DF: Black Myth: Wukong PS5 Tech Review (Excellent Visuals, But Too Many Tech Problems)

[ethomaz]

It's clear that Game Science has poured a lot of time and expertise into making a high-quality game, so I hope that these performance issues can be ironed out. My impression is that this is a PC-first release from developers that don't have a lot of experience developing for PS5, because a lot of the conventions and concessions that console games typically use just aren't here. Using UE5 probably does make achieving a good balance between performance and image quality more difficult, but there is certainly low-hanging fruit here that could substantially improve the experience in the here and now while more thorny issues are solved.

Black Myth: Wukong on PS5 is fetching, flawed but fixable

Black Myth: Wukong - testing the PS5 version vs PC, plus an analysis of the three modes: performance, balance and quality. Digital Foundry investigates.

www.eurogamer.net

For these missing him... Adam's summary.

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- "One of the strangest game technically"

- 3 modes: Performance, Quality, Balance
- Outside of resolution, not much difference other than shadow cascades
- Lumen GI looks a bit more refined in Quality

- Game leans a lot on FSR

- Quality, DRS 1296p to 1584p. Uses FSR image up-scaling
- Doesn't look bad in stills but quite bad in motion
- Aliasing in motion not handled well, alpha textures like fur are 'a mess'
- Post processing has dithering that doesn't look good

- Balance mode is mostly the same but runs at 1080p

- Performance mode has added sharpening applied to the image
- Also runs at 1080p with possible DRS, but sharpening makes the image quality look very 'fried'
- Performance mode also uses frame generation with lots of visible artifacts
- Seems to be using frame generation / interpolation from 30 to 60 just for Performance mode

- Performance mode mostly achieves 60 FPS in traversal, with minor traversal stuttering
- But during combat, it drops frames to 40's, for one tested boss fight, frame gen is dropped in Performance mode and it runs at a consistent 40~ fps
- Latency is a big issue. Input response of a 30 FPS game with a frame-gen image of a 60.

- Balanced mode has better input latency
- Minor traversal stutter, targets 45 FPS

- Quality mode has 'the worst 30 fps cap' Oliver has ever seen, if it's meant to be a cap.
- Hovers between 31 and 36 FPS with 38 seen the highest
- It can also dip to 20's during combat

- The game does not have 120hz or native VRR support, only the forced system level one
- Quality and Balance mode do not benefit as they are both below the PS5's 48hz VRR cap

- The final stretch of the video is comparing the game with PC to show all the things PC does at max that are missing on the console.
- eg particles, lower texture quality, geometry pop-in, lighting differences, lack of VSM, shadow quality

- DF's conclusion is that they think the game has a long patching path forward, and that this is clearly a PC-first project.
- The games facial animations in all the cut-scenes are mo-capped for chinese audio
- The game's black colors are never truly black and there is no HDR support

 

[Say1nMan]

Yeah, holding off on this until the PS5 pro.

 

[Gediminas]

so many problems that visuals are excellent

 

[ethomaz]

To be fair UE5 is indeed still infant in performance side.
Plus this case is using Nanite and Lumen where not even Epic has a solution to run it via hardware at 60fps.

 

[ethomaz]

In resume...

30fps with framepace issues.
45fps mode in a 60Hz container... anything can save this "nightmare".
60fps that drops to 40fps outside VRR range.

PS. To give a bit more context... the 40fps modes in others Sony games uses the 120Hz container because 40 is a integer fraction of 120 (3)... so you don't have issues here... now with 45fps mode in a 60Hz container nothing can save this mode... you will have judder all the time.

 

[ethomaz]

Added Adam's summary.

 

[CrackmanNL]

Feel less FOMO waiting on the physical, I expected patches, makes me feel like they waited on purpose for the disc release.

Wouldn't call uncapped or weirdly capped modes necessarily tech issues, neither the sharpening slider and HDR missing on both versions but rather odd design choice issues. Could'v benefited from some XDev support

Speaking of odd, comparing it with max PC and coming to the conclusion the shadows looks sharper while ray-traced on the 4090 is curious indeed, what are we doing here.

This title will definitely be a interesting testbed on what PS5 Pro out of the box wo patches will mean in upgrades.

 

[Gediminas]

people playing and have little to non issues.

 

[saltyashell]

Now just imagine how bad it’s gonna look on series S

 

[Shmunter]

Pro, when?

Spencer alluding to Sony monyhatting this off Xbox. Can’t help the deals made by others, lol.

He just defies the realities of the S being a fucking anchor.

 

[quest4441]

I agree there are issues with the PS 5 port but which UE 5 game doesn't? But having that weirdo alex do this review is sketchy as fuck, he is one of those PCMR guys and that particularly has a hate boner for this one due to the pedoera influence. Having John do the review on this one would have been the better choice

 

[anonpuffs]

Not too surprised tbh. The game is extremely heavy. I'm surprised they didn't just lower the settings for performance mode though, I can get excellent performance by turning down settings even without framegen, it's hard to think PS5 hardware can't achieve locked 60 on a mix of low/med. Maybe it's the 4k res, but they should just have half res/1080p with FSR upscaled to 4k if that's the case. The FSR implementation of this game is quite decent at hiding FSR's normal weaknesses with shimmering, although the motion clarity is bad when panning the camera due to TAA, it's not that distracting considering you can cover it a little with motion blur.

 

[ethomaz]

Pro, when?

Spencer alluding to Sony monyhatting this off Xbox. Can’t help the deals made by others, lol.

He just defies the realities of the S being a fucking anchor.

I don't think these issues even require Pro to be fixed.

Looks more like lack of knowledge or time to just to good modes.
How they setup it is atrocious and makes no sense at all.

 

[ethomaz]

Ohhh I forgot to say... man there are a lot of wrong in this modes.

The 60fps mode (the performance one) is not 60fps... it is 30fps with frame generation to try to reach 60fps lol
You have higher latency because the render is 30fps and tons of artifacts due FG.

 

[Shmunter]

Ohhh I forgot to say... man there are a lot of wrong in this modes.

The 60fps mode (the performance one) is not 60fps... it is 30fps with frame generation to try to reach 60fps lol
You have higher latency because the render is 30fps and tons of artifacts due FG.

This is the thing, not sure this team can make it a bonafied 60. We shall see

 

[ethomaz]

This is the thing, not sure this team can make it a bonafied 60. We shall see

Maybe but it just not this mode.

30fps mode goes higher as 38fps.
45fps mode? I mean unless you TV had a 60Hz or 90Hz container you will have judders.
There is a reason the Sony studios choose 40fps in a 120Hz container... because 120 / 40 = 3 (a integer).

Seems like they didn't understand why devs where adding 40fps to their games and just... well let's be cool and add a 45fps mode instead 40fps

LFC in 120Hz container is a must if your game is dropping to 40fps... that is how you make VRR works below 48fps... in fact with LFC it will works down to 24fps.
The difference in the modes is weird too... they are all the same outside resolution.

And sadly PS5 Pro won't fix any of these.
I know UE5 is not supposed to run at 60fps on consoles with Nanite and Lumen enabled but they could at least do the basics in the 30fps and 40fps (not 45) modes.

 

[YeezyDude]

Yeah, holding off on this until the PS5 pro.

Exactly!