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Digital Foundry: Face-Off - Wolfenstein: The New Order

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Vashetti

Banned
id Tech 5 was designed from the ground up for 60fps gameplay, so what kind of results could be extracted from it now all the power of the new generation of consoles is at its disposal? With last week's release of Machine Games' Wolfenstein: The New Order, we finally found out. In our initial performance analysis, we went in search of the first cross-platform 1080p60 first-person shooter and while the game mostly delivered, the dicovery of a dynamic resolution suggested that, once again, PlayStation 4 had managed to trump its Microsoft rival.

After first isolating an obvious example of the tech at work on Xbox One, a more detailed look at the captures revealed that both versions of the game achieve their locked 60Hz update by adjusting the amount of pixels rendered at any given point, in effect balancing engine load in order to put consistent refresh and controller response first.

Having now completed our analysis, it's clear that the PS4 gains an advantage with smaller drops in resolution that occur less frequently than they do on Xbox One. Metrics in the area of 1760x1080 are found on PS4, while on the Xbox One this can drop to an extreme of 960x1080 in some scenes. This is usually identifiable by an increase in the amount of jaggies on screen, along with a slightly fuzzier appearance to the already gritty aesthetic that Machine Games employs throughout the game.
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Featuring a similar file size on all platforms (around 40GB) the same artwork is used across the PS4, Xbox One and PC versions of Wolfenstein, with environments featuring a mix of incredibly high and extremely low-resolution textures. Despite asset parity, the level of anisotropic filtering is slightly higher on the consoles. Streaming is handled to a similar degree across all formats with variable levels of texture pop-in between the three platforms. There's no clear winner here - all three have issues at various points, although PS4 and PC owners should be able to improve matter by installing an SSD into those systems.
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So just how scalable is id Tech 5? The true test of the engine would be to compare the results of the new consoles with the last. Unfortunately Bethesda didn't send us last-gen code, but we borrowed the PS3 version and stacked it up against The New Order running on PS4 to see the key advantages the new consoles bring to the game. Naturally, the target resolution is pegged at 720p on PS3, but a dynamic framebuffer regularly results in sub-HD visuals as the engine attempts to hold a solid 60fps - just as it did in the PS3 version of Rage. This results in a somewhat murkier look, with fuzzier geometry edges - exacerbated by the lack of anti-aliasing - and blurrier textures.
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Much more:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-wolfenstein-the-new-order-face-off
 
I wonder why the Xbox One has more pronounced normal mapping. Is it perhaps because of the typical issues with the One's gamma curve settings?
 
Of course PS4 will be better-looking. But XB1 owner here saying Wolfenstein looks fantastic so far, in case anyone is worried about it just looking plain bad. Dat frame rate.
 
How noticeable is the dynamic resolution?

I know Wipeout HD did it as well and I never noticed it in that game but I never got far enough in RAGE to see it because I couldnt get over the constant texture pop in.
 
The only few times that i noticed something was different was during some cutscenes (X1)

And a couple of times in the
hideout

Not much more than that though, game is too much fun to even care or notice while blasting shit up
 
Is the sheen on the hand completely absent on the PC version or was it slow to load?

oUrJ4e9.png


(couldn't get the x1 image to load for some reason)
 
xbox one here. never noticed any resolution drops. too fast i guess. only one framerate drop that was limited to one specific level (which oddly enough did not happen on a subsequent playthrough - it was really pronounced the first time through). didnt notice any texture streaming problems. zero. i thought the game performed admirably for such a troubled engine.
 
Cygnus said:
Such an awful engine.
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It only does one thing right, and that is 60fps on mediocre hardware. I would argue that the whole "handpainted texture thing" for every part of the world can be done similarly without all the downsides associated with mega texturing. Heck, their stamping process is basically just plastering decals all over the world and baking them into the megatexture....

Otherwise it sucks on high end rigs that can do so much more.
 
EBE said:
xbox one here. never noticed any resolution drops. too fast i guess. only one framerate drop that was limited to one specific level (which oddly enough did not happen on a subsequent playthrough - it was really pronounced the first time through). didnt notice any texture streaming problems. zero. i thought the game performed admirably for such a troubled engine.
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Sorry, I just find that VERY hard to believe. Surely you just weren't paying attention?
 
Question.

When people say 'sub-HD', do they mean to say it is less than a full HD resolution, that it is less than 720p - the marketing minimum - or that it is less than SD?

Because to me, sub-HD could mean all of them. An SD signal is sub-HD, but so is 700p. That seems really bad terminology for measuring something.
 
PS4 version looks and performs great, i noticed jaggies only few times, it all lasted very short [and never impacted performance].
 
It's mind boggling either console is dropping resolution. Even on their PC (680 and 3570) they couldn't run with full bells and whistles. What is so demanding about this game? RAGE ran at a locked 60 on my 5770 even with bumped up texture res. Was Carmack not around to lend a hand?
 
So this is just dynamic resolution or any interlacing happening?

Really tired and work has forced me to read a 200+ facts book until tomorrow so haven't read the whole df :(

BibiMaghoo said:
Question.

When people say 'sub-HD', do they mean to say it is less than a full HD resolution, that it is less than 720p - the marketing minimum - or that it is less than SD?

Because to me, sub-HD could mean all of them. An SD signal is sub-HD, but so is 700p. That seems really bad terminology for measuring something.
Click to expand...

If we're really anything below 1920x1080p is sub HD but the marketing girls and boys got 720p to be recognised as HD sooooo anything below 720p is sub HD now.
 
hawk2025 said:
Sorry, I just find that VERY hard to believe. Surely you just weren't paying attention?
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truly. im not saying they didnt happen, but any resolutions drops were probably resolved too quickly for me to notice. so i dont think they are an issue. framerate drops were nonexistent outside of the moment i described - one level, towards the very end,
youre in a mech suit blowing shit up
. texture streaming is nowhere NEAR as pronounced as it was in rage. youd have to be blind to not notice it in that game. i didnt here.

lack of AA IS obvious throughout. so i can see image imperfections.
 
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