[0:02] Why hello there. A warm welcome of sorts
[0:05] this week to DF Direct Weekly. It is
[0:07] indeed warm. We're having a heat wave
[0:09] here in Europe. Uh I'm John Lynaman.
[0:11] Richard Lead Better is out currently. He
[0:13] is very busy working on a big video. So
[0:16] he asked me to take over. So of course I
[0:19] brought along my good friends here.
[0:20] First starting with Oliver McKenzie.
[0:23] >> Yes. John, it's been a little bit hot
[0:25] here as well, but not quite as
[0:26] sweltering as I think it is where you
[0:28] are.
[0:30] Indeed, we're approaching 35C. It's in
[0:32] the '9s if you're in Fahrenheit. And
[0:34] then, of course, we also brought along
[0:37] the mainstay, the Rock himself for the
[0:40] Digital Foundry Channel. It's Tom
[0:42] Morgan.
[0:43] >> Hello, John. How you doing? Yeah, 22
[0:46] degrees here in Brighton. Got the
[0:48] curtains closed. Uh, no air con, alas,
[0:51] but uh, we're going to push on through
[0:52] regardless.
[0:53] >> Wonderful. Yeah, we have a lot of stuff
[0:54] to talk about today. We've got the
[0:56] latest on GTA 6. We're going to micro
[0:59] analyze like 7 seconds or less of
[1:01] footage. We're going to talk about the
[1:02] new Unreal stuff. There is some good
[1:05] news coming out of that. There's Gears
[1:06] of War stuff and a lot more to talk
[1:08] about today. Uh but first, uh I did want
[1:11] to bring some attention to the site.
[1:13] We've got Will Jud who was on recently
[1:15] actually. It's lovely to have him back
[1:17] who's been doing a lot of work over on
[1:19] the site, including some cool new
[1:20] articles. He's got stuff about the Intel
[1:24] and Nvidia collaboration. uh the AMD
[1:27] crossover, the Intel AMD crossover point
[1:30] that's nine months away. There's the
[1:32] ultra expensive $3,000 PS5 SSD, which
[1:36] we'll talk about later cuz it is kind of
[1:38] uh crazy. And even a Sonic Adventure 2
[1:41] mechanical keyboard, which I have to
[1:43] admit looks pretty cool. So, all that
[1:45] and more over on the website. Check it
[1:47] out. And of course, check out our
[1:49] Patreon and all that stuff. But before
[1:51] we jump into the episode, first here's a
[1:54] word from our sponsor.
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[3:16] So, gentlemen, a lot of news this week,
[3:18] but before we dive into GTA 6, I do want
[3:20] to give a quick uh sort of I guess
[3:24] eulogy, if you will, for Mr. Bobby
[3:27] Prince, who passed away recently this
[3:30] week at the age of 81. He was the
[3:32] original composer of Doom, Doom Nukem
[3:34] 3D, so many other classic '90s games, an
[3:37] absolute legend. Uh, and I was really
[3:40] saddened by this news this morning. So,
[3:42] I did at least want to give a shout out
[3:44] to his great work, remind people of what
[3:47] he's done in the past, and yeah, truly
[3:50] an awesome influence in our game
[3:52] industry, a great composer on the
[3:54] Western side. So, we'll miss you, Bobby.
[3:58] But right, of course, when we started
[4:00] this uh show this week, we thought we
[4:02] were going to be jumping right into the
[4:03] Unreal Fest stuff, but it turns out
[4:05] Rockstar had a little surprise for us
[4:07] all. They announced that pre-orders are
[4:09] going live soon for GTA 6. They also did
[4:12] a box art reveal trailer, which is a
[4:15] very short little clip. Uh it's already
[4:18] amassed like 6 plus million views in
[4:21] less than 24 hours, which is uh rather
[4:24] impressive, I must say. But we got this
[4:26] nice little sort of like camera pan out
[4:28] of it. And people have been going nuts
[4:30] analyzing it. And I think from our
[4:33] perspective, the thing that really stood
[4:35] out is like we're trying to break down
[4:37] what they're doing for reflections. Um,
[4:40] man, this seems so silly because it's
[4:41] just it's almost nothing. But it it is
[4:44] it is kind of funny and light-hearted to
[4:46] be to looking at this so closely because
[4:48] based on what we've seen in the previous
[4:50] trailers, we do think that GTA 6 is
[4:52] using ray tracing uh for reflections,
[4:56] for lighting, all sorts of things. And
[4:59] this large open area here really helps
[5:02] us kind of understand what they're doing
[5:04] and also the drawbacks to it. Uh, and I
[5:07] think we've kind of determined that they
[5:08] are doing ray trace reflections with a
[5:11] bit of screen space tracing on top of
[5:14] it, which is relatively common. That's
[5:17] usually what you see in Unreal, for
[5:18] instance, where the BVH structure, the
[5:21] thing that they're tracing into actually
[5:23] is somewhat less detailed than what you
[5:26] actually see in the primary view. So,
[5:28] layering SSR sort of fills in those
[5:30] extra details. But, we noticed some
[5:32] weird anomalies with this one that kind
[5:34] of stood out. For instance, this Ferris
[5:36] suite on the distance and Oliver I think
[5:38] we were we we were talking about this on
[5:40] Slack yesterday and just kind of like I
[5:42] felt it's like wow we're talking about
[5:44] whether or not like why is this ferris
[5:47] wheel not showing in the reflection
[5:49] here. Uh and it it feels like we're
[5:51] really down the rabbit hole here but it
[5:53] is fun. So, I think it's possible that
[5:57] we're seeing something where they're
[5:58] simply not drawing every object that far
[6:00] out into the BBH and it's just like left
[6:03] out of that view. Um, but it's also not
[6:06] covered by screen space. Like, what do
[6:08] you think about this?
[6:10] >> Well, it's a very interesting and
[6:12] unusual combination of SSR and RT
[6:15] reflections. It seems to be in terms of
[6:17] this showing because we do know that the
[6:19] game is using RT reflections based on
[6:21] prior showings. We also know that it has
[6:23] SSR in some instances. Like for
[6:25] instance, in earlier trailers, we saw
[6:27] like there was a coaster on a table and
[6:29] the way that it was reflecting without
[6:31] showing the underside of that bowl or
[6:33] that coaster or whatever, it was
[6:34] indicating that there was some screen
[6:36] space information that was being reused
[6:38] in that reflection. Um, and in this
[6:40] showing, I think we're seeing some
[6:41] evidence of screen space reuse in terms
[6:43] of what we're seeing in the bottom left
[6:45] hand side of the screen where there's
[6:46] very clearly um information in on screen
[6:49] that's being disccluded. and it's
[6:51] revealing new uh reflection information
[6:54] there. Um, but the curious thing is that
[6:57] in other areas like in that ferris
[6:59] wheel, we would usually expect there to
[7:01] be some kind of reflection showing in
[7:03] the water there with SSR typically, not
[7:05] in every case, but typically, and it's
[7:07] not showing there. And then also in the
[7:10] uh kind of towards the bottom right edge
[7:12] of that uh image, we're also seeing an
[7:15] interesting area where there's uh a
[7:17] bridge that's being lit quite brightly
[7:20] and it's not showing occlusion um
[7:23] between the uh bridge and the light
[7:25] sources and there's also no evidence of
[7:27] screen space information reuse there in
[7:30] terms of the appearance of occlusion and
[7:32] discclusion along that edge. So I I I
[7:36] don't know quite what to make of this.
[7:37] And this is the kind of funny issue
[7:39] where like if we literally had
[7:43] 5 seconds with the camera here, we could
[7:46] probably work out roughly what's going
[7:48] on.
[7:48] >> Oh yeah.
[7:49] >> But in the in the universe of looking
[7:50] through this like very limited uh
[7:53] panning shot without much movement at
[7:55] all in the camera, um I'm I'm a little
[7:57] bit less certain, but I think there's
[7:59] probably some RT reflection component
[8:02] here. Prior GTA games have used I think
[8:05] uh reflection maps in GTA 5 I believe
[8:09] they were using um if I'm not mistaken.
[8:12] Uh but here I suspect based on the much
[8:16] higher complexity of the world and based
[8:17] on the appearance of RTM prior showings
[8:19] and based on the fact that we are seeing
[8:21] like some perspective correct reflection
[8:24] detail when screen space information
[8:26] isn't available along that left edge and
[8:28] a couple other artifacts. I think what
[8:30] we're seeing is SSR layered on top of
[8:32] RT, but behaving in a slightly unusual
[8:34] way that we wouldn't necessarily expect,
[8:36] but this is all basically as expected. I
[8:39] would stress like this is all pretty
[8:41] normal stuff for a game this generation.
[8:43] And it makes complete sense to use a
[8:46] combination of SSR for small details for
[8:49] details that might be excluded from PVH,
[8:51] things like this. Um, in combination
[8:52] with RT, that's like an industry
[8:54] standard at this point. This is all
[8:56] pretty expected stuff. Although the game
[8:58] obviously looks quite extraordinary, I
[8:59] would say.
[9:01] >> Yeah. And beyond the reflection stuff, I
[9:03] also really like how so this scene has a
[9:06] lot of lights in it. Right. Right.
[9:08] >> As you would expect from a longdistance
[9:10] view, but the the distance at which
[9:12] these lights remain visible is very
[9:14] impressive, I think, where it really
[9:16] looks like each little point light is
[9:18] represented well within the scene, which
[9:20] is nice to see. You can't always expect
[9:22] that. I also noticed they've got that
[9:25] they seem to be using a technique
[9:27] similar to something like Marvel
[9:28] Spider-Man and a few others where it's
[9:31] like a parallax trick on the building
[9:33] surfaces to give the impression of like
[9:35] 3D interiors.
[9:37] >> Um, but all this is the kind of stuff we
[9:39] just glean from looking at this very
[9:41] tiny clip. And I think, you know, once
[9:43] you get more time with it, if you
[9:45] actually just move the camera at all,
[9:46] like you said, you would instantly
[9:48] understand like, oh, okay, this is what
[9:49] they're doing. But it is it is fun to
[9:52] speculate and look at this uh and kind
[9:54] of see how far we've come along that. I
[9:57] mean Tom, you were breaking this down as
[9:59] well. What are your thoughts on what
[10:01] we're seeing here? Anything particular
[10:03] stand out to you?
[10:05] >> Uh I mean it's it's for sure miss mixing
[10:08] that SSR and uh rate tracing. I mean in
[10:10] a similar way we've seen to uh a lot of
[10:13] titles this generation. Lumen stuff like
[10:16] comes to mind. Anything using lumen?
[10:19] Yeah, it's a yeah, all the oddities
[10:22] associated with those techniques are
[10:24] there. As well as Oliver's already
[10:25] mentioned, there's a lacking lack of uh
[10:28] shading to some reflected elements. Uh
[10:31] you know, on the left side, I guess uh
[10:34] there's some structures near the bay
[10:36] there, and it's just missing any sort of
[10:39] any of the shading on the actual part
[10:42] above water in the reflection.
[10:45] And uh obviously you know left side of
[10:46] the image there's SSR artifacts as well.
[10:48] So those two things suggest you know a a
[10:51] BVH uh for the the ray tracing and uh
[10:55] the classic occlusion artifacts with
[10:57] SSR. Um
[10:59] >> yeah I'm sure you know it's funny having
[11:01] uh this feed because it's accessible on
[11:04] the this video we're talking about
[11:06] wasn't exactly in the trailer itself
[11:08] with the
[11:09] >> cover up. It was on the website that
[11:13] revealed the video and it's just a new
[11:15] component embedded within the website as
[11:17] you scroll up and down. It's a very
[11:19] slick website. Go to GTA 6 and it's like
[11:22] go to the high quality setting if you
[11:24] can select that by going to the menus
[11:27] and suddenly you get this graphic. You
[11:29] can scroll up and down and this massive
[11:31] view quality is reasonable and you can
[11:33] kind of inspect for yourselves, you
[11:35] know, go get the magnifying glass out
[11:38] and see what you reckon. But yeah, it
[11:40] for to my eyes SSR and rate tracing
[11:42] makes the most sense.
[11:44] >> Indeed. Indeed. But I guess there's not
[11:47] much more to say other than that. But it
[11:48] is it is kind of fun to look closely at
[11:51] this stuff because I mean when you see
[11:53] those numbers and the amount of views
[11:55] this thing is getting just it is really
[11:57] crazy. There is no bigger game in the
[12:00] world I would say right now that's
[12:02] upcoming.
[12:03] >> And it's fun to look at something where
[12:05] money is simply no object here. like
[12:08] they're able to do whatever they need to
[12:10] do to make this game uh because of this.
[12:13] So, we'll definitely be keeping an eye
[12:16] out and I'm excited just to see what
[12:17] their tech can offer because it feels
[12:20] like they've kind of quietly been
[12:21] building stuff in the background doing
[12:23] their own thing and that's always fun to
[12:25] see. So, obviously we will be looking at
[12:29] that when it releases hopefully later
[12:31] this year.
[12:33] But let's move on to the next topic. All
[12:36] right, this week it was Unreal Fest and
[12:38] it was unreal. There was a lot of stuff
[12:40] coming out of here, uh, including a lot
[12:42] of news from Epic itself, um, both about
[12:46] Unreal Engine 5 and the upcoming Unreal
[12:49] Engine 6. We also got some new tech demo
[12:51] stuff, including a nice look at Gears of
[12:53] War Eday, uh, which is really cool. But
[12:57] let's start with Unreal Engine 5.8
[13:00] because this actually does have some
[13:02] nicities in it. And it kind of we're
[13:04] kind of reaching the point where uh a
[13:06] lot of things that were still in that
[13:08] early state or that pre-release state
[13:11] have now reached the official production
[13:13] ready status. Things like megalytes for
[13:16] instance are finally like officially
[13:18] production ready, ready to be used. Uh
[13:20] we're going to start seeing them in
[13:22] games. But the big news, I guess, for
[13:25] the game console world is this thing
[13:27] they called Lumen Light, which is a
[13:30] higher performance, lower requirement
[13:32] version of Lumen designed to provide
[13:34] results similar to the full fat Lumen,
[13:38] uh, but with a reduced CPU cost and
[13:41] reduced over overhead in a way that
[13:43] makes it feasible for platforms such as
[13:45] Switch 2 where it's largely not existed,
[13:48] Oliver. Right. Like, and this is this is
[13:50] something where it feels like it could
[13:52] genuinely make a big difference for
[13:54] upcoming multiplatform releases because
[13:56] they stress that this isn't something
[13:58] you need to like customize specifically
[14:02] for each platform. It's a seamless sort
[14:05] of like uh option. So, you essentially
[14:08] light your world one way and that is
[14:10] going to be work workable with Lumen
[14:12] Light as well
[14:14] >> as the as the larger more full fat
[14:16] experience right?
[14:18] >> Yeah. Yeah, I believe lumen light
[14:20] interesting technology. I think it's
[14:22] just a different name largely for what
[14:24] we saw a couple of weeks ago announced
[14:26] lung 5.8 which was the medium lumen
[14:29] setting. This seems to be something that
[14:30] is basically equivalent to that in so
[14:32] far as basically we're seeing a
[14:34] primarily probe based approach to lumen
[14:37] that still gives you the kind of
[14:39] lighting detail that you'd expect in
[14:41] broad strokes from Lumen but at a much
[14:43] lower performance penalty. Indeed,
[14:45] they're not only talking about Switch 2,
[14:47] they're talking about 60 FPS on Switch
[14:49] 2. So, that's really quite striking. Uh,
[14:53] very, very interesting here. Um, yeah,
[14:56] it it's a probased technique. I think it
[14:58] will mirror uh no pun intended the look
[15:02] of uh what we've seen from a lot of
[15:04] lumen titles on series to a large degree
[15:07] because for GI they do depend on this
[15:10] probebased
[15:12] uh lumen or radiance cache oriented
[15:14] lumen radiance probe oriented lumen but
[15:17] for reflections they're relying
[15:18] primarily on SSR with a rough specular
[15:21] fallback from the GI of course I'm sure
[15:23] you could switch you could ship a more
[15:26] involved version of this technique
[15:27] techique on switch 2, but the guidance
[15:29] from Epic is to basically use this probe
[15:32] based GI and then use SSR plus this
[15:35] rough specular fallback from the GI
[15:37] which is something we've seen in a lot
[15:39] of Switch uh seriess S titles including
[15:40] like Robocop very early on. I remember
[15:43] that being a prominently used this
[15:44] technique and we've seen many other
[15:46] titles I believe also expedition 33 is
[15:48] another prominent example of this on
[15:50] series.
[15:51] >> Um and yeah, the target here is up to 60
[15:53] fps on switch 2 and low-end handhelds
[15:55] things like that. So very very cool.
[15:58] There are also some other interesting
[15:59] announcements with UE5. Um the biggest
[16:02] announcement which I think John
[16:04] referenced I mean at least in terms of
[16:05] my own interests is that Megalytes is
[16:07] production ready and I think we were
[16:09] talking about it they demoed it a couple
[16:11] of years ago or about a year ago I think
[16:13] on
[16:15] >> Yeah. on PS5 running at I think 1080p at
[16:18] 30 fps and now they're showing it off in
[16:22] commercial software that's going to be
[16:24] shipping this year at a much better
[16:26] level of image quality I would argue
[16:27] although you know perhaps less intensive
[16:29] uh content in terms of its lighting at
[16:31] 60 fps in like Gears of War Eday which
[16:34] we'll talk about shortly which I think
[16:35] is
[16:35] >> and Halo which
[16:37] >> Halo yeah which are like super
[16:39] good-looking titles and relatively
[16:41] performant ones as well um perhaps you
[16:44] know in in the case of Halo. There's
[16:45] some image quality issues here and
[16:46] there, but like very impressive titles.
[16:48] Um, and yeah, I'm super looking forward
[16:51] to that. That just seems so cool. I
[16:53] can't believe this is shipping this
[16:54] generation at high performance. I
[16:56] remember Alex talking about it and he
[16:57] was like, "This is probably going to be
[16:58] next generation technology back in the
[17:00] day." Um, and it probably largely is
[17:02] designed to work really well next
[17:04] generation consoles. But the fact that
[17:06] it's running well on like a Series X,
[17:08] that's awesome. I think that's totally
[17:10] rad. And for those that aren't aware of
[17:13] it, then I guess the main benefit of
[17:15] this is that it allows artists to
[17:16] essentially place as many lights as they
[17:18] want in a scene. It removes the
[17:20] constraints of a performance bottleneck
[17:23] around each light source. And obviously
[17:25] things like deferred rendering and all
[17:27] that were already designed to reduce the
[17:28] light cost, but here like they can put
[17:31] shadow casting lights everywhere. And
[17:34] we're already seeing that. I mean,
[17:35] that's that's one of the things in the
[17:37] Gears of War EDay demo that they show
[17:39] off is just like every single light in
[17:42] that scene, and there's a lot of them uh
[17:44] produces lights and shadows. I think the
[17:47] part from that demo again that I really
[17:49] liked was the uh when I walked through
[17:50] the freezer section, and every single
[17:53] like light bulb inside the freezer is a
[17:56] light, which means that you actually get
[17:58] the correct glow, right? like when you
[18:00] walk into that area, it's there's an
[18:02] ambient light level increase because of
[18:04] the use of all these lights. And I think
[18:06] that's super super cool. Uh they also
[18:09] talked about uh that the shader compiler
[18:11] is continuously being improved. Uh they
[18:15] say it's they've already reduced shader
[18:19] count in Fortnite by 68%.
[18:23] And in addition, there's also pro
[18:25] improvements to the pipeline state
[18:27] objects. So, the PSOS, so there's
[18:29] improved caching, improved fallback, and
[18:32] it's just faster all around. Like the
[18:34] idea here, obviously, I think they
[18:36] referenced the Hitchhunter, uh, their
[18:38] own internal hitchhunter at Epic, who,
[18:40] uh, we showed up in one of his videos at
[18:42] one point. That was quite funny, but
[18:44] they really are putting a lot of effort
[18:46] into trying to wrangle this problem,
[18:49] right? and just find ways to reduce the
[18:52] total number of shaders, the time it
[18:54] takes to compile them, and all the other
[18:56] issues that are encountered with like
[18:58] PSOS as well that's leading to these
[19:00] stutters and long wait times during
[19:01] development. So, that's great. Uh,
[19:04] they're also talking about advanced
[19:05] shader delivery, which is a DX12 feature
[19:08] that's being ramped up. There's, oh,
[19:10] have you seen this, Tom? Mesh terrain.
[19:13] So, this is something really interesting
[19:15] because so I've made a lot of like stuff
[19:18] in Unreal myself now that I and one of
[19:21] the big limitations I found is like when
[19:23] you want to do like a big map, you're
[19:25] just using like height maps, right? And
[19:27] then you're placing
[19:28] >> individual meshes on top of that, but
[19:30] the height map itself, it's obviously
[19:32] limited in what you can do since it's a
[19:33] height field. You're kind of only
[19:35] limited to things sort of facing
[19:37] outward. So you can't like generate and
[19:39] carve terrain that like overlaps on
[19:42] itself and like has crevices and and all
[19:44] that kind of stuff. And that's where you
[19:46] would normally just have to like sort of
[19:48] kit bash things on top of it. But now
[19:51] they seem to be doing a full
[19:53] >> meshbased terrain system here. And I'll
[19:56] be curious to see how it works that
[19:57] allows you to manipulate the terrain in
[19:59] much more detail uh to create overhangs
[20:02] and all that. And they're saying it uses
[20:04] a smaller memory footprint, making it
[20:07] even lighter weight. So, I don't know.
[20:10] Um Tom, as somebody that covers a lot of
[20:13] Bethesda games, not that are Unreal, uh
[20:16] you you've got a lot of experience
[20:18] walking around height maps.
[20:20] >> Yeah, I guess subliminally where there's
[20:22] been a lot of that. Um but generally
[20:25] like the the the the back end of the
[20:27] presentation seems to be very much
[20:28] focused on were the benefits for people
[20:31] using tools and these uh you know editor
[20:35] level uh features that will really pay
[20:38] dividends for just the workflow of
[20:41] >> and we we bemoone the uh how widespread
[20:44] Unreal Engine 5 is but we've also got to
[20:47] accept that for a lot of indie
[20:49] developers AA developers it's great to
[20:51] have all these tools just gifted to you
[20:54] right out of the gate. And they've got
[20:57] another one in in here which they
[20:58] touched on which relates to performance
[21:00] capture without markers
[21:03] >> which is very cool and um just needs you
[21:06] know I I I'm wondering how uh accurate
[21:10] this is. But they seem pretty confident
[21:12] that you can get full body motion
[21:13] capture and for the um Unreal Engine
[21:17] editor to interpret bits that are
[21:19] malleable. So you can tweak it later on
[21:22] and adjust for animation.
[21:24] >> So it looks very um yeah useful for a
[21:28] developer to just jump in there if they
[21:30] don't have the technology to get the
[21:32] full marker set up and go to a you know
[21:35] proper u room to capture all this stuff.
[21:38] >> Yeah. So, I agree. That's one that's
[21:40] actually one of the most exciting things
[21:42] because that also opens this up to
[21:44] smaller creators now, right? Uh they
[21:46] were demonstrating that you can do this
[21:48] from video. So, you just take a video
[21:50] feed and pipe this through and it's able
[21:51] to essentially pull off the the
[21:54] performance capture onto a model, which
[21:56] is, you know, it could could be big news
[21:58] for VTubers.
[22:01] No, but like
[22:02] >> this is an interesting way to sort of
[22:04] like get that sort of realistic
[22:05] animation but without any of those
[22:07] expensive setups. Just film it possibly
[22:09] even it's like a phone camera. And they
[22:11] actually showed examples of taking old
[22:13] movie footage, dropping it in there, and
[22:16] then mapping the movements from that
[22:17] footage directly into a character model.
[22:19] So, I'll we'll be watching that. Uh, and
[22:23] I guess the last thing that I liked
[22:24] visually, it's not really relevant to
[22:26] games, is they showed that their offline
[22:29] depth of field render. And I do actually
[22:31] use the offline rendering in Unreal.
[22:33] That's what I use the most when doing
[22:35] video stuff sometimes. It's like
[22:37] rendering something out from Unreal's
[22:39] like sort of sequence editor. Like you
[22:41] make a nice looking scene, some models
[22:43] in the scene, but then when you render
[22:45] it out, you can take advantage of the
[22:47] offline uh super slow by the way
[22:50] rendering uh to get really fancy
[22:52] effects. But now they're handling depth
[22:53] of field like a real camera now and how
[22:56] it like works with the scene, which
[22:58] should look really really cool. Uh, and
[23:00] it does look cool in the examples that
[23:01] they showed. So, lots of nice stuff
[23:04] happening there. Um, but obviously
[23:07] Oliver, the big thing to come out of
[23:09] that as far as games are concerned is uh
[23:12] Kate Rener, the tech director at the
[23:14] Coalition, who she is extremely smart,
[23:17] legendary person, was also the tech
[23:19] director on uh the SSX games by the way.
[23:23] So, one of my favorite classic series
[23:25] >> and it's been around for a long time
[23:28] doing this stuff
[23:29] >> and The Coalition definitely one of the
[23:31] best studios in the world when it comes
[23:33] to utilizing Unreal. And yeah, based on
[23:35] that recent demo, the results they're
[23:37] showing so far are excellent. But this
[23:40] new demo essentially showed the game
[23:41] running at 60 FPS on Xbox Series X. It
[23:44] focused on that sort of like supermarket
[23:46] location that was in the demo. And
[23:48] there's a couple things that really
[23:50] caught my eye here. First of all, I
[23:51] already mentioned there's the mega
[23:53] lights, and they definitely highlighted
[23:55] that where every single light in that
[23:56] supermarket, and there's a ton, uh, is
[23:59] projecting light, but they also went big
[24:02] on uh the destructive element where now,
[24:07] so this was a complaint people had with
[24:09] Gears 5 and that it was a very static
[24:10] looking game. And when you're doing that
[24:12] really finely baked lighting, this is
[24:14] one of the things that can be limiting
[24:16] in that if you move too much in a scene,
[24:19] when using static lighting, it can look
[24:22] a little bit awkward, especially when
[24:23] it's not factored in well into the bake
[24:25] cuz you have to do like a dynamic
[24:27] solution with the baked lighting.
[24:29] >> Here, it's all unified. But they showed
[24:31] things like granular tile breakage where
[24:34] Marcus sort of shoots the wall and you
[24:36] see all the little individual tiles
[24:38] crack and break off. I won't say it's
[24:40] necessarily a brand new thing. We've
[24:42] seen stuff like this, but it seems like
[24:44] the level of detail around it is
[24:47] improved. Uh they also fired bullets
[24:50] into the freezer cage, which uh so it
[24:55] shows the glass shattering and they say
[24:57] they're like they're actually ray
[24:58] tracing the individual glass fragments
[25:01] as it falls down into the scene. The
[25:03] only thing I will say that's a little
[25:04] bit weird about that is that there's
[25:06] glass on both sides of those uh freezer
[25:08] cases and yet the bullet only penetrates
[25:11] the first the first pane of glass. It
[25:14] doesn't go through to the second pane.
[25:16] >> A little bit weird. I don't know. Maybe
[25:18] they'll fix that. Um but it it the
[25:20] actual effect of the primary glass that
[25:23] breaks is very very cool. So um but
[25:26] yeah, I mean what what else what else
[25:28] caught your eye here, Oliver?
[25:30] Oh, I was just super impressed with the
[25:33] Megalytes presentation. I was super
[25:34] impressed. Like there's one shot where
[25:37] they're showing like this wall of CRTs
[25:40] >> that are casting like these super soft
[25:42] shadows, like these beautiful area
[25:44] lights that are nice diffused, very
[25:47] good-looking, colored in interesting
[25:49] ways. Um, and they're casting very soft
[25:52] shadows off of adjacent objects. And I
[25:54] think that just looks awesome. There's
[25:55] also a shot where they show off the fact
[25:57] that when you shoot your gun, you get
[26:00] these beautiful muzzle flash shadows.
[26:02] This light and this muzzle flash that
[26:04] we've not seen the likes of since
[26:05] Killzone 2, right? Very, very cool
[26:08] technique there.
[26:10] >> We actually uh what that reminds me,
[26:12] they were actually in a HalfLife Alex in
[26:14] VR,
[26:15] >> which is super immersive, right? You
[26:17] actually got the full muzzle flashes
[26:18] from every shot. But you're right, it's
[26:20] not a super common thing, unfortunately.
[26:22] >> Not common at all. Not common at all.
[26:24] and they are using a hardware lumen. Um,
[26:26] but it's interesting. There are some
[26:28] moments where like on a road for
[26:32] instance, we're clearly seeing when the
[26:34] camera is moving and when the edge of
[26:36] that camera would normally show some
[26:38] kind of occlusion issue. We're not
[26:39] really seeing that. And I think that's
[26:41] probably because either the screen space
[26:43] information is not being used in that
[26:44] instance or because there's a much
[26:46] closer fidelity between the screen
[26:48] information that's in screen space and
[26:49] the information that's actually in the
[26:51] BBH. So, I think that's a very positive
[26:53] sign. But in other instances, I think on
[26:56] transparencies during game play on like
[26:59] window panes and things like that, I
[27:01] think we're more obviously seeing
[27:04] something that looks to me like it's
[27:06] primarily um relying on set screen space
[27:08] information still. So, we're seeing a
[27:10] little bit like for instance in that
[27:12] freezer cage section when Marcus is
[27:14] walking through there, we're seeing kind
[27:16] of like not like kind of correctish
[27:19] looking but clearly showing some obvious
[27:21] occlusion issues, reflections in that
[27:23] instance. So, um I do wonder if maybe
[27:26] that's a little more selectively applied
[27:28] there. Um this also is a 60 fps trailer
[27:31] and it does seem to be running at 60 fps
[27:33] largely. some dips in the mix and then
[27:35] that um the cinematic sequence towards
[27:37] the end is running at kind of 30 fps
[27:41] with some dips roughly in that vicinity.
[27:44] So it's not 100% like lock 60 perfect
[27:47] and also there like some minor image
[27:49] quality faults that you could have but
[27:50] by and large like this is an extremely
[27:52] impressive demo to be running at 60 fps
[27:54] on a console. Good enough image quality,
[27:58] megalytes, super interesting stuff. Um,
[28:01] but yeah, this is just an awesome
[28:03] trailer and I can't wait to see the
[28:04] final game.
[28:06] >> Yeah, and uh I agree actually. Uh, when
[28:08] you were talking about the CRTs, it did
[28:10] occur to me. I think it's funny how the
[28:12] CRTs in this world are essentially like
[28:14] 70s era designs, like the big wood grain
[28:17] boxes with the giant knobs on the side.
[28:19] Like that is very 70s. I wonder how they
[28:23] went with that. It's very, very
[28:24] interesting choice they made
[28:25] aesthetically. Uh, but you mentioned at
[28:29] the end there that that final cut scene.
[28:31] And Tom, this is kind of an interesting
[28:32] topic I've been thinking about lately is
[28:34] cutscenes and frame rates. I think in
[28:38] some ways I actually like how cut scenes
[28:41] look at 30 fps with good motion blur. I
[28:44] know. I know. I it it sounds insane and
[28:46] I don't always love it,
[28:48] >> but I was playing a game recently and
[28:50] we'll have a video up for that next week
[28:52] where I realized like man like with the
[28:54] motion blur shutter speed dialed in
[28:56] >> and just the way everything moves like
[28:57] it just feels really good at 30 and
[29:00] since you're not playing the game there,
[29:02] I don't think it's a big problem. But I
[29:05] kind of want to What do you think about
[29:06] that? like as some we've been covering
[29:08] this stuff for so long and it kind of
[29:10] comes and goes, but what do you think?
[29:14] >> Uh 30 fps for cut scenes, 60 for
[29:17] gameplay. That switch
[29:19] >> Yeah, it's an odd one. It's uh it can be
[29:23] jarring, I suppose, is the main
[29:24] criticism you might have,
[29:26] >> right? No one likes that constant
[29:28] switch, but there's something about it,
[29:31] right? The the reason we've stuck to 24
[29:33] fps in film for so long, the reason we
[29:36] almost reject the move to 48 for some
[29:40] films, I think Avatar did that. The
[29:41] Hobbit did it. Um, but yeah, in the
[29:44] world of film, we almost reject it
[29:46] because of the soap opera effect. Uh,
[29:48] that feeling it's too smooth and our
[29:50] brain, we always prefer to have uh, you
[29:53] know, that that slower update so our
[29:56] brain can fill in the gaps. And that
[29:58] might apply to games as well. Cut
[30:00] scenes. Um, you know, for a more
[30:03] cinematic effect to really hammer home
[30:04] that this is a big moment. That is a
[30:07] cool psychological trick to use as well
[30:09] as a technical limitation. Say if they
[30:10] want to add more to a cutscene in terms
[30:13] of the render budget, you've got, you
[30:15] know, they can whack up the the settings
[30:17] to a higher degree than was otherwise
[30:20] possible. And I love that actually in um
[30:23] in certain games in actual I know this
[30:26] is sacrilege coming from Digital
[30:27] Foundry, but in some games growing up
[30:30] with um like PS2, Dreamcast, you know, a
[30:34] lot of them had poor sub 30 frame rates
[30:36] and I almost loved cherished it for that
[30:39] because I knew that if it was pushing
[30:40] the frame rate that hard, I must be some
[30:43] seeing something that's completely like
[30:45] I've never seen before like in terms of
[30:47] the tech like you know, Killzone 2. uh
[30:50] was one of the big ones. Like I knew
[30:52] that the lighting in that was just
[30:53] incredible and going to some multiplayer
[30:56] maps cuz I played the online mode quite
[30:59] a bit. I knew I was seeing something
[31:01] that I shouldn't be seeing and that the
[31:03] console just couldn't handle. That is
[31:05] cool. Uh but yeah, to go back to Gears
[31:07] of War, um it's a great demo. Uh, I mean
[31:10] it's uh it goes back to the tradition I
[31:14] think Epic have always had of using
[31:16] Gears of War to showcase their latest
[31:18] tech. And one of the happiest, most
[31:20] gratifying parts of that was them saying
[31:21] they've thrown away all the well they've
[31:24] started from scratch in terms of
[31:25] building this game up to represent the
[31:28] latest uh technology that um Unreal
[31:30] Engine 5.8 or 6 5.8 I believe has. So
[31:36] yeah, I'm really glad that we're seeing
[31:38] mega lights with that fixed ceiling uh
[31:40] in terms of performance cost on the GPU.
[31:42] We're seeing the uh order independent
[31:45] transparencies on the the glass there
[31:47] going through from one pane to the next
[31:50] even without the bullet physics
[31:51] penetrating both. They might fix it. Uh
[31:54] yeah, just it's every aspect of this was
[31:57] screaming. This is our big showcase.
[32:00] Fortnite is the the the clearly the
[32:03] headline act for Epic these days, but we
[32:05] haven't forgotten Gears of War and what
[32:07] it means in terms of our legacy uh and
[32:10] in terms of showing what this technology
[32:11] is capable of. So, yeah, great showcase.
[32:14] And now I I really can't wait to play
[32:16] it. Like it feels like a proper uh you
[32:19] know um continuation of that of that
[32:22] series. So yeah, very excited.
[32:24] >> All right, so that's Gears of War Eday.
[32:28] There's e-holes. That's all you need to
[32:29] know. Looks good. But uh we got one more
[32:34] topic to mention on Unreal and then
[32:36] we're moving on. So Epic also talked
[32:39] about Unreal Engine 6. And I don't want
[32:41] to get too in-depth here because there's
[32:43] still a lot we don't know and it's still
[32:45] a long ways off, but it did open an
[32:47] interesting can of worms. And I've been
[32:49] sort of monitoring uh chatter on this
[32:52] and spoke to some developers as well
[32:54] kind of off the record about this kind
[32:56] of stuff. And essentially one of the
[32:58] changes they're making uh in favor of
[33:01] this new language they call verse is
[33:03] there they want to eventually phase out
[33:05] blueprints which is a node graph system
[33:09] uh visual scripting that they Epic
[33:11] itself sort of pioneered. Uh visual
[33:14] scripting and node graphs have become
[33:16] very common in many other engines as
[33:18] well. Uh for instance decim relies
[33:21] heavily on it. the Horizon games, all
[33:23] the questing and logic and stuff, a lot
[33:25] of that stuff did use a node graph
[33:28] system as well. I don't know what
[33:30] they're currently doing, but that's what
[33:31] they did use to make that. Um, and the
[33:35] feeling I've got is that there's like an
[33:37] interesting war between people on this.
[33:40] People get very upset very quickly.
[33:43] You've got on one hand uh the old heads,
[33:46] and I absolutely get this that they
[33:49] don't want to use a node graph system.
[33:51] don't like this especially when the
[33:53] project becomes large is and I think at
[33:55] AAA scale this becomes a huge problem
[33:57] because the messiness of it uh
[33:59] essentially you've got just like a web
[34:01] of like little boxes and lines
[34:03] everywhere linking all these different
[34:05] variables together to create the results
[34:07] and that can indeed be very difficult to
[34:09] parse. Uh, I think it can be useful and
[34:12] good, but it's also something that's
[34:14] difficult to scale at a large size. And
[34:18] a lot so a lot of developers are like,
[34:20] "Yeah, I don't like them. I never used
[34:21] them. I'm glad that they're gone." Um,
[34:24] but there's actually a lot of studios
[34:26] and smaller teams as well that rely
[34:28] heavily on this stuff uh, and have built
[34:31] a lot of their games around it. And
[34:33] yeah, it is a lot of indie stuff and
[34:36] maybe double A stuff like obviously the
[34:39] one of the more famous examples is
[34:41] Expedition 33 which leaned super heavily
[34:43] on this and those developers are pretty
[34:47] upset by this stuff the the removal of
[34:50] this because they've spent years sort of
[34:52] learning it under the feeling that this
[34:54] is one of the big features Epic was
[34:56] supporting and now they just essentially
[34:57] want to pull the rug out and say no this
[35:00] is going to be depreciated
[35:02] And I, you know, tech needs to move on.
[35:06] But the thing is is like if they
[35:09] introduced blueprints and said, "Oh, you
[35:12] can't write, you know, CC code anymore.
[35:14] You have to use this." There would be a
[35:16] gigantic uproar for good reason. So this
[35:18] is essentially like taking away options
[35:20] whether you use it or not. Some people
[35:22] did. And those people are going to be
[35:24] hit by this. And as an amateur myself on
[35:28] that, I liked using the node graphs.
[35:31] I've used them a lot actually,
[35:32] especially for like building materials
[35:35] and like shaders and stuff in Unreal.
[35:38] It's a really fun thing that you can do
[35:40] and it's great if you're just like like
[35:43] I'm not making games in Unreal. Uh but I
[35:46] do like to make things diaramas and and
[35:49] other stuff that's useful and that's a
[35:52] real nice way to do it. Um so I don't
[35:56] know what I want not important. And
[35:57] that's not what I'm not the customer for
[35:59] Epic, but I do feel a lot of these
[36:02] smaller developers uh are being left out
[36:04] on this. And there is some speculation
[36:06] that this is being done in favor of
[36:09] pushing towards AI and vibe coding,
[36:12] which again, I'm going to I don't want
[36:14] to get into that here cuz it's that
[36:16] opens a whole can of worms. But I am
[36:17] curious if you guys uh kept up with any
[36:21] of this dialogue or what are your
[36:22] thoughts on this? I don't know, Oliver.
[36:26] Yeah, I mean, um, it does seem like they
[36:30] are removing blueprints. I mean, their
[36:31] language is kind of ky on this. They're
[36:33] basically saying, "Well, it's going to
[36:34] be deprecated and we're not going to be
[36:36] shipping new features at some point and
[36:38] then we're going to be moving away from
[36:40] it and removing it entirely at some
[36:42] point." That's basically what they've
[36:43] said. Um, this is like a pretty far out
[36:47] change in terms of like if we're talking
[36:48] about deprecation, no new features as of
[36:51] 6.0. 6.0 know is some you know I think
[36:55] we're talking about late 2027 for early
[36:57] access and sometime thereafter for a
[36:59] full release quite a bit uh thereafter
[37:01] for a full release the interesting thing
[37:04] about this to me is that uh they're not
[37:06] actually shipping any UE5 updates
[37:09] apparently not not major UE5 updates at
[37:11] least after 5.8 this is the end of the
[37:14] road as far as we're aware until 6.0
[37:17] until the early access release of 6.0 I
[37:19] know which is quite some time away.
[37:20] That's a pretty long time between UE5
[37:23] version updates. Um but yeah, in terms
[37:25] of the removal of blueprints, I mean
[37:27] there, you know, I'm sure there are a
[37:28] lot of elements here. I think that
[37:30] blueprints are a great technique to
[37:32] experiment uh and work on iterate on
[37:36] ideas here, but actually shipping
[37:38] blueprints in a major way. Like I'm kind
[37:40] of shocked that Expedition 33 runs as
[37:42] well as it does with all those
[37:45] blueprints in the mix. Maybe it's
[37:46] because it's such a limited title in
[37:48] terms of what it's trying to do in terms
[37:49] of the environments, in terms of the
[37:50] complexity of like um you know the open
[37:53] world systems, things like that. But
[37:55] it's kind of shocking to me that games
[37:57] are actually shipping blueprints as much
[37:59] as they are. And perhaps in the name of
[38:02] having an ultimately more extensible and
[38:05] performant framework for iterating on,
[38:07] you know, your gameplay ideas or
[38:08] whatever, perhaps verse is a better
[38:11] option. And yeah, there are some
[38:12] integrations there that do make it
[38:14] possibly more compelling with things
[38:16] like LMS and things like that if that's
[38:18] your want. But I think this is like
[38:20] ultimately, you know, there's a lot of
[38:22] technical debt in maintaining multiple
[38:24] systems like this. So I can understand.
[38:26] >> Sure. Sure. shifting over. But it is
[38:28] unfortunate because like yeah, you do
[38:30] have this example of this game and I'm
[38:32] sure many many other titles like it
[38:34] where you do get a lot of mileage
[38:35] instead of being able to iterate and
[38:36] ship really quickly on this kind of node
[38:38] graph based system and uh that is
[38:40] presumably being removed and it does not
[38:43] seem like there's necessarily going to
[38:45] be an alternative that's as convenient.
[38:48] I guess they're going to have to pull a
[38:49] um uh another realms and stick with an
[38:52] old engine for a long time.
[38:56] was exactly where I was going to go with
[38:58] that actually. The, you know, we've seen
[39:00] a lot of developers like dig their heels
[39:02] in, right? Yep.
[39:03] >> With a previous iteration, uh, famously
[39:06] Square Enix, stuck stuck with Unreal
[39:09] Engine 4, uh, their own kind of version
[39:11] of it that they've modified. So, it's
[39:14] not unheard of. And I I think if it's a
[39:16] preference for some, you know, it's free
[39:19] to try and developers will weigh up the
[39:21] pros and cons of moving to a UE6. And if
[39:24] they really do think it's better for
[39:25] their workflow, then you know they can
[39:27] stick to 5.8 and that's uh keeping a lot
[39:30] of features in place. What might scupper
[39:32] them a bit is when they get to uh when
[39:35] Epic starts revealing more features on
[39:37] top of the 6.0
[39:40] uh path of uh Unreal Engine and then at
[39:43] that point, you know, you've got to
[39:45] adjust or be left behind. Uh which is,
[39:49] >> you know,
[39:50] >> yeah, a decision for them to make. To be
[39:52] clear, I do think that in 6.0,
[39:54] your old good node graph blueprint
[39:57] system, that's still supported, but it's
[39:59] kind of more of an open question. They
[40:00] did talk about support for early
[40:02] versions of UE6, but it's not clear like
[40:04] at what point do they remove it after
[40:06] that point. They're a little bit less
[40:07] clear. And they do say it will be
[40:08] removed at some point. So, if you're
[40:10] just shipping instance 6.0, maybe you
[40:12] can still use blueprints just fine,
[40:14] >> but you know, 6.4
[40:16] maybe not, right?
[40:18] >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And this is the
[40:21] problem with working with an engine you
[40:23] have no control over. Uh Capcom would
[40:26] have no such problem. Uh Guerilla Games,
[40:29] you know, they can uh chart their own
[40:32] destiny.
[40:33] >> Indeed. Indeed. And uh you know, it is
[40:36] interesting to see the types of moves
[40:39] Epic's trying to make versus um some of
[40:43] the stuff happening on internal engines.
[40:45] I It's It's It's a complicated, crazy
[40:48] world. And um yeah, I mean I guess we'll
[40:51] we'll just continue to track what's
[40:53] happening. I'm very curious to see where
[40:55] all of this goes and how developers
[40:57] around the world feel about these
[40:59] changes. So yeah, more soon, I guess.
[41:03] But for now, let's move on to a a very
[41:07] expensive topic.
[41:09] So this is something that Will Jud
[41:11] flagged on the site, and I had to check
[41:14] it out with my own eyes to see it. And I
[41:16] get it, the cost of storage, it's going
[41:18] way up. It's pretty crazy at this point,
[41:21] but SanDisk is offering these new
[41:24] PlayStation 5 officially licensed SSDs.
[41:28] So, that means they have a little
[41:29] PlayStation logo on them. Just so you
[41:31] know, the cost of the 1 TBTE model is
[41:34] already, you know, 380 bucks. Uh, that's
[41:37] pretty high. 760 for the two TBTE. You
[41:40] know, you see that you're like, that's
[41:42] expensive, but it's not like out of
[41:45] affordability. And then there's this 4
[41:47] TBTE model for 1,500. But the one that
[41:50] has us all like kind of staring in awe
[41:52] is the $3,000 8 TBTE model. And Oliver,
[41:57] why don't you tell us all about how
[41:58] you're going to be buying this $3,000 uh
[42:01] 8 TBTE model? No, I'm just kidding. What
[42:04] would you do? Would you spend three
[42:05] grand on this model or would you just
[42:07] buy multiple PS5 Pros instead and just
[42:09] swap them around?
[42:11] >> That Hey, that's a that's a heck of a
[42:13] concept there, John. Uh, I I would take
[42:16] option C, which is I would maybe buy a
[42:20] different 8 TBTE drive because I'm kind
[42:22] of shocked by these prices, honestly,
[42:25] because like, you know, not that long
[42:27] ago in Canada at least, it was possible
[42:30] to get an 8 TB drive for like $800 or
[42:32] so, $900 maybe.
[42:34] >> Um, and even now, I can go on Amazon.ca
[42:37] CA right now and buy an 8 TB SSD for
[42:40] like 1,700 or $1,800 Canadian dollars,
[42:43] >> which would be equivalent to like I
[42:44] think 1,400 or 1300 American. Um, when
[42:47] you factor in the exchange rate, this is
[42:49] more than twice as expensive as that is.
[42:51] And not only is this more than twice as
[42:54] expensive as the going rate for 8 TB
[42:56] SSDs right now, but in the future it
[42:59] might be even higher because the $3,000
[43:01] slightly under $3,000 price tag is
[43:03] discounted from $3700,
[43:07] which is their apparently normal
[43:08] recommended retail sale price for these
[43:11] devices. So, man, that is a really
[43:15] expensive product. Um, I can understand
[43:18] paying a bit of a premium for like a
[43:19] licensed PS6 PS5 drive, but in this
[43:24] case, there's nothing that special that
[43:25] you need to use for a PS5 drive. All you
[43:28] need is a is an um a PC uh Gen 4 SSD
[43:34] with a minimum speed at 5500 megabits
[43:37] megabytes per second, although as we've
[43:39] seen from Rich's testing, that can be
[43:41] considerably below that without not
[43:42] actually having any performance penalty.
[43:44] And ideally a heat sink, although I'm
[43:46] not even sure a heat sink is necessary.
[43:48] People have done various tests on it. I
[43:50] think a heat sink is more just like
[43:51] insurance bit of safety, you know, for
[43:54] like a really more or less really
[43:55] extended workload. Maybe you'd see some
[43:57] performance degradation on on devices
[43:59] because there's not enough air flow or
[44:00] something going to the uh going to the
[44:02] SSD, but in general, it should not be
[44:04] that important. Um, and yeah, the specs
[44:06] drives are really good, but again, you
[44:07] don't need more than about 55 100
[44:11] megabytes per second uh speeds. And this
[44:14] goes up to 7200 megabytes per second
[44:16] speeds, but even still, I see 7200
[44:18] megabytes per second drives for sale for
[44:21] totally reasonable prices relative to
[44:23] this. That's not a good excuse either.
[44:25] Um, I do wonder if they're just pricing
[44:27] this in with, god forbid, the
[44:30] expectation of future price rises in
[44:32] terms of the components, the market
[44:33] price of those components. Uh, that
[44:35] might not be too great here. Um, but I
[44:39] hope this doesn't pretend really
[44:42] negative things for the storage market.
[44:43] I hope this is just one uh retailer, one
[44:47] uh manufacturer trying to mark things up
[44:49] a little bit, make a bit of margin, lean
[44:52] into a PlayStation 5 uh branding
[44:55] opportunity there and uh kind of gouge
[44:58] people a little bit because if this
[45:00] indicates the future direction of where
[45:02] SSD prices are headed in the next few
[45:04] months, that's like extremely negative.
[45:06] We're talking about multiple multiples
[45:09] above where SSD prices were in the
[45:12] before times, which is not that long
[45:14] ago. You know, we're talking about 6
[45:16] months ago, 9 months ago, SSD prices
[45:18] were pretty good uh relative to where
[45:20] they are now. And now they're like a lot
[45:23] higher. And it's uh really devastating.
[45:25] But like I think that this is hopefully
[45:28] not indicative of where things will be.
[45:31] And I don't think it's indicative of
[45:33] where things are right now.
[45:36] Okay, very interesting. Tom, anything to
[45:38] add
[45:40] >> only that I hope this is just a a crash
[45:44] like a phase crash already restore
[45:46] balance restore but you know a temporary
[45:49] one in terms of the
[45:50] >> the longevity of it. Um, it does seem
[45:53] quite quite aggressive though and I
[45:56] don't think I've seen anything in my,
[45:58] you know, in my life uh in this
[46:00] industry. I like it, you know, it's it's
[46:03] incredible. Three grand for an SSD, but
[46:05] a lot of it, as Oliver is saying, does
[46:07] seem to be related to that PlayStation
[46:10] branding. And, uh, you can do much
[46:13] better by looking for just regular
[46:15] Samsung branded ones. And, you know,
[46:18] that's all you need, SanDisk branded
[46:19] ones. But, uh, yeah. Uh probably
[46:22] probably go with option B though. Uh if
[46:25] that was it, get two three PS5 Pros,
[46:28] keep one, toss the other Pros away. Just
[46:30] keep the the MVMES. Just take the MVMEs
[46:33] out of those, but toss the other two
[46:34] Pros and uh yeah, swap them around.
[46:38] If only I had that much money.
[46:41] >> All All right, then. So that's that's
[46:43] not great news, but our next topic, I
[46:46] guess it could be considered some good
[46:47] news. So, last night it was confirmed
[46:50] that out of nowhere, Iron Galaxy is
[46:54] porting Call of Duty Black Ops 1 and 2
[46:57] to PlayStation 5. Uh, and it seems to be
[47:01] the full suite. All the modes,
[47:03] everything seems to be in there. And
[47:07] Oliver, I don't know. I mean, these
[47:09] these were big games. It almost feels
[47:12] like they're pulling the emergency rip
[47:14] cord here. like, oh, we got to go back
[47:16] to, you know, the games that were super
[47:18] popular. This is the Treyarch stuff.
[47:20] These first two Black Ops games were
[47:22] really wellreceived. I think Black Ops 2
[47:23] was a launch title for the Wii U even,
[47:25] which we talked about recently.
[47:27] >> Um, but it's interesting because they
[47:30] only announced it's coming to
[47:31] PlayStation. And I guess when you think
[47:33] about it, the reason would come down to
[47:35] backwards compatibility, right? On Xbox,
[47:39] these games work natively. Well, not
[47:41] natively. these games work via, you
[47:44] know, the backwards compatibility
[47:45] program. So, I don't know. I was kind of
[47:49] reminded of that Red Dead Redemption
[47:51] situation when that first happened where
[47:53] the developer was like, "Hey, you
[47:55] already got it on backwards
[47:56] compatibility, so why bring it?" And
[47:58] then the other users get a direct port.
[48:00] But there's a lot of benefits to having
[48:02] an actual port. So, I don't know. What
[48:03] do you make of this situation knowing
[48:05] this?
[48:07] >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a a concerning
[48:10] situation because I've gone back and I I
[48:12] booted up Black Ops 2 on my Xbox Series
[48:15] X prior to this call and it is still,
[48:18] you know, like a 600p title.
[48:21] Yes, it's not an Xenhanced title. And
[48:24] when you look at I mean the situation
[48:26] with like Red Dead Redemption 2 or
[48:28] rather Red Dead Redemption one
[48:30] chronologically Red Dead Redemption 2 I
[48:32] suppose but you know the game itself Red
[48:33] Dead Redemption one um that game was at
[48:36] least 4K on Series X and Xbox One X. So
[48:40] you look at that title at least relative
[48:42] to the initial version of Red Dead
[48:44] Redemption for PlayStation that was
[48:46] quite competitive with how the game ran
[48:48] on PS5 for the most part. part. I mean,
[48:50] it did not have FSR upscaling. Did not
[48:53] look quite as nice. Um, or I guess it
[48:55] wasn't FSR upscaling in that case. It
[48:56] was FSR native AA. It didn't look quite
[48:59] as nice in terms of aliasing
[49:00] presentation, but broadly speaking, you
[49:02] know, still 4K visuals, still 30 fps.
[49:05] Later, they upgraded the PlayStation 5
[49:07] version to um 60 fps, which did increase
[49:10] that golf a little bit more. And of
[49:12] course, when they released the game
[49:14] again with that new port for all current
[49:17] generation platforms, including Switch
[49:19] 2, including Series X, that situation
[49:21] was rectified. But in this case, it does
[49:24] seem like a bit of a raw deal and just
[49:26] like a really a bit of a misplaced
[49:28] priority to not ship an Xbox version as
[49:30] well because I mean, unless the
[49:32] PlayStation version is literally just
[49:34] like the exact same, you know, I think
[49:37] like sub 600p res like miserable
[49:40] resolution on PlayStation. I think it
[49:42] was like 880 by 720 or something.
[49:44] Something really atrocious that right.
[49:46] It was it was not very good in those
[49:48] titles back in the day. And I would
[49:50] certainly hope they would not just try
[49:52] to replicate that on hardware as
[49:53] powerful as a PlayStation 5. I don't
[49:55] think that's necessary. PlayStation 5
[49:56] Pro, god forbid. Um, so I'd hope that
[50:00] they would actually ship this version of
[50:02] the game across all platforms, but it
[50:03] remains to be seen exactly what they're
[50:04] going to do with this game. It is a very
[50:06] old title. I don't expect any
[50:08] significant graphical enhancements
[50:10] beyond resolution and possibly frame
[50:11] rate, but um yeah, I I really think they
[50:15] need to do the do the full monty here
[50:17] and ship it on everything. I think they
[50:18] need this on why isn't this on Switch 2?
[50:21] You know, that's another question. Like
[50:22] it's a subtitle thing. What's going on
[50:24] here? Because
[50:25] >> exactly
[50:25] >> Switch 2 should be capable of handling
[50:27] this game at, you know,
[50:29] >> 60 fps, high resolutions. Like there
[50:31] should be no impediment to shipping this
[50:33] game across
[50:34] >> anything that can hold the charge at
[50:36] this point because the game is so old.
[50:38] So why aren't they doing it? I just
[50:40] don't know.
[50:42] >> Tom, what do you think?
[50:44] >> Yeah, it is odd because they only
[50:46] announced this as a a small tweet and
[50:48] then a follow-up tweet to say, you know,
[50:51] all modes are included. Zombies,
[50:53] multiplayer, campaign, so you're getting
[50:56] everything. It's the comprehensive
[50:57] package on both games. Yet I if this was
[51:00] their moment to really drive home the
[51:03] value of this port, they would have
[51:05] announced those things. Switch 2, you
[51:06] know, they would have announced um you
[51:09] know, some sort of resolution upgrade,
[51:10] you know, at least, you know, it was
[51:12] such a brief line that, you know,
[51:15] wouldn't it wouldn't have hurt to at
[51:17] least mention some of the uh
[51:19] improvements. I find it impossible to
[51:21] imagine if you're starting from uh you
[51:23] know, a fresh port, I guess. Yeah. So,
[51:27] it it's very surprisingly vague is what
[51:29] I'd say and that uh they didn't really
[51:32] go into any details, but if they've
[51:34] revved up Iron Galaxy to
[51:37] um be involved with that that game again
[51:41] and got them fired up to be make, you
[51:43] know, engaging with it. It wouldn't be
[51:45] surprising uh to me if they did have
[51:47] Switch 2 sort of being prepped for
[51:50] something down the line, you know, in
[51:51] terms of the return on investment to get
[51:53] a whole developer working on this stuff.
[51:56] But uh yeah,
[51:57] >> indeed indeed.
[51:58] >> Who knows? Guess
[51:59] >> we'll find out. Might check this out
[52:01] when it releases, though. I'll be
[52:03] curious to see like what they actually
[52:04] do to it. If it's just a resolution
[52:06] boost or if they actually do some kind
[52:08] of additional enhancements. Guess we'll
[52:10] find out soon. All right, though. Couple
[52:13] more topics to cover and then we're
[52:16] done. So, this next topic actually
[52:19] brings us to something that I guess has
[52:22] sort of fallen out of fashion and the
[52:25] never was really mainstream to begin
[52:26] with, but it's VR talk. But, I've been
[52:29] kind of wondering, I guess, like what's
[52:31] going on in the VR space, especially the
[52:34] high-end VR space. So, I was offered an
[52:37] opportunity to toy around with a new
[52:40] unit from Pimax, relatively new. It's
[52:43] their Dream Air headset. This is a very
[52:46] expensive headset. It's like two grand
[52:48] uh and a little more if you want the
[52:50] inside out version with the tracking
[52:52] controllers, but you know, this is still
[52:56] very popular in the PC VR space, the
[53:00] sort of high-end ultra high resolution
[53:02] VR headsets, uh designed specifically
[53:04] for things like racing, anything with a
[53:08] cockpit, stuff like that. Right. I've
[53:10] been using the Quest 3 headset as my
[53:13] main for a while. I like the wireless
[53:15] features. The pancake lenses are good.
[53:17] Good optics there. Uh but it's obviously
[53:19] held back by the fact that it's using
[53:21] LCD screens with very poor black levels.
[53:25] And you know, the resolution, while
[53:26] still very sharp, it's starting to show
[53:28] its age. So these new this new Dream Air
[53:32] then is designed to sort of compete I
[53:34] guess with what was the big screen VR
[53:36] headsets which is they've essentially
[53:39] created a very tiny ultra thin headset
[53:42] using Sony micro OLED screens um with
[53:47] their own pancake lenses uh but in ultra
[53:51] high resolution so they call it like an
[53:53] 8K headset. So the actual resolution
[53:56] then of the screens, it's about 3840 by
[54:00] 3552 pixels per eye. So if you combine
[54:03] them, then you're looking at essentially
[54:05] 27 million pixels or an 8K resolution.
[54:10] And the reason that's interesting here
[54:12] is that this is the first headset I've
[54:14] ever tested where the the pixel density
[54:18] is now so high that I can no longer
[54:20] perceive pixels at all. It is like I
[54:24] guess the retina display equivalent for
[54:27] a VR headset. And it's my first time
[54:29] experiencing this, right? Cuz up until
[54:30] now, even with fairly high resolution
[54:32] headsets, you could still see the
[54:34] individual pixels, right? It felt like
[54:36] you're looking into a grid of pixels,
[54:38] which is almost like it's it's it
[54:40] improved. It's like the screen door
[54:42] effect that you always heard about where
[54:43] it feels like you've got a layer of
[54:44] pixels on top of what you're looking at.
[54:46] But here the resolution is now so high.
[54:49] The the resolve on detail is so
[54:52] exceptionally sharp that it genuinely
[54:55] feels like you're peering through like
[54:57] more like a camera lens or like an
[54:59] actual lens into the real world. And
[55:02] I've never seen anything like this.
[55:04] Playing a game like Halflife Alex, when
[55:06] you pick up a pistol and you're like
[55:08] examining the markings and the details
[55:10] on the gun or the russles which have all
[55:12] those little chips and everything sort
[55:14] of mounted on your hand there, like it
[55:17] looks like a real object. Like it's hard
[55:21] to explain. I don't know. Can you guys
[55:22] picture what I'm talking about here?
[55:23] Where it's just like the resolution is
[55:25] now so high that it just removes that
[55:27] barrier completely. And when you couple
[55:30] that with like, you know, the fact that
[55:31] these are OLED screens, so the black
[55:34] levels are great. They're super bright,
[55:36] super clear. Uh it just feels like we're
[55:39] reaching like a new level of clarity and
[55:41] realism for VR. That was kind of
[55:43] exciting.
[55:44] >> So, um I don't know. What do you guys
[55:46] think of of this like idea conceptually?
[55:50] >> And you got me excited to try it. And uh
[55:52] it's a fully wired solution as well. So,
[55:54] >> currently, yes.
[55:56] >> Okay. So latency not a problem, right?
[56:00] That's one another one of the barriers I
[56:01] guess for VR.
[56:02] >> I would say wireless VR is pretty lag
[56:04] free. I mean there is some latency but
[56:06] it feels good and I'm I'm happy with
[56:08] wireless VR. Uh but I must admit going
[56:11] back to both wired and then the ultra
[56:13] high-risisk screens. Yeah, it does kind
[56:16] of highlight a difference where it's
[56:18] just it's artifact free, right?
[56:21] >> Yeah. No, it sounds uh appetizing. I
[56:24] tell you what, maybe I'll pop over to
[56:26] your place sometime, give it a try.
[56:29] >> It's It's worth looking at. And again,
[56:30] this is not this is like the opposite of
[56:33] a mass market product, right? This is
[56:35] not for the general audience. This is
[56:37] strictly a high-end VR solution for a
[56:40] very specific audience, but seeing what
[56:44] it's able to deliver and a wider FOV to
[56:47] boot, by the way, so like you actually
[56:49] see more of the image around you. Um,
[56:52] it's super super cool and impressive.
[56:55] And yeah, I think for cockpit based
[56:57] games, that's probably where it really
[56:58] shines based on my experience as well.
[57:00] There is like even at a normal distance
[57:03] when you're sitting like in an F1 car
[57:05] cockpit now, you can look at all the
[57:06] little dials and bits and bobs in the
[57:08] cockpit around you
[57:10] >> and everything is completely legible.
[57:13] >> Uh, it's honestly nuts to see it. So,
[57:17] uh, it also only weighs. It's like 170
[57:20] g.
[57:21] It's this very It's so thin and light
[57:24] that it doesn't have that like normally
[57:26] with a larger headset when you move your
[57:28] head, you feel like this delayed weight
[57:30] of the headset shifting, right? And
[57:32] that's just gone. Like it now feels just
[57:34] like a bulky pair of glasses as opposed
[57:37] to like a giant headset sticking off
[57:40] your face, which again makes like head
[57:42] movement feel a lot better because you
[57:44] no longer feel that additional weight,
[57:46] right?
[57:48] So, what games did you try? You've done
[57:49] Alex, you've done uh F1.
[57:51] >> So, yeah, I did F1 because I had that
[57:53] installed. Um, let me actually bring up
[57:55] the list of stuff that I was playing
[57:57] around with. Of course, I did the
[57:58] HalfLife 2 VR mod. Um, I did Grip Combat
[58:02] Racing, which made me want to throw up
[58:04] because it's like too much.
[58:07] Uh, Alien Rogue Incursion VR. That's
[58:10] actually interesting. When I first
[58:11] loaded that up, I was like, wait, the
[58:13] frame rate's not very good here. Like,
[58:15] what's going on? And it turned out, I
[58:16] guess, with the way Steam VR works and
[58:18] like the automatic scaling, it was
[58:20] trying to render it at like 16,000
[58:22] by7,000 resolution, so 16K. And it
[58:27] worked, but uh it didn't work well. What
[58:30] was interesting though is that because
[58:32] uh it has the um what is it? The time
[58:36] warp stuff, right? Like to sort of
[58:38] interpolate frames when your frame
[58:40] rate's lower on head movement. uh the
[58:42] actual head movement looked completely
[58:44] smooth, but when you would move the 3D
[58:47] objects like your hands in the world, it
[58:49] was extremely choppy because of the
[58:51] super high resolution. So, it's funny to
[58:54] see that work, but yeah, you're not even
[58:56] with the 5090 like 16k super sampling,
[59:00] not super doable. Uh, also Riven.
[59:04] Riven's a good one. I like the VR in
[59:06] Riven. If you guys have checked it out,
[59:07] that remake of the game, it just it's
[59:10] crazy immersive to be wandering around
[59:12] in there and the new contrast and
[59:14] brightness of these screens and clarity.
[59:15] It's like I could only dream of this
[59:17] back in the '9s, being able to
[59:19] essentially peer into this world.
[59:22] So, it's it's cool. I like to see this.
[59:26] I think it's a really neat thing. Um,
[59:29] I'm happy to see VR continue to evolve.
[59:31] I definitely still prefer wireless to
[59:33] wired, but I also understand that you're
[59:36] not going to be able to transmit the
[59:38] kind of data necessarily over wireless
[59:40] at this kind of fidelity right now.
[59:42] Necess
[59:44] doesn't seem that likely because the
[59:46] bandwidth requirements for this is
[59:48] pretty nuts.
[59:50] So um
[59:52] >> that's crazy. What is the interface for
[59:54] that to the PC? Is it a USB high
[59:56] bandwidth USB? Let me talk about this
[59:57] cuz there is a couple little uh
[60:00] >> sort of issues and caution flags here.
[60:02] First of all, yes, it uses USB cable
[60:05] >> and display port together, right?
[60:08] >> Uh but when I first installed this, so
[60:10] you have to install the PMAX software,
[60:13] which is it's improved. I would say it's
[60:15] completely fine. It's like the interface
[60:17] between the headset and Steam VR.
[60:20] Basically, you put the headset on, it
[60:21] goes into that software, and you can
[60:22] just launch Steam VR from there. It's
[60:24] fine. But when I first installed the
[60:25] headset, I was not able to get a
[60:27] picture. It would not actually power up.
[60:29] And it turns out that if your
[60:31] motherboard has uh onboard video and you
[60:35] do not have that disabled in in the UF
[60:37] UEFI, the bias or whatever, it will not
[60:40] work. It will not go to the secondary
[60:43] graphics card. It will try to use the
[60:46] built-on uh built-in video and you won't
[60:49] overight
[60:50] >> which is super annoying. Uh I searching
[60:53] online a lot of users encountered this
[60:55] which is how I kind of figured out like
[60:56] oh wait that's what's going on here and
[60:58] that was what was going on. Once I did
[60:59] that it was fine but that did make the
[61:02] setup slightly annoying because it it
[61:04] didn't really indicate why it wasn't
[61:06] working. It just failed the connection
[61:09] to display port and yeah so that's a
[61:12] little bit of a pain. Uh there's also,
[61:15] you know, again, you've got to fiddle
[61:16] with the automatic sort of scaling
[61:18] features of Steam VR because the
[61:21] resolution is so high that by default it
[61:24] was often trying to just render stuff at
[61:26] like a stupidly high resolution upwards
[61:28] of like I said 16K and the performance
[61:31] is just not good there. So, uh you've
[61:34] got to pay attention to that. But again,
[61:36] Steam VR has all these functions within
[61:38] it to sort of modify that as you go. So
[61:41] you can adjust each game or the overall
[61:43] Steam VR experience to whatever
[61:45] resolution and performance target you
[61:47] desire.
[61:49] By the way, headset is 90 Hz native. I
[61:52] think you can do 72 Hz as well, but 90
[61:54] Hz is the target, which I think is a
[61:56] pretty good uh pretty good middle ground
[61:59] here. It's it you get very clean motion
[62:01] clarity at 90 Hz, but it's not as
[62:04] difficult to drive as something like 120
[62:07] because yeah, you're you know, you're
[62:09] rendering at such high resolutions here.
[62:11] Essentially 8K all the time that yeah,
[62:14] you need it. So, I don't know. Any other
[62:17] questions about this? It was just it was
[62:19] just kind of a weird thing and it's fun
[62:20] to experiment with.
[62:23] >> How was your How was performance
[62:24] overall? You're driving it with an RTX
[62:26] 5090, am I right? And I I feel like
[62:28] >> so that's the that's the other thing.
[62:30] >> And that's the thing, Tom. Because it's
[62:31] such a high-end product and it's very
[62:34] much only targeting that sort of user, I
[62:37] suspect anyone that's picking up a
[62:38] headset like this would also have a
[62:40] high-end GPU, right?
[62:43] >> Uh so and technically, I mean, you can
[62:45] drive this on a lower power card if you
[62:49] are willing to drop the resolution, but
[62:50] then you lose obviously the big benefits
[62:53] of having such high resolution screens.
[62:55] Either way, I just got to say like I
[62:57] wanted to mention this because it's it's
[63:00] cool to see. The only thing still
[63:02] missing in VR is like the peripheral
[63:04] vision outside of the sweet spot. It's
[63:07] still black, right, naturally. And I was
[63:10] thinking about that because of the way
[63:11] lens optics works. It's a hard problem
[63:13] to solve. But what if they like
[63:14] installed some sort of like
[63:18] lighting system that would sort of like
[63:20] match the color that's being displayed,
[63:23] you know what I mean? within the lenses
[63:25] themselves somehow as like a just a
[63:27] peripheral light like even if it's not
[63:30] something you can visually focus on
[63:32] >> just some
[63:32] >> a bit like those Philips Huegh lights
[63:35] behind TVs.
[63:35] >> Yeah, I was thinking about that. I'm
[63:37] wondering how that would actually work
[63:38] if it would look good. Uh just some way
[63:40] to sort of fill in that peripheral area
[63:42] rather than just being black space cuz I
[63:44] mean I'm already used to it. I wear
[63:45] glasses, right? So the area outside of
[63:47] the sweet spot it's blurriier normally
[63:49] as expected. Uh, but there is still
[63:52] light and stuff happening around there
[63:54] as opposed to just pure black. So, so
[63:57] even though the FOV is wider, you still
[63:59] have that black border problem, which is
[64:01] something that nobody's been able to
[64:02] solve yet. Uh, but yeah, that's that's
[64:05] pretty much that. So, let's uh
[64:08] >> How much?
[64:09] >> Very very cool.
[64:10] >> Oh, I as I said at the beginning, super
[64:13] high-end, dude. I mean, I guess it's
[64:14] less less than the Apple Vision Pro was.
[64:18] >> Less than an eight terab SSD job.
[64:21] Yes. Uh I think there's a model that
[64:24] uses the Steam uh lighouses that's like
[64:28] 17 or 1800 and then there's like the
[64:31] 2200ish
[64:33] one for which has the inside out
[64:35] tracking the slam version as they call
[64:37] it which ships with its own controller.
[64:40] So it's basically around two grand for
[64:43] this. Um, but yeah, it is a niche
[64:47] product, right? And it's selling for
[64:50] niche prices, though less niche than
[64:51] Apple Vision Pro. And it looks a lot
[64:54] better than the Vision Pro. The
[64:55] screenwise, I'm saying like the
[64:57] difference between the Vision Pro and
[64:59] this in terms of clarity, it's light
[65:02] years better. I feel like this is the
[65:05] type of display Apple would have wanted
[65:07] in the Vision Pro, but was not able to
[65:09] deliver. uh because it really does
[65:11] provide that true like real life clarity
[65:15] that I think we've been looking for for
[65:16] a long time. So yeah, that's where we're
[65:20] at.
[65:20] >> Amazing.
[65:21] >> Anyway, let's move on to the final topic
[65:24] here. So, as we've been doing lately, uh
[65:28] we've been using the Digital Foundry
[65:30] time machine, the website that Will Jud
[65:33] built to look back at things that
[65:35] happened on Digital Foundry one year,
[65:36] five years, and 10 years ago. Uh, one
[65:39] year ago, uh, it looks like I posted the
[65:42] review for Death Stranding 2, which was
[65:44] cool.
[65:46] And Alex posted the the DF Retro EX
[65:50] video on Doom 93 up through the Dark
[65:52] Ages, which was also cool. Uh, lot of
[65:56] stuff happening there. Oliver, you did a
[65:59] video, it looks like, on Switch 2
[66:02] improvements that were happening at the
[66:04] time, such as the Pokemon Scarlet and
[66:07] Violent improvements, cuz we were still
[66:09] in the Switch 2 era, right? We also
[66:11] looked at Mind's Eye last year. My
[66:13] goodness.
[66:14] >> Oh, yeah. I took that one on. That was
[66:16] uh good fun.
[66:17] >> The big one for me though is five years
[66:19] ago, we released part one of the DF
[66:22] Retro episode I did on the launch of
[66:24] PlayStation 1, which I look back on
[66:26] fondly. It was one of my favorite
[66:28] episodes to ever work on. Uh it was Audi
[66:31] and I worked hard on that. We spent like
[66:33] a full month just like crazy long hours
[66:36] putting that like multi-hour thing
[66:37] together. But it was just a great time
[66:40] revisiting all those different games and
[66:42] looking at them in detail. And the
[66:44] Japanese launch itself was a lot of fun
[66:46] to cover because there's titles in there
[66:49] that never came out anywhere else. And
[66:51] from a modern perspective,
[66:53] very strange or interesting. Like uh
[66:57] there was Tama, which is the like the
[67:00] mysterious tale of like the little ball.
[67:02] It's like a one of those maze games
[67:04] where you roll the maze around. You have
[67:05] to roll the ball through it. Like that
[67:07] was actually a launch title.
[67:10] >> Oh my gosh. I don't know. Did Did any of
[67:12] you guys ever get a chance to watch that
[67:14] episode? I know it was long.
[67:16] >> I sure did. I lapped it up. I'm a huge
[67:19] Well, that's were you know a huge part
[67:20] of my teenage years growing up with the
[67:22] original PlayStation and and uh you
[67:26] provided an amazing insight into the
[67:29] culture and the the atmosphere that
[67:32] surrounded uh gaming at that time. you
[67:35] know, the wider the wider sense of where
[67:37] people were in terms of moving from Sega
[67:39] or Nintendo and seeing this newcomer
[67:41] enter the space and, you know, the the
[67:46] fact that Sony managed to drum up so
[67:48] much excitement amongst developers
[67:50] through their music roots, like their
[67:51] music production roots to get uh some
[67:55] amazing ideas, amazing creatives working
[67:57] on launch titles. Uh yeah, which I think
[68:00] really just defined where PlayStation
[68:03] would go on. Um, yeah. So, it's a
[68:06] incredible video. I'm now got the uh the
[68:08] full marathon up on my browser here.
[68:11] It's about 2 hours 46 minutes.
[68:13] >> Oh, yes.
[68:14] >> of pure PlayStation one goodness.
[68:17] >> Indeed.
[68:19] >> Must see. Must see if you've not seen it
[68:21] already.
[68:21] >> Yeah. Yeah, it was like a bunch of
[68:22] little mini DFRs in there since we
[68:24] looked at every game and there was lots
[68:26] of comparisons with them like the four
[68:29] fiveway NBA Jam comparison, Rayman,
[68:32] stuff like that's in there. All kinds of
[68:34] good stuff. So, if you haven't seen it,
[68:36] do check it out. Uh although I have to
[68:40] look back 10 years ago, Tom, we we were
[68:44] cranking stuff out. Uh, it looks like
[68:47] you did a video on Breath of the Wild
[68:49] for the Wii U, which is fun.
[68:53] >> Yep. Yep. That was uh Wii U. Switch
[68:57] wasn't out by that point, was it? It was
[68:59] the next year that Switch came out. Just
[69:01] had the Wii U version.
[69:03] Yeah. What a time. And we were all We
[69:05] knew something was coming. We knew
[69:07] something was coming uh up with
[69:08] Nintendo's next machine,
[69:10] >> right? No, you're right. I'm looking at
[69:11] it now. This is a video that you and I
[69:14] both talked about. We were both in this
[69:16] video and it was discussing the early
[69:18] sort of gameplay footage out of the Wii
[69:20] U version. I was at that E3 and they
[69:23] obviously the Switch wasn't announced
[69:24] yet. So, uh, all the demo stations,
[69:27] everything was done on the Wii U. And I
[69:30] still think the game really felt like it
[69:32] was crafted for the Wii U and like the
[69:34] whole like Shikica slate thing like
[69:36] what? It's a it's a Wii U gamepad. Come
[69:38] on now.
[69:40] >> So,
[69:41] >> uh, it just
[69:42] >> it's interesting. That version is cool
[69:44] though. It runs worse than Switch One,
[69:46] but it's amazing that a game like that
[69:48] could run at all on the Wii U.
[69:51] >> Perfectly it perfectly enjoyable as
[69:54] well. Like there are some more frame
[69:55] rate drops, but uh you could definitely
[69:58] have a great time on that. Um I think it
[70:01] was the the big request for the
[70:03] follow-up like Tears of the Kingdom to
[70:05] really show what Switch One could do.
[70:07] And um funnily enough, that seemed to
[70:10] fall behind people's expectations in
[70:12] some performance terms and it became
[70:14] clear that Switch 2 was the target as
[70:16] well for that one. So
[70:17] >> indeed,
[70:17] >> and Nintendo loves to do their um two
[70:20] console releases like uh just on the the
[70:22] precipice, the kind of dividing point
[70:24] between two generations. They always
[70:25] release a new Zelda every time.
[70:28] >> Yeah, that kind of started with the
[70:30] GameCube to Wii transition, didn't it?
[70:33] >> Yeah.
[70:34] >> Yeah. Good times. I guess the last the
[70:36] other thing 10 years ago was I took a
[70:38] look at Mighty Number Nine on the Wii U.
[70:42] >> I don't know if you remember that
[70:43] version but
[70:44] >> I remember you being so disappointed.
[70:45] >> Well, beyond Mighty Number N itself
[70:47] falling super short of expectations, and
[70:49] that's a whole crazy situation. The Wii
[70:52] U version was rotten. It was so bad. It
[70:55] performed so poorly.
[70:57] >> It's really hilarious to look back at
[70:59] that port. I don't know, Oliver, did you
[71:02] ever follow any of the Mighty Number N
[71:03] stuff?
[71:05] Uh, not too closely. Wasn't there like a
[71:07] 3DS version as well that got cancelled
[71:09] in the mix there?
[71:10] >> Oh, there was a 3DS and VA versions
[71:12] announced, right? Obviously, they never
[71:14] happened. And we always were like, yeah,
[71:16] I mean, this is an Unreal Engine 3 game.
[71:19] >> Uh, if they're going to bring it to 3DS
[71:21] and VA, they basically got to make a new
[71:22] game. And they never did. Obviously,
[71:27] I don't think it was ever like
[71:28] officially cancelled in the fact that
[71:31] they said, "Oh, we're not making this
[71:32] anymore." more like I think they just
[71:33] you know
[71:34] >> everybody stopped talking they stopped
[71:36] talking about Mighty Number Nine.
[71:38] >> Yeah.
[71:39] >> Uh for Yeah. What a time.
[71:42] >> But that's going to do it. That's the
[71:43] end of the show. Um thank you for
[71:46] joining me, guys.
[71:48] >> Pleasure. Pleasure.
[71:49] >> Great to be here.
[71:50] >> It's so difficult to follow up the
[71:52] amazing Rich Lead Better. So, I tried my
[71:54] best, but we got through it. Hopefully,
[71:56] it's good enough. Rich will be back in
[71:58] the hosting seat next week and we'll
[72:00] continue with DF Direct. But thank you
[72:02] everyone for making it to the end. Be
[72:04] sure to check us out on
[72:05] digitalfoundry.net.
[72:07] Uh you know, we got that awesome Patreon
[72:09] over there. You can come hang out on the
[72:11] on the DF Discord and say, "Man, we need
[72:14] more Rich hosting." Or also go into the
[72:17] great topic about is Richard eating
[72:19] dinner, which was blowing up last night.
[72:22] So the answer is yes, he was eating
[72:24] dinner last night. But that's going to
[72:26] do it from us for now. So, thanks for
[72:28] watching and we'll see you next time.