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Doom Eternal - The Digital Foundry Tech Review - id Tech 7 Is Incredible
- Thread starter Equanimity
- Start date
Just look at how badly things turned out when other Bethesda games used it.
The Evil Within 2 and Dishonored 2 were performance disasters. The original Evil Within was a mess at launch too, but was salvaged with a patch (on PC).
Is anyone saying that?
I can see a preference for the art direction, but Eternal has much more detail than DOOM.
I will say that some of what makes Eternal look so good doesn't necessarily hold up in compressed YouTube videos - it looks so much better running locally with pristine image quality.
Good video.
Played through the 1st level on PC @gsyced 1440p/144 with mouse/keyboard but due to all the HDR praise I'll replay this level on my OLED TV with a Xbox Controller and will then have to decide whether I prefer high frame rate and mouse/kb or HDR and perfect black. John praised both, wish he hadn't *sigh*, so I wonder what his platform of choice for his 1st playthrough actually is?
Thankfully, you can easily choose the screen you want to use in the PC video options. Too many games that only run on your primary monitor.
Played through the 1st level on PC @gsyced 1440p/144 with mouse/keyboard but due to all the HDR praise I'll replay this level on my OLED TV with a Xbox Controller and will then have to decide whether I prefer high frame rate and mouse/kb or HDR and perfect black. John praised both, wish he hadn't *sigh*, so I wonder what his platform of choice for his 1st playthrough actually is?
Thankfully, you can easily choose the screen you want to use in the PC video options. Too many games that only run on your primary monitor.
According to VG Tech, it can go sub-HD on base Xbox One (To a low of 638p)
Maybe this is just Warzone (The only mode I've played), but CoD MW has pretty bad texture popin issues, on PS4 Pro at least
Maybe this is just Warzone (The only mode I've played), but CoD MW has pretty bad texture popin issues, on PS4 Pro at least
Not sure about pop-in on consoles, but asset quality is generally a bit lower in Warzone. I think MW definitely achieves a much nicer, cleaner, and more consistent aesthetic than Doom has, though I doubt it's on the same level technically.
I like the move Eternal has made toward using the more... grotesque? designs from older Dooms (whose artstyle I love), but it seems so much messier and has more visual noise than Doom 2016 I feel. Though I wasn't a big fan of the art direction in 2016 either. Something about Eternal's visuals seems kind of off, so far (only beat 3 missions atm)
There are some people in this very forum who think that 2016 does look better. I don't know, from what I've seen so far on my PC, Eternal looks so much better to me.
Yes, but games have been doing this forever. The Dreamcast, for instance, was built around it.
Agree 100%.
DOOM 2016 is presented like a film.
DOOM Eternal looks and feels more.. game-y, I suppose. (I just hate the UI/HUD and some dialogues)
I think you're seeing an art change yeah - technically it's quite a bit better. I would say that 2016 could look samey in places, but that also came with a very coherent look, sort of a heavily refined Doom 3 aesthetic without all the darkness everywhere. You could in turn compare it to the aesthetic of a whole host of SciFi films that inspired D3 and 2016 more directly. Eternal is much less afraid to be colorful and vibrant, which is much more varied but often a little goofy. This is a conscious choice they've made, not an accident, they're leaning into the cheese quite deliberately all through the game and not just visually.
I'd say the one area where I think it's a proper step back is the 3rd person cutscenes, simply because they don't look very good most of the time. The first person animations always look great (in 2016 and Eternal) but here the 3rd person scenes tend to look off.
Yeah. Obviously, in the video, you can see the complexity of the new game. It's just the first game as you put it seemed a bit more refined. Also, the sci-fi man-made environments can fool one into thinking "prettier" with more tricks like reflections and shiny elements while the sequel has more natural outdoor environments that don't give the same vibe.
It is a 4K video but YT probably hadn't finished processing. :-(
Look no doubt it's a good looking game, but I can't help but see so many level assets are incredibly low poly. Spiked corpses, or other random clutter etc look like SOOO low poly.
Thankfully the overall picture does look good at times, but I can see why this game runs at such a high framerate on my 1660ti.
Thankfully the overall picture does look good at times, but I can see why this game runs at such a high framerate on my 1660ti.
This being much smaller file size deserves recognition compared to 2016
Hope to buy this soon for PC need to use Mouse and Keyboard
Hope to buy this soon for PC need to use Mouse and Keyboard
Dark1x, there was something I was curious about, not just with this video's results but with a lot of games. Why exactly do so many games, including DOOM Eternal, have dynamic resolution caps to something like 1440p (especially frequent on Pro)? I don't understand the point of that - all it seems to do is guarantee inferior usage of Boost Mode on future machines.
On Ultra settings with some key options turned to the max, I'm getting a consistent 100+ FPS at 1440p on my OC'd Vega 56. It's great.
I think YT in Europe doesn't allow for more than 1080p right now. It's the same thing Netflix does.
Just to clear the confusion: Netflix in Europe is still at 4K/HDR/Dolby Vision + Atmos, they just reduced the bitrate (from 25 to 50%).
And Youtube is still allowing 4K, or at least, every video from Digital Foundry is still at 4K, including this one.
It's not ideal to make the frame scale target overzealous. Resolution scaling typically works by percentage, so a higher ceiling means less overall accuracy. It also means that it's constantly trying to find the right performance margin even during normal conditions, which can make it more unreliable the less headroom you give it.
Dynamic resolution typically works by taking a measure of the current frame time and adjusting the resolution based on said time. If you constantly make the renderer miss this target, you end up with a more unstable frame rate even if it is later compensating. A missed frame target is still missed.
I see, thank you very much. I didn't know this was all percentage-based. And I'm guessing that offering different max resolution targets (and frame rate targets) would be a huge pain the ass for testing.
Well, I can only hope there are patches for these sorts of games when the new consoles arrive. Having the new DOOMs stuck at 1440p60 on PS5 would really suck.
With this game in particular, id have already stated they plan to add raytracing to the PC version in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if they're planning on releasing a patch for next-gen consoles that adds RT support, as well.
It's the smoothest game I've ever played, it looks fantastic and the loading is insanely quick. Calling it a masterpiece is spot on.
It's certainly not a generational shift gameplay wise. Just engine wise.
Does id license out their engine? Or do they just use it internally? Because I wish more people could use this amazingness.
this has been pretty much a feat (in various variants) in 3D games since eh.. maybe even the first Doom.
That would certainly be nice, I hope you're right. Another cool thing to add (for PC) would be DLSS.
Well, there is that mechanic of destroying enemy body parts to remove their abilities and alter their attack patterns. Maybe it's not a generational shift, but that's some real gameplay complexity that I haven't seen many games do, and I'd love to see it eventually become standard.
This is a really good run through John. You and the rest of the team are doing great work right now, as always though!
Having sight of id's development tools and getting a bit of perspective on how they have been able to apply these innovations to the game was really interesting. It would be great to see this kind of thing in more of your features, depending on your level of access of course.
Having sight of id's development tools and getting a bit of perspective on how they have been able to apply these innovations to the game was really interesting. It would be great to see this kind of thing in more of your features, depending on your level of access of course.
Was thinking the same thing. John has made some brilliant videos in his time but this one may be his opus. I especially loved his explanation of the decal tech used and how it alters the look of the game.
You don't need Vulkan for that. Simplygon (the most popular middleware for LODs generations) handles that for the best part of this decade.
"80 to 90 million polygons".... wait, what? Every 16.67ms on consoles (enhanced ones at least)? IIRC, Uncharted 2 was said to output around 1.2 million poly/per scene or frame and later FFXV was (iirc) around 5 million poly/per scene or frame.
That's 16x to 18x increase in poly count..... how in the world did they manage that kind of density in a 60fps game?
They haven't licensed their engine out in quite a while now. It is a shame.
That's 16x to 18x increase in poly count..... how in the world did they manage that kind of density in a 60fps game?
They haven't licensed their engine out in quite a while now. It is a shame.
I still can't believe the load times in the game. Removing the startup movies allow for an even better experience when booting up DOOM. I can't wait for more games to take advantage of high core counts and faster storage.
I think Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal's temporal AA is pretty much the best I've seen. It manages to look smooth without being super soft and blurry.
I was making two separate points.
I'm gonna say it's a combination of efficient culling, and per-pixel LOD combined with smooth dynamic resolution. The way LOD is handled in particular might be a big point, I remember FFXV being rife with pop-in.
Oooh good, time to watch again. Love these 20+ minute deep dives
Hard to argue with that, after playing this.
I wouldn't put Capcom or The Coalition too far behind though (and special mention to Media Molecule for what they have done with Dreams). It's a great time to be a fan of high frame rates and HDR.
I can't wait to see what they can do with ray tracing.
80-90 million. These are some previously unthinkable values (even if John had said, 18-19 million per frame, I'd have said it was ludicrous) now made manifest in a current gen game. There's efficiency, there's genius and then there's witchcraft.
They've stopped licensing the engine to external studios once they were bought by Bethesda.
They do "license" the engine to Bethesda's other internal studios though.
What other 60 frames per second console first person shooter was technically more advanced than this game?
Battlefield 1? Battlefield 5? Moder Warfare?
Do you really have to ask?
Those games target realistic vistas as opposed to Doom Eternal's more cartoony style. In terms of polygons and effects, Doom Eternal seems to have them beat by quite some margin judging the technical analysis videos we've had so far. You can enjoy a visual identity more, in the same vein that you can prefer Cuphead's artstyle to that of The Last Of Us 2. But Doom Eternal's visuals are ridiculous.
