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Digital Foundry: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 PS5: Fidelity vs Performance Mode Comparison - Which Mode Works Best?

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Be warned of spoilers.






Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has finally arrived, with Insomniac Games pushing its technology to the next level. Once again, Fidelity and Performance Modes are on offer, but which works best for you and what are the actual differences beyond the basic frame-rate numbers? Fidelity 30fps/40fps, Performance 60fps and all VRR modes are covered in this detailed breakdown.


00:00 Overview
00:57 Performance mode and fidelity mode visual differences
05:20 Spider-Man Remastered settings comparisons
06:40 Image quality and resolution
08:33 Performance
11:27 Analysis and conclusion
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
- Two visual modes, Performance and Fidelity. Both have RT. Look similar at a glance but clearly evident differences when examined.
- Performance mode lacks extra clarity of RT reflections and coverage of Quality (in some tested instances RT is swapped by cube maps)
- Variety of metallic surfaces lack RT reflections in Performance mode during game play.
- Car windows get low resolution cube maps in Performance. In Fidelity mode, these are reflected with RT.
- RT is retained in windows, glossay and water surfaces in Performance mode, however.
- DF's basic impression / conclusion: Perf. mode is perfectly reasonable but drops many transparency reflections.
- Foliage is less denser, grass LoD is lower and civilian densnity is lowered in Performance mode.
- Shadow quality and character hair strand also lowered in Performance mode.

- Spider Man 2's Performance mode RT is resolving better and higher detail compared to Spider Man 1's Performance RT
- In general settings split is similar to Spider Man 1's Performance RT vs Quality mode though SM2 takes more of a hit by comparison.

- Performance mode: 1008p to1440p using Temporal injection
- Fidelity mode: 1440p to 2160p reconstructed to 4K using TI.
- Fidelity mode has a clear edge, particularly obvious in long range details.

-120h Modifier:
- Fidelity w/ 40hz mode drops typical resolution to 1440p
- VRR unlocked can drop resolutions further since it runs unlocked.
- Performance mode can drop to 900p

- Performance mode: Mostly maintains and hits 60 FPS with some drops in alpha heavy areas.
- Traversal related single drops also seen.
- Fidelity mode is 30 FPS with slight stutter at camera cuts and 1 off drops in traversal.

- Fidelity 40hz can drop more frames in stress moments of game play here.
- VRR Smooth caps the frame rate, VRR uncapped unlocks it.
- VRR unlocked Fidelity: 40 to 60 FPS
- VRR unlocked Performance: 60 to 80 FPS
- Fluctuations in frame rate can be noticeable like other VRR uncapped games

- DF conclusion:
- Visual difference between Performance and Quality is higher than Insomniac's previous games
- Oliver's personal preference is Performance mode
- 40hz Fidelity mode strikes a good middle ground with smoother performance while retaining higher visual fidelity.
 
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Ronin_7

Member
- Two visual modes, Performance and Fidelity. Both have RT. Look similar at a glance but clearly evident differences when examined.
- Performance mode lacks extra clarity of RT reflections and coverage of Quality (in some tested instances RT is swapped by cube maps)
- Variety of metallic surfaces lack RT reflections in Performance mode during game play.
- Car windows get low resolution cube maps in Performance. In Fidelity mode, these are reflected with RT.
- RT is retained in windows, glossay and water surfaces.
- DF's basic impression / conclusion: Perf. mode is perfectly reasonable but drops many transparency reflections.
- Foliage is less denser, grass LoD is lower and civilian densnity is lowered in Performance mode.
- Shadow quality and character hair strand also lowered in Performance mode.

- Spider Man 2's Performance mode RT is resolving better and higher detail compared to Spider Man 1's Performance RT
- In general settings split is similar to Spider Man 1's Performance RT vs Quality mode though SM2 takes more of a hit by comparison.

- Performance mode: 1008p to1440p using Temporal injection
- Fidelity mode: 1440p to 2160p reconstructed to 4K using TI.
- Fidelity mode has a clear edge, particularly obvious in long range details.

-120h Modifier:
- Fidelity w/ 40hz mode drops typical resolution to 1440p
- Performance mode can drop to 900p
- VRR unlocked can drop resolutions further since it runs unlocked.

- Performance mode: Mostly maintains and hits 60 FPS with some drops in alpha heavy areas.
- Traversal related single drops also seen.
- Fidelity mode is 30 FPS with slight stutter at camera cuts and 1 off drops in traversal.

- Fidelity 40hz can drop more frames in stress moments of game play here.
- VRR Smooth caps the frame rate, VRR uncapped unlocks it.
- VRR unlocked Fidelity: 40 to 60 FPS
- VRR unlocked Performance: 60 to 80 FPS
- Fluctuations in frame rate can be noticeable like other VRR uncapped games

- DF conclusion:
- Visual difference between Performance and Quality is higher than Insomniac's previous games
- Oliver's personal preference is Performance mode
- 40hz Fidelity mode strikes a good middle ground with smoother performance while retaining higher visual fidelity.
Not all heroes wear capes.
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Performance mode looks like shit. Don't need these too soft to criticize anything shills to tell me anything else.
At least based on that video, there's tons of aliasing and flickering, especially on distant or fine objects such as wires and fences. Every time Oliver zooms in even mildly, the Performance Mode flickers like crazy. Fidelity Mode also does but to a much lesser extent. I hope it isn't noticeable at normal viewing distances.
 
At least based on that video, there's tons of aliasing and flickering, especially on distant or fine objects such as wires and fences. Every time Oliver zooms in even mildly, the Performance Mode flickers like crazy. Fidelity Mode also does but to a much lesser extent. I hope it isn't noticeable at normal viewing distances.
Not noticing any of that playing on a 1080p monitor.
 

Represent.

Represent(ative) of bad opinions
At least based on that video, there's tons of aliasing and flickering, especially on distant or fine objects such as wires and fences. Every time Oliver zooms in even mildly, the Performance Mode flickers like crazy. Fidelity Mode also does but to a much lesser extent. I hope it isn't noticeable at normal viewing distances.
It’s even more noticeable when playing. I’m on a 65” OLED and it’s night and day
 

Luck

Member
I keep saying... RT is useless in these machines. Why make such a big compromise to the IQ for that...
Bullshit. I love Insomaniac's RT in 60 fps. Good choice to use it instead of another crappy cube maps or screen space reflections. And the game still looks great.
 
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Bullshit. I love Insomaniac's RT in 60 fps. Good choice to use it instead of another crappy cube maps or screen space reflections. And the game still looks great.
Its great for buildings and I wouldn't want them to get rid of it.

Add another Performance Mode where RT is disabled in favor of higher LOD and object density, sure, but I still want Performance RT.
 
What's lacking here is the usual resolution in both 30fps and 60fps modes. Why not saying anything about it? For the 40fps mode they have no problem saying the resolution is often at 1440p, what about the others modes? Why they don't want to say resolution is usually at the highest range?

They do say the resolution usually drops when GPU bound by alphas, which I had suspected.
 
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Ev1L AuRoN

Member
I'm quite happy with PERFORMANCE mode, in these comparisons yeah you can clearly see the difference but playing I struggle to notice any difference playing on a 65'' TV at a reasonable distance. 40fps the great for purists, but IMHO smoothness beats everything.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Exactly. It's shite. Next gen will probably be ready for proper raytracing, I think this gen should stick to maximizing rasterization. Look how incredible Forbidden West looks.
I cannot go back to Spider-man without ray-traced reflections. It just looks wrong when you have all these reflective surfaces sometimes in quite confined (relatively speaking) areas and what you see reflected in them is just plainly incorrect: like a road when behind you there is a building (cube maps for reflections have their limits). It is incredibly immersion breaking once you see what RT reflections bring.

The quality of the visuals, resolution, and framerate in the 40 FPS RT mode are just *chef kiss* 😙.
 
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ChiefDada

Gold Member
That DoF tho...

TE8zpFv.jpg
 

saintjules

Gold Member
Pretty divisive here. I was preferring 60fps initially, but after playing and my eyes adjusting to 40fps, it seems that will be how I play the game. Fidelity mode capped.
 
Played around with both settings a few days ago and I settled on Fidelity, mainly because the shadows in Performance aren't up to snuff (generally lower quality or outright missing).

Also noticed some missing ray traced reflections in Performance but that was less of a factor into why I chose Fidelity.
 
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DryvBy

Gold Member
The difference between fidelity 120hz auto on and off.

FLgsGvg.jpg
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I personally do not care for the 120hz mode because it gives a small soap opera effect that doesn't sit right with me.
 

proandrad

Member
I always go for performance, but the unlocked 40fps mode is amazing. If we could get this level of performance and smoothness in video games I would have no issues with devs dropping high framerate games to push visuals.
 

DanielG165

Member
I wanna squeeze every last ounce of performance out of the PS5, but after playing SM1 on PC at 60fps, I can’t go back to 30fps with a game like this, and I don’t have a VRR capable TV. Performance mode it is for now.
 
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