Horizon: Forbidden West - Quality or Performance Mode?

[RayCharlizard]

It's like throwing everything and the kitchen sink at something because they really, really want to sell what that new shiny hardware can do. It's like turning the volume up to 11 whether they needed to or not.

It kind of reminds me of some of the launch Xbox 360 games like Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero. Dev teams that really threw every new fancy effect they could at their launch games so that no one could possibly confuse them as anything other than "next-gen", but they ended up looking gaudy in the process.

HFW isn't anywhere near as bad as those two examples, and I still find it to be one of the best looking games ever made, but it just brings back those types of feelings when I play it. I'm still taking screenshots left and right and I'm still often in awe of the visuals.

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Geez, I think you nailed it right there. That's exactly how I feel. The hero lighting is just this thing that from a technical level probably couldn't be done on last gen, so it's a "showcase" feature but one that doesn't actually feel natural or dramatic after an hour of it. Like I get it, it lets us see the skin and hair shaders really shine and makes the subsurface scattering apparent all the time, but just doing a few big set piece moments where the sun is just off to the side behind the characters head would be just as effective. Not every scene needs bloom, to bring it back to the 360 era. lol

 

[Deleted member 93841]

I just got to my first cauldron in performance mode and I think I'm going to shelve the game in the hopes that they fix it up in the next few months. I'm not exaggerating, but I haven't seen a game look bad on PS5 as HFW does in performance mode.

The game in general seems to lack a lot of polish and clearly needed more time in the oven. Things like Aloy grabbing the middle rung on a ladder after a jumpb, only for her to literally swing back and forth through the bottom half of ladder like it's not there really brings the experience down. And the game is full of such problems.

 

[Wouwie]

I went back to quality mode and adjusted after a while but the gameplay feels better in performance mode. So i'm not really happy with either but it's not a big issue anymore. I think i'm going to shelve the game for a while since i'm not really enjoying it (mostly gameplay wise). I'll just wait until a few patches are out and maybe restart.

That being said, it's obvious there is a beautiful game in there. I feel it will need another few console generations or a pc to do it justice (which is not surprising for an open world game, i guess).

 

[dd492941]

I jumped back and forth through quality then performance, then just quality during cutscenes and dialog and now back to straight quality as it just looks so much better in quality mode and the gameplay is still smooth enough for me.

 

[Mobius 1]

I have only encountered one issue so far, where clearing a camp caused the game to stutter. It happened in both graphic modes, so the bug must be unrelated. Fast-travelling out of the area and returning resolved it.

 

[Porkepik]

Finally received my collector edition so finally can test it and...... Quality all the way for me, image quality in performance is awful, people were not joking on the shimmering, the blight particle effect is like a different effect completely. Keep in mind I play on a 75inch tcl 635 from 2021 about 8-9 feet from the screen. I don't see any stuttering issue while revolving with the camera. The choice is a lot simpler than what I thought it would be. Being so close to a big screen its more than obvious the difference in IQ.

 

[Gero]

I just got to my first cauldron in performance mode and I think I'm going to shelve the game in the hopes that they fix it up in the next few months. I'm not exaggerating, but I haven't seen a game look bad on PS5 as HFW does in performance mode.

The game in general seems to lack a lot of polish and clearly needed more time in the oven. Things like Aloy grabbing the middle rung on a ladder after a jumpb, only for her to literally swing back and forth through the bottom half of ladder like it's not there really brings the experience down. And the game is full of such problems.

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yes you are

 

[Violater]

I just got to my first cauldron in performance mode and I think I'm going to shelve the game in the hopes that they fix it up in the next few months. I'm not exaggerating, but I haven't seen a game look bad on PS5 as HFW does in performance mode.

The game in general seems to lack a lot of polish and clearly needed more time in the oven. Things like Aloy grabbing the middle rung on a ladder after a jumpb, only for her to literally swing back and forth through the bottom half of ladder like it's not there really brings the experience down. And the game is full of such problems.

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I don't think this is the hobby for you.....

 

[Lord Error]

Vincent's findings are very interesting. I hope GG will investigate this. The change in brightness is almost for sure happening because when the motion blur is applied, it lowers the scene brightness, which shouldn't be happening.

Quality mode is aggressively over sharpened and it gives me eye strain. It looks beautiful but kind of jarring and unnatural.

I dunno, this kinda feels like a game that is gorgeous on a technical level but some of the creative decisions on the visuals will age weirdly.

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Care to point out some places on screenshots where you are seeing artificial sharpening? I haven't seen any tell-tale signs of edge enhancements due to sharpening on the screens I've seen. The game has unusually high amount of texture and shader detail, but it's "real" detail.

 

[digitalrelic]

Vincent's findings are very interesting. I hope GG will investigate this. The change in brightness is almost for sure happening because when the motion blur is applied, it lowers the scene brightness, which shouldn't be happening.


Care to point out some places on screenshots where you are seeing artificial sharpening? I haven't seen any tell-tale signs of edge enhancements due to sharpening on the screens I've seen. The game has unusually high amount of texture and shader detail, but it's "real" detail.

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Just a quick shot I just grabbed:

Not sure if this qualifies as sharpening or not, but foliage, distant foliage specifically, is artificially sharp. Maybe not necessarily in the "they've added white edges to every object" type artificially sharp, but in the "this just doesn't look right and/or natural and looks jarring and at odds with realism" artificially sharp. It's also much more apparent in motion than in screenshots.

 

[Benzychenz]

Official statement from Guerrilla about the issues, they are working on it

r/horizon - Regarding Visual Issues

2,028 votes and 1,816 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

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Great. I already wasn't planning on starting Horizon until after I'm done with Elden Ring so sounds like I'll have a polished up version waiting for me.

 

[Latvian Hitman]

Care to point out some places on screenshots where you are seeing artificial sharpening? I haven't seen any tell-tale signs of edge enhancements due to sharpening on the screens I've seen. The game has unusually high amount of texture and shader detail, but it's "real" detail.

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The sharpening effect shows up much more in motion than it does in a still frame, (I'm guessing it's tied to temporal AA) but it also tends to not show up in a web-compressed video clip. You really just have to have the game running in front of you to see what people are talking about. There's definitely a LOT of post-sharpening that is not just a result of natural detail.

 

[Disco Infernal]

Maybe it's just me but this is the least smooth 30fps I've played yet on PS5. Seems to be more of an issue on OLED but it's anything but smooth when I'm playing.

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Yep, this 30 is anything but smooth. Even on LCD.

 

[BuBu Jenkins]

The resolution mode is smooth as 30fps can get with no frame drops below it while not suffering from awful frame pacing/frame time issues. Don't know what people are experiencing to claim that its stuttery or choppy than any other 30fps game because i'm not seeing it at all on my 75" Sony XBR 900e LCD.

 

[EJS]

Official statement from Guerrilla about the issues, they are working on it

r/horizon - Regarding Visual Issues

2,028 votes and 1,816 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

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That's good to hear. I have no idea how long it takes to fix something like this.

 

[SeeingeyeDug]

The resolution mode is smooth as 30fps can get with no frame drops below it while not suffering from awful frame pacing/frame time issues. Don't know what people are experiencing to claim that its stuttery or choppy than any other 30fps game because i'm not seeing it at all on my 75" Sony XBR 900e LCD.

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It seems like LG sets in the OLED era (even LCD sets that use the same processing chips as their OLED cousins) have an issue with 30 fps games. I know my newer LG LCD that comes with variable frame rate and even G-sync support looks like stuttery on my PS5 on 30fps games. It could also be something PS5-to-LG related as I didn't have those issues on 30fps games when my PS4 pro was plugged in.

When I say stuttery, I mean it's consistent. Like it's impossible to motion blur any 30fps games and each frame lingers on the screen for the entirety of its frame time so you end up with 30 distinct pictures juddering across the screen every second.

It's forced me to play every game in performance mode so far on PS5. I can't even play non-60fps patched PS4 games like GTAV.

 

[shadow2810]

It seems like LG sets in the OLED era (even LCD sets that use the same processing chips as their OLED cousins) have an issue with 30 fps games.

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Not really, it's just this game

 

[TooBusyLookinGud]

It seems like LG sets in the OLED era (even LCD sets that use the same processing chips as their OLED cousins) have an issue with 30 fps games. I know my newer LG LCD that comes with variable frame rate and even G-sync support looks like stuttery on my PS5 on 30fps games. It could also be something PS5-to-LG related as I didn't have those issues on 30fps games when my PS4 pro was plugged in.

When I say stuttery, I mean it's consistent. Like it's impossible to motion blur any 30fps games and each frame lingers on the screen for the entirety of its frame time so you end up with 30 distinct pictures juddering across the screen every second.

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Wonder if this is my problem too. I have an LG C1 and 30fps for this game is rough for me.

 

[SeeingeyeDug]

Not really, it's just this game

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Nope. For me it's Spider-Man remastered quality mode. Horizon Zero Dawn before the 60fps patch. GTAV. Shadow of Mordor. Etc.

 

[ss_lemonade]

The resolution mode is smooth as 30fps can get with no frame drops below it while not suffering from awful frame pacing/frame time issues. Don't know what people are experiencing to claim that its stuttery or choppy than any other 30fps game because i'm not seeing it at all on my 75" Sony XBR 900e LCD.

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New frames don't really blend in as new ones are being outputted on an oled, so in realtime, 30 fps motion, objects (especially ones in the background) when panning appear to judder heavily.

 

[Lionheart]

Turning off motion blur in res mode made the game infinitely better on my c9

This is now my favourite mode i don't even toggle perf any more

 

[flipswitch]

Turning off motion blur in res mode made the game infinitely better on my c9

This is now my favourite mode i don't even toggle perf any more

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In what way did it improve things?

 

[TooBusyLookinGud]

Really weird that these issues were not a high priority to fix before launch…

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But there are no problems and we are overreacting. Great video.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Vincent's findings are very interesting. I hope GG will investigate this. The change in brightness is almost for sure happening because when the motion blur is applied, it lowers the scene brightness, which shouldn't be happening.

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Somewhat, I think it's more the sharpening algorithm can no longer pick out the different contrast of the pixels it's trying to highlight with all the motion blur. When it stops, then it can 'do its thing', which is basically adding higher contrasted pixels.

 

[Skulldead]

I'm not sure how long something like this can take to fix

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I was hoping it was a bug or something they forgot.... but it look much bigger then just graphic option. Probably couple of weeks, pretty sure this not going to be this week. I was so hype to play it and now it it's on my i'll play it someday... i love the first game so much... such a bummer.

 

[Lionheart]

In what way did it improve things?

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It's way less juddery in motion and now it feels smoother

 

[Skulldead]

yes you are

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no i agree with him, i can show you how many Ps5 game i have and finish, AND NOT a single game look as bad as this in performance mode. False except smurf vileaf, it's broken on ps5...still waiting for the patch this summer...

Play Cyberpunk at 30fps if you want too see rough.

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but the 60fps is not broken, 15 hours and it's look great. And remove sensitivity in a action game is a weird advice...

 

[digitalrelic]

Wonder if this is my problem too. I have an LG C1 and 30fps for this game is rough for me.

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I have an LG C9 and 30fps games are great for me. No issues.

And ya'll keep saying Horizon is rough at 30fps but I have to say, I have no idea what ya'll are talking about. Turn your stick sensitivity down a notch or two and motion blur to medium and it's a fantastic 30fps experience.

Play Cyberpunk at 30fps if you want too see rough.

 

[flipswitch]

It's way less juddery in motion and now it feels smoother

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That's great. I will give it a try tonight.

 

[TooBusyLookinGud]

I have an LG C9 and 30fps games are great for me. No issues.

And ya'll keep saying Horizon is rough at 30fps but I have to say, I have no idea what ya'll are talking about. Turn your stick sensitivity down a notch or two and motion blur to medium and it's a fantastic 30fps experience.

Play Cyberpunk at 30fps if you want too see rough.

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I'm mostly a PC player and I don't play under 60fps. I'll admit that this could be my issue; I'm used to playing at 60 and above.

Lionheart said turn off motion blur. I'll give that a try.

 

[Lord Error]

Just a quick shot I just grabbed:

Not sure if this qualifies as sharpening or not, but foliage, distant foliage specifically, is artificially sharp. Maybe not necessarily in the "they've added white edges to every object" type artificially sharp, but in the "this just doesn't look right and/or natural and looks jarring and at odds with realism" artificially sharp. It's also much more apparent in motion than in screenshots.

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I see what you mean. Those bushes on the ground and the tree in the distance for example do look pretty weird. In fact, if I keep staring at top/right portion of your screen at 1:1 resolution, I feel like it's overwhelming my eyes in an unpleasant way, like some optical illusion where you start to see something happening on a static image.

I still think that most other screens and videos I've seen look really nice, but they should tone down a bit whatever they're doing.

 

[Z6E1Z9O]

i found these quotes interesting as they actually paint a clear picture on what their priorities are(were) but maybe couldn't accomplish with the ps5 version:

"Well, let's start at our regular 1080p year rendering - we have a strong focus on anti-aliasing so whatever technique we wanted to use for having 4K rendering also needed to be at that same quality," says de Carpentier.

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Pro and HDR support was integrated into Horizon relatively late into the game's six-year development, and Guerrilla experimented with several higher resolution strategies, trying them out side-by-side before settling on 2160p checkerboard. In terms of native rendering, the team gave 1500p a shot, but weren't fully satisfied with the results. And to be clear, checkerboarding in the case of Horizon involves rendering half of the pixels for the full 2160p frame, the other half resolving via reprojection from the previous frame - a process that Giliam says provides a "native resolution detail level", if not quite the sharpness. However, every natively rendered pixel - be it 1080p on base PS4 or checkerboard 2160p on Pro - also benefits from 4x temporal super-sampling.

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these were from their discussion with digital foundry back when zero dawn released here

i know that graphics sell and whatnot, but i really wished that the main target for FW was 60 fps and the 30 fps mode was scaled up accordingly instead of the opposite that many games go for.

 

[Lionheart]

I'm mostly a PC player and I don't play under 60fps. I'll admit that this could be my issue; I'm used to playing at 60 and above.

Lionheart said turn off motion blur. I'll give that a try.

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If you've only played 60fps for years this won'tbe for you, but for those that can tolerate 30 and play a lot of console games, turning motion blur off can make it feel like those games

 

[M. Wallace]

I think low motion blur actually makes 30fps look better.

 

[Deleted member 93841]

yes you are

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Nah. Performance mode is the worst looking PS5 game I've seen so far.

I don't think this is the hobby for you.....

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Sorry that my opinion offends you.

 

[Samaritan]

Turning off motion blur in res mode made the game infinitely better on my c9

This is now my favourite mode i don't even toggle perf any more

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Interesting, I'll give this a try for long-term, but in my short tests, I thought the lack of motion blur really exposed the stutteryness, with motion blur at least helping to mask it with smearing frame to frame.

 

[Deleted member 93841]

Really weird that these issues were not a high priority to fix before launch…

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I wish he went into a bit more detail on the 30fps issues he spoke about, especially with DF saying that it's the preferred mode of play.

I also find the 30fps here very choppy compared to other games and I'm not playing on an OLED.

 

[Paganmoon]

it would be helpful if people stating 30fps feels smooth would also clarify if they're playing 30fps on PS4 or, the PS4 version on PS5. Or if it's 30FPS quality/resolution mode on PS5.

I know this is a quality vs perf thread, so should only be PS5s but I've seen it mentioned that even the PS4 version runs smoother at 30fps on the PS5, even the the PS5 version seems to be running stable 30fps with no frames pacing issues.

FWIW, I'm playing resolution mode on PS5, and not really noticed it being choppy on my CX, but I might just not be sensitive to the issue, or too used to choppy games.

 

[FunMouse]

The first hour or so I was swapping between both options. I settled on Quality and haven't had any complaints. LG CX with 12 hours into the game so far. I love how pretty the game is, especially at night!

 

[Enforcer]

Yeah resolution mode on PS5 for me feels sluggish even with camera turned down. It's not 30 smooth at all.

 

[flipswitch]

So I tried turning off motion blur as some suggested but I found the 'judder " more obvious ( on OLED) and ended up putting motion blur to Medium which is the highest setting and it lessened the judder. Give both options a go I guess.

 

[2Blackcats]

As others have suggested, I'm enjoying quality mode after setting motion blur to Medium and adjusting the x and y camera sensitivity sliders two notches left from default. Feels great now. Using LG OLED C1.

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Wahey, great to see another convert . It's been mentioned loads of times but few takers.

 

[2Blackcats]

Wonder if this is my problem too. I have an LG C1 and 30fps for this game is rough for me.

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It definitely is.

Your brain compensation after a while. Motion looks clear to me now a dozen or so hours later

 

[Paganmoon]

those with judder issues on LGs/Oleds, are you sure you're in game mode with no interpolation shenaningans?

 

[Deleted member 93841]

I installed Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart this morning and checked out the 4k30fps mode, just out of curiosity to see if it's my monitor or something causing 30fps to feel so bad in HFW. For me, there's an immediately noticeable difference between 30fps in R&C:RA and this game. So it's definitely not my monitor that's the problem. I wonder if it has to do with the illumination issue brought up in the HDTVTest video. Either way, it just feels very juddery in 30fps and playing with the camera speeds or motion blur settings doesn't fix it for me.

If HFW felt like R&C in 30fps, I'd have no issue playing it in quality mode. I do hope GG manages to fix/improve it in the next few weeks.

 

[Bart0n]

I was content with performance mode until hitting the desert area. I feel the IQ has took a nose dive, especially in areas with the moving grass. Tried going back to 4K/30 but it genuinely hurts my head when playing. The mixture of intense sharpened details and the harsh 30fps, gives me a headache. I think I'll pause this play though and start it again once I finish Elden Ring. Hopefully the issues will get fixed.

 

[2Blackcats]

I installed Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart this morning and checked out the 4k30fps mode, just out of curiosity to see if it's my monitor or something causing 30fps to feel so bad in HFW. For me, there's an immediately noticeable difference between 30fps in R&C:RA and this game. So it's definitely not my monitor that's the problem. I wonder if it has to do with the illumination issue brought up in the HDTVTest video. Either way, it just feels very juddery in 30fps and playing with the camera speeds or motion blur settings doesn't fix it for me.

If HFW felt like R&C in 30fps, I'd have no issue playing it in quality mode. I do hope GG manages to fix/improve it in the next few weeks.

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There are other variables too that effect people to different extents. FOV is a big one which bothers some a lot and others not at all but can really heighten these issues.

 

[immsun]

Over exaggeration for sure.

Really weird that these issues were not a high priority to fix before launch…

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Over exaggeration for sure but lets make a video on it for some cheap clicks. DF didnt mention anything nor am i experiecing such things in quality mode.

 

[dstarMDA]

Over exaggeration for sure.
Over exaggeration for sure but lets make a video on it for some cheap clicks. DF didnt mention anything nor am i experiecing such things in quality mode.

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Have you watched the video? How could this be exaggerated?

Why are you dismissing any concern on this game over multiple threads (this and the review thread)?

 

[Micerider]

those with judder issues on LGs/Oleds, are you sure you're in game mode with no interpolation shenaningans?

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Yeah, my question as well. I launched the game in standard mode on my C9 by mistake and it was horrible. Back in game mode : smooth and great (well, still visibly 30 FPS, but smooth enough to be oblivious about it after a couple of minutes).