DF Direct Weekly #99: PSVR2 Review Reaction, DLSS On Non-RTX GPUs? Wild Hearts PC Perf Debacle

We join John, Rich and Alex in the immediate wake of the PSVR2 review period, further discussing the hardware, talking games and answering supporter questions. Rich and Alex investigate a tip-off that DLSS is accessible on select Nvidia non-RTX GPUs in Cyberpunk 2077, while John and Rich discuss issues with games they looked at outside of work hours - Wild Hearts on PC and the new Tales of Symphonia remaster. Spoilers: there's disappointment.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:11 News 01: PSVR2 post mortem
00:28:38 News 02: Cyberpunk exposes DLSS support on Nvidia Turing GTX cards - but is it the real deal?
00:36:01 News 03: Wild Hearts suffers PC performance woes
00:46:32 News 04: Tales of Symphonia remastered disappoints
00:51:10 News 05: Nuon DVD player console gets new lease on life with controller adapters
00:55:52 DF Supporter Q1: Can DF still capture direct-feed footage off an undocked Switch?
00:59:51 DF Supporter Q2: Why do PC games do a poor job of optimizing settings for your specific hardware?
01:06:53 DF Supporter Q3: Could frame generation technology be used to offload game animation onto the GPU?
01:08:36 DF Supporter Q4: Could DLSS 3 double the frame-rates of emulated retro games?
01:10:54 DF Supporter Q5: Would FSR 1 style upscaling work for backwards compatible titles on consoles?
01:12:51 DF Supporter Q6: The RTX 2000 series had a bit of a slow start with few RT titles, so should the RTX 3000 series have been the first to support RT instead?

[danim]

I noticed the noise gate is too strong on John’s mic. It cuts off way too strong and early. The pauses are pretty dramatic.

[JerryFlowersIII]

I'm going in on PSVR2 and I REALLY hope AstroBot Rescue Team is ported. I'm fairly bummed it hasn't been announced. I'd really like to play it.

[ogto]

hearing John mention Ryan Davis (of Giant Bomb) at around 25:00 really warmed my heart.

Love Ryan Davis

[vyasrushi]

John, once the VR patch for GT7 gets released on 21st, Don't forget to drive on tracks like Nurbergring, Mount Panorama, Tokyo Expressway, Spa and Le mans at midnight...these tracks already look ridiculously gorgeous at night time on flat screen, just imagine how good they would look in PSVR2

[andrewfranges]

Resident Evil 4 in VR was a transcendent experience. I almost want to buy PSVR2 just to play Resident Evil: Village.

[Quotenjugendlicher]

We need more Rich eating ice cream on the direct.

And I am not gonna mentioned that obvious German song Alex missed in his list.

[Parker--]

Love the Ryan Davis shoutout. Truly sad he passed nearly ten years ago. They also really changed game coverage as we know it.

[Alcatraz]

RTX 20 series released at the right time, otherwise you will get a chicken and egg problem. The only problem was the price, the price jump was just too much.

[RetroCrisis]

Oi Rich, nothing wrong with my crappy 1080p LCD tv! 🤣

[bikechan]

Doing a let's play where everyone plays the game together and y'all profile it in real time and talk about the issues sounds like an awesome idea. Hope you do it

[CHROME-COLOSSUS]

Hybrid AAA titles like RE8 and GT7 will be a super-strength of PSVR2. Until VR has a broader user base we cannot expect much AAA VR-exclusive content, but this will pave the way for high-quality right out of the gate.

Parallel to those will be AA and smaller VR devs that will deliver better and better VR-centric games.

Although Meta is presumably developing high quality VR for Quest 3, currently no other VR system is positioned as perfectly as PSVR2.

Incidentally, DS5 can be used in VR for supported titles. GT7 uses motion sensing so you can use it like a virtual wheel.

[bryanalexismusic]

I love when Rich explains things for me and everyone in the west 😂

[GreyMatterShades]

Regarding the comments about the weight of the PSVR 1 cable (at 6:25), there was a hardware revision that eliminated this issue. The cable was lighter and everything from that inline box (volume/mute buttons and 3.5mm headphone jack) were integrated into the headset.

[SuperNova-pyec]

Good point on PSVR2 and the duel sense. With GT7 VR patch out tomorrow I wonder if they will allow the use of Duel-sense controller as I cannot imagine everyone having a wheel. Using the PSVR2 hand controllers would be a bit odd and take you out of the experience.

Edit. Just checked the site and it does support duelsense, duelsense edge and wheels

[ModestMouseTrap]

John, there are over 140 games that are announced in development already.

[pdeb]

Good to hear about using the VR2 as a normal screen. I ordered a PS VR2, even though i have a good 4k screen, in the summer i have a lot of issues playing during the day because of to much light in the room. Now I think I can play some games which are quite dark, and use the headset instead of tv.

[usernamefromhell]

I prefer PS5 Tempest 3D audio with my Fidelio X2HR headphones over home surround sound, by a lot.

[doggiehowzer]

FSR1 being an open source code worked a real treat in a number of VR titles/tools. VR headsets often require rendering way higher than 4K resolutions (about 2.5x more for something like a Reverb G2) so they tended to be more taxing on GPUs. More importantly, it allows FSR to work with a higher base resolution to upsample from and to. 

Great community developers used it in OpenXR Toolkit (using FSR even before DLSS was officially supported on some games) and Custom Shaders Patch (Assetto Corsa).

[echobay]

We know the PSVR2 version of GT7 supports the Dualsense. There was a video just released today showing game play from Japan. So I am sure it'll depend from game to game when it's included.

[alexatkin]

Nice to see you discuss API/GPU instruction innovation. I always mention Programmable Pixel Shaders when this comes up as I remember the same argument back then as fixed function on those cards did not improve much due to using the silicon for the new programmable shaders, the same as rasterisation not improving as much on the 2080 due to the focus on RT and Tensor cores.

I think the complaints were louder this time not only thanks to social media, but the fact a lot of the people complaining have never experienced that innovation before and the inherent cost of it in the short term. Its why I was far more inclined to be an early adopter of the 2080, having been a PC gamer since before GPUs existed I knew what to expect.