Assassin’s Creed Unity and Why Frame Rate is Way More Important Than Resolution

CraveOnline: "If you’re the kind of person who lets out an audible groan whenever you see the words “console parity” meet in a sentence, and who sighs heavily when you hear talk of the ongoing struggle for developers to reach that 1080p sweet spot, then I feel for you. It wasn’t so long ago when the term frame rate wasn’t even in our lexicon, but now it seems to be the subject of the most discussion on every gaming website out there."

[LordMaim]

Both are important.

[JonnyBigBoss]

But one has to be more important than the other.

[Ultra]

Give console gamers options for 1080p and 720p to combat parity.

[decrypt]

Maybe a dynamic resolution would work for consoles. 720p in crowded areas, 900p in lesser taxing areas.

However even a dynamic resolution might not help if the game is CPU bound.

I personally think the game is very taxing on the GPU side of things.

Check out the game running on PC with a 7870 (which is slightly more powerful than the PS4 gpu.

A 7870 is doing 20-30fps at 1080p (40% more res than PS4). Which looks about balanced when you consider performance numbers PS4 vs 7870.

Now up the GPU on the PC to a GTX 970 which is 2x as powerful as the PS4 and the frame rate goes between 40-60fps. Again this is a 2x real world gain vs the PS4. This is a big in your face to the people who claim consoles come with super optimization, as this proves PC optimization can be dam close to consoles.

I would think the game is probably GPU bound and for consoles to get higher frame rate Ubisoft will probably have to down the res to 720p.

This is a long term forecast i have been making, as more and more true next gen games role out, expect PS4 and Xb1 to be back at 720p.

Console makers will need another attempt at 1080p next gen.

[jebabcock]

Your logic is flawed decrypt. For your claim to hold any water the assumption that ubisoft did a good job optimizing across the board would have to be made. This is probably the worst candidate you could have picked to make this argument.

[decrypt]

@jebabcock

I can understand Ubisoft not optimizing for the PC, however when it comes to consoles that is their main target audience and as of now PS4 has the highest user base. I dont understand how Ubisoft could just ignore their largest potential user base that would just be self killing.

I would think they have probably made a very resource intensive game and the scaling of the game on PC just shows that. I would reserve further comments until i see the game running if it really offers all the eye candy people say it does then it probably needs the resources too.

[IGiveHugs2NakedWomen]

Yes frame rates are more important than resolution, however, we are paying $60 for games. Should we not expect a "standard" resolution? If a game was running at 60 fps but the game has Original Nintendo Entertainment System resolution running on the PS4 or Xbox One would you buy it?

If developers don't want to build games that have a minimum stable 30fps with 1080p resolution, then they shouldn't be charging $60 dollars for the game.

Does anyone think that's fair?

[decrypt]

@igiveghugs

Dude i am watching videos of the game running maxed on PC.

It looks bloody amazing.

Check this video running max on PC:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

I think the game is resource demanding, this is not Ubis fault. Consoles just have weak hardware. They need to down the res to 720p for consoles to get stable frame rate.

They are charging 60usd for making the game, its not their problem if console hardware is weak and cant handle 1080p. You want the game in 1080p buy it for a PC.

[OB1Biker]

It always a compromise of course. easy to understand.. must be playable but best possible graphics IMO and of course it also depends on the type of game

[starchild]

That's a nice video, decrypt. You're right about the game being demanding due to having great visuals, at least in my opinion.

To my eyes, and based on what I know about the graphics techniques being used in the game, Unity is probably the best looking game I have played on my PC, period. It looks that good.

That's partially why I'm so baffled by people claiming it is unoptimized. The game is not unoptimized. It is properly multithreaded and scales well with more powerful hardware. It doesn't have the kind of CPU bottlenecking we saw with AC4. It is demanding due to the massive scale and the graphical makeup of the game.

It's sad that Unity is getting all the hate for being demanding when it's really due mostly to the fact that it is one of the first fully current gen multiplatform games we've seen. Most other games are cross-gen games with various aspects of their graphical makeup held back by the last gen roots.

The truth is, Unity might be demanding, but most of the better looking games this gen will be similarly demanding, especially if they are open-wold.

Already we are seeing this. Dragon Age Inquisition, for example, benchmarked at 37fps average on a GTX 770, while Unity was benchmarked at 39fps average. (although DA Inquisition was using anti-aliasing and Unity wasn't). Still, we can see that there isn't a huge difference in their performance.
http://www.pcgameshardware....
http://gamegpu.ru/action-/-...

And we have to remember that Dragon Age Inquisition is a cross generation game, whereas Unity is a fully current gen game. I also thought that Dragon Age Inquisition didn't look as good as Unity when I saw it at PAX Prime.

I think that as more and more completely current gen games get released people will realize that Unity's performance wasn't so bad after all. I predict that games like The Witcher 3, The Division and Batman Arkham Knight will be similarly demanding, if not more so.

[freshslicepizza]

unfortunately most console games don't let you fiddle with settings too much. you get what you get. if i remember correctly bioshock allowed you to turn off vsync which improved the frame rate but you got screen tears.

[IGiveHugs2NakedWomen]

@decrypt

"Dude i am watching videos of the game running maxed on PC.

It looks bloody amazing.

Check this video running max on PC:"

That's wonderful, but i'm not talking about this game running on a PC. A PC has ways to adjust frame rates and resolution manually to get the game to run smoothly, PS4 and Xbox One do not. When I buy games for the PS4 I expect the games to look and play better than games that ran on Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, PS2, and PS3. Assassin's Creed Unity runs at 900p and an UNSTABLE 30fps on both the PS4 and Xbox One. If an open world game like Infamous Second Son can run at 30fps and 1080p why can't this broken mess from Ubisoft do it? It's not a massive game, it's just filled with useless NPCs. When I pay $60 for a game I want to enjoy looking at it as well as enjoy playing it.

[Amuro]

when frame-rate deeps below 20 the game is unplayable. When resolution goes as low as 240p the game's still playable, thus frame-rate is more important.

[timmyp53]

They should release a patch where you can increase or increase npc density in the towns. Problem fixed.

[Findingcrybabies]

Not gonna happen. Ubishit made this game.

[RG_Dubz]

Even the PS2 has several games running 60fps, some were also 720p.. Gaming has went downhill so fast.

[Elda]

Possibly you mean PS2 remasters on PS3.

[RG_Dubz]

No, not at all.. I was playing Downhill Domination (PS2) just last week, 60fps..

@DragonbornZ

Yes, technical requirements have went up but the hardware has increased drastically as well.. I agree development effort is nearly nonexistent these days.

[Amuro]

GT4 on PS2 was 60 frames and 1080i. There were a few other 1080i games on PS2 too like Tourist Trophy, Beyond Good & Evil and Valkyrie Profile 2. And running at 60 frames there was Zone of the Enders, which IRONICALLY ran at 30 frames on PS3 and later on with a patch it ran at like 45 frames but it could never touch the original PS2 version.

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

[DragonbornZ]

Gaming & technical requirements have went up, developmental effort has gone down.

[skulz7]

It has really impressive graphics but the frame rate is the issue. On the one hand Ubisoft were actually right that the consoles can't handle 1080p with those graphics at the moment. I mean the frame rate drops at 900p, imagine what it would have been like at 1080p.

[Eidolon]

Or maybe they just aren't very good at optimizing their games.

[seanpitt23]

If this was the case then the pc wouldn't be having problems just the consoles I think they find it very difficult optimizing their games.

[mkis007]

The point is moot when 30fps isn't ever truly reached in 30fps games. Black Flag on ps4 was perfect at 30fps constant...but that game being only 30fps on next gen should have been the red flag.

[DaBooth]

And this is why you NEVER get AMD to build a console pc or babies buggy I wouldn't let AMD make a coffee you know its going to come back with tea lol !!! no seriously cheap nasty AMD bits inside every new shiny bucket of next gen garbage really mr sony you gave me a amazing ps3 cell processor then a utter pile of monkeys mess and a cheap nasty omg gddr5 graphics card for £350 you having a laugh when even devs cant write good high quality games on a tablet processor ?? and a graphics card from the budget AMD range you know when you have been rolled and both companies going to AMD has really done us all for five years at least unless they give us ps5 inside ps now

[strangeaeon]

I have to agree, I was let down from word go with the hardware of both the X1 and PS4. Now we have to wait another 5 years before we see any significant improvement in graphics, AI, physics, etc. And PC, while potentially way more powerful depending on your rig, will not get scaled up due to being held back by the consoles.

[Bennibop]

You can improve the frame rate of the PS4 version by putting your PS4 offline, game runs loads better when you do! Seems to be an issue that can be patch based on this fix!

[shadow18spirit]

To me FPS is way more important to me than resolution, i want the game to be smooth when i play it, otherwise i'll get frustrated with the game.

[Remy_S]

Its pretty damn pathetic that it still drops frames with the resolution at 900p, definitely not buying this garbage.

[rmedtx]

I completely agree with you. They should have taken time to optimize the game for every specific platform with they didn't. I'm not paying for a broken game.

[Wolfenstein51]

Resolution has not been that important since Myst. It's all about the framerate. Give me one example of a game that benefitted from higher rez/lower framerate. I can give you 20 examples of games that were better due to higher framerates. Try playing that piece of garbage Borderlands 2 on Vita - basically runs at 10-15 FPS during any moments where shooting was involved which is most of the time (and I am a Borderlands super-fanatic). I guarantee if a company released a game at 720p with 60 FPS, VERY few people would complain.

[mochachino]

Both resolution and framerate have minimum standards to be passable. Framerate should never be less than a constant 30FPS and resolution should never be lower than 720p. If devs can do 60FPS at 720P/dynamic res, or 30FPS at 1080p/900p, or 900p at 50FPS, etc. that's a design choice I suppose.

Even better would be to give gamers the option, but less than 30FPS or 720p is unacceptable to me personally this gen and I won't buy any AAA game that doesn't comply with these minimum standards.