Final Fantasy 14 Upgraded! The NEW 7.0 Graphics Update Tested on Consoles and PC

[@mylifeingaming]

[Try4ce] Hey y'all, just wanted to leave a comment here since the discussion seems to be dominated by the DLSS issues! I actually originally had a line in the DLSS section owning up to my inexperience in this area, but it got cut (along with other points) as I was trying to trim the video down to a more manageable size (it took way too long to make). I now wish I'd kept that bit in, because I knew the DLSS implementation was limited and simplistic compared to other games, but since I primarily play console games, my frame of reference for deeper critique here is limited. Because the DLSS mode offers no real settings and is a bit opaque about what it's actually doing, I opted to NOT use it for building my comparisons against version 6.58 footage - TSCMAA or FXAA are safer choices in that context since the image quality is comparable. I also hardly used DLSS for any footage in the video apart from the DLSS section because I felt I couldn't really trust it. I played through about 50-60% of the Dawntrail story during production of this video, but that actual playtime was mostly on PS5 and Series X, with a few hours also spent on Series S. So this is why I did not catch DLSS errors in cutscenes, and unfortunately, it would not have occurred to me that I would need to check how it behaves in cutscenes specifically since I didn't come across the issue through the normal course of play. From the testing I did, I thought it was pretty good - not exceptional perhaps, but in the context of this game and what else it offers, pretty good. I tried to show some flaws in all AA solutions, and clearly stated that none are perfect. It seems clear that I did not catch DLSS's biggest flaws, though. I say all that to say, even with my limited DLSS experience, I knew it was not as robust of a DLSS implementation as PC gamers were probably used to by now. So I did not mean for my comments to come across as giving it a free pass. But listening to it now, after having cut out several lines in the section, I can see how it seems that way. My intent was to be a bit more neutral - thinking of it just from the perspective of anti-aliasing, edge crawl is significantly reduced as I run around the world. As someone who plays on a TV, I think the results are quite appealing in that regard. However, if you are playing up close to a monitor (which I am not set up to do) or if you are relying heavily on DLSS's upscaling (I was playing on a RTX 3090 so I didn't need to), I imagine that it's much easier to see the issues. Perhaps I shouldn't have thought of it this way, but in terms of upscaling, I considered that a performance concern, and PC performance testing was never on the table for this video. At any rate, it seems that people desperately want to see DLSS improved in FFXIV. Had I known that it was considered "broken" and not just an outdated implementation, I would've raised more of a fuss here too. I did search around to see if there were any commonly discussed issues with the graphics update, but unfortunately this just did not get onto my radar (I was surprised to find no discussions on the soft shadow variability). As an old game that was never designed with any sort of TAA in mind, I imagine there are reasons for the issues, but considering people in the comments here have noted that workarounds exist (which I won't be testing personally, so I can't vouch for their quality or caveats), there must be a way forward for Square Enix to improve DLSS to some degree (and if they want people to not use those workarounds, it would behoove them to try). I understand the disappointment that a DF video didn't fully raise a point that should be marked as "needs improvement" - PC is not my field, and it was 100% my decision to include PC in this video despite it being outside my comfort zone (there was no pressure to do so). My main intent for including PC here was to simply show the fullest extent of the graphics update, because if I only used PS5 and Series X as the baseline, then people wouldn't know if the consoles used the highest resolution textures, the highest quality shadows, or something lesser (PS5 and Series X use darn near max settings, as it turns out, but with some anti-aliasing quirks). While I did confer with the DF crew on a few points I was less confident on, and while DLSS did come up, I apologize that I didn't pursue it any deeper. Don't worry - with my own channel, or any possible future content on DF, I'm not likely to go outside my lane on PC stuff very often. It's a big big hassle to capture at 4K and I'm just not set up to test multiple hardware configurations. Personally, I'm much more interested in the couch gaming experience and seeing what is achieved with fixed hardware. I only felt the determination to look at PC for this game because I like it so much and wanted to do everything with the video that I possibly could. I hope the video and its comparisons were enjoyable enough otherwise!

[@xivlore]

I don't believe this is accurate, as there is massive conflicting statements surrounding DLSS. My personal experience is that DLSS makes the game look better, since DLSS has its own AA it improves the image and looks far superior to FXAA/TSCMAA. It could be an issue on certain PC setups/resolutions. Look up a video "FFXIV DLSS vs FSR" by ThisisCitrus, it shows how much better DLSS looks than native, that it fixes the horrible flickering AA of the native image, and how to make it look even better.

[@mistyfox832]

@@xivlore same here, dlss looks great on my system, fsr is oversharpening and still flickers bad

[@ddidier750]

@@xivlore And in this video of thisiscitrus, the guy tell to debug by using the last version of dlss and dlsstweaks. And start his video by saying "how to improve and fix dlss and use quality preset and dlaa".

[@KaiserAlucard]

@@mylifeingaming don’t worry it’s all good, we PC folks are really demanding. Just tell Alex to take a look at the DLSS in this game and he won’t resist making an hour long video about all the issues it has 😆 But really we are kinda disappointed because you guys at DF have the power to make things move when you put your finger on it. I mean, I’m pretty sure the latest Jedi Survivor update is thanks to you guys, so we count on you a lot so SQEX fix the DLSS in FFXIV.

[@LeesChannel]

I love Try4ce, who's here criticizing him!? 😡👊

[@BlackAera]

Wait... that's not the Digital Foundry voice!

[@99Vood99]

It's one of the gentlemen from 'My Life in Gaming', they collaborate on occasion with DF.

[@Bakkerrs]

Totally not!

[@rainasy1766]

my life in digital foundry

[@yorkipudd1728]

But it is the DF rhythm. He's nailed that tech bounce.

[@Jordanbiggs1473]

@@99Vood99 i dont like it. i was pumped to hear the df guys talk about ff14.

[@astrea555]

Parallax textures are so cool. No idea what they aren't used more. So much details for a cheap cost.

[@rcketbnny]

In some area I notice turning it off give me about 8-10 more fps

[@Demmrir]

They've been mostly replaced by real geometry in modern game engines that can support that level of geometry. Which is objectively better. They continue to be great for a performance-lite option for details as in FFXIV.

[@MidonaRhel]

Just wanted to add that its really neat that transparent textures no longer disappear when another transparent material is between it and the camera (was an old bug you would see if you got your character inside a fish tank). Hopefully it means we will get more alpha enabled materials, even though I assume they will remain stingy due to the performance penalty

[@KaiserAlucard]

I was expecting you’d talk about the poor implementation of DLSS that makes everything distant blurry, and the constant stuttering on PC since the graphical update when you play with a controller. These needs to be adressed since Square Enix keeps ignoring the problems.

[@DBTHEPLUG]

That's what you get for playing an MMO with a controller, on PC. And of course for using DLSS on a PS2 level graphics game.

[@Drawica]

@@DBTHEPLUG Petty

[@witchymary1037]

I don't have controller issues, but I'm on Linux.

[@Neolith_]

​@@DBTHEPLUG Profile picture tells me all I need to know lol.

[@Brinewind]

​@@DBTHEPLUG Look! It's someone from twenty years in the past! And they brought their high horse with them! The game is optimized for controller support, genius, and that last declaration is so deeply unintelligent it isn't worth picking apart. Liking my reply. Yah troll bastuhd. Much love.

[@BVZZpunk]

I'm pretty surprised at the complete lack of discussion around the extremely poor implementation of DLSS & jitter. Not what I would expect from a DF analysis honestly. Fundamentally DLSS is broken as it stands. It's essentially disabled in cutscenes due to the disabling of jitter, it's not just an issue with TSCMAA. Also there's effectively two passes of dynamic resolution scaling going on at the same time, which causes artifacting and blurring depending on the scenario. There are also issues around DLSS clashing with certain vertex shaders used heavily through the game, causing extreme strobing effects (Square Enix have consistently been closing bug reports regarding these issues, seemingly they consider these issues a feature and not a series of blatant implementation failures). DLSS Tweaks and XIVJitterFix plugin are required in conjunction to achieve a clean, stable image at all times. Additionally Reshade can be used to remove the problematic vertex shaders which cause issues with DLSS. Also FSR 100 doesn't fully disable FSR.True it doesn't upscale, but there's still a bunch of post-processing effects.

[@Demmrir]

People keep saying DLSS is broken and causes all these problems but I've never seen any and I'm extremely sensitive to visual quality in games generally. Is it mostly people using the 60 fps target on weaker hardware who are actually using DLSS upscaling or does it supposedly impact DLAA too?

[@mrnicaria]

@@Demmrir This affects everything. The required jitter to make DLSS work the way its supposed to doesn't exist in the unmodified game. How are you even using DLAA without using DLSSTweaks? That's (one of the many) parts of the problem, the lack of settings forcing you to use external mods to actually get it to look good.

[@BVZZpunk]

@@Demmrir The issues are honestly really blatant, not sure how you're not seeing the complete lack of DLSS or AA in cutscenes.

[@deathtrooper2048]

You don't need upscaling on a 10 year old game. I wouldn't be surprised if it's using an older version of DLSS.

[@BVZZpunk]

@@deathtrooper2048 Considering you can get an easy 30% increase in frames at 4K, even with a 3080 & 5800X3D, I would say that DLSS is definitely an important feature. Not to mention the image stability improvements that you get from a properly implemented solution, which has been a problem plaguing XIV since launch in 2013. Also to answer your second point, SE bundled in 3.5.0, so it's not the newest, but it's still a perfectly fine version.

[@PogueSquadron]

So glad to have another Try/MLIG crossover video. You guys do such incredible work.

[@mrnicaria]

This is so disappointing. If there was any outlet that might have caught Square Enix's attention on how awful the DLSS/FSR implementation is and actually make them do something about it, it was DF. Somehow you've completely missed this and even said that it's a good implementation. What happened?

[@indiepyx]

What happened is that they put a console gamer to review a PC game. Alex should've taken this one.

[@ilakya]

Have you tried FF16 PC? I think here's the problem of DLSS2 and FSR1 only. The game may just start to manage their motion vectors since they didn't use much of it before. And to use DLSS3 and FSR3 like FF16 needs quite a good motion vector. They can't just let the transparent moving arrows effect throw the temporal AA of the things behind it off like it is now. That needs to be fixed before they implement the more advanced super resolution tech.

[@mrnicaria]

@@ilakya I have! It is better in 16 for sure. The problems with 14 have already been identified and mostly fixed by the community via mods as this update is quite old, and what you're saying may play a factor but there's also some very evident issues elsewhere. I recommend reading BVZZpunk's comment and his replies for a full rundown on what's going on.

[@mylifeingaming]

​@@indiepyx[Try4ce] I'm the only one who could have access to the game world beyond 2.0 content. It was 100% my choice to include the PC version here, by the way - I didn't have to. But I wanted to use it as the baseline for comparisons because I thought it was important to establish what the highest level of settings looked like in this case (which is not much different on consoles, but I thought it was important to show PC to prove it). Absolutely though, I'm a console gamer and picking apart DLSS implementations is not something I'm experienced in. I originally even wrote that in the script even, but cut it for time because obviously, the video is way too long as it is. I believe the game engine has limitations that prevent the DLSS (and other AA options) from being more robust, and I tried to say so in the video. But it still has way less edge crawl than any other AA mode in the game. From where I play (couch) DLSS looks good, but not perfect. Could look better, but can it be better in this game? I don't know.

[@mrnicaria]

@@mylifeingaming Thanks for the extra context. The rest of the video is great, for the record. That being said, you're giving them too much benefit of the doubt with it being an engine limitation problem given that there are mods that have solved 99% of the issues. And I mean, come on: The only settings are On and... On below 30 FPS? The fact that you can't even turn it OFF, let alone adjust the quality options... They haven't even tried to do this properly and you know it. Of course they can do better. I'll be honest, when I saw how bad it was from the Benchmark to now I was so hoping that this video would be made and there would be a huge section about how terrible it is, all the problems it has, and some kind of direction for Square Enix to take for it to be resolved. This is one of the worst implementations of DLSS that's ever been in an extremely popular game and the biggest outlet that covers such things has completely glossed over it, worse yet, claimed it's actually good. Now I fear they will just leave it like this forever and get away with it. Time will tell.

[@ernyoung8357]

An in-depth video covering my favorite game? Uploaded on my birthday?! Thank you Marc and DF crew!

[@Kniffel101]

Sudden Try4ce jump scare! =O I'd totally dig more MLiG and DF collabs! =D

[@mr.selfimprovement3241]

The material based lighting and how it reacts to skin and metal armor is the biggest thing that changes the look imo. Estinien's Dragoon armor stands out as radically different looking in realtime cutscenes now. Same goes for a lot a characters. Some armor I never liked now looks great! Overall though, the graphics update is at best hot-or-miss for me as a legacy FFXIV player who plays the game every week.

[@sinom]

25:55 this is because of the indexed colour system they're using for clothing textures. Because of how that system works there's absolutely no blending or smoothing between colours in different "colour bands" which causes these harsh pixelated lines

[@namfow]

Can you do more to visually indicate where we should be looking? I love and know FFXIV well and am deeply familiar with the DF format but I *really* struggled to know where i was supposed to be looking in the majority of comparisons in this video, *especially* full screen before/afters that only changed once.

[@katarh]

Shadows under small objects were the easiest place that I saw immediate differences.

[@UltraCasualPenguin]

I think they did good job. I haven't even noticed shadow camera issue but now that you mentioned it I will most likely notice it. My biggest issues are framerate drops in cities (Series X set to 120hz + LG C3) and shadows on my character face which make it look in certain lighting situations like she has massive lower eyelids.

[@soratheultima]

Fantastic overview of all of the changes that where made, even showing before and after footage! I haven't tried dawntrail yet except for a battle challenge but i might give it a go pretty soon. The game looks much prettier now. This was highly detailed and I'm glad you showed footage from various expansionpacks.

[@storiesofindiana]

Speaking of MMO graphical changes, Dawntrail is the FF14 expansion that sent me back to check out WoW after a decade+ break. The visuals are much better than when I left that game after Cataclysm.

[@Winky813]

As an Au Ra player I am saddened by the limbal rings not always having the same intensity of their glowing effect at all times like they did prior to 7.0. That being said though, their glow effect in darker areas and at night after 7.0 is much more noticeable and I do quite like that. There is also some unintended subsurface scattering on their horns that the dev team have addressed and will be fixing in the future, so no more oddly glowing horns when viewed in sunlight at least for raen as I don't think xaela have this issue. An odd thing I noticed that was briefly touched upon in the anti-aliasing segment, I've noticed some odd image ghosting on PS5 when moving the camera quickly. Most noticeable when zoomed close to your character and moving the camera you'll see a ghosted image of your character. I'm not sure if it's the anti-aliasing causing this, but I don't recall seeing this prior to 7.0

[@w061a09]

he has talked about it, and yea its TAA that causes it

[@Erika-pz9ps]

so glad I'm not the only one wondering if the console had "temporal AA" without the "AA"

[@sofakng163]

What the heck? I know I recognized that voice but was confused because it was a Digital Foundry video. Glad to see the collaboration! Two of my absolute favorite channels!

[@MoonSarito]

I find it interesting how many of the graphical settings of the Series S version are a match for the PS4 version and don't have many of the improvements from the PC/PS5/Series X versions. This makes me think that they will probably keep the PS4 version around for a lot longer than the PS3 version since the Series S hardware gap isn't that big and both versions are very similar. Not to mention this is probably the version they'll bring to the Switch 2 in the future.

[@Demmrir]

Random note on the new grass system that's small and subtle but nice: Grass used to just constantly gently sway. Now it stands pretty still with occasional swaying in waves that spread along the ground like actual gusts of breeze, and of course if someone walks through it (not just you, NPCs and enemies too).

[@IvanGarelli]

Great overview of the update. Thank you for pointing out the pros and cons of the options such as AO, shadows, AA, etc.

[@Soxie86]

Luckily the AA issues can be solved with relative ease . Overall the upgrades are a step in the right direction.

[@MaraFFXIV]

I definitely never got used to the changes to my character, if anything it's only gotten worse. It varies from race to race, but with some of the faces it's like they didn't even *try* to make something similar to the old look. Glad they've finally acknowledged the issue and promises updates in the coming patches, but given that they lied about the cause of the issues, I'm not confident in their ability to fix them in earnest.

[@DravenxEyeless]

This looks stunning... Now, if only they implemented Spanish as an official language. I'm from South America, but I've got no issues playing the game in English. However, most of my friends don't know English so it's a hard sale to get them to play with me.

[@Callibree]

First thing that comes to mind: The shadow softness changes are relative to the point of view the camera is the source of light.

[@AnimeAjay]

Totally disagree with the AO and AA assessment. The max AO setting and AA+jitter are dramatically better in pretty much every way - any minor artifacting is totally negligible. Odd that the DLSS section doesn't mention the technical details despite being readily available online or the fact that it totally disables when you interact with any NPC. It's totally broken presently and requires a third party plugin to fix. There's also significant blur on characters at distance due to the mipmap load bias being really high. No mention of the insanely poor optimisation in the new cities? You can see the issues by just looking at your CPU and GPU usage in those spots. Not really the oversights I'd expect from a DF video.

[@d3x84]

FF14 is and was always very poorly optimized. It's not rare that games with a "similar amount of stuff to calculate", you get like twice the FPS or in other words: The GPU in Final could hover for example ar 25% with a frame cap, but needs to work at like 75% instead. The rendering engine of FF even with it's upgrade barely fits most standards from 10 years ago.

[@reisshep]

I didn't notice the DLSS issue on my PC at all. However, the upgrade as a whole felt lacking to me because AA is still so bad.

[@sinom]

DLSS technically doesn't get totally disabled. It ""just"" disables the jitter and without that DLSS and TSCMAA are both kinda useless

[@GENKI_INU]

I actually agree with them on the AO and AA jitter points. I'm just not a fan of the GTAO:Quality setting, because it's so intense that it looks like an unnatural wall of black in occluded areas and corners which don't blend properly, nor respects bounce lighting rules. The GTAO:Standard setting doesn't have these issues and looks more realistic to my eyes, while having better FPS than all other AO options to boot. Also, while the AA without jitter does miss some edges while stationary, I think the flickering caused while stationary in some areas with jitter on outweighs any benefits the jitter would've had because the artifacting simply sticks out more and draws your eyes, leading to a more perceived noisy image than with no jitter.

[@OrionXIXI]

Nah, he's completely right about the AA+Jitter option. It's horrifically poorly implemented, so much so that it's already been addressed by the community in the form of a 3rd-party plugin. Of course, those are still technically against Square TOS, so it would be nice to see them address it themselves, along with their broken DLSS.

[@meeee32156]

i might be late to the party, but this dude helped me out hugely when i was learning about pvm's back in the day. glad to see him on digital foundry!

[@JustLivinItUp85]

Random Nobody is now the best character in XIV.

[@SotNist]

That lighting improvement comparison @ 10:59 makes the before look like PS1 pre-rendered CG backgrounds vs Gamecube remake pre-rerendered CG backgrounds 😆

[@wo262]

funny how the industry adopted the term "Ground Truth" for an ambient occlusion that still approximate and screenspace. the term is generally used for the reference offline renderd version that other techniques aspire to look like, usually made with world space raytracing. they shouldn't be using it so carelessly like that otherwise it loses its meaning

[@Shahpo]

Do they call it ground truth because it's meant to replicate ground truth, or is it because it uses more depth info?

[@mbsfaridi]

@@Shahpo Probably both.

[@SBUGEDA]

Great video. Don’t listen to the harsh comments that ignore the high quality of all comparisons and analysis you’ve provided here.

[@dazextralarge]

Amazing review that I wasn't expecting at all! Glad you did it!

[@TykCub]

I've been looking forward to this video for a while!! Very nice job! Thank you :)

[@nitroxide17]

So if you have the free trial version, I guess you don’t have access to the graphics update?

[@FTRnRhome]

*hears voice* what a pleasant surprise!! That's awesome bro!

[@AlikanAlmeida]

To me the most priority thing in your list would be option 2. In forrest areas, it is very egregious on how image change to blurry to crisp to blurry to crisp while you are moving/stopping. That is the most distracting thing to me. While there are several other things they can improve, I think overall the graphics are way better than before if they fix that.

[@asdsad17]

that is how temporal AA works. perhaps you can try to force AA on the driver side.

[@Xbob42]

@@asdsad17 Temporal AA with proper camera jitter absolutely doesn't do this, to my knowledge. If it does, it's nowhere near as bad as the level I've seen in FFXIV, because I've never noticed it in literally any other game.

[@hsvfanjan17]

To me, someone who hasn't played this game and probably won't either, this game will always look like 2014 due to its global illumination system. I wonder if an improvement comes around eventually

[@esparda07]

FFIV's world is beautiful..

[@joshuaminke6629]

wasn't even aware this game was available on console. i swear it was only released on PC in 2010, was there a relaunch im unaware about lol

[@mylifeingaming]

[Try4ce] It was supposed to come to PS3 eventually when it launched in 2010 on PC. But it flopped so hard that the team leadership was shuffled and the game was rebuilt from scratch and re-released in 2013, launching simultaneously on PC and PS3, with other console versions to follow (you can no longer play on PS3). They even titled the relaunch "A Realm Reborn" to emphasize its newness, and it's gone on to be a huge success.

[@Linkinbr]

DLSS implementation is very broken right now, no mention of that?

[@xivlore]

Because it isn't, people are just using it wrong. Look up a video "FFXIV DLSS vs FSR" by ThisisCitrus, it shows how much better DLSS looks than native, that it fixes the horrible TAA of the native image, and how to make it look even better.

[@xivlore]

I don't believe this is accurate, as there is massive conflicting statements surrounding DLSS. My personal experience is that DLSS makes the game look better, since DLSS has its own AA it improves the image and looks far superior to FXAA/TSCMAA. It could be an issue on certain PC setups/resolutions. Look up a video "FFXIV DLSS vs FSR" by ThisisCitrus, it shows how much better DLSS looks than native, that it fixes the horrible flickering AA of the native image, and how to make it look even better.

[@OrionXIXI]

@@xivlore It is absolutely accurate. DLSS is definitely broken as of right now. It CAN look better, but can and generally does end up breaking down over time and locking to extremely low internal resolution when dipping even a single frame below target framerate. Coupled with no user option to choose a DLSS quality profile for the performance gains that would offer, and you are essentially only getting DLAA, and even then only as long as you perfectly maintain your given framerate target. None of this is how DLSS should be implemented and even violates Nvidia's own guidelines for developer implementation. All this to say, yes it's broken, there's no question about it.

[@MoodySelection]

Question ! : Why do developers not make it so that HBAO/GTAO draws the shadows a bit further away from the edge of the screen so that the drawing isn't so obvious when panning the camera? Would it cause such a significant loss in performance?

[@Odder-Being]

About shadows, we got the standard settings (low/med/high) and on top of that 'softening' (weak/strong/strongest) and thus softening strongest starts to look like plain low shadows again, this is nuts.

[@gamepreserver]

A pleasant surprise to see Marc doing this analysis, great review! Don't let the negavite comments discourage you 👍🏻

[@churibman]

Never played FF14 so I just have to say that even though most of you might be used to it, the walking animation of the little guy is amazingly cute 😊

[@beasthunt]

I came back after Dawntrail release and started fresh since it's been 2 years since I last played and 400 hours split between the PS4 launch version and 2 years ago. I'm enamoured with this game. I'm 600+ hours in and I'm still in Shadowbringer with a lvl 91 character. I stopped so I could lvl another class to take advantage of the MSQ xp before it ends after this xpac and starts up again in Endwalker. This game is great.

[@MoeMunnie023]

how u comment 2weeks ago. ?? vid just dropped

[@GradietPanda12345]

Too bad dawntrail isn’t

[@GradietPanda12345]

@@MoeMunnie023you realize patreon /channel members watch things early right?

[@icyjiub2228]

@@GradietPanda12345 Can you people stop acting like an MMO expansion shot and killed your dog. Dawntrail has flaws but holy shit.

[@lexiconprime7211]

@@icyjiub2228 I didn't catch any of what you're saying from his comment. I get it, you've seen a lot of dislike towards dawntrail and are tired of it, but as far as criticism goes, the person you replied to was exceedingly tame.

[@SoFishtry]

Love to see you here Try

[@JudasPriestArmyChile]

My life in gaming ❤️

[@Perez3005]

Wish they would update one thing: water textures. They look old, and the game has a lot of water and rivers flowing through the areas.

[@JJBCrimsonKnight]

My one thing is the FPS being tied to physics. Jobs like RPR and MNK need different gearsets based on FPS as well.

[@Lxx00Jxx00]

you're my favorite member of df nice video as always

[@lyra797]

DLSS is just blurring in this game

[@index5442]

I removed DLSS's dll file and it's been same as before patch. Only issue is no AA, since dlss forces DLAA (AA).

[@GrimAbstract]

Why don't you just leave it at 100, doesn't that mean notice res?​@@index5442

[@SageAtoreis]

"Final Fantasy XI didn't get a graphic update" :C :C :C Forever sad about that

[@verothix]

I noticed with strongest shadows that they have a horrendous impact on performance when looking over vast distances. Areas like Urcopacha in particular will have noticeable frame drops with it on unless your PC is fairly modern. (on my oldish pc this translates to my fps dropping to 15 depending on how I angle my camera.)

[@charoleawood]

17:45 16x anisotropic filtering is needed here BAD, where is it? Love the parallax occlusion maps, though!

[@technoviking2415]

16 times the detail you say!

[@mylifeingaming]

[Try4ce] 16X is turned on for all PC footage. However, the game seems to treat parallax occlusion maps differently from non-POM textures. You can see a difference on POM if you force 16X via GPU settings versus the in-game setting. I actually spent a lot of time testing this and trying to figure out if it was a bug or if the devs intended for POM to be filtered differently. Ultimately I didn't include that discussion though, largely for time and also because I didn't know for certain if this is how anisotropic filtering behaved on PC prior to 7.0 (I mostly play the console versions). The only thing I knew for sure is that AF was improved on consoles to some extent.

[@charoleawood]

@@mylifeingaming You did a lot of work on this video, Try, i was thoroughly entertained even though i've never touched FF14 --- i can see the 7.0 improvements are clearly better than what was there before, the way you highlighted each element was fantastic!

[@richardmana4007]

Series S fxaa is the only solution for non-temporal blurry gameplay lol

[@rinnievids]

good showcase, i agree with most thats said as well

[@ironeleven]

I found the anti-aliasing upgrades incredibly disappointing on account of jaggies and flickering (especially during cutscenes) being my single biggest visual complaint with the game pre-7.0.

[@Decenium]

man this update is huge, amazing

[@kamalzamer9443]

Hey that’s the voice actor from Arzette!

[@thereptilescorpio]

Awesome work!

[@socram3254]

This update is mixed for me. While everything looks overall better I feel like they could've gone way further with this, my theory is that old consoles and fear of community backlash hold them back

[@saysikefam4433]

A good chunk of the player base is still using PCs, and laptops that barely meet the minimum requirements. Probably they were afraid that by raising those min requirements too much they could alienate these players (and their subscriptions).

[@Makalon102]

They are also working with an old engine that always causes a lot of technical problems with features they can’t add

[@monchicruz8278]

I haven’t really had a chance to dive into FFXIV but I was elated to see on PC (since I migrated there) that the bothersome aliasing issues have been fixed

[@ziomatrix223]

Enabling DLDSR + DLSS is a good way to get better image quality. However it doesn't work in cutscenes or when talking with NPCs...it's weird.

[@lucybell6815]

oh man i'm never gonna unsee that shadow softness bug lol

[@b01scout96]

GTAO Quality is just too dark IMO. it reaches black levels the physical world would never allow. And Square Enix missed big time in not implementing frame generation of any sort or native HDR. With its continuing CPU bottleneck that would've been a big win. 😞 Bad DLSS implementation and missing grass shadows add up to my dissapointments... The obviously old FSR1 and jitter have me dumbfounded.

[@aleksandernowak585]

FF14 is a DirectX 11 game. Maybe they have to migrate the engine to DirectX12/Vulkan first to do that.

[@pencilcheck]

I hope they upgrade for those who are in free trial.

[@mylifeingaming]

[Try4ce] They aren't running two asset generation pipelines. Everything applies to everyone. It's just that the various consoles have a feature setting lower here or there.

[@donkeyy8331]

is it just me or is GTAO Quality a bit broken, or perharps just too strong? It seems to darken too much some creavices making the artifacts standout even more.

[@SentinelBorg]

GTAO Quality on PC at least on my 4090 also has some strange frame time behavior. Every few frames the latency almost doubles when you have it on compared to standard. So I would always advice to use GTAO Standard.

[@LightSummoner84]

No DX12 upgrade, Very Shitty FSR and DLSS implementation. The new antialiasing is better but the game still has a lot of sparkle. The graphic update is incomplete and need a lot of works in the future. What a failure.

[@ThatNormalBunny]

No DX12 support but they did remove DX9 support so the game only runs in DX11. I don't see why you'd want it to have DX12 support though most DX12 games run like shit because a bunch of stuff that used to be automated by the API is now controlled by the developer

[@LightSummoner84]

@@ThatNormalBunny Because it remains in many ways more stable than the dx11, the dx11 is full of crashes on ff14 especially since its implementation several years ago. Besides, using DX12 would also be a slight performance gain.

[@SilverwingedBat]

Not a failure, game still looks better on PC regardless of the shortcomings. It's FF14, we never expected it to look as good as something like new gen titles.

[@LightSummoner84]

@@SilverwingedBat "No, I know that the game wouldn't be like next-gen; that's simply impossible, especially since it's running on multiple platforms. The problem is that the graphical update is uneven; some textures have been upscaled by AI and simply haven't been redone, which creates a discrepancy between the old textures and those that have been redone. At this stage, the only textures that have received good work are the recent ones and those that could be automatically modified with the new textures. I know very well that FF14 will never have the appearance of FF16 or others, and that's not the goal. But currently, the graphical update is similar to a texture pack with some textures just upscaled, which is cool, sure, but all the technologies that have been used or added are outdated and poorly implemented. The FSR and DLSS are excessively poorly implemented on both FF14 and the PC version of FF16. The dynamic resolution isn't great, and the new anti-aliasing is better but not incredibly effective either. The game still has a lot of aliasing, and some problems could clearly have been fixed. Moreover, the poorly executed implementation of these technologies causes a micro lag effect that many people have noticed in the Dawntrail areas. We were just expecting the graphical update to be of much higher quality in terms of implementation and technologies. As for the textures, everyone was aware that we shouldn't expect a standalone game."

[@SoraShadowdancer]

Should you really be comparing the older areas when they haven't been updated yet? SE said it was going to take them at least a year after DTs release to update all the older areas and all the equipment textures. My trick to seeing if a piece of equipment has been updated is to look to see if it has two dye channels. If it doesn't, then it hasn't been updated. That aside, they said they were going in order of expansion release from newest to oldest with the ARR areas being last on their list to update. Some changes are universal, yes, but I don't think a comparison should be done until after the update has been completed, and it isn't yet.

[@LightSummoner84]

They didn't say it would take at least a year; they said they would continue to update the game graphically after version 7.0, so with each patch, they will add various textures. That said, it will still take several years

[@mylifeingaming]

[Try4ce] There are quite a lot of changes across the world. Many, if not most world textures are updated to some degree. Yes, gradual updates from here have been pledged, but we cannot know for sure where they will stop. So I think it absolutely makes sense to look at the results now. Nothing wrong with charting the progress.

[@TheFirstIG]

What a dedication for a game, thanks for this Video ! It was a joy to watch :)

[@georged7627]

I cant wait for the Nintendo Switch 4 in 2042 to look like this 😁

[@DoritosBurger]

Switch 2 is going to be like ps4.5 so it can easily handle these graphics

[@georged7627]

@@DoritosBurger I want Switch 2 and I want it NOW

[@Travisbaptiste]

Man, it would have been funny if you transitioned to alex after your apology. Good video thx for all the comparisons

[@michaelell389]

I have two different platforms that I play FFXIV on, at home I play on a extremely overbuilt PC (7950X3D & 7900XTX) and when I'm traveling I pack my M1 Max Mac Studio (10/24). On PC I noticed no drop in performance outside of maybe a very packed area like the Second Dawntrail Hub City, on the Studio I went from pre-DT overhaul hitting around 90fps to struggling for 60fps post-DT.

[@bullshooter4040]

Great look into the console performance of the graphics update. While less was analyzed on the PC side, those with lower end systems can also rest easy, as the game is even better optimized after the graphics update. The Steam Deck - usually the floor of most budget systems, runs FFXIV as great as it always has, 30fps stable in most areas if you wish to lock it there.

[@michiganjack1337]

Very nice MyLifeInGaming crossover 👍

[@enekomh]

I played through the Dawntrail campaign on a Series S and the performance overlay of my LG C4 was saying all the time I was running above 90 fps but I was noticing clear stutters and slowdowns even with vrr on so I wouldn't trust the TV's built-in fps counter at all

[@bnizzle02]

As always sir you hit a homerun for this! Great to see the comparisons for consoles and PC after Dawntrail has come out. Someday there will be even more updates that may further set a long a lot of good things!

[@trignite]

Why dont games let you run at a higher resolution that renders 10-20% extra screenspace than what you can see, then have ScreenSpace settings like SSR, HBAO, GTAO etc render outside the viewable screen, this way you dont see any issues at the edge of the screen

[@MrCarlWax]

If DLSS is supposed to be broken rn, I feel really bad about amd users if they fix it. DLSS looks great on my screen as is.

[@Alpacalips]

I love that this channel gives our game a little love!

[@icy1007]

I set it to Maximum settings on PC and forgot about the settings menu. Runs at a locked 165fps at 1440p. Drops to maybe 100fps in densely populated towns, but I don't notice with my VRR screen.

[@lawyerlawyer1215]

I mean it’s an old game that looks equally old, I should hope it performs well.

[@Demmrir]

@@lawyerlawyer1215It doesn't perform as well as you'd hope. There are a lot of objects and players and that's still rough for many PCs.

[@yokogoph]

To my understanding that is a CPU limitation.

[@ScyrousFX]

''Guest reviewer Marc 'Try4ce' Duddleson knows this game inside and out and has been tracking its progress for years, so who better than to tackle Final Fantasy 14's latest chapter?'' Who better? The obvious choice wouldn've been Alex, or a Marc/Alex team-up. Being an FF14 expert is one thing, but Marc completely missed the problems with DLSS and many other issues in the update. This video could've spend a little more time in the oven I think. It's not quite up to snuff with other DF content.

[@ganiman]

There is still a lot of great information in this video, lets not ignore that.

[@vSoulreaver]

I can't take this seriously at all when he says that DLSS looks great in this game. I had to put a Sharpening Filter through NVIDIA Overlay and that still doesn't fully fix it, because in movement the game blurs and deblurs. How did you not see that?

[@kewa_design]

Cant See that either 😅 maybe its Not that big of a Problem on lower resolutions idk

[@asdsad17]

because dlss is better than native and you will be happy with the blur.

[@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish]

You guys have been used to the dogshit fxaa that barely addressed the jaggies for a decade, now there's an option that actually works oh no it's blurry!!!!

[@vSoulreaver]

@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish 1. I've just played the game for less than 3 years. 2. DLSS can look so much better than this blurry mess. 3. They should at least let us choose which mode of DLSS or DLAA we want to use. Also piss off with that petty ass comment.

[@nighttimestalker]

The insane performance inconsistency hurts imo. Im seeing drops from the 80s down to the 30s. In skme areads the drops are over 60%. And that's with me dropping to 85% res scale instead of native 4k. These upgrades do not justify this much inconsistency. Same for ghosting. Its bsd in foliage areas. Loke REALLY bad. I'm really hoping this gets fixed

[@carlosmagnomacieira8210]

Could you guys test Jedi survival without denuvo? I heard the performance is waaaaayyy better now

[@Malinkadink]

If they added 120hz support on consoles did the fix the physics breaking at anything beyond 60fps? some examples are hair doesn't flow the same way it should, some armor/capes/etc that normally are flowy are rigid, no jiggle bits either.

[@katarh]

Some of the "PS1-esque" textures are a deliberate decision to try to give the impression of embroidery. It could definitely look better, but what they are going for is Zardhosi or Kashmiri style embroidery on some of the outfits. It can even look pixelated up clothes in real life. So I don't worry about it too much.

[@saysikefam4433]

The same issue is noticeable on the 7.0 AST chest artifact gear, specifically with the small star decorations. I understand they aimed for an embroidered look, but with the high-definition textures and the new velvet shader around it, it just doesn't look good.

[@SOF006]

Only DLSS 2.0 and FSR 1.0? That seems very lazy considering DLSS 3.0 and FSR 2/3 have been available for a while now.

[@Uizdar]

There's no officially supported version of FSR2 for DX11, which this game runs on currently.

[@ioritenshi]

This is a 2013 game, you know that, right?

[@nitaiginzburg8689]

I love deep dives and this was great, but if I could provide some feedback, I definitely think there is too much back and forth between topics, and paragraphs that are longer than they need to be, I think a shorter and more concise video if possible would be better. Sticking to main talking points and structure it less mixed up

[@existentialselkath1264]

FXAA quality when stationary and TAA quality when in motion is quite literally the worst of both worlds.

[@vibvian]

ive been waiting for this one

[@williamhazlett6724]

only difference i see is they game more light on items and areas seems like they wasted alot of time to me since modders have done this in a few days instead of years

[@RubyRoks]

Between the soft shadows and AO oddities, i'm wondering if their camera system and how it ties in to the graphics rendering needs reworked.

[@MattyR_1]

Watching this video made me realize how much money they had to spend just to be able to test it out on each platform.

[@LightSummoner84]

Not really. They created auto-generated textures that are less resource-intensive and can be disabled at any time depending on the platform. To avoid optimization issues, they released mandatory FSR/DLSS if the frame rate drops below 60 fps.

[@KaneMeadowsGaming]

While it's certainly better than nothing, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for a lil more.

[@Decenium]

jeez the ps4 was done dirty, I just hate how devs dont challenge themselves with the objective to make the ps4 version look as good as possible

[@readifdumb]

Graphics update, while better, is not good enough imo. Aliasing is still an issue if you're not on 4k, lighting is still bad in places, and overall post-processing is not good enough to blend the scene together.

[@ThatNormalBunny]

If you're on PC Reshade can fix a lot of that

[@Odder-Being]

GTAO standard looks better i.m.o then GTAO quality. GTAO quality is to much contact shadow even where there is no contact at all.

[@arahman56]

Gotta also remember the Fantasia changing to a 1 hour buff, which also gives the players more time to better fine tune the features to their liking (previously, if something looked off, that meant another fantasia).