I think neither Vya or me are getting the right point across. This discussion started with how capable are consoles and how can they get that 4K60 or 4K30 target. Sources have already been provided that an RX580 can hit 27 FPS @ 4K on a PC. An equivalent GPU will surely do the same on a console. It won't get 60. It will get 30. And it may even dip below 30.
Console ports use several tricks that have also trickled down to the PC space and they provide insight in how the consoles get their FPS targets. None of that is console-specific optimization. TSSAA and other upscale/blur/sharpen passes have been seriously improved and are now also providing a benefit on PC versions of said games. That is what applies to the GPU side of the equation, and is therefore easily ported over. (Internal) render resolution is a common slider these days, and that slider is never maxed out on a console. Play RE7 and you can see the point. Its a blurfest on its basic setting and even the maxed out slider still applies some sort of upscale on a lower internal render res. You
never get your native display res rendered for that game within the basic game settings.
What is not ported is the CPU-focused improvements, and those are indeed all about abstraction layers, being able to code closer to metal, and on a single configuration. But those improvements ONLY serve to allow the slow CPUs in the consoles to do what they do. They are not only 'nice to have', they are essential, compulsory work that needs to be done to even get a game to run proper. "Optimization" for CPU on the graphical side of things can often be done without touching graphics quality, but not always. None of these things make the GPU faster. They allow a console to use that GPU fully with a much weaker CPU.
Talking about memory subsystems giving extra performance is complete bullshit and does not take into account the varying setups the consoles have used to date. Its not without reason an extra CPU core was made available to devs and its not without reason many games frequently dip to sub 25 FPS on either console. Those numbers simply belong to this range of hardware and any time they perform much better, you can easily point to the reason. Forza was named, well, racing games use a fixed track, have a very limited scope, basically are limited in everything. Its almost on-rails in terms of game design with the minor exception of some car simulation which is also one fixed asset per race. Racing games have always performed better and were always capable of pushing graphical boundaries compared to for example a shooter on the same hardware. Hell, I remember Wipeout on the PS3, which ran a buttery smooth 60 FPS everywhere and looked pristine. There is nothing really new here.
People really should stop comparing todays' console landscape to that of 10 years or further back. Its not the same. The market is rapidly moving towards simplifying all the things, one size fits all and that goes for game design more than anything. Complexity only brings additional expenses with very little benefits, and walled gardens these days can be maintained by just plastering a different DRM and logo on your hardware.
Here is a good example of what I mean. There are no shortcuts to better GPU performance here. Only tricks and they aren't console specific, but consoles are the best devices to deploy this for. Not only because of the single hardware config, but mostly because there is economical incentive: the cheaper the hardware in the console, the more you'll sell, the bigger the potential market, also for devs. If devs can bring higher graphical fidelity on that same config, that is a USP to their product. On the PC that USP only comes out when you buy better hardware, so devs don't benefit. They benefit more from providing a range of settings you can tweak. Cheaper, easier, more suited to that market.
http://www.redgamingtech.com/killzo...tion-temporal-reprojection-shadow-fall-1080p/
