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Digital Foundry: Face-Off - The Last of Us PS3 vs. PS4

V

Vashetti

Banned
Striking at the opportune moment, Naughty Dog's award-winning The Last of Us is now available to PlayStation 4 owners in remastered form - giving both newcomers and double-dippers alike a chance to play the game in lush 1080p at 60 frames per second. For impressions of how the adventure holds up on next-gen hardware when played from a fresh perspective, be sure to check out our earlier tech analysis from Digital Foundry chief Richard Leadbetter. In this article however, we'll be addressing the returning crowd; indeed for those who loved the PlayStation 3 original, is there enough here to make the game's campaign worth another play-through? Is there more to it than just a resolution and frame-rate bump?

The first thing I'll say is that expectations going in were cautiously managed. I was disappointed to see the game absent from Sony's E3 spot this year, and Naughty Dog's roll-out of information prior to the expo proved treacle-like at best. In an earlier interview with Edge, creative director Neil Druckmann even conceded to the difficulty of translating the game's PS3-focused engine to PS4, where his team's emphasis was much less on adding new bells and whistles - and more on simply getting the code to run.

“We expected it to be hell, and it was hell,” Druckmann says. “Just getting an image onscreen, even an inferior one with the shadows broken, lighting broken and with it crashing every 30 seconds, that took a long time.” In the end, getting the game running as faithfully to the original as possible has proven a priority, alongside a simple image quality boost “akin to looking at a DVD versus Blu-ray.”

But having played the game extensively on patch version 1.00, and several hours of the day-one update 1.01, we can confirm this is a very stable, faithful revisiting of the original game. Not only that, but it's received upgrades beyond the bump to 1080p - an increase in resolution that makes it necessary to push draw distances out further, boost texture map quality, and add occlusion mapping to decals. For a close look at the game's evolution (and occasional side-steps) between PS3 to PS4, check out our head-to-head video and zoomer gallery below.

With under a year to turn this project around, it's clear there are some rocks left unturned on this PS4 re-release, but where attention has been paid the difference is huge. For example, there's a notable update to the opening Quarantine area, where building brickwork is vastly more defined and crisp. We also see zero texture pop-in issues as we walk around the jungles that skirt Bill's Town, with the PS4's high access-speed GDDR5 memory making level streaming a non-issue. This is as opposed to the PS3 game's reliance on pulling assets from optical and hard disk drives, which could produce the occasional pop-in.
Click to expand...
Performance compared to PS3 is night and day. Infrequent drops to 50fps (with 46fps being the lowest on record) are the worst of it, most notably during the initial Bloater boss battle. There are occasional dips besides this around flooded inner-city areas, but the experience is predominantly on the 60fps line. Compared to the PS3, with its variable 20-30fps readout, we're looking at a frame-time reading that sticks largely to a sharp, responsive 16ms, while the PS3 routinely dips as low as 50ms.
Click to expand...

On the 30fps lock vs 60fps:

Naughty Dog also offers a 30fps toggle, which caps the frame-rate to half the game's top-end refresh. Other Sony first party releases let players dabble with a similar option, such as Killzone: Shadow Fall and infamous: Second Son, though in this case there's really no need. Drops from the 60fps target simply aren't frequent enough to justify it, whereas in the latest Killzone it helps to avoid the regular lurches between 30-60fps.
Click to expand...

Much more: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-the-last-of-us-face-off
 
G

Guymelef

Member
From the other thread.
#PS4AF
AgTBBhb.jpg

0QvmFEe.jpg
Click to expand...
 
A

androvsky

Member
...with the PS4's high access-speed GDDR5 memory making level streaming a non-issue.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure memory speed is never the limiting factor when it comes to streaming assets off a disk.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
androvsky said:
I'm pretty sure memory speed is never the limiting factor when it comes to streaming assets off a disk.
Click to expand...

The point, I believe, is that they can load in everything at once, rather than streaming it as you approach it (leading to pop in and texture's progressively getting higher resolution etc).
 
D

DustyVonEric

Member
Man, I'm so happy others get to play this game.

I don't understand people hating a remaster of the game. Non-ps3 gamers and those who missed the party the first time around can now experience an even better version.

I'm still on the fence on whether I'll buy it when I get my ps4, but seeing how much effort ND put into this version and the added perks like dlc and commentary might sway me.
 
I

icespide

Banned
"Drops from the 60fps target simply aren't frequent enough to justify it" (in regards to the 30 lock)

probably the most important take away
 
C

CapitalismSucks DonkeyBalls

Banned
Screenshots do not do the upgrade justice whatsoever. This is a game where it needs to be seen in motion to understand how much improvement has been made over the PS3 release.

I will say, however, that I have a hard time seeing how the character models are supposed to be their cutscene counterparts. I'm just not seeing it.
 
A

androvsky

Member
Vashetti said:
The disc installs entirely to the HDD.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure memory speed is never an issue when streaming assets from an HDD as well, although I did specify disk and not disc. I mean sure, there was a time I was writing an uncompressed 4K video player for a Pentium 4 with a 32-disk (as in HDD) RAID 0, but I ran into system bus speed issues before I did memory speed. Switching to an AMD server with Hypertransport fixed it.
CyclopsRock said:
The point, I believe, is that they can load in everything at once, rather than streaming it as you approach it (leading to pop in and texture's progressively getting higher resolution etc).
Click to expand...
That would be capacity, not speed, and the writer was emphasising the speed. Otherwise, yes, that's correct.
 
W

w00zey

Member
I can't wait to see this in motion on my tv. People post pics all the time of next gen stuff and it doesn't look completely impressive and then I play it and motion and am in aww.
 
S

Seanspeed

Banned
Man, the framerate difference is just wonderful.

This will probably be one of the first times console gamers get to switch a game between 30fps and 60fps to compare and I cant wait to hear people's impressions on it.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
androvsky said:
That would be capacity, not speed, and the writer was emphasising the speed. Otherwise, yes, that's correct.
Click to expand...

That's true, but perhaps the slower ram would have made loading all that data into RAM at the start of each segment impractical (as in, it'd require overt loading times as opposed to loading it all in during cutscenes?) But yeah, you're right, capacity is more important.
 
W

w00zey

Member
icespide said:
first comparison where the 30FPS shadows actually look noticeably better to me
Click to expand...

I think they all have looked like that. I thought I read somewhere though that not all shadows are softened like that. Which is probably why not all of them were that much better.
 
H

Horse Armour

Member
CyclopsRock said:
That's true, but perhaps the slower ram would have made loading all that data into RAM at the start of each segment impractical (as in, it'd require overt loading times as opposed to loading it all in during cutscenes?) But yeah, you're right, capacity is more important.
Click to expand...
Not even close, HDD speed will always be the limiting factor to loading, you're working with hundreds of MBs as opposed to at least a few gigabytes per second with even the slowest RAM.
 
D

DieH@rd

Banned
androvsky said:
I'm pretty sure memory speed is never the limiting factor when it comes to streaming assets off a disk.
Click to expand...

Game can now easily access 10x of ram memory. Sure hard disk speeds are the same, but, assets that could not fit into PS3 ram are now easily streamed-in before they are ever needed, and they can reside in GDDR5 ram for a longer time without the need for real-time streaming.
 
S

Seanspeed

Banned
The Rain King said:
Still no average frame rate? That's my simple minded barometer goddammit!
Click to expand...
Just watch the framerate video. Its mostly 60fps with very occasional dips into the mid 50's and the rare dip to high 40's/low 50's.

Its a 60fps title. Not a rock solid 60fps, but good enough to be considered 60fps nonetheless.
 
Cornbread78

Cornbread78

Member
"Oh God, the game dips into the 50 fps zone they can't even get a remaster to 60fos; Pre-order cancelled!"


Wait for it, wait for it......

the experience is predominantly on the 60fps line. Compared to the PS3, with its variable 20-30fps readout, we're looking at a frame-time reading that sticks largely to a sharp, responsive 16ms, while the PS3 routinely dips as low as 50ms.
Click to expand...


Oh $hit, what can we complain about now......

"Dammit, why are the shadows better in the 30fps version!!!" Man the torches!


as was said yesterday, Good Job ND, damn good job...
 
The Rain King

The Rain King

Member
gdt said:
The dips are so rare that an average frame rate is meaningless.
Click to expand...

Seanspeed said:
Just watch the framerate video. Its mostly 60fps with very occasional dips into the mid 50's and the rare dip to high 40's/low 50's.

Its a 60fps title. Not a rock solid 60fps, but good enough to be considered 60fps nonetheless.
Click to expand...

Thanks for replies. I think I just wanted to see a juicy 59.20 or something. *sad face*
 
A

androvsky

Member
CyclopsRock said:
That's true, but perhaps the slower ram would have made loading all that data into RAM at the start of each segment impractical (as in, it'd require overt loading times as opposed to loading it all in during cutscenes?) But yeah, you're right, capacity is more important.
Click to expand...

I doubt it. We're talking about a 50 MB/s HDD loading into a system with 176 GB/s memory. Even with the memory being busy doing other stuff (like rendering a scene), that's barely more than statistical noise. With all the zeroes in for clarity, that's 50 out of 176,000. Just the rounding error in the memory bandwidth number I typed there by not making it a power of 2 is more than 50 MB/s, lol.


IMBored said:
I think they meant that the 8GB can store a lot more textures, as opposed to the pitiful amount on the PS3.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's kinda what he had to have meant, but like I said above, the writer emphasised the high-speed nature of the memory and not the capacity, and it's an error I've seen a lot of people make since the PS4 reveal. The only reason I'm being pedantic about this is that it's a Digital Foundry article.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
The Rain King said:
Thanks for replies. I think I just wanted to see a juicy 59.20 or something. *sad face*
Click to expand...

Average framerate is near-useless, really. Frequent supershort dips down to 10 FPS vs a constant 57 FPS might average out the same and be entirely different experiences. Worst dip and overall consistency are better measures.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
shandy706 said:
The shadows cast by the grass/bodies/objects disappear in the PS4 shot.

Just noticed that while admiring the crisper textures/res.
Click to expand...
Yep, that's the missing AO that I mentioned above. Looks to be completely absent on PS4. I wonder if 30FPS lock options brings it back.

*Edit* I really wonder if PS4 version has their realtime character ambient shadows - a technique that totally made the TLOU for me - as far as I know being the only game to ever have something like that.

For example: Note how Bill's hand shadow is missing from the car on the PS4 version.
JGCh9dd.jpg

lDFkan3.jpg
 
S

shandy706

Member
benny_a said:
The article talks about AO and says it's absent for foliage and changed for characters. The latter is received positively by the writer.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I see that in the article. No mention of shadows completely missing from objects/npcs on the ground though. We need MOAR shots. If you look at the example gif, it looks like there's no shadow under bodies at all.

I'm also curious as to if 30 vs 60 makes a difference there.
 
I

IAmRandom31

Banned
Lord Error said:
Yep, that's the missing AO that I mentioned above. Looks to be completely absent on PS4. I wonder if 30FPS lock options brings it back.

*Edit* I really wonder if PS4 version has their realtime character ambient shadows - a technique that totally made the TLOU for me - as far as I know being the only game to ever have something like that.

For example: Note how Bill's hand shadow is missing from the car on the PS4 version.
JGCh9dd.jpg

lDFkan3.jpg
Click to expand...

always funny because at first when the pics are real condensed and smaller I'm like. Well not too much of a difference.

Then I click em and make em bigger and them WAM. All the changes become very apparent lol
 
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