PC vs. PS4 Pro?

[Braindead_Paul]

Crashes and controller issues aside, does the PC version at least look any better than the PS4 Pro version on a 4K display? Is it rendered in native 4K (PS4 Pro is apparently upscaled)? Are there improvements wrt aliasing and flickering edges in comparison to the Ps4 Pro version? FPS seem to be all over the place on PC (60fps if you're lucky), how is it on Ps4 Pro?

[Aemony]

PC renders at 1800p by default. It can be forced to 1080p by hex editing the executable, or 4K by using the "/4K" command line argument.

FPS on PC is relatively easy to get high, depending on your specs. Even my Quadro M620 (comparable to about a GTX 460) is capable of running the game at around 60 FPS, and that's when it renders the game internally at 1800p.

The graphical settings of the game isn't really necessary to have set on highest (or "On" as it's just known here). The PC version does not have, to my knowledge, any additional improvements or visual effects added to it compared to the PS4.

If you do not experience any frequent crashes with the PC version then I imagine you'll get the best result with the PC version as long as you have a semi-modern gaming CPU, and force various things like AF in the display drivers, or maybe add ReShade to get higher quality post-processing filters added to the game.

I don't own the game on PS4 Pro so I can't really comment upon the details for that beyond that I believe it also uses 1800p as the internal render resolution, with no option to render at 2160p (4K).

Edit: 1800p, not 3800p >_<

[sammykneen]

Platinum’ed on PS4 Pro and it has no issues whatsoever. Runs at 1800p (as opposed to 1080p on the standard PS4 version) upscaled to 4K and stays close to 60fps at all times, I started playing after the translation patch and I never encountered a bug in 150 hours playtime.

I would go with Pro for now.

[koinzell]

it runs and looks more in depth then the ps4 pro ver.

[Javituchi]

I can't say much about the gameplay itself on PC version, because mine keeps crashing after prologue, on PC, so I cannot play it yet... But anime movies (opening, ending and such), in PS4/Pro, were locked to 30fps, while on PC, they are 60 fps. So the movements of characters/things are more smooth on PC...

That is the only good thing I can think of for now of the PC version. But I cannot/won't play it until they fix the crashes and freezings.

[T]

Originally posted by Javituchi:

I can't say much about the gameplay itself on PC version, because mine keeps crashing after prologue, on PC, so I cannot play it yet... But anime movies (opening, ending and such), in PS4/Pro, were locked to 30fps, while on PC, they are 60 fps. So the movements of characters/things are more smooth on PC...

That is the only good thing I can think of for now of the PC version. But I cannot/won't play it until they fix the crashes and freezings.

Umm... why would it matter to play animation likely produced at 24 fps with padded frames to 60 fps?

[Braindead_Paul]

Thanks everyone!

[Javituchi]

Originally posted by damag0r:

Umm... why would it matter to play animation likely produced at 24 fps with padded frames to 60 fps?

Because it is much more smooth, and less painful to the eye. Specially when you get used to 60fps smoothness, animation at 30 fps can get a bit unbearable. For watching anime alone is ok, but for videogames, it can get unbearable, specially if switching between both while playing.

Check my comparison video of it. Notice on background pans, rather than characters, smoothness...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFbLCutDtrM
Dunno about others, but I clearly see more smoothness in PC (60fps) than unstable forced PS4/Pro (30fps), and that smoothness helps for better experience of the game, imo.

[Braindead_Paul]

Originally posted by Javituchi:

Originally posted by damag0r:

Umm... why would it matter to play animation likely produced at 24 fps with padded frames to 60 fps?

Because it is much more smooth, and less painful to the eye. Specially when you get used to 60fps smoothness, animation at 30 fps can get a bit unbearable. For watching anime alone is ok, but for videogames, it can get unbearable, specially if switching between both while playing.

Check my comparison video of it. Notice on background pans, rather than characters, smoothness...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFbLCutDtrM
Dunno about others, but I clearly see more smoothness in PC (60fps) than unstable forced PS4/Pro (30fps), and that smoothness helps for better experience of the game, imo.

Thanks for the video. This is surprising, since videos have a fixed frame count per second, so their "smoothness" should be the same no matter which device you use to play them (given the devices support the same max fps).
If the difference was not simply caused by a bad sampling rate for capturing the left video, they either screwed up playback on the PS4 Pro (played at a lower rate than source material) and fixed it for PC, or they improved the videos on PC by post-processing (which would be a noteworthy feature of the PC version).

[Minneyar]

The problem with pre-rendered video is that in order for it to look perfectly smooth, your display's refresh rate has to be the same as the rate the video was rendered at. If you rendered your video at 24 Hz but your display rate is 30 Hz, then in order to play it back at the same speed, you've got two solutions; you can either draw the frames at the same speed they were originally rendered, which will cause tearing because sometimes it will be in the middle of drawing a frame when your monitor refreshes, or you can draw every sixth frame twice, so you've got 30 frames for 30 Hz, but that makes it look like it's stuttering.

The problem still exists at 60 Hz, but it's much less noticeable because you can render every frame twice (for 48 frames) and then render every sixth one of those a third time in order to match the 60 Hz update rate. It's still noticeable when compared to the video when rendered at its intended rate, but it's much smoother than 30 Hz.

As a side note, that's one of the reasons that 144 Hz is sometimes held up as the "holy grail" of refresh rates; 24 Hz divides into it exactly 6 times, so your videos will look perfectly smooth.

[Evilnapkin]

Originally posted by sammykneen:

Platinum’ed on PS4 Pro and it has no issues whatsoever. Runs at 1800p (as opposed to 1080p on the standard PS4 version) upscaled to 4K and stays close to 60fps at all times, I started playing after the translation patch and I never encountered a bug in 150 hours playtime.

I would go with Pro for now.

PS4 Pro version absolutely is not near 60fps at all times. PC version runs much smoother.

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by Javituchi:

I can't say much about the gameplay itself on PC version, because mine keeps crashing after prologue, on PC, so I cannot play it yet... But anime movies (opening, ending and such), in PS4/Pro, were locked to 30fps, while on PC, they are 60 fps. So the movements of characters/things are more smooth on PC...

That is the only good thing I can think of for now of the PC version. But I cannot/won't play it until they fix the crashes and freezings.

This may suck for you, but ... that could be several, several months.

One thing I admire about NISA is that they stick around and coninue working on their games, even if they deliver them on life support. But, it's going to be a long series of patches and since this is a niche game you're going to be the one who has to keep checking if the game's working yet -- there's not going to be a news story or anything convenient like that.

[Javituchi]

Originally posted by Braindead_Paul:

If the difference was not simply caused by a bad sampling rate for capturing the left video, they either screwed up playback on the PS4 Pro (played at a lower rate than source material) and fixed it for PC, or they improved the videos on PC by post-processing (which would be a noteworthy feature of the PC version).

I capture all my videos with the best quality (1080p 60 fps 50MB/s), which is much higher quality than the original file, from my ElGato capture card, so there is no lost quality... Thats what you see on your screen when you play in the PS4 Pro version... My capture device can show me the framerate on screen (recording or not), and for the opening/ending cinematics of Ys 8, it drops to constant 30fps, while playing the game its 60... Thats why I say I think they optimized it to 60 fps for this PC version, and maybe the Switch one as well.

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

This may suck for you, but ... that could be several, several months.

I've already got platinum trophy on the PS4 version, so the game experience I have felt it. I don't mind waiting... I have faith NISA will eventually fix it sooner or later... I've waited 7 months without refunding it with this hope. If I hadn't, I would've done refund when they first delayed it...

I'm more troubled with doubts over which version should I make a gameplay of the game from, for my channel. Doubting wether start doing a gameplay of the PS4 version, or wait some more time until they fix PC version.

[Braindead_Paul]

Originally posted by Minneyar:

The problem with pre-rendered video is that in order for it to look perfectly smooth, your display's refresh rate has to be the same as the rate the video was rendered at. If you rendered your video at 24 Hz but your display rate is 30 Hz, then in order to play it back at the same speed, you've got two solutions; you can either draw the frames at the same speed they were originally rendered, which will cause tearing because sometimes it will be in the middle of drawing a frame when your monitor refreshes, or you can draw every sixth frame twice, so you've got 30 frames for 30 Hz, but that makes it look like it's stuttering.

The problem still exists at 60 Hz, but it's much less noticeable because you can render every frame twice (for 48 frames) and then render every sixth one of those a third time in order to match the 60 Hz update rate. It's still noticeable when compared to the video when rendered at its intended rate, but it's much smoother than 30 Hz.

As a side note, that's one of the reasons that 144 Hz is sometimes held up as the "holy grail" of refresh rates; 24 Hz divides into it exactly 6 times, so your videos will look perfectly smooth.

Thanks for the in-depth answer. Since the videos (probably) have 24fps (not 30fps), that makes perfect sense.
Still, since both devices are capable of outputting 60fps, there should be no difference. They either did something wrong on the PS4 Pro or they fixed video processing for the PC release.

[Vayne]

Go master race, never go back to peasant race

[Braindead_Paul]

Originally posted by Javituchi:

Originally posted by Braindead_Paul:

If the difference was not simply caused by a bad sampling rate for capturing the left video, they either screwed up playback on the PS4 Pro (played at a lower rate than source material) and fixed it for PC, or they improved the videos on PC by post-processing (which would be a noteworthy feature of the PC version).

I capture all my videos with the best quality (1080p 60 fps 50MB/s), which is much higher quality than the original file, from my ElGato capture card, so there is no lost quality... Thats what you see on your screen when you play in the PS4 Pro version... My capture device can show me the framerate on screen (recording or not), and for the opening/ending cinematics of Ys 8, it drops to constant 30fps, while playing the game its 60... Thats why I say I think they optimized it to 60 fps for this PC version, and maybe the Switch one as well.

Thanks for clarifying. It's a pretty nice improvement on PC, then. Or a pretty sad oversight on PS4 Pro.
Makes it more difficult to decide which version to get, however...