I think you're vastly overestimating what the console is capable of if you think that it this game should be running not only better effects but also ultra textures.
You need to read before you respond, I think I've expressed the technical issues with Witcher 3 a million times already. The console versions have abysmal load times, what takes a few seconds on PC takes almost a minute on consoles (after death sequences), pc hard-drives are not from the future. It has inconsistent textures and filtering (bouts of medium textures mixed in with high coupled with low AF at times (4x) makes ground textures look soupy. Shadows and AO are generally at medium quality, but there are times when you will see shadows and AO quality that looks worse than the lower setting. The PS4 version is missing simple shaders on water that the lowest preset on PC has. Pop-in is ridiculous, shameful even, just look at the video in the OP, no need to go further and witness the nasty pop-in and how long it takes for textures to load on buildings as you ride through......
Btw, the 750ti, a lower end card with 2GB of ram handles Ultra textures, why? it's because textures on the Witcher 3 are not amazing, it never goes beyond 1.8GB of Vram. The PS4 has handled much higher quality textures before, it handled mordor's textures on high which uses more vram than Witcher 3's paltry 1.8 GB at max. Ultra textures allows for better caching, it's good for the 750ti, it's double good for the PS4. The problems with their streaming engine on consoles is a joke, bad pop-in, slow loading textures at a mix of mid-high that uses even less vram than ultra, yet the textures still loads like molasses.
The 750ti is such a beast to handle all these things that the more powerful PS4 can't, yet it's languishing in deficit of double digits in other games with certain settings dialed back. I'd wager that the textures would be on low and the load times would still be awful on consoles. Med-high textures, where is the performance gains in texture loads and framerate? also, settings at lower than low, where are the performance gains..... With these type of settings the PS4 should be running this at closer to 60fps. This is a joke of a port, that the PS4 is using lower settings than inferior hardware and it still falls to the teens in cutscenes and running at 20fps in gameplay, it could not be clearer.
There are deep-rooted issues with this game on consoles, streaming engine sucks, load times suck, assets are at abysmal settings and still no performance gains. At this point, I think they would have to redo this game ground up as a remaster concentrating on the consoles, it's clear they can't simply patch this. I imagine the only way to fix this is to patch the whole game.
it also doesn't run at 60fps locked. In stressful situations it can go as low as 46 fps.
Like for a split second in the bloater fight? TLOU runs 60fps 99% of the time. The ports I was talking about don't come close to that on PS4, they don't look better than TLOU and they don't have better effects.
Oh ok. Yea I was responding the thelastword's notion that ps4 should basically run the game as if it was a high end pc at 30fps.
Really, is that what you do? and you always play the victim in most threads I've seen of you. I have never said that, as a matter of fact, in this very thread, hell, to the very post which you quoted..(the one just above your post).. .I said this....
thelastword said:
You'll never see me asking that Witcher 3 perform better on PS4 than an 980GTX with hairworks on etc.....I'm simply asking that games run better on better hardware, that lesser hardware should not outperform better hardware.
Choosing the proper settings for a fixed hardware platform is a balancing act, sacrifices will have to be made. Load times being much longer on console doesn't surprise me one bit, both the Blu-Ray drive and the hard drive used in the PS4 are very slow compare to even 7200 rpm drives, never mind SSDs. Data must be loaded to RAM beforehand, it stands to reason that load times will suffer as a result. Don't forget that the RAM pool is shared for both the system and the graphics card. As for textures, Witcher 3 is not the only game where texture quality on PC is higher. I was as baffled by this as you were, but it was explained to me that factors such as bandwidth size and memory speed play a huge role as well. Lastly, the 750Ti is weaker than the PS4 gpu but it is newer (and apparently extremely efficient) tech and it is supported by a CPU with higher IPC. It isn's such a travesty that it manages to comlete with the PS4, it has been the case for almost every game out there.
With that kind of hardware it is a given that you will get much better performance and visual quality than your console 95% of the time. The only exceptions are porting disasters like Arkham Knight which are very rare.
You can't make an argument when the port in question is a bad one with better performance and assets (texture loads, load times, water, shadows, AO) on lesser hardware. If the 970GTX was struggling with Witcher, I'd say the PS4 version would be in line for such downgrades, not when lesser hardware has better assets. Just recently the XB1 version run the game at a more consistent clip. This is not the game that you use to make that example.
In any case, every single PS4 game is installed on the HDD, this means that the bluray factor you mentioned is invalidated, but despite that, the PS4 bluray drive is much faster than the PS3 BR drive anyway. Do you believe that the persons who own Witcher 3 digitally have better loadtimes over those who own it on bluray? It doesn't work that way.
The PS4 has more than enough ram to load med-high textures (768MB to 1024GB most probably) and assets into memory for a smooth non-janky looking and performing game. Batman AK is superior in every facet where Witcher 3 fails on the same hardware. Now check batman's textures, load times, pop-in (or lack there of) and effects and that gets you even more perspective on the matter, (that is..) if the better assets on the inferior 750ti or the better performance on the XB1 does not prove it enough already.
I'd also let you know, that 7200rpm drives does not give you a ratio of 50:5 seconds when it comes to loadtimes over a 5400rpm drive, not even super super ssd drives will give you such returns. It should also be known that 5 second load times on PC was the result of a stock drive on the i3/750ti setup or any pc for that matter.
