DF Direct Weekly #166: Summer Games Fest, PS5 '8K' Labelling, AutoSR Microsoft Upscaling!

The summer game showcase events are now in full swing and in this new episode of DF Direct Weekly, it's John, Oliver and Alex at mics, discussing the games of Summer Games 'Fest', along with other big new stories of the week. What's going on with the removal of the 8K label from the PS5 box? What do the team make of the PC adaptor for PSVR2 - and what's the score with Microsoft's AutoSR upscaling?

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0:00:00 Introduction
0:01:20 News 01: Summer Game Fest: Lego Horizon Adventures
0:13:44 Metaphor: Refantazio, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
0:25:17 Sonic X Shadow Generations, Alan Wake 2: Night Springs, Phantom Blade Zero
0:40:53 Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, Slitterhead, Killer Bean
0:50:14 Black Myth: Wukong, Civilization 7
1:03:59 News 02: Sony removes 8K support from PS5 box
1:22:49 News 03: PS VR2 PC adapter detailed
1:32:58 News 04: Microsoft unveils Auto SR upscaling tech
1:46:20 Supporter Q1: How can you optimize Windows text rendering for WOLED displays?
1:50:03 Supporter Q2: Why do people suggest limiting your frame-rate to just below the display refresh rate when using VRR on PC?
1:53:24 Supporter Q3: Would John recommend a PS VR2 or Meta Quest 3 for PC VR use?
1:55:33 Supporter Q4: Can you recall the first game that left you in awe of its graphics, making it hard to envision a better-looking game?
2:04:30 Supporter Q5: Are the consoles holding back RT use on PC?
2:10:25 Supporter Q6: What games do you wish you had first played on better hardware?

[RetroCrisis]

This is what happens when the dad is sleeping

[Houldey]

38:12 John: 'It's running pretty well these days isn't?', Alex: *SOUL LEAVING BODY*

[josephbustamante]

John is keeping the spirit of Chad Warden alive with "PS Triple."

[agentsmith]

General Grevious while hearing "hello there" from John:

"General You are a bold one!
I expected someone with your reputation to be a little …. older!"

[DeonvanHeerdenMusic]

The boys having no idea about Killer Bean's history makes me feel so old

[mmmako]

Killer Bean is a game based off an indie movie by the same name, created entirely by the matrix reloaded's lead animator.

[kosmosyche]

Every time they mention The Talos Principle 2 it becomes so obvious they didn't go past the first "prologue / tutorial" area and have no idea about the scope of that game. 😂 Like every time they go "but it's a smaller game", when in reality it's probably the biggest game on UE5 as of now.

[aggies]

+1 for Alex making a frame pacing Video. Going in depth on Vsync, how it functions, and why it's 20+ year old "legacy" implementation has lead us to this grab bag of marketing named various "technologies" which are confusing to sort out. If you are someone who wants, max framerate, smooth pacing, VRR and minimum latency, explaining what we need for that (especially not limited to a single vendor) would be great.

[darkknight]

favorite awe inspiring graphics:
MGS2: "omg the rain!"
God of War II: "that statue is huge!"
Luigi's Mansion: "it looks CG!"
Rogue Leader: "just like the movie!"

Halo CE: "the tree bark looks so real! the ground bumps from the flashlight!"
Doom 3: "moving urinal shadows! monitor text is so sharp!"
Half-Life 2: "water looks so good! alex is so hot!"
Gears of War: "everything is so shiny in the rain! camera shakes like a documentary!"
Crysis: "those are real palm trees! and they break where you shoot them!"
(nothing for a very long time)
RDR2: "...my goodness pretty much everything!!"
Future games: no idea. may never happen again for me. hopefully Gears E-day. death stranding 2 also looks good.

[SpontaneousWeasel]

38:13 this is the moment Alex becomes a dinosaur in response to lords of the fallen performance

[koerel]

1:06:25 I may be wrong here but don't the 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 chroma schemes refer to compression in YCbCr rather than RGB? As in the Y (luminance) is full resolution as it's what our eyes perceive with the most detail, but the color data is compressed. If I recall correctly Cb is blue, Cr is red and green is redundant as it can be deduced as the difference between the red+blue and the total luminance.

[slickrat]

I literally know a dude who bought the Xbox One S thinking it would do 4K gaming, I had to explain to him it did 4K only for video content (not games) and additionally he needed a 4K TV. Dude was so oblivious he thought he was having 4K gaming with his Xbox One S on his regular Full HD TV. So yeah, putting 8K label on the box is highly misleading for the layman.. It is a cheap trick that can in fact fool the unaware.

[Breakfastnooka]

When I first saw Rallisport Challenge on a demo xbox, I could not believe it. The way the tires left tracks in the sand, the water splashing, and the amount of dust behind and then collecting on the car! I was sold. These two games I think still look amazing to this day.

[drober]

Summer Games Fest was cool, but the Xbox showcase knocked it out if the park! Now that xbox owns everything and reserves it for their show, Summer Games fest gets the scraps.

[ecc]

The biggest "OMG, this looks amazing!" has to be the jump from Half-Life with software rendering to Half-Life with a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee.

[tyo]

This episode "dropped" earlier than usual?

[chrsrugby]

Why on earth 8k was ever talked about is beyond me. Get me 4k 120fps then we can talk about an almost imperceivable improvement in resolution.

[Noeiq]

Oof. That "explanation" of chroma subsampling was very wrong. This format uses YCrCb rather than RGB. Y (luminance) is always full bandwidth. Cr and Cb (color delta channels) are subsampled, with 4:2:2 using 1/2 samples in X only, and 4:2:0 using 1/2 samples in both X and Y. Yes, the terminology is really stupid.

[AndyGilleand]

422 and 420 do not operate in RGB. They operate in YCbCr

Y represents luminance, and that is always full resolution

Cr and Cb represent Chroma channels, which work differently than RGB, but are a representation of hue and saturation

422 has half resolution chroma channels, and 420 has quarter resolution chroma channels.

In all cases, if you turned the image to black and white, it would appear perfectly full resolution, but it's the color information that is lower res.

For reference, EVERY blu-ray and TV show you've ever watched is sampled at 420, and nobody really notices it, because our eyes have a lower sensitivity to color information.

The only time it becomes a problem is typically with very small colorful text.

[dnmr]

I hope you have the chance to do an Special Direct covering the unexpectedly amazing Xbox Showcase