Shenmue III and PS5 Boost Mode

For sure a short window can't argue against the timing at all. Somehow I'm better now, though. Perhaps because I'm more relaxed and not so tense as my initial, anxious play through? Definitely same story for how I overcame the difficult QTE and CQTEs of the Dreamcast games (polished mirror).
 
Just saw test footage in Niaowu running on PS5.


When I haven't seen S3 in a while I always forget about the crazy huge fish-eye lense field of view :p

I guarantee the game would've ran better on PS4 if they'd narrows that down a bit (or a lot).
 
When I haven't seen S3 in a while I always forget about the crazy huge fish-eye lense field of view :p

I guarantee the game would've ran better on PS4 if they'd narrows that down a bit (or a lot).

Actually I think it’s more to do with the field of view that never feels right and seems to close especially comparing it to the original games. The classic camera mod for PC I think makes the game look far superior-


@LemonHaze or someone more technical knowledgeable may be able to correct me but with more pulled out camera that would require they draw more of the scenery which actually may be more taxing, thus the much closer FOV we got in final game.
 
@LemonHaze or someone more technical knowledgeable may be able to correct me but with more pulled out camera that would require they draw more of the scenery which actually may be more taxing, thus the much closer FOV we got in final game.
Suzuki mentioned at one point that the camera in III was how he had always wanted it to be in the original games, but they couldn't do it due to limitations on system overhead on the Dreamcast.
 
Actually I think it’s more to do with the field of view that never feels right and seems to close especially comparing it to the original games. The classic camera mod for PC I think makes the game look far superior-


@LemonHaze or someone more technical knowledgeable may be able to correct me but with more pulled out camera that would require they draw more of the scenery which actually may be more taxing, thus the much closer FOV we got in final game.
They're two separate things: the camera's position (distance from Ryo, its height) and the field of view (how much you can see on-screen, horizontally and vertically). Even though the camera position is closer to Ryo in III, the field of view is wider (to my eye, anyway). Just look at how much of the environment you can see walking through the fields in Bailu, the waterfront in Niaowu, etc. Contributing to this feeling is the camera height, which is higher up in III. In I & II, the camera's further away and closer to the ground.

Suzuki mentioned at one point that the camera in III was how he had always wanted it to be in the original games, but they couldn't do it due to limitations on system overhead on the Dreamcast.
That makes sense, because a higher camera would mean more visible scenery to render every frame.
 
Looks 100% smooth in both videos but a better "benchmark" would be in the center
where all the market stalls and stairs are

Here you go. There is a brief hitching stutter and as you can see the pop-in remains unchanged from PS4 port. As in it’s rather noticeable.



For sure a short window can't argue against the timing at all. Somehow I'm better now, though. Perhaps because I'm more relaxed and not so tense as my initial, anxious play through?

I think it’s familiarity when QTE’s will happen and also getting familiar with the patterns or even button prompts. I remember failing most of the mugger QTE chase in Niaowu and even though I couldn’t remember all specific button combinations I could recall one or two which made the whole sequence less arduous.

They're two separate things: the camera's position (distance from Ryo, its height) and the field of view (how much you can see on-screen, horizontally and vertically). Even though the camera position is closer to Ryo in III, the field of view is wider (to my eye, anyway). Just look at how much of the environment you can see walking through the fields in Bailu, the waterfront in Niaowu, etc. Contributing to this feeling is the camera height, which is higher up in III. In I & II, the camera's further away and closer to the ground.

Yes that’s true I was just referring camera position rather than FOV, which I wouldn’t exactly classify as fish lense although some may say so. I hope it’s modified in a potential Shenmue 4 as it never felt quite right in default position.
 
Here you go. There is a brief hitching stutter and as you can see the pop-in remains unchanged from PS4 port. As in it’s rather noticeable.
Are you not installed to the internal SSD? This looks far worse than when I showed the game running on a PS4 Pro with an internal SSD.

BTW, If there's really a strong interest I can do the same video again on my PS5 and hook up a frame rate graph to both, but the PS5 one won't be very interesting.
 
Are you not installed to the internal SSD? This looks far worse than when I showed the game running on a PS4 Pro with an internal SSD.

BTW, If there's really a strong interest I can do the same video again on my PS5 and hook up a frame rate graph to both, but the PS5 one won't be very interesting.
uhh.... freaky... i did my SSD PS4 Pro upgrade in August and did captures for a blog article at my job about the same time!
 
Here you go. There is a brief hitching stutter and as you can see the pop-in remains unchanged from PS4 port. As in it’s rather noticeable.





I think it’s familiarity when QTE’s will happen and also getting familiar with the patterns or even button prompts. I remember failing most of the mugger QTE chase in Niaowu and even though I couldn’t remember all specific button combinations I could recall one or two which made the whole sequence less arduous.



Yes that’s true I was just referring camera position rather than FOV, which I wouldn’t exactly classify as fish lense although some may say so. I hope it’s modified in a potential Shenmue 4 as it never felt quite right in default position.
I'd have to see a direct comparison to verify, but those NPCs do seem to load in faster than on a base PS4. Maybe it's just the SSD that makes a difference and not the PS5 itself (judging by @Sappharad's comment) -- I'm not sure. But I'd love to see an actual PS4 vs PS5 comparison.

On a base PS4 with a regular HDD, running through the main strip in Niaowu can result in NPCs taking several seconds to load in. You can bump into invisible NPCs that haven't loaded in yet, and stand still in front of market stalls for what feels like 3-4 seconds before the shop owner appears. Your footage seems like an improvement over that?
 
I'd have to see a direct comparison to verify, but those NPCs do seem to load in faster than on a base PS4. Maybe it's just the SSD that makes a difference and not the PS5 itself (judging by @Sappharad's comment) -- I'm not sure. But I'd love to see an actual PS4 vs PS5 comparison.

On a base PS4 with a regular HDD, running through the main strip in Niaowu can result in NPCs taking several seconds to load in. You can bump into invisible NPCs that haven't loaded in yet, and stand still in front of market stalls for what feels like 3-4 seconds before the shop owner appears. Your footage seems like an improvement over that?
I wish I had stock PS4 HDD footage to provide a direct comparison, but alas I never re-captured any before selling my PS4.
Given there was some interest those, I've recaptured the PS4 Pro footage I posted twice on PS5 - once via external SSD (which happens to be the exact SSD that was inside my previous PS4 Pro) and again from the internal SSD that comes with the PS5.

I probably won't have a comparison ready until later this week, I need to tweak the framerate analysis tool I wrote to handle multiple side by side videos, but what I've noticed from finally playing on PS5:
1. The load times and pop in seem roughly the same whether loading from external SSD versus the internal SSD.
2. The game does not maintain a locked 60fps as was previously suggested. -Edit- I had a lot more to say here originally, but after running the actual analysis it's better than I thought it was. I noticed duplicate frames when I was arrowing through the video frame by frame, but that must have been the player's fault. In my video editor I don't see duplicate frames, and performance analysis only picked up expected ones. All drops are basically single frame drops that happen when the game is streaming assets. It's effectively a locked 60 outside of that like John said.

uhh.... freaky... i did my SSD PS4 Pro upgrade in August and did captures for a blog article at my job about the same time!
I was promising to do the comparison way back in January when I installed the SSD, but never got around to it until August because no one wanted it and no one with capture hardware was able to get "stock PS4 Pro" footage for me to do a comparison. So I eventually just recorded it when I got around to it and never did a side-by-side comparison like I wanted.
 
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I only did on my PS4 Pro, although i did reinstall the stock HDD and re-download my digital Shenmue 3 and Judgment for comparison captures.
 
The game does not maintain a locked 60fps as was previously suggested. In some areas, yes it does, but I've also seen drops to the upper 50's by just manually scrubbing through the footage I captured frame by frame. I need to do some testing to make sure there aren't any dropped frames caused by software updates to the machine I use for capture, but I did notice a couple streaming related stutters actually playing the game so I know I'm not crazy. Even if there are drops, it looks amazingly smooth on PS5.


I was promising to do the comparison way back in January when I installed the SSD, but never got around to it until August because no one wanted it and no one with capture hardware was able to get "stock PS4 Pro" footage for me to do a comparison. So I eventually just recorded it when I got around to it and never did a side-by-side comparison like I wanted.
That comports with my experience. Also UE4 engine has these hitching issues when you it feels they are streaming in assets.
 
NPC's definitely load in quicker on PS5 than PS4 Pro. If you race to the vendor avenue via the harbour shortcut you could stand there and it would take a good 5 seconds or so for the shopkeepers to load in, on PS5, they were already there.
 
Is there's reason there's no footage of the external USB SSD past the loading screens?
There's no reason to. External USB SSD versus Internal SSD doesn't impact frame rate, just load times. I went with the Internal SSD for the PS4 vs PS5 footage because more people will probably run from the internal storage anyway. External SSD's are still pretty uncommon. I actually do have a full capture of the same footage from the external drive, but you're only going to see the same random 1-frame drops for pop-in assets that were already rare in the footage shown.

I could have just labelled the videos PS4 and PS5, but figured it was worth mentioning which video I used for the source footage from the rest.
 
Here is the comparison between PS4 Pro (with SSD) and PS5:

Thanks for your work. I was not surprised to see the very rare occasional dip on PS5. I was surprised by where it happened and the apparent lack of effects or things on screen which resulted in dropped frames.

This video also shows how much better the game feels, looks and moves compared to PS4 version. My first playthrough as I was trying to conserve health and walked everywhere it wasn’t as obvious but low to high 40FPS with constant fluctuations was not pleasant. I hope console gamers that don’t have access to powerful PC revisit this on PS5 in due course.
 
Here is the comparison between PS4 Pro (with SSD) and PS5:
I'm a little surprised, considering how they were talking about the integration for this internal storage on the PS5, that it doesn't even really come close to my M.2 drive for load times. Good to know that the performance is more stable, for whenever I decide to actually get a PS5. (Probably five to ten years from now.)
 
I'm a little surprised, considering how they were talking about the integration for this internal storage on the PS5, that it doesn't even really come close to my M.2 drive for load times. Good to know that the performance is more stable, for whenever I decide to actually get a PS5. (Probably five to ten years from now.)

For dedicated PS5 titles the SSD is amazing. I can literally from cold boot jump into Spider-Man or Demon Souls gameplay in seconds.
 
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