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DF: Quantum Break PC vs XB1

Zomba13

Member
Yikes. I heard it was bad but this just seems confusing more than anything. A lot of weird choices(? bugs?).
 

Caayn

Member
Haven't seen either video yet, but after reading the article I guess I'm not really looking forward for my PC code anymore.

I can't believe they actually sold this.
Same. I only played the first of the first act on the XB1 and decided to wait on my PC code to play the, what I thought would be, better version of the game.

Now that the verdict is out, I'll play through QB on my XB1 and try to sell my PC code when it arrives.
 

hwalker84

Member
This is one thing is don't understand. Does Microsoft not know PC gamers are going to run these kinds of tests on their PC releases? If this is your effort delay it please.
 

Makareu

Member
Didnt Microsoft / Remedy said the QB PC release matching the Xbox one was because they were surpised how easy it was to do a PC port ?
 
The camera is moving their correct?

If motion blur is scaling with fps, then you could have a much smaller mb gradient in the PC picture, thus making it clearer.

We need full resolution uncompressed stills IMO for a better comparison and to judge. We have so few of those for some reason....


Still camera.
ZDMb.jpg


Don't want to post a ton of images. You can just watch the videos. In the DF video it's much clearer when just walking forward as well. Doesn't look to be a alleged carbon copy of what the Xbox is doing.

I've seen shots from PC, some ugly recon looks to happening looking at the edges but Xbox is much lower res in final appearance. Of course it would be great to have a bunch of PNG images. DF could provide some in their articles but it's always some muddy looking jpgs.
 
Can someone explain the reconstruction thing, if the XB1's res is 720P and the PC is 1080P, why do we still get a blurry IQ on PC? it's not post-process stuff but that reconstruction technique, but how can it ruin a native res IQ?

Because in your case 1080p is the output resolution. The actual rendering resolution is 2/3 of whatever the output resolution is. So in 1080p you are actually getting 720p. In 4K (2160p) you are actually getting 1440p.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Still camera.
ZDMb.jpg


Don't want to post a ton of images. You can just watch the videos. In the DF video it's much clearer when just walking forward.

I've seen shots from PC, some ugly recon looks to happening looking at the edges but Xbox is much lower res in final appearance. Of course it would be great for a bunch of PNG images.
Yeah, it seems to be a limitation of the site. All of the images I provide are BMPs of great quality.
 
I guess this game would've been a nice showcase for AMD's cards, if it wasn't such a mess overall. It's hard to understand how Remedy could push out such a technical flop, considering their PC history and previous AW port that was great. I guess they were on a tight schedule and porting the game to PC exposed a lot of engine issues, in addition to having to deal with DX12 and UWP limitations. AMD's advantage would indicate that the engine is highly optimized to utilize GCN and Xbox One's rendering pipeline, and the PC port is essentially a direct port with only the barebones PC features and no optimizations.

I'm pretty sure they'll eventually fix the framepacing issues, but I doubt they'll ever enable a mode without the reconstruction technique used. Also the global illumination technique and it's problems are unlikely to be changed. We've seen similar stuff with Fallout 4 where Nvidia used its volumetric lightshafts, which would blur out object edges at lower quality levels, and higher quality was very performance intensive for little gain. I think the overall soft image quality the reconstruction technique used in addition to motion blur and film grain provides helps hide the issue, but on PC close up it is just too soft. This should've been possible to counteract with using higher resolution, but the engine seems to perform really poorly on PC, and it's hard to see where the bottleneck is. Perhaps it is the GI solution that simply murders GPUs at a higher resolution.
 

Pjsprojects

Member
Well I read the whole article and from that means I'm not even looking forward to my free PC code.

Great article on a rushed,restricted game.
 

dr_rus

Member
Wouldn't rendering the volumetric light shafts at full res remove most, if not all of the artifacts? Of course, it's different for this game since it is using the temporal reconstruction technique.

It would. But unless we're talking about some type of a pre-baked rendering (most of those in older games are pre-baked and can't be dynamic) the performance cost for such implementation would be enormous as you'll have to raytrace the whole scene with a pixel precision. There are other ways of doing this with better quality but they're not working well on GCN h/w.
 
Lol when a Titan X gives 20 extra frames over a 970 you know the port is shit. Amd did probably do a better job working around the issues.
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Shittiest PC port I've see in a long while. I'm not buying any games on the new PC platform until the major problems are addressed.
 
Still camera.
ZDMb.jpg


Don't want to post a ton of images. You can just watch the videos. In the DF video it's much clearer when just walking forward as well. Doesn't look to be a alleged carbon copy of what the Xbox is doing.

I've seen shots from PC, some ugly recon looks to happening looking at the edges but Xbox is much lower res in final appearance. Of course it would be great to have a bunch of PNG images. DF could provide some in their articles but it's always some muddy looking jpgs.

Yeah, it seems to be a limitation of the site. All of the images I provide are BMPs of great quality.

you can change the jpg end of comparison screnshots to png in my experience, for example:
8dqar.png

gvq7o.png
 

Daingurse

Member
Consistent frame pacing just plain isn't possible, and is my biggest issue with the port by far. Hurts the playability so much, the X1 version looks buttery smooth by comparison. If I could have a consistent 33.3ms at 30fps I'd be a lot happier. And if this wasn't a UWP app I could have done that myself with RTSS or a Nvidia Adaptive 1/2 Refresh Rate. This shit is so fucking frustrating, UWP brings no benefits whatsoever to me as a pc gamer or consumer.

Shittiest PC port I've see in a long while. I'm not buying any games on the new PC platform until the major problems are addressed.

Tomb Raider cost me like $9 bucks, and I couldn't control my desire to want to play this game, but yeah I ain't buying anymore shit on there. QB had the strongest pull for me, and they fucked this up worse than Arkham Knight. So yeah, I don't see myself buying anything else. This has really deflated any possible confidence I could have in their commitment to quality. I thought QB was going to be about as bad as the Tomb Raider port at-worst, if fucking only . . .
 

roytheone

Member
I have a 60 ghz monitor
No SSD
And a nvidia card.

Reading that article, the game will be a disaster for me. And they charge € 70 for it. This is arkham knight level of shitty porting. At least I got that game cheaply.
 

Javin98

Banned
It would. But unless we're talking about some type of a pre-baked rendering (most of those in older games are pre-baked and can't be dynamic) the performance cost for such implementation would be enormous as you'll have to raytrace the whole scene with a pixel precision. There are other ways of doing this with better quality but they're not working well on GCN h/w.
Ah, I get it now. Thanks a lot, this was very informative.
 

blastprocessor

The Amiga Brotherhood
John l like your collaboration with Richard (i'm a fan of Richard) and you guys work well together on the video.

Good job.
 

jet1911

Member
Man that port is a real mess. It's a shame because the game is so good. MS/Remedy just alienated a lot of people by releasing the game in this state.
 
Damn, the port indeed seems like a mess. Did they not test it at all?

I was wondering if they didn't just ported to win32 and used the centennial tool to uwp, so the tool could have added those bugs in the conversion, but centennial requires the latest build to run. That would explain why there are apparently denuvo on the game.
As things stand, it simply isn't possible to achieve a smooth frame-rate on any PC hardware configuration and thanks to the profound limitations imposed on gamers by the Universal Windows Platform, there's no way to fix it.
Could the game actually be fixed if were it not a uwp game? There are win32 games that even the community could do nothing but wait for a patch. Though that frame rate lock looks like it could be something durante could fix.
 
Could the game actually be fixed if were it not a uwp game? There are win32 games that even the community could do nothing but wait for a patch. Though that frame rate lock looks like it could be something durante could fix.

You could at least fix the framepacing most likely if it were not uwp. Locking it to some value that divides well into your native hz.

For example, those with 120hz monitors could lock to 60 (if the bug of 5/6th refresh rate in the game works the way I think it does), or those with 60hz monitors could lock it to a real 30fps.
 

GHG

Member
Damn, the port indeed seems like a mess. Did they not test it at all?

I was wondering if they didn't just ported to win32 and used the centennial tool to uwp, so the tool could have added those bugs in the conversion, but centennial requires the latest build to run. That would explain why there are apparently denuvo on the game.

Could the game actually be fixed if were it not a uwp game? There are win32 games that even the community could do nothing but wait for a patch. Though that frame rate lock looks like it could be something durante could fix.

There is a chance that the internal resolution rendering problem is something Durante could fix. Then things like frame pacing/framerate locking could be fixed with tools like RTSS. But as it stands we are At the mercy of the developer fixing things. No doubt they will do the best they can, but there's still no guarantee.

I mean if the community can go some ways to fixing shitshows like the saints row 2 PC port then some chance is better than no chance right?
 

bede-x

Member
Can anyone explain the reasoning behind locking the game at 50fps (or 5/6 of the refresh rate)? Why would you do that?
 

Jude

Banned
Reading and watching the video of John and Richard talking over the game points out how absolutely broken it currently is. 5/6th of your refresh rate is the FPS cap?

WHAT?!

So does that mean... if I ran the game on a 100hz monitor (doable on my rig), it would be capped at 83fps?

What a bizarre... everything.


Yeah, the behaviour is completely beyond the pale regarding strange things I have seen in PC ports. Like, what?

I can get more than 50fps on a 60hz tv, so maybe they are just... wrong, at least with an amd card.

An outer world magic rig pushing more than 50fps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5a-HVOQG9g

Maybe some of us have Quantum pcs... who knows.
 
nice. looking forward to picking up the game later for xbox one

As it stands, we've found that it's impossible to experience the game at a smooth 30 or 60fps on the PC. Frame-pacing issues and the inability to reach your display's refresh rate are a genuine issue for the PC version
On two of our Nvidia-equipped systems, Quantum Break crashed. A lot

Screen%2BShot%2B2015-12-07%2Bat%2B4.03.31%2BPM.png
 

ISee

Member
After reading the article I'm like:

What?
Why?
Who did this?
Seriously, what's going on here?

Arkham Knight was bad, but this seems to be even worse. Honestly at least some people were able to brute force the game or to lock it @30 and get 'reasonable' results (not saying that bruteforcing or having to lock fps to 30 is something we should accept!). But this game... it's like every decision they made was just wrong.
 

LordRaptor

Member
?

For looking into and trying to address the real problems the game has launched with?

Bug verification, reproduction, fixing and regression testing is a real thing that takes time to do.
It's going to take longer than it otherwise normally would because it has to go through MS cert rather than just be deployed as a bugfix patch update thanks to UWA though.
 
Wow glad I didn't build my PC for this game. The differences are marginal at best.
You know I was really excited with MS releasing their IP on PC but its been a profound disappointment so far.
 

Conduit

Banned
Just to note - this video is only comparing the visual differences.

The full article and performance video will dig into the problems with the PC version (which are severe)

Can you explain this ( or anybody ) :

Quantum Break has arrived on the PC and to suggest that the results are disappointing would be a massive understatement. PC gamers are left out in the cold with another high profile release failing to deliver expected levels of performance, features and customisation. As things stand, it simply isn't possible to achieve a smooth frame-rate on any PC hardware configuration and thanks to the profound limitations imposed on gamers by the Universal Windows Platform, there's no way to fix it.

Which limitations?
 
Xbox one version really close to ultra, outside resolution.
Well yeah, the PC version is severely gimped.

Can you explain this ( or anybody ) :

Which limitations on UWP?

He's referring specifically to the lack of using third party software to interact with the game, like RivaTuner Statistics Server, which could have been used to correct the game's framepacing issues. For a primer on UWP limitations, I highly recommend Durante's article for PC Gamer.
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Can someone explain to me why it doesn't render at a native resolution.
 
Can someone explain to me why it doesn't render at a native resolution.
Because the X1 version doesn't render at native resolution, and for whatever reason (perhaps time, perhaps it was deemed not worth the effort because of how core to their renderer it was) they didn't change it for the PC version.
 
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