidia’s pockets and nothing else.

[@TerraWare]

@@joemarais7683 Let's hope the 7900XTX is exactly what AMD are portraying it to be. Its nice to see the pc gaming market say no to the 4080 and how it's priced.

[@Vincornelis]

@@joemarais7683 they can keep trying to push the current thing and there'll always be a market for it but with every new card you do get more performance per buck and there's a definite crowd that has no direct interest in the latest thing but just wants something that exceeds consoles at a decent price knowing that'll be good enough to play most new games on for the next 5 years.

[@armintamzarian4256]

Credit to Microsoft for lowering the (already attractive) price on Series S this black friday and possibly on holidays. It can be found all over Europe around 229€ which is INSANE in price/performance. Specially in these days where everything gets more and more expensive. Much appreciated.

[@yellowblanka6058]

"You were born a no-goodnik and you'll die a no-goodnik Tamzarian"

[@thedude8128]

Desperate times calls for desperate measures...

[@chrisbent5734]

Rich's answer to the final question had me crying from laughter.

[@megapro125]

"the guy gets covid like he's the monkey from outbreak" lmao

[@vincentjohnson7175]

"He's like the monkey from Outbreak" 🤣

[@MarkSynthesis]

Gears 5 is technical masterpiece (and a pretty excellent actual game on top of that), and still one of the best looking third-person shooters ever made. Maybe it's just the fact that it's inherited a legacy of that rather distinctive "massive shoulder dudes" Unreal Engine aesthetic of years past, but the Coalition is basically who I immediately think of when it comes to "Really, really good UE-driven games."

[@TerraWare]

The expansion looks real nice too. Hivebusters. Gears Tactics is also a really nice looking and generally good game.

[@FortWorthRaised]

All the Xbox One Gears games were top tier, I just feel like the meme of Xbox having no games made people forget they existed.

[@MarquisDeSang]

All I want to know is : will FSR3 be available on Series X and PS5?

[@seizonsha]

The weakness of gears 5 is the cringe characters,story and execution.

[@ZeitGeist_TV]

@@MarquisDeSang Considering that FSR is open source and FSR 2.0 was even included GDKX for support on Xbox One consoles not just the Xbox Series X/S and PC it's very likely that FSR 3.0 will be utilized at some point on at minimum current generation consoles.

[@SimplexPL]

A very famous Witcher 3 texture mod will most probably be included, made by HalkHoganPL

[@piotr78]

@@Robbl "years ago", exactly. I wish we moved on instead of constantly updating perfectly good looking games.

[@huaky24]

I think he was working with cd projekt red directly, i recall halkhogan mentioning something about they're actually using his textures for the update.

[@snakebebop]

@@piotr78 the Witcher 3 looks fine on it's own but when you compare it to what it once looked like back in it's initial gameplay reveal then it looks like shit

[@SimplexPL]

@@huaky24 That's what I meant. It was initially a W3 mod and it will supposedly be included in the remaster.

[@gameguy301]

so tired of this paranoid delusion in discussions that DLSS / FSR will make devs not care about optimization: 1. worse crap like checkerboarding and TAAU is already ubiquitous dont get mad at better tools just for being a new bandaid to the same problem. 2. dropping the internal resolution only really has significant impact on per pixel shader cost, any other failure of your pipeline to run smoothly will still completely fuck your performance raw. 3. optimization is rarely "I did coding magic and now its runs twice as fast" it is often "we shaved off a little here and there in ways we hope you don't notice" which is an excellent description for reconstruction in general. 4. at an individual level effects like ambient occlusion and screen space reflections have used reconstruction for over a decade and we called that little trick optimization, now when its the whole screen suddenly we revoke that title? 5. frame generation needs a high and stable input framerate to avoid visual artifacts, stuttering, and uneven / unplayable input lag. 6. as if devs ever needed an excuse to release shitty unoptimized games in the first place

[@killerfugu2659]

What baffles me the most is the sheer amount of people saying "it runs fine for me" the amount of people willing to flat out lie to defend their favourite game, or just have eyesight that bad they can't tell when a game goes what must be sub 20fps pretty often is beyond me.

[@sadgiantsfan3690]

Watched my friend play the new Pokemon game and it legitimately gave me a headache with it's framereate issues. I've never experienced that with a game and I'm not some snob who can't deal with frame drops. Gamefreak should be embarrassed for putting out such as terrible product

[@dustinharter1388]

I would love to see a video from you guys explaining why “Breath Of The Wild” works so well on Switch, while Pokemon Scarlet/Violet does not. Is it as simple as just needing more time, or is there a lot more happening behind the scenes? Love the work you all do. Thank you

[@GlowingOrangeOoze]

I'd love that kind of video too, but that sounds more like investigative journalism than tech analysis

[@_TheElMan]

Nintendo themselves made BOTW, which says it all

[@_TheElMan]

With all this talk of refunds etc. I wonder if Nintendo will take Pokémon back in-house for the next game?

[@strangestecho5088]

Gamefreak's in-house game engine is trash and lacks a modern rendering pipeline. Their technical expertise is poor, they're understaffed, and they rush development of their games.

[@MassiveHappyClapper]

@@strangestecho5088 Pokémon is the world's most successful entertainment franchise. They should easily be able to attract an excellent AAA Dev to make a great game.

[@Dellphox]

I'm looking forward to the Witcher 3 update, it was the game that got me to finally build a gaming PC years ago.

[@MrMrTravman]

I just hope the PC improvements are good. I don't need too much of a reason to reinstall the witcher 3 to be honest.

[@AndyGilleand]

Nanite is effectively a dynamic LOD system. The weird thing is that Epic seemed to be focused on targeting "one polygon per pixel" type of detail. While that's a cool use of the tech, I don't think it's the smartest use of it. What I would suggest Epic do is make the detail level dynamic as well. What this would mean is that in the same way dynamic resolution can be used to stabilize GPU frame render time, Nanite could effectively be used for the same idea on the CPU. This means you could target any frame rate, and Nanite would scale the detail level automatically to reach that target, while dynamic resolution would also scale in the same way to determine the ideal resolution for your performance target, based on your hardware. If this could be achieved, you could potentially have almost perfectly optimized performance on just about any hardware configuration there is, and for any type of game. So not only would 60fps be possible on Unreal 5, but it may be the best and most consistent way to achieve it, if they would tweak Nanite to work this way.

[@kokumosu]

I know for a fact that the PC version of the Witcher 3 wont be as drastic of a difference because we have had mods already integrate that experience for us. But having Ray Tracing will be nice natively. Currently RTGI does a really good job, but i have found issues when it came to LODs becoming grey when using it. As far as the integrated mods, there has not been any word on others, but The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project by HalkHogan might be built into it natively from what ive seen . CDPR reached out to him regarding "cooperation" So thats always good to see Devs working with modders internally.

[@griffgames9538]

Q: Why is CDPR upgrading The Witcher 3? A: They're going to Polish the game.

[@CharcharoExplorer]

I strongly disagree with baked vs Dynamic Lighting. Sure, a well done baked lighting pass can look better, but RT enables us to do even the dynamic lighting just as well. And in a static, pre-baked world you lose way too much for it to be worth it.

[@arnuff]

I can't believe Alex's "behind 7 proxies" reference did not land 😥

Yeah it was a good one but he missed it by 1 😅

[@corey2232]

My biggest issue with Pokemon is that unlike Cyberpunk, it doesn't have the visual look or scope to justify such awful performance! Cyberpunk was pushing a crazy large vertical world with tons of NPCs & lots of detail, high quality textures & models, etc. while Pokemon looks about as vanilla & bland as you can get... Everything's as basic & empty as possible, presenting a look & scope inferior to even Skyrim (a decade+ old game that looks & runs better on the same hardware). And all this for an established IP that's so damn popular, it can move 15 million units on a lazy, low effort gen 4 remake sold at full $60 price! Cyberpunk was an entirely new IP, and the first non-Witcher game CDPR ever made (a first person one at that)! What's Pokemon's excuse? They're not trying anything groundbreaking or pushing the genre forward, they're just trying to catch up to the genre! Everyone's patting them on the back for simply giving us an open world... ok, that's cool, but all I can think is "about time." Notice how BotW did that same thing, except it actually helped advance the genre forward & try new things. GF is just trying to slowly catch up via half step iterations each release, hoping to eventually get to a point the genre was at over a decade ago. All for a franchise that has raked in billions from the games alone... That amount of money SHOULD allow the IP to give us the best of EVERYTHING, yet instead we settle for low effort, rushed out, lack of features/innovation, & "kind of functional."

[@AlexAnteroLammikko]

I think, realistically, its the dev cycle. Arceus came out in January and now this game is coming out and its the same dev team whereas Skyrim was worked on for something like a decade. Not justifying anything at all, but they have to increase these dev times and expand the team. This game expanded the scope but kept the time frame.

[@cakeisamadeupdrug6134]

I do find it frustrating how quick people are to blame the hardware when Xenoblade looks and performs better as an open world game on both the Switch and *Wii U*

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@AlexAnteroLammikko This, but also realistically, I can't see them expanding their staff/increasing development time when it's been proven time and again that the public will lap up any mainline entry in the series regardless. Why put in more effort at more expense when you can phone it in and still profit? Until the mainstream gaming public at large gets some standards for game quality, things like this are going to keep happening. I don't condone/agree with it, but it's something that will require the bulk of the gaming public to give a damn, and they've been shown time and again that they don't.

[@corey2232]

@@AlexAnteroLammikko Oblivion came out March 2006, while Skyrim came out November 2011, so not quite a decade. But I agree, development time is certainly a major factor imo. Difference is Skyrim came out on weaker hardware a decade ago & was trying to revolutionize the genre being a trend SETTER, while Pokemon is working with the knowledge/foresight from years of games in the genre, still not even close in terms of visuals, scope or ambition to the countless games that came before it (all on more capable hardware). It's so bad it's almost offensive at this point. You cannot tell me a company that has made billions on the games alone can't afford to put forward better results, just trying to imitate what has worked elsewhere. Again, look at Nintendo's *FIRST* attempt to make 3D Zelda open world. They went all in after one game. The world, the visuals, the presentation, the environments, the physics, the mechanics, all while trying to ADVANCE the genre, not simply imitate what already worked. And Zelda is a series that makes drastically less money than even the cheapest Pokemon game. Pokemon is slowly iterating to even be in the conversation of modern open world games. *Sword & Shield* - here's some open zones & you can freely rotate your camera (it's actually embarrassing they were so proud of something so simple). *DLC* - here's more open areas from start to finish! *Legends Arceus* - here's bigger open zones, now where Pokemon actually roam around like real wildlife you can interact with! *Scarlet/Violet* - We finally got here, it's all open world now! Just don't try to go into buildings, that feature is for the next game!

[@corey2232]

@@cakeisamadeupdrug6134 Exactly! People like to compare Switch to 360, but forget the Wij U was actually more powerful than the 360/PS3, & Switch is more powerful than Wii U. Just because the system is under powered compared to its contemporaries, doesn't mean it's not capable in its own right. Even a 540p, heavily cut back version of Witcher 3 is *MILES* ahead in visuals compared to Scarlet/Violet, yet runs better. Monolith has made 3.5 Xenoblade games during Switch gen alone, 2.5 (Torna) being completely new. All of them, including a Wii remaster, look & run better than Pokemon, have much better production values, and only sell about 2 million tops! To highlight the lack of effort even further, Pokemon has the most basic, cookie cutter story, characters & dialog ever, yet they still do silent text boxes. Xenoblade actually has a long, detailed, cohesive narrative with tons of dialog & cutscenes for a 100+ hour game (meaning way more voice acting would be required), and they spend the money for voice acting! People like to say "but that means too many languages to translate!" So what?! The characters & story are as simple as they get, translating to 100 languages would be like 1 day in the studio compared to Xenoblade... yet the 15-25 million selling game opts not to do it 😑

[@radiorah768]

Depending on how you view the Pokemon situation, it's close to Cyberpunk levels. If the game wasn't named Pokemon, it would be laughed and ignored off the shelf.

[@thiagovidal6137]

The audio in this podcast is so low that is hard to listen to in a public transport or even at the office. Believe or not, just the ambient air con is loud enough to make it hard to listen to this. Can you guys boost it up a bit somehow?

[@TheNerd]

I'm watching this podcast since it's release and I just realised, that Alex has a scar like a true RPG WARRIOR. I bet in real life, he is secretly a german Paladin, serving somwhere in the Oberes Mittelrheintal! It would explain his passion for graphics since the area is gorgeous!

[@EmperorOfMan]

DLSS question sounds more philosophical than practical. Does the game look good and run well? Why should care what AI is doing behind the scenes?

[@itsd0nk]

The unreal 5.1 updates look absolutely amazing. It’s finally looking like something ready to ship games with!

[@nomad_20XX]

Funnily enough, the og serious sam games from 2001 supported up to 128x anisotropic filtering, as well as other somewhat obscure features like ati's truform, I don't think I ever bothered checking how much of a difference that made though

[@kierenbuckley370]

what is even worse is people are defending Pokemon preformance issues saying it doesn't matter, it's overblown

[@90lancaster]

Perhaps GPU connectors should be required to be screwed in like a DMI connector, or have spring clips on them like some olfd Printer leads had. Something that can't just be pulled out. But then you might want a "break away connector" on it then so as to prevent tripping over a lead ending up with your PC on the floor. I do worry for people who have External GPU clusters causing a really nasty potential fire hazard though. or anything that gets stupid how being anywhere near a laminate that can melt and catch fire or a carpet that could burn. One reason I often had my PSU mounted on a wire rack or sitting on a metal tray. I was genuinely afraid they were going to set the carpet alight they were so hot at times.

[@simonrockstream]

Scorn was really hurt by those stutters.... a real shame. Really put a dent in my experience with the game. Loved every second, except all those constant stutters..

[@mattstarf4294]

The guy who was talking about DLSS, I think was referring to DLSS and AI being a substitute for pure performance!

[@steel5897]

But still, the end product that matters is what's on your screen, no? It always come back to that. It's such a weird question/concern to have. Any technology that enables hardware to be more efficient and deliver a better quality final image is welcome. It's not like developers will deliberately sabotage their games.

[@mattstarf4294]

@Steel I agree with you, I'm not sure anyone needs more pure performance to run legacy games anymore! That being said I hate proprietary tech and DLSS is exactly that

[@kelownatechkid]

Bad faith interpretation of the last question. He was really clear about his point, he thinks that devs are not optimizing as much because they can rely on DLSS. Kind of crazy how you guys all completely avoided the actual text of the submitter!

[@Deano2point0]

I honestly believe that the main problem with the Pokémon games is that underneath it all they are still simply scaled up DS games. The engine and the tool chain needs to be thrown away, and they need to start from scratch. I think this is the issue John alluded to regarding the development team too (along with the crazy release schedule). They're lacking in skills and experience (clearly) for making games for the big screens. Yet the Pokémon company have nearly unlimited resources to throw at this problem to fix it, and they haven't. I don't understand.

[@DavidCowie2022]

They're going to sell millions of copies even if they do a half-arsed job. Why should they bother doing it right?

[@Deano2point0]

@@DavidCowie2022 Very true. Therein lies the problem I guess.

[@QuackEasy]

@@Deano2point0 There will never be a polished Pokemon game, The Pokemon Company decided that we needed 3 games in 12 months. At least this time the gameplay got good reviews, there is still plenty of consumer goodwill leftover from Arceus as well. On a side note, I personally think gen 9 art style is too realistic in ways. The difference in the detail levels for the characters and environments contrast too much for me, making everything look bad to me.

[@sylwester7]

I'm still learning english. I've been trying to continuously repeat "quantifiably identified" for few minutes now and I think I already impressed my cat. Thanks Rich! :D

[@-Grifter]

I’m more impressed that your cat also understands English?!

[@soldi1135]

In-game time in Ghost of Tsushima slows down during dawn and sunset, cause devs knew it's the most beatiful time of the day.

[@Sipu79]

My prediction for GPU pricing at nvidia is that when competition forces the 4080Ti to come out it will take this price slot of current 4080 and the cards below will be bumped down

[@mariuspuiu9555]

only for the founder edition cards. maybe...

[@Sipu79]

@@mariuspuiu9555 MSRP of course, which is a lie

[@vivid8979]

I really want them to dissect Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and make Gamefreak reflect on what stuff they are feeding their die-hard Fans (Fair enough since most of them will eat it anyways)... But I want the best for them, this poor people doesn't deserve this kind of treatment..

[@ckoerner]

The disappointment in the latest Pokemon game is due in part to how much love and admiration folks have for the past games. The solid, fun, technically competent games. It's frustrating and sad. I have hope that the folks in charge are listening and some of the more egregious issues are resolved with some software updates. The game is solid and pushing the series in a bold new direction and I hope the folks at GameFreak get the support they need.

[@CYB3R2K]

I've mentioned on Pokemon reddit page how poor the game looked and that it was unacceptable for 2022 standards even on the switch and that if more people stopped buying the game it would've been a much better game the next time. Got removed after I've received only backlash comments... Be ready for another decade of Pokemon mediocrity.

[@KonradGM]

IT's not about loving shimering, it's about hating the artifacts brought by TAA, such as over sharpening, loosing clarity, introduciton of ghosting, introduciton of shimering in stand still scenes etc. I have lack of AA as any person, but don't pretend and tell me RDR2 looks good with TAA, or that older games such as GTA V look better with TAA instead of high MSAA (yes i know different rendering and performance, but talking abotu pure image quality)

[@davidgarcia-rv3fs]

the older man on top is the reason why Digital Foundry is Digital Foundry, honestly.

[@monkfishy6348]

An $800 RTX 4060, rebranded as a 4070Ti does not make ANY sense.

[@paul1979uk2000]

The DLSS and FSR image and frame boosting tech isn't a problem if it replicates the frames and image of what it's trying to aim to do, that of native frames and image quality and personally, I think it's mainly an issue for purest that want native resolution and frame rates, especially if developers start targeting games with this kind of tech in mind because for the purest, it could get mighty expensive on the hardware front if a game is targeting lower resolutions and say 30fps, the purest that want 4k native and 60-120fps native will need some beefy hardware to do it. That isn't an issue for now because games are targeting 4k and at least 60fps but things can change, but in any case, for most gamers, it's no big deal as long as the end result is good. But seriously, developers already use upscaling tech a lot on consoles to gain extra performance, they will do the same on frame rates once the tech is good enough, after all, if they can render a game at lower frame rates, output it to a higher frame rate, it means they can ramp up the visuals across the board and they've already shown they do this a lot on the resolution front, they will on the frame rate front once it's good enough, after all, it's an easy cheap way to extend the life of a console or weaker PC hardware and at the end of the day, there is only so much resources around, especially on consoles, if they can use that hardware resource budget more effectively, developers will and the truth is, most gamers won't care about resolution or frame rate being upscaled, it's the purest that want the best without any tricks that could have a problem because it will become a lot more expensive for them.

[@12coco100]

Saw Cyberpunk 2077 on ps5 using fsr 2.1 and it looks great while running 60fps with 4k image quality. We haven't even mentioned Variable Rate Shading.

[@joa6336]

The problem with Scarlet Violet is that the games are good but the performance and bugs ruin It :/

[@randir14]

One of the integrated Witcher mods might be the HD Reworked mod. Before the next-gen version was even officially announced there was a rumor that the mod author was collaborating with CD Projekt.

[@thanosthemadtitan5518]

Pretty sure he got hired at CD Projekt Red. One of the popular modders did.

[@randir14]

@@thanosthemadtitan5518 Either way it was confirmed today that the mod will be included.

[@ChrisPkmn]

Pokemon makes more money than it needs. They need to pause, and reconsider their direction before they hit catastrophe with fans, programming talent, or public perception.

[@riggedforepic6293]

Great show as always. That thumbnail looks like 3 GTA characters 😁

[@satyasyasatyasya5746]

I really hope one of the MODs in The Witcher 3 next gen version include the gameplay mod on nexus mods that changed skill trees and stuff. It was made by one of the devs and I consider it a kinda official patch tbh. Its quite popular.

[@subjectivereviews]

You can do 60fps currently for Witcher 3 on Series X. Let's hope this is worth it

[@piotr78]

Been that way since the one x

[@huaky24]

Fsr and a 120fps target would be so nice

[@deadlyydude5522]

@@piotr78 one x could never really lock 60fps tho, it generally was in the 50s-40s

[@ZeitGeist_TV]

@@huaky24 FSR 2.0 at 1440P dynamic so that we can get as high to 120hz with freesync and I'll be extremely happy. If we only get 60fps and it's locked or at minimum no drops below 50fps and it looks as good as a resolution or graphics mode just without whatever RT solution they will be using is more realistic. I simply can't wait though too see what they have done on never gen consoles, especially with load times.

[@huaky24]

@@ZeitGeist_TV I don't really care if it has rt, I'm just excited about the updated textures and extra missions. Along with the other dlc packages that's being included.

[@DeepMukherjee]

HD rework has to be in the list of mods to be included

[@Canadian_Gamer]

Dayum. John and Alex butting heads right off the get go. John can be absolutely savage!

[@steel5897]

DLSS doesn't need a justification to be in a game, it's literally the best AA method there is, you gain image quality AND performance. I game on a 1440p monitor and on a 4K TV, DLSS is always welcome regardless of ray tracing or not, it's actually an image quality improvement on all accounts and it makes traditional AA methods obsolete if it's present.

[@1GTX1]

Not always... Uncharted 4 looks bad even in 4k with DLSS...

[@v1kt0u5]

20:56 Didn't you forget "The Callisto Protocol" and "Atomic Heart"? 🧐

[@carlkitchen]

About the DLSS 'looking better than native'... while yes it 'can' look better, it has a lot of variables for that to be so. Like it depends on both input and output resolution (output more so seemingly), game implementation, and assets used in the scene in question. 4K generally good down to performance even. 1440p only good at quality. And I'd generally not use it at all if you can help it at lower than 1440p output. It does great on text for compressed or low quality textures but a higher resolution texture can do equally as well. It doesn't do well on tightly clustered shapes (like leaves or needles on trees) but can do fairly ok on thin strands (like telephone wires). And in some games (like CP2077 for example), lights will flicker off and on completely at a distance using DLSS. And there is also the standard upscaling artifacts as well like ghosting or moire. Though this seem to be getting better over time with new iterations. And some games deal with these things in different ways. My whole point with this is there are gains and losses both when using DLSS. And those can change depending on the situation. If it was a win across the board then it would just be enabled by default.

[@overdev1993]

just keep in mind Gamefreak OWNS 1/3 of the Pokemon company

[@edjosef7936]

If I recall, they hired the Modder that redid the textures to 4K. That along with the ray traced upgrades.

[@Eternalduoae]

The problem with Gamefreak is that they just don't care. They have the money to build the support and resources to not make the games technically poor but they don't want to and this isn't their first game that they're just half-assing.

[@dustblowingman]

Some KZbinrs and sites made it seem like if you buy a 4090 it will 100% light on fire

[@timmy3822]

I see the "Pokemon's for kids" argument thrown about quite a lot. It's true younger children may not care if a game runs poorly if they're having fun, but that doesn't mean we should accept it. I recall playing Ocarina of TIme on my N64, it was slow because it was the 50hz PAL version and we know the FPS was pretty chuggy on that title. But eight year old me didn't care because I was having a blast in Hyrule. However, there are a LOT of Pokemon fans, myself included, who are now adults but grew up playing these games and still care about the franchise quite dearly. I was there playing Pokemon Blue, collecting the trading cards and playing Pokemon Stadium when the craze first swept through Europe. 25+ years later and I'm still fond of the francise and it's simple but charming gameplay. That doesn't mean I should accept such appauling quality assurance and performance. I was trying to play Violet yesterday and despite some of the fun changes to the gameplay loop and general formula, it was REALLY hard to do so. You're pulled out of the experience every time the camera clips through a wall, when the game itself actually slows down (feels like game speed is tied to clock speed) or when the resolution dips so hard you feel like you're playing a 3DS game. Enough is enough.

[@beardalaxy]

as someone who has been into emulation for a long time, there have been shader compilation issues there for some time but they usually have been patched up with asynchronous shaders, and they are almost flawless in that regard even on stuff like switch emulation. there are only a few games that don't work well with it.

[@Apoplectic_Spock]

🍺 And here's to 87 more episodes!

[@CricetoFunni]

At this point, bad performance in games really has no excuse. If DOOM Eternal and NieR can run on the Switch than so can a Pokemon game of all things. It is PURE laziness to have a game like this run like it does.

[@AJDOLDCHANNELARCHIVE]

Speaking of "holiday content"... 2002's "Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza" would be a fun game to look at by either Alex or John. Quite an underrated and forgotten title in my mind.

[@joemarais7683]

I love how y’all are gonna say “these HAVE to be that expensive” meanwhile I’m sure Nvidia and AMD will have more record quarters. Its all bullshit.

[@lemmelix]

Holy cow that's a hot take from Diego Elrey. Are you gatekeeping plebs with low-end graphics card to not play at higher resolution and better frame rate mate?

[@guitarsimon1]

I’m surprised Nintendo let them publish Pokémon in that state given it’s been basically perceived as a Nintendo title since the 90’s, and Nintendo themselves are famous for their unique brand of polish.

[@matthewpokora336]

I'm so glad someone mentioned Audi. Was beginning to wonder where he'd been banished to

[@Dionyzos]

Speaking of the Game Awards, I think there should be a "Best Technical Achievement" category. Technical devs are not getting any love there at the moment while their work is absolutely crucial. Horizon Forbidden West would probably be a front runner for me.

[@Cinnamon1080]

Who defines “achievement”? It runs the risk of just being a “most grafiks” category.

[@reaktorleak89]

As a dev I would just continue the course, ship the product and see if maybe Unreal 5.2 aligns with our development. Ripping features out and essentially rebuilding the game even 1 year out from release is a no-no.

[@LucidStrike]

I'm confused why Richard - monologued, really - that we're not getting any performance increases without price increases when the 7900 XTX is faster than the 6900 XT for the same price. What's he mean? 🤔

[@shredenvain7]

Your not gonna beat the consoles when it comes to performance per dollar. You cannot by a motherboard, ssd, CPU, GPU, memory, power supply and case that is equal to the Xbox series X for the same price.

[@madmax2069]

1:19:43 no, they're not talking about the visual aspect of DLSS, they're talking about the performance side of DLSS. Like if devs started using DLSS to obtain performance instead of actually optimizing the game to obtain performance.

[@TestTypeG]

I've never rung a bell for notifications on KZbin, but I finally broke down because I just had to experience the notionally instant notifications for myself.

[@nunyobiznez875]

32:06 This is nonsense. The 4090 proved that it can indeed be done, and was a massive gain in performance over the previous generation. In fact, it's been the largest generational increase in performance in years. Even if you only want to point at cost alone, TSMC only increased chip prices by 20%. Going to $1600 vs $700 from the previous gen, is a lot more than 20%, and far, far higher than is justified. I also don't think Nvidia really needs help, trying to defend their ridiculously high prices, either.

[@Unprotected1232]

There's no way QA missed the massive issues in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Someone approved this game for launch. You guys should do a proper in-depth video on the game.

[@EmperorOfMan]

Sales team told them like every Pokemon game it will sell a billion copies. People always complain and swipe their credit card anyways and ask why things don't change.

[@otherprisma7354]

At this point they cannot give the Pokemon Games a free pass with all the tech issues. Also, just because the game is "fun" doesn't retract that the game is having major problems, its not an excuse anymore.

[@Helifax19]

I think DLSS 3.0 (Frame generation) works perfectly fine with DLAA and not DLSS 2.0 on the 4090! This way you can actually use full resolution with the best AA method and high framerate! Win-win across the board!

[@andreiga76]

That's the way I'm playing A Plague Tale Requiem, best option for quality and performance since now they support gsync. :)

[@MassiveHappyClapper]

I like Alex I really do, but he came across as unusually snotty about the Witcher 3. It was a great game and looked good in its time and still is excellent. I am looking forward to seeing the improvements.

[@robbieclark1784]

I was a DLSS skeptic at first, but after seeing it in action (mostly here on DF) am completely sold. FSR 2.0 is great too. I think these should be viewed as positive developments.

[@TanninZero]

Absolutely, these techniques are the definition of "Work smart, not hard" and I think it's fantastic that GPU developers innovate on software and AI and whatnot instead of _just_ upping the number of transistors every time the chip manufacturers make that possible and be done with it.

[@steel5897]

The people who say they don't care about DLSS or even rally against it are just ignorant, they don't know any better. Same for the backlash against TAA from people stuck in 2012 with their 1080p monitors and ancient rendering tech putting out jagged unstable garbage.

[@empirehypnosis]

This is what happens when there are no stresses for a company to adapt and evolve. Pokemon has no competition, therefore no immediate drive to improve in the market

[@sunvsthemoon]

As much as Pokémon is guilty of performance issues, it's hard to sit and watch John be so harsh on performance just a few days after gushing over Sonic Frontiers and being far more kind and understanding regarding its technical issues.

[@b130610]

In regards to the "$250 graphics card"... While the 3050 has been a disappointment, the low prices on the rx 6600 and 6600xt right now are making it a great time for people trying to buy a budget system. Those cards are plenty for 1080p gaming, and at that performance tier, ray tracing isn't as big of a deal, while dlss isn't as impressive at 1080p nullifying the main disadvantages of amd cards right now. I think that the $200-250 market is actually as strong as it's been in a long time right now. I do hope that nvidia comes back with something interesting next year though, because both the 3050 and the 1630 have shown that it either can't, or chooses not to compete at the low end, and that's going to lead to stagnation in the long run.

[@nielsderijk]

Saturday afternoons are the best with you guys. :) Gameplay reveal of the next gen Witcher 3 is coming this week… so covering this topic now might have been a bit premature?

[@thorocomments]

Slow news week… 🤷🏾‍♂️ Nah, you’re right. Could have waited…

[@anywaays6992]

Yeah I clicked this thinking they made the reveal already smh

[@nisem0no]

22:54 Very true. Scorn's stutters were really bad. I thought I was one of the few, as I'd googled and not found many others complaining about it, but it seems that's not the case.

[@SITSIndustries]

7:50 "Rich says in-the-here-and-now" drinking game. Everyone celebrates!

[@Pinoisreadingabook]

i think the question 4 meant that devs are going to stop optimizing their games because they can rely on dlss

[@ShinySilvery]

Re: Richard’s awkward intro “next gen/current gen” confusion. The delineation used to be quite simple, always mystifies me how this has gone off the rails nowadays ... As a previous gen goes out of production - prior to release of a new console generation: Current Generation: PlayStation 4 / XBox One Unreleased Next Gen consoles: PlayStation 5 / XBoxSeriesX or S As ‘next’ merely literally means what’s coming next down the pipe ... Post Release: 𝙊𝙡𝙙 𝙂𝙚𝙣 - PlayStation 4 / XBoxOne 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙂𝙚𝙣 - PlayStation 5 / XBoxSeriesX or S In turn “next gen” becomes PlayStation 6 / Whatever they decide to call XBox 5 … Keeping It Stunningly Simple - was always the thing. Don’t make it sound like you’re confused or it’s confusing !

[@FiliSuperDuty]

The RTGI in Metro Exodus with real time of day was crazy. Why can't more games be like that given some of these huge budgets? The studio behind Metro isn't even a "AAA" studio, is it?

[@ToadyEN]

I think Diego means that he doesn’t want game developers to feel that they have the AI / frame generation to fall back performance where normally they’d optimise their games.

[@Hueventure]

On the unreal subject. I'm thinking some of those stutter problems (at least for UE 5.1) could probably do a lot better by separating meshes more. Using something like data layers can maybe help with this in contendum with world partition even if it's not fully open world, together will go a long way. I think some of these stuttering though may not just be environmental. Some of it might be animations as well. Like objects or actors that have anims or varying blueprints/code that drives them to run next to these super hi res meshes and when walking around in game they may be hitting every tick to display that anim on screen a little too early kinda like how you mentioned about some instances where meshes are loading too early. Some of these loading issues are basically more than just static meshes. Anims, actors, etc, so further separation may help but it's a lot of QA testing needed to tell which ones, where, and when, especially for consoles and lower end hardware to tell how to approach it. It'll get better hopefully. Plenty of workarounds but I'm sure we would love to have less workarounds needed. Hopefully nanite evolves heavily to combat the rendering side of things. Helps you be more creative with less hiccups in high meshes

[@Lead_Foot]

The white/red led just shows that the card is getting power from the connector. The problem with 12VHPWR is it is still detecting the connector and getting power, but it isn't connected properly.

[@DefinitelyNotSade]

I was hoping for Avowed to be the first UE5 title to be released, but that dream disappeared a long time ago with the radio silence from Obsidian going on for so long regarding the title.

[@CondorCalabasas]

Actually Alex is wrong about TW3. You can't use many items during a fight and you have to prepare before hand.