Digital Foundry Direct Weekly: Gamescom 2021 Analysis

Gamescom 2021 Highlights and Tech Deep-Dive

The episode provides a deep-dive analysis into the most significant announcements from Gamescom 2021. The team, featuring Rich, Tom Morgan, and Alex Battaglia, evaluates the technical performance and visual fidelity of several major titles.

Key Game Discussions

• DokeV: Described as a visual spectacle, it showcases cutting-edge motion blur and particle effects. The developers prioritize graphical fidelity over performance at this stage, resulting in low, cinematic frame rates.
• Forza Horizon 5: The team highlights the photogrammetry and dense geometric detail of the Mexican, biomes. There is a strong focus on the game's seamless transitions and the challenge of maintaining quality across cross-gen hardware.
• Dying Light 2: An in-depth look at the RTX demo, emphasizing features like ray-traced reflections, shadows, and global illumination. The team posits it as a premier PC-first experience.
• Call of Duty: Vanguard: The team expresses skepticism, noting the lack of major technological leaps from the Modern Warfare (2019) engine and expressing fatigue regarding the cross-gen development constraints.

Industry Trends and Hardware

"I'm kind of not particularly interested in that anymore... This is like such a protracted cross generation period that I am starting to get a little bit fatigued."

• The discussion shifts to the state of GPU markets and the entry of Intel Arc. The team discusses the potential impact of XESS as an alternative to DLSS.
• There is debate surrounding NVIDIA refresh rumors, specifically the RTX 3090 Super, questioning the necessity and practical power consumption limits of such high-end hardware.
• Steam Deck and Proton: The team contemplates how Linux and Proton will affect future performance analysis, noting that the Steam Deck deserves dedicated coverage rather than being lumped into standard Windows-based PC reviews.

Developer and Technical Q&A

• Deepfake Concerns: Rich addresses the bizarre speculation regarding "deepfaked" interview subjects, explaining that poor-quality video feeds were salvaged using AI-based upscaling (Topaz AI).
• FPS Boost: Discussion on the slow trickle of new FPS Boost titles, citing the need for publisher collaboration and the complexity of older codebases as primary hurdles.