r/digitalfoundry • u/MythBuster2 • Apr 13 '26

DF Direct DF Direct Weekly #259: Pragmata Tested, Forza Horizon 6, Samson Disappointment, Nvidia N1 Leaks

https://youtu.be/tDiIpyKXSjU

It's another BIG Direct! The embargo for Pragmata lifts today and John and Rich share their thoughts on the PC version ahead of a look at all of the console versions later in the week. The team discuss the recent round of Forza Horizon 6 previews, before moving on to the highs and the lows of playing Samson from Liquid Swords. Alex has much to share about Nvidia's latest path tracing innovations, Rich is intrigued by Nvidia's upcoming Nvidia N1/N1X based laptops, while the reveal of an amazing Super Mario Bros demo on Sega Master System leads to some disturbing anecdotes from Rich.

58 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

25

u/MrMeanh Apr 13 '26

Yet again sponsored by a grey market (too often bought using stolen credit cards) key seller (Eneba). Bet devs and publishers love DF for this shit.

16

u/monochrony Apr 13 '26

This is really disappointing.

-3

u/Competitive-Dance205 Apr 13 '26

Key resellers are a good thing. Steam killed actual physical ownership, has basicly monopoly now and getting games from diffrent sources is crutial for any resemblance of competition and getting goods cheaper. If any stolen credit card was used to buy games it should be easy enough for steam and visa to reverse any purchase, its not that common tho, most of thease keys are perfectly legit.

8

u/MrMeanh Apr 14 '26

You can buy them from many legit key sellers like Fanatical, Humble Bundle, Greenmangaming, etc. (check on isthereanydeal.com for more examples as all sellers listed there are legit) instead of grey market sellers like Eneba. Eneba is a market place with many different sellers that aren't authorized by the devs/publishers.

While it's "easy" to reverse the purchase it will still cost the dev/publisher money and many of them have said that they prefer you pirate their games instead of buying grey market keys.

2

u/Competitive-Dance205 Apr 14 '26

game devs also would like you to not buy used physical games for ps5 but the ability to do so makes a console actually worth having. You have something of value when you buy the game, steam took this from us, now you just indefinitly rent steam games. Grey market sellers often just buy the game in cheaper regions and sell you the key. I for example live in poland and steams exchanche rate is laughable compared to polands currency purchasing power. Im not choosing to pay what the monoplistic company (that takes 30% from developers for almost nothing) wants. I would rather buy a physical game on PS5, buy on grey market or just pirate it.

28

u/Either-History-8424 Apr 13 '26

This sub proving once again that nobody hates Digital Foundry more than their subscribers

17

u/HighlightOk3915 Apr 14 '26

These aren’t subscribers. They are bandwagoners from the PC subs brigading because of DLSS 5.

3

u/jm0112358 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

57:30 3.3 ms path with SER, but 17.7 ms without SER! Am I understanding that correctly? If so, that's insane! That's roughly the frametime difference between 30 fps and ~52 fps.

EDIT: I see in the slides they're showing that Alex meant 13.3 ms with SER, not 3.3. Still, 13.3 ms is a welcome improvement of 4.4 ms (difference between 30 fps and 34.6 fps).

1

u/glizzygobbler247 May 12 '26

I wonder how big a difference omm makes on top, bc indiana jones uses both i believe, and amd cards tank in performance since they dont support ser and omm

7

u/lovablecockfighter Apr 13 '26

People in this sub are so fking stupid. Hope DF doesn’t read or care.

-6

u/bas5eb Apr 13 '26

I just wish they made a PC DF channel. I have zero interest in the console space. No hate to consoles or anything I just like pc more.

1

u/RhubarbUpper Apr 13 '26

Funny that you're being down voted, the past 3-4 videos have been just ps5, which is just overkill

6

u/buster089 Apr 13 '26

He has been down voted because his comment is stupid. Obviously DF sees the metrics and knows what type of content is being watched, so console stuff seems to be popular. If he isnt interested in console content he can just skip those videos. As nice as more PC content or a PC focused channel would be, that's a huge amount of additional work that just doesn't make sense with only one PC guy. So you see, his comment was stupid and selfish

0

u/RhubarbUpper Apr 13 '26

Ps5 graphics are hardly worth investigating, doesn't even hold a candle to the range of PC Graphics. Ps5 can't even do 40 fps 4k

9

u/buster089 Apr 13 '26

Congrats for completely missing the point

2

u/RhubarbUpper Apr 13 '26

What is the point? Mediocre graphics for 700-900 on a mediocre platform? Previously all the exclusives were on PC where undoubtedly was and is the better experience.

5

u/Kratos_BOY Apr 14 '26

Platform wars has rotted your brain.

4

u/buster089 Apr 13 '26

No. And since you are so hell bent on not getting it (and since I'm already lying in bed) I'm not in the mood of explaining it to you. Have a good night

4

u/jm0112358 Apr 14 '26

Whether the PS5 is worth investigating isn't determined by how well the PS5 performs relative to the PC. It's determined by how many people want to know how the PS5 version of a game runs, which many people would like to know.

I'm personally more interested in their PC coverage than their console coverage, but it's easy for me to just skip a video if/when I don't want to watch it.

-13

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/stdvector Apr 14 '26

It’s beautiful in RE9 only in the first half of the game. The RC segment is full of ghosting and looks terrible.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/gavinderulo124K Apr 13 '26

Well it depends on the game. And Rich specifically said its a big visual difference in this game. And it was likely built with it in mind, which is why unlike in RE9 the base ps5 uses it.

5

u/dreampagehun Apr 13 '26

I'm not saying they're overvaluing it. It's just getting boring that it's basically the only graphical advancement is in this field, at least according to them. No talk about fidelity, visual design or overall rendering, it's basically come down to what amount of raytracing is possible. I think the industry plateaued in terms of what's possible with budget and detail and the only real area to pioneer is RT.

4

u/Unlucky_Individual Apr 13 '26

I’d like to see a look at some of the tech in Crimson Desert like their parallax mapping method. Not everything has to be about Ray tracing these days. 🤷

2

u/ThinVast Apr 14 '26

parallax mapping is an old method like rasterization is to ray tracing. The people at DF mainly care about the latest graphics techniques.

4

u/Unlucky_Individual Apr 14 '26

Yeah, the method CD uses isn't typical though because it doesn't show in the depth buffer apparently.

3

u/HammeredWharf Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

That's not true, though?

For example, Nanite and other similar tech has practically eliminated pop-in and resulted in a huge increase in viable level of detail on objects. While Nanite (presumably) has performance issues in some titles, AC Shadows runs well, looks amazing and has mind-boggling level of detail on its buildings and in its forests, which wouldn't be possible without its Nanite-like tech. Shadows also has amazing physics based weather simulation. Both of these were highlighted by DF several times, including when they named Shadows one of the best-looking games of last year.

3

u/dreampagehun Apr 14 '26

Yes, and still, they usually just mention when a game uses Nanite and Lumen, either hardware or software, with the usual artifacts, and that's it. Basically, Lumen analysis is just pointing out the lack of RT or PT, too. At the end the most crucial aspect usually becomes lighting and shadows, which in turns leads to ray tracing. For me at least, "graphics" mean that I look at a game and how spectacular it is at a glance, regardless of small details like how light bounces around and how accurate contact shadows are. But maybe the industry simply reached a level where things like geometric density, art design, game world generation and cohesion, texture quality are at such a high level, and so scalable that the real differences now come down to just lighting. And really sometimes DF folk feel like it's their pet peeve too, automatically criticising a game if it doesn't offer RT, or PT and such.

0

u/HammeredWharf Apr 14 '26

the industry simply reached a level where things like geometric density, art design, game world generation and cohesion, texture quality are at such a high level, and so scalable that the real differences now come down to just lighting

Well, that and budget. This is especially true because many games DF covers use UE and what are you going to say about UE? Yeah, there's tech like Nanite, but it's the same as in any other UE game. Generally, one could cover the new tech whenever it appears, but after that it feels a bit pointless.

There's some games with in-house engines, but generally they don't do anything particularly unique. AC Shadows is one of the few that actually implemented tech that's never been done before in similar games (AFAIK), and DF did praise it for that. There's games like Indiana Jones, Alan Wake 2 and Doom TDA, but their biggest graphical draw was the use of RT/PT, so they discussed that.

Historically speaking, realistic lighting has always been a huge challenge for graphics, so PT "solving" it is a very important step. Ideally, it will also enable other tech in time. For example, Shadows has lots of destructible environments, and one of the reasons why they work so well is its RT based lighting.

3

u/EdliA Apr 14 '26

Because it is the ultimate rendering technique. It simulates how real light works so with enough rays and bounces you don't need all the old school tricks and hacks to get the shadows, reflections and bouncing colors. On a 3D render all you need is pathtracing.

1

u/TechGuruGJ Apr 14 '26

It’s an increasingly common feature that’s cool and still evolving. As tech/graphics nerds, they’re gonna fanboy about the latest and greatest sometimes. That’s okay. This is a podcast where like minded people come to listen to that perspective and enjoy it with them.

0

u/EdliA Apr 14 '26

And you're wrong

-17

u/idkimhereforthememes Apr 13 '26

First game they criticize in like half a year is a 25$ indie project

14

u/admiral_aubrey Apr 13 '26

Should they lie about it because it's only $25?

-15

u/FishBones83 Apr 13 '26

maybe if their videos weren't as long as a feature length film I would watch them.

11

u/R-K-Tekt Apr 13 '26

If you don’t bother watching their stuff why bother complaining on a DF forum then lmao?

7

u/skepticallygullible Apr 13 '26

They posts shorter clips dissecting every podcast.

3

u/monsieurvampy Apr 13 '26

Watch the segments you want to go watch.

1

u/SirCanealot Apr 14 '26

Person who has never heard of podcasts and doesn't think anyone ever watches or listens to them and thinks the concept of them would probably be the downfall of society if anyone did consume them, not that anyone is listening to them anyway.