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DF: Zelda Breath of the Wild uses dynamic resolution scaling

Mokujin

Member
While I'm only about 20 hours in, portable Zelda runs like a rock I have not noticed the dynamic res changes (not like 10% drop is going to be easy to spot)

And the docked mode drops are just here and there and the weird thing is that when they happen doesn't seem to be related to increase in scene complexity, so that's quite weird.

Dynamic resolution scaling is a wonderful tech and I wouldn't mind Docked even getting down to 720p to avoid those sporadic drops, but drops maybe related to Switch performance itself but peaks of streaming data and graphics engine + cpu pushing hard memory bandwidth at the same time.
 

Caayn

Member
Interesting.. this means that the firmware glitch affects Zelda too..
Doesn't seem like it.
In the meantime, we've seen this intriguing report about WiFi potentially impacting Switch performance. While this could possibly affect some users, we've quickly retested a few Switch titles in flight mode and we're finding that this has no impact on our existing results.
 

z0m3le

Banned
If it is simply dynamic resolution, then 4-5x WiiU becomes only an ideal. The game does have greatly improved effects, and the resolution jump maxes out at 4.5x when docked. But it does not stay there, often running more like 3x docked. And you're saying it can drop as low as half of WiiU when undocked. That strongly suggests that, while on paper Switch is far more powerful, in reality there are bottlenecks which make using that power very problematic.

uhh... No, the game runs extremely well, we don't know the cause of the 360p frames, but my suggestion is an artifact of TBR, possibly not even a performance issue itself. Also we are still looking at a port of an existing game here, which is never going to be as efficient as a ground up build for a completely different architecture which Switch is. Lastly we have no reason to suspect that fp16 code is used at all in this game, leaving room for more performance possibly in Shinen's next game if they choose to use it. Also Wii U's performance is not solid at all, so the idea that the portable version ever drops below Wii U is unfounded to say the least.

We just don't know enough about what is going on with these few frames, to draw any substantial conclusions. Launch software, especially of ports is the wild west when it comes to performance comparisons, even with someone as good as Shinen, the best we can do is see what they are capable of hitting and take note of the issues that araise, but concluding anything on those issues is just not very responsible IMO.

Cool story. Trying to start a fire?

Comparisons aside, it's a good point for performance here, the CPU has to use that same 25GB/s bandwidth and that could cause issues, even 3 cores @ 1ghz could consume as much as 8GB/s i believe (A57 cores @2ghz can each consume as much as 5GB/s iirc) thus when big enemies or a lot of foliage is around, or a lot of physics going on, could be causing these issues, but it is guess work.

PS I do hope Horizon is taking notes from Zelda, the systems in place in the Zelda game could have really elevated Horizon to a 10.
 

Lucifon

Junior Member
I think there is more to this story that just a dynamic resolution. I came across an area where it looked like AA was temporarily turned off.

Look at these two screenshots:

My game does this with every screenshot I take using the Switch's screenshot function. What's going on with it? It's as if the screenshot is taken from a much lower native res.
 

kubev

Member
This makes sense. I thought maybe I was imagining things, but I thought things looked blurrier when it was raining. It's a shame that Nintendo wasn't able to iron out the performance more by being more aggressive in its use.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Not talking about that... There is a glitch on the firmware that create problems with the dynamic resolution of Fast RMX. And Shinen says that when fixed, RMX could work 1080p all the time without drops in res and fps.

The glitch is linked to the auto-connect feature of the WiFi. That's why people tried to turn that off.
 
My guess its the AI and Physics in Zelda, that game has some really cool stuff going on that not even Horizon is doing, has anybody looked into that?

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVPXKdSEGNQ

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEGWtyJAkO0

Physics are really impressive in BotW. What's even most impressive is that they impact the gameplay (wind direction and strength being a prime example). And yes they may very well be bandwidth consuming. Now did you really need to bring Horizon on the table to state this point?
 
I love all the guys surprised they didn't notice this.

Of course you didn't notice it. No one notices this shit until they get told that it's happening. The game has been out for almost two weeks and literally no one has mentioned they thought this was happening.

Says more about a community where people regularly claim they can spot even the smallest difference in resolution.

So much for all that power the Switch apparently has.

Anyway, drop it down further if it will help with performance.
 
This is a good point, the memory bandwidth has to be shared with the CPU too, so in moments where the CPU might take a large chunk out of the bandwidth, could cause freeze frames for moments like some have recorded. That actually seems to be the most likely cause of this, the espresso CPU might be maxing out and the Switch CPU might be taking up too much bandwidth to push those extra pixels (from the GPU) in docked mode.

Cool, I could be on to something, I just noticed how much it did in Physics and AI in that video, it just seemed that the system must be working really hard at times

Anyway I hope far more technical guys can look into it, would be interesting to see how much the Physics and AI are taxing this system
 

jediyoshi

Member
My guess its the AI and Physics in Zelda

Except it can switch when the scene is essentially staying the same

XbmUizn.jpg

mMXXkwG.jpg
 

Doopliss

Member
I love all the guys surprised they didn't notice this.

Of course you didn't notice it. No one notices this shit until they get told that it's happening. The game has been out for almost two weeks and literally no one has mentioned they thought this was happening.

Says more about a community where people regularly claim they can spot even the smallest difference in resolution.

So much for all that power the Switch apparently has.

Anyway, drop it down further if it will help with performance.
If you look through the thread you'll see that several of us already noticed this.
 

z0m3le

Banned
Cool, I could be on to something, I just noticed how much it did in Physics and AI in that video, it just seemed that the system must be working really hard at times

Anyway I hope far more technical guys can look into it, would be interesting to see how much the Physics and AI are taxing this system

Espresso is leagues below Switch's CPU, the main performance hit is in bandwidth I believe where the CPU could be drawing as much as 1/3rd of the available bandwidth for itself.
 
I actually still think the most likely explanation is some weird artifact of TBR which I think Shinen would be interested in using.
Fast RMX is still a port though. ...if Shinen make a ground up Switch game they will probably be able to hit 1080p. Those guys are tech wizards for being a 5 person team.
These comments seem self-contradictory. If Shin'en are technical wizards, and interested and capable of new techniques, why would a port be hard for them? Why would they be bad at using those new techniques?
 

killatopak

Member
I love all the guys surprised they didn't notice this.

Of course you didn't notice it. No one notices this shit until they get told that it's happening. The game has been out for almost two weeks and literally no one has mentioned they thought this was happening.

Says more about a community where people regularly claim they can spot even the smallest difference in resolution.

So much for all that power the Switch apparently has.

Anyway, drop it down further if it will help with performance.

Not true, I noticed it and I'm certain many others did as well. The clarity from area to area can be pretty apparent.

Some people, myself included, just don't care to post about it. I don't even post in the BotW thread because of how much I want to avoid spoilers and experience the game fresh.
 
These comments seem self-contradictory. If Shin'en are technical wizards, and interested and capable of new techniques, why would a port be hard for them? Why would they be bad at using those new techniques?

Because they created a game specifically for the WiiU architecture which is very different from the Switch and then they ported it. If they built a game ground up they wouldn't be starting from a weaker base.

Or simply, how many ports are better looking than a game built natively on that hardware? You think TLOU PS4 was going to be better looking than Naughty Dog's ground up game?
 

Credit where credit is due.

The important thing to take away from this is that it's not enough. Game is dropping resolution on the fly and it can still be a stuttering mess.

What's the reason? I don't care about random people showing videos about physics and how much stuff is happening.

If your game can't maintain framerate due to the systems you've implemented, it means one of two things:

1. It was developed poorly
2. The system is not powerful enough to handle what you are trying to make it do.
 

z0m3le

Banned
These comments seem self-contradictory. If Shin'en are technical wizards, and interested and capable of new techniques, why would a port be hard for them? Why would they be bad at using those new techniques?

Why do you think it is hard? The Switch version of this game runs incredibly well... Do we know that the Wii U version doesn't have huge drops in resolution? I think Digital Foundry noted as much in the video? Are you comparing Wii U version to Switch or just looking at Switch version and asking why the game isn't 1080p 60fps 100% of the time, while pushing more effects, a new lighting engine and handling 4 player split screen.

Actually... interesting, that 4 player split screen could be where that 360p frame buffer image even comes from? as that would be the portable resolution in 4 players, it's possible that the reason the target resolution exists is for this mode and when aggressively dynamic rendering, it can jump to that much lower resolution for a frame or two to avoid a drop in frame rate.
 

neoglow

Banned
I'm surprised there hasn't been more talk of this, I find it really noticeable on the Wii-U when things get really blurry and low-res. Mainly in towns.

Don't dare criticise a game that gets 10/10. Its perfect remember, you'll only wind up the fan boys. ;)

Thankfully the game is good fun cos the graphics are pretty bad sometimes with poor detail and loads of jagged edges. Although the Switch is just a handheld so in portable mode it looks quite good but not so much docked on a TV.
 

z0m3le

Banned
The docked mode runs bad. The handheld mode runs great.

With Zelda they should just allow the dynamic resolution to drop all the way down to where the handheld's resolution goes, that should solve the issues, I mean it would still never look worse than the Wii U version (which is the version I'm stuck with for now)

Damn. Sorry about that.

No harm, I should have been more clear, not trying to say Zelda runs great on the Switch, though I'm playing it on the Wii U and it's still never been much of an issue for me.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Actually, there is some evidence to suggest that FAST RMX on Switch is also using temporal upscaling, and is not native 1920x1080. Not certain by any means, but suggestive.
That depends on how you define "temporal upscaling" the technique used on Wii U is most certainly *NOT* used in Fast RMX (which is what Shin'en refers to as "temporal upscaling")

That is clear as there is nothing even remotely resembling the types of interlacing and pulsating artefacts you get on Wii U in the Switch game.

I do agree that Switch likely has different bottlenecks compared to the Wii U, though, but I'm 100% in agreement with Shin'en that the temporal upscaling technique used in Fast Racing Neo has been eliminated.

This was not the case in the older January demo, by the way. The one I played at the Nintendo event still used this feature and it was quite obvious in motion (it's impossible to miss as the artefacts are severe).

I feel pretty certain that Shin'en is just using adaptive resolution as there are no visible artefacts present that one might associate with something even more advanced like checkerboard rendering. The resolution just seems to shift a lot.
 

z0m3le

Banned
That depends on how you define "temporal upscaling" the technique used on Wii U is most certainly *NOT* used in Fast RMX (which is what Shin'en refers to as "temporal upscaling")

That is clear as there is nothing even remotely resembling the types of interlacing and pulsating artefacts you get on Wii U in the Switch game.

It was a really great video btw. Switch is going to be an interesting machine for you guys to cover, especially as more ground up games start showing up and we can start seeing games designed around the architecture.
 

Seik

Banned
Interesting, I never actually noticed it! :O

Knowing this and the GPU bug that affects the scaling that will be fixed soon, hopefully it shall fix some performance issues as well.

The slowdowns pretty much are at similar places than the Wii U, I can't believe those are still there solely because the game's in 900p instead of 720p. Just need some ironing out, I hope.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Oh my god digital foundry.....its "percent." Not "per cent."

Thise quotes almost gave me a seizure.
Actually, as an American writing for a UK site, I am continually surprised by the variations in spelling between UK and American English. Per cent is the common UK way, apparently. I always write "percent" myself but, when my articles are edited, the UK spellings are swapped in during that phase. I'm still terrible at accounting for that.
 

orioto

Good Art™
Beyond comparing versions, what i'm really surprised at with this game is how Nintendo seemingly didn't have a target machine. I mean.. I would imagine them, usually (but maybe i'm giving them too much credit), to have a target and to scale things so they run well for it. But BotW doesn't run well on any device at all lol

Just to be clear it runs wayyy well enough for me and i'm not a framerate fetichist so i don't even see the problem in some occasional drop or barely noticeable resolution changes (i think it happens so quickly that i noticed at first but i stopped noticing now). i'm just confused at how Nintendo planned things for the game
 

z0m3le

Banned
Beyond comparing versions, what i'm really surprised at with this game is how Nintendo seemingly didn't have a target machine. I mean.. I would imagine them, usually (but maybe i'm giving them too much credit), to have a target and to scale things so they run well for it. But BotW doesn't run well on any device at all lol

Just to be clear it runs wayyy well enough for me and i'm not a framerate fetichist so i don't even see the problem in some occasional drop or barely noticeable resolution changes (i think it happens so quickly that i noticed at first but i stopped noticing now). i'm just confused at how Nintendo planned things for the game

Games rarely run at 60fps during all stages of development, the problem with Zelda is that it is extremely open ended, so testing a game in all the different situations that might arise is problematic to say the least. However freeze frames are certainly an issue that should have been caught and they lead me to believe it is actually a bandwidth problem, but a bottleneck somewhere along the way is certainly causing it, and it being dense areas with lots of physics and large characters, does strengthen the idea to me at least that it is bandwidth intensive, and certainly shouldn't be a CPU issue as the portable and docked CPU is the same and both faster than Wii U's CPU by a large amount. GPU of Switch when docked should also be more than enough for the resolution bump.
 
Actually, as an American writing for a UK site, I am continually surprised by the variations in spelling between UK and American English. Per cent is the common UK way, apparently. I always write "percent" myself but, when my articles are edited, the UK spellings are swapped in during that phase. I'm still terrible at accounting for that.



Well, its good to know its at least unintentional!

Cmon jett I'm on my phone here.
 

Jinroh

Member
lol @ people saying no one noticed it. I talked about it in the main thread a few days ago and nobody replied.

Each and every time I go see the fairy in the forest near Kakariko village the games becomes blurry. It's very obvious the resolution drops.
 

orioto

Good Art™
Games rarely run at 60fps during all stages of development, the problem with Zelda is that it is extremely open ended, so testing a game in all the different situations that might arise is problematic to say the least. However freeze frames are certainly an issue that should have been caught and they lead me to believe it is actually a bandwidth problem, but a bottleneck somewhere along the way is certainly causing it, and it being dense areas with lots of physics and large characters, does strengthen the idea to me at least that it is bandwidth intensive, and certainly shouldn't be a CPU issue as the portable and docked CPU is the same and both faster than Wii U's CPU by a large amount. GPU of Switch when docked should also be more than enough for the resolution bump.

That's interesting.
I would think personally, development wise, the problem of the game not being perfectly optimized for any device comes from the fact that it had a weird process. I mean i could perfectly see the game starting on WiiU with strong limitations and Nintendo struggling to achieve their ambition, then the game being moved on Switch as a main version in the middle of it. So they kinda dropped the ball for WiiU performance while not being able to completely optimize it for Switch cause of the time frame.
 

ToD_

Member
Picked up on this as soon as I left the shrine of resurrection. The image got noticeably softer when looking at the more dense area on the left as I was walking to the old man (undocked). I figured DF would have spotted this already. Glad to see this confirmed instead of wondering if my eyesight is declining rapidly.
 

Dryk

Member
I'm talking about before this thread was created.

Of course there will be those who claim they noticed it but have never mentioned it before this thread.
I've been assuming that the 720p -> 1080p scaling to my monitor has been making it look weird. Now I'm not so sure.
 
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