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GTA V: PSN Digital Version Impressions - Check-In Thread

netBuff

Member
I have noticed very few issues with the launch 60GB drive but I did have a spare 80GB SSD so I swapped to that. Haven't noticed any pop-in but I haven't been going super speed. Now I'm wondering if disc + SSD will be even better.

I'm not experiencing any problems with the digital version, but my PS3 has an SSD as well. Digital version & SSD will, most likely, net you the best experience overall in regard to loading times and pop in problems.
 

DoctorZ

Member
Rebuild database did nothing for me, tried it last night. I really hope this gets fixed as knowing that there is an issue you can't help but look for it and when you take your eye off of the car or look at anything other than the characters in cutscenes it stands out.

For those also getting issues is it jus the pop in or are other aspects of the game that area lacking compared to the other versions. I only have the PSN version so I can't compare. I'm just assuming the 20s framerate and aliasing is just the game. But watching some videos I feel like the game just looks better in general than what I'm seeing.

I'm on a stock CECH-3001A 160gb slim.
 

RaikuHebi

Banned
I'm not experiencing any problems with the digital version, but my PS3 has an SSD as well. Digital version & SSD will, most likely, net you the best experience overall in regard to loading times and pop in problems.
I don't think that's true since the PSN version doesn't have an 8GB install. So presumably it is uncompressing that data as it comes, which must make it slow even on SSD.
 

-griffy-

Banned
I went ahead and bought the disc version of the game, deleted the PSN version. It's like a night and day difference for me. No more gratuitous pop-in, only the "normal" pop-in out in the distance. And I don't know if it's my imagination or not, or just not being distracted by trash cans and street signs popping up right in front of my car anymore, but it seems to run a bit smoother too.
 

oxidax

Member
I went ahead and bought the disc version of the game, deleted the PSN version. It's like a night and day difference for me. No more gratuitous pop-in, only the "normal" pop-in out in the distance. And I don't know if it's my imagination or not, or just not being distracted by trash cans and street signs popping up right in front of my car anymore, but it seems to run a bit smoother too.

Just did that like 30 minutes ago. It feels proper now. Can't believe i doubled dip but i just hope i get a refund so i could buy Puppetteer.
 

dubq

Member
I experienced my first issues last night. They were very minor and literally only for a split second. Going at breakneck speeds, and coming to a full stop, twice the texture on the ground was a flat colour but it quickly corrected it self.
 

Teddified

Member
This kinda sucks, I used PSN cards to get this, so even if I want a refund I wouldn't be able to get the game for at least a month or so.

I mean it's not too bad, but it's very annoying to run into things that pop in just after I hit it. It only happened like 2 times in 10 or so hours. I would really like to try the Disk version but I'll just have to bite the bullet on this one and hope it doesn't impact too much.

I hope they can at least look into it and maybe either find a solution or at least tell us to deal with it. Any answer would be nice.

I've done the database thing before I installed and after I installed and played, and it didn't really seem to do much sadly.
 

jon_dojah

Banned
Me and my girlfriend both have identical PS3 Slim standards with 160gb hdd's. I loaded the game on mines at launch and have not seen pop-in once in my 8+ hours of gameplay. I loaded game on hers the same day and noticed severe pop-in within the first 2-3 hours of gameplay. The ground will flicker in and out of existence. The same with skyscrapers and other huge geometry. Its really bad but its weird that my own identical PS3 doesnt have this issue at all so far.

Btw we both have close to same amount of free space since all the same PSN games are loaded on both systems.
 
Yeah noticing some more pop in now.

You seem to get it more when you are speeding down long busy streets the most. Had a few cases of crashing into things that popped in at the last second.

I took a super bike down the Beverly hills boulevard looking street in the north of LS and drove the length of it as fast as I could and the game got real bad by the end of it. Couldnt see the ground by the end of it.


Anyway I think its pretty clear the game isnt designed for a full HDD install like this or the two disc HDD install on 360. If rockstar and Sony willingly sold a game knowing it would be a little broken I hope more people start to speak up and demand refunds and its removal from PSN.

I might just shoot Sony a email requesting a refund and lodging a complaint. I can guess I wont get anything back but it wont hurt to voice up and let them know the game is busted.



I would actually get a disc version now out of curiosity but everywhere in town is sold out. lol.
 

oxidax

Member
Well =\ at least i tried.

Thank you for your recent call to Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) Consumer Services.

We are unable to process your request for a refund on the PlayStation® Network.

According to our Terms of Service, all sales are final.

For more information please check the Terms of Service and User Agreement.

i just got the disc anyways. Damn... Sony really screwed us up on this one. At least the people with the issue.
 

AkuMifune

Banned
Rockstar should have the lion's share of the blame, IMO.

Precisely. The game was designed in a way that would make any digital version not perform as well as a disc-based one, and yet R* still released a digital version on PSN. Sony wasn't aware of the way it was programmed, they shouldn't be blamed.

Lawsuit!
 

netBuff

Member
I don't think that's true since the PSN version doesn't have an 8GB install. So presumably it is uncompressing that data as it comes, which must make it slow even on SSD.

I didn't see any missing road textures, extremely low-res textures or missing objects so far like I've seen on YouTube. It is possible that disk & SSD is slightly better than digital & SSD, but the difference certainly can't be all that big.
 

Qwell

Member
I'm about 12 hours into the game now with my 250gb slim (stock hdd) and still haven't noticed any pop-in at all. My roomate has the disc based version and ours look exactly the same. Now that I have seen the DF comparison video and know exactly what to look out for I'll keep an eye on it.

I'll still be double dipping, but only once the PC version is released. Regardless of this pop-in issue or not, I definitely want to play this game at 1080p+ with a higher frame rate.
 
Boggles me how the biggest game on PSN has issues like this, scary because i was gonna get the download version but got the retail at the last moment.

Refunds for those affected should be given out imo.
 
I have a PS3 slim with a stock 120gb HDD. I downloaded and installed GTA V and started noticing some pop-in while starting out, but nothing horrible. However, I've noticed that when driving I get a ton of pop-in, to the point where sometimes the entire road will disappear for a second or two. When this happens it looks like all the cars are flying for a couple seconds. Needless to say I've had a ton of crashes due to objects appearing directly in front of my car.

I've done the rebuild database / restore files thing but it didn't seem to do anything. I'm hoping this is something that can be patched, since it looks like people aren't having much luck asking for refunds.

The game is still "playable" for the most part, but I've started driving really, really slowly to try and avoid these problems wherever possible.
 

Jedi2016

Member
Apparently Rockstar forgot to mention to Sony that the game wasn't designed to run from a single HDD install. I imagine the PSN version is probably just a direct rip of the Blu-ray, so when streaming, it has to pull it from two different parts of the hard drive as well as cram it into a single SATA port. Hence, issues.

I was pondering the digital version at first, but when the first inklings of issues with the Xbox version hit, I figured the PSN version would suffer the same problem. Luckily, I was able to find a copy on day one.
 
Fuck it. Ordered a copy from Amazon.


Was ridiculous the last time I played it. Pop in and pausing while it loaded in while driving around.
 
It was running great for me until the plane mission with Trevor. Then, as I panned the camera around whole mountains started popping in. It didn't give me any more trouble until I completed the Trevor mission after he drives to Los Santos. Now, I can't drive anywhere without seeing newspaper vending machines and building textures flash out of nowhere. Never had anything as bad as missing road textures thankfully.
 
So this version dramatically worse for things like pop-in and performance? That sucks, my disc version is having heaps of issues booting on my ps3 but runs perfectly once in game. Thought about going digital as replacement but now I'm not sure.
 

oxidax

Member
So why is Rockstar ignoting the issue anyways? They haven't responded to my ticket since 4 days now after i told them that its not a disc problem cus its the digital version. You can see people tweeting the problems to them and its like if they dont want to read it because they answer to everything but that and i am pretty sure they know that digital foundry, ign and others have it up on their websites.
 

sappyday

Member
So why is Rockstar ignoting the issue anyways? They haven't responded to my ticket since 4 days now after i told them that its not a disc problem cus its the digital version. You can see people tweeting the problems to them and its like if they dont want to read it because they answer to everything but that and i am pretty sure they know that digital foundry, ign and others have it up on their websites.

Maybe they're trying to fix the issues. R* is being hammered in every way right now. They might have 1 billion dollars but I'm pretty sure they're working their ass fixing a lot of the issues the game has right now.
 

Cels

Member
Maybe they're trying to fix the issues. R* is being hammered in every way right now. They might have 1 billion dollars but I'm pretty sure they're working their ass fixing a lot of the issues the game has right now.

they don't have 1 billion dollars. sony/microsoft take a cut. the retailers take a cut as well.

i would imagine a lot of their work is going into prepping the launch of the online
 

oxidax

Member
Maybe they're trying to fix the issues. R* is being hammered in every way right now. They might have 1 billion dollars but I'm pretty sure they're working their ass fixing a lot of the issues the game has right now.

They put an article on their support page with upcoming fixes and things that they're "looking into". This issue is nowhere on that article and its already on almost every mayor gaming website.
 

jobber

Would let Tony Parker sleep with his wife
I haven't had any pop-up issues, but when switching between characters, the graphics get screwed up as it zooms in.

Once a cut scene played involving driving fast and the road was missing.
 

Omerta

Member
Personally, I've had some pretty serious pop up issues during the intro but nothing too serious during the game... The odd fence loading a little late, things like that.

Nothing that nearly all open world games on consoles don't suffer from... If you pardon the double negative.
 
I'm running the disc version, so this is second hand info.

4 of my friends went digital. 3 have regular slim, 1 has super slim and all 4 have commented on having the pop-in and frame rate issues. It seems pretty random (or maybe its just less bothersome to some) though as 1 of them claims it doesn't happen that often, and the other 3 complain about it quite frequently (we've all been chatting in mumble while playing the past week).

They're also all running whatever stock harddrives came with their console.

This game runs like crap and has long-ass loading times in all versions right? PS3 Disc here.

I'm playing the disc version.... The ONLY problem i've had so far is the long ass load time when I first boot up. Otherwise I actually haven't had any major framerate issues and haven't seen a single loading deal after the initial boot. Hardly think the game runs perfect, but it certainly runs nowhere near crap.
 

Revengineer

Unconfirmed Member
The stock drive in my PS3 slim kept failing to backup to a FAT32 formatted USB HDD. It would get to 60-75% then give me an error. I tried rebuilding the database and file system twice with two failed backup attempts.

Started noticing framerates of probably 18-20 on the regular, then my game failed to load after a heist mission so I lost ~2 hours of gameplay since I guess the game doesn't autosave if you're just free roaming and not doing anything.

I said fuck it, took the 7200RPM 320GB 16MB cache drive I bought intending to restore a backup to, ripped the old one out after copying save files to a USB stick, and set out for a day of formatting and downloading.

May I just say that the PS3 is a god awful system when it comes to usability and flexibility? I finally got the system to pick up my USB stick with the firmware on it after several formats and identical filesystem makeup, always using the right USB slot as you're supposed to do. I get the system running and start the 18GB GTAV download. Since it was estimating 2 hours (would be more like 3) I figured I'd take a nap.

Woke up an hour and a half later, moved my controller's analog stick to wake up the monitor, and saw that the download was at 43% and the little tiny "active" animation had frozen. Yup, system was frozen hard. Still not sure if this happened because I chose "download in background" or what.. but after a hard reboot, I finished the download thinking that it would probably be corrupted, but I thought I'd test my luck.

Yup, corrupted. Deleted the failed install, the installer, and restored the file system. Downloaded the game again (no background this time). It installed..

And now the game seriously runs much better. I'm shocked at how noticeable the 5400-7200 difference is, and I bet the 16MB cache is crucial as well. The game definitely averages a noticeably higher frame rate, and textures seem better even. Load times are quicker including swapping characters.

It was an ordeal, but it was worth it.
 

robot

Member
Had 2 instances of the road issue last night, and some texture loading issues. Kinda sucks but not enough to double dip. Really enjoying the game, hoping they can patch this before I'm done playin through.
 
I played my cousin's disk 360 version and I saw much more pop in than my psn version though it looked like the framerate was better.

It seems this game just randomly has crappy performance and sometime plays great.
 

Afrodium

Banned
I've really been noticing the pop in lately. Nothing like roads and buildings appearing or disappearing, but textures often load late and street signs are popping in constantly. Hard to ignore now that I've noticed it.

Do saves transfer between the digital and physical versions? I won't double dip if they don't. I have PS+ with cloud saving turned on.
 

Pyronite

Member
I have the same texture and geometry steaming problems that X360 (completely installed) users have. If I drive fast enough the screen literally turns white as I'm waiting for buildings, cars, and random objects to load. Normal driving speed leads to noticeable popup of both textures and geometry. This is definitely a problem.

I'm disappointed that I bought it digitally and don't think R* should have offered it. I want to see the game how it's meant to be seen.
 

carlos

Member
I've really been noticing the pop in lately. Nothing like roads and buildings appearing or disappearing, but textures often load late and street signs are popping in constantly. Hard to ignore now that I've noticed it.

Do saves transfer between the digital and physical versions? I won't double dip if they don't. I have PS+ with cloud saving turned on.

yeah saves are completely compatible between versions.

a shame to hear of the issues for some; cant complain about my digital version. the problem must be related to the vast amount of variations of ps3s and hdd's out there.
 

Teddified

Member
Has anyone actually gotten a refund? I'm not going to double dip until PS4. And if someone has gotten a refund I'll try. But I'll probably just have to deal with this version but it just ticks me off 1-2 times a playsession and makes me want to double-dip.
 

Omerta

Member
Game failed to load the texture on an entire building for about 2 seconds... Not long into the campaign...

Hopefully, Rockstar will patch-fix this and if they do, that'll totally justify the digital purchase.

This is a game I'll be spending a lot of time with (especially with GTA Online) and for me, the benefits of digital media outweigh those for physical.
 

whiteape

Member
Works fine on a PS3 Slim with 160GB standard drive.

Just one time on a highspeed trip with a car, there were pop-outs. It was really strange: Buildings and textures were popping in, and after a some miliseconds there were popping out, so i was driving in an empty world. But when i stopped the car everything came up again.

But this here never disappeared:

gtavtunnel2.jpg


Other side:

gtavtunnel1.jpg
 

Abylim

Member
Soo, I have been having bad pop in, as in, if I drive too fast when I first start playing I drive around on what appears to be nothing :\

I tried the rebuild data base thing, and its been great! I drove around downtown as fast as my kick ass car could handle, and nothing! Not only was everything there, it wasnt blurry either.
New slim 500gb, no fancy hard drives or anything.

Tested it out on other games, and it seems to load shit a lot quicker!
 

coolasj19

Why are you reading my tag instead of the title of my post?
Is this going to be a concern going forward? I don't want the whole digital distribution thing going down the pipe because games use Rockstars method of simultaneous Disc + HDD streaming.
 

DeVeAn

Member
I am not having these issues. I have a slim and 500 GB WD 5400 and 100 GB left. Been playing since launch.
 
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