Intel Panther Lake Handheld Rumors

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Okay, brilliant stuff. Uh but before we move on, uh quick shout out to the DF supporter programme. Early access to every edition of DF Direct Weekly, uh high-quality video downloads of everything we do, news updates from the team, completely ad-free access to digitalfoundry.net. Our website is pretty amazing stuff. So please do consider that uh patreon.com/slash digital foundry. Uh, but let's move on to our first news topic. Okay, so first news topic of the week. This one came out of nowhere and from a p surprising source. We were all set to talk about uh Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resync as our lead story. But then Alex gained access to the GDC um archive of uh talks from this year. And we found something that I think, Alex, it's it's quite extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah. It's uh hidden away in a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful presentation about F-125's path tracing. It says F-125 path tracing at 200 miles per hour. This was presented by Tom Hammersley of Yay , uh codemasters in this case. And it was all about the path tracing implementation in F125, specifically on PC. So there was a ton of really good information there, uh, developed over two years. Oh, sorry, one year with two senior uh engine programmers really fast. But the the golden nugget was at the very end of the presentation when going over performance numbers and he specifically references the RX9070XT as being surprisingly okay at the path tracing, like roughly 30 hertz at 4K FSR3 quality mode. And he said, like, basically, okay, well, can this run on lower end stuff? And then he cues up a video of path tracing running on dum dum dum, the PlayStation 5 Pro. Uh you heard me right. PS5 Pro running F1 with path tracing. And amazing. There's a yeah, I mean basically when the PS5 Pro came out, we probably didn't think about path tracing being anything really viable for that console. Um rdna three, r dna four, you know, they're better at RT, but not super impressive always. Um and this is running on there. So there's two things. He throws up a slide after he shows off this quick video showcasing it running. And basically it's running internally at 1080p. It's being upscaled to 4K via PSSR. He doesn't say PSSR 1 or 2, but it' really doesnt matter because they have a very similar frame time cost. It's running a daylight track, which is kind of important. I'll talk about that later. Um and it's showing the the original video that he just queued up was he said 30 hertz, 30 FPS. So then this performance slide shows up, and there's we can see there's two columns. On the left is the game standard path tracing implementation, with I would say probably little like microcode optimization specifically tied to PS5 Pro architecture. It's just like a port from the PC version. And you can see that's running at 42.32 milliseconds. So that is actually quite a bit lower than 30 fps ? Um, you know, 20 fps ish region wouldn't be good enough for real-time rendering, at least at 1080p internal resolution. But next to that is what I presume the video is based on. He doesn't actually directly say it, but uh EA Seed is the research organization, engineering research organization within EA, and they do a whole bunch of crazy stuff like machine learning research, path tracing research, that's where Gibbs came from, their real-time GI solution they use in all their sports games. And there is a different path tracer where the total frame time cost is 23.36 milliseconds, which is a little bit above 40 FPS, which he said was good enough for a 30 hertz presentation. 30 fps . He also made his mention as part of this. I'm talking about it here, but this prototype work, there was zero promises at all uh that this will be shipping. Uh that's what we do. Uh we always say things with big caveats at DF and so do developers. And uh yeah, so wasn't promised to be shipping in any ver version or any iteration of the game. Although he does thank Mark Cerny at the end of the presentation. So I don't know. I kind of think this could be somewhere in the future, personally. Um, but this is fantastic. Um there's there there's a couple caveats though, in spite of that. The EAC to Orca one is running really fast, but he specifically mentions that they kind of want to work on their own path tracing implementation. That's what it kind of sound ed like more. Like they want to optimize that first, then they want to do some other things with that to make it running better. Uh, and also another thing to mention is that uh the daylight tracks are a lot cheaper to render than the nighttime tracks in this game. Uh and it's always been that way, especially like when you play uh what is the one in the rain that you always do, Rich ? I don't know what you're talking about. Monaco? Right. Okay, yes. Monaco in the wet is the is the classic stress test, right? Yeah, yeah. So like that has tons of lights and one of the things that makes uh path tra cing really expensive is when you get into many light scenarios and that's when rooster uh starts getting a lot more expensive um so that that is uh one aspect of the path tracing that is not represented here. And we would have to see if that were ever in a shipping product, if there would be large differences like we see on PC here. Uh another semi-caveat is that the their original path tracer that they shipped on PC had a kind of band-aid solution to bring it out. At the end was for the secondary paths after the first one. So multi-bounce is actually handled by DDG I, which other path tracers like those found in uh like Cyberpunk or Indiana Jones, uh, they use different types of uh radiance caches when they do do them. And they usually do it after the multi-bounce has already like been to like two or three. They usually it's like the fourth bounce where they start uh going to the the caches. So this this is already like a lighter white thing. Doesn't mean it doesn't look b good or something like that, but it's already bit of a a lighter weight thing. So it's not uh like you can't just suddenly port Cyberpunk to the PlayStation Punk Pro or something like that here. As much as that would be cool. Um yeah, it it doesn't work that way. But specifically for this game, they did show off path tracing running on the PlayStation 5 Pro. Mm-hmm. That's pretty impressive. Um I'm intrigued by this, obviously, Alex, because the you're quite right. Sony hasn't even mentioned path tracing as a uh a potential use case for the PlayStation 5 Pro. It's obviously got enhanced ray tracing, as you said, compared to RTL A two, but the concept that it's capable of path tracing is kind of like um we thought it was off the table. Rightly so. And and when you look at other RT um implementations that we've seen on PS5 Pro, you know, we've seen, you know, with Alam Wake 2, for example, that they actually had to deliver what was essentially a lower than low version of of ray tracing for for PlayStation. But which makes this all the more interesting. Something that I find really interesting in addition to to what you've said, the computational cost of the EAC'd or ca um uh coming in at twenty three point three six milliseconds um if you're at thirty hertz you know you've got um you you know that's th that's 33.3 milliseconds. So there's kind of like leeway here. Um obviously PSSR is gonna take up um uh some of that uh 10 millisecond um hit of them, so to speak. But I was thinking, you know, a lot of of the uh PlayStation 5 Pro games have been coming in at 864 P, uh using PSSR with a two point five X multiplier on each each access to axis to get to four K, right? That's eighty percent of ten ATP. So that's another potential route forward there, uh depending on what the implications would be to to image quality there, because um upscaling ray tracing's a bit tricky, isn't it? But that is a potential option there. I really hope they ship it, right? I really hope they do something here. You know, it's it would be a real statement. Uh certainly get a lot of interest back into Four Wheeler One uh 25, which is already like a really, really good PlayStation 5 Pro game that we highly recommend people check out. Kind of curious if they maybe might ship it in 26 instead so they've got time to refine it. I don't know. So Tom, what do you think? Yeah, they're pretty fluid with this uh these sort of rollouts. Um you could get away with you know, doing a patch update for the current version and that'd be fine. I mean yeah, uh it's fascinating. I mean thirty FPS Formula One is an acquired taste I'd say. Yeah it fair point. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely like up our alleyways that you we'd we'd love to see this uh DF uh just to see how well it runs. And obviously the the breakdown of the the buffer and how how many milliseconds it takes to get a frame out with path tracing. Uh I'm not familiar with the rest of the back end and how much else like lops on top of that. So 23.36. The one thing that stands out to me is like um they've really made a huge saving. You know, their standard PT model on PC. It's the indirect paths uh part of it, which is uh they've cleaved off 17 milliseconds there to get uh with uh EAC's version of it, the AUCA uh uh approach to it, which is uh amazing. I'm wondering how much you know we'd notice if we were to flip between the two and see indirect rays like indirect bounces uh to grade in quality. That could be very interesting to see. What I'm so used to seeing, like, oh, we've achieved this amazing thing, and then there's a voice in the back of my head that says, Ah yes, but at what cost? Um you know, maybe it's so um subtle that no one would really mind. What you know uh that's so that'd be very interesting to see. That's a really good question, Tom. And so one thing that um also came out earlier this week was I'm gonna send this over to Oliver. Was a paper from NVIDIA titled Raster PT Enhanced Algorithmic Advances for Faster and More Robust Raster Path Tracing. So uh for EA F125 on PC, they use REASTR DI. And they use Reger, which is an AMD advancement for the indirect Restor implementation there, which like grounds it in world space with a voxel structure. Really cool stuff. But why I reference this NVIDIA paper is which is a different type of technology actually. It's not the stuff that ships in F1. But for the same, for much less performance, like half or even less. This paper shows that you can get even better quality using a similar technique, just with a lot more optimizations and better way to sample things. So one of the cool things like about that EA orca seed uh path tracer that they referenced there in the F1 presentation is that it could actually be even better quality than uh the original path tracing implementation because the interesting yeah Rooster is really, really new technology. I think it's like 2020 was the first time it came out. And they just keep making advancements on it and how to sample it better, get the first initial samples in a cheaper way. It's like a very expensive technique in general. So every single time you cut down like half of one part of it, it actually has a very large millisecond frame effect down the chain. So uh to say the least, who knows? The future is hyper accelerating. It just makes me more confident that something like PlayStation 6 could support at least 30 FPS uh PT titles. Because if it's already running at 30 FPS and something like a PS5 Pro, obviously with a lot of caveats there, um it makes it much more relevant for the future of PlayStation 6. I think I'm a bit more optimistic than UX. I think we could probably do sixty based on on this and the advancements being made and the fact that RDNA five is basically built for this kind of thing. Mm-hmm. Uh that's kind of like the point of it really. Uh which is really, really exciting, right? Um uh I guess there's still sort of uh plenty of uh latitude for running um uh sort of rasterized versions at super high frame rates as well, if that's if that's possible. Um but man, I'd love to see path tracing on a console. And um it's kind of like been one of these things where you you look at what the requirement is in the current generation for running, you know, really good high fidelity path tracing and you kind of think, well, maybe it's not going to happen for the next generation consoles. But then you sort of see the direction of travel, the amount of optimization that's going on, the changes being made, the focus on it. I think you know that's that's quite an interesting thing the fact that um uh you know uh EA code masters you know are seriously considering this and and actually coming up with working implementations for PS5 Pro no less I think it's really really, exciting stuff. Was there anything else in the presentation not specific to PlayStation 5 Pro that caught your eye? Well, they have a very different requirements than every other Path Trace game, I would say. Tom made mention of it with playing F1 at 30 FPS as being an acquired taste. And if you think about it, like the amount of distance that an F1 car travels, both like in one, you know, in thirty three milliseconds is a huge distance. That means you can get massive disocclusion or massive um like uh space difference between like the spatial coordinates in one frame to the next. And that makes uh doing RAS trace uh sorry, path tracing even more challenging. And that's one of the reasons why for their at least uh according to Ham um that they did use DDGI for the secondary bounces because it's a very stable structure as a car moves through it. So they basically were talking about how getting it to work at speed, uh, both at 60 hertz as well as with cars moving so quickly, especially at those nighttime like Abu Dhabi at night or Bahrain in the rain, as you've said, I think in the past, Rich. Um, yeah, Bahrain and Monaco, yeah. Monaco, yeah. I had to think about it. About the difference between NRD and ray reconstruction. Like um NVIDIA's relax deno iser uh or real-time denoiser is really good to start with and because you can debug it really easily. Um but RR gives way better results, but it's harder to debug because it's a black box and it picks up on all your mistakes, he said. Like it always, if you make a mistake somewhere in your maths, like uh earlier in the pipeline, R R is gonna show it like magnified 10 times uh because it just picks up on subtle correlations and you know actually makes them look like something in the frame whereas something like NRD would blur it over and you wouldn't see it. Um so yeah, it's very interesting uh that sort of difference to see. But hopefully presentations like this, which is you know, two engineers less than one year's work, um it shows that it is very doable. Uh that it doesn't take much time and the results were really amazing. Like I really wish we had more time to cover F-125 when it did came out. We kind of heard a little bit late that it was getting path tracing and it was like with other titles, but I think it could have easily been a blowout video uh describing how it works. And I think if it's if it's still gonna be there in F one twenty six, presumably, right? So like uh I think that's uh another thing to make sure we cover it when the time comes. It's very rare that the masters of code uh regress features from one to the next. So while I guess it hasn't been confirmed, I'd be very, very surprised if they don't actually do it. Just one final question that I've got. Uh you're talking about the ninety seventy XT. They were surprised by how well it performed on on uh F one twenty five there. And that was a four K quality mode, so it would be like native fourteen forty P. And were they talking about a performance target there, like 60 FPS or whatever? Yeah, so at um it wasn't 60 FPS. It still didn't manage 60 FPS. It was like 33.5 milliseconds at Abu Dhabi at night, uh, according to this year. Uh so it was like running at less than half the speed of a fifty ninety, but still less than half the speed at path tracing of a fifty ninety is actually a pretty good win for RDNA4. You'd expect it to be worse. But the thing is you're looking at uh apples and oranges here because one of them's using ray reconstruction, which is a lot higher quality, and the other one's using NRD. And the PlayStation 5 uh Pro version was also running NRD. So the quality of a 1080p upscale um could be questionable uh visually depending upon what's going on. So that's another thing to talk about. Like PS5 Pro I think also needs some sort of rate regener ation. I'm pretty sure that's in the bag. Uh whether it's going to be PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 6 is is you know up for debate. I was just uh raising the ninety seventy XT because obviously we've got figures here for um the standard path phasor running on PlayStation 5 Pro. So obviously it it's no ninety seventy XT, right? But it's quite interesting that you can get a sort of potentially a back of an envelope calcul ation on how much faster the 9070 XT is. But uh interesting nonetheless. And um yeah, I you know, obviously when it comes to um uh F1 tw uh the F1 franchise really um Codemasters they just sink in a lot of tech work. You know, that um PS5 Pro version that they put out was was fully featured. I mean they even had a shot at an AK mode. Yeah. It was also 30 wasn't it? I think Twice twice If it was sixty, amazing. Like is that there. I don't remember that. But I think it might have been thirty . Yeah, well they're always right there at the forefront, aren't they? And I think the positioning would be good if they were there on the PS6 launch. Because let's be honest, the PS5 Pro struggled for big bullet point things to advertise against and to have a big push for PS5 PS56 with path tracing as a a a big like you know we need words to sell you know big marketing uh uh terms to kind of get across what a new uh console's bringing in terms of value. So path tracing could be that. And maybe this could be one of those series and franchises which pushes it. I could see it. Yeah. I definitely want to see more there. They just go above and beyond, right? And uh they could in theory just, you know, let the the franchise carry the uh the sales, but they don't. They just push technology from uh one iteration to the next. I think it's pretty good. Um okay, great stuff. Pathfacing on PlayStation Five Professional. Who would have believed it? I really do hope they ship it. Um or just put it into F one twenty six if needs be. Do it. We've stopped but But let's m Steamer here. Give me the dirt. My mother in law is coming over. Then your home must be spotless. We'll handle the carpets, couch, and rugs. You handle her criticism with bait goods. People complain less when they're chewing. Book your deep clean now at Stanley Steamboard.com. Let's move on. Okay, so uh this segment of DF Direct has been sponsored by Libanovo, who sent me two of their Libanovo omni chairs to check out. So um truth is that she approached us a while back and I wasn't really sure what we could do about it because you know DF and chairs it's not really a a natural collaboration, is it? Uh but Alex with all the things that you've gone through this year, the fact that I'm significantly older than you. Um, so at this point, I've spent like 35 years doing desk work . And I've got to take this a bit more seriously, right? So, yes, um, on a personal perspective, chairs, I'm looking into it. Um, we did approach the Libonovo that we have got a couple of their chairs. This one's the black one. There's also like um a a white one, a space grey one, which um you'll see some B wells of. So I've seen the reviews of this chair and and there's a focus on ergonomics, right? And I've realized that um all of the prior chairs I've had have been sort of gamer-oriented chairs and they've been comfy, I've I've liked them. Um but there's always a sense that there's uh a support issue, like lumbar support in particular, sort of the lower back. It's been lacking and after a long day you you sort of definitely feel it. So I've got the Omni in, right? And viewers might notice that I've been using the black version of this chair for a few weeks now. So I've got some thoughts. Uh yeah, the space gray version, you'll see it in the B-roll because that was shot by our uh contributor at uh James Hills at his studio he's been working out um he's been helping us out rather a lot with a lot of logistical stuff behind the scenes. Just pointing out there that because the people might suggest that I'm into DJing, but that's James, not me. Yeah, there's all that other stuff going on in his studio. Uh before we go on though, um I'm no ergonomics specialist, right? Or a chair specialist even, and uh my experience is limited to the chairs you've seen on DF Direct over the years, but you know ergonomics is clearly important. So if you think'reing about changing your chair, purchasing a new one order or whatever, I'd be looking at a variety of sources, expert opinion to figure out what's best for you. Because I think in the long term, this stuff is actually quite important. So my time with this theni Om , I'd say it's like a sort of really high-tech office chair with some interesting features. It's it's pretty cool. That's also the easiest chair I've built, right? Um I've got the optional footrest sent over. This one's super, super easy to build. Very, very few parts won't take you five minutes. Kind of looks a bit odd to begin with, but obviously it's an ex-it was an extension to a chair I hadn't yet built. Um, and the chair takes more time to construct, maybe about 20 minutes in total, I think. Uh when you open the box, there's this big guide sheet and it's a fairly logical methodical process. There's only four screws in total. Actually give you a screwdriver, good. And uh which something's made made me chuckle, they give you the some gloves for constructing that. What? Really? That's that's awesome, yeah. Um kind of like almost sort of surgical gloves. It's quite funny. Uh it's worth watching the YouTube guide for construction. Um first of all, you might have issues figuring out exactly where the s the screws should go. The video's definitely helpful there. And secondly, there's kind of like a loom of electronics, right? Cables. So the video kind of clues you in on where the wiring should sit when you're putting it all together. Uh all pretty straightforward. My only critique, it's kind of st stupidly small stuff, that the guide talks about a small a small screw and all the screws are the same length. It is of a different type though. On a tangent, it's the first chair I've ever bought with a USB-C socket. But this is the interface that connects up the electronics to the rest of the chair. There's also a USB-C battery that powers the whole thing that slots in underneath there. Let's talk about the features here. And this is the sort of key thing that I think is interesting about this chair and the concept of uh supporting your spine. Uh they've got this thing called the bionic flex fit um for the back rest um and what they call dynamic support. So there's a lot of clever stuff going on, but ultimately the key thing that I wanted and got, I guess, was proper lumbar support at the base of the um at the base of my back. And you know, the the chairs I've used before done it with like cushions, minor adjustments uh to the backrest, but this is kind of a lot more granular, which I think is a pretty good thing. It's two chairs, uh two buttons rather on the chair for adjusting the shape of the backrest. Um there's like this really cool sort of adjustable piston on the back um which sort of gets you uh into the right positions there. Just reshape the you just reshape the back rest by using those buttons. It's really, really straightforward. That's the key feature from my uh perspective. That the headrest here is also pretty cool because you know you can take it out, you can put it in, you can uh adjust the the height. There's also sort of lateral back to front movement. And um I've never really felt sort of like I could use a headrest in the past 'cause the shape of my spine is such that my head is forward. Um yes, it's it's pretty cool stuff. Uh the recline positions, now this is interesting because they're kind of positioning this as a chair that's for office work, but it does other things. So the initial position, 105 degrees, the deep focus mode. I would actually call this typical office chair angle mode, and that's pretty much what I use exclusively. Uh there's 120 degrees, which sort of opens it up for a bit more sort of um movement for your spine. It's okay, but and I didn't really get on with it. And there's recline modes. So I don't relax in my office space, but there's a hundred and thirty-five degrees and a hundred and sixty degrees. So I think it's war for people that want to relax a bit in their offices or dens or whatever. And a hundred and sixty degrees, well just just think about the angle on that. It was funny because I leaned back and thought I was gonna fall over. Fall back. But it does kind of work and that's where you use your your foot rest. Yeah. Um so I think it's basically a pitch for relaxation there. Um and then there's on the stretch, and this is sort of a feature that's aimed at massaging the the uh the lumbar area. So you're kind of like I guess the idea is you go into 1 60 degree mode and then the you press the button and then the piston it goes from like minimum to maximum in a a sort of five minute duration. It's sort of aimed at um I'm just gonna quote this. Postural fatigue. It's aimed at reducing that postural fatigue. And it's best used with the footstool there. Um the B roll here, I look a bit uncomfortable with it. I thought it might be a bit of a gimmick. I don't use the feature, but my wife actually had a go on it. She does have lower back problems and thought it was great. Uh there's one more thing I want to point out here because um back when we were part of uh Corpo World with Reed exhibitions . We used to get guide, do you remember? We used to get guides through on how to sit at our desks in our chairs. And there's this has actually got pretty much the same guidance. And the thing that I discovered is that uh my desk is actually too low um uh to to to get the proper um sort of posture. So that's something I've got to sort out and I can sort it out because my desk has got telescopic legs. So at some point I'm gonna need to get that sorted. But the bottom line I think is that you buy a gaming chair for comfort, right? But this one I guess it is comfortable, but it's more about ergonomics and proper support. There are some sort of things to point out. For example, five-year warranty on the chair, but only two years warranty on the electronics. And basically the electronics are everything that sets, you know, the customization, it's everything that sets this chair apart from the prior ones I've had. So not having a similar five-year warranty on that, I think it's a bit of a miss. They should probably address that. Obviously, this is a really expensive chair as well. You know, these high-end ergonomic ones are a lot more expensive than your typical gamer chair, typical office chair. I've not fired other ergonomic chairs, so I can't really compare. But it is more comfortable. The customization for spinal position, good. Don't feel like I'm slouching in my chair anymore, which I think was the the main thing I was worried about. Um there's no this is a crazy one, but I kind of think it's cool. There's no egregious logos on the head vessels. This is it. This is the big one. Yeah, so I've been kind of like, you know, promoting uh subconsciously promoting uh other chairs for the last few years. Yeah But that's the feature low uh lowdown of of this particular one. I just want to say uh I I'm not a chair or ergon ergonomics expert, so I'd recommend uh on a topic as serious as this, reading a diversity of reviews when considering a purchase of this size. So but you know, with that said, please do check out the video description below with the links through to the various Libanovo websites in in various territories. Um Alex, chairs. You moved on to a standing desk . You're back in chairs now. Well, I'm switching. So that's the one thing. That's one thing I want to recommend to people in the audience is that uh you can't presume that a piece of technology will s insure your health forever or something like that. And you need uh you need activity in your life, uh you need vari ation. My physical therapists uh in German it's more makes more sense, but yeah, your back, your body is a bra uh is a movement apparatus. It is not meant for any sort of super extended single positions. And so you have to change up and vary your lifestyle to stay as healthy as possible. Something I didn't do for years, which is why I'm in the position I am in now. But you know, like, so uh I think it's great to invest in uh technologies like a desk and a chair that will uh make you healthier, but you have to then actively use the uh the kind of uh diversity of positions and movement that these things should allow you. So if you have a standing desk, you go up and down with it. You change it up during the day. During the middle of this podcast, I change where I was sitting and standing, right? Uh uh who knows? I'll break out the uh uh the uh uh the treadmill. Treadmill. Uh five minutes from now. You never know. But that's the whole point is you have to keep moving. And so uh I'm very happy that we are actually starting to talk about this stuff on DF, even in the space of a sponsored segment, because it is everyone is sitting, everyone is , you know, viewing screens all day, but they are constantly neglecting what it does to their bodies. And this is one of the ways to actually start becoming active about it and thinking about it. And like Rich said, definitely do your research. Also, if you can, depending upon your country, talk with a health professional about what it'll bring to your life and what they also think about it. Um yeah um and Tom, you've been we I met up with you last week and we were talking about this. You're you're putting in your 10,000 steps in addition to you know everything else. Yeah so my issue is uh you know it's it's not uh severe by any means but it's uh kind of an early warning call, I guess, like it's you know, that feeling of uh thinking oh I don't really want to now I've got to stand up. This is gonna hurt. I've got to really think about how to do this. That's a bad sign. So I've I've uh and it's because of uh all this sitting down and um I just not you, know exc,lusive to digital foundry work or, you know, anything in the games industry. It's worldwide, all sorts of professions. And it's going to be yeah, and people do warn you in their later years years, you know , be careful of your back and I'm starting to see the early signs of of those issues I guess. So I've been putting in my ten K every day and that's ni being really number like advice number one for uh a lot of these early signs of back pain um that I've that I've received and ten K a day has really helped and I imagine lumbar support on this would help massively as well, which I don't have. So um yeah. We'll have to figure that out. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it that's the thing, right? I mean um thirty-five years I've been in this game and it is mostly desk work, right? And uh it's gonna take a toll just because the amount of hours that you put in. So it's well worth uh c considering that when you're uh considering your sort of work space. It's all the more important bearing in mind that work from home is still a big deal, I think, for a lot a lot of people. Yeah, for sure. Obviously as as John famously put it, we're just a bunch of dudes working in our bedrooms. Okay, yeah, so in terms of like ergonomics, that sort of thing, very, very important, but it is still just one part of the whole picture and we're kind of like figuring this all out for ourselves as well. But um I guess with that, let's move on. Okay, so this week we saw the announcement of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resync, which is essentially a remaster of the beloved Assassin's Creed Black Flag. And uh it is using the latest iteration of the Anvil Next uh engine. Uh man, it's man that game came out in like twenty thirteen? It was kind of like a cross-chain game between Xbox 360 and Xbox One and PS3 and PS4. And it's back. Exciting times because this is one of the bel most beloved series entries. I mean, you know, I'm always going to be uh uh bigging up Unity, but obviously this one was a lot more popular . Um uh Tom, what do you think about this one? Exciting times, I think. I mean, you know, the the concept of actually going back to this game and um focusing on the single player stuff, bringing the new engine features, reimagining. I hate that word, reimagining. They've got to pick a re-something, don't they? Actual new gameplay mechanics as well. I think that's pretty impressive. Yeah. Lots to talk about here. What are your takeaways? Yeah, almost too much stuff to kind of condense into one segment, I think. But uh the head line for me really is that it is as faithful as it possibly can be while still trying to manage you know uh uh to alter the gameplay in ways that fits uh the way we play Assassin's Creed today. It look by the looks of it, it still looks like it's using the combat system fundamentally of the original, which is key to enjoying Black Flag as we remember it. But they have made it more fluid. Uh they've added st story chunks new story new characters um and it just all round feels like they've committed way more to this than I'd expected going in. The they're using they're sort of is rebuilt on uh a new Anvil uh the newer Anvil technologies and it's great but it still looks and feels like that old school Assassin's Creed experience. So there's a bit of a kind of disparity there, like between old and new, which I quite like to see because it I think people get nostalgic for that style where you know the parkour had a very certain look to it, a certain rhythm as you moved about, the combat as well. You know, from origins onwards it was all a bit more slightly more dark souls inflected in terms of the layout of the the controls and everything, but but yet it's it's uh very interesting to see how far they've gone with the visual upgrades as well. Like just you know, there's top down views of like the harbours uh completely reworked with s uh like the lighting and shadows at di at range. I don't know if they'd hold up as they are like on a modern system, so they've gone in and redone all that. A lot of facial uh mo cap as well is being redone. It's incredible that they've um committed so much resource to this. And it shows that they really, really care. And I I think it's a special game as well because I don't know, i you remember when it came out Rich and we were kind of in that space where we were looking at the current gen games like the PS three and three sixty and we were thinking, yeah, that's the black flag , that's for you know, where black flag is. But we're really looking at unity as like the benchmark of what's gonna happen next and for the series and w the because it was the new iteration of the Anvil engine. But black Flag kind of came out with uh it settled on it was safer in a lot of ways in terms of its tech, but it still blew everyone away because it really pushed for those shi p battles. You know, the it was like they launched with this trailer which blew like it was just astonishing, like the uh the wave simulation, the the weather effects while you were blasting these cannons across But yeah, so it was really yeah, it was it definitely one of the more memorable Assassin's Creeds, which is saying a lot because there's been so many. It's just and we've been there pretty much every year covering them. Yeah, I mean obviously we've seen remasters before, right? I mean the whole the wh I was gonna say that's that that's jug like this this is such a different scenario, Rich. Like Ezio collection is such a not good thing. Yeah, I mean it looks great, Alex, but there is uh obviously some ray tracing interest in this one. Mm-hmm. Yeah, this appears to be using Anvil Max uh ray tracing. I presume it's also using their MPH system, their micropolygon geometry system. Although it's a little bit, that's a harder thing to see in a trailer. Um well, even though there's a good amount of footage here, but this also has a lot of vegetation. And if I recall, the MPH system as of their last title didn't cover vegetation, so we'll see when the game comes here. But uh the the PC spec requirements are out and it's a little bit confusing. I at first thought that they were shipping a ray tracing only title, but then if you like look at the based upon the the way they laid out the spec or even the minimum spec says something like software ray tracing. Um but if you actually look at the bottom right, it says you can turn on a baked lighting. So it's a little bit confusing that they they wrote that. We should assume it's gonna be like shadows, right? I uh yeah, I presume so. But game world size here, sparsity, as well as indoor locations, I presume the ray tracing here is gonna look a lot, lot, lot better than the bakelighting, kind of like it did in many areas of shadows. One thing that I did notice that is different in this title that Shadows had, and this one doesn't have, is um the character hair uh appe ars to not be using their really cool hair strand-based system. Uh it looks like the character models look way better than the original, but I don't think they're using that here. Um, based upon everything I can see. It still is okay looking here, but I don't think it's in use here. And I think that may be a consequence of the very long development time of this project. Uh, if I recall, we started hearing about this years ago, and uh it seemed like it would have maybe come out like at some point in the past. And then they pushed for higher quality on it at some point internally. And I think they, you know, they have like all this character art they made and remaking hair for a bunch of character models is probably a massive endeavor that would maybe not be worth it for the final product. So I don't think that's in here. Maybe I'm wrong, but uh doesn't look like it is as of this. But I think the lighting looks way better than the original. The distance set with shadow maps, render looks great. Everything looks better. Then they don't have that like PS3 Xbox 360 glint to every single service. Everything's just like slathered in normal maps with terrible materials. Um, this looks like a like something really high quality in comparison. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I'm hoping that there'll be uh a a decent level of optimization similar to um shadows as well, because if we go back in time to uh Black Flag back in the day was one of the day one of the games that I just couldn't run at sixty frames per second uh on my system. It just it just wasn't possible for some reason. I just couldn't never quite got to grips with it. You know, that that was quite interesting. Uh but not particularly satisfactory. Um looking at that PC specifications chart though, what you know, the standard raid facing has got a little asterisk on it on minimum. What what do you have we figured out what that means? Yeah, it's it's in the bottom right and it's this a weird thing that says like, oh it uses software and you can turn on baked lighting if you want instead. Right. The the the the asterisk and the force like the organization of this chart here is a little bit stupid, I think. I d I don't know who did who did it, but sorry, but like the bottom right, just like showcasing features here, that's like completely unintelligible, I think, to most people reading it. Uh I didn't understand it. Yeah it's doing uh yeah like you really have to think about it. Um so not that Well I'd love to see a a a GTX sixteen sixty running standard road facing that that would be quite the feat wouldn't it be it probably run terribly to be honest with you. Uh but those those minimum specs also are pretty generous. I think that it probably runs a lot worse than you would think there. Just CPU wise, 'cause usually when you're in a bad CPU ville. Uh like the frame the frame times are like I think it's you know the frame times are just the the problem. It's like one of the problems you had so much trouble with the the original game, Rich, because at the time CPUs were good, but uh they had pretty four poor frame times in the Assassin's Creed games. Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We've come a long way with Assassin's Creed on PC, I think, because it never felt like a focus to me. But the um the last game was certainly in and in actual fact. I'm just thinking about when I w revisited Unity for that video a few weeks back. Oh yeah. And uh the PC version was like had uh L O D issues that the consoles didn't have even on Ultra High and it's like, mmm, what's go what's going on here? That's not quite right. But yeah, that seems like a uh uh a thing of the past now and uh I'm looking forward to this. I think it I think it's you know a game of its era that has you know, looks like they've approached it correctly. They've brought in all the new tech that's gonna make a difference. I think there's still a certain romanticism around this particular chapter that you know they've tapped into in the marketing. I think people are gonna enjoy it. If you have any sort of final thoughts on it, Tom ? Well, just good to get back to the sea shanties. Uh that's uh the main thing. Uh no, it it's just it's interesting. It is interesting as a uh not just for the tech but also just about Ubisoft reevaluating the series as a whole because in the uh I mean they've announced that they're kind of dialing back, you know, they had this uh kind of narrative across the whole Assassin's Creed series with the Desmond Miles, like the future stuff where you'd you'd be sent back in time to these various time periods. I kinda liked that. I like the present day stuff , but there was a point I think it might have been um uh Brotherhood where I just kind of checked out on that particular storyline. It just seemed to get a bit weird. And that's the problem. I think people just sort of got a bit tired of it. So in this apparent ly they're dialing that back and replacing that with more stuff within the black flag universe and world, which is good. I think it's uh the right move. But yeah, I'm very interested to go cover this one when it comes out. Yeah, and hopefully we'll get some access to Ubisoft as we had with uh Shadows to find out more because there's clearly a lot going on here. I'm quite excited to see how this is gonna land. We don't have too long to wait either. So yeah , good stuff. Okay, let's move on. Okay, so our next news topic. Um, it's kind of like been an expanding topic across the week because there's been a lot of things happening in the Xbox space. And um we actually have now something that is approaching a strategy, I think. But um I guess we should go through them in turn. I guess it started there was a story that there was going to be an end to custom silicon um uh within Xbox. It is basically going to be effectively a refactoring of existing AMD parts. Um I don't think that's a particularly big deal. Um what we have had is con uh confirmation from um AMD and Microsoft that the the bits that are needed for backwards compatibility with uh older Xbox games are obviously going to be baked into the silicon. So everything that's needed to run your old console games is is e is in there. Everything going forward about the future of graphics technology is kind of like now going to be shared between um the PC space and the console space. I think that's going to be the same pretty much on um uh PlayStation as well, perhaps with some minor modifications. We just need to see. But you know, it is basically a a unified direction of travel. So this concept of um custom silicon I think Alex, I don't know what you think about this, but you know, when we've got presentations from AMD that include Mark Cerny, the the concept of the end of custom silicon it's not really a big deal because it's actually now a collaboration between all parties to have so everybody gets what they want. Yeah. Do you agree with that? I'd agree with that. I also say like uh especially since uh like the end of RDNA three, a lot of the research side. AMD's been pushing actually really hard on the research side. And a lot of the stuff that they would be bringing into the architectures with, you know, they're going to get feedback from the vendors there and feedback from the people wanting things like an Xbox or PlayStation to be made or, you know, the Steambox, which everyone forgot about. Um yeah you know they're gonna bring that back. Did they? I I Val forgot about it. You know, they're going to bring that stuff into the RDNA IP and it's just going to carry over to every other product. I, you know, reading also into the PlayStation PlayStation PlayStation, I can't say it, PlayStation 6. Uh based upon that video, it seems like the things that RDNA 5 will have are just like the stuff that they're gonna use in PlayStation 6. It does it that presentation to me for the amethyst PlayStation Six Six stuff didn't really seem like a this is a PS6 exclusive technology thing. Rather, yeah, these are the things that RDNA will have in the future and PlayStation 6 will have as well. So I don't actually read this much like you in a negative way at all. I think the infrastructure and the amount of money it takes to make something very, very custom uh is not worth it because being different than the norm, which is PC standards, is a bad idea because developers want to have a simple life, right? They don't want to be making special just special stuff like the PS3 all the time. So um I think this all makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think on the Sony side, there's still room for doing stuff like that uh customized compute unit for audio, the the Tempest audio engine. Yeah, there's still room for stuff like that. It's just in terms of like graphics IP, graphics features, that sort of thing. Um , you know, that's that's kind of like a unified approach now. D do you sort of lament the end of potentially the end of exotic hardware though, Tom? Yeah, yeah. That's where I uh we it's we're a lot of us in the console space uh got kind of excited about every new console you know coming out. Uh fondest era for me really is uh like N64, PS1, Saturn that 'cause there's just so much so much, there. And uh it continued with PS3 and 360 obviously. But yeah, I have felt the I mean it's inevitable the the the change in the turn in the tide with uh PS4 and Xbox One on wards, I I think it's it's more about what people are willing to put uh what developers are willing to put into the the software side and about optimizing the the hardware for them rather than offering up these uh wild features that maybe no one will never use um or maybe will be useful for one and two games like um but yeah it's it's it's it's it had to go this way to to keep things budgets as light as they can possibly be in a in an industry where the budgets for most big triple A games are already kind of inflated. So it's uh it had to happen. I guess on the Sally side as well, they'll be ki retaining their custom APIs and stuff like that. You know, to from the hardware perspective, there's there's sort of uh strong argument at this point for feature parity. Um but let's move on to some of the other discussion points. Um we were lamenting last week, Alex, the um uh the sort of direction of Game Pass, Games Pass. Um and um w well we had a sort of instant sort of reaction that to that directly afterwards, which is that they are c utting the price of Game Pass Ultimate from I think $30 down to like $22, something like that, $23. They're gonna remove Call of Duty as a day one part of Game Pass. So , you know, in a sense it's kind of like almost like an unwinding of of um uh some of the changes that were made in the wake of the ABK acquisition. And I think it's probably for the best, but you know it it it just sort of highlights to me that uh that acquisition probably didn't turn out for the best. It didn't really make a enough of an impact on Game Pass subscribers to actually make it worthwhile. They've reduced the price, but it's still not as uh uh as as as as cheap as it was prior to the increase to thirty dollars. So they've only wound it back so far. Uh from a strategic point of view, I think it's probably the right call to sort of hive off um call of duty just from a sustainability uh perspective, because you know it's um all of the indications are that the numbers aren't aren't w weren't great there. I think um going forward though the focus really needs to be on call of duty itself and getting the the quality level up because the last couple of entries haven't really been hugely um sort of compelling to the point where we didn't even cover the last call of duty, which which is a first for a game of that size. Yeah, for sure. Um yeah, what do you make of that though? I mean it seems sensible, doesn't it? Right, Tom? Yeah. Uh I mean you get what you pay for, but you're not always paying for what you want. And I think with Game Pass a lot of people maybe didn't want to play Call of Duty and yet were lumbered with this extra fee per month to to get the Call of Duty game every like day one and I don't think that's really fair. It doesn't give people flexibility. And I I especially since that scaled down to the well, the essential, the basic model for the Xbox passes. It was just like okay. So uh all the tiers for Xbox uh game pass have kind of been reduced pretty much. Well I don't think it's all the way back to where it was, but it's close. And we're back to we're on the right path. But I do think you know we we see this sort of tone in a lot of Microsoft's Xbox announcements that this is our new future, this is where we're gonna go, our bold new strategy, we're gonna go here. And then two years later they do something kinda kind of uh contrary to that and it's just kinda it you you need to pick kind of a a a line and uh stick to it. But it does sound this is a good start, like um stabil ised gen nine as a healthy and high quality base. What does that mean? Because I don't uh I you know I guess what does that mean? What does it mean? Yeah. I mean stabilized kind of suggests that it's unstable at the moment, which suggests there's issues with Gen 9, right? So what are the issues? Well, I guess the fact the console's like gigantically expensive is a bit of an issue, but what can they do about that? Is it about delivery of games? I I'm not sure. You know, that's um uh we've got this uh strategy um document or rather a sort of statement um that's shared um yeah there's there's a lot in there that I think I don't quite understand. So there's a lot of sort of uh sort of exec talk there whereas I'd prefer they just say what they mean. Yeah. Uh talk about expand you know, read I I don't even sort of get it. Something about the windowing the windowing of stuff, which I guess is possibly related to exclusivity and the time between um uh a release on PC and a release uh and and and Xbox rather and a release on PS five. Yeah, there there's a lot going on there. Uh a sort of you um just gratuitously inserted thing about a change in approach to AI. Well, you know, I' notm even sure what their original approach to AI was. Um, except that, you know, what was it, co pilot for games, which I don't think anybody is particularly interested in. I don't know. There's a lot in there that's that's kind of a bit baffling, but um yeah, I'm interested to see how it's actually going to translate into stuff that actually happens. Yeah. Um there was this report actually Oliver posted it in our uh DF Direct channel about um a kind of um uh customizable menu for Game Pass. Yeah, so Alex, last week we were talking about these these tiers in Game Pass. We didn't sort of quite understand what it all means. And it looks as though they've kind of like decided right it's going to be less expensive. Um and they're also going to evolve it into a more flexible system . And uh Jez Corden from Windows Central claims that there's going to be uh potentially a pick your own plan formula for game pass where you can basically pick what features you want and maybe there'll be customized pricing there. I don't know, you know, the the whole sort of tier structure there has always been a bit baffling to me um because there's sort of like signature features of game pass that are only available if you really spend a lot of money. I guess the the the the good thing with the Picky Road plan is potentially that um you could save money, but I guess the other thing about it is that it could highlight, you know, there's the fear of missing out. So it could work the other way and people end up spending more. I'm not sure. Uh what do you make of all of this, Alex? Well, I I just to reference the Netflix model, which is perhaps the original internal pitch of Game Pass, is that you pay a certain amount of money each month and you get really big headline titles, but then Netflix uses that money to make smaller stuff uh and secure like licenses for like other IP and stuff like that that may enriches the entire model like and makes everyone happy. But then you know the price of Netflix goes up, they take away stuff over time, and you get less happy. And I canceled my Netflix like years ago. I think, or maybe it was shortly before they got rid of TNG being on there. Um like there's no reason to use Netflix with no TNG. Um in my opinion. And um yeah, so here I see both a positive in that you're paying for stuff you don't care about. I didn't about half of the like the new Netflix stuff that was coming out. I thought it was just garbage. Maybe I didn't, you know, maybe there's people who don't care about a lot of headline game pass titles, but like the like the indie portfolio it has. Um so you could do that. But at the same time, I'd be a little bit wondering and worried if they also use this like different customized tiers and plans to also support how they fund things that go into Game Pass. And over time, it could create like a lopsided thing where a lot of people are just subscribing to Game Pass for AAA maybe and the amount of users who have like the indie tier or the indie selection uh is smaller. So they don't actually bring in a lot of indie titles to Game Pass over time because the economics stop working. So I could see this also became becoming problematic over time, depending upon how the people who buy Game Pass decide to use it. But at the moment now, like you said, Rich, this is like a lot of exec corpo speak. Super hard to parse. Fix the fundamentals for players and partners. They don't say we're not gonna sorry, Oliver, we're not gonna unf Windows eleven. They don't say that here, but you know, that's what it should say maybe. Uh so uh yeah, actually Windows 11, the interesting thing is here, they don't there's not a lot of Windows talk in this. This is all about Xbox. And yeah, that's uh that's a They've even deprecated the uh the Microsoft gaming brand in favor of Xbox, which I think is a positive move. It's the right move, um certainly from sort of like a audience perspective, because there was the sense that sort of like the the Microsoft mothership was was encroaching more on the Xbox brand than was comfortable. I don't think that's actually changed, but certainly changing the brand is uh is is a step forward. Um this this concept about exclusivity it keeps coming up, but fundamentally, if we're going to be talking about it, the the concept of exclusivity is basically it's not going to appear on PlayStation 5 for a set period of time. And I think that's, you know, fair enough in terms of like um uh perception, perception of what Xbox is doing. But the the key thing is that in the grand scheme of things, um, the biggest competition for console gaming has always been PC, and Microsoft is a PC company, and those games are still going to appear on PC. All the audience research I've seen is that the younger audience , the teenage audience are into mobile and PC and uh gaming laptops are huge there. Um so in in a sense that I I think there's from a from a holistic point of view, the concept of um uh viewing PlayStation as as some sort of threat to Xbox or competition to Xbox is kind of like archaic thinking at this point. Yeah. Microsoft are thinking bigger, they're thinking about um you know getting their titles played on as many um devices as possible by as many people as possible and PC is a huge part of that um so I think you know that's almost kind of like window dressing.' Its something that the the core audience are clearly uh fascinated by and uh concerned about, but you know, broadly speaking, um it's it's not that much of a big deal. And I don't think the strategy there is really changing. I still don't really know what stabilizing Gen 9 means. Healthy and high quality base. There was talk about affordability as well. But at the you know, at the same time they've got a really expensive Series X, a really super, super expensive Series S, bearing in mind its actual capabilities. Project Helix is going to have like a you know a relatively huge APU for a console. So how's that going to be affordable? Um yeah, I mean and the other stuff just seems like s things that uh uh a gaming company should be doing anyway. Lead in comfortable personal high performance accessories. I mean that's what everybody should should be aspiring to anyway . Um the the content stuff, is there any I mean there is this talk of expanding into China, which is quite difficult owing to the restrictions the government imposes there. Let's talk of mobile first, which kind of makes sense, bearing in mind what the younger audience uh you know where they're playing. Maintain and grow in live games and long term steward stewardship. I mean that's your sort of uh forever games, right? Which, you know, they've got a lot going on there. Um and they actually sort of talk about Minecraft, the Elder Scrolls, Sea of Thieves. Yeah, I mean it's stuff about fixing the fundamentals for players and partners. What you know, what is that broken? Yeah. What is the strategy there? Curious. Um, I guess it is still, you know, we now have a sort of over over sort of arching strategy. It's called We are Xbox. Um but I'm sort of just waiting to see how this actually translates into actual actionable things that we're gonna notice. But I guess that's all I've got to say about that at the moment. Any final thoughts, Tom? Only only that it does seem internally y there's no real specifics in that document, but i internally it's clear their messaging is yeah, we need to re-redirect, uh we need to fix a bunch of bunch of things. We're not going to say specifically what they are, but we know we've got, and that enough is on its own kind of enough for me to say uh people within Microsoft right now and Xbox are trying to turn the boat, which is positive. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean that's a a positive step forward. Some curious things in their um We Are Xbox uh master plan there. Clarity is kindness. Yeah, that's an interesting word. I'd l I'd I'd love to see some clarity beyond this document. I'm imagining a bunch of motivational posters with cats on them with all these underneath them. Outwork the problem. It is a cat hanging from a string. Um, you know, protect our art though makes me happy. Um because that's probably what they haven't done as well. I mean, they've they've been really good with their back catalog in comparison to Sony, but I still think they could have done it better in some areas, uh, specifically regarding stuff like BC on PC and uh trying to really, really hard secure like the Activision Blizzard backlog and making it like very you know playable across all systems. I think they still could have done better there. So I hope that is a positive thing for the future. I would have liked to have seen an assurance to the staff that their jobs are a bit more secure, bearing in mind how many thousands of uh people they've let go . Um but that wasn't there. No. Uh man, there's a lot of stuff in here that I'm I'm struggling to unpick. Sig signal over over ceremony . Core before more. Markers, makers over managers. They just wanted more eliteration, didn't they? But they were just they're they're kind of catchy. I'm sure that well I hope I hope this makes sense to uh the people that this memo was aimed aimed at. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, the speed is learning like is like what speed, first of all? Like the stuff you snorts? Like wha what is this about? Are they orcs? Like what is this? So the Warhammer reference for the n nerds here. Um Yeah, but like I This is going radically off on a tangent. Let's see where Microsoft uh This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly widow working at an aquarium, Tova forms an unlikely friendship with the Cremudgeonly Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remark Moms this' Mother's Day weekend, only on Netflix May 8 . Okay, so let's move on and talk about something else. Um, Mouse PI, this was a game that released a couple of weeks ago. Really interesting concept here. It's essentially um, well, I don't know what you would describe it as really, but if you could imagine a sort of first-person game uh in the style of like 30s animation . It's literally black and white. Uh kind of like vibes of cuphead to a certain extent there. Yeah. Um but very, very different. Um Tom, you've been taking a look at this. It's a very, very unique presentation. Um I played it a little while um just before we came on the direct here. Yeah. Very, very curious. What do you make of it? Yeah, I I mean it's uh I I will say it's developed by a newcomer developer Fumi Games. They've gone for PS5, Xbox Consoles and Switch 2, and PC obviously. I gave it kind of about 20 minutes on each platform. There's a lot of uh uh two modes on each as well, a quality and a performance. Um yeah, very interesting. Like it reminds me uh bizarrely enough a lot of Paper Mario uh because they had a lot you know the all the uh spate of HT2D RPGs that Square Enix is pushing out these days, where obviously it's 3D backgrounds, but then a 2D element sprite on top. But that spr ite has actual 3D emitting properties like um it casts a shadow, even albeit uh a simple circle shadow, ambient occlusion, it's a light source as well, so as it travels through the scene it'll you know there's a broom essentially that you can summon to show you the way to the next point in the map. Yeah, the this the setup is simple. Um you're a mouse detective and you're thrown into this nineteen thirties inspired sort of world of of kind speake asies and you know casinos and all these uh uh underground world, uh this underground world basically. And it's very much it's very much um opens up with its s uh pitch, I guess, in terms of the visual style. There's like several v style modes you can choose to basically up the film grain to make it look really old timey and like the the film grain is ramped up to the point that the the frame is battered up and you can also increase the uh there's a kind of a smear you can add, like a Vaseline like smear, like diffusion is what it's called. Diffusion. Uh that goes on top of the chromatic aberration. It makes it look really messed up. And then sound as well . You can make it look as it sound as if you have um have it running on vinyl or a really beat up old cell celluloid um film reel uh as if it's been school ed. So very cool stuff. And but it's always in black and white, no matter what you do, it's in that monochrome style. And uh yeah, so when you strip all that away, what you're left with is basically a shooter with very high quality sprites coming at you uh with what they call um they call it kind of rubber hose animation. Like uh it's the idea of squashing and stretching and all the limbs not having points of articulation like we have elbows, they just have like round bendy limbs . Noodles, yeah. Noodles. Which is a great idea. Well it's a great utilisation of animation to take it to the furthest extreme and to show off what you can do with animation and to show things like friction and you know preparing for a jump you've got things like squash and stretch so there's like uh weapons and health items will bend and flap as you pull them out and you know the uh as you pull the the cork out of a whiskey bottle the glass will stretch with it to show that tension and it's uh it's all sold they've uh they sell it really well in the sprites and they're very committed to the bit and it's a lot of fun. Enemies and characters appear as 2D elements, as I've said. They're kind of like um it's funny just to kind of walk over them and see this tech like sprite just flip around. And um but it's a very violent game as well. It's just surprisingly like you know, you jump you're blowing these um the heads off these mice. They get decapitated and there's blood everywhere. I'm like, okay, this is a real vibe mix up. I wasn't quite expecting that. Um but yeah, so that's the setup. It's it's it's a cool style. It's nice to see something something non uh conformative and just trying something completely unique. Yeah, as I say, there's two modes on every console, and they've been very transparent, the developer to in kind of laying out all their tech in a you know, kind of their resolution and frame rate targets and a table, which I'll send to Oliver . Um everything you see in that is exactly as you uh uh is true of what you end up getting. The kind of noteworthy points are that PS5 and Series X and S all get 120 FPS modes if you have uh the right display attached, if you're using that performance mode. But the switch 2 version kind of peaks at 60 and um and that's kind of uh enough for that. But yes, it's uh the resolution part of it doesn't go into the fact it is dynamic. There's a a lot of dynamic switching. So on switch two they say the performance mode while docked is ten eight uh is uh ten eight p but it's kinda nine hundred p to ten eight p. The quality mode on switch two well docked is 1440p, but it drops to 1080p, so 1080p to 1440p there. Uh PS5's quality mode is 1800p to 4k, so there's some flex there in hitting 60 FPS and the 120 FPS performance mode on PS5 is 1296p to 1600p. So it's quite a lot of quite a lot of numbers there. But yeah, the uh uh TLDR, there's uh flexibility to the numbers they're saying and they'll go below that. Um and I think you found this too, Rich, uh that the the resolution numbers are one thing, but the image quality is kind of another . And it's kind of the anti-aliasing is there, but it's not it's not doing the visual style any j uh uh justice because it's a it's a great style, but I don't remember seeing 30s carto ons with jagged stair steps and uh shimmering and it kind of it ruins the aesthetic just to not have a better implementation in there. Yep, yeah. I I played it this morning and uh I did it on PS5 Pro, right? I don't think there's specific pro support, it just cleans up what's happening on uh PlayStation 5. Yeah. And uh initially I thought, right, okay, I'm gonna go into performance mode. And uh the image quality I thought um was n't wasn't great. You can see like there's some real issues, particularly with like specular aliasing and stuff like that. Big time. Um the resolution looks quite low. Um obviously I've got like a um a forty eight inch OLED like literally right in front of me here. But you know, that would have been visible living room distances easily. Um also when you're really close to the sprites they seemed a bit blocky and uh that that was a bit off putting. But um when I switched to quality mode, um everything just looked a lot, lot better. I mean th those same issues are there, they're just mitigated, and I think that's definitely the way I'd prefer to play the game on a PS5 console. Um Um it's kind of just interesting that you you are seeing sort of big aliasing issues like that in the in the modern era. But you pointed out, Alex, that those sprites are probably being compatible with anything else. Yeah, TAA famously uh is pretty bad with sprites, uh transparencies. They don't have motion vectors usually uh and to the same degree, especially if they're like like Tom said, they're um um moving with the camera. Uh, you know, like John uh you could see them flipping around and stuff. So that would be even more problematic. And I imagine that's one of the reasons why they wouldn't do it because it would make everyone smeary and it would ruin the aesthetic. But at the same time , I'm thinking of ways that could have mitigated or made it better would be to super sample the game. So you'd actually have it run, you'd actually have it run at a lower resolution, something like 480p. Like seriously, if we're going for that aesthetic, and then just have it be downsampled from the higher res that it actually is. And that could be one way to do it. I'm a little bit surprised that you said, Rich, that the game even has any specularity at all. So that's kind of another one. It's just it's just the contrast I think in terms of um uh bright colour, sorry, bright edges in particular and stuff like that. I know what you mean. Yeah, you ' likere a right at the start, you walk out and there's a table with uh all these bright white plates on it and you can immediately just see the stair stepping all over those. Uh that's my first impression. Oh yeah. I thought I thought yeah, going back to Cuphead in particular that, was one of the things about that game is just that there was no aliasing issue because everything was hand drawn. Yeah. It didn't matter if you were running at seven twenty P or ten eighty P on PC, it essentially looked the same 'cause it was all hand drawn art. But I guess this is different because it is combining two D and three D elements necessarily so for the concept. Yeah. I suppose MSA or something like that would have done a job on that. Like uh you know it it reminds me a bit of Doom in in this way as well. Yeah. I think it's a bit of a boomer shooter, uh, to use the phrase that people really like or don't like. Some people don't like it. I find it amazing. Um even though it should be Jet X shooter, you know, that's like the best part. It should be a Gen X shooter but it's Bernard shooter. Um yeah, a few uh bits to talk on now about performance. Uh and I'll I'll wrap this up. But yeah, it it is not uh a perfectly optimal game by any means uh the PS5 uh like the quality mode is you know running at 4k on base PS5 and it's like 40 to 60 FPS. There's bits like the casino uh with a giant like roulette table in the middle, uh there's the streets and a subway area with all these uh characters loitering on the the um the pathway and it's just it's just not there. Um 4K is a stretch too far. The hundred and twenty hertz mode uh gets you kind of uh unlocks that completely and runs at a lower resolution. But even then it's like mid-70s, mid-70s with drops into the 60s as well. So yeah, it's it that'll probably do fine with VR, it's uh that'll absolutely fix, you know, work, but it's not an ideal situation. Uh and the best way to go about that is to run the game at sixty hertz and use the performance mode, which just will cap at sixty, and then you've kind of got your fluid frame rate without any points. Um, Pro, PS5 Pro solves pretty much all of that. I'd say the quality mode now runs at 60 flat from pretty much all the testing in the same areas, and the 120 hertz performance mode kind of gets there. It's like 100 to 1 20. So it's pretty good. Um and it does a you know it's a significant uplift in in performance over what we had uh on base console. Um anything beyond that will be cleared up by VR. I did try switch two . Obviously the aliasing is significantly worse there. It's just yeah it's just 900p to 1080p and maybe maybe low will be lower in the handheld state as well. But I tried it in docked mode and the 30 FPS, sorry, the 60 FPS mode, the performance mode, is more like 40 to sixty and it's just yeah, it's not quite not there and uh the solution there is running at thirty in the quality mode, which seems to hold really well. Like it's a really solid capped experience so far. And I imagine that's that will uh yeah, it's just yeah, that's the the nature of the beast, I guess. But it's uh 30 FPS experience seems to like the best way to go on switch to I did give series S a very quick go before I jumped on the uh this direct just to see what was going on there because it's always curious to see because it's a bit more unique um uh sort of uh as a spec. And it was running pretty much at 40 to 60 on that performance mode. Sorry, on the uh quality mode. So the performance mode does clear that up quite well on series S. Um but yeah, it's a interesting game. Um switch to drops a few settings as well, worth noting. The texture quality is dropped like on the very first lift door, which opens like this way, sliding. The textures are dropped in quality, missing some fog effects while you're out in the streets, which is a shame because it's a very nice sort of noir-ish a thing to add. And I've noticed the dead mouse enemies also just disappear much faster from the ground once you've downed them, which is a bit of a shame. And the finally, the ambient occlusion on switch two is like uh significantly downgraded, so it looks almost like crisscross sketch patterns where there should be any shading, which actually looks all right given the the kind of cartoony look of the game. So but yeah, I'm uh out of breath now, so that's uh but that's okay . Like me like last week. Uh you know, this is this is actually kind of a funny thing uh thing about this game. I believe it may be uh a Unity title or it's using a modern engine basically to give it portability. Yeah. But it's uh it's one it's one of those instances where it makes you wish that something like Z Doom or G Z Doom was actually portable. It's just not for uh licensing reasons. But it would it would shoe through this, it would run like at a billion FPS at 4K on almost anything. Uh so you know, it just gives you a sense of like the costs sometimes that you have to incur to make a game actually portable to multiple platforms is just the base here is Unity, right? You know, and that that is a much higher base than the Doom Engine, which could maybe have run this game with some scripting. I don't know. Now that I would have loved to have seen a great idea. Something I I would love to see, and it does exist , but I've not had a chance to see it yet, is there is actually a PSP port of Cuphead. What that's sick, I don't know that . Yeah, I'd love to see it. I mean, in theory, you know, if it is mostly sprite work, it's it's kind of doable. The memory implications though are probably quite troubling. Uh bearing in mind it's like built for much, much more modern modern hardware. But yeah, I'm kind of curious about that. There are videos on YouTube there. Anyway, let's move on. Final news story of the week, and it's a good one. Um there's rumors emerging, uh credible rumours, I would say, that um Intel is planning to follow up on the release of its Panther Lake processors, the laptop processors, with specific handheld versions, or maybe just taking those existing processors and shrinking them down into handheld form factors. It does look as though you're going to get like the full um GPU architecture that was there in the full Pantherlake chip, which is great. And it looks like there's going to be two variants, one with 10 XE3 cores, one with 12 XE3 cores. And it looks, yeah, it does look as though it is pretty much the full Panther 8 configuration there, two performance CPU cores, 8 efficiency cores, and the four of the four low power cores there. So it's, you know, this is gonna be pretty hardcore for a handheld. Um and I think the thing that excites me the most about this or or leaves with a lot of anticipation is that um it's going to have uh 25 watt base TDP. Uh there's there's potentially the uh the notion that you can go up to 65 watts or 80 watts uh on the on the more extreme version of the chip, the one that's got the four uh the full twelve XE3 cores. Um the laptops that I uh that I've got and I think you've got one as well Alex um it seems to top out mostly at like 30 watts. And if we go back to the coverage I looked at in the past, uh when I looked at this in the past, um you could actually play Anum Wake 2 um with series S resolution but PS5 quality settings and it would outperform the series S there. So there's a serious amount of horsepower in Panther Lake there, bearing in mind it is an integrated GPU. And of course, you're getting all of the Intel feature set. So you're gonna get like um XESS for example, you'll have the frame generation, the multi-frame generation that they're doing there. So um it looks like there's gonna be announcements at Com putex . I wouldn't be surprised if the collaboration with MSI continues. Um obviously they've done the the the claw uh handheld. I'd expect to see a new claw. I mean I I've got no actual insider knowledge here, it just seems logical, right? Uh but there may well be other uh partners as well, since it does seem to be um um the the rumours do seem to be talking about more than one product. Alex, exciting times, right? I mean proper competition to AMD in the handheld, PC handheld space is something that we've been kind of wanting for a while now, right? Yeah, and with a forward-looking GPU architecture, which is what we're missing from AMD most most, you know, for most things. I think the CPU side is in a okay place. Um, but it's really that GPU that we really just want something that is more capable and more flexible and off ers you a road to the future for supporting things like machine learning and frame generation that is higher quality. The one thing that I also want to talk about here that I think is good about them is the four low power core that they actually have, because one thing that you have to kind of manually set up if you have a Steam Deck, I think, really, is um like let's say you're playing an old 2D game or an emulator like a Game Boy emulator or something like that. It will you know clock down, but it won't necessarily clock down everything super hardcore like you'd really want. And you sometimes have to like manual profile it to get it really hard and get uh get put everything down to just run it like a Game Boy game. Which is tedious. Which is tedious. Uh extra work just to get more battery life. Because that's why you want it. You want more battery life. Here, I think the balancing that will be available at least within Windows, we'll see about Linux support in the future, will be that these four LP cores are gonna be the thing, everything else is gonna turn off, and you're just gonna get these LP cores here running. Uh the the smaller, less ambitious content. And I think that could be a really great setup for playing lower end older games at like 60 to 120 hertz, depending on what they are, um, but with great battery life. So I think that could be a little like dark horse uh kind of performance feature there uh that hopefully should be testable in the final product just running like a Steam Deck let,'s say over here with a really low power game versus this with a very low power game and just seeing how they they turn out in the end. I think that'd be a vi at the same uh well it wouldn't same wattage at that point because it'd be it would be very low wattage. I don't know. But I I'm just curious to see what that actually has for the final product. Cause that's one thing that I really liked about the new architecture. Uh or at least the extension of it, because this is actually a previous thing they've done in the past, but just that it's even better now, that they can turn off the rest of the chip and just have these LP cores running. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Um Tom, any thoughts? Yeah, gosh, the scalability power wise is is uh incredible. Um our colleague Will Judd uh uh his article on this, which I'm looking at now is like uh saying it's uh it uh puts it along similar to AMD strict halo in terms of the power of wattage and it's like eighty watts on the arc 3 uh G3 Extreme is kind of absurd, isn't it? Is that a power direct to the mains situation? Can't be off the path, bro. It's it's gotta be, yeah. Yeah. I mean you could it you could in theory do 80 watts, um, but you know you've got other things on top of that. Um I don't think the memory is included in that. Oh okay. The screen the screen won't be. Uh the SSD won't be, the motherboard. Yeah, so there's gonna be additional power on on top of that. But I do think that the way things worked versus Strix Halo, which is a very different product, is that um Strix Halo kind of thrives at I mean eighty watts sort of sixty to eighty watts is is its kind of sweet spot 'cause it's a mass ive slab of silicon. The GPU here is is not as potent, but actually uh the less power you give it, the better it sort of retains its proportion uh proportionate performance. So it actually is in some of the benchmarks I've seen, so for example the forks, you know, the lower the wattage goes, the more of the performance it retains versus fixed halo, which loses a lot more performance when you go down beneath the sweet spot . And it's kind of what you want for a handheld. I mean I love my um uh GPD Win 5 with Strix Halo in it. It's capable of doing some like crazy things. You know, you are literally play it playing Alan Wake as you would playy it on a PlaStation 5 in a handheld, and it looks really, really cool. But you know, do you do you really want to be using a handheld that's like drawing 50-60 watts to get that experience uh when you 've got like you know potentially more efficient silicon that you know has got stuff like um proper machine learning based upscaling that strict halo doesn't have so I'm looking forward to it. I mean we've had a taste because uh you know when I did get the um uh laptop foo from Intel with Panther Lake in it, I was ki kind of surprised that it was power limited compared to the stuff that you saw, Alex at C R which I think was like eighty watts or sixty five watts , something like that. In that sort of window. Yeah. So that yeah, that that that was quite interesting. It's like, okay, well they're already limiting it on um on laptops. But it didn't seem to matter that much. You still got a great experience. So I expect that to sort of persist into into the handhelds. And I guess the other stuff is kind of like, you know, you start moving into wishlist territory. You know, you want a VLR screen really on a handheld, PC handheld especially, it really does make a difference. It papers over a lot of the cracks because you are still ultimately dealing with a device that's running at you know extremely low power. Um, you know, a series S is still pulling like 80 watts without a screen. Yeah. So doing this at 30 um uh w maybe up to sort of 40 to 50, you know, it's still it's still a bit of a push. So you do want stuff like VR . I hope one of these uh devices has an OLED VR display. Um the Legion Go two, I believe, with that device which uh ramped up to like fifteen hundred, two thousand dollars for some reason if that had it. But there are other devices that are coming with that screen. I really hope one of those uh one of those Panther Lake laptops gets that screen because that's kind of like you know kind of what you want, isn't it? I don't imagine this stuff's gonna be cheap because of the current memory crisis and the SSD crisis and the fact that Panther Lake itself is a pretty advanced chip, right? It's not gonna be um you know uh, something that's that that they can sort of produce in volume at uh massively discounted prices. But, you know, there seems to be this sort of real push for handheld gaming in the PC space. Steam Deck kind of kicked off um that particular uh movement. It's been pretty cool to see it sort of evolve over the years. But the one thing that has been lacking has been competition and yet here it is, and I'm really looking forward to it. Uh any final thoughts, Alex, before we wrap up? Nada . Fair enough. Yeah, straight to the point. Nada, that's it. Okay, that was the final news topic therefore the end of the show. 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