The new gen consoles

No not possible. I'm sure Sony and Microsoft have their own internal benchmarks behind closed doors, not that those numbers will ever see the light of day.

 

Not possible for now. Let the modders put their hands on new consoles and see what happens.

 

My mind is blown looking at that chart and seeing that I am playing on a notebook PC with 5 teraflops of gaming power. Here's the rub though; will this computer:
1. Be alive in 5 years? (Good thing I got a 3 year warranty..just in case)
2. Be able to play "Multiplat Game X" at similar settings to the PS4 in 5 years? Probably not.

My 7800gt desktop setup I made in 2005 was technically more powerful than the 360 and played the initial multiplat (COD2) better than the 360. However, I doubt that rig could have handled Crysis 2 at comparable settings in 2011 or Crysis 3 of 2013.

I believe my Alienware 18 will not be able to hang with the 3rd generation games on up from the next gen consoles. I would like to think that it will; but it is doubtful. However I am enjoying the best of the best right now...and that is what counts. Who knows what tomorrow brings; enjoy what you have today.

 

Try crysis 2 at 720p and all low settings and directX 9. Your 7800GT will play it just fine. And I haven't had a console last more than a few years without it dying, and I don't play it all that much. I'm on my third xbox 360 and went through two PS4's before I sold the second one... /shrug/

 

Hey guys and gals. I know we're all PC gamers here, but I think sometimes it's quite interesting to see what's happening on the other side of the fence. So in the spirit of education, I decided to spend some quality time with the next-gen consoles and jot down my observations here. In short, I actually came away pretty impressed, especially with the PS4.

I went to the Microsoft and Sony stores at the mall today and played for about 3 hours. Did an hour of Forza 5 on Xbox One and a couple hours of AC4 and Killzone: Shadow Fall on PS4.

All three games were native 1080p. AC4 and Forza were locked at 30 FPS and 60 FPS respectively and never dropped below those numbers. Killzone is also a 60 FPS game but definitely dropped frames when things got busy. I'd say the average was probably around 45 FPS. Regardless, everything felt very smooth to me, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that the difference between 30 and 60 FPS is much less pronounced when using a controller than when using KB&M. At least that's the way it's always felt for me, even on shooters. I was surprised by the complete absence of screen tearing in everything despite no V-Sync. It could've been just the games, or the ridiculous 75" 480 Hz refresh rate TV's that they were running off of.

As far as graphics were concerned, 1080p and much sharper textures were the most striking differences from current-gen. Compared to the sub-720p, low-res textures crap that's been the norm for PS3 and Xbox 360 in the last few years, this was like graduating to PC. However, I didn't notice much if any improvement in other areas such as advanced effects and physics. The anti-aliasing (or lack thereof) also left much to be desired. While all three games used some form of post-process AA, it did little to reduce the annoying and distracting crawling/shimmering caused by temporal aliasing during moving scenes.

I thought Forza and AC4 both looked pretty good if unspectacular. In Forza, the cars were exquisitely modeled but the environments were pretty plain. Racing games have never been known to push the bleeding-edge of visuals and this was no different. AC4 looked better. Nice big waves, ample vegetation and foliage, and lots of fine environmental detail and high-res textures. Probably similar to PC at 1080p and medium to high settings.

But what really stole the show for me was Killzone. This is, by far, the best-looking console game I have ever seen. I've got no problem admitting that Killzone probably looks as good as many PC FPSes. Not in the same stratosphere occupied by the likes of Crysis 3 and BF4, but close. The lighting and shadowing were what impressed me the most and give even those titles a run for their money. The textures were generally of very high resolution and particle effects and specularity abound. But one thing that looked extremely off amid all this eye candy goodness was the lack of volumetric smoke effects. The graphics were top-notch everywhere else, but smoke and dust were so flat-looking you could actually see the sprites. IMO Killzone is more of a tech demo than a fully fleshed-out game because the gameplay isn't anywhere near as good as its production values.

Here are some random screenshots of these games that I found on the web:

 

It sounds like you enjoyed yourself. Those wet rock texture in that screenshot look pretty sweet too. I think you may have touched on some of the shortcomings eg. smoke and flame sprites and simplified physics. I think it's a fizzer a massive launch game like killzone only runs at 30 fps but what can you do eh... So if you're impressed imagine what they could have done had they been a bit more generous with the hardware.

 

Killzone is capped at 60 FPS but it feels like it's running less than that most of the time unless there's not much going on. To me what helps with the perception of smoothness the most on consoles is a consistent frame rate, even if it's relatively low. Like I said before, the reduced responsiveness of the controller somewhat mitigates the input lag advantage of 60 FPS over 30 FPS. That's why AC4 locked at 30 FPS subjectively felt smoother than Killzone with its highly variable frame rate.

Viewed through the lenses of a PC gamer, I'm wasn't super impressed. But compared to the current-gen console stuff I've seen in the last few years, it definitely looked and felt like massive leap forward. Although with the bar set so low, it's not difficult to shatter it. And you're right about the lackluster hardware. Sony and Microsoft really played it safe this time. I would've liked to see them beef up the internals considerably and sell at a loss again instead of breaking even. The PS4 has barely enough horsepower to stay relevant right now while Xbox One is already irrelevant at launch. Both consoles will age fast.

 

I had the chance to play Xbox One and PS4 this weekend as well, at Best Buy. They had it hooked up to a 46" Samsung LED SMART-TV @ 240Hz -- it was sweet. I'm somewhat impressed with the consoles. I did not expect them to perform so well. I may actually buy one of them now, along with that TV.

 

I was under the impression and I'm almost certain Killzone single player runs at 30fps and multiplayer at 60. Perhaps it had a lot of motion blur which tends to mask.

 

I believe the 30 FPS lock was from earlier in the development phase and they unlocked it later on. So now both modes are running unlocked and targeting 60 FPS, which I'm assuming is where the cap is. Turns out my subjective impressions of highly variable frame rates were correct. It generally hovers between 30-40 FPS in the campaign, while multiplayer varies between 40-60 FPS, but there are times when it shoots all over the place.