Unreal Engine 4 Demo: PlayStation 4 vs. PC

Digital Foundry: "Last week's GDC reveal of Unreal Engine 4 running on PlayStation 4 hardware gave us a revised look at 2012's Elemental PC demo - at the time operating on Core i7 in combination with Nvidia's powerful GTX 680 - and after the dust settled we were curious to see how the two renditions compared directly. This should give us some idea of the ways in which Epic has reshaped its code to better suit the new console platform. Of course, it's early days and UE4 in itself is still in development, but the question remains - to what extent can PS4 match up to a top-end PC?"

[DigitalSmoke]

Looks prety good for a stock engine.
Wasn't the PS4 version made in 3 +- weeks with 4Gig of GDDR5.?

[TheOneWhoIsTornApart]

Yea it was made quickly and im not sure if it even used that much GDDR5. Im not worried at all about the PS4's performance because we have barely scratched the surface on what it is actually capable of.

[Spinal]

And we the consumers Win. I'm getting a PS4 day one.

I got my PC gaming rig i7 16gb ram on a gtx 560 (soon updating to Radeon 7950). PC for the multiplats and play station for their exclusives.

Best way to live :) best of both worlds.

Oh and I'm an ex-Xbox live member RIP Xbox. Kinect 2.0 can kiss my ass

[Ezz2013]

what the point of this article ?!

even DF themself said :
" Of course, it's early days and UE4 in itself is still in development,"
and EPIC also said they are using a very early dev kit for ps4 and the demo was rushed

and since when UE4 engine is the engine that show PS4 full power ?!
Did UE3 was the engine that represent ps3 full power ?! Oh Hell NO.

also the demo is nothing amazing at all
in fact it Looks worse than the games we already saw on ps4
and those games are not even using the ps4 final kit
the only thing that will show how much powerfull ps4 really is ...is sony 1st party developers

[Fishy Fingers]

I get your point, only engines built specifically for, or at the very least, catered for, the PS4 will showcase its potential.

But UE3/PS3 comparison isn't really justified, the PS4 is based on 'standardised' hardware, inline with what the UE4 is designed for. This wasn't the case for the PS3.

Either way, it's likely UE4 will continue to be the middleware solution for most devs next gen, to see it up and running with great results at this early stage of both engine development and hardware revision is great. If nothing more it indicates decent multiplat performance for Sony in the future (on UE games anyway).

[AsimLeonheart]

The PS4 is looking awesome but the PC master will be here soon to put it down again. I dont know what they get from doing that again and again. Why dont they understand that console manufacturers cannot possibly put GTX Titans and Radeon 7990s in their consoles. It will not just be the GPU but the power supply, heat sink, cooling system and everything they will have to put in it to run that kind of GPU and CPU without melting the insides. Just imagine the costs associated with that and the price we would have to pay for such a console; easily $1500. Therefore I am happy with what I am getting with the PS4 for only $400 to $500.

[FreakdoutKid]

ram isnt going to make any diff

[Ezz2013]

and this also prove my point even more

from this Digital Foundry UE4 Face Off :
Alpha PS4 devkits:
*********...while the PS4 tools and APIs are still in their initial stages of development - it's going to take time for devs to fully get to grips with the new hardware. Over and above that, assuming this is the same demo that was shown at the PlayStation 4 reveal, we know for a fact that most studios only received final dev kits in the weeks beforehand, the suggestion being that most of the UE4 work will have been produced on unfinished hardware.*******

So..they know that this UE4 Demo have been been produced on unfinished hardware (very early ps4 dev kit)
and yet they still make this Face Off ?!

[thechosenone]

So in short it had nothing to do with the fact that the PS4's hardware was not able to run certain features, it's that UE4 engine itself is limited even on PCs. It'll be a number of years before we get an accurate representation of what the PS4 is truly capable of achieving and even then newer technologies and techniques will be pushing those boundaries all the time.

Checkout Mark Cerny's interview and the comment about launch titles not utilizing all that the hardware has to offer.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum...

"This type of functionality isn't used widely in the launch titles. However, I expect this to be used widely in many games throughout the life of the console and see this becoming an extremely important feature."

[thechosenone]

Xbox users don't expect GI or dynamic shadows in your version either and that's even more true if the rumors pan out about the 720's lower specs.

[silverbeld]

PS4 and PC really looks the same.

One thing I noticed is the PC brightness is Higher thats why you see a little more details.

[papashango]

hate to be the one to tell you this but its based on x86. Game developers know the in and outs already and so there won't be a magical "scratching the surface".

Pay attention to the industry they are all saying the ps4 is basically a pc. The best games to come out for the ps4 will be from first party devs and indie devs.

Don't expect 3rd party devs to play a major role in game quality this time around.

[Crazyglues]

I think the take away here is this, -Mark Rein the CEO of Epic said, "that the nex gen consoles had to step it up if they even want to be able to run the Unreal 4 engine"..

So I think he meant memory concerns as the dev kits had like 1.5 gigs which would be too weak.. So Sony has stepped it up and gave us 8 gigs of DDR5 -And here we have it not only running but looking really dam good-

From someone who played Crysis 2 on high-end PC and PS3 I can tell you the visuals are nice on PC but it's still the same game... (it makes it hard for me to justify upgrading my graphics card to a GTX Titan when I'm not really getting much more out the game- Like I was expecting the PC version of Crysis 2 to be different like if I kick a car you hear the metal crunch and the car goes flying and make a crazy explosion.. -that just doesn't happen because these companies are just trying to keep the experience the same across platforms)

This is why PC guys hate console Gamers - because of consoles they are dumb-ing down the PC experience to make it feel the same across the board.

-which sucks if you just bought a GTX Titan so you can play the game at it's full potential and be amazed...

-But anyway I'm really happy with the look of this on the PS4- it looks good enough & close enough to PC that we will be getting some really amazing games on PS4..

Makes the PS4 a great value for what it will end up costing (around 529 -550)

-Day One buy 4 Me.

.____........___...
.____||......||.......|___||
||.........___||............ ||

[JONESY6]

I actually noticed a larger graphical difference between PS4 and PC than I notice with almost all current gen games and PC.

I think that's because the PC versions this gen didn't get much attention, so they were sloppy and didn't look much better than the consoles.

[DivineAssault]

good enough.. After devs get familiar with the console, it will get better

[LOL_WUT]

Yep, if it looks this good when rushed and with early dev kits then I can only imagine how it would look after they spend more time utilizing the hardware.

[Kennytaur]

The PS4 version seems rushed and not a good representation. Why not compare the Agnis Philosophy demo? it's much better.

[fermcr]

Isn't this duplicate news ?

I've already seen a article PlayStation 4 vs. PC Unreal 4 demo on N4G.

[LAWSON72]

That was older comparison between to different demos

[majiebeast]

Wasnt to impressed by the unreal engine 3,4 90% of the games made with it looked like they had a coat of vaseline over them.

The power of the ps4 is gonna come from the engines build in house by the ICE team at Naughty dog not multiplatform engines like unreal 4.

@Lawson

I said 90%. Batman and Bioshock being the exceptions and are probably highly modified unreal 3 engine games even gears 2 has that vaseline coating it looked god awful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

[LAWSON72]

Bioshock Infinite say hi

[sengoku]

you can bet that naughty dog will out preform anything that epic will be capable of doing simply because epic like any pc game designers have so many other types of hardware to consider.

but it looks good enough already and i'm sure this demo does not even run on final ps4 hardware..

[sandman224]

It looks good enough, I'm more concerned with the frame rate on the ps4. I believe it's more important to have a high frame rate over polish and effects. Lets not forget that this is what the ps4 can do right now. If I recall the consoles only get better in performance after developers have learned the ins and outs of the system. That's why games look better later on in the consoles life span.

[Kaze88]

Heres another too http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Id like to see fully optimized version of this demo on every platform (ps4,pc latest,next xbox) and then compare.

[isarai]

How many times is this same subject going to end up on N4G?

[FrigidDARKNESS]

As many times Sony Gamers try to convince each other that the ps4 can out perform a PC.

There is omething wrong about this demo. I dont recall the pc looking overly bright.

[Ezz2013]

UE4 will not be used any more by most 3rd party devs like this gen
most 3rd party dev's now are using their own engine ...thank god!!
which is GREAT for gamers of alll systems

Square Enix = Luminous
Capcom = Panta Reih
Sony = Ice
Crytek = Cry Engine 3
EA = Frostbite 3.0
Activision = Developing their own engine ATM
Bethesda = Gamebyro
Konami = Fox Engine
Valve = Source 2.0
Rockstar = use it own engine too

so what is left to use UE4 ?!

and also UE4 rushed and unfinished demo is not what ps4 can do
we saw what ps4 can do with REAL games which look much better than that demo
and not only that ...they are running on very early ps4 dev kit and also still alpha-stage

and we still didn't see the rest of sony's powerhoue 1st party devs like ND and SSM etc on ps4

all of what i said are Facts here

[Sevir]

Most independent Developers, like Ninja Theory and deep silver, and the like will use UE4. Major publishers created did the work this gen to create their Next Gen engines because, last gen caught them off guard, and it was too expensive to spend money in creating specific engines at the start due to the jump develepment cost associated with the PS3/Xbox360.

so having a middleware like UE3 came in handy because it eliminated the work going in with developing for the PS3/xbox 360.

This time however, major publisher, did their R&D towards the last few years of the PS3/Xbox360 generation for what they felt would be adequate for NXT Gen console and so this is what we have now.

As for Sony, the Ice team based out of NaughtyDog's Studio, only supply the baseline optimization and renderings for the Sony umbrella, these baseline instructions are then taken by each of those studio's and evolved into their pipelines Its why QD's engine looks and works nothing like SSM, or ND, or Bend studio, or GG over in Amsterdam, or like Sucker Punch in Seattle, or Evolution in Cambridge.
Sony's Developers have their own engines but the baseline comes from ICE Team.

[DeadlyFire]

PC version has better lighting/shadows. PS4 version was on uncompleted hardware. I expect similar results to the PC version when all the platform hardware is optimized for the engine. Maybe by E3 2013 or GDC 2014 we will see the final result. I expect in many cases it is the reason why most new games have not had a PS4 version shown off just yet as the PC is being the base for the new generation games that have yet to announce their presence. Which can benefit PC, and console development in big ways.

PS4 will be better than average PC spec hardware of the same caliber thanks to alot of the high level coding and push to dig into the hardware without the API really being necessary to do things faster than OpenGL and DirectX. Not saying it can outrun all PC hardware though. I expect 2.5-3.0 Tflops performance match up as a maximum potential reach for the PS4, but it won't happen in its first year. X720 as well should have a decent reach, but I would expect more 720p games on it than the PS4. Games should look great all around thanks to x86 resources that can be shared among ports without much change.

The really exciting part about this tech is what happens if/when they push x86 to the max in the generation after this one with everything they learn about digging under the APIs and controlling the hardware directly.

[thebudgetgamer]

Two times.

[JAMurida]

I see the difference but I'm still on board with having a good game overall. The Killzone Shadow Fall demo was realtime gameplay and IMO, looked better than the stuff Unreal 4 has showed, maybe it's because of that fact that we are so use to seeing nothing but the same color usage in Killzone games, yet the demo showed a crazy amount of color. I still think that the Killzone demo is a better showcase of what the PS4 can do, and iirc, the demo wasn't even running on final specs, which leads to believe that there is still much improvement to be made. But what's even more surprising is how this is the first of years to come of showing what the system can do.

I'll wait for people like Santa Monica, Naught Dog, PD, and others ( sadly not Zipper =/ ) to show what the PS4 can do.

[mrmancs]

the ps4(un-optimized) unreal 4 demo looked pretty great and way above this gen imo , but lets not Forget the pc version which the engine was originally built for had an extra snow flake particle and Better lighting(for now) and it looked more blurry.

[kingduqc]

it's called deep of field. PC had more particles for sure, probably run faster too.

in 2 years the gap will be huge again and we'll be stuck on bad texture QQ.

[Sevir]

The console being an amalgam of midrange PC parts and GPU combine to pull of some pretty impressive yet scaled back presentation besides that of the year old PC benchmark for the UE4. whats more is that this Demo is largely epics first attempt at getting the engine working, and seems to be running on hardware that wasn't finalized. proof is in the fact that Most Devs didn't even know that sony changed the ram specifications of the PS4 just weeks before the announcement, and then the fact that Final Devkits didn't go out but weeks to select developers before GDC2013.

So what does this say for an Engine running on prototype PS4 hardware!? The Console in itself is a beast, and play in the shallow end of the PC in its early days...

Case in point the first year of console games will look impressive, but Second Generation PS4 games and games launching in year 3/4 will look be swimming in the same area, and the differences will be negligible.

If early hardware was what this demo was running off of and Epic managed to get the PS4 to play this close to the GTX 680 set up then seriously whats the PC elitist going to say when Epic's engine is up and running on Final PS4 hardware once they've had the chance to really wrap their hands around the upgraded Ram, the boost in clock speed, and the refined set of API packed into the PS4 devkits?

The next gen of games will be a sight to behold and games are going to be outstanding, especially from the exclusive console developers!

[Holeran]

". Update: To clarify, it's our understanding that there won't be a real-time GI/Lightmass divide between PC and console in final UE4 games - we're looking at the pre-computed solution across all platforms."

So they are now saying that pc versions won't be running real time global illumination?

That was the biggest difference in the two demos.

[chukamachine]

Nobody knows what the PC version framerate was. Maybe they decided that not enough people's had the juice and in a full running game, it's completely different to a graphics demo.