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And rockstar games require a rockstar account. Ubisoft requires an Ubisoft account. Microsoft requires an Xbox account … For single player games too, at least one login.
Sony is late to the game but this complaint rings hollow to me when we only target them.
They all want the social side, and to various degrees add social and other features. With varying degrees of success too.
Absolutely. But if someone got you in one of those steam inventory scams or stole your access token, it sucks if you lose your entire game library and have all your eggs in one basket.
So having a bunch “backed up” so to speak with Epic gives some peace of mind. VAC bans aren’t common for most users, but they do make mistakes sometimes.
This is the point though. They have beefed up my Epic Games library to the point where if I got banned from Steam, I would have a viable fallback.
That cannot be understated. It has a network effect and makes adopting it as a new platform versus a legacy one with two decades behind it, far easier to adjust to.
I love that at least someone is really trying other than MS with their poorly supported windows games store attempts.
Or your “time clock earth sounds” app from the not so well policed appstore takes silent background screenshots, grayscales them and sends them to their host for OCR.
I agree this permission is annoying. But I differ in I feel it should be system controlled and can be invoked by apps that identify specific fields to be blocked, instead ofnjusy disabling it outright.
Your understanding of frame generation is incorrect.
Again let’s say a huge absurdly low FPS and a big frame window for example. 10ms between frames.
If your frame windows is 10ms. Frame 1 at 0ms and Frame 2 at 10ms. Frame generation is not just interpolation. That is what your new TV does when you activate motion smoothing and soap opera mode. This is not what framegen is, at all.
In frame generation the frame generation engine (driver or program) stores a motion vector array. This determines the trend line of how pixels are likely to change. In our example, the motion vectors for the ball indicate large motion in a diagonal direction let’s say, and the overall frame indicates low or no motion due to the user not swinging the camera wildly. The frame generation then uses frame 1 to make an estimate of a frame 1.5, and the ball does actually move in the image thanks to motion vector analysis. The ball moves independently of the scene itself due to the change in user camera, so the user can see the ball itself moving against the background.
So, in frame 1.5, the ball you are seeing, as well as the scene, have actually moved. Now, the user can see this motion, and lets say they didn’t notice it in frame 1. This means frame 1.5 is a chance for them to react! And their inputs go through sooner, reducing true latency by allowing them to react to in-game stimus faster. Yes, even if the frame is “faked”
In reprojection, at frame 1.5RP, again crucially there is not any new scene data. Reprojection is not using motion vectors it’s using the camera and geometry only. If the user isn’t moving the POV at all for example then the reprojection just puts the frame where it already was and the user waits the full 10ms before the ball appears to move. Even if the camera is moving, reprojection is going to adjust the scene angle relative to camera, the ball is not going to move within the overall scene. Again, consider if the ball is flying left, and the user walking left. The reprojection cannot move the ball left. If anything, if the reprojection is put on the existing scene geometry, the opposite would occur and the ball may even appear to move right or slow down due to paralax.
Reprojection uses old frame data and moves it like flat cards in 3d space, so the frame of the ball in scene the ball stays in position till frame 2. And can only be affect by camera motion that drives reprojection, not other rendering data. And what the user sees of the ball wouldn’t change until 10ms later. Only the overall flat scene can reprojection, so the user tilting the camera or swinging it can feel instantly responsive. But till the next render pass, the real motion data, delivered either via motion vector or frame 2, doesn’t his them in a reprojection on 1.5.
So again, your understanding of current frame gen is wildly incorrect. And what you are describing for reprojection getting better is essentially to add reprojection to framegen. And use motion vectors to render the new portion of the frame, and use the projection to adjust overall pov based on camera input. Which again, works well. Adding reprojection and Framegen together is not a bad idea. And reprojection is great for reducing perceived latency (why it is essential for avoiding motion sickness in VR). These are two techniques solving different forms of latency issues. Combined they offer far more.
Frame reprojection lacks motion data. It is in the title. It is reprojecting the last frame. Frame generation uses the interval between real frames, feeds in vector data, and estimates movement.
If I am trying to follow a ball going across the screen, not moving my mouse, reprojection is flat out worse. Because it is reprojecting the last frame, where nothing moved. Frame 1, Frame 1RP , then Frame 2. 1 and 1RP would have the ball in the exact same place. If I move my viewpoint, then the perspective will feel correct, viewport edges will blur and the reprojection will map to perspective which feels better for head tracking in VR. But for information delivery it is no new data, not even a guess. It’s still the same frame, just in a different point in space. Not till the next real frame comes in.
With frame generation, if I am watching this ball again, now it looks more like Frame 1 (Real), Frame 1G (estimate), Frame 2 (real) Now frame 1 and frame 1G have different data, and 1G is built on vector data between frames. Not 100% but it’s a educated guess where the ball is going between frame 1 and frame 2. If I move my viewpoint, it is not as responsive feeling as reprojection, but it the gained fake middle frame helps with motion tracking in action.
The real answer is to use frame generation with low-latency configurations, and also enable reprojection in the game engine if possible. Then you have the best of both worlds. For VR, the headset is the viewport, so it’s handled at a driver level. But for games, the viewport is a detached virtual camera, so the gamedev has to expose this and setup reprojection, or Nvidia and AMD need to build some kind of DLSS/FSR like hook for devs to utilize.
But if you could do both at once, that would be very cool. You would get the most responsive feel in terms of lag between input and action on screen, while also getting motion updates faster than a full render pass. So yes, Intel’s solution is a set in that direction. But ASW is not in itself a solution, especially for high motion scenes with lost of graphics. There is a reason the demo engine in the LTT video was extremely basic. If you overloaded that with particle effects and heavy rendering like you see in high end titles, then the smearing from reprojection would look awful without rules and bounding on it.
This is a hilariously bad take for anything not VR. async warping causes frame smearing on detail that is really noticable when the screens aren’t so close your peripheral blind spots make up for it.
Its an excellent tool in the toolbox but to pretend that async reprojection “solved” this kind of means you don’t understand the problem itself…
Edit: also the LTT video is very cool as a proof of concept, but absolutely demonstrates my point regarding smearing. There are also many, MANY cases where a clean frame with legible information would be preferable to a less latent smeared frame.
And you are missing my point.
You don’t trade one for the other. You add this in the options menu, in a smaller font.
Then when The Crew, X-Defiant, Lawbreakers, or any of the 30 other games that AAA publishers end server support for this year go down, the people who bought it aren’t left unable to play at all. Theres a fallback. And it does not affect matchmaking because it’s down the menu out of the way, and not the default matchmaking method. L
Sorry man, but the fundamental backend of IP based matchmaking is a prerequisite to skill based matchmaking. At a high level, the skill rankings make an ELO value or similar ranking and feed that alobg woth player status into the active player pool for the region. The active player pool then feeds the game client the ip sets for the current match.
Literally all these games are peer hosted, and require this. Once the match is setup they literally drop you into a lobby (this part is visible to you) and fill it with IPs (invisible). That is as old as DOOM.
So again, everything costs something as people aren’t free, but this is a function must exist to power the skill based matchmaking, and needs only be exposed in the shell.
Also, its not just valve, its literally every PC game ever made before the mid 2000s. Jedi Knight II? Unreal Tournament? Quake 3? Hell emulated PS3 and Switch titles have shown this off as well. All of these are still playable today thanks to not exclusively using skill based matchmaking.
Great wall of text, defeated by the simple idea of adding a fucking optional LAN or Lobby based matchmaking based on IP can be for unranked and takes near 0 effort to add.
You want the main game mode with matchmaking? Official ranked server.
Wanna play 2 vs 30 AK-47 vs knives only? Private lobby.
Also, the latter was how the original devs accidentally invented Left 4 Dead by figuring out that was a ton of fun.
Yea, fuck this. I like Nvidia and they objectively have better software on the cutting edge. But they stopped focusing on thos market now and are all in on AI while screwing over the high end on gaming. No DLSS is worth this bullshit.
I’d rather pay less for an AMD card with 90% as good performance, and just slightly jankier software, than pay the Nvidia tax this time. I was tempted to get in on the low end of the 5000 series, but I’ll grab a mid-tier AMD and be happy.
For low res, no.
Hi res, sure. Make it optional, or let players download the region they like. Or just the airports with much lower res landscapes, etc etc.
Or just, let them have it all and make these choices. Memory is CHEAP nowadays. If you’re a flight sim enthusiast, a few terabytes for the map data is the least expensive part of your setup by far.
They need to make sharing controller presets easier. Like MASSIVELY easier.
I cannot emphasize this enough. Let users send controller profiles and attach them to forum posts, etc.
This is needed desperately because navigating presets is straight up busted. Currently it just promotes whatever has the most users, which is whoever published first.
Doesn’t matter if there is an objectively brilliant control scheme for Resident Evil 5 or something, nope, you’re using the first layout published by GoonerMaster69 in 2014 or whatever.
Both these factors make using the steam controller a chore. It’s incredibly powerful, but setup is a fucking CHORE. I love it, but making it work well is always me tweaking for way too long, or using g the suboptimal poorly named presets at the top of the list.
The RE5 example is real. RE5 is amazing with the steam controller if you have a trigger full pull mode shift to mouse input so you can have perfect accuracy with no acceleration. But try finding this in the preset list.
The speculation is wrong.
If your hobby is making Paper Maché Owls, and one day Hobby Lobby calls you and threatens to sue you in criminal court for millions, or you can silently stop your hobby?
Unless you have millions to burn, you give up your hobby, because it’s not worth ruining your life over.
This is not true in the literal sense.
You cannot redeem HZD keys, and buy it as part of a bundle with both versions. They stopped selling it standalone.
So you can get the upgrade for $10 if you already have it, or wait for a sale on the bundle.
But in either case you can still play the original release without the PSN requirement even if bought after the remaster release.
No thank you.
Nomura was literally the reason that vsXIII never finished, and languished in development hell for years until he was taken off the project and it was rebooted as XV under a new game director who had to salvage and reuse as much as he could from Nomura’s assets and work and put out a game. This is not to trash Nomura, but vs. XIII was a concept of a game, with tech demos, it but never a game built on a solid foundation.
Nomura is talented in many ways, but he has let projects overwhelm him in the past, and seems best positioned as a producer or scenario and art lead rather than the game director.
Yea originally I hoped all the Overwatch shorts were building to something.
But no, the overwatch “plot” is just random erratic threads going all over the place. Fuck that.
Every other hero shooter has been similar, and most don’t even get close to having unique enough characters or an interesting setting to care. Concord at least have the character part it seems,but the gameplay and well, everything else is just meh.
I did also mean first party content. To my point though was that popular mods were often also rolled into titles as officially sanctioned expansions later on. But first party titles also featured significant amounts of unlockable and customizable content. This didn’t begin with the monetization era.
Travelling, but start by looking up Doom wads and Duke Nukem Build engine mods.
These were so plentiful they were put into compilations, and the best were even repackaged with the game in later releases.
Again, tons of playformers and fps titles would previously offer characters as unlocks as well as customization equipment. The Tekken series up through 5 had SO MUCH GEAR. Virtual Fighter up to VF 4 EVO. Fighting games were actually huge with this, and only Soul Calibur seems to have kept it around a bit. They still sell customizatipn packs I believe, but they offer FAR more out of the box than average.
Could list more but unfortunately about to lose signal.
Sorry man, this is just counterfactual.
I’m glad you feel this way I guess, but before you were born and well into the PS3 and 360 gen, games were still releasing with tons of cosmetic unlocks.
The RPG leveling system of Modern Warfare and the push to tie in game unlocks to your online progression dovetailed with selling skins and cosmetics across the industry. If you were a gamer on the PS2 and the 360 era the difference was like night and day. It’s why people were bowled over when games like Spiderman included so many costumes because the pressure to monetize these would normally be massive.
But somehow, they included dozens of unique designs and outfits without it bankrupting the company. Just like the decades of games prior to the DLC era had. Like magic.
This spoken like someone who never experienced mods and entire unlicensed expansions to games being made well before DLC was a thing. I’m sorry but again, this is counterfactual to the reality of decades of PC gaming prior to the launch of the Playstation and Xbox stores where everything was locked down and customization was turned into DLC.
I still can’t believe we sell fucking skins for guns. It’s so callously exploitative.
When the initial player base numbers are fucking unsustainable, this is a necessary and expected correction.
Panicked headline aside, there are still tens of thousands of players online at any given time and the game is doing extremely well at for not having had a proper expansion or new faction, and just the steady drip feed of new gear and equipment.
Everything you listed is true of all the other companies frankly. That’s just how it is. As you said, the frogs have been boiled, and Sony is almost the last to do this now. They need the analytics info all their competitors have, ostensibly. Sadly this is the landscape we are in.