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Call For Questions For DF Direct Weekly #232 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-09-18 11:21:12
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
Q&A

Content

Hello there - let's get straight to it! We're currently planning DF Direct Weekly #232 and we are requesting and requiring your input for the show - topic suggestions, comments on the topics we're about to disclose, and of course, questions for the Supporter Q+A section.

The docket currently looks like this. We'll be sharing early thoughts on Dying Light: The Beast, we'll be talking about the new deal between Intel and Nvidia to create x86/RTX processors, and we'll be going hands-on with the Sonic Crossworlds demo. FSR 4 on RDNA 3, you say? Assuming I can find the time for testing, we'll be putting the leaked INT8 version of the upscaler through its paces on the RX 7700XT, the closest equivalent GPU in performance terms to PS5 Pro.

Other things potentially up for discussion? The GPD Win 5's Strix Halo price-point, and FSR Redstone's alleged multi-platform aspirations. Of course, a lot of gaming news quote-unquote drops on Thursday, so this list may be far from final.

With John in Japan, it'll be Rich (ie me), Alex and Oliver at the mics, with an 8AM BST deadline on submissions. Thanks and have a nice day!

Files

Comments

Alexander Zyryanov

If time allows, I would love to hear you talking about rendering in LEGO Voyagers. It looks really impressive to me.

Bigmanupstairs

Good morning Kings of Tech, I'd love to hear Alex's thoughts on Randy Pitchford's PC optimisation advice for Borderlands 4. And do y'all think Randy could steal Alex's job at DF with his expert advice? :D

Peter Karadimas

Hello gentlemen. I find myself torn between getting the console version or the PC version of a game with poor frame pacing and shader compilation studder. Are there any games (like maybe Jedi survivor) where you'd recommend playing console even over a well equipped PC rig?

SodaPop6548

Good day gentlemen! I keep seeing all the issues with Borderlands 4 performance and I can’t help but feel this is another example of UE5 issues. Agree or disagree? I admit limited tech knowledge (thank you for what you do), but I feel as though the engine isn’t as reliable as previous iterations were on consoles or PC.

kreskowaty

Greetings Founders! Is Borderlands 4 performance as bad as the Internet would make you believe? Randy Pitchford is doing a terrible job with communicating but... is he a tiny percent right? Are gamers too stubborn with refusing to use upscaling and expect games to run great maxed out? Shouldn't the conversation be more about game optimization vs. actually finding the best settings for "your" gaming rig?

GeekyDud

G'day gents!! With the ray traced revelation that Outlaws has been for Switch 2, it got me thinking of Doom The Dark Ages, which then got me thinking of the previous games. With how performant Doom Eternal's RT reflections are, is it possible Switch 2 could run a version of them at 60 fps? Or is the RT CPU overhead just too great? What about 40 fps? Thanks for all your hard work and have a splendid day!!

Question Generated By JensenGPT

Modders got the Int8 version of FSR 4 working on RDNA2, including Steam Deck. It's more of a proof of concept than anything since the performance hit is too big and there are image quality issues not present on RDNA4, but it still makes me wonder; Why won't Sony be able to get this working on PS5 Pro until some time next year? I understand the quality standard for an official implementation should be higher than what can be achieved in a mod like this, but PSSR launched with pretty sub-par image quality already, and still requires a lot of overhead to run. I'm having a hard time understanding why they need so much time.

Will Cooling

Would Rich be willing to review the Master System Evolution if a free holiday to Brazil to pick one up was chucked into the package? It's the system you loved to hate with over 130 games built into it! More info at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp2-5PA__EA&t

Kipters

Hello gentlemen! With bandwidth costs being one of the reasons for the temporary unavailability of your content archive, an old saying came to mind: never underestimate the bandwidth of a van full of tapes. Would you consider selling and shipping hard drives containing your archive to supporters? Thanks and have a great day!

ConcreteLlama

In honour of Talk Like a Pirate Day, how would you rate FSArr 4 on ArrDNA 3?

HorizonOfANewDay

New Xbox experience has been tested on Rog Ally hardware, and claim is an extra hour of battery life. Is this erxtra 60 minutes really enough for users to want to migrate back to Windows from Steam OS when that extra 60 minutes is still 60-120 less than SteamOS offers? I like the idea of all my games, even DRM games, in one app on a handheld (Playnite anyone!?) but not sure I'd be willing to give up 120 +/- for it.

Full House's John SteamOS

What are your thoughts on this Nvidia+Intel motion question mark. Down the road do you think we'll see proprietary advantages to having an Nvidia GPU + Intel CPU setup?

Natiq İsmayılzadə

Greetings from Baku! Do you think artificial intelligence will one day be used for game porting? For example, if we give AI all the information about a PS4 game and the device, can it port the game?

Taggen86

Maybe have a little group discussion in the direct regarding the switch 2 dlss findings?

goregutz

Yeeeeeees, DF gentlemen! This week, the Intel B50, a workstation GPU because the best selling workstation GPU in less than a week. Are workstation GPU customers just more tech savvy or does NVIDIA seriously make competitive gaming GPUs in the mid range? Alternatively, are us regular gamers just sheeple? Why did we allow NVIDIA to become effectively a monopoly? If Intel makes a compelling GPU in the near future, what're the chances it'll sell well?

Jordan + Cinewhirl

Do you guys have any plans to talk about performance of non graphically intensive games? I play a lot of grand strategy titles like crusader kings 3, hearts of iron 4 etc. It would be interesting to understand more about how these games perform on different CPUs and how they scale differently to other types of games

MattGPT

Greetings Gentle Fellows (Exclamation Mark)! Last week Alex commented on Borderlands 4 only using software Lumen and this being incredibly heavy at higher levels vs hardware Lumen. I know that there is quite a lot of additional work required to make hardware Lumen work but it is also a lot more performant. I can understand why small devs might not want to implement hardware Lumen when they still have to create a fallback software variant, but why do larger developers where the work would be relatively trivial ignore tech which would objectively improve their game's performance? Also, would it be possible for Epic to modify software Lumen so that it ran on the GPU instead of CPU, chosen by a user setting, so that those with high end GPUs could gain some benefits of the more powerful hardware, even if not quite as much as proper hardware Lumen? Finally, congratulations on your independence!

VictrixCausa

Hello DF team! With NVidia buying a chunk of Intel, how much does this increase the likelihood that we’ll eventually get a console-like device with Nvidia graphics and x86 CPU architecture? The ship seems to have already sailed for PS6/NeXtBox, but does this partnership open up tantalizing possibilities for handhelds?

Chicken Point

Greetings! What do you think are the implications of PSSR being updated with "features" from FSR4? The two implications that occur to me: 1. The upscaler improves. 2. The upscaler becomes easier for developers to work with. I am especially excited about the second possibility. My thought is that maybe the update will make it easier for developers to churn out "Pro Enhanced" versions of games, due to the developers being already familiar with FSR4 features. Do you find this plausible? Warm regards, Glen

regawdless

With the rise of ChatGPT and the likes, when will we see true AI driven NPCs? When will we be able to have actual conversations with them, when will they dynamically react to the environment and the players actions?

SuperGT

Salutations, messrs. Apparently, AMD Redstone is being developed using a project called ML2CODE, which if I understood correctly runs the ML code in shaders. It appears to me, as far as ML, that AMD is betting on generalized hardware while Nvidia is betting on specialized hardware. What are your comments on this? And how would you relate this, if at all, to the shift from fixed function units to programmable shaders long long ago?

Marcus

Hello foundrymen. I hope you’ve been having a good week. We’ve been talking a lot recently about the DLSS difference with the switch 2 using high-quality upscaling in order to match or even exceed higher end hardware without access to a good quality upscaling solution. Could this leaked FSR 4 or potentially an official port from AMD be the saving grace for 7000 series GPUs and RDNA 3 and 3.5 based handhelds, which notably includes the upcoming Xbox ally X and every other non-switch handheld and the few Intel-based ones that occasionally crop up. Keep up the good work!

NixonLives

Hallo DF Squad! Can gaming ever move past the 'building the camera while filming the movie' stage? Would one unified engine ever alleviate the constant technical hurdles or is this medium uniquely 'always under construction' Cheers!

Mab7373822

How long do you think digital storefronts should stay up for, to give gamers the facility to continue to download and install their already-purchased games? I know that the perfect answer would be "forever" but that being said, what do you think the minimum should be?

Taggen86

Are you suprised that they actually created a dlss lite mode for switch 2? (And not only used normal dlss cnn at lower res)

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

With Steam OS becoming more widespread, do you think Valve needs to release a Steam Deck 2? And how realistic is it for Valve to offer long-term OS support to the seemingly endless array of X86 handhelds coming out of Taiwan?

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

With a console, phone or tablet, you click the game and it runs. With a PC things regularly break, are incompatible with specific setups or just have poor performance without heavy duty tweaking. In some ways I feel like the PC has become even harder to use for gaming - at least when problems arise - than the days of editing my 286's autoexec.bat. Worse still, some really good features need serious time investment to work out how to use (I'm looking at you DLDSR). Is SteamOS our only saviour?

Darryl Stewart

Hi Team, Regarding gyro controls, it seems that gyro-enjoyers have long been singing its praises for several years as the ideal combination of the simplicity of a controller for movement with the aim precision of a mouse for shooters. What is your best guess at why Microsoft has not made gyro controls a standard feature on Xbox controllers?

Pol Kallamata

Just a day ago the thought of Nvidia and Intel teaming up to bring new APUs to the market would have sounded crazy. Does this announcement make you hopeful that we may soon see Sony, Toshiba , and IBM reunite to bring back the Cell Processor?

Ben DePaz

Hello! Do you think that any of the new features of FSR Redstone will be automatically available in apps that use FSR 3.1.4? For example, will Ray Regeneration just work? Or will the developers have to go in and do work on their apps, meaning we may not see these new features on existing titles?

Crashpad

Hey DF Crew, do you guys plan on covering the skate game preview at all?

Dude Man McBrosef

Hello DF folks, Recent subscriber here. I am just curious to hear about Alex’s giant bucket of “90s GPUs” that snuck in the frame last week! What is his favorite? And if he has a favorite, why is it kept in a bucket?! Thanks for the information and entertainment every week!

hobx

Hey df gents of gentlemen. With the whole Borderlands FIASCO, it occurred to me, has there been any example of a well optimised UE5 game? Look forward to your thoughts!

Pulec

Hi DorFs. With tools like GameNative, GameHub, and Winlator, people are running Steam games locally on Android phones/handhelds instead of streaming. Valve already develops Proton for Linux—should they make an official Android translation layer for x86_64 games? Considering Valve earns most of its revenue from its store, tapping the huge Android market could be very profitable, right?

DyeHardX86

Alright Fellows? Alright here. I've seen a lot of discussion in forums and on YouTube about the amount of RAM devs would like to see on the Next Gen Consoles, Handhelds, and PCs and they aren't conservative upwards of 50 GB according to some devs will be necessary to fully leverage the AI capabilities in these new chips(Magnus, Orion etc.) so my question is Will cross-gen be as drawn out this time around as Gen9 was considering the AI paradigm shift? Thank you and have a great weekend.

Chill_Mode_JD

Greetings DF dudes, after watching Riches Strix Halo video it seems to me like cooling these next gen chips inside small form factors is going to be the biggest challenge. Should people just except there’s diminishing returns the smaller you go or will the technology advance enough for these bespoke chips to run at full tdp in handhelds one day? Appreciate the DF community, have a chill weekend dudes!

Buzz Bee Spoke

Hi, digital fu. Most of the time sequels get more graphics. But sometimes they get less graphics. Whats the biggest downgrade from a successor to a game or by a developer to their previous game? Keep up the good stuff chips.

Kirkland Spector

What’s up DF :) First time asker, long time fan (since pre VO on Youtube)! With the new Xbox Ally, I’m imagining what my htpc gaming machine will run in the next few years. Ideally I’d hope Steam OS but will Nvidia ever support Linux to make that dream come true? It saddens, but doesn’t surprise me, to hear DF’s description of the “Xbox Windows” on the Ally feels bolted on and not legit - classic MS. After decades of Windows being litter compared to the Mac experience, I lack faith in Microsoft sticking the landing on making a true console OS for htpcs. If you had to wager a guess, do you see Steam OS becoming a viable option vs “Xbox Windows” for “htpc pc consoles?” I love my 4090, but am dying using windows on the tv. Let us pray the almighty messiah Jenson brings us to the rapture with Linux/SteamOS support. Much love from San Francisco!

Thomas Bonuso

Hello Tech Bros What is the share the American government has taken in Intel ($11bn) will direct its further operations and decisions regarding the international market. Is AMD a better competitor (to trust with non-uniliteral business plans) in light of this development?

Yinj

Good day humans. I have question about Shader precomp sparked by Borderlands 4. Is Shader precomp Black Magic or why is it so difficult for Devs to have a complete set? Is it like a Checklist you have to go through and mark or how does it work? Is it just "lazy Devs" or is QA (if they still exist) the problem? Cheers

Snorlax cat

Hi gents without hats! Long time asker, short time fan, why did you not cover Garfield kart 2 ALL YOU CAN DRIFT? The game seems to be top notch and it would make nintendo and sega kiss their business bye bye like square in 2007 as neogaf commenter famously predicted. Now jokes aside, how do you choose which games to cover when you are *outside* of your preferences? What was the hardest editorial choice you had to make the content rich-er?

Jagster

Gents, greatly appreciate your Borderlands 4 coverage and performance breakdown. Mr. Randy Pitchford seems to have caught some foot in mouth disease again via essentially blaming players for having outlandish expectations for what their respective PCs are capable of in running the game. It seems this makes for a good bit of hooey, seeing as how even 5090s are having issues with the game. What are your thoughts on Pitchford's statements and whether they bear any indication as to whether or not the game will see further optimization or is perhaps just doomed to exist in its current state ongoing across all platforms? I'm not a big fan of Randy, to be honest, as he oftentimes feels like the human embodiment of the Simpsons meme "No it's the children who must be wrong!"

Apothecary2

Hello, I would genuinely like to hear your full perspectives on upscaling motion clarity and what aspects are actually most important. Since PS5 professional coverage started there have now been many cases even recently where PSSR demonstated obviously superior motion clarity to other upscaling solution but Digital Foundry seemed to acknowledge this but downplay this fact and recommend other options based on how the still shots look. This has baffled many outside observers in the community. After all, aren't games mostly played in motion? Especially since motion clarity has so frequently been a pain point in modern games and is event the most common reason TAA haters state why they abstain from it.

Pomps

Hello good sirs and fine gentleman! Would you be so kind as to ascertain the details of Shin'en's recently announced "The Touryst" update, as they pertain to the game's new operation at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second? Might this be employing the much-rumoured DLSS lite upscaler as used by Fast Fusion? Looking forward to your thoughts on this! https://thetouryst.shinen.com/deluxe/

Pulec

You meant to say Windows is the problem? Cause it often is. Even on Arch Linux (Linux distribution which SteamOS is based on), many games in Steam are often click play and it runs. Even with NVIDIA GPU. Things are better on AMD GPU from my experience though. Proton-GE is nice to have, but if there are issues often proton-experimental fixes things. Otherwise ProtonDB and see what works, although too many people use launch parameters that are either outdated or not required at all. If you do not require Games with anti cheat that is not supported on Linux (Battlefield 6, Valorant and other such shooters) you might have easier time on SteamOS or Bazzite.

jooninja

Bit of a silly question, but I am genuinely curious. Since GeForce Now sends a video signal, and Lossless Scaling works on video, is it possible to use Lossless Scaling frame generation on the video feed of GeForce Now? If it is possible, how does it perform?

Salman

Don't know what you guys were talking about last week. Randy Pitchford's Borderlands 4 PC tech review said "The game is pretty damn optimal".

TSGames

Hi folks! Last time driving with my car at night I noticed something I didn't saw in any game so far. When the headlights hitting a puddle the light gets reflected onto surrounding surfaces, buildings and so one in a quite straight manner. Isn't this something raytraced GI could solve? I remember a video from Alex of Metro Exodus where a local light hits a colored wall tinting the whole room, so I suppose the basic principle is possible. Am I missing something or did we not see this so far for mirror-like surfaces, and if so what could be the reason? Thanks!

Roman Lachance

Hi DF Crew. With more and more games requiring shader pre-compilation, I was wondering why this pre-compilation seems to be entirely done on the CPU while the GPU twiddles its thumbs. Is there something inherent to compiling shaders that precludes it from being done on the GPU? Or is it just a case of it being easier to write the shader compilation step for the CPU as opposed to supporting it across AMD, Intel and NVIDIA GPUs? Thanks for all of the content over the past 12 years I've been reading/watching.

Salman

Hello DF Crew More UE questions this week 1. Why isn't hw Lumen available as an option in more games? Besides Cronos can't think of any others w/hw Lumen that have come out this year. 2. Played the demo for Bramble last week and I was wondering, is there a viable alternative engine out there for games that want to have that kind of look and aesthetic? For a minute I thought of Cry Engine but I'm not sure about Crytek support.

Visitors From Dreams

G'day from Australia team. As someone working in Hi-Fi industry coverage, I’ve always been intrigued by the lack of coverage around game audio. Personally, I feel a good DAC and a quality set of headphones or speakers (stereo or surround) can have a bigger impact on immersion than your choice of TV or monitor, but I know that’s a minority view. Why do you think the subject doesn’t get more attention? (From either a software OR hardware perspective). Is it because framerates and resolution are easier to quantify and measure? Because game audio tech isn’t evolving as quickly as visuals? (Wheres Ray Traced audio at?) Or simply because most gamers don’t realise how much they’re short-changing themselves by not investing in better audio equipment? Maybe a mix of all three? Do audiophile companies wanting to break into the market need to start covering there products with tacky RGB? Is their room for this discussion in the gaming space? The last time I remember it being touched on by DF was when John shared his thoughts on Crash Bandicoot 4. Curious to hear what you all think.

Pol Arbequina

Good day gaming and technology enthusiasts! Recent suporter here! I'll be very interested in any differences in quality that you find in FSR4 for RDNA3, compared to the original version for RDNA4. Given that the two models work in different ways. How do you think AMD would market a potential version of FSR Redstone and FSR4 for non-RDNA4 GPUs? I find it very exciting that a wide variety of hardware would have access to good quality ML software, but they would be running two different models with much different performance profiles. Cheers!

Sam Wall

Good day chaps, my question is simple. What are you all playing in your spare time outside of reviews?

Chicken Point

In my opinion, today's LLM chatbots feel natural and convincing to interact with because of the immense amount of data they are trained on. So, if a game features LLM-driven NPC dialogue, if the dialogue is natural-sounding, it'll be because it is using that same data. In which case, it will provide an experience akin to talking to ChatGPT. I.e., quite uninteresting after you've done it a few times before. Alanah Pearce has opined that developers have long been capable of creating extremely complex and reactive dialogue trees. But, they don't do it, because in their playtesting, they find that players don't even prefer it. So, if she is right, it could be that we are excited by the *idea* of complex, reactive dialogue trees, but we don't necessarily find them fun in practice. (Sorry, I know you didn't ask for my opinion -- I just couln't help myself! I think your question is a good one, and I'd like to hear the DF team's thoughts on it.)

tod weitzel

Is the Intel/nVidia partnership likely to result in an product that is competitive in the portable space again, or are they more interested in parts that are 100 watts and up?

Joshi

Greetings DF! With news of Nvidia partnering with Intel what are the implications for gaming hardware? What kind of stuff would you like to see and how long do you think it'll take until we see something that's used in a real consumer product? Thank you for your work and everything you do at DF!

DaJaCo (Dan)

Happy Half-Fortnight Lads! I’m reminded of Richard’s comment “this is getting dense isn’t it” – well I’d hate to disappoint with a “sparse” question this week; FSR4 has been “accidentally leaked” in FP8 and INT8 formats and enthusiasts have gone wild with the INT8 version, which will apparently ‘run’ on Steam Decks, RDNA 2&3, Nvidia, Intel, and probably even on suitably dense potatoes! Amongst the general hubbub I wonder if the 7000 series cards are a suitable PS5 Pro simulator, since even the 7900XT only has 123 TOPS of INT8. If Cerny’s claimed 300 TOPS of INT8 and “favourable comparison” to the 9000 series are true, the best way to simulate a PS5 pro would be to take an RX 9070 (289 INT8 TOPS), and force it to use the INT8 version of the upscaler instead of it’s (architecturally preferred) FP8 version. I’m curious what you think of all this, what tests you now think need doing, and also what implications this might have for the PS5 PRO, PS6 and upcoming PSP – for instance, will the later pair have an easy performance boost from FP8 support; while the PS5 Pro will be lumbered with its laggard “dense” INT8 ?

RAVE_DAM0S

Hola Foundrymen, With Xbox shifting toward it's hybrid ecosystem and many AAA third-party developers NOT supporting Xbox Play Anywhere, could we see a growing divide where studios prioritize Xbox-PC builds and begin phasing out dedicated Xbox-console versions? Or is it more likely that developers will continue optimizing for both platforms for the foreseeable future? As for your freedom filled future, all the best!

Alan

Hi guys, I like and support DF because of its integrity, principles, and values; it's a shame other games media isn't more like DF! The discourse around Borderlands 4's issues highlights the problems games media has by way of handing out high review scores for a game that is fundamentally broken at launch. Why does games media have this issue when other media isn't afraid to be critical?

CottonBird

Have you explained what Virtual Shadow Maps are? Most of the explanations I've found seem to be for people already making games in UE5. It seems like it's "Nanite, but for shadows"? Is there anything markedly different between VSMs and other shadow techniques in terms of the end result seen by the player?

WoundedBum

Hello gentlemen, Do any of you have any out of left-field games you'd like to see be remade in a modern way? Having recently played Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I'd love a remake of the old point and click Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in the same style. Are there any games out there that tickle your fancy in a similar way? Thanks!

Taggen86

Do you think PSSR/FSR4 on ps5 pro will run faster than what we see in the int8 RDNA2/3 mods?

TheAdam

Hi DF Crew! So Intel and Nvidia, the next big lay offs are then forseeable...I'm curious If AMD is going to search for a partner as well, which partner might that be...any chances there would be a collaboration between AMD and Apple? And which implications are you seeing techwise for the near future with this new partnership. Thanks for your work!

Bjornhard

Hello independent gentlemen :) My wallet is flirting with the PS5 Pro and I’m afraid it might turn into something serious during the holiday sales. I didn’t go Pro because of the underwhelming CPU changes but I did recently upgrade to a 4K OLED TV, and that has got me considering it. Though an upgrade might benefit a lot of games, GTA 6 is really the driving force behind my temptation to upgrade, so I’m curious what you guys think would be some reasonable enhancements to expect the Pro will bring to GTA 6 for those of us with a 4K TV. Thank you from Sweden, I’ve tried to convince our prime minister Ulf to include your patreon in our country’s budgetary spending but he’s being a bit stingy.

digitalfoundry

There's not much more from Strix beyond 54W and it's basically *almost* topped out at 85W. I think the issue here isn't cooling but bandwidth.

DaJaCo (Dan)

According to a "leak" from detective seeds back in July, the Pro will be the only way to play the game at 60fps. However given the amount of RT effects on show, and Rockstar's track record, the team remain skeptical. I asked this question at the time - here is their answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUs4lvtA9Qo

DaJaCo (Dan)

The Nvidia/ARM APU codenamed N1X is more likely to be suited to the low power apu segment for notebooks and handhelds, the intel partnership seems more focused on the server and AI segment. Unfortunately the N1X was delayed until 2026, but it could really shake up AMD's dominance in the gaming handheld market.

Bjornhard

Maybe I should have specified it in my question but I think 30fps is what to expect, definitely not 60 :) I was asking what “reasonable enhancements” we could expect from the PS5 Pro, especially for people with 4K displays :)

DaJaCo (Dan)

FSR 4 FSR 4L (4 Losers) I don't think it would get past the marketing department.

DaJaCo (Dan)

I think Sony made promising first steps in this area with their tempest audio tech and introduction of different playstation branded headphones. These products were a significant step up from previous generations, but still very far behind audiophile level experiences. Hopefully they'll take the same approach with the PS6 and have some better quality plug-and-play audio accessories, and an advancement of their 3D audio systems.

DaJaCo (Dan)

I agree, surely motion clarity is the number 1 goal of an upscaler - unless you're talking about a game with fixed camera angles or something!

DaJaCo (Dan)

When pitching a ford to prospective buyers, there is a tendency to get carried away.

DaJaCo (Dan)

It was a hilarious watching Alex cover Stellar Blade.

Series Xistential Crisis

I can think of plenty but only in the right hands. The new Shinobi, for example, is a decent game but as someone who’s been playing them since the original l think it missed the mark. Doesn’t feel like Shinobi. They really nailed Streets of Rage so its a curious one. Anywho, tons of games I’d love to see remade but gotta be done right. Nice name by the way.

Series Xistential Crisis

Ditto, stayed with DF because they pretty much tell it like it is. Then I can make an informed decision.

Visitors From Dreams

I’ve been impressed with Dolby Atmos for Headphones on Xbox, but the lack of an optical out means I need to use an optical extractor to get the most out of my setup. Not a dealbreaker, but definitely a hassle. (For a long time I used the opening level of Battlefield 1 to test a headphone’s dynamic range, still a great benchmark.) What always amuses me is how poor most gaming headsets sound, limited dynamic range, weak imaging, and often overpriced for what they deliver. Even a budget pair of audiophile headphones (Meze 99 Classics or Neo for example) usually offers a huge step up, whether you’re playing competitively or casually. But I suppose that’s the trade-off when you design specifically for a “gamer” audience. What surprises me most is how little presence there is in the audiophile gaming space, especially given how mainstream gaming has become and how willing players are to invest in their setups. I imagine we’ll see more growth here as ray-traced audio and other sound technologies continue to evolve as well. Maybe...

Chicken Point

I can relate to your suggestions about good headphones and speakers. But a good DAC? Do you really think gamers can tell a costly DAC from a cheap one? In my experience, I cannot, though I don't claim to speak for anyone else. If you have any suggestions on comparisons I might be able to perform, to help me identify the difference between a good DAC and a bad one, I'd be interested to try them. I like your question though, and I'd be interested to hear DF's thoughts on it!

FalconPunch

Hi, DF! Is Oliver going to test more games on Mac platform? There are some interesting ports around to make good comparisons with PC/Consoles.

BespokeEP

Making big changes to the CPU would have been a massive waste of money, there are literally less than 5 games out of thousands that are CPU bound. The CPU mostly affects physics simulation and other gameplay oriented elements. Devs would have had to make 2 different versions of the game to take advantage of a CPU upgrade and the goal is to make the upgrade a simple thing for devs to incorporate. The goal was to have the image quality of fidelity mode combined with the performance of performance mode, and this is achieved in the overwhelming majority of titles. And things will improve even more when the PSSR2/FSR4 update rolls out early next year. It also puts Sony in a far better situation when starting next gen, where Xbox will have to issue patches for every game to support FSR4, Sony has already done that for a ton of games and ironed out most of the issues

BespokeEP

The major unknown is how PSSR2 will effect performance. If not 60fps, the Pro will easily do 40fps. And I promise you that Sony has an entire team of engineers working with Rockstar to make the Pro version leagues better than the others. But even if every version is 30fps, what does it matter? The Pro will still be the best looking by a country mile. We still haven't seen any real gameplay, so nobody even knows what the game is trying to do. What we do know is that with proper engine optimization, anything is possible. Just look at HFW and DS2... And neither are using PSSR2

Bjornhard

A question for the community: I’m new here so I just wanted to check if it’s OK to comment the same question on a couple of directs in a row, in order to increase the chance that the DF Crew picks it, or is that frowned upon?

Chicken Point

I'm also new, so I can't speak on the community's values. Personally, I wouldn't frown upon it. They can only answer a handful of questions per show. "If they can't fit your question into the show when you ask it, you must wait 40 years before asking again."

Visitors From Dreams

Given the popularity of brands like Astro (I assumed it was just the headphones that were average but it turns out the DAC in the mixer's is incredibly muddy as well when you plug something decent into it), no I don't think they can tell, but i put that down to most gamers never being give a reason to investigate the idea, its not exactly a common part of the discourse nor is it really something thats marketed. There are very few headphone models out there that aren't kneecapped unless you have something decent driving them, but you don't need to spend big money (PC side anyway where you can use very reasonably priced dongle DACs from the likes of Audioquest or Earman) to get pretty big gains. In terms of comparisons, for a full sound you can plug a pair of Meze 99 Classics into anything and your going have a pretty good time. With DACs directly its a little harder because of how different headphones load and offload sound. For a while my go to was a pair of Meze 109 Pro paired with a Chord Mojo 2, its not a cheap combo but its about as good as you can get IMO without spending insane amounts (a relative term ofcourse), but as my financial situation changed I shifted to a pair of Meze 99 Neo and an old Pro-Ject Headbox S2 Digital. Its nowhere near as rich or dynamic a pairing but its far cheaper and has a very hefty feel to it which is all I need given I don't play multiplayer titles anymore. If you can get your hands on a Chord Mojo 2 and chuck whatever you have into it you should notice some pretty big differences in terms of dynamics, sound stage and especially imaging, super important with FPS. Work backwards from there and welcome to the world of audio testing haha.

seanny

Unreal Engine has rather detailed official documentation for all of its (major) features. Look it up for VSM. In a nutshell, rather than splitting the shadows up into distance cascades as was tradition, it splits them into a tilemap, and updates them as needed rather than re-rendering the whole thing every frame. The detail level that you *can* get out of VSM is bonkers, but its performance considerations & settings are somewhat different than conventional CSM, and obv some titles have struggled to use it well.

Stephen Heim

Hey Alex, With how poorly Borderlands 4 is running on all platforms and the main difference I see is the addition of UE5. Is BL4's poor performance more fuel for the fire against Unreal Engine 5 being the main bad guy in a lot of peoples performance woes? or is this a sub-version 5.x issue that can be fixed with an engine update or something. Thank you Oliver, Rich, Alex, John and along with Tom for the excellent video on the egregious BL5 console nightmare that people PAID FOR!. Of course thanks to the rest of the team and to you all for what you do for the community. Cheers!

OlderThanIThought

It’s a careful balance though. Imagine visiting a town in Skyrim and all of those characters’ dialogue is not immediately clear in intent/purpose. It would be very easy for the player be disoriented and very hard for the developers to make dialog coherent and interesting but also serve a concrete purpose. It would be funny though to have a dragon lord follow up his dialog with whether i want a round up of medieval recipes 😝

Rigor88

Hey DF, I noticed the other day playing Borderlands 4 my slightly undervolted 5090 was just drawing 300w, why do you think UE5 is underperforming on GeForce compared to Radeon? Perhaps because the entire engine is coded with the console architecture in mind?