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[Filben]

I remember many years ago when some devs simply forgot to check the anisotropic filtering "on" checkbox and when it became known to media and communities (wasn't it here??) some devs put out a patch.

On PC, I'm using (mostly forced) 16x AF since Riva TNT2 times and back then I never noticed performance differences and I still don't today. Most of the time it comes for free or MAYBE with an impact of 1 fps when we talk about 100, so that's close to 1%. Now I was playing Outer Worlds, not Play Anywhere compatible, by the way, which is a shame in itself when some Game Pass titles support it and others don't and you still have to rely on lists... that's not convenient.

Anyway, I noticed horrible texture filtering.

Disclaimer: I just wanted to see how heavily chromatic aberration is implemented so I left it on. It's not to hurt your eyes. Sorry if I did.

This looks plain awful. I can live with less shadow details or slightly worse lighting on consoles because that's not something I noticed if it's not too bad or I don't see a side-by-side comparison. THIS however, looks like one flat texture without any details (and I'm not even crouching in those screenshots) and it's constantly visible and apparent.

Why is this still, TOW is from 2019 I think? a thing with console games? I've read this article explaining that AF is quite heavy on performance which is not what I observed on PC but what do I know. However, this dev explains that 4x AF is the "best bang for the buck". If you ask me and if that's 4x AF in TOW, then I'm sorry to say it, and excuse my French here, this shit looks fucking awful. I rather have 50 metres less viewing distance (because to my eye it doesn't matter if it's 500 or 450) and have better textures when they matter like this close.

I hope this is an exception with modern games (only played this game so far on the One X) and please tell me this isn't standard and, those of yall using a nextgen console, this is NOT an issue anymore in PS5/SeriesX versions.

Flatten me like those textures if old or singular problem in TOW only.

 

[mrcroket]

I can't agree more with you. I have been forcing Anisotropic filtering since ever on every single PC that I had (gamings pc, laptops or pcs with integrated gpu...).

And never notice even a little impact on the performance, so I simple don't understand why devs don't care about, when it impact A LOT on the image quality (more even that resolution, specially with modern Antialising methods).

I know that consoles are limited, but 16x anisotropic must be the bare minimung. Memory bandwitch ? my ass, tell this to my IGP vega 8 with DDR4....

 

[RoadHazard]

I think it's mostly a memory consideration? But yeah, I've also always experienced a very minimal impact on performance from turning it up to 8-16x, even on mid-range computers, so I dunno why we still have this issue in 2021.

 

[Stuart360]

The funny thing is i swear one of the bullet points about the OneX before launch was 16xAF as standard. I know that was true with some games but there were also games where it wasnt true.
Also those screen look like 2x or 4x AF, there is def some because on PC if you have AF off it looks way worse than that closer to the player.

 

[Andodalf]

The funny thing is i swear one of the bullet points about the OneX before launch was 16xAF as standard. I know that was true with some games but there were also games where it wasnt true.
Also those screen look like 2x or 4x AF, there is def some because on PC if you have AF off it looks way worse than that closer to the player.

One X forces 16x AF for Xbox one games and all other BC.

 

[Stuart360]

One X forces 16x AF for Xbox one games and all other BC.

Ah right, so read it wrong. That makes a bit of sense then.

 

[Perfo]

Regardless of a simple setting done right or wrong, this game is one of those which makes me wonder if devs even play their games. I think I became blind while playing the game, it's a mix of horrible art direction and use of colors, tech or whatever. Punching my eyes with needles was less painful than looking at this I swear.

 

[Ev1L AuRoN]

Anisotropic Filter seems almost free on PC, I can't wrap my mind around how is such an issue on consoles.

 

[DarkestHour]

It appears that way. Playing Forza 5 (on PC) and the textures look like shit until you're on top of them. Guess I'm going to have to force it on.

Actually, it appears I do have it forced already. Maybe the game just has bugs because a lot of the textures look like they're from PS1.

 

[Allandor]

Ah right, so read it wrong. That makes a bit of sense then.

Series x does the same for all "bc" titles. But if the game has an enhancement patch it is up to the developer.

Never had a problem with outer worlds except that it always crashed on my PC reproduceable at various spots. So I couldn't finish it (was a driver problem with my than vega56) so I replayed and finished it on my one x. The graphics were totally ok for me.

 

[GametimeUK]

What's the point in having 4K if the textures look all soupy? It makes no sense to me whatsoever. Someone on gaf explained to me why it's easy on PC and not on consoles, but I can't remember the jibberish included in the wall of text.

 

[Kilau]

I don't understand it either and the examples in the OP aren't even that horrible but still bad. I remember many PS4 missing AF compared to the xbone releases.

It appears that way. Playing Forza 5 (on PC) and the textures look like shit until you're on top of them. Guess I'm going to have to force it on.

Actually, it appears I do have it forced already. Maybe the game just has bugs because a lot of the textures look like they're from PS1.

I've been dealing with that too, on Extreme they seem fine but Ultra is a blob. Apparently it's a bug and High looks better than Ultra.

 

[rofif]

I don't really understand why there is no x16 global lock on ps5 and xsx.
I use x16 global setting in nvidia control panel since like 2004.

That said, your images don't look too bad. Maybe it's just low mipmap bias to help reduce shimmering

 

[Allandor]

What's the point in having 4K if the textures look all soupy? It makes no sense to me whatsoever. Someone on gaf explained to me why it's easy on PC and not on consoles, but I can't remember the jibberish included in the wall of text.

On PC you normally have more memory and bandwidth available so turning on AF makes almost no difference for the performance. On consoles you have a very specific envelope the developers normally use and there are almost no resources left. So AF would hurt performance. That is why Xbox one x or series x activates it on titles that have no enhancement patch.

It is up to the developer to decide how he/she best uses the resources. AF might bring more quality but than something else might get drilled down. On PC I normally don't activate AF any longer. It mostly over sharps games. Or you can better see texture-borders on older games. On consoles this is a bit different as most of the time (in bc titles) texture quality is already quite low.

 

[nightmare-slain]

this pisses me off. put it in. the effect is has on performance is negligible. if a game gets ported to something like Switch then yeah alright i get it leave it out if you need to but for Playstation/Xbox/PC it should be there no matter what.

i play mostly on PC and there are still games that set it to like 4 or 8x because it thinks "whoa hold on your PC might not be able to handle this shit". i turn that shit right up to 16x.

 

[TrueLegend]

Yep, one of the big reasons we PC users get to endlessly harp about you know the master race stuff. Maybe because PS5 and Series X have not become main console systems yet and there are few new releases so its hasn't dawned on the internal development processes that maybe they should give it to console audience. Maybe there is some sort of thinking that maybe it keeps the reconstruction blur in tune to visuals so that native resolution and reconstructed resolution don't become too obvious to users. It really isn't that costly compared to all the other stuff that are pushed high on the new consoles.

 

[b0uncyfr0]

I always thought this game looked worse than anticipated (for the release period). Looking at those screenshots i was mostly correct.

 

[RoboFu]

AF takes away bandwidth and memory. These games were meant to be played on ps4s and xbox ones with HDD streaming that contain limited both.
That has more to do with it than actual gpu performance.

but it really isn’t “ all games “

 

[kuncol02]

AF takes away bandwidth and memory. These games were meant to be played on ps4s and xbox ones with HDD streaming that contain limited both.
That has more to do with it than actual gpu performance.

but it really isn’t “ all games “

No it's not about bandwidth from storage but ram bandwidth which in consoles is shared between CPU and GPU. At least that's how it was explained to me on this site.

this pisses me off. put it in. the effect is has on performance is negligible

On PC.

 

[mrcroket]

No it's not about bandwidth from storage but ram bandwidth which in consoles is shared between CPU and GPU. At least that's how it was explained to me on this site.


On PC

No it's not about bandwidth from storage but ram bandwidth which in consoles is shared between CPU and GPU. At least that's how it was explained to me on this site.


On PC.

Even on laptops with IGP and shared memory (and also much lower bandwidth that console memory) you can use 16x filtering without barely drops 1 or 2 fps (I have a HP laptop with vega 8).

 

[RoboFu]

No it's not about bandwidth from storage but ram bandwidth which in consoles is shared between CPU and GPU. At least that's how it was explained to me on this site.


On PC.

Sort of, the bandwidth is shared with what’s coming in from streaming on these apus.

 

[Kuranghi]

Most people either don't have a 4K screen, don't sit close enough to a 4K screen based on its size and/or have untrained eyes for telling whether something is crap or not so devs don't care even if 16x AF takes only 0.5ms of the frametime budget, they'd rather have the 0.5ms back for something else.

I spoke to Alex from DF and he told me before PS5/XSX released that he didnt think it would have 16x AF because there are still bandwidth limitations that don't exist on PC + the aforementioned "better use" of that 0.5ms or whatever it is.