Coming This Week to Digital Foundry (Week 48, 2024) (Patreon)

Hello there and welcome to your slightly delayed news update on everything that is happening here at Digital Foundry this week. Lots going on - clearly, hence the delay in this update - and in addition to the stuff described here, we're also starting to think now of December content. Ah yes, we're coming to that time of the year where we face a month where we have ten days off for Christmas, but still have to produce 'content' for the whole month - and we can't afford not to really because we actually make money from YouTube in November/December.

We're also continuing to crack on with our behind-the-scenes benchmarking software upgrades that we're planning to roll out for the inevitable RTX 50-series release in January. We also think we now have a solution for 4K 120Hz VRR capture - or rather a working theory on how to do it. As you may know, Elgato has some kind of solution here, but its fps monitoring is essentially the refresh rate of the display - which is not necessarily the frame-rate of the game. Low frame-rate compensation and all, right?

We're at the point now where we can capture the full frame output of a 4K 120Hz VRR signal. LFC duplicate frames and all. However, what we don't have yet is a timing mechanism that measures how long those frames persist because it will be variable. Variable refresh rate, right? Still, the battle is half won. Going into 2025 we're confident of a good solution here.

Onto the news updates for the week though!

John has just finished his review of Gran Turismo 7 on PS5 Pro - and it's available to download now on premium tiers as a 70Mbps HDR file. This one covers off all the modes, including full resolution 4K 120Hz and even 8K at 60Hz. PSVR 2, enhanced ray tracing? It's all there. We don't have the game yet but his next major project will be Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Alex will also be moving onto Indy in PC form once code arrives but right now, he is looking at Fortnite on PS5 Pro. The image above doesn't tell the full story but we reckon that the Pro is delivering the first hardware Lumen RT since The Matrix Awakens. Flight Sim 2024? We'd love to do it once the game is actually reviewable. This may actually slip in 2025 at this rate.

Rich (ie me) has completed benchmarking Strix Point via the Beelink SER-9. Hoping to get that content done by the end of the week. Next stop, mini-ITX PC build and inevitable PS5 Pro comparisons, plus building a new GPU test system and roadtesting the new automated benchmarks from Illusion.

Oliver continues to be the busiest man in video games. There's some embargoed content we're banking, but beyond that he will be looking at the revisions made to the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition and really wants to look at Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Forbidden West's PS5 Pro updates.

Tom has just come back from Poland where he met with Michal Drobot, tech director at Infinity Ward. We'll be telling you all about the enhancements to the Call of Duty engine for BLOPs 6, plus outlining the Pro support. We're waiting for some material though, so for now, he's circling back to Dragon's Dogma 2 on Pro.

Will continues to help with Eurogamer article adaptations of our video projects but - of course - will be piling on the deals for Black Friday. I've already bought a discounted Samsung 990 Pro - but do let us know of anything in particular you're looking for. Some of the AMD CPU discounts are nuts - particularly on Ryzen 5600X and even 5700X3D.

Anything else we need to be aware of? As always, do let us know in the comments box that is - as ever - 'below'.