I'm subbed to DF and not him. I think that speaks for itself. I don't need others to say what I should or shouldn't do when it comes to Youtube videos of all things. I learned a ton from DF over the years and can make my own opinion on what is right and wrong in their videos.
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Shots Fired! Threat Interactive calls for you to unsubscribe from Digital Foundry.
GametimeUK
Member
I've unsubbed, blocked them on twitter and enabled chromatic aberration in all of my games.
Guilty_AI
Member
viveks86
Member
Sorry I keep getting distracted by how his hairstyle keeps changing. Is he cutting to comb his hair after reading out every few sentences?
On the actual content though, if you disagree with DF, just call it out with evidence or rant on a forum and move on. He sounds like a scorned narcissist screaming for attention and going on some pointless crusade. Weak link in the industry, my ass. Couldn't get through the whole video as it was annoying as hell. Believe me, I tried.
On the actual content though, if you disagree with DF, just call it out with evidence or rant on a forum and move on. He sounds like a scorned narcissist screaming for attention and going on some pointless crusade. Weak link in the industry, my ass. Couldn't get through the whole video as it was annoying as hell. Believe me, I tried.
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ChoosableOne
ChoosableAll
Who is this? Justin Bieber's nerd cousin?
bender
What time is it?
My MobyGames page should be huge considering all the special thanks sections I ended up in via Kickstarter projects.
ScHlAuChi
Member
I do game/leveldesign for over 22 years and worked with pretty much every iteration of Unreal, but also CryEngine and some other propitary ones.
People heavily underestimate how much optimization is done there. Currently working on some PCVR/PSVR2 stuff.
Guilty_AI
Member
can you give us examples of what you worked with?
Guilty_AI
Member
depends on whose side of the console wars you're on
ScHlAuChi
Member
I could, but I have been pretty critical of TI on this forum multiple times, I dont have much interest becoming a target for his fanboys like DF did!
But I worked at Ubi Montreal in the mid 2000s on PS2/GC/Xbox stuff where you REALLY had to optimize for those weak platforms.
Spitfire098
Member
You think this dweeb ain't doing the exact same thing?
bender
What time is it?
A lot of the ire comes from people that don't like some of the personalities that are front and center.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Imagine ever having subscribed to something like this in the first place
I have more respect for people who pay for Only Fans than I do people who pay for DF
I have more respect for people who pay for Only Fans than I do people who pay for DF
RoboFu
One of the green rats
I'm just attaching my thoughts to the topic. I could care less about YouTubers.
Donald mac Ronald
Member
DF are a bunch of clowns. Their paid Xbox shilling is tiresome. And that Alex with his skirts can't hide his bizarre hatred for anything playstation.
Buggy Loop
Member
Pay... Youtube subscriptions?
Guilty_AI
Member
You say that but you're basically one google search away from being found.
And what kind of optimization did they employ?
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
I unsub'd a while back. Still watch some stuff but don't care for their opinions.
He actually talk exactly that on the video, no words where he's wrong, just about the "tone", "lack of experience" and so on
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Thebonehead
Gold Member
I managed a couple of minutes of this video.
Luckily I noticed a eight out of ten cats does countdown video on the next up and watched that instead.
Now I've seen this video a fair few number of times and it was still more worthy of my time than the OP video
Luckily I noticed a eight out of ten cats does countdown video on the next up and watched that instead.
Now I've seen this video a fair few number of times and it was still more worthy of my time than the OP video
MAX PAYMENT
Member
Wait. So one of the DF guys mentions he's been doing it a long time in a video and this dude thinks it's a reaction to him?
ScHlAuChi
Member
Sure, if someone wants to find out, they can with enough effort, but people are lazy.
DF is an easy target as they are public.
Well that is a complex topic, but for example the designer had to make sure that the player cant see more than X number of BSP and meshes at any time.
So if your limit was say 30 visible BSP, you had to do your leveldesign around that limit which of course often leads to strange architecture or layouts.
One of the most famous things in those older games is the "S" corridor which was basically used to make sure the player couldnt see the previous section so it could be unloaded.
Or for a game like Far Cry instincts you basically had a map made out of 64x64 meter patches and the designer had to manually define which patches would be loaded/visible from the patch the player was in.
Dr.Morris79
Gold Member
So wouldnt that be 1% correct, 99% full of shit?
Wolzard
Member
A bit emotional, but he's right about some points.
But I wouldn't elevate Digital Foundry to the point of changing the industry as he claims, even though they have created a legion of graphics whores. The bottom line is that to me, Digital Foundry is an entertainment channel. It's cool to see how a game is running or what technologies they're using, but I don't use them as a benchmark for anything. It's like Linus Tech Tips, where they talk a lot of nonsense about hardware, but it's fun to watch.
Now, one point that I find annoying is the cult of celebrity. DF is not an authority, but is treated as one by many and criticism of them is attacked or censored. Another point is that you can't talk badly about developers.
But I wouldn't elevate Digital Foundry to the point of changing the industry as he claims, even though they have created a legion of graphics whores. The bottom line is that to me, Digital Foundry is an entertainment channel. It's cool to see how a game is running or what technologies they're using, but I don't use them as a benchmark for anything. It's like Linus Tech Tips, where they talk a lot of nonsense about hardware, but it's fun to watch.
Now, one point that I find annoying is the cult of celebrity. DF is not an authority, but is treated as one by many and criticism of them is attacked or censored. Another point is that you can't talk badly about developers.
This dude badly wants attention from DF, it's like "notice me senpai!"
He is right that UE5 is a dogshit engine but his video on Alan Wake 2 was trying too hard. He's now bordering between being a content creator going for ragebait clicks and making legit criticism. Remedy has always pushed visual tech even if there had to be compromises and he is pandering to his fanbase of GTX 1060 users who are upset they can't max out new games.
He is right that UE5 is a dogshit engine but his video on Alan Wake 2 was trying too hard. He's now bordering between being a content creator going for ragebait clicks and making legit criticism. Remedy has always pushed visual tech even if there had to be compromises and he is pandering to his fanbase of GTX 1060 users who are upset they can't max out new games.
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DirtInUrEye
Member
Shallow Americans.
You leave my Wichard alone, he's a legend.
Although I do think DF have generally gone a bit downhill since their earlier years, when they used to do really granular comparisons between the console and PC versions of all new releases. I used to find those old analysis vids quite useful.
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Durin
Member
A bit dramatic, but there is plenty of criticism to go around with bad trends in video game graphics evolution.
So much of the pipeline being built around temporal aa and upscaling solutions that have motion artifacts and blurred out detail. You have games with static environments that don't even make use of the benefits of dynamic ray-traced lighting solutions, bad denoising that can make some games look worse than baked lighting, and enough examples of bad implementations yielding poor frame-pacing.
I usually just go to Digital Foundry for general performance and benchmarking, they only have so much understanding of how game engine's work, but at least the consensus is UE5 continues to have consistent performance issues derived from their solutions like lumen, nanite, etc.
So much of the pipeline being built around temporal aa and upscaling solutions that have motion artifacts and blurred out detail. You have games with static environments that don't even make use of the benefits of dynamic ray-traced lighting solutions, bad denoising that can make some games look worse than baked lighting, and enough examples of bad implementations yielding poor frame-pacing.
I usually just go to Digital Foundry for general performance and benchmarking, they only have so much understanding of how game engine's work, but at least the consensus is UE5 continues to have consistent performance issues derived from their solutions like lumen, nanite, etc.
Wildebeest
Member
Graphics are so good these days that you need a whole industry of people to explain if they are actually good or not. Then you need a whole industry on top of that to explain what percentage of the commentary from those sources is full of shit.
Guilty_AI
Member
Yes, and many modern devs don't seem to bother doing even this level of optimization. This is actually something this TI guy has talked about before, though not specifically with BSPs, like one scene where many devs would leave the engine rendering multiple shadows that weren't visible by the player, or applying fully dynamic lights in places that couldn't even be reached by the player or any object.
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Kronark
Member
I think the TI guy is right about a lot that he's calling out. There's an incredible focus on minor visual quality features while basics like performance and visual clarity are thrown out the window. Ray tracing can look good in side by side comparison but I have never once missed it when it's not there, tanking the fps to 30 while image quality is fuzzy is noticeable every time. With that said... I don't like the hero complex the TI guy has... There's a way to call these issues and people out without also declaring yourself to be the Jesus Christ of game engines.
I think a lot of the problem stems from artists and engine devs not being game experience / final product focused, and to some degree from artists not being technical. I've worked with a lot of these types of people who will crank a slider from 4x to 16x on the backend and increase render time from minutes to hours for a difference you can't even notice. Then someone has to come in retroactively and try and play detective for why the hell we're burning 3 hours a frame in render time when we could be spending minutes. The focus is 100% on hitting some visual goal or achievement for them personally. The guy programming the smoke visual effect wants his smoke to look amazing. He doesn't give a shit that the game is going to now require DLSS to make it to market because that wasn't his job. I blame incompetent production managers and game directors for letting this shit slide honestly. The artists are always going to try to make the best art, but it's on good leads to reign them back in when they go too far. It feels like everyone has just gotten lazy about DLSS being a quick fix at a late stage of production when specs could have been wrangled early on.
Also to anyone in this thread defending Remedy and Alan Wake 2 technically. Please stop. I love the game and it's a masterpiece... but it ran like shit.
Edit: Also is there any good resource debunking what the TI guy is saying technically? Every thing just seems to be "I'm a big experienced game dev guy and I say he's wrong" which for me carries all the energy of a redditor who got fired saying they were the perfect employee.
I think a lot of the problem stems from artists and engine devs not being game experience / final product focused, and to some degree from artists not being technical. I've worked with a lot of these types of people who will crank a slider from 4x to 16x on the backend and increase render time from minutes to hours for a difference you can't even notice. Then someone has to come in retroactively and try and play detective for why the hell we're burning 3 hours a frame in render time when we could be spending minutes. The focus is 100% on hitting some visual goal or achievement for them personally. The guy programming the smoke visual effect wants his smoke to look amazing. He doesn't give a shit that the game is going to now require DLSS to make it to market because that wasn't his job. I blame incompetent production managers and game directors for letting this shit slide honestly. The artists are always going to try to make the best art, but it's on good leads to reign them back in when they go too far. It feels like everyone has just gotten lazy about DLSS being a quick fix at a late stage of production when specs could have been wrangled early on.
Also to anyone in this thread defending Remedy and Alan Wake 2 technically. Please stop. I love the game and it's a masterpiece... but it ran like shit.
Edit: Also is there any good resource debunking what the TI guy is saying technically? Every thing just seems to be "I'm a big experienced game dev guy and I say he's wrong" which for me carries all the energy of a redditor who got fired saying they were the perfect employee.
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Buggy Loop
Member
No words where he's wrong? There's plenty of videos that debunked him, a ton of UE devs on UE forums/Level1techs that debunked him, he's considered a clown mostly.
He fake copyright strikes the videos debunking him, which is illegal by the way.
And that's not at all how the youtube copyright takedown works
Otherwise almost all the videos of drama on youtube would be taken down.
Does fake copyright takedowns inspire confidence with this guy?
In fact the "fanbase" almost melted away after all this and critized the hell out of him in Discord... to the point they had to close their discord server...
He blocks channels that challenge him, he deletes comments critical of his claims because they can't handle being proven wrong. Fuck TAA subreddit has come hijacked by this clown and many peoples are pissed. He turned it into a TI echo chamber. Blocking serious critics while allowing toxic responses.
Not that he doesn't have a kernel of truth but that he's not particularly knowledgeable in comparison to serious youtube graphic engine help or tutorials nor even average dev forum discussion. He's not going into details of how he's doing things, like show a demo with bad fps, an absolute deluge of jargon thrown out with very little explanation of relevance and bam higher fps? Do peoples understand that almost anyone can bullshit their way with this?
He even lied in his video for nanite. Long read, by an actual dev.
Remedy rendering engineer was very nice in his reply considering this little punk called his game
- unoptimized
- over complicated
- blurry
- noisy
- basic visuals (LOL?)
So you see? TI guy is barking at the wrong tree.
Imagine if he ever makes his UE5 branch project a reality. Then somehow (i doubt) a huge team of hundreds of peoples use his engine branch and fuck things up along the way. Be it documentation, lack of knowledge, budget, feature cuts, etc. Things that happen in a videogame developement basically. Is HE gonna be responsible for the shitshow? Do you think this is the type of person that can take the blame? Of course not.
He's never made a game, never had a huge team working on a project with so many failure points. Would he own it up to be responsible for the output of hundreds of peoples putting their fingers into what's gonna be presented on screen once they use his engine branch? We all know the answer to that.
So Remedy was professional in all this. Kudos to him.
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Kronark
Member
So you see? TI guy is barking at the wrong tree.
Imagine if he ever makes his UE5 branch project a reality. Then somehow (i doubt) a huge team of hundreds of peoples use his engine branch and fuck things up along the way. Be it documentation, lack of knowledge, budget, feature cuts, etc. Things that happen in a videogame developement basically. Is HE gonna be responsible for the shitshow? Do you think this is the type of person that can take the blame? Of course not.
He's never made a game, never had a huge team working on a project with so many failure points. Would he own it up to be responsible for the output of hundreds of peoples putting their fingers into what's gonna be presented on screen once they use his engine branch? We all know the answer to that.
So Remedy was professional in all this. Kudos to him.
All the Remedy guy seemed to admit was yeah our engine is an unoptimized pile of shit but it's because of production issues. That's probably true but likely a by product of the industry steering itself into these titanic overly complicated 7 year dev cycles so that every blade of grass has a 4k texture applied. If it takes 7 years to make your game it probably takes a few years to remake parts of it to be optimized, so they just pass on doing it.
I fail to see how any of this makes the TI guy wrong about the tech issues he's calling out about specific costly engine features being un-necessary bloat.
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Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Threat Interactive?
Until I see reciets from him(not them, him).
Shut the fuck up DF isnt gonna respond because its not even worth the time.
Until I see reciets from him(not them, him).
Shut the fuck up DF isnt gonna respond because its not even worth the time.
Unknown Soldier
Member
They have a Patreon or whatever, you can pay for DF
Buggy Loop
Member
Also even Fuck TAA subreddit does not even want to be affiliated with this dude, he even got banned there
While you can see in that list of developers or peoples who contacted Fuck TAA subreddit for legit information, Alex from DF is actually part of the examples where he asked the subreddit ideas for the videos of TAA Blessing or curse.
Fuck TAA subreddit as much as that name can sound aggressive, they want the option of choice and approach this topic in a positive manner. The exact opposite of TI.
While you can see in that list of developers or peoples who contacted Fuck TAA subreddit for legit information, Alex from DF is actually part of the examples where he asked the subreddit ideas for the videos of TAA Blessing or curse.
Fuck TAA subreddit as much as that name can sound aggressive, they want the option of choice and approach this topic in a positive manner. The exact opposite of TI.
fart town usa
Member
I'm genuinely interested in what this guy has to say but he's talking way too fast.
I'm also painfully ignorant on this kind of tech so it's all flying over my head.
I'm also painfully ignorant on this kind of tech so it's all flying over my head.
Jigsaah
Gold Member
So true. I'm out of my element here as well. That's why I like reading what other folks say who may know more about this. It comes off really pompous and ultimately....not helpful.
No words where he's wrong? There's plenty of videos that debunked him, a ton of UE devs on UE forums/Level1techs that debunked him, he's considered a clown mostly.
He fake copyright strikes the videos debunking him, which is illegal by the way.
And that's not at all how the youtube copyright takedown works
Otherwise almost all the videos of drama on youtube would be taken down.
Does fake copyright takedowns inspire confidence with this guy?
In fact the "fanbase" almost melted away after all this and critized the hell out of him in Discord... to the point they had to close their discord server...
He blocks channels that challenge him, he deletes comments critical of his claims because they can't handle being proven wrong. Fuck TAA subreddit has come hijacked by this clown and many peoples are pissed. He turned it into a TI echo chamber. Blocking serious critics while allowing toxic responses.
Not that he doesn't have a kernel of truth but that he's not particularly knowledgeable in comparison to serious youtube graphic engine help or tutorials nor even average dev forum discussion. He's not going into details of how he's doing things, like show a demo with bad fps, an absolute deluge of jargon thrown out with very little explanation of relevance and bam higher fps? Do peoples understand that almost anyone can bullshit their way with this?
He even lied in his video for nanite. Long read, by an actual dev.
Remedy rendering engineer was very nice in his reply considering this little punk called his game
When it is widely seen as the best looking game of 2024.
- unoptimized
- over complicated
- blurry
- noisy
- basic visuals (LOL?)
So you see? TI guy is barking at the wrong tree.
Imagine if he ever makes his UE5 branch project a reality. Then somehow (i doubt) a huge team of hundreds of peoples use his engine branch and fuck things up along the way. Be it documentation, lack of knowledge, budget, feature cuts, etc. Things that happen in a videogame developement basically. Is HE gonna be responsible for the shitshow? Do you think this is the type of person that can take the blame? Of course not.
He's never made a game, never had a huge team working on a project with so many failure points. Would he own it up to be responsible for the output of hundreds of peoples putting their fingers into what's gonna be presented on screen once they use his engine branch? We all know the answer to that.
So Remedy was professional in all this. Kudos to him.
widely seen by who? i remember when the game launched a lot of players complained that the game was too heavy for what it was offering in graphics, there was even people comparing it with RE2 remake showing how that game was very light and still beautiful, all i saw was people in industry give pat on the back and compliment each other
the guy from remedy seems to try very badly to put the blame on "pressure" and "capitalism" but we have even stylish indie games self published badly optimized like sommervile, there clearly something wrong with the devs and they are trying desperately to maintain the status quo
ScHlAuChi
Member
There is a good reason why modern devs cant do this level of optimizations:
- Games have become much much larger, the amout of developers, content and assets needed for a modern game is like 100x larger than back then.
TI wants highly optimized games, and calls developers incompetent, but lacks any sort of understanding of what modern dev reality is.
- Asset quality and complexity is much higher, manual optimization has become simple impossible.
How do you optimize Quixel assets with tens of millions of polygons? Do it by hand?
How do you optimize an openworld map with hundreds of thousands of lights? Do it by hand?
TI basically suggests using a knive to open a can - as its cleaner than using a can opener machine that makes rougher edges.
Sure, this works when you have 1000 cans to open, it might work fine, but when you have 1 million cans to open, the knive solution is simply impractical!
The result would be even longer dev cycles.
- Making a modern game the "old way" with baked lighting is pretty much impossible from a productivity standpoint as it takes way too long.
Any oldschool dev can tell you that baked lighting drives you insane, as whenever you move a light or an asset, you have to redo it.
Not a big problem when your game is only made out of small rooms, but on the larger scale like openworld games, this creates so much downtime that it becomes unproductive.
- Modern tech is way better than the old tech.
TI might hate Unreal, but thats because he doesnt understand how modern games are made, nor understands the tech behind it.
Nanite and MegaLights work well when used correctly in scenarios they were made for. His examples are bad examples.
Raytraycing is also used for much more than just pretty graphics, it´s also used for Audio, AI, Culling etc.
- Developers arent getting paid to optimize, they get paid to produce content.
TI doesnt seem to understand that it isnt developers that call the shots, its the publishers.
A developer executes what the publisher demands them to do. The publisher has the money, they pay you!
As a dev you do what they say - end of story! If you dont, you lose your job or they close the studio!
His angry rants against devs wont change that, unless he is the one ponying up the cash!
TLDR version:
TI offers seemingly simple solutions that fall apart pretty fast once you look at it in detail and are completely impractical on the large scale.
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Buggy Loop
Member
Do you understand the difference between making an engine and a team of hundreds using it to make a game with time and budget constraints?
You can take any games released in the past 15 years and find things to criticize.
He's also wrong about almost all tech issues he's barking about in UE5. Check the reddit dev reply in my post. Read it if you have to.
Devs have called him out but he fake copyright claims them multiple times.
Of course when you're alone, in your mom's basement and the customer is you and you only, you can optimize the fuck out of your little code all you want. You'll be a genius coder for the biggest customer, you.
But until you have hundreds of peoples working years on the basis of the quality of your code, you really have no ground to stand on to piss on peoples who went through this.
Remedy dev puts it on the table, nobody in a rendering team is making things to shit up performances.
TI criticized a lot Alan wake 2 for the non path tracing fallback, which is irrelevant. Remedy was trying to maximise visual fidelity FOR path tracing, their deal is with Epic on PC first. Remedy had to make a lot of sub-optimal decisions for the raster fallbacks on consoles. Expecting game devs to optimize for every possible graphic settings and still push fidelity is an almost impossible task. He doesn't understand this because he's never had to deal with this. He wants games to run on his 1060 and rages at anything with a ray bounce.
Alan wake 2 is still the best looking game of 2024 and is quite optimized for the fidelity of the graphics, geometry, instant scenery change and various tricks for the dark world AND path tracing. Do I have to remind peoples what visual fidelity we had for path tracing in games just a few years ago?
Nothing here is in the scale of downloading a megalight demo and tweaking settings in an engine made for public. You can even go and do that yourself.
The TI dude even has alts to reply to his own videos
And he keeps talking in third person.
Who's to say his youtube fanbase is even real at this point. You can even fake that.
I mean if you want to have this dude the saviour of graphics, by all means..
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