---
title: 'DF Direct Weekly #269: GTA 6 News Reaction, UE5 Upgrades, UE6, Gears E-Day Tech Demo'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZBmEY3z7hWs'
video_id: 'ZBmEY3z7hWs'
date: 2026-06-21
duration_sec: 4352
---

# DF Direct Weekly #269: GTA 6 News Reaction, UE5 Upgrades, UE6, Gears E-Day Tech Demo

> Source: [DF Direct Weekly #269: GTA 6 News Reaction, UE5 Upgrades, UE6, Gears E-Day Tech Demo](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZBmEY3z7hWs)

## Summary

This episode of DF Direct Weekly covers major gaming tech news, including an analysis of the new GTA 6 box art trailer, which reveals its likely use of ray-traced reflections combined with screen-space reflections. The show also dives into Unreal Fest announcements, such as the new, lighter-weight 'Lumen Light' for platforms like Switch 2 and the production-ready 'MegaLights' system demonstrated in the Gears of War: E-Day tech demo.

### Key Points

- **GTA 6 Box Art Tech Analysis** [[03:47]] — The panel discusses the brief panning shot in the GTA 6 box art, noting its use of a combination of ray-traced (RT) reflections and screen-space reflections (SSR). They analyze anomalies like a missing Ferris wheel reflection, suggesting objects may be excluded from the BVH structure, while also praising the high density of point lights visible at a distance.
- **Unreal Engine 5.8 Key Features** [[12:36]] — Epic announced UE5.8's new 'Lumen Light', a high-performance version of Lumen for lower-end hardware like Switch 2, aiming for 60fps. 'MegaLights' is also now production-ready, allowing as many shadow-casting lights as an artist wants, as shown in the Gears of War: E-Day demo running at 60fps on Xbox Series X.
- **UE6 and Blueprint Deprecation** [[32:36]] — Epic confirmed that Unreal Engine 6 will phase out Blueprints (node-based scripting) in favor of a new language, 'Verse'. This has caused controversy, as many indie and AA developers heavily rely on Blueprints, while AAA studios often find it messy for large projects. The transition is expected to be slow, with deprecation starting after UE6.0.
- **Ridiculous PS5 SSD Pricing** [[41:09]] — Oliver highlights the insane cost of SanDisk's official PS5 SSDs, especially the 8TB model at $3,000 (discounted from $3,700). He notes you can buy a non-licensed 8TB Gen4 SSD for roughly half that price, calling the premium purely for the PlayStation branding a price gouge.
- **Pimax Dream Air VR Headset Review** [[52:10]] — John reviews the Pimax Dream Air, a $2,000+ VR headset with Sony micro-OLED screens. He praises its ultra-high resolution (8K), which eliminates the screen-door effect, making it the first headset where he cannot see individual pixels. It offers incredible clarity and OLED black levels, ideal for niche high-end cockpit games.

## Transcript

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