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Questions for DF Direct Weekly (Week 17) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-04-28 14:58:50
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Here we are again, seeking all our patrons to provide us with your wonderful questions for us to answer during DF Direct Weekly. This week, we will be discussing Gamestack a bit further and round off the presentations regarding sampler feedback streaming and direct storage on PC. Additionally, we'll be talking Mortal Shell and take a look at the PS5 patch, Alex will be on hand to talk about his Metro Exodus PC Enhanced and much more!

Submit your questions below in the comments field and we'll answer as many as we can!

Comments

Anonymous

how do you feel about returnal from a design and tech standpoint?

Adabada Pling Boink-WeeeeeU

Can console game developers check if the connected display have VRR support enabled, and provide an uncapped framerate for those displays while providing a capped framerate for mediocre displays without VRR?

AGSMA

DF Question: if anyone on the DF team was into game development and had full access to a game engine, proprietary or not, which one would you chose?

Avery Baker

Hey Team! Fun question for you, what’s your favorite studio or console manufacturer that’s still around today? And what do you believe has contributed to their success in lasting so long?

Oliver Mackenzie

Hi DF team, About 10 years ago, Richard used to talk about the concept of a “perceptual 60fps”, the idea that in a 60 fps game, brief drops to somewhat lower framerates will often not be noticeable. I remember Richard discussing this in the context of the Xbox 360 and PS3 Call of Duty games. Do you think this logic still applies? I agreed with the sentiment at the time, but I think I have become more sensitive to framerate since.

The Wooniest Woona

There's a lot of genres that have fallen out of favor over the years, for instance arcade racers are much less of a thing these days. If you could bring one older genre back to prominence, what would it be?

Anonymous

What is it about alpha transparencies that has such an effect on performance?

Demstel

Will you be covering Genshin Impact on ps5?

Anonymous

I know it's still early, but what are you all expecting/hoping to see from e3 this year? One realistic expectation and one pipe dream?

Leigh Ashton

rather than having Alex and/or John play old PC games on period appropriate hardware, can we have some videos where Alex uses his considerable knowledge to patch up, improve and utilise super modern hardware to show off old games in a way they never could be played in the past? For instance, maybe reshader + marty's RTGI shaders? 8k DSR? Especially games around the Crysis era

andre surles

DF Crew, Can the cloud be used to stream in weather/AI and other less immediate tasks to free up local hardware? Thanks Andre’

1040STF

Hello gentlemens. Would it be technically possible to feature 120fps videos for your Patreon users, as Youtube only support 60 ? You seems to be able to capture 120fps as you show this footage slowed down. PS : You should take a look at Unravel 2 at 120fps if you didn't yet. The effect it has on the art style, especially on the backgrounds, is just gorgeous to look at.

Anonymous

Gentlemen! What is your most memorable musical moment or sequence in a video game? Perhaps a menu theme from a Bubsy game holds that special place in your heart?

Anders Lønning

I recently broke my bank account on a Mister FPGA, should I now do it again with the Retrothink 5X?

Ryan Harvey

Hey guys! I’m really happy to be a new Patreon after enjoying your content for such a long time. I was curious if you guys had any interest in covering the new ps5 version of Final Fantasy XIV. There’s a few different graphical settings, and there’s a pc and ps4 version you can also play on ps5 and I think it would be really interesting. There’s a free trial and beginning areas with lots of online players in the hub would put the game through an easily accessible stress test early on. I’m sure a lot of people would appreciate your in-depth look. Thanks guys! I’m happy to be here to support :-)!

Rip Van Winkle

Just a bit of a fun question - if each of you could take one PlayStation exclusive game and bring it to PC, what would it be? For me it would have to be Spiderman with the RT reflections.

Ali Almutawa

Do you think PS VR2 will be backward compatible? if so, do you think that is the reason the Dualsense has the lights facing the player? since its using inside out tracking.

Anonymous

I want to play TLOU 2 but do you recommend to wait till the PS5 remake is out? Will the remake be much better than the current PS4 version?

Justin Valero

Is there any plans to look back on Halo MCC with the Series S|X patches implemented?

Mr Fujisawa

Why do you think there has been no TLOU2 enhancement for PS5 (apart from adaptive triggers) i expected a 60fps patch pretty early on,

Anonymous
>>58686249

I’m curious about this too. That’s why I’ve been holding off on playing TLOU2.

ConcreteLlama

It used to be that console hardware within the same generation could vary quite drastically, but these days (particularly with Sony and Microsoft in gen 8 and 9) they seem to be very similar. Obviously this undeniably makes things much easier for multiplatform developers, but do you prefer the current approach, or miss (or maybe even see advantages to) the old approach with wildly different architectures? Also does Richard wear anything under his hoodie?

The Dressing Gown

Really enjoy the content all, keep up the incredible work! What would you say is the most important game of each gaming generation? (Besides the obvious ..... Crazy frog racer)

bjorktribe

Okay, so probably no DLSS equivalent for this generation. Got it. Even after years of partnership with AMD, do you think Sony and Microsoft may get FOMO and jump ship to an Nvidia solution next generation?

Dubuc Nathan

As someone who have always found emulation fascinating, both because of its ability to preserve games, but mostly for the brilliant engineering powering it, I have always wondered if DF is interested in talking about it.

Sonicx9

Why does UE4 have a bad track record on the Switch?

Anonymous

Would you consider releasing these discussions as a Podcast as well? Either as a patron exclusive or for all. That would be truly excellent!

Lucas Rodrigues Ramos

Alex, what do you think the compromises will be on the console versions of Metro Exodus Enhanced? They say they're targeting 4K60, will it probably use TAA upsampling? What base resolution do you think it will use? Or is it going to be DRS? Is RTGI going to be half or quarter res? And last do you think RT reflections will be off the table? Amazing work from all of you DF guys, thank you so much!

Eric Hurst

Do any of you have any thoughts or opinions on Linux as a gaming platform? Linux has made tremendous strides in the past couple of years thanks to the community, graphics card manufacturers, and Valve’s efforts with Steam Play on Linux. It obviously still has a long way to go, with things like anti-cheat support and such, but do you see potential in Linux as a more viable gaming platform in the future? Would you ever consider switching to Linux as your primary PC Gaming OS? Cheers

Martin Birkeldh
>>58713265

YouTube premium makes it possible to listen with the screen off. I know, I know, not the same thing but a temporary solution for you. 👍

Art Vandelay

Hey DFs, a bit of a speculative one here: Sony and Epic have been working closely together, with the Japanese company going as far as making considerable money investments in the Fortnite creator. Now, UE5 is looking pretty revolutionary with the potential to not only make next-gen games look amazing, but also bring production costs down considerably. Is there something brewing here? Could we see a shift towards Unreal Engine among Sony's first-party studios?

Edward G-Jones

Hey all Super interested in all the ray-tracing and tech focused videos you do (lov ya alex... and everyone else of course) and I'd like to ask a question specifically regarding the ray tracing mentioned in the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition video. You said that the original release of the game had the ray traced GI only bounce once, which makes sense, ray tracing is expensive. So naturally my question is how the hell did they get the GI to have 'infinite bounces' in the new version and what does that even mean? I assume that rays have some form of lifespan thereby meaning rays terminate. With that in mind they technically can still bounce indefinitely meaning 4A can say there's 'infinite bounces'. There's no actual cap to the number of bounces rays can perform. So really I'm asking how such a system exists in real-time? Also are there other examples in games/real-time that have a comparable 'infinite bounce' system?

Thermopyle

I've got a follow-up question for something that was discussed in Weekly #3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqU3m-TRBl4&t=5278s) ; previously you brought up the question of how to comparatively analyze picture quality with current titles using dynamic resolution, TAA, and other upsampling techniques. The possibility was brought up of using the encoder's quality setting and then looking at the resulting video bitrate as a way to compare level of detail between platforms; Rich listed a few problems with the approach, specifically that games with film grain could throw off the result and that dynamic elements such as weather and volumetrics would cause variation between clips. So, my question in follow-up to this is; why do film grain or the dynamic elements matter when you're comparing the same game on multiple platforms? Film grain will throw off the bitrate at a quality level across all versions (unless film grain settings are different--which I'd expect to be part of the analysis anyway) so that shouldn't be an issue. If you're playing the first 2-3 hours of a game on all platforms then that will give you an even baseline for that aspect of things. Weather and time of day effects will vary, but that varies for your gaming viewers as well so they can't expect to see the same performance you would in your testing anyway. Gameplay style will also vary which means different effects from one player to the next, which also impacts CPU/GPU load and dynamic resolution as a result as well. Even among the DF team that's going to be an issue, and I expect it has driven some different results between the team when playing on different systems to produce platform videos to compare between. Even a single team member going from one platform to the next can change their gameplay style as they become more proficient at the title. So to sum up this rather long-winded question; when we know game performance and image quality is being judged based off random per-player per platform elements to begin with, why with sufficient footage to even things out (you wouldn't want to compare a 2-minute fight clip against a walking clip, or a short sunny day clip versus a heavy rain clip, obviously), is bitrate not a good way to judge the average quality? If you're capturing hours of footage for each platform, why is that not a sufficient size to make such a judgement?

Wooodfield

Haircuts all looking good, and with that in mind; What do each of you use to edit your own videos for digital foundry. and how long typically does each video take to render? ( And have you had any you have had to re- render ) Thanks, Gareth

Anonymous

Hey all! In addition to powering real-time global illumination in upcoming versions of Godot and Unreal Engine, do you see Signed Distance Field rendering techniques gaining widespread adoption across the industry as a cheaper alternative to triangle ray-tracing? Perhaps extending to other lighting features such as reflections or rendering entirely using SDFs as seen in Dreams? All the best, Robert.

tod weitzel

Did any of you watch the new Mortal Kombat movie and what did you think of it?

xwurm

Hey Alex, I don't know if you can answer this or the question itself might be stupid: In your Metro Exodus Enhanced edition video you show the lighting differences in identical scenes between ray tracing and other illumination techniques and how it is a lot more work for developers to properly place lights. Wouldn't it be possible for a developer to create a ray traced scene and "translate" all the lighting into a static scene so it looks the same but ray tracing is kind of pre-rendered? This would obviously only work in scenes without a dynamic light source.

Joe Tangco

Hey guys, I know you've said pixel-counting is one of the most tedious parts of your jobs. Is it possible to set up some kind of crowd-sourced, Discord endeavour? eg. you share 100 images of zoomed in edges -- so the game and platform is virtually anonymous -- and we collectively try to count edge-pixels on your behalf?

Shithauser
>>58818769

It may be stupid, but I was thinking the same thing. You'd give up dynamic lighting for results like that on lower end hardware.