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Digital Foundry: Performance Analysis: The Evil Within

D

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Dictator93 said:
Serious question:

Has there been a 1080p 60fps game that looks very good whilst also having complex graphics?
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On consoles? Heh, not too many.

I'd argue that MGSV looks absolutely fantastic and has a huge scale to boot but its cross-platform roots are still pretty evident if you look closely.

Perhaps Metro Redux? It's a last gen thing but it's still an amazing looking game and never ever drops a frame on PS4. It's completely locked. An impressive engineering effort.

I'm all for performance but this is way blown out of proportion. It's a "console game" type of performance.
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That's not true at all. You're specifically referring to the last few years of PS3 and 360 titles. It hasn't always been that poor. Compared to what else is available on PS4 or XO, The Evil Within is actually one of the worst, if not THE single worst, performing games across the two systems. Most games these days at least deliver a consistent 30 fps.
 
D

Dictator93

Member
hey_it's_that_dog said:
Last gen geometry means this game is probably not an example of what he's asking for. It looks great, but the environment assets are at a level of complexity dictated by the PS3's horsepower.
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Along with the complexity of the shading and the FX going on.

I only wanted to ask that question kind of rhetorically, because it does seem to appear more and more, that if you want stellar performance in a game (this game is a ba example for that IMO), you have to give up quite a lot for that "next gen look."

dark10x said:
On consoles? Heh, not too many.

I'd argue that MGSV looks absolutely fantastic and has a huge scale to boot but its cross-platform roots are still pretty evident if you look closely.

Perhaps Metro Redux? It's a last gen thing but it's still an amazing looking game and never ever drops a frame on PS4. It's completely locked. An impressive engineering effort.
Click to expand...

MGSV has great chracter models, but the sacrafices for 60fps are pretty obvious all over the place. Its dithered alpha, lack of shadowed light sources, big LOD problems, distinctly poor SSAO, low res shadows. Etc.

Metro is perhaps a better example, but even then, as soon as they go PBR 4A admitted they will go 30fps for next gen consoles so it actually looks graphically better.
 
H

HeelPower

Member
hey_it's_that_dog said:
Last gen geometry means this game is probably not an example of what he's asking for. It looks great, but the environment assets are at a level of complexity dictated by the PS3's horsepower.
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Does that really matter ?

The PS4 can handle a 2013 game at high settings at 1080p and 60 fps.

Its not like every high setting on PC supports a large jump in geometry and effects.
 
Windom Earle

Windom Earle

Member
I've watched a stream of this game yesterday and it looked rather unimpressive from a technical side (to put it mildly). Paired with the gigantic black borders it becomes offensive to my eyes.
 
I

industrian

will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
StevieP said:
There is no such thing. This kinda stuff shouldn't still be on the collective vocabulary of anyone on GAF at this point.
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I agree. Let's use "incompetent developers" instead. Because why challenge the work rate of someone when their end-product is all the evidence you need.
 
RedAssedApe

RedAssedApe

Banned
performance on ps4 doesn't really bug me when playing but i kind of want to wait to see if they do another patch. stable 30fps would be nice.
 
I

impact

Banned
StevieP said:
There is no such thing. This kinda stuff shouldn't still be on the collective vocabulary of anyone on GAF at this point.
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Are you telling me that the PS4, PC and XB1 ports of this game aren't lazily made? Sub 30fps on these consoles at this shit resolution and it's not the developers fault? Haha never change.
 
N

nOoblet16

Member
lupinko said:
Vanquish was butter smooth 30fps last I remembered on PS3 anyway.
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It wasn't it ran worse than 360 and even the 360 version was never constant 30FPS, vanquish, the game essentially had GTA level performance. On PS3 it had v sync and that caused it to run worse than 360 version. There were levels where the framerate would average out to 26-27FPS. That is not butter smooth at all. But Vanquish had a very good object and camera motion blur that made it look fluid but it would have looked better if it was completely locked 30FPS or even around that (such as Gears of War 3 or Uncharted 2/3).
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vanquish-face-off?page=2
 
S

StevieP

Banned
impact said:
Are you telling me that the PS4, PC and XB1 ports of this game aren't lazily made? Sub 30fps on these consoles at this shit resolution and it's not the developers fault? Haha never change.
Click to expand...

You have time vs budget vs manpower as a constant struggle. Has anyone ever figured that maybe, just maybe, one of those things or a combination of them is to blame?

Sure technical skill matters, but the fact that people are calling developers "lazy" really irks me on this forum. Without knowing the story behind the development of this title, you don't know what happened. It could be that the team of developers were working 80 hours weeks to get the game out as is. In fact, that's extremely common nowadays.

To blanket-insult game developers and call them lazy strikes me as ignorant, imo.
 
Papacheeks

Papacheeks

Banned
StevieP said:
You have time vs budget vs manpower as a constant struggle. Has anyone ever figured that maybe, just maybe, one of those things or a combination of them is to blame?

Sure technical skill matters, but the fact that people are calling developers "lazy" really irks me on this forum. Without knowing the story behind the development of this title, you don't know what happened. It could be that the team of developers were working 80 hours weeks to get the game out as is. In fact, that's extremely common nowadays.

To blanket-insult game developers and call them lazy strikes me as ignorant, imo.
Click to expand...

But there has to be people who are the budget people fir the developer/publisher that look and assess the state of the game and the hardships the team is having and see if it's viable to keep going.
Especially knowing that the engine they were using wasn't optimized to begin with for last gen. So how are you going to get it to work on new next gen hardware if it's didn't even run well on last gen hardware?

Same reason why Kingdom Hearts 3 is being made with Unreal Engine 4 instead of SE in house engine. It was not viable financially, and that seems to be a close scenario here.
Which is why the game has gone through alot leading up till release. If we look back at past trade shows like Pax East of this year it wasn't in the best of shape and was noted as such by press and attendee's who played it.

Then at Pax Prime they showed the game running a lot better, and people became more interested, but again they were showing certain levels, that didn't have the frame rate issues.
Then you get the over bloated hardware specs to play a game that basically is running on an old ass engine.

Then we get Eurogamer to confirm how bad the port is, and how it should be running better on quad-core cpu's.

This game seems to have had I would agree a rocky development, but one that seems could have shifted on a a better engine like UNreal 3, and still looked great, and be optimized for both console and pc.
The fact that they would ship the game in the state it was knowing the issues, shows you that it seems to be more of the higher ups that should have taken notice of the state of the game earlier on and made a decision. And that decision should have been backed by the developers as well.
 
H

Hypron

Member
StevieP said:
You have time vs budget vs manpower as a constant struggle. Has anyone ever figured that maybe, just maybe, one of those things or a combination of them is to blame?

Sure technical skill matters, but the fact that people are calling developers "lazy" really irks me on this forum. Without knowing the story behind the development of this title, you don't know what happened. It could be that the team of developers were working 80 hours weeks to get the game out as is. In fact, that's extremely common nowadays.

To blanket-insult game developers and call them lazy strikes me as ignorant, imo.
Click to expand...

Yep. If those devs were lazy they'd get other jobs because as a software engineer you make more and work less when working for a normal software company.

Management issues are very often the reason for a poor quality product. Maybe not enough time was allocated for QA, maybe the project wasn't well planned... Laziness features towards the bottom of the plausible reasons for the game shipping as is.
 
O

omonimo

Banned
nOoblet16 said:
It wasn't it ran worse than 360 and even the 360 version was never constant 30FPS, vanquish, the game essentially had GTA level performance. On PS3 it had v sync and that caused it to run worse than 360 version. There were levels where the framerate would average out to 26-27FPS. That is not butter smooth at all. But Vanquish had a very good object and camera motion blur that made it look fluid but it would have looked better if it was completely locked 30FPS or even around that (such as Gears of War 3 or Uncharted 2/3).
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vanquish-face-off?page=2
Click to expand...
Worst than 360? Run like GTA5? O_O
 
Green Yoshi

Green Yoshi

Member
I read many negative comments about the PS3-version, but not so many about the 360-version. Either there are more active PS3-users or there are noticeable differences.
 
C

Cubed

Member
I'm sure the game is fun, but I'm not paying $60 for a new gen game that can't reach EITHER 1080p or 60fps. I can deal with one concession, but not both. Hell, it doesn't even run at a locked 30 fps. Sad.

This game, Alien: Isolation, and Sleeping Dogs: DE are all technical letdowns on the PS4.
 
N

nOoblet16

Member
omonimo said:
Worst than 360? Run like GTA5? O_O
Click to expand...

The link I posted has framerate analysis and you can see it yourself. It hovers around 26-27 FPS and dips a lot to low 20s. That is essentially GTA level performance, it does feels more fluid but that is down to the low input lag and very good use of object/camera motion blur and good animations. None of the games made by Platinum have ever been good at holding their target FPS with the exception of Bayonetta 360 which stays closer to its target FPS more than any other game made by them.
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
I'm honestly not too thrilled with how the game looks or performs - and the issues range from the obvious technical shortcomings to stylistic decisions the dev made.
 
I

Inceptional

Member
Haunted said:
I'm honestly not too thrilled with how the game looks or performs - and the issues range from the obvious technical shortcomings to stylistic decisions the dev made.
Click to expand...

I thought I was going to feel that way as well but after playing the first couple of chapters, I feel the complete opposite. I'm loving the stylistic choices(including the black bars) and it's running just fine on my PS4. Besides some slight pop-in and one framerate hiccup at the end of chapter 2, I think it runs just fine, and I'm usually pretty sensitive to framerate issues. Maybe it's the slower pace of the game that's helping but I'm finding the framerate a non-issue so far. It's certainly no Saints Row 4 on 360, which ran like shit and I got rid of because of that fact. But that was also a much faster paced game, so probably more noticeable. All I know is compared to the things I was hearing before playing, I've been pleasantly surprised with how smooth it's felt so far. It also just looks really cool and has some of the best atmosphere I've seen in a game since TLOU.
 
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