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GTA V PS4/XONE Downgrade - Version 1.00 Vs 1.08 Comparison [edit: BUG]

Please don't try and pretend GTA4 PC's bugs and horrible optimization was down to people not knowing how the Options worked.

Its bugs are one thing (which I am not talking about). But turning down the sliders led to above console framerate. I think its reception is partially a misunderstanding, yes.

You can look for benchmarks out there (of which there are many) that show it scaled with core amount / core frequency / as well as with crowd density / view distance settings.
 

Danlord

Member
Just tested vehicle damage (without a car that has the highest armour from LS Customs hah) and I don't know what the bug was before specifically but the vehicle deformation is pretty normal from what I remember before all these patches. Bumpers bending and snapping off, bonnet(hood) popping off and the angle of the wheels turning inwards making it near impossible to drive/steer and the car eventually grinding to a halt.

As for AF and Parallax Mapping I covered that in a few posts above, still lowered and missing.
 

Kezen

Banned
Its bugs are one thing (which I am not talking about). But turning down the sliders lead to above console framerate. I think its reception is partially a misunderstanding, yes.

You can look for benchmarks out there (of which there are many) that show it scaled with core amount / core frequency / as well as with crowd density / view distance settings.

And it should be added that too many naive people believed the console versions ran the equivalent of the max density slider values.
Clearly that was not the case, this is absolutely true that had the game been capped to PS3/360 level it would not have had the reputation it ended up having among the PC community.

The PC version went significantly above the console versions in every way and as a direct result it was a very demanding (and not too well optimized) game.
I didn't play it near launch though.
 
Its bugs are one thing (which I am not talking about). But turning down the sliders lead to above console framerate. I think its reception is partially a misunderstanding, yes.

Yeah, no. I once had everything on minimum just to test and the framerate was still crap. At that time my pc was mid-range, so I wasn't expecting 60fps, but at any resolution it was still crap.

It eventually got a lot better, but at launch it was terrible.
 
Just curious - why are we assuming that this might be a bug? I find it hard to believe that these type of features have all been disabled because of a bug(s).
 

Marlenus

Member
Literally the next sentence in the article:

But once we venture on to later missions, certain buckling points start appearing on each console. For the PS4, this often manifests during speed races through busy downtown junctions, where a drop to 24fps constitutes our biggest performance dip.

What constitutes 'fine' is different from person to person, but it clearly did not run completely ideally.

From my experience that is pretty much the only case where the deviation from 30 FPS is fairly substantial and it only occurs when driving quickly through those intersections in the day time. In such an open world game maintaining a constant 30 FPS frame rate in all scenes leaves a lot of IQ on the table and finding a balance between 30 FPS most of the time and good graphics is a difficult task but I think the PS4/Xbox One version of the game managed that just fine.

Even if these changes did fix the performance in those sections I am not sure the cost is worth it because for the rest of the game performance is pretty much a constant 30 FPS. I have yet to play the patched version of the game so I cannot comment on if performance is even improved but if not then the loss is of no benefit what so ever.

I am of the opinion though that this is an oversight from the online mode and will probably be fixed if there is enough noise about it.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
So you've tested it and haven't seen any notable performance increase?

I think you could put a pretty quick end to the 'compromise or error' discussion for us.....
Out of town at the moment so can't really do any digging myself.
 
Yeah, no. I once had everything on minimum just to test and the framerate was still crap. At that time my pc was mid-range, so I wasn't expecting 60fps, but at any resolution it was still crap.
You are describing a CPU limit of a specific kind: one that is not as obvious.
A game with massive simulation being CPU limited is really common. In fact it makes sense that the game has a kind of scaling like that after a certain point.

The situation you are describing points to the game's gamecode bogging down the framerate. So much so that your adjusting even viewdistance settings was not affecting framerate anymore. The same thing happens nowadays in games like Arma or even in Crysis 1: which pegs all of its gameplay code (of which there is a bunch) to one core.
 
I think people are seriously over reacting.
Small loss of detail is worth it for a solid 30fps rather than patchy 30fps.

Then it should be a choice for the user, like how saints row 1 and 2 allowed you to toggle vsync on console, it was for the user to choose.

Mistake or not in the latest update, the removal of rather nice visual effects all of a sudden is stupid of rockstar games, so far next-gen sucks because of shit like this.
 

Saty

Member
Freaking give the players the choice. You don't even have to bombard them with settings. Make one setup that's about maximum fidelity with a note that it isn't going to be 30fps locked 100% of the time. Make a second setup that's about constant 30FPS with whatever cutbacks the dev decided to do to get that lock.

Now have a toggle in the options menu for either 'Performance' or 'Fidelity', or whatever you want to label it as.
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
1.09 was just released on ps4

Ok, this explains what I just saw...was so confused and thought I didnt update to 1.08. Swore I did to get online...lol.

Props for a extremely quick update tho.

Autosave is working again, didnt update to 1.09 yet.

Looking around the game now, and there is no way to tell what version you are on without, before updating. GoW Ascensions had version numbers at startup IIRC.
 
Can anyone explain exactly what the issue is with the railroad track screenshots in the OP? I'm not trying to suggest that the issues aren't real, just having trouble understanding what difference those shots are representing.
 

Derpyduck

Banned
I never had a problem with the frame rate. Stop speaking for everyone please. I'll take high visuals for a little, non noticeable, dip here and there.

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it didn't exist. And it wasn't "here and there". It was constant during daylight hours within the city while driving. Now it's gone. I'll trade some minor visuals for a steady framerate any day of the week.
 
Can anyone explain exactly what the issue is with the railroad track screenshots in the OP? I'm not trying to suggest that the issues aren't real, just having trouble understanding what difference those shots are representing.

watch the video also if you can.

Before now the game was using a bump mapping of sorts to make flat textures look 3D, adding depth and realism to things like stones, rocks, bricks and part's of the train track, look at the piles of stones between each segment of track and you can see in the older patch it has a 3D look to it, but not in the latest.
 
Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it didn't exist. And it wasn't "here and there". It was constant during daylight hours within the city while driving. Now it's gone. I'll trade some minor visuals for a steady framerate any day of the week.

Shit's not minor. Parralax mapping contributed largely to my reaction to the incredible visuals and without it alone the game looks a mark or two worse in terms of visuals, bringing it noticeably closer to it's last gen counterparts.

To each his own I suppose, but I'd rather have the game that blew me away with its visuals than a game that runs at 30fps a bit more often (and my experience echoes the "here and there" sentiments, to a degree - the center of the city by the skyscrapers and especially by Mike's house will muck things up depending on which angle you come at them from but otherwise I never had any problems I can recall)
 

ScOULaris

Member
This is looking more and more like an intentional change by the developers. And if that truly is the case, then I'm disgusted.
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
Still didnt update to 1.09 yet and can definitely confirm damaged was screwed up. (seeing ppl post its fixed with 1.09) I've been crashing into other cars, buildings, corners of buildings with only scratches to show for it. You would think the corner of a building would cause indentations.

And I definitely remember doing that mission
trying to get Michaels boat back
before the update, I failed it so many times because of car damage, or
Franklin flying off the car..

I had just told someone before seeing this thread its like they made current gen harder using the car damage as an example. I dont remember failing any early mission on last gen. If car damage woudla been like this when I first played I wouldnt have failed it so much.
 
Just curious - why are we assuming that this might be a bug? I find it hard to believe that these type of features have all been disabled because of a bug(s).

Tree/branch/bush sway was glitched at launch, we thought it was a downgrade; but it was a glitch. Which was fixed.

Car destruction was glitched after an update, we thought it was a downgrade; but it was a glitch. Which was fixed.

This could be a glitch too.
 
Before now the game was using a bump mapping of sorts to make flat textures look 3D, adding depth and realism to things like stones, rocks, bricks and part's of the train track, look at the piles of stones between each segment of track and you can see in the older patch it has a 3D look to it, but not in the latest.

Ah, thanks. I can definitely see the difference now. For whatever reason I was trying to spot a difference in the stone piles on the sides of the image, rather than focusing on the track segments right in the middle, d'oh.
 

-griffy-

Banned
Can anyone explain exactly what the issue is with the railroad track screenshots in the OP? I'm not trying to suggest that the issues aren't real, just having trouble understanding what difference those shots are representing.

It's hard to see in the static screenshot, but before the patch they were using parallax occlusion mapping to give depth to the texture. If you were to walk around you would see the illusion that the cross beams and the pebbles actually have depth and proper perspective based on the angle you are viewing them. Here are some examples of the effect:
7MoOE.gif

tumblr_n1lia0WQUu1r9no7zo1_1280.gif

40512-1-1376837802.gif


After the patch the parallax mapping was removed so it is just a flat texture.

If you look around where the picture says "PARALLAX OCCLUSION", before the patch you can see the cross bars look like they are actually sitting in the rocks properly based on the perspective the camera is looking at them. After the patch, the perspective looks completely off for this angle, it's just a flat texture on a flat plane, and the "perspective" of the texture looks as if you should be standing on the other side looking towards where the camera is.

This is disappointing since GTAV's use of POM on the next gen versions was a somewhat big deal. It's still a new effect to consoles, and most games don't use it. So to see fairly widespread use of it in a gigantic open world game with good performance was actually quite impressive and unexpected, and represented a significant improvement over the last gen versions of the game, as well as being a nice visual benefit for the new first person mode. It was actually one of the effects that got me to buy the PS4 version despite having played the hell out of and beaten the game on PS3. It demonstrated to me that the next gen version was more than just simply a higher resolution port.
 
Man some of you are overreacting like this is the end of everything

It is very discouraging for games to be downgraded after patches.

Is there a way to play the game as version 1.00? Delete the game and don't install the patches after you reinstall the game?

I don't play GTA Online so I won't care about not accessing online stuff.
 
Tree/branch/bush sway was glitched at launch, we thought it was a downgrade; but it was a glitch. Which was fixed.

Car destruction was glitched after an update, we thought it was a downgrade; but it was a glitch. Which was fixed.

This could be a glitch too.

Thanks for the enlightenment - didn't realize the trees where bugged out. I felt like this was done intentionally but I guess I was wrong.
 

cormack12

Gold Member
It's hard to see in the static screenshot, but before the patch they were using parallax occlusion mapping to give depth to the texture. If you were to walk around you would see the illusion that the cross beams and the pebbles actually have depth and proper perspective based on the angle you are viewing them.

Thanks for that. Informative and with examples. I guessed it was to do with 'depth' after seeing the screenshots. The second one just looks 'flat' and skewed strangely.
 
This is disappointing, specially since I was waiting for the game to get into a sale or smtg to buy it. Most of my friends game in PS4, so I'm not really interested in getting this game on PC, specially since I've already played it on X360.

The heists were really tempting, but I guess I'll hold out and see what happens next.


These new consoles are progressively the shittiest ever. Fucking trash.

I don't think you'll last here long
 

Ramsiege

Member
The next time someone wonders why devs go for prettier graphics over stable framerates, I'm going to point them to this thread.
 

_machine

Member
Oh, so you're okay with this precedent of downgrading a game significantly via patch after everyone has already purchased it?
I'm not saying it's not an issue, but I don't think that saying it's flat out downgraded when the performance has increased. It's a tradeoff for sure and definitely a negative for some people, but saying that it's only a bad thing is not fair. That said, it's not handled very well in terms of communication and I do think there's a fair chance it's a bug.
 
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