Support NeoGAF

[owandeseis]

I posted this question in another thread, but the people I was talking to did not respond, so I'll post it here.

I keep hearing about the "scale" of Starfield, because of which visual compromises had to be made. I honestly do not understand this argument.

Unlike Skyrim, Starfield is not a big gigantic world. It is split into 1,000 procedurally generated planets. Most of those planets, as seen in the presentation, would be barren for resource gathering. You land on a barren, tiny planet; the game loads that (single) planet. When you leave that planet, you wait on a loading screen, and the game dumps everything from that planet and loads the next planet.

So at any given point in time, the game is only rendering one small (mostly barren) planet, where there are no mechs, huge animals, or machines, or "Eikon type" battles that would be very expensive to render. Then where is this argument of "massive scale" coming from that's affecting the game's visual fidelity?

Just the fact that pretty much every object is moveable and doesn't disappear when you leave it somewhere is absolutely massive, not in the way you mean it maybe, but

If what they say is true, it also has bigger cities than any other game they did, probably without loads, and about the rest, honestly we don't know so we just guess.

But yea flying on the space, space ships, lots of planets, NPC's with routines, base buildings, and most importantly, being able to be a diogenes syndrome guy... yea these guys do a lot of stuff that nobody else does in the industry.

Other than that, Starfield being 30 FPS, FFXVI and Star Wars Jedi Survivor having hard struggling "performance" modes... and more to come, it's time to get used to it.

You want 60 FPS on every game? well as some known guy would say, fortunately there's a product for these who want that, it's called PC.

This said i think that sometime after the game's release, they'll manage to do a performance mode, or at least a 40 FPS one, just like Asobo did with A plague tale

 

[SF Kosmo]

It’s not any larger. It’s loading up a procedurally generated, largely barren planet landscape

These “complexities” may require dev resources, but they ARE NOT massive limitations for hardware

Seems a lot of people want to crown Bethesda for some nebulous complexity that only really exists in their own minds.

Physics. Actual complex AI routines. That may limit the vision to 30fps.

An open world shooter that has lots of stats? No. That is nothing new. I see no technical reason why Cyberpunk can have a 60fps mode but Starfield cannot

I think there's a lot more dynamic simulation and player authorship in Starfield, which is hard for devs to account for except by leaving a lot of overhead. Cyberpunk barely has AI on cars, let alone the ability to spawn dozens of physics simulated objects on screen and have them persist throughout your saves and travels, or build a house and then fly it around.

My point here is not to say that Starfield is doing anything "more advanced," or anything (Cyberpunk certainly has graphical features that Starfield does not), but there's probably more variability in the framerate because it's a more dynamic game that lets the player do a lot of difficult to predict things. And so the devs have prioritized a more consistent presentation.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure what the point of arguing is. Bethesda would have loved to make Starfield run at 60fps, if they could have done it without compromising important features. Maybe they're incompetent, or their engine just sucks, but probably they are just CPU bottlenecked because they're doing a lot simulation stuff under the hood.

 

[Gaiff]

I haven’t seen anything that Starfield does, from a system complexity standpoint, that looks to create a more limited 30fps vision

And you wouldn't know this unless you knew every frame's rendering budget. The bottom line is, it will be by far the most complex open world games when it hits the market outside of Star Citizen but this game is a scam. The game has even stuff like 0G fighting where gravity affects the way object moves and you even have different guns behaving differently under those circumstances and obviously, ragdoll physics are also changed.

Not even the devs have said that, either btw!

They claim it’s the fidelity and visuals. Which look good, but not so good that a lowered resolution mode wouldn’t be possible.

They just don’t have the time or resources to make it happen or it simply wasn’t a priority for them

And as I said, it's possible they'll just add one later down the line. I looked at the game and am not in the slightest bit surprised that it's capped at 30fps. Those are meh-tier CPUs, not top of the line beasts, assuming the CPU (or something else) is the issue of course which is likely considering they can target 4K. Else, I'm not sure why they wouldn't just add a dynamic res or 1080p mode or something.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Let's see if after 5, 6 months Bethesda feel like doing a Performance toggle that cuts out literal swathes of detail.

Despite the Performance mode, I still think Requiem is best played in the 40hz mode. It just cuts out too much.

And we saw the cuts they had to make to achieve that. I expect if it is at all possible, starfield will receive a 60FPS patch down the road and it will pull a lot back I imagine, foliage etc.

That's not the point. They tried to push the doom & gloom, and the options were then added. Most framerate tied to gameplay proponents don't care about lower rez and missing foliage. Some do more than others. Some are content with 40hz modes. These are the things developers have condition and marketed to us for almost 3 years now.

The point is, they try pushing things as gospel, when it is doable from each time they tried to make that a narrative.

 

[Zathalus]

Frankly it boils down to this, everyone stating that this should easily be 60 Fps because it is nothing impressive has very likely a specific agenda they want to push. This agenda is transparently obvious when looking at thier post history. The war continues.

 

[DaGwaphics]

Let's see if after 5, 6 months Bethesda feel like doing a Performance toggle that cuts out literal swathes of detail.

Despite the Performance mode, I still think Requiem is best played in the 40hz mode. It just cuts out too much.



Maybe not in terms of character details related to time of release but in terms of the sense of exploration, it definitely feels close to ME1.

I was purely talking about character facial animation and emotions. ME1 did an incredible job with that, or at least I remember thinking that it did at the time (might be something I look back at today and find less impressive). It looks like Starfield is far above ME when it comes to exploration and possibilities for sure.

 

[Gaiff]

That's not the point. They tried to push the doom & gloom, and the options were then added. Most framerate tied to gameplay proponents don't care about lower rez and missing foliage. Some do more than others. Some are content with 40hz modes. These are the things developers have condition and marketed to us for almost 3 years now.

The point is, they try pushing things as gospel, when it is doable from each time they tried to make that a narrative.

Not very fair. A Plague Tale has entire trees missing and some sections look completely barren. I think DF operated with the assumption that 60fps wouldn't look dramatically different from 30 besides the cut to resolution. Every game can run at 60fps if you strip down enough stuff.

 

[skneogaf]

I'm curious what pc is needed for locked 4k@60fps.

I had zero interest in the game but the showcase was very good and paints the game as a combination of lots of ideas into one.

Hopefully playstation fanatics will pick up a xbox to play it and realise having more than one console the best way to enjoy our hobby.

 

[PixelatedBeast]

At a time when OLED monitors and TVs are more afforable, and devs have had more time developing for these consoles.... suddently 30 fps is okay on 12 TFLOPs .....this is a damn joke. Be sure to bookmark this page for receipts so the defenders can be shown the error of their ways when they contradict themselves later this year.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Not very fair. A Plague Tale has entire trees missing and some sections look completely barren. I think DF operated with the assumption that 60fps wouldn't look dramatically different from 30 besides the cut to resolution. Every game can run at 60fps if you strip down enough stuff.

Again, reread what I wrote. Hell, people were jumping for joy when Dirt 4 added 120fps mode and the game looked horrendous (almost PS2 levels of simplistic object detail on the tracks) in comparison. Some of the very same people on certain sides, mind you that want to now defend the graphics over framerate and "think of the sacrifices."

Look, I am fine with their choice, hopefully they can add at least a 40Hz happy medium mode down the road on consoles. I am just pointing out that I refuse to subscribe to DF narrative hottakes, when not everyone needs all the bells and whistles when it comes to performance they are accustomed to for their gameplay experience.

At a time when OLED monitors and TVs are more afforable, and devs have had more time developing for these consoles.... suddently 30 fps is okay on 12 TFLOPs .....this is a damn joke. Be sure to bookmark this page for receipts so the defender can be shown the error of their ways when they contradict themselves later this year.

Jokes aside, it's going to s-s-s-s-s-suck on OLEDs. 40Hz would ease that OLED stutter.

 

[Zathalus]

At a time when OLED monitors and TVs are more afforable, and devs have had more time developing for these consoles.... suddently 30 fps is okay on 12 TFLOPs .....this is a damn joke. Be sure to bookmark this page for receipts so the defender can be shown the error of their ways when they contradict themselves later this year.

You do realise that 12 TFLOPs is no longer impressive right? You can buy a $260 GPU these days that smokes it. You can also buy a $130 CPU that is faster then the XSX and PS5 CPU as well.

The days of either console being impressive are behind us. The compromises to reach 60FPS are getting excessive as well, drops to 30fps range and sub 720p are not exactly what I would call ideal.

 

[DaGwaphics]

Not very fair. A Plague Tale has entire trees missing and some sections look completely barren. I think DF operated with the assumption that 60fps wouldn't look dramatically different from 30 besides the cut to resolution. Every game can run at 60fps if you strip down enough stuff.

They made major changes to how the rat swarms were calculated as well (which lead to the dramatic fps improvements on PC), in that particular game those cuts/optimizations didn't change the gameplay possibilities much if at all, but that isn't necessarily the case for Starfield. Not to mention all of the very noticeable graphical adjustments they had to make like you mention.

If the 30fps cap is purely GPU based, I don't seen an issue with offering a low res performance mode if the results are consistent. If the CPU limitations are going to create a situation where the FPS in hectic areas is barely raised in exchange for excessive image degradation and cuts to the gameplay itself, I don't see the need for it.

 

[MarkMe2525]

Idiot Greenberg gets asked about game frame rates and answers with console video output. This is similar to when that MS exec responded to a tweet about game resolution and replied with the consoles video output resolution. This is why he refers to it as "output", which says nothing regarding the internal frame rate. I agree that it was a moronic reply to the tweet.

In saying that, it's obviously clear there is no 60fps mandate or minimum on Xbox nor have they ever advertised that. It serves no purpose for users on gaf to constantly spam threads and misrepresent the ramblings of a moron just because he is high level employee at MS.

 

[Gudji]

You do realise that 12 TFLOPs is no longer impressive right? You can buy a $260 GPU these days that smokes it. You can also buy a $130 CPU that is faster then the XSX and PS5 CPU as well.

The days of either console being impressive are behind us. The compromises to reach 60FPS are getting excessive as well, drops to 30fps range and sub 720p are not exactly what I would call ideal.

They're still impressive machines not sure what you're going on about when 90% (or more) of gaming computers are weaker in every aspect.

 

[Gaiff]

They're still impressive machines not sure what you're going on about when 90% (or more) of gaming computers are weaker in every aspect.

90%? Is this 2017 lol? The 2070S-class cards and above aren't just 10% of the market.

 

[Team Andromeda]

It did, but got even more just because Gotham Knights came around the same time and people panicked around 30 fps becoming standard again for next gen only games.

Actually, that specific game is the reason why I rather upgraded my PC GPU instead of moving to consoles. I got a nice deal for a similar GPU (well, a little more powerful one) for $400 right after the crypto fiasco ended so couldn't pass on it. A Plague Tale Requiem finally got a 60 fps patch on consoles but compromises are several more than on my PC, where I played it on High 1440p at around 60-70 fps.

No it did not . It got rave reviews and wide praise for its gfx, even from DF much the same for Flight Sim

 

[93xfan]

Oh no. An NPC disappeared. Anyway. Is storing every little thing worth the 30fps tradeoff? Maybe to some. If that’s actually the reason (which it’s probably not)

But 99% of the players won’t care that you can stack sandwiches

It’s an RPG. You can’t just have NPCs you need to interact with disappear.

how is doubling down working for you, btw?

 

[Zathalus]

They're still impressive machines not sure what you're going on about when 90% (or more) of gaming computers are weaker in every aspect.

About 25%+ of the 140 million gaming PCs on steam have GPUs roughly equal to or better then a PS5/XSX.

So no I don't particularly consider the consoles to be impressive anymore. Note that I don't mean they are bad, but banging the 12 TFLOP figure was more relevant when it was the equivalent of a upper tier card and not one that is below $250.

 

[PeteBull]

Love it how people are clinging to anything that might bring this game down. The presentation was stellar, one of the best ever.

Fingers crossed they don't shit the bed come release. I could go either way right now but the amount of people wanting it to fail is just sad. Great games are good for everyone, regardless of platform.

100% agree here, but i posted link to DF analysis just so we keep it reasonable and dont take dev's words for unbiased truths, here we got proof itself that at least in xbox showcase demo, aka currently. maybe older build, but still, game doesnt run at 4k30, but well below that, 1296p, even if it was dinamic, its only 60% x 60% on both axis, aka not actual true native 4k, but 36% of actual 4k pixel amount in each frame
And from watching the footage i guarantee u game didnt hold stable 30 durning gameplay either, noticed many dips to around 20 fps, if not lower.

 

[Team Andromeda]

You do realise that 12 TFLOPs is no longer impressive right? You can buy a $260 GPU these days that smokes it. You can also buy a $130 CPU that is faster then the XSX and PS5 CPU as well.

The days of either console being impressive are behind us. The compromises to reach 60FPS are getting excessive as well, drops to 30fps range and sub 720p are not exactly what I would call ideal.

What days are these ? Unless you want to go back to the Mega Drive .PC have always smoked console.

 

[MarkMe2525]

noticed many dips to around 20 fps, if not lower.

Would love some timestamps if you have the time.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

It’s an RPG. You can’t just have NPCs you need to interact with disappear.

how is doubling down working for you, btw?

Are you seriously trying to claim that Bethesda games have such peerless quality control that an NPC has *never* disappeared?

Anyway, CP2077 sold 20M and despite the buggy launch the game felt pretty good despite perhaps being more limited in certain ways and things “disappearing”

 

[DaGwaphics]

They're still impressive machines not sure what you're going on about when 90% (or more) of gaming computers are weaker in every aspect.

Still the best value for the money that you'll find for a complete package. And they still have some advantages in IO handling that PCs have to work around as well.

And they will likely do 60fps a lot more often then last-gen did, but they certainly are not some weird super computers that can guarantee high framerates in all instances. How many games will have to be released that either lack a performance mode outright or have a very poorly implemented one that is basically unusable before we no longer have the big debates every time?

 

[Zathalus]

What days are these ? Unless you want to go back to the Mega Drive .PC have always smoked console.

The first two years of launch both the XSX and PS5 were impressive, especially for the price. Obviously the PC was faster but building a faster PC (even at the mythical MSRP of the mining craze) required you to spend like 3x the price. For $500 the hardware was a steal. These days you can build something just as fast for under $600 of course.

 

[GHG]

Holy shit, dude. How do you know what the game is doing?

How long is it, how much story? how are the side quests?

You should ask yourself the same questions considering some of your other posts regarding this game.

 

[Mister Wolf]

I'm curious what pc is needed for locked 4k@60fps.

I had zero interest in the game but the showcase was very good and paints the game as a combination of lots of ideas into one.

Hopefully playstation fanatics will pick up a xbox to play it and realise having more than one console the best way to enjoy our hobby.

I'm hoping they partner with Nvidia and provide us frame generation.

 

[Team Andromeda]

The first two years of launch both the XSX and PS5 were impressive, especially for the price. Obviously the PC was faster but building a faster PC (even at the mythical MSRP of the mining craze) required you to spend like 3x the price. For $500 the hardware was a steal. These days you can build something just as fast for under $600 of course.

I dont get why people need to compare a PC to a Console , thats to overlook how PCs have always killed Consoles for graphics and FPS since the 32 bit Consoles

 

[adamsapple]

It’s not any larger. It’s loading up a procedurally generated, largely barren planet landscape

They've already said the universe has a mix of hand crafted and procedural generated planets.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

They've already said the universe has a mix of hand crafted and procedural generated planets.

No doubt, but 99% of it is procedural. Most of the hand crafted stuff for the main campaign

There’s no time for them to hand craft 1000 planets

 

[Fake]

You haven't seen the recent PC ports have you? There will be a lot of older CPUs that can't do 60 here, there will also be some quite old ones that can actually outperform these console CPUs (in particular Intel has some really fine wine Xeons out there with a lot of cache that do very well in games).

Make no mistake between poor PC ports and high demand PC hardware games.

And is not like people don't play games at low settings.

 

[Gudji]

No doubt, but 99% of it is procedural. Most of the hand crafted stuff for the main campaign

There’s no time for them to hand craft 1000 planets

Most open world games have been using procedural tech for years now. Suddenly it becomes another excuse for the lack of 60 FPS mode, I just can't.

I give up, I'm gonna play it on PC anyways.

 

[Kataploom]

No it did not . It got rave reviews and wide praise for its gfx, even from DF much the same for Flight Sim

Yes it did, but also got involved the "30 fps is back!!" drama back then. Game is amazing, looks amazing, one of the best looking games I've played so far, but it released without performance mode around the same time Gotham Knight and something else I don't remember now, so the "drama" was "current gen games not being 60 fps anymore". I know because that drama and specially Requiem were the reasons why I opted for staying PC. Even with equally or slightly better GPU, I'd get better performance than consoles out of CPU alone.

 

[R6Rider]

These days you can build something just as fast for under $600 of cours

Go ahead and list a build that will be better than the XSX for PS5 for that price.

 

[clarky]

Jokes aside, it's going to s-s-s-s-s-suck on OLEDs. 40Hz would ease that OLED stutter.

I'll be on PC so no skin off my nose.

However after a fairly positive experience with Zelda on my C2 regarding the dreading 30fps judder, If they implement it well I don't think its as bad a people are making out. Like you say 30fps can be fucking horrible on an OLED, hopefully thats not the case.

Odds on they will do a performance mode at some point. A 40hz option like you say would be ideal. Be nice to crash out with a hangover and play this at a somewhat reasonable frame rate.

 

[Balducci30]

Horizon used procedural animation for the npcs? That’s crazy I thought for sure they were motion capture

 

[Gudji]

Horizon used procedural animation for the npcs? That’s crazy I thought for sure they were motion capture

NPC talk (not all NPCs of course some are motion captured think its for the most important quests), wild life placement, machine placement in some spots, climbing if I'm not mistaken (those yellow spots aloy can grab on in the walls) and more stuff.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Yes it did, but also got involved the "30 fps is back!!" drama back then. Game is amazing, looks amazing, one of the best looking games I've played so far, but it released without performance mode around the same time Gotham Knight and something else I don't remember now, so the "drama" was "current gen games not being 60 fps anymore". I know because that drama and specially Requiem were the reasons why I opted for staying PC. Even with equally or slightly better GPU, I'd get better performance than consoles out of CPU alone.

The game was held up as one of the 1st true current consoles games . I seem to remember some of the DF team praised the move to prioritise graphics

 

[Kataploom]

The game was held up as one of the 1st true current consoles games . I seem to remember some of the DF team praised the move to prioritise graphics

Yes, I know, not saying it didn't, I loved it and loved how it looked (way better than most realistic aimless western game graphics), but the fact it didn't run at 60 fps alongside Gotham Knight releasing without 60 fps mode too was polemic, it was a drama all across social media and youtube.

 

[Zathalus]

Go ahead and list a build that will be better than the XSX for PS5 for that price.

I didn't say it would be better, I said just as fast. It would be a Intel 12400f, 16GB, AMD 6650XT build. You can assemble one on pcpartpicker. Around $600-$630 for that.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

As per this criteria, even The Witcher 3 is not an RPG.

Not a "proper" RPG under my personal criteria. Still an RPG style game though.

 

[Negotiator101]

No doubt, but 99% of it is procedural. Most of the hand crafted stuff for the main campaign

There’s no time for them to hand craft 1000 planets

We have no idea what percentage is procedurally generated and hand crafted, but they did say the system they've created mixes the two together to create different experiences for everyone. Time will tell how it works out.

 

[Physiognomonics]

As expected they are in full damage control. 1296p + FSR + unstable 30fps + No RT at all :

"It looks great and we expect this to be the norm". This is not the norm, this is an anomaly when all others current gen games (bar one) run at least at 60fps without RT.

 

[Negotiator101]

As expected they are in full damage control. 1296p + FSR + unstable 30fps + No RT at all :

"It looks great and we expect this to be the norm". This is not the norm, this is an anomaly when all others current gen games (bar one) run at least at 60fps without RT.

 

[Boss Mog]

Look at these fucking apologists making excuses for MS. Then they have the nerve to say the FFXVI demo is better in 30fps, well not to me, I tried both modes and 30fps was near unplayable for me due to the heavy motion blur, I'll take a higher unstable framerate any day especially when you consider that in combat it's pretty much a locked 60, the dips occur in cutscenes and while exploring.

If your 4k game sometimes runs at 60fps then it should have no problem running 60fps in 1440p. But my guess is that the 4K is a lie, it most likely uses FSR to achieve that resolution and image quality would suffer too much at 1440p with FSR and that's why they didn't do it.

 

[MarkMe2525]

Most open world games have been using procedural tech for years now. Suddenly it becomes another excuse for the lack of 60 FPS mode, I just can't.

I give up, I'm gonna play it on PC anyways.

I don't think many understand the manner in which these "procedural" operations are used in these games. There are plenty of good reasons why a team decides to lock to 30fps on a closed box system, the procedural generation of the terrain and planet systems likely isn't one of those reasons.

I'll take a higher unstable framerate any day

Many wouldn't. I don't understand the level of agitation being shown due to something that is clearly a personal preference.

 

[01011001]

I didn't even pick up on the lack of Screen Space Reflecfions before they mentioned it.

but god damn, THANK YOU BETHESDA! that is honestly my tech highlight in the game so far!
dynamic cubemaps instead of those DOGSHIT, DISGUSTING, VILE, UGLY, HORRID, ATROCIOUS, DESPICABLE excuses for a graphics effect!
FUCK screen space reflecfions! FUCK THEM RIGHT TO HELL!

I should actually buy the game now instead of only playing it through gamepass tbh, just to pat them on the back for deciding TO NOT expose their players to that hellspawn that is SSR!


FUCK SCREEN SPACE REFLECTIONS! ALL HAIL BETHESDA!

 

[MidGenRefresh]

30FPS on consoles is a great choice. Don’t limit your vision by what the current day affordable hardware can offer. Your game will be better for ever and ever because of that.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

No doubt, but 99% of it is procedural. Most of the hand crafted stuff for the main campaign

There’s no time for them to hand craft 1000 planets

Tell me you’ve never played a Bethesda RPG without saying you’ve never played one.

Man no offense intended but your plethora of posts in this thread are just downright stupid. Maybe take a break until the game is out and we know whether your service is even needed.

 

[TheRedRiders]

I'm impressed with the geometric density especially on terrain and close up objects. It would be interesting to see if they're leveraging mesh shaders, which means another major next-gen feature is finally being put to good use.

 

[skit_data]

I am 100% certain that I wouldn't be able to tell. Played RT Performance mode in Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart and to me it looks like the same resolution as the other modes. I'm actually happy I can barely see the difference between any resolutions above 1080p, because it's probably gonna become more and more common in the coming years.