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UE4 graphics setting presets for the Switch found on GitHub

crinale

Member
It's sad thing that battery tech hadn't improved so much for like a decade.
Sure power saving did make them last longer, but..
 

10k

Banned
screen percentage is upscaling FYI

so it wont render native in handheld mode but will in docked

EDIT:

if you presume the docked is 1080p then 66% is somewhere between 720p and 1600×900 pixel wise, so safe to bet 720p

so seems like THEORETICALLY it would be 1080p on tv, 720p on handheld like leaks suggest
That's all I wanted.
 
They're significantly scaling back a variety of graphics settings when in handheld mode by default instead of just chopping the resolution to 720p.

Wouldn't going from 1080 to 720 require half the gpu processing? Unless they have to pair down other settings for the CPU when on portable mode
 

KingBroly

Banned
They're significantly scaling back a variety of graphics settings when in handheld mode by default instead of just chopping the resolution to 720p.

I'm guessing on Nintendo's games they won't be downscaling anything (except Smash...and MAYBE Splatoon), as they'll use the handheld mode for a base on everything.

Honestly, this doesn't sound quite so bad.
 

GAMETA

Banned
It's actually numbers representing a thing. How the hell can it be misleading? The OP isn't suggesting easy or meaningful ports are coming to Switch. That's another debate entirely.

Op implies that it's just a matter of downscaling quality to fit the NS and voila. It's not.

But I guess you're right, misleading was a bad choice of word :)
 

LordRaptor

Member
Hehe.

But it's even more than that, seems a combination of downscaling and graphic attributes cut down. On decreasing the resolution doesn't seem to cover for the gap between console and handheld. Which is a bit strange under the scenario presented by DF which made it look like the having 1080p docked and 720p on handheld is "free".

I was getting frustrated because deferred rendering requires vastly more complicated calculations to hit a target renderframe than forward rendering does, where geometry rendering is basically a linear variable (and also the only one you can particularly do much with)

e:
I still maintain that the best image quality you are going to get on the Switch is to target 720p first, then take the 'freeby' boosts in docked mode, rather than the other way round - these settings don't make me change my mind on that, except the 'upscaled' version will look even nicer

anti-aliasing? we did it?

post-process AA is fairly 'cheap', but also blurry; the ideal combo is something like supersampled geometry + some sort of temporal AA, but thats obviously more expensive.
 
Basically graphics settings themselves will scale down to match the portable mode, not just resolution.

That seems very hard to do though, its almost like making two SKU's with completely different configurations and then having to switch between them instead of just making a resolution switch like PS4 and Pro.

That could be an obstacle getting down and dirty with the hardware, but having to account for handheld mode will have done that by default i suppose.

Considering the agressive nature of their clock speeds, i guess they do this specifically because they can't control the state of the game without massive cutbacks like this

Reduction in certain effects won't be as noticeable at a lower resolution on a smaller screen anyway. Trying to cram too much detail into too few pixels could actually make things uglier, IMO. At the very least, having to render less could help with battery life.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
I'm guessing on Nintendo's games they won't be downscaling anything (except Smash...and MAYBE Splatoon), as they'll use the handheld mode for a base on everything.

That would be much easier to code for definitely, but third parties are gonna want to be more ambitious which is where problems will show for handheld mode i think.

Nintendo should have just locked devs to handheld mode, so the GPU upclock could just increase res for the television display, so they could not try to get cute.

But i guess at the same time, upscaling handheld fidelity assets to the TV could not look so great either, even with increased internal res. That might even exaggerate it
 

10k

Banned
So usually in game. ini files 1 is low settings, 2 is medium, 3 is high and 4 is ultra.

And for AA and AF "1" is usually 2x AA or AF, "2" is 4x and so on and so forth.

Looks like docked mode will be 1080p medium settings on PC and handheld will be 720p low settings on PC.

This is a rough example. Just adds perspective.
 
The best thing to come out of this (so far) are the code names WolfSea and WolfAir. That would've been so much cooler than NX.

Why in the world would one put the screenpercantage setting at 66% in mobile mode?

From the first page:

The screen percentage in UE4 is applied to both width and height. So 66% of 1920x1080 would mean 1280x720.

What *is* curious about the screen percentage is that it wouldn't be necessary if the system actually forced a resolution change when switching between docked and undocked mode, but the fact it's there means the game is merely notified of the change and has freedom to decide what to do, instead of going through a device destruction-recreation process like what happens when you rotate an iOS or Android device, for example.
 
Why in the world would one put the screenpercantage setting at 66% in mobile mode?

Makes a lot of sense. Saves a lot on GPU headroom (which is downclocked in mobile mode) and you're playing on a significantly smaller screen so 720p really won't be so bad. Especially after the 3DS's 240p, I'm seeing 720p as an upgrade =P
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Reduction in certain effects won't be as noticeable at a lower resolution on a smaller screen anyway. Trying to cram too much detail into too few pixels could actually make things uglier, IMO. At the very least, having to render less could help with battery life.

Also very true. Good point.
 

KingBroly

Banned
That would be much easier to code for definitely, but third parties are gonna want to be more ambitious which is where problems will show for handheld mode i think.

Nintendo should have just locked devs to handheld mode, so the GPU upclock could just increase res for the television display, so they could not try to get cute.

But i guess at the same time, upscaling handheld fidelity assets to the TV could not look so great either, even with increased internal res. That might even exaggerate it

It's probably easier to get everything onto the higher end and downscale with the way engines are built these days, than trying to cram everything down to the lower-end specs.


Games-wise, the big games that are most likely to miss Switch are online-only games because of handheld mode. You can't guarantee an internet connection with that. BUT I imagine many games won't make it to Switch, for one reason or another.
 

Rodin

Member
Well, so much for "this means nothing, my phone can run UE4". This is great news.

I already said it but i'll say it again, i really hope they'll use temporal reconstruction. That's a lot of performance gained for a slightly more blurry image.
 
I wonder if we will see developers use temporal reconstruction similar to Quantum Break and Rainbow Siege Six to increase framerate by rendering at a lower resolution and using 4 lower resolution frames to construct a higher resolution image. Also, it will be pretty interesting to see if Nvidia allows Switch to use a version of their multi-res shading tech which is used in Shadow Warrior 2 to render certain parts of the screen at higher resolution and other parts at a lower depending on where the player looks.

There seems that there are a lot of approaches developers can use to port down games to Switch. I guess this might be the good news Nintendo fans were looking for.
 
Also all this 1080p docked talk, lot of games will suffer a lot graphically if they go for native 1080p.


Depends what games. This is why this discussion doesn't bring meaningful real world conclusions.
Sure there are presets but there's also what you try to push with then engine.
 
Also all this 1080p docked talk, lot of games will suffer a lot graphically if they go for native 1080p.

Depends on how they are developed. If they made to run fine in handheld mode 720p the increased clock in docked mode should be more than sufficient for 1080p.

It would probably not matter much to target a resolution a bit lower than 720p in handheld mode because of the relatively small screen. WiiU Gamepad is 480p and many games looks gorgeous on Gamepad.
 

Thraktor

Member
At a guess, the reason they use a scaling factor for resolution rather than explicitly setting it to 720p in portable mode is that it allows developers to set a docked resolution and get an appropriate resolution in portable mode as well if they don't want to have to tweak each one. So, if a developer went with 900p in docked mode, they'd get 600p in portable mode automatically.

Obviously larger devs would manually optimise everything for each mode and ignore the presets, but for small devs considering a Switch port it would make things a little bit simpler.
 

M3d10n

Member
They're significantly scaling back a variety of graphics settings when in handheld mode by default instead of just chopping the resolution to 720p.
Actually, they are scaling back a variety of graphics settings *and* chopping the resolution to 720p. This line reduces the rendering resolution to 66%, so 1080p becomes 720p:
Code:
+CVars=r.ScreenPercentage=66

At a guess, the reason they use a scaling factor for resolution rather than explicitly setting it to 1080p in portable mode is that it allows developers to set a docked resolution and get an appropriate resolution in portable mode as well if they don't want to have to tweak each one. So, if a developer went with 900p in docked mode, they'd get 600p in portable mode automatically.

Obviously larger devs would manually optimise everything for each mode and ignore the presets, but for small devs considering a Switch port it would make things a little bit simpler.

Actually, I think the Switch doesn't force a resolution change on the game when changing modes. So it seems UE4 games, by default, simply reduce their internal rendering resolution to 66% to compensate. That "screenPercentage" setting is UE4 specific, you can actually change it on the fly to reduce game resolution without reducing the UI resolution.
 

nightside

Member
So usually in game. ini files 1 is low settings, 2 is medium, 3 is high and 4 is ultra.

And for AA and AF "1" is usually 2x AA or AF, "2" is 4x and so on and so forth.

Looks like docked mode will be 1080p medium settings on PC and handheld will be 720p low settings on PC.

This is a rough example. Just adds perspective.


Anything closer to that would be beyond my expectations.
 
They're significantly scaling back a variety of graphics settings when in handheld mode by default instead of just chopping the resolution to 720p.

This seems... concerning. Not in and of itself, but if it opens the door to games that can only maintain 30fps when docked, that would be very bad.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Actually, they are scaling back a variety of graphics settings *and* chopping the resolution to 720p. This line reduces the rendering resolution to 66%, so 1080p becomes 720p:
Code:
+CVars=r.ScreenPercentage=66



Actually, I think the Switch doesn't forces a resolution change on the game. So it seems UE4 games, by default, simply reduce their internal rendering resolution to 66% to compensate.

Which makes sense on a small screen, no?
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Wonder why they used Wolf instead of NX as a codename.

Maybe it's a wolf in sheep's clothing? The secret sauce lives!

This seems... concerning. Not in and of itself, but if it opens the door to games that can only maintain 30fps when docked, that would be very bad.

What, scaling back for handheld mode is done precisely to maintain a stable framerate,
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
e:
I still maintain that the best image quality you are going to get on the Switch is to target 720p first, then take the 'freeby' boosts in docked mode, rather than the other way round - these settings don't make me change my mind on that, except the 'upscaled' version will look even nicer

How would you do that for a UE4 game that was developed with PS4 in mind and barely runs at 1080p 30fps on PS4?
 
66% screenpercentage only means that the game scales back based on the hardware specs.

It doesn't say anything about 1080p to 720p. So a dev can target 720p resolution in docked mode and the game automatically scales to 66% in mobile mode and upscales it to 720p.
 
I wonder if we will see developers use temporal reconstruction similar to Quantum Break and Rainbow Siege Six to increase framerate by rendering at a lower resolution and using 4 lower resolution frames to construct a higher resolution image. Also, it will be pretty interesting to see if Nvidia allows Switch to use a version of their multi-res shading tech which is used in Shadow Warrior 2 to render certain parts of the screen at higher resolution and other parts at a lower depending on where the player looks.

There seems that there are a lot of approaches developers can use to port down games to Switch. I guess this might be the good news Nintendo fans were looking for.

Except wouldn't developers be using these same techniques on other platforms? There's no advantage specific to the Switch there. I suppose there's always the possibility that Nvidia has some proprietary secret sauce that increases performance with little hit to quality, but as a long-time Nvidia GPU owner, they promise a lot of those types of things but never really deliver - they tend to have exclusive features which look better but kill performance.
 

Micerider

Member
screen percentage is upscaling FYI

so it wont render native in handheld mode but will in docked

EDIT:

if you presume the docked is 1080p then 66% is somewhere between 720p and 1600×900 pixel wise, so safe to bet 720p

so seems like THEORETICALLY it would be 1080p on tv, 720p on handheld like leaks suggest

Well....it could also be that the dock is at 900p... (720p being close to 66% of 900p)
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
So what's next, someone boots up a UE4 game with settings that match these presets and go "Dis is Switch grpahics!!" ??

I am actually curious what UE4 could accomplish with these presets to be perfectly honest lol.
 

18-Volt

Member
Oh god. Here comes the 10 fps games in handheld mode. Nintendo should cancel this thing's launch before it is too late.
 

AmyS

Member
So in a nutshell, Switch game graphics, the complexity & quality, are scalable, aside from resolution, between portable and docked modes.

Do I have this right ?
 
So what's next, someone boots up a UE4 game with settings that match these presets and go "Dis is Switch grpahics!!" ??

I am actually curious what UE4 could accomplish with these presets to be perfectly honest lol.

Now the Seasons Of Heaven devs can pretend to have access to Switch dev kits.
 

Thraktor

Member
Actually, I think the Switch doesn't force a resolution change on the game when changing modes. So it seems UE4 games, by default, simply reduce their internal rendering resolution to 66% to compensate. That "screenPercentage" setting is UE4 specific, you can actually change it on the fly to reduce game resolution without reducing the UI resolution.

I agree that Switch likely doesn't force a change, my point being that small devs who forget to set a separate resolution for portable mode would just see performance tank, and UE4 compensates for this by automatically scaling resolution down (for devs who don't change the presets, anyway).

It does make it a little puzzling that they would have both a resolution drop and a drop in settings, given the resolution change should account for the performance difference between the two on its own.
 
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