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DF: Tech Analysis: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Freeman

Banned
Whats up with the BF4 crowd stating their opinion as facts?

people can judge graphics as they want. I could give a shit you can play BF4 in 4k 60fps, my TV is 1080P, my PC doenst have the Juice and I'm not intrested in BF4. Theres more to the final result of how impressive something is than simple metrics like resolution.
 

DrkSage

Member
really..? i have seen only some jeep driving footage and some sneaning section from this game and i thought it was really underwhelming, merely a small upgrade over previous Uncharteds and not a true generational leap.

i have been wrong many times before so.. can anyone link to some truly spectacular footage that lives up to all the hyperbolic praise?

http://m.imgur.com/ikfmYbC
AT-AT=this post
Rebel=people who fell for it
 

LostDonkey

Member
What is is about Naughty Dog games that put PC players in a tizzy? Can't we just enjoy the game for looking really good?

Of course we can, But you really think saying it's the best looking game ever created on any platform isn't going to start a discussion?

That's one very bold claim.
 

Daft Punk

Banned
Of course we can, But you really think saying it's the best looking game ever created on any platform isn't going to start a discussion?

That's one very bold claim.

If the claim is coming from a forum poster, then it's just an opinion. If it's coming from DF, then I'd say that's something up for debate. So far I've seen PC people get offended at the idea that a console game could rival something on PC.
 
I think the difference between 720p/900p in a 1080p screen and native 1080p is bigger than native 1080p vs native 4k*. It also would be like saying that TR2013 in 4k looks better than the latest TR at 1080p.

BF4 definitely doesn't have Uncharted 4's graphical quality, 4k or not.

*Source: I work with 1080p, 1440p and 4k screens daily.

Its Also hilarious that people care for resolution when ID imagine half of neogaf is overscanning their tv's. Btw, if you work in the tv production industry, why do tv's still overscan by default in the year 2016?
 

HoodWinked

Member
framerate is so weird the 30fps footage looks really smooth in this game almost like there is interpolation but there couldnt be since there are only 30 frames.

i've been playing the overwatch beta and there is a setting to limit the fps to 30 and it looks really bad there its probably just an issue with the game itself and may not be outputting the frames properly. despite the performance stats in overwatch saying its steady on 30fps.

the game runs flawlessly at 59/60 though.
 

GnawtyDog

Banned
You sound like someone who hasn't paid attention to PC gaming since the 90s. None of that stuff you've wrote is true.

What's not true? Actually since "all of it" is not true you might as well explain why - sentence for sentence. 8 sentences total I think.
 
Wow, just finished the DF tech analysis and I am absolutely blown away. Uncharted 4 is definitely the best looking game I have ever seen on anything. Sure there are games like Tomb Raider, Quantum Break, and Battlefront on pc which look great, but honestly the attention to detail doesn't come close to the level I'm seeing in Uncharted 4. Games have really come a long way.
 

Corine

Member
What's not true? Actually since "all of it" is not true you might as well explain why - sentence for sentence. 8 sentences total I think.

Ok.

1."They're delusional then." You can't possible know that. 2."You can have a monster PC but if you don't have a proper game to showcase the power under the hood, that's all you got, hardware." Exactly the same can be said of consoles. Plenty of games showcase the power of PCs. Almost all PC games have settings that just aren't possible on consoles. 3."PC gamers have to mostly deal with multiplats that simply offer options from the base offering in consoles." Again the exact same thing is true of consoles. Of course PC has far more exclusives than any consoles. 4."The games are hardly optimized for the hardware under the hood since it varies greatly." They use these magical things called apis these days. Only people that have no clue about PC gaming don't know that. 5."It's no rocket science." I'll give you that one but you obviously don't understand it. 6."DICE this gen is currently playing Crytek's role for PC gamers last gen." I'd give that to the Star Citizen devs. 7."The dev that throws enough bones around to gush about - thus the hardcore PC gamers can't stop mentioned them." So it's the same as the One vs Ps4 wars. 8."Still, the hardware is grossly underutilized (better wording, optimized) compared to a console." The 750ti has been proving that sentence wrong easily since release. If you want to continue the discussion PM me because this thread isn't the place.
 
Can someone please confirm that there is no screen tearing in this game? I don't wanna watch the performance video because I want to be a complete virgin to this game when I play it for the first time.
 

Timu

Member
I played a bit this evening.

Multiplayer is INSANELY clean and sharp. It looks lovely.

However, the slightly worse textures and lack of particle effects and moving parts really hits just how pretty it looks. It doesn't have a touch on singleplayer.

I hope co-op is closer to how singleplayer looks.
This game has co-op?
 

M_A_C

Member
Can someone please confirm that there is no screen tearing in this game? I don't wanna watch the performance video because I want to be a complete virgin to this game when I play it for the first time.

No way ND would allow screen tearing.
 

GnawtyDog

Banned
"They're delusional then." You can't possible know that.

Lol ok. Sending someone to confirm.
"You can have a monster PC but if you don't have a proper game to showcase the power under the hood, that's all you got, hardware." Exactly the same can be said of consoles.

I see no problems in the argument. Standard fare, applies to both (more so to PC than consoles, the higher-end the GPU/CPU is). So what's wrong?

Plenty of games showcase the power of PCs.

These days, for the power that's out there, very few actual games showcase the power of modern high-end GPU's. Star Citizen might perhaps be a solid showcase but still being worked on (if you wanna count game slices as a game sure - I don't)..... everything else is practically standard fare. Higher shadows, HBAO, higher resultion, some AF options etc... if your hardware can run it without regular frame drops at 60 fps, then you run it - if not you lower. Nothing has changed.

Almost all PC games have settings that just aren't possible on consoles.

No shit. You mean 4K on $400-$500 GPU... please...even with those cards you'll get framerate issues at 4k..probably because of you know what...
optimization.
....has to be a spoiler cause it seems to fly over your head.

"PC gamers have to mostly deal with multiplats that simply offer options from the base offering in consoles."

Again the exact same thing is true of consoles.
The statement was said to be wrong. You're merely saying it applies to both. With the exception of TLOU:Remastered I can't recall a game that allowed you to tweak with settings on consoles as PCs. Very rare. The settings are overwhelmingly fixed - 99%.
"The games are hardly optimized for the hardware under the hood since it varies greatly."

They use these magical things called apis these days. Only people that have no clue about PC gaming don't know that.

Yes I am not aware of what DX12, Vulcan is.... GAF keeps reminding me they don't exist, threads never pop up. Not to mention, that doesn't disprove the fact that PC hardware is underutilized.

As a general rule, the higher the GPU, CPU, the less you get for your buck. It seems to me that you really are having a hard time grasping the fact that solely focusing on optimizing for set hardware is not the same as developing for base hardware and adding graphical options for higher-end hardware. The options do not improve strictly proportional with power either. They've gotten better (as anything that's iterative like API's are)...they're nowhere close yet. Ad-hominem appreciated.
" It's no rocket science." I'll give you that one but you obviously don't understand it.
Clearly.
"DICE this gen is currently playing Crytek's role for PC gamers last gen." I'd give that to the Star Citizen devs.

Not really, development hell (or whatever it's to be called) has made that game fade - as showcased in various threads.

"The dev that throws enough bones around to gush about - thus the hardcore PC gamers can't stop mentioned them."

So it's the same as the One vs Ps4 wars.

Kind off Yes. PC doesn't have a singular organization behind it...the push is decentralized. Relatively the same if you look at the end goal only.

"Still, the hardware is grossly underutilized (better wording, optimized) compared to a console." The 750ti has been proving that sentence wrong easily since release.

You mean third party developers have been proving that wrong. Cause it's definitely not first party developers. Not to mention the bigger hole in that argument. Maybe you'll figure it out one day.
 

RexNovis

Banned
If you've been keeping up with Digital Foundry over the years and have an interest in graphics technology, you owe it to yourself to give Uncharted 4 a try. In fact, it's such a remarkable achievement that even users that prefer to stick with other platforms should find a way to at least sample the game, just to appreciate the extreme artistry and expertise on display here.

That is the most definitive recommendation I think I've ever seen out of DF o_O Wow! UC4 must be truly something to behold.
 
You mean third party developers have been proving that wrong. Cause it's definitely not first party developers. Not to mention the bigger hole in that argument. Maybe you'll figure it out one day.

So what is lacking in third party efforts that exists in first party efforts? Surely they start working with the same documentations and tools provided by Sony themselves. Third party devs have proprietary devs have separate teams. working on separate platforms, developing their own software for creating within each platforms confines. What exactly separates the first party?
 

GnawtyDog

Banned
So what is lacking in third party efforts that exists in first party efforts? Surely they start working with the same documentations and tools provided by Sony themselves. Third party devs have proprietary devs have separate teams. working on separate platforms, developing their own software for creating within each platforms confines. What exactly separates the first party?

What separates ROTR and Uncharted 4 graphically, tech wise?

Talent (and knowledge), dev time, singular focus. It applies to any game out there really. You pick the examples and figure it out.

Edit: ROTR is not really a good example until the PS4 version releases...not that it will change anything but still.
 
So what is lacking in third party efforts that exists in first party efforts? Surely they start working with the same documentations and tools provided by Sony themselves. Third party devs have proprietary devs have separate teams. working on separate platforms, developing their own software for creating within each platforms confines. What exactly separates the first party?

Their time and budget have to be spread across multiple platforms. They are limited in how far they can go with platform specific optimizations. Art assets have to be designed to work with whatever the weakest target platform is
 
Outstanding. Huge respect to Naughty Dog here, the game appears seamless and polished to an unrivalled degree. Some wonderful technological achievements.
 
What separates ROTR and Uncharted 4 graphically, tech wise?

Talent (and knowledge), dev time, singular focus. It applies to any game out there really. You pick the examples and figure it out.

But I was talking about third party efforts. How does a game like Assassin's Creed suffer more, when there's a combined effort of thousands, probably a good number just working on the PS4 version alone, suffer more that Uncharted 4? Like you said, it's a matter of focus. Programming is not just matter of having a single dataset and simply compiling to platform. Each platform requires it's own substantial effort to even be executable in it's native environment. So what focus does a first party benefit from where a third party doesn't?
 

GnawtyDog

Banned
But I was talking about third party efforts. How does a game like Assassin's Creed suffer more, when there's a combined effort of thousands, probably a good number just working on the PS4 version alone, suffer more that Uncharted 4? Like you said, it's a matter of focus. Programming is not just matter of having a single dataset and simply compiling to platform. Each platform requires it's own substantial effort to even be executable in it's native environment. So what focus does a first party benefit from where a third party doesn't?

Not sure what the question is, if you can make it clearer. I don't want to assume.
 

OsirisBlack

Banned
So people who've played it really feel it looks better than the Order 1886? That's the only game to legit wow me visually this generation.
Its weird, I think UC4 is the absolute best looking stylized game out on Console and in the top 3 period on any system. (Hello my name is Osiris and I am a PC gamer) The Order 1886 went for a more realistic look which it nails just as well as Uncharted nails its more stylish look. I think they are two of the top five best looking games so far this gen.

AC Unity on PC,the Witcher III and Battlefront are the others on my short list. Comparing BF to UC4 is pretty dumb when UC4 has much more going for it as an overall package UC4 blows battlefront out of the water and I don't care what you are playing BF on. Interactivity, animation, deformation, enemy Ai and location variety its not a fair comparison.

Now after battlefield 1 drops the top 5 will look a bit different.
 
Not sure what the question is, if you can make it clearer. I don't want to assume.

Your presumption was that third party efforts were lacking compared to first party efforts. I just want clarifications on what gains are made by first party, that third parties cannot, in regards to efforts. More specifically speaking with regards to massive AAA efforts.
 
Why are PC gamers are so offended here. Can't they accept that a console game can also look great with optimization? As digital foundry said this game is a technical marvel and optimized well.
 

GnawtyDog

Banned
Your presumption was that third party efforts were lacking compared to first party efforts. I just want clarifications on what gains are made by first party, that third parties cannot, in regards to efforts. More specifically speaking with regards to massive AAA efforts.

Ohh.. like I said, it comes down to a combination of things, talent(knowledge), dev time, singular focus, man power does help obviously - all comes down to timelines.

Now what you're saying is that studios like Ubisoft's A'Creed teams have different, well staffed teams allocated to the different versions of the game thus there should NOT be a difference in "effort" compared to a first party developer. The judge of that is really not the effort, it's the end result. Sony doesn't put out games from a first party team that can be at least considered similar to Assassins Creed and thus directly compared.

The closest in the Ubisoft stable to a Sony first party effort would be Watch Dogs or Far Cry to Infamous: Second Son. Killzone: Shadow Fall vs. Call of Duty on next-gen...
 
Picked up my copy a few hours ago and I gotta admit I'm extremely impressed. I play primarily on PC and this is still one hell of a graphical showcase IMO, regardless of platform. I've only tried multiplayer so far too but it's so smooth and the IQ is very impressive. This AA method is outstanding.
 
Ohh.. like I said, it comes down to a combination of things, talent(knowledge), dev time, singular focus, man power does help obviously - all comes down to timelines.

Now what you're saying is that studios like Ubisoft have several teams allocated to a single version thus there should not be a difference in "effort" compared to a first party developer. The judge of that is really not the effort, it's the end result. Although Sony doesn't put out games from a first party that can be at least considered similar to Assassins Creed.

The closest in the Ubisoft stable to a Sony first party effort would be Watch Dogs or Far Cry to Infamous Second Son.

I'm just saying that no one's sleeping on any platform. And the effort shown by each title is a culmination of effort to affect the project as designed. I feel there's a large skew that first party efforts are more precious than others, but by and large the efforts of third parties have diverged sharply from what remains the stable for first parties.
 

GnawtyDog

Banned
I'm just saying that no one's sleeping on any platform.

I am sure there is. At the beginning of this gen "parity" was big. Sometimes it's solely a business decision. Not every third party developer operates like Ubisoft's A'Creed teams. If what people say is right, Crystal Dynamics only develops for the Xbox One and someone else does the PS4, PC ports? I am sure you can find stories around.

Batman Arkham Knight...MKX on PC - poor ports. There is sleeping..
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
its officially the number one selling game on amazon for the year so far

BS, its been 5 months. There's no possible way UC4 could outdo literally every single game that has released in like whatever small amount of time it has been out even just on Amazon. you must be looking at hourly charts
 
I am sure there is. At the beginning of this gen "parity" was big. Sometimes it's solely a business decision. Not every third party developer operates like Ubisoft's A'Creed teams. If what people say is right, Crystal Dynamics only develops for the Xbox One and someone else does the PS4, PC ports? I am sure you can find stories around.

What dev does ROTTR on what platform is SE's call. Nixxes (widely championed in this forum) did a fined job with the PC version, adding extra effort in terms of taking advantage of the extra horsepower. PS4 will get their due in the holidays this year.

In terms of parity, it's not always as simply throwing horsepower at the problem. I'll make a case with the infamous case of Watch_Dogs. Before this gen even started, much of expected development was eyeing the gtx680 as a ballpark figure for the coming hardware. This was clearly telegraphed by Epic's famous Samaritan demo, the first rendition of the Elemental demo with voxel cone tracing GI, and the first showing of Watch_Dogs at E3. When solid details about hardware expectations started to be revealed. there was a noticeable shift by devs to temper their titles to the reality of the situation, easily surveyed by the subsequent showings of Watch_Dogs throughout the media circuit until release. Devs were hamstrung from overexpectations and had to adjust too soon. It's easy to call it parity simply looking at res, but under the hood there's a lot happening that needs to be accounted for. especially in a first gen open world title with prominent multiplayer built in.
 

wesly999

Banned
These days, for the power that's out there, very few actual games showcase the power of modern high-end GPU's. Star Citizen might perhaps be a solid showcase but still being worked on (if you wanna count game slices as a game sure - I don't)..... everything else is practically standard fare.

SC has some pretty graphics but so do a lot of other PC games (including multiplatform). I wouldn't just label SC as solid just because it's a PC-exclusive. It's almost like you are saying nothing can utilize the PC's hardware unless it's an exclusive.

Higher shadows, HBAO, higher resultion, some AF options etc... if your hardware can run it without regular frame drops at 60 fps, then you run it - if not you lower. Nothing has changed.

But all of these things are something coveted and take up GPU cycles. How can you negate their effects on how a game looks?

Yes I am not aware of what DX12, Vulcan is.... GAF keeps reminding me they don't exist, threads never pop up. Not to mention, that doesn't disprove the fact that PC hardware is underutilized.

There are a lot of games that utilize almost 99% of the GPU on PCs.
 
I'm at Chapter 13, and yep, this is the most visually impressive game I've ever seen. I don't know how it's running so smoothly, with areas so large and dense; it's downright magical. Yeah you can nitpick a rough texture here or there, mainly the water, but overall it is quite overwhelming. Nothing touches this imo.
 

wesly999

Banned
Their time and budget have to be spread across multiple platforms. They are limited in how far they can go with platform specific optimizations. Art assets have to be designed to work with whatever the weakest target platform is

Disagree here.

Exclusives don't necessarily mean a developer has a "leg up" on developers that make multiplatform games.. in fact, I'm more impressed from the robustness a game engine has for multiplats. Yes we've seen some PC games suffer because of developer deadlines, but some developers like Rocksteady/Rockstar go out of their way to make PC-ports utilize the hardware pretty well and it shows.
 

wesly999

Banned
What dev does ROTTR on what platform is SE's call. Nixxes (widely championed in this forum) did a fined job with the PC version, adding extra effort in terms of taking advantage of the extra horsepower. PS4 will get their due in the holidays this year.

In terms of parity, it's not always as simply throwing horsepower at the problem. I'll make a case with the infamous case of Watch_Dogs. Before this gen even started, much of expected development was eyeing the gtx680 as a ballpark figure for the coming hardware. This was clearly telegraphed by Epic's famous Samaritan demo, the first rendition of the Elemental demo with voxel cone tracing GI, and the first showing of Watch_Dogs at E3. When solid details about hardware expectations started to be revealed. there was a noticeable shift by devs to temper their titles to the reality of the situation, easily surveyed by the subsequent showings of Watch_Dogs throughout the media circuit until release. Devs were hamstrung from overexpectations and had to adjust too soon. It's easy to call it parity simply looking at res, but under the hood there's a lot happening that needs to be accounted for. especially in a first gen open world title with prominent multiplayer built in.

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