If you have concrete evidence they directly paid money to DF for positive coverage and DF didn’t disclose it as a sponsorship deal then you should report it, either anonymously or not, as that would be a breach of EU law and can lead to extremely harsh financial fines or even jail time.
I guess I should rephrase to what the term was actually used, recruited DF to make them "pro Xbox" and "influence positive affinity"
If that was the flying them over to Seattle for showing off the hardware video then it sure did create hype, but it failed to influence the results of launch face offs. The first wave of comparison videos from DF for this gen were absolutely brutal towards the XSX. People on twitter were accusing DF of being Sony shills because of the results.
There was a deal in place at one time to give DF exclusive access to the Xbox hardware for the reveals for said positive affinity
Well using a paint package and processing the two images. First doing A-B (then a high pass filter) produces mostly residue of a blocky head suggesting to me that image B has less smooth detail pixels that are brighter in all but this region, hence why it didn't remove that residue and leave it smooth.At this point, you are being wilfully ignorant. They both use 1080p with a 100% FSR scale. PS5 does not use any better post-processing so the burden on both machines is the same. Doesn't matter if PS5 is oversharpened. It makes no difference to the performance which is what matters.
Which one is better?
you do realize Mark Cerny himself gave Richard a direct interview BEFORE the PS5 road to the show. DF had the tflops number ready at exactly 12PM the moment the road to show presentation went live. that means they saw the saw presentation before hand and then were given access to cerny himself.
It's simple. It was about the IQ of PS5's Performance Mode vs. the other modes and PC. OP took issue with DF's methodology because apparently, the IQ on PS5 is "higher" when they're using the same resolution and FSR pass. There is thus no performance differential brought about by the much more aggressive filter in the PS5 version. To drive the point home, I showed the Balance vs Performance mode because it would appear that the Balance Mode has a higher IQ when they're using the exact same settings and resolution. Performance is just a lot more aggressive with the sharpening. The "softer" IQ of performance mode is closer in quality to the PC version.
Interview vs being flown out and given footage to use.
DF is flown out all the time. No one goes out to these preview events on their own dime. its an all expense paid trip. they did the same with the PS4 Pro. Richard was literally there at the reveal event.
You are saying absolutely nothing that refutes my original statement:
You're shitting me. They were excusing that thing with OS features. Just watch this first ever comparison where they ignored the broken/lower setting raytracing on xbox and higher gameplay fps on PS5 to harp on about the 60hz OS setting from 13:00 onwards
Sorry, I don't follow which image was which. What platform and settings was image A and what platform and settings was image B?
Image A: PS5, Balance (not Balanced) Mode
I am pointing out the flaw in your argument. If its industry standard that everyone is flown out and given early access then everyone is no longer neutral. Richard was flown out by Sony for the Pro so he's no longer a neutral source? Mark Cerny was given an exclusive interview by Cerny before the PS5 reveal so he's not a neutral source? Makes no sense.
There were missing reflections. The PS5 version wasn't badly adjusted for the system they were not referring to VRR either they were talking about forcing 60hz. I just find it funny that you think they were brutal to the xbox when they were concentrating on these inconsequential things as xbox advantages. They turned higher PS5 benchmarks into xbox experience and how it's 'jarring' on PS5.
4800S. They wanted to match the PS5 as closely as possible, but yeah, the 4800S has problems of its own.
Ah okay, well I went back and took a small look at some of the footage between PS5 balance and PC( particular shot at 6:03-6:04) and they aren't a match at all with balance mode. The PC fog cheaply fills the view volume to saturation much faster on PC, and this is after the the foreground characters look blurry/fuzzy in the cinematic on PC, both aspects that are a big performance cheat.
Where do you see the missing reflections? This is the first I’m hearing of this. I recall Callisto Protocol and Ghostwire having worse reflections on XSX but nothing about DMCV. The only other thing I recall was that the XSX was not going to have RT ready for DMCV launch, but it actually did have the RT mode after all. It skipped XSS.
I don't see the difference between "DF were brutal" and "comparison videos from DF were brutal". This is what you said:
They were not.
I didn’t even mention Sony in my initial post.
If you don't see the huge difference between the picture quality then it might be time for new glasses. RX 6700 looks so blurry compared to the PS5. You can't really make out much detail on the big guy's face on the RX 6700, specially in that bottom pic.
Is that some major difference to you?
The PS5 enjoying a 20%+ performance lead against the XSX is absolutely a brutal result from DF. I’m referring to the performance results, which is the only thing that really matters.
www.eurogamer.net
It’s a sharpening filter. Static 1080p image has been confirmed by both DF and IGN/NXGamer. So has the fact that PS5 is using a mix of high/medium (but mostly high) settings. Crank the sharpness filter up on PC and you’d get the same resolve. What’s likely happening (and I’ll test this later) is that FSR2 at 100% disables the sharpening pass, as it’s likely coupled to the upscaler. 100% means no upscaling, hence no sharpening.
The actual empirical result is different from DF comparison videos being brutal and it's the latter that determines bias. When you downplay those results and concentrate on something else.
There are pictures of it you can search online for. It's mostly in puddle reflections in specific spots. Control had similar issues too because of some DXR quirks in its infancy.
At the end of the day results are the only thing that matters to me. I suppose I could go over every sentence and make sure that my platform of choice gets the appropriate amount of praise, but I don’t really care. As for the RT being different, I can find zero evidence for DMCV having missing reflections. So no wonder DF didn’t mention it, because the difference doesn’t exist. If you find it, let me know.
As shown by the static PS5 images of balance and performance mode that Gaiff presented without labels and I analysed correctly,. even things that look the same on the face of things might not be as identical as you think to get a true resolve.
“Pushing the narrative”, you think they are doing this and thus you view everything they do with a lens of suspicion. What seems like a perfectly innocent phrase turns into a solid indictment against them with that mindset.
Those images that Gaiff posted do not look the same. The underlying settings are identical, the only difference being that performance mode has frame generation applied as well as the sharpening filter cranked up to max, which leads to textures and fine detail starting to look crunchy. It also causes heavy artifacts and pixel breakup in motion, but you can not see that from a still image.
You seem to think the world is very black and white but any EU official would have a hard time connecting a previous "unrelated" payment like the Press Reset documentary to bias in any future reporting and it simply isn't worth the cost of litigation when it's not clear cut and would result in a loss.
www.eurogamer.net
Biased against who? Sony? They just released an article calling astro bot "Virtually flawless" and a "Joyous celebration of gaming".
Astro Bot is virtually flawless and a joyous celebration of gaming
Team Asobi's PS5 masterpiece gets the Digital Foundry review treatment.www.eurogamer.net
Individual members of DF all lean one way or another. I never understood the "they're biased towards MS and against Sony". The problem i have with them is they have always been too afraid to criticize all devs and publishers. They don't want to bite the hands that feed them. It's an integrity issue.
Ironically, the one person that DOES criticize companies is Alex, who is also the one guy there who is obviously truly biased towards PC. He's the most smug and constantluly looking to show hpw superior PC is compared to console. Which is true and I didn"t have a problem with him until he started poo pooing the need for a PS5 Pro. As a console gamer I desperately want mid gen updates because I know how badly we need them to keep up with the PC ...higher resolution, better RT, and a better upscaling solution would do wonders in many of the games that have come out.
So I was respecting him for having a backbone until he started campaigning against the Pro which doesn't jive with his own observations as to where console is weak compared to PC ...i also can't stand his smirking and delighting over PC/console comparisons- call me insecure but its obvious in his demeanor.
John, Oliver, and the other Brit need to grow a pair and push back against devs when they do a crappy job of optomizing/not including HDR/broken hdr/shitty FSR etc aThey've been remarkably consistent in their wishy washy attitudes. They must get nice perks at their jobs is all i can say. They'll praise when somethings good. They'll mention something bad but they never take these devs to task.
