Backfoggen
Banned
This is one messy looking game. The streets still look horrible like they did in the early footage.
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[Digital Foundry] Performance Analysis: Assassin's Creed Syndicate
- Thread starter stryke
- Start date
Shin-Ra
Junior Member
Dictator93
Member
I get the feeling this game, and unity as well, are pushing GPU and CPU VERY HARD. Hence why it is 900p in the first place: there would be no reason for it to be that resolution otherwise. This time though, I am just suggesting the load profile changed between games. Less crowds, less enterable buildings means less drawcalls, less animation data to have run on the CPU...etc. So now the PS4 is showing its GPU advantage. Maybe.
Just a hunch.
As opposed to your "we're insignificant, might as well keep quiet" mentality?
I audibly laughed when I saw that tbh.
Stone Ocean
Member
More dips on the Xbone? Huh? Wasn't it the other way around in Unity? The hell is wrong with this fucking engine lol
Dictator93
Member
Perhaps read the thread and the article which would offer clues to that change?
I really feel the yearly push is preventing Ubisoft developers having enough time to optimise and for the engine to continue to improve.
Yes performance is better than Unity out the door but the hit to do this suggests to me without time to optimise code the brute force approach of just dropping the content has been employed too.
It feels they originally overshot the consoles comfort zone with Unity and this title is a half way house response forced by an annual release schedule.
On PC the engine can shine but it's not feeling right on console yet. They should seriously give more time to the next entry and allow time to really align the engine and their design principles for AC with the actual consoles specs.
Yes performance is better than Unity out the door but the hit to do this suggests to me without time to optimise code the brute force approach of just dropping the content has been employed too.
It feels they originally overshot the consoles comfort zone with Unity and this title is a half way house response forced by an annual release schedule.
On PC the engine can shine but it's not feeling right on console yet. They should seriously give more time to the next entry and allow time to really align the engine and their design principles for AC with the actual consoles specs.
As opposed to your "we're insignificant, might as well keep quiet" mentality?
Not what I said and not a reasonable interpretation either. There's a significant distinction between voicing displeasure or wishing a game ran better and flatly refusing to buy it because it's not superior in its technical specifications (even when the review makes it clear it does run better).
Dictator93
Member
An embarassingly low quality sprite and water effect.
The quality of the splash is the exact same. . .
Maybe you should tell them how they would go about making it 1080p. Smh
DOWN
Banned
Well, the vast terrain of emptiness helps MGSV a lot.
Anyway, crowded streets is one of the features I loved in past AC games, this looks empty
Shin-Ra
Junior Member
The dropped frames actually seem to occur when the wet-lens distortion appears, which for some reason is only after she splashes back out.
http://gifyu.com/images/ACSYNDsplash.gif
Still, there's no obvious reason that scripted scene should be so taxing in that moment.
http://gifyu.com/images/ACSYNDsplash.gif
Still, there's no obvious reason that scripted scene should be so taxing in that moment.
dgrdsv
Member
I laughed so hard on the last part about walkable interiors.
thelastword
Banned
These pics look absolutely awful, I've yet to understand how people call this game beautiful or a technical wonder, awful lod, weak textures, pop-in galore on top of performance issues. I understand people liking unity's art and setting, but it's not amazing on technical front.I have Unity on PC and played it on a 970 but I found it not all that beautiful tbh. Felt like there was a vaseline filter on everything (and I'm not talking about FXAA) and the texture draw distance was really bad.
(not my pic but like this)
Older AC games seemed to swap in low poly models like this:
which actually looked good whereas Unity appears to use very poor low res textures:
Ha, perhaps he would like to see if a Titan X coupled with an i7 runs this game better than the PS4.......1.What would you like them to test with? A 980Ti, a R9 380, a high end AMD CPU or an I3 Skylake? Maybe they should even include linux or mac setups?
Too many different, possible and still logical PC configurations you could use to test performance vs consoles. It's too much work.
2.Most, even mid class, PC configurations would just straight out win, like 9 out of 10 times (one being Arkham Knight). It's not even close most of the time.
For example: even one year ago, when Unity came out and everybody complained how bad it ran, most PC people were able to make it run at 1080p30-60fps. On the other side consoles ran at 900p 20-30fps. And the PC crowd (including me!) still complained the hell out of the game and it is still considered a bad port. (Not saying it is a good one but it ran and looked much more worse on consoles).
PC wins. No need to showcase it.
Edit:
Also watch some NX gamer on YT
I think the engine can do 1080p on PS4 easily, something about every Ubisoft game defaulting to 900p on PS4 just rings "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" to me. Remember, even black flag was 900p on PS4 at release, why? why would this game ever be 900p with no AA? Then 1080p was patched in because every other 30fps game on the system was 1080p, black flag even got a nice AA solution on top. All of these IQ enhancements and the game still runs like pie.
Then the XBOX should have eaten this game for lunch since it has the more powerful CPU
Do you really believe that if a game like DR3 is ported to PS4 that it won't run it at a better framerate and resolution? So much talk about CPU's and being cpu limited, the same was said about Unity, persons use to say that Unity performed better on XB1 because of the CPU, they said it was all the draw calls and A.I of the 10,000 strong crowds, how wrong were they. You really hear it all tbh, that same unity was later patched and runs about the same framerate as the XB1, so what say they now, it even has the better overall framerate now, since it runs better during combat.Who here is saying this game is GPU limited, what I've heard is more talk about CPU limitations, if the CPU is the culprit of these odd lost frames on PS4, why is my resolution stuck in the 900p sector like it's XB1 cousin? It makes no sense, so I'm really not understanding what's rationale about the argument you are presenting.
Better IQ, not necessarily better effects or the like. However, it has been proven, if a game has same resolution on the same platform the PS4 version should not only exceed the XB1 in framerate but also in effects and perhaps other graphical features like AA etc...The other tidbit to keep in mind is that a 1080p game on the PS4 still outperforms it's 900p cousin on the XB1 with similar graphical settings......and..
if a game at 1080p on PS4 still outperforms the same game at 900p on the XB1, why wouldn't a game that's 900p on both platforms not carry the same legacy, hell, the PS4 version should even gain a couple of lead frames because it's tasking the GPU less. You see, it's all GPU in that instance. This is why it was so puzzling that some tech guys would even suggest that Unity was not 1080p or performed worse on PS4 because of every-which way excuse, it was wrong then and it's wrong now.
Just like Black flag, both this game and Unity could run at 1080p on the PS4 without much issue. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite is all I'm seeing here.
Paging Dark10x, did you guys ever capture footage of when this game was (allegedly, supposedly) running at 1080p on the PS4?
Zombie James
Banned
Smells like forced parity. Again. Get your shit together, Ubisoft.
Dictator93
Member
The game performs notably worse on xb1. How is that parity?
DOWN
Banned
Unity is da gawd of open world visuals. The very long thread stating so was no fluke.
The assets and lighting are out of this world for open world quality and even scaled down (from these real screens from here on GAF) would be glorious
It's gorgeous and yet to be defeated
Garrett Hawke
Member
You can make any game look good if you get the right angle and down sample enough. Unity looks great up close but the moment you get onto the roof tops and start being able to see buildings in the distance they become a muddy mess.Unity is da gawd of open world visuals. The very long thread stating so was no fluke.
The assets and lighting are out of this world for open world quality and even scaled down (from these real screens from here on GAF) would be glorious
It's gorgeous and yet to be defeated
Dictator93
Member
DOWN
Banned
My initial reaction too considering visual parity is very rare this gen and normally falls in favor of PS4 since pure IQ tend to get a boost with GAF giving the credit for those wins to it being an obvious place for the GPU advantage to show. Performance differences are usually chalked up to CPU issues on GAF.
It isn't but obviously people are just playing the “take popular number, compare. If same, parity“-game which is ridiculous.
But seriously, the thread is already done. Nothing will really tell us why the game performs how it does and as in all games, we will most likely never know.
Your link to the pdf is the only reliable source in this thread and there won't be any more helpful talk.
You're all gonna slam Syndicate for its LOD issues and then use MGSV as an alternative? Okay.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
It's completely visually inconsistent. Someone could post another 10 shots that look like they came from a last gen game.Unity is da gawd of open world visuals. The very long thread stating so was no fluke.
The assets and lighting are out of this world for open world quality and even scaled down (from these real screens from here on GAF) would be glorious
It's gorgeous and yet to be defeated
No need for a Titan X. A 960 will do just fine, I bet it can run Syndicate at 1080p/stable 30fps (using console settings) with a modern Core I5 (2500K and above). Hardly high-end hardware you will agree but it has produced visibly superior results to the PS4 in many games.
We don't know that. Every engine is different and games have different bottlenecks.
There is no proof that the PS4 can run Syndicate at 1080p with the same render settings.
However, there is a case for more than the really pitiful AF on both consoles. It should be 16 on PS4.
thelastword
Banned
I believe your point has some merit, but I hope you're not implying that the hit involves a scaleback on crowds, this is a different game and I believe we should be judging the game based on what it is and what's it's doing. Surely, not every AC game should have 10,000 npc's on screen. In any case, the npc count and draw calls was not the reason Unity had a bad framerate on the PS4, that was proven wrong a long time ago by the people who suggested it in many forms since then. Solid point otherwise, but, is the same team who worked on Unity the very one which worked on Syndicate?
That has been seen on many DF videos, when exactly should that dip become visible on the digital OSD??
Still, this game look so basic with lots of drab looking environments, texture work and overall detail leaves a lot to be desired, at least a good IQ(1080P) would offset that somewhat, but it all looks a blurry drab mess to me.
Did past AC games all have 10,000 npc's? What is the history there of past AC games I'm not remembering, even DF acknowledged the game having more npc's than they first thought. I'm not getting every game and every setting must now accommodate 10,000 npc's, France is not London, London is not France, the last game didn't even have coaches you could ride or that type of traffic, trains etc...Well, the vast terrain of emptiness helps MGSV a lot.
Anyway, crowded streets is one of the features I loved in past AC games, this looks empty
On the flip, MGSV is not a 1080p 30fps game, I don't think Unity or Syndicate would ever enter that conversation, because it would be competing with graphical heavy hitters like Until Dawn and 1886, do you know how much more impressive Kojima would have made MGSV look at 1080p 30fps? At 1080p 60fps it still much more impressive than Syndicate on a technical level. All I'm seeing in syndicate are some basic looking character models, drab textures, low AF and some really low rez effects.
HoodWinked
Member
saw commercials for this game and fallout 4 on yesterday's football game.
interestingly enough neither game had a ps/xbox bumper at the end so publishers are paying for their own tv ads.
interestingly enough neither game had a ps/xbox bumper at the end so publishers are paying for their own tv ads.
Fbh
Gold Member
But they did a good job. After a game with horrible performance and tons of glitches they now release a more stable and better running game.
Yes, downgrades and cutbacks had to be made, but that's because current console hardware just coudln't handle something like Unity. Cutbacks are also part of optimization
thelastword
Banned
These high rez shots on a beastly rig have surely made some mileage, but again, great art, there's nothing amazing about it technically. You could take that same beastly rig and post shots of all the inconsistencies in visuals at the same high rez glory, all the lod issues, texture issues and sometimes bland areas. The art is glorious in some parts, but as a whole this game leaves a lot to be desired.Unity is da gawd of open world visuals. The very long thread stating so was no fluke.
The assets and lighting are out of this world for open world quality and even scaled down (from these real screens from here on GAF) would be glorious
It's gorgeous and yet to be defeated
Can you imagine that syndicate looks even worse and it's IQ has not improved a bit even. Just unacceptable.
I think you're being a bit too harsh on ACU. Those issues were mostly cleaned up (yes, it was buggy as hell at first). The game looks absolutely insane at times. It has rough edges but, in some scenes, it left my jaw on the floor.
Unfortunately, I don't think we have any direct footage of that "1080p" PS4 footage. There was never a chance to capture any of it.
I assure you, a beastly rig is not necessary. I can play ACU at 1440p at a completely stable 30fps on a GTX780/i5 3570k. At 1080p it's mostly 60fps as well. I can even play at 4k with a smoother frame-rate than the console versions.
It really does look that good and you do not need an insane rig to handle it. I swear!
DOWN
Banned
let's not do these cliché dismissals that apply to any open world games.
And no, the issues are not overwhelming. This thread, the best graphics thread, and the screenshots threads weren't full of praise and Unity mentions by mistake. The impressiveness was noted. Unity's visual highs are the highest of any of its competition and its delusional to pretend their uses of PBR, HDR, subsurface scattering, global illumination, atmospherics, exposure simulation, etc. didn't elevate it in unmatched ways.
Where are these other open world games that can produce screenshots like that??? Show me, please. I live for the idea of games that can beat those shots with their own.
The cutscenes are stunningly mo-capped, lit, and detailed (including fantastic hair). But Paris? Looks incredible, detailed, and polished well above average and reaches a fantastic height.
i dont see why people are saying it isnt... it is.
Its simple really... the developer made the game with the exact same specs on both consoles. that by all means IS parity. obviously if you take the settings from PS4 version and put that same game on XB1 the console wont handle it as well... thats not saying ANYTHING about game parity... all it says is that the console cant handle the game parity.
Totally agree. It ran very well on my 780 at the time without PCSS and using very high LOD.
No issues hitting 60fps the majority of the time on my 970 then 980, with max LOD.
I don't think that Syndicate could run well at 1080p on PS4. The cutscenes seem to hit the GPU harder than the CPU and yet the PS4 can still sometimes drops frames in cutscenes. If it was running in 1080p then these scenes may run even worse.
The PS4 spends quite a lot of time at 30fps and that would skew the average. Unless you mean for scenes where both are sub 30fps.
Did DF post framerate averages? If one just ran the percentage difference it could be pretty close to the theoretical difference between the two.
edit: like here for example
The PS4 spends quite a lot of time at 30fps and that would skew the average. Unless you mean for scenes where both are sub 30fps.
Congrats on reading the thread.
ISee
Member
I remember reading something about cutscenes rendered in a higher resolution in Unity on consoles. Maybe it's the same in AC:S. But generally I agree. I doubt the PS4 has enough resources left to render the game in 1080p It already drops fps (from time to time) during 'normal' 900p gameplay. and I also think this is due to a lack of cpu and not gpu power.
Dictator93
Member
Exactly what I meant. Obviously, when the PS4 ist at 30 we cannot possibly know what its real FPS would be if it were not capped.
EightBitNate
Member
Please stop with the parity bullshit. It's so embarrassing.
First of all, Syndicate was at Sony's E3 press conference and is receiving exclusive content. Why would Ubisoft do that and then botch the PS4 version?
Secondly, it's not like its running perfectly even at 900p. Neither version is, but the PS4 is at least more consistent. I don't raising the resolution anymore would help. I'm not completely sure how the engine works, and neither is anyone else outside of Ubisoft. There's so much stuff going on behind the scenes. It's just so disingenuous to say it's a parity thing.
DOWN
Banned
Ubisoft said it first and the visuals have been identical ever since, despite their other titles before the comments on parity having been higher quality on PS4. The question with Ubisoft didn't come from nowhere. It sticks out on its own for having been so unusual this gen to see parity since there isn't much reason there would be, but it got much worse when Ubi switched from not having parity to having parity, after their own person said they wanted parity.
ninjablade
Banned
There is no other excuse at this point, its forced parity, almost every game coming Out on ps4 has a clear resolution advantage over The Xbox version, they. Are clearly Not taking advantage of the ps4. Higher at the very least better AA.
I'm not referring specifically to NPCs but just general downgrade across the board. Looks to me like it was a case of take couple of years to produce game with much more optimised code base or push another entry out in one year with some further optimisation plus a downgrade in visuals to try and achieve more or less same thing.
I just don't believe it's possible to churn out complex games like this and properly optimise the game and to be honest I think the wobbly stability of the games shows this.
I like what engine promises but on the other hand I'd rather then pushed engine under black flag further and delivered 1080p.
I wouldn't surprised if the fucked up PS4 engine for Unity negated any of the performance benefits that the faster GPU could afford. That Ubi released four patches and magically improved PS4 performance by 20% to 25% without any noticeable downgrades gives us an indication of the state the game was released at.