• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PS4's AF issue we need answers!

Some did, but as said before AF is not always free. Mipmaps are used to maintain distant texture quality for surfaces rendered in less pixel space. The more AF you have, the more memory you use up, which in general on PC games is rarely an issue and the bandwidth / processing impact is negligible.

However, on a fixed hardware (console) development you generally optimize EVERYTHING to fit inside the ram alongside the OS, and continue to cram as much as you can as you shrink down the draw calls and other resource handling. This means that, in the case of DMC, they may have simply forgot, OR they had to work post-release to optimize the game just enough to have room for AF.

I don't believe we have any evidence of it being disabled in any of these cases due to performance issues, given that most of the times its resolved its with a quick patch it suggests that it's simply being forgotten/missed by QA. Maybe it's just something that console QA isn't used to looking for or they concentrate more on other issues.
 
I don't believe we have any evidence of it being disabled in any of these cases due to performance issues, given that most of the times its resolved its with a quick patch it suggests that it's simply being forgotten/missed by QA. Maybe it's just something that console QA isn't used to looking for or they concentrate more on other issues.
It's not something that is automatically enabled, to begin with, but that in of itself is potentially part of the issue. When developing for DirectX and similar APIs, you have to port to the PS4 handlers and this could in fact be something that gets missed.
 
No. AF is cached on chip. Bandwidth has no effect on it. PC low end GPUs with miniscule bandwidth are performing AF 16x just fine.

Thanks for clearing that up, it was the only excuse I could think of. One of the things I expected to be a standard this gen was good AF, and it's a shame there's so few developers pushing for 8x or higher.

EDIT: Hold up, I just looked it up on various sites and they all claim AF mainly affects bandwidth. So it's still a possibility that having the CPU share bandwidth has an effect on the implementation. Could you explain why you claim otherwise?
 

dr_rus

Member
Thanks for clearing that up, it was the only excuse I could think of. One of the things I expected to be a standard this gen was good AF, and it's a shame there's so few developers pushing for 8x or higher.

EDIT: Hold up, I just looked it up on various sites and they all claim AF mainly affects bandwidth. So it's still a possibility that having the CPU share bandwidth has an effect on the implementation. Could you explain why you claim otherwise?

These "sites" don't know what they're talking about. AF does not affect bandwidth in any sensible way these days. All AF fetches are cached on chip. All you have to do to see that is look up any AF benchmark on a low end PC GPU/APU.
 

JP

Member
df0791fea0a86cbe76f50fd31a3d70eb.png


Proving once and for all it wasn't on AT ALL.

No performance hit noted in the game so far.
That's good news, I'm not convinced that everybody will go back and add enable AF but is there a list of games of games we have that have the issue so games can be ticked off if it does happen?
 

Journey

Banned
Tried to recreate the shots as close as I could.


Before:
ivgOrFuNIOVSL.jpg


After:
ifJVHFnKHLZkf.jpg


Honestly made a much bigger difference than I expected and performance is exactly the same. IQ is really crisp now. Hopefully we see it in most games from now on.


That last image in particular shows a huge difference!

AF is critical to the game's visuals, shame on anyone downplaying it, just look at those screens, glad it's fixed. I wonder if this would be an opportunity to finally get an answer as to why it keeps happening.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Not having AF can degrade the image drastically. Now lets see if the other games affected get patches.

Dying Light was patched a few weeks ago. That and DmC are the two major, recent examples.

Stuff like Strider and Thief are probably too far from release to actually get a patch, especially with Double Helix being owned by Amazon now. I know I'd personally hope that CoD AW gets a patch for it but I doubt that'll happen since AF was bad on both consoles.

I do think that Dying Light and DmC getting patches alongside Borderlands Handsome Collection having it bodes well for future games. I figured Borderlands might be another one with issues since it's UE3 but it's intact there and the recent PS4 footage of Arkham Knight, another candidate for poor AF implementation due to UE3, seems to have it as well.
 

RedAssedApe

Banned
That last image in particular shows a huge difference!

AF is critical to the game's visuals, shame on anyone downplaying it, just look at those screens, glad it's fixed. I wonder if this would be an opportunity to finally get an answer as to why it keeps happening.

Well it was mentioned that Sony put out a technical bulletin about it. That and the fact that there are two recent examples of patches that fix it seem to indicate it is on the devs and not a problem with the Api.

Well basically (I don't want to enter in any specifics) it reminds devs how to make it properly and a future update to make it "easier" (it is not that it is "difficult" now at all).
 

DOWN

Banned
Tried to recreate the shots as close as I could.

Before:
ivgOrFuNIOVSL.jpg


After:
ifJVHFnKHLZkf.jpg


Honestly made a much bigger difference than I expected and performance is exactly the same. IQ is really crisp now. Hopefully we see it in most games from now on.

unbelievable. how the hell did AF get ignored?
 

Caayn

Member
Tried to recreate the shots as close as I could.
Honestly made a much bigger difference than I expected and performance is exactly the same. IQ is really crisp now. Hopefully we see it in most games from now on.
Massive difference, although it doesn't seem to be 16xAF or is that just me? Thanks for posting.
This alone feels like a huge leap in terms of IQ. The difference is staggering.
Jup, IQ goes a lot further than just resolution.
 

FranXico

Member
Well it was mentioned that Sony put out a technical bulletin about it. That and the fact that there are two recent examples of patches that fix it seem to indicate it is on the devs and not a problem with the Api.

I still find odd that devs did not even look into it at first. Surely for a lot of them, Q&A would have reported this issue.
 

Portugeezer

Member
I'll be picking up DMC now that the AF issue has been fixed.
We need to get the message out to devs & pubs that we'll reward them with our wallets when they address this issue.

More that we send a message that we don't accept crap, because now all they did was make it how it should have been.
 

HTupolev

Member
These "sites" don't know what they're talking about. AF does not affect bandwidth in any sensible way these days. All AF fetches are cached on chip.
The TMUs fetch from on-die caches, but the AF order will influence which MIP levels/(how many texels per fragment) are drawn from and used in said caches when sampling from oblique-angled stuff. If you have lots of oblique objects with high-order AF and unique high-quality textures on screen, the result could potentially have a BW hit that's not irrelevant or completely hidden by other things.
 
I still find odd that devs did not even look into it at first. Surely for a lot of them, Q&A would have reported this issue.

The ones that did probably fixed it. You can only see the select few where QA didn't notice, or production chose to waive the bug and hit a deadline.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Massive difference, although it doesn't seem to be 16xAF or is that just me? Thanks for posting.
Jup, IQ goes a lot further than just resolution.
I'm not sure. It's definitely at least 8x. These shots are compressed a bit since they're captured by the share button so it looks clearer in game.
 

i-Lo

Member
I'm not sure. It's definitely at least 8x. These shots are compressed a bit since they're captured by the share button so it looks clearer in game.

Thanks for taking the time to post those comparison images.

From your personal experience thus far, has there any notable performance degradation post patch?
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Thanks for taking the time to post those comparison images.

From your personal experience thus far, has there any notable performance degradation post patch?
Exactly the same. I even played through the few parts where it drops and it's identical. It holds 60fps very well overall.
 

dr_rus

Member
The TMUs fetch from on-die caches, but the AF order will influence which MIP levels/(how many texels per fragment) are drawn from and used in said caches when sampling from oblique-angled stuff. If you have lots of oblique objects with high-order AF and unique high-quality textures on screen, the result could potentially have a BW hit that's not irrelevant or completely hidden by other things.

You keep saying that but there are no real world results that prove that this hit is anything but miniscule. In cases where the GPU is struggling with 30 fps because of bandwidth limitation this may lead to 1-2 fps loss, sure. But such cases are very rare and we can safely omit them from this discussion.

Both Dying Light and DmC show that there are no bandwidth issues on PS4 when enabling AF. This is just a code glitch / overlook on developer's part.
 

Metfanant

Member
You keep saying that but there are no real world results that prove that this hit is anything but miniscule. In cases where the GPU is struggling with 30 fps because of bandwidth limitation this may lead to 1-2 fps loss, sure. But such cases are very rare and we can safely omit them from this discussion.

Both Dying Light and DmC show that there are no bandwidth issues on PS4 when enabling AF. This is just a code glitch / overlook on developer's part.

That's not his point..I don't think he is trying to say its a PS4 issue that this titles has ZERO AF...however...even the titles that DO have AF (on both consoles) often have low levels, or even varying levels of AF...

So the point is...if AF was absolutely free like some people want you to believe, don't you think the devs that bothered to implement it in the first place would have just gone with 16x all the way around?...but they don't...

there is obviously a reason why they would go with lower levels of AF...and really they only reason would be to save resources...

Absolute worst case scenario the PS4 is on par with the Xbone's ability to handle AF...but both consoles generally have less than 16x, at least in more hardware intensive games...there is a reason..and bandwidth makes some sense
 

_machine

Member
That's not his point..I don't think he is trying to say its a PS4 issue that this titles has ZERO AF...however...even the titles that DO have AF (on both consoles) often have low levels, or even varying levels of AF...

So the point is...if AF was absolutely free like some people want you to believe, don't you think the devs that bothered to implement it in the first place would have just gone with 16x all the way around?...but they don't...

there is obviously a reason why they would go with lower levels of AF...and really they only reason would be to save resources...

Absolute worst case scenario the PS4 is on par with the Xbone's ability to handle AF...but both consoles generally have less than 16x, at least in more hardware intensive games...there is a reason..and bandwidth makes some sense
Yeah, I know for sure that bandwidth was one of the reasons last generation platforms lacked AF and even today I know some developers have their artists author textures with different AF settings and not force 16x for all textures. PC isn't the same as consoles regarding AF and we can't really access any real comparisons on consoles. That said, for ground textures and others really visible surfaces the consoles should have absolutely no problem with 16xAF.
 

HTupolev

Member
You keep saying that but there are no real world results that prove that this hit is anything but miniscule. In cases where the GPU is struggling with 30 fps because of bandwidth limitation this may lead to 1-2 fps loss, sure. But such cases are very rare and we can safely omit them from this discussion.
I agree that it will usually tend to be small (and often well-hidden) as a fraction of the overall cost of rendering the entire frame, but some devs in the console space have seemingly had cause to limit AF order (i.e. the oft-mentioned KZSF), which is why I don't like simply saying "X is never a bottleneck because AF is never a bottleneck."

Both Dying Light and DmC show that there are no bandwidth issues on PS4 when enabling AF. This is just a code glitch / overlook on developer's part.
I'd tend to agree in a lot of the instances being discussed.
 

Jomjom

Banned
This is why Ive pretty much switched completely over to NXgamer now and pretty much ignore DF. Well done analysis so soon after the patch.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
This is why Ive pretty much switched completely over to NXgamer now and pretty much ignore DF. Well done analysis so soon after the patch.

NXGamer isn't as scientific as DF. It's important to keep that in mind. I enjoy his videos and love his eye for detail but he does speculate/exaggerate a good deal. He is getting better though.

Framerate analysis are kind of strange between the two sites. They often get different results and sometimes DF is more representative of my experience, sometimes NXG.
 

Jomjom

Banned
NXGamer isn't as scientific as DF. It's important to keep that in mind. I enjoy his videos and love his eye for detail but he does speculate/exaggerate a good deal. He is getting better though.

Framerate analysis are kind of strange between the two sites. They often get different results and sometimes DF is more representative of my experience, sometimes NXG.

DF is often in error or make oversights as well so to me thats a wash.
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
Damn, that's some good difference. Here's hoping devs implement this into their games, from now on.
 

pixelbox

Member
Why lol?
look the framerate comparison with AF "on" and AF "off" HERE and ok this is a margin better but it's better.

PS: nevermind in regards to roboplato comment ^^




Ok don't have think of this.

Sorry, I was unclear. It was meant to signify "And people thought is was the PS4's fault"
 

dr_rus

Member
That's not his point..I don't think he is trying to say its a PS4 issue that this titles has ZERO AF...however...even the titles that DO have AF (on both consoles) often have low levels, or even varying levels of AF...

So the point is...if AF was absolutely free like some people want you to believe, don't you think the devs that bothered to implement it in the first place would have just gone with 16x all the way around?...but they don't...

there is obviously a reason why they would go with lower levels of AF...and really they only reason would be to save resources...

Absolute worst case scenario the PS4 is on par with the Xbone's ability to handle AF...but both consoles generally have less than 16x, at least in more hardware intensive games...there is a reason..and bandwidth makes some sense

I feel like we're going in circles and I'm writing this for like 10th time in this thread only. Nobody is saying that AF is free. AF is an operation which is performed during a texel fetch by TMU. Every operation has a cost - if not in performance then in hardware complexity.

But having said that - AF is nearly free in a sense that the performance hit from AF on modern GPUs is so small that you won't be able to even see it most of the time. It is less than 1% for AF 16x on a GM204 chip for example.

Lower levels makes zero sense because of how fast the highest one is. The only reason why a dev would want to use a lower level AF is because he thinks that it'll be a better suit for a texture. Some textures may shimmer with higher AF for example. And it is wise to remember that "textures" these days are not only color maps which we call textures usually but normal maps, shadow maps, etc. as well. A lot of those doesn't need AF at all so it is smart to save some performance by not applying AF to things which don't need it.

AF 16x is twice the fetches of AF 8x while it may be rather hard to see a difference between the two with a naked eye. So why use 16x? It's console philosophy - save performance everywhere you can.

At the same time - most of games which lack AF on PS4 aren't taxing PS4 at all so this is clearly not what developers wanted and more of a bug / overlook on their part.

I agree that it will usually tend to be small (and often well-hidden) as a fraction of the overall cost of rendering the entire frame, but some devs in the console space have seemingly had cause to limit AF order (i.e. the oft-mentioned KZSF), which is why I don't like simply saying "X is never a bottleneck because AF is never a bottleneck."
See above on reasons why AF can be set to lower values sometimes. Performance is not the problem. PS4 have gobs of bandwidth and it certainly isn't bottlenecking AF in any way. Does AF have an impact on bandwidth? Sure, some percentage will be eaten by cache misses - likely less than 1%. Is that percentage so big that we need to discuss this matter for 10th time here?
 

Javin98

Banned
Thanks.

NX Gamer just did an updated framerate test post patch to show its effect and address any remaining concerns about performance hit on PS4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLORChiImGk
Just watched this. Yet another great analysis from NXGamer. Now I really trust him more than I trust DF.

This is why Ive pretty much switched completely over to NXgamer now and pretty much ignore DF. Well done analysis so soon after the patch.
Agreed. Unlike DF (most of the time), he actually does a brand new video when a new graphical feature is patched in. My only problem now is that NXGamer releases videos too slowly. If he were to release videos every 2-3 days, I would totally ignore DF.

NXGamer isn't as scientific as DF. It's important to keep that in mind. I enjoy his videos and love his eye for detail but he does speculate/exaggerate a good deal. He is getting better though.

Framerate analysis are kind of strange between the two sites. They often get different results and sometimes DF is more representative of my experience, sometimes NXG.
DF often misses out on a lot of things that NXGamer caught. Missing god rays, anyone? And I think "a good deal" is an exaggeration. He does make some random speculation sometimes (tessellated floors in U4), but he has improved in his analysis. However, he does not bring up next gen gameplay or subjective bullshit in his videos like DF does. And last but not least, he doesn't seem to show a hint of favoritism.
 
I haven't really been following the thread too closely, but has there been any comment from the DmC or Dying Light devs about why the games didn't have AF initially, or why/how they added it later?
 

Jomjom

Banned
I haven't really been following the thread too closely, but has there been any comment from the DmC or Dying Light devs about why the games didn't have AF initially, or why/how they added it later?

I think it's clear they just screwed up and forgot. Maybe Sony doesn't make it easy or activated by default or whatever but that doesnt really excuse such a big oversight.
 

Conduit

Banned
Agreed. Unlike DF (most of the time), he actually does a brand new video when a new graphical feature is patched in. My only problem now is that NXGamer releases videos too slowly. If he were to release videos every 2-3 days, I would totally ignore DF.

I asked him about BF : Hardline :

BF : Hardline PS4 vs. Xbox One comparison soon?

He said to me :

Sorry was not enough demand for it so I left at the XboxOne analysis, sorry.

Demand???
 

Metfanant

Member

Its not "going in circles" its simple facts...in games that have AF on both consoles the level is often much lower than 16x...

I really don't care what you or anyone feels the consoles "should" be able to do with this "free" or "almost free" operation...the simple fact is that devs make an absolutely conscious decision to use lower levels, or a variable level of AF...

Whether its a 1% hit or not is irrelevant..the devs see some sort of benefit of not just going with a blanket 16x AF implementation...

It could be bandwidth, it could be devs just saying the difference doesn't matter, so let's save any resources we can easily save, it could be anything...
 
Top Bottom