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Call for questions on Digital Foundry Weekly (Week 41, 2021) (Patreon)

Published:
2021-10-13 14:23:10
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Hello everyone! Can you believe it, we are already in October and DF Direct Weekly has been going strong for over 6 months! And a huge part of why we enjoy doing this show so much is all the wonderful questions and comments we get from you awesome supporters. Speaking of which, we need those wonderful questions once again for this week's episode! It is a light news week as October tends to have, but we'll dive a bit into Citizen Con and talk a bit about the takedown of GTA mods as Take2 now has officially announced the remasters.

Leave your questions and comments below!

Comments

Anonymous

How do you feel about the use of NFTs and the blockchain for the (presumably) upcoming Intellivision Amico boxed ‘Physical Products’?

AGSMA

Would you scream in fear if Richard unveiled more than 3% of his raw power?

Jonas Taghizadeh (Taggen86)

More and more pc games suffer from streaming/shader compilation stutter ( e.g., Kena, far cry 6). Why do we see these stutters? Is there anything you can do as a gamer to minimize them/make them less noticeable?

Jonas Taghizadeh (Taggen86)

Considering that rt is included in all major game engines you would expect that most cutscenes that are not generated in real time to be path traced in games today. Is this the case? If not, why?

Lee Yarker

PlayStation face buttons; we know that Sony officially call the bottom face button 'cross', but what do you refer to it as? Cross or X? Or something even more left field.

d0x360

Alex, could you do a quick recap on the state of deathloop? They have released 3 patches to fix the studder with the 3rd being in the beta branch before official rollout. If they haven't managed to fix it by now does that look bad for the chances? Also any rumblings about ubi soft fixing fc6? Running at 90+ fps with VRR and still seeing studder is nearly as obnoxious as playing at 30fps.

TransTechGirl

We recently had a discussion on Discord about hardware limitations and game design. Personally I feel that constraints can lead to more innovative design, more varied types of games and better utilisation of available hardware. What do you think?

Anonymous

Do you have any plans to collaborate with other creators in regards to MMO coverage? The video on the evolution of Final Fantasy 14 earlier this year was incredible and having similar videos for other major MMOs such as World of Warcraft would be nice. Potentially this is also an area in which you could collaborate with the developers themselves?

Anonymous

Question directed at John. With the release of Metroid Dread, I've found that it looks remarkably clean on my LG E9 OLED when playing the game docked, despite the obvious limitations of upscaling from 900p into a 4K framebuffer and the aliasing that results of course. I barely use my Switch docked with many multiplatform releases because the games just look like soup upscaled to 4K. Riffing off of your wonderful technical analysis of the game; would you agree that more Switch titles should ship without TAA if they are running at the upper end of the resolution spectrum, and do you have any alternative suggestions for devs porting games to the Switch (rumored "Pro" model with DLSS notwithstanding)? P.S.- Cheers to everyone on the team I greatly look forward to these weekly shows.

N30n V

Now that Windows 11 has launched, What's DF's take on whether gamers should upgrade to Windows 11 or not? Is there any plans to cover pros and cons when it comes to pc gaming performance etc.?

Anonymous

With the Battlefield 2042 Beta come and gone, I've seen some vitriol about the quality of the build spread across social media. Out of the little time I spent with the game, I experienced nothing I wouldn't expect from a pre-release beta build. But there have been calls for EA and DICE to delay the game even further after people have shared their buggy, less than satisfactory experiences online. I almost feel as if the BF beta is being unfairly judged relative to the recent, polished Halo Infinite technical previews (after a year long delay). Is this a case of making a mountain out of a molehill, or is the state of the recent beta build a month before release a legitimate concern?

Matthew Santa Maria

If you could time travel back 30 years, what's the one game you'd show and blow your past self's mind with?

andre surles

Hi DF - Fantastic work as always, you've reignited my love of gaming and tech. Question - Destructible environments are still rare, what technology will allow them to become more common? Procedural, AI, Advanced physics and modeling?

Wander

Since we're now coming up to my personal favourite holiday, I'd love to hear from all of you, what are some of your favourite and most memorable horror games? It's not a particularly original answer but I really love RE4 on the GameCube.

tobz619

Glitches and bugs! do you have any memorable/personal favourites?

Demstel

Hi DF team. I remember seeing a tweet from DF saying you got a Starlink to check for fast internet. What happened to it, is it any good? Will you be testing it for cloud games? Thx

Angel

Perfect for PS5 Bravia TV Auto HDR Tone-Mapping. Discuss. GO! Will this be the future of TV’s and consoles. Where they “talk” and tell each other their capabilities and come to an agreement? It could be useful for ease of set up for the not so tech savvy of us out there.

Angel

Also haven’t heard any opinions on Switch Online N64 and Sega Genesis games.

Anonymous

How much does the GDDR6 in the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles impact CPU performance? Is it possible to do an apples to apples comparison on PC in anyway?

Jens Mogensen

Love the content you guys produce. It’s a bit of a shame though that you never made that much content/analysis of PSVR content after the (very good) review of the headset. I would have loved seeing comparisons of PSVR, PCVR and Quest titles like you do with PS5, Series X and PC these days. I assume the reason was a decline in consumer interest for vr at the time. This does seem to be changing slightly in the runup to the PSVR2. So here’s my question: Rich, will you do a hardware review of the new headset and controllers? I guarantee that I will slowly enjoy a nice piece of cake while watching you go over every detail. The decadence will be substantial. The next day John could do a detailed comparison of the panels with competing headsets and the day after Alex could go into the impact of using raytracing for the first time in vr (one can dream, Alex!). Love you guys. Here’s hoping the next generation of vr will be a reset in coverage. No one really does detailed graphical analysis in this field and with your pedigree you would instantly be THE goto place for it.

Anonymous

Would you rather see a 4K Switch or a 1080p or 1440p Switch with improved image quality features? When it comes to the Switch, I think I'm more interested in seeing less aliasing and pixel shimmer, or even more 60fps options as opposed to 4k. I have a PS5 for my 4k needs.

Pol Kallamata

The past few generational transitions in console gaming have all been accompanied with increases to target resolutions. From standard definition to 720p in the 360/PS3 era, to full HD last gen, and now 4K. Is it possible that given the low adoption rates and market demand for 8K TVs, that the next generation will break the cycle and continue to target 4K. And if so, could this actually bring about a more meaningful leap in game design and next generation visual effects, if so much of added horse power that comes with a new generation wasn't committed to chasing a higher pixel count?

Anonymous

Love your work guys! Posted this earlier but was in the wrong topic: are you going to cover Diablo II: Resurrected? Between the original, last gen and current gen versions, this seems like a DF walhalla for technical and art direction analysis!

Lepef

Hi Guys, To future-proof games what is preventing developers from setting the largest bounds possible (let's say 900p to 4K) and just switch between a 30 fps and 60 fps lock ?

Anonymous

I don't know if this is too late (please don't read this out if it isn't) but can you comment on the new rumour about the switch 2 and that it might not be backwards compatible? Surely they'll be using the next tegra chip, so therefore wouldn't it mean that it should be able to run switch 1 games? Thanks for the great videos.

doctune

Hi Rich and Gang, just a quick one: Is Direct Storage aka Velocity part of and enabled in the Windows 11 launch build and can Gamers like me already benefit from it as of now? Many thanks.

Gluten-Free Potato Glutton

Reposting prior submission. Cheers! Why don't Sony/Microsoft game developers release uncompressed HDR trailers alongside their Youtube counterpart? As I watched the GoW Ragnarok gameplay trailer, I couldn't help but think the visuals appeared flat in comparison to its predecessor, but then I remembered how the HDR implementation for God of War 2018 played a pivotal role in creating one of the most visually stunning games of the prior generation; it was a "night and day" level of difference. What complications, if any, prevents developers from making such trailers available to their gaming audiences?

tod weitzel

Do any of you have backgrounds or interest in photography? Alex in particular is that sort of person who can look at an image and describe if and how it looks real. I'm surprised discussion in digital foundry spends a lot of time on light and shadow, but not composition, focal length, or lens artifacts. Art teams are spending a lot of time on those elements as well as photo mode but not much discussion around how hard it is and.

tod weitzel
>>69727174

PS, not necessary for read: If any of you haven't watched Tim's Vermeer, it's one of my favorite movies. It basically applies the DF model of reverse engineering the construction of an image from its output to 400 year old paintings.

Sloth

A lot of the discussion around playing retro games on original hardware tends to focus on NTSC consoles. But for collectors in PAL regions the advantages of playing 90s or early 2000s console games on original hardware versus emulated NTSC games is more complex. Generally speaking how would you weigh up the relative pros and cons of playing PAL games on original hardware versus emulated NTSC versions of the same games?

Bryan McIntosh
>>69724136

Always remember, a lot of people watching a game trailer are watching it on sub-optimal hardware in a sub-optimal environment. They're on a phone without a HDR display, or using a sub-$1,000 laptop with a screen that MIGHT be IPS if they're lucky (it's likely TN if it's a sub-$700 special from Best Buy).

Bryan McIntosh

The RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT seem to be heavily memory bandwidth constrained, and they also have a downright tiny amount of Infinity Cache compared to their BIG NAVI counterparts. Since ray-tracing eats up gobs of VRAM, do you think that one reason why Navi 2 under-performs when using ray-traced lighting is due to the GPU spending a lot of time swapping data in and out of cache? What developer tools would one need to determine this?

Luke

Which of the big 3 is your favorable console and why?

Robert Brown

You mentioned that some AAA developers target Intel integrated graphics as baseline for low PC settings. How do intel’s business focused laptops compare to the last gen base consoles in gaming performance?

Anonymous

With a large portion of Live Service games having launched during the PS4/X1 generation how long do you expect many of them to continue supporting these aging consoles before moving on to solely supporting the latest gen hardware? Surely games like the upcoming Halo Infinite or COD Warzone won't be adding new things the last generation hardware forever.

Anonymous

Hi guys, first of all, thank you for all the quality content you create. I was wondering after last week's episode : regarding the new Switch OLED model, you mentioned the new chip attached to the HDMI port of the dock, and we know the latest firmware update included a new "update dock" option, only related to those OLED models. Do you guys think these are hints of the rumoured 4K Switch console that somehow ended up in the final current product ? Or could they be hints that we can hope future software updates regarding display options ? What are your thoughts ? Merci

Art Vandelay

Hey, DF! So, a few weeks back I tried to make a point regarding how PCs could potentially be holding back console games design and development. Not surprisingly, Alex was not very happy. Now, allow me to use the "authority argument" because, well, the man has spoken: "Essentially, this massive influx of less capable parts means that this is an audience that developers may feel kind of compelled to address, you know, they want to make sure their games run on Intel integrated graphics. So, again, this serves to extend cross-gen still further because those are inherently less capable parts that don't have next generation features." There you go, "DF said it". Thanks, Rich! :)

Soban

Why is backwards compatibility a non-issue on pc with successive cpu, gpu etc generations but something quite limited on console hardware? I've heard that hardware has something to do with it e.g. PS4 pro retaining OG PS4 SOC for legacy mode, and more recent speculation of an upcoming Switch pro being unlikely due to a lack of Maxwell compatible modern Tegra SOC (via SciresM of Atmosphere firmware)

Snorlax jobless

Hello beautiful people! I’d like to know if it’s posible that since console hardware can reach 40 hz on an 120 hz panel, in games like rachet and clank rift apart with rt enabled, it would be posible that manufacturers tap on to compatible 50hz panels to get there. Even if there’s some hiccups for people who can’t get VRR (though it’s not on the ps5) or 120 hz displays it may be a smoother experience with 50 fps than just 30.

Spencer M.

Would have you preferred to have Metro Exodus for the Series S to run at 30fps if it meant a visual presentation on par with the PS5 and Series X, or do you think that the sacrifices made in order to achieve 60fps were worth the visual penalties?

Anonymous

I spotted in the latest Nvidia game-ready drivers update that Shadow of the Tomb Raider was gonna be updated to DLSS 2, and DLSS was going to be added to Rise of the Tomb Raider. Would be keen to hear any of DF's thoughts on that. Thanks!

André Scheffler
>>69744257

I've actually used this with a PC at 50Hz to be able to have vsync enabled and it felt as smoothly as 60Hz. So I think it's a good idea!

Riva

“4K50”? As far as my knowledge goes every TV and Monitor today should support native playback for 50Hz progressive content. All my tested devices (5 TVs, 7 Monitors, EU Version) from the past 7-8y at least were able to do so. So why is it not utilized for games and we are instead talking about 120/40Hz playback? I hope this is an interesting topic to investigate. Maybe it's worth a video of its own :-). Besides, I think it's good that DF brings an additional, slightly more European perspective to the internationally very US-influenced landscape. Good work.

Kevin Dickson

Hey Chaps. So I dont have to lug around two handhelds, I've been thinking about how well (or not) the Steam Deck could run Ryujinx. What do you think? Am I living in a dream world?

Thermopyle

After watching your Crysis 2 Remastered coverage and how happy you were with the conversion, I went back to rewatch your April video addressing the Series/PS5 patch of Crysis 1. That video wasn't nearly as positive. How do you feel about the current status of Crysis Remastered now that the sequels are releasing, and do you know if Crytek intends to make further improvements to the first game?

kingpenumbra

hey y'all, I was thinking (scary I know), could an AI vision program be trained to determine the resolution of an image, or is the post-process makeup getting so heavy that it might be hard?

Adam

It's been a while since we've heard anything from Nvidia about more old games being "Ray-mastered" similar to Quake 2 rtx. Do you believe more are still coming? As a related question, I see Doom 3 floated a lot as a possibility for that treatment, but I personally feel that in that case the introduction of physically accurate lighting might render the game unrecognisable, given how much brighter many scenes would become with light bounces especially from ambient sources - would that also worry any of you, or does the Battaglia tier thirst for Ray tracing outweigh them?

TheCollector

Why haven’t we seen the same kind of advancement in audio as we have seen in visuals? Are most players unable to tell the difference in properly spatialized audio or are game devs mostly handling audio as an afterthought? Why hasn’t ray traced audio become a thing?