Digital Foundry: Silent Hill 2 Remake - PS5 Tech Review - An Authentic UE5 Recreation... But What About Performance?

John Elden Ring

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5 Jul 2022
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Developer Bloober Team's remake of Silent Hill 2 is a surprise success in its telling of a Konami's original story, backed by an authentic visual recreation in Unreal Engine 5 - with Lumen reflections and GI. Comparisons to the PS2 original are fascinating to observe, where the studio has the bravery to deviate from the script where need be. There are rough points here too though, notably in performance - and sadly neither PS5's performance or quality modes always hold a stable line at their target 60 or 30fps.

00:00 Introduction
02:45 Original versus remake comparison
09:55 PS5 Mode Comparison/Lumen Differences
13:58 PS5 30FPS Quality Mode Frame-Rate Test
15:54 PS5 60FPS Performance Mode Frame-Rate Test
17:29 Verdict
 
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rofif

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This looks amazing. Quality mode for me but I might wait for pro quality mode !
 
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Airbus

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More games I using UE5 more I think it is not a good engine.
Depends on the developer themselves on how they utilize the engine

Lot of good looking UE game like gears of wars, batman arkham, street fighter, ace combat, tekken, ark, stalker, ff7 remake, senua, black myth wukong etc
 

akira__

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What is going on with UE5 games?

We actually need more game engines and more competition on that level.
The film industry started flirting with the engine, and since then, the focus has shifted.


Before, the engine was focused on gaming, but now with film, they are not limited to 30 or 60 frames per second. The defining features of ue5 work poorly within the context of gaming.

Below is a presentation on PS5 with UE5 lighting. Even while moving slowly, the image is very unstable.

Maybe Mark Cerny has fixed that issue for them with PS5 Pro using PSSR. But who knows? The state of the engine is holding back this generation.

 
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mibu no ookami

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Again, this is why people saying the PS5 Pro isn't need or isn't worth it are going to have egg on their faces for 4 years... It's going to be a rough 4 years and the same can be true of the vast majority of the PC community.

Sony has really read the room here better than most of the knee jerk reactionaries on the interwebs...

Towards the end of this generation, it's totally possible that fewer and fewer games will even have a 60 fps mode on base consoles. It'll be fascinating to see what happens with the Series S over the next 12-24 months and when Microsoft is going to rip the bandaid on this generation.
 
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SuperPotato

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Again, this is why people saying the PS5 Pro isn't need or isn't worth it are going to have egg on their faces for 4 years... It's going to be a rough 4 years and the same can be true of the vast majority of the PC community.

Sony has really read the room here better than most the knee jerk reactionaries on the interwebs...

Towards the end of this generation, it's totally possible that fewer and fewer games will even have a 60 fps mode on base consoles. It'll be fascinating to see what happens with the Series S over the next 12-24 months and when Microsoft is going to rip the bandaid on this generation.

Yeah, i'm getting the Pro for this reason. More and more games are going to run on UE5 and the base system is already struggling. The PS6 won't launch until 2028, so that's 4 years of extra performance.

PC players are already complaining about the PC port. It suffers from a lot of stutter, which is normal on UE4/5 PC games. The game barely runs at 60 fps at 4k (no DLSS) on a 4090
 

mibu no ookami

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They should've modified Fox engine and used it

I can't take comments like this seriously. They should have used an engine that has largely been defunkt for nearly a decade? That certainly has no support structure and that none of the team will have ever used? Wild.

The film industry started flirting with the engine, and since then, the focus has shifted.


Before, the engine was focused on gaming, but now with film, they are not limited to 30 or 60 frames per second. The defining features of ue5 work poorly within the context of gaming.

Below is a presentation on PS5 with UE5 lighting. Even while moving slowly, the image is very unstable.

Maybe Mark Cerny has fixed that issue for them with PS5 Pro using PSSR. But who knows? The state of the engine is holding back this generation.


I think when they built UE5, they were pushing for advancements in what would make games pop more, particularly the lighting, but something I don't think was considered was that most console games would be pushing for 60 fps.

Development of UE5 probably started in 2016 or 2017.

I think it's important to consider what was happening around 2016.

May 2016, Uncharted 4 launched (not an unreal engine game obviously) but it was at the time one of the best looking games on the market. It ran at 1080p30.

We have a massive paradigm shift to games running at 60 fps, but not only that but trying to do 4K at the same time.. It's just too much of a leap. It's why games like Silent Hill 2 don't run anywhere close to native 4K. It's quality mode, I repeat quality mode drops to nearly 1080p with DRS. The performance mode drops well below 1080p and that's with temporal upscaling...

So the question here is going to be, how does PSSR perform compared to TSR. Silent Hill 2 may very well be the PS5 Pros first real test out of the gates and depending on the timing we'll get to see two different iterations of Silent Hill 2 on the PS5 Pro. First in boosted mode and just improvements to dynamic resolution and frame rate and finally with a patch that includes PSSR.
 

mibu no ookami

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Yeah, i'm getting the Pro for this reason. More and more games are going to run on UE5 and the base system is already struggling. The PS6 won't launch until 2028, so that's 4 years of extra performance.

PC players are already complaining about the PC port. It suffers from a lot of stutter, which is normal on UE4/5 PC games. The game barely runs at 60 fps at 4k (no DLSS) on a 4090

It's smaller scale, but apt, I remember the flack Sony got for having a storage expansion solution that required you to take the plate off of the PS5 and install the SSD into its drive housing.

Microsoft had opted for a cleaner and easier solution which was plug and play.

So many people on the interwebs shouted that Microsoft had the right solution, but anyone with critical thinking knew that the cost factor was going to favor Sony's solution and all it sacrificed was the 4 minutes it takes to take the plate off, install the drive, and put the plate back on.

If I look on Amazon, a 1TB Seagate XBS expansion drive is 147 dollars. 2TB is 249 dollars.

You can get a 2TB Samsung PS5 drive with heatsink for 149, the same price of the 1TB xbox drive. You can get a 1TB samsung drive for 100 dollars...

People are complaining about the PS5 Pro's price right now, but it's going to be the only way to play these games at the performance most the people complaining want to play games at, without spending considerably more money.
 

quest4441

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The pro will seem more and more like a value purchase the further current gen UE5 only games release, But coming to Silent Hill - the game is beautiful even with the frame drops, I hope we can get a quality like performance mode on the pro
 
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akira__

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Again, this is why people saying the PS5 Pro isn't need or isn't worth it are going to have egg on their faces for 4 years... It's going to be a rough 4 years and the same can be true of the vast majority of the PC community.

Sony has really read the room here better than most the knee jerk reactionaries on the interwebs...

Towards the end of this generation, it's totally possible that fewer and fewer games will even have a 60 fps mode on base consoles. It'll be fascinating to see what happens with the Series S over the next 12-24 months and when Microsoft is going to rip the bandaid on this generation.
They have no other narratives left currently. It's been absolutely dire on the other side. We've never had a generation where one side stopped showing up (well, maybe Philips CD-i).
The playbook of this gen for xbox is
1 show no gameplay during shows
2 delay the game atleast once
3. announce they'll release with only 30 fps mode
4. release and nobody ever speaks of those games anymore. Zero sticking power.

Let's do a game to check the severity of this gen failing:
We've reached the midpoint of the gen, so name atleast 3 console exclusives that defined the Series console so far.

Then try it for the Xbox One, and you'll be able to name 3 games. Then check the release dates of those games and you'll find out they released before the midway point and closer to launch.

DF has been at the forefront of those narratives.
Since the announcement of PS5 Pro, they are releasing video after video about the Pro.

DF a few years ago used to be much more professional and happy. All their narratives turn out to be false. DF's narrative on 30fps would become common, just to reduce the 30fps

We had the narrative that PS5 Pro would be CPU limited, only 10% they said. And then the first game they test that they always call CPU-bound, Dragon's Dogma 2, had a significant performance boost. Granted not yet stable 60fps, but with base consoles hovering around 30 fps, it's a huge improvement.


They love coming up with stupid narratives, and if you push back, they label you the console warrior. But it has been highly entertaining, certainly because the longevity of those narratives have been reduced from years to now months.
 

rofif

...owns a 3080...why?
24 Jun 2022
1,988
2,494
Again, this is why people saying the PS5 Pro isn't need or isn't worth it are going to have egg on their faces for 4 years... It's going to be a rough 4 years and the same can be true of the vast majority of the PC community.

Sony has really read the room here better than most the knee jerk reactionaries on the interwebs...

Towards the end of this generation, it's totally possible that fewer and fewer games will even have a 60 fps mode on base consoles. It'll be fascinating to see what happens with the Series S over the next 12-24 months and when Microsoft is going to rip the bandaid on this generation.
We need the pro because engines like unreal ensure that devs no longer do true to the metal optimisation. They just change presets in ue.
I still believe they could achieve a ton with ps5 if they dropped stupid 60fps need and really worked on it.

That said. Pro is coming and I hope sh2 uses it !!!