Re: Update on EA SPORTS PGA TOUR
Lots of speculation elsewhere that this might be to get a 60 fps mode working on consoles for launch. I suspect this is wishful thinking but really hope it happens!
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I'm thinking it could also have to do with Augusta's hole 13 redesign, by lengthening the tee box back into the trees to be on par with how Augusta is this year. I am hoping, for the console players, it will mean 60fps.
I am also hoping it means we get the redesigned Par 3 course at Augusta. The render from the scan that EA has on their blog shows the area where Par 3 course is. I had a blast playing it in the Tiger game, hoping they did add the redesigned Par 3 course at some point. It's part of "Road to the Masters" so it only makes sense.
An EA rep is on the record saying they had very early access to knowledge about changes at Augusta
I don't see how they could be needing more time for that now, in the 11th hour.
I'm hoping the 60fps issue gets fixed with this 1 week and 4 day delay so the issue can finally stop being mentioned everywhere. Even 1080 60fps will help the console players.
@MaouYumisu wrote:I'm hoping the 60fps issue gets fixed with this 1 week and 4 day delay so the issue can finally stop being mentioned everywhere. Even 1080 60fps will help the console players.
It's actually a 2 week delay to both early access and main release dates.
My counting was off it seems. Oh well. Hopefully 2 weeks will be enough to fix the issues needed or unless they need the time for the Augusta 13th hole lengthening thing. Back to 1934 Augusta until then.
According to the the Xbox and PS Store pages, the game now releases on April 6th, with early access presumably on April 3rd
Why does this keep moving around?
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/ea-sports-pga-tour/9NSCGT9B9GD1
The PS Store listing lines up with a release on 4/7 at midnight in the eastern US. Mine shows that the game will be released at 11 p.m. in the US central time zone, which is midnight in the eastern time zone, meaning it comes out in parts of the US technically on 4/7.
So if you live west of the eastern time zone, you will get the game late in the evening of 4/6, but it does still sync up with a 4/7 midnight release in parts of the US.
It may be midnight local time. So the people that would technically be playing the earliest out of anyone would be New Zealand. They are 17hrs ahead from the Eastern Timezone in the US.
- @Ultrasonic_77 I would have thought if they were going to add a 60 FPS performance mode, they would have indicated that in the press release about the delay. Based on my experience with PC games, it would require nothing more than a resolution drop from 4K to 1080p on the consoles to hit the 60 FPS mark. I think the game would still look great at 1080p, but there seems to be an overriding tendency to stress the value of 4K res as the main target. I say let the game default to 4K @ 30 FPS. Those of us who want the 60 FPS will find the graphics settings menu and gladly drop the res to 1080p to make it happen.
It takes me about 10 seconds to make that change in the settings menu of PGA TOUR 2K23 on the PC version and I don't imagine it took more than a couple of hours of programming to include that option in the games menu. I don't see where it would be any more difficulty to do it in EA Sports PGA TOUR on a console.
@JCauthen09 wrote:
@Ultrasonic_77I would have thought if they were going to add a 60 FPS performance mode, they would have indicated that in the press release about the delay. Based on my experience with PC games, it would require nothing more than a resolution drop from 4K to 1080p on the consoles to hit the 60 FPS mark. I think the game would still look great at 1080p, but there seems to be an overriding tendency to stress the value of 4K res as the main target. I say let the game default to 4K @ 30 FPS. Those of us who want the 60 FPS will find the graphics settings menu and gladly drop the res to 1080p to make it happen.
It takes me about 10 seconds to make that change in the settings menu of PGA TOUR 2K23 on the PC version and I don't imagine it took more than a couple of hours of programming to include that option in the games menu. I don't see where it would be any more difficulty to do it in EA Sports PGA TOUR on a console.On most games the drop in resolution doesn't need to be anything like as severe as down to 1080p, but is usually associated with other changes too like not using ray-tracing. Coming up with a more optimised performance mode that runs at a stable frame-rate would take rather more work than your brute-force approach. Oh, and I don't think most would be happy with it being 1080p by the way.
Re. the delay announcement I did say I wasn't expecting to see a 60 Hz mode at launch, although it would be great if this happened.
- @Ultrasonic_77 I just can't imagine we're going to get to 60 FPS in this game just by eliminating ray tracing. There might be some optimizing they could do that helps a bit. I tried an experiment with PGA TOUR 2K23 today on my PC. I left the game at 1080p, but cut the refresh rate to 30 Hz, locking the frame rate at 30 FPS. Since my PC can maintain 60 FPS with the refresh rate set to 60 Hz, I knew it would be a smooth 30 FPS.
It turns out that that yes, the animation was smooth, but I got a strong impression of feeling like I was swinging the club underwater. It really hurt my touch around the green where the club always felt like it was painfully chasing my my stick motion. I shot a 39 on the front nine of Bay Hill at 30 FPS, then switched to 60 Hz/ 60 FPS for the back nine and shot 31. This experience solidified my desire for 60 FPS in ways that aren't all quantifiable.
I imagine I'll end up buying the PC version if I can cut the res to 1080p and achieve 60 FPS. I have the benefit of being an EA Access member so I'll get to test both versions before making a decision. I just can't see a 4K, 30 FPS XBox Series X version floating my boat like a 1080p, 60 FPS PC version will, but I'm more tactile than visual.
I started a poll at Operation Sports asking console owners if they'd settle for a 1080p res to achieve 60 FPS with EA Sports PGA Tour. It'll be interesting to watch. One key thing to keep in mind here is that the 2K swing is very frame rate dependent and I’m not at all convinced that EA will have that same issue.
I think the logic and the code for how the swing goes comes directly from the controller into the game engine in a way that is not frame rate dependent… at least not to the massive degree that is true in the 2K game
The good news is that at least the EA developers are listening to the community and out of all that's been discussed about frame rate and resolution. It seems to me that we are going to get something of a selection mode in the graphic settings for consoles eventually. That is the positive.🙂
@JCauthen09 wrote:
@Ultrasonic_77I just can't imagine we're going to get to 60 FPS in this game just by eliminating ray tracing.That isn't actually what I said and I don't expect this either. I mentioned ray-tracing as an example; others examples would be reducing draw-distances and reducing asset densities (plants, trees, NPCs etc) and there are more beyond that.
Off the top of my head I can't think of a single game on PS5/XSX where a 60 Hz performance mode runs at 1080p. Can you? Where I think 1080p might have been used in some cases is for 120 Hz modes but it's certainly not all of them if it is.
- @Ultrasonic_77 There are two that come to mind that have a performance mode in 1080p. Dirt 5 has a performance mode that uses 1080p, but it does that for 120 FPS. My display is locked at 60 Hz, so I can't try that one. Elite: Dangerous has a 1080p performance mode, but it's not built as a Series X game. I remember I used Performance mode in it on my original XBox One, but when I got a One X, I was able to run it quality mode at 60 FPS. To its credit, Elite: Dangerous actually has four different quality/performance mode options. I love having those options on a console.
I misspoke earlier when I tossed out the idea that eliminating ray tracing alone would be sufficient to double the frame rate. I forgot to add the other factors that would also have to change, as you say, such as object detail, draw distances, shadow quality, etc. I still wonder how much would have to be sacrificed from all of the above to achieve 60 FPS at 4K?
We're seeing more performance mode options being thrown in to next-gen consoles, but a resolution step down doesn't seem to widely used. I wonder if that's something Microsoft and Sony frown upon, or is it just a thing with publishers? - @64mamaluke True, all indications are they are listening. I'll be curious to see what they can cook up to respond to it. Meanwhile, I'll likely be sitting back and playing it at 1080p/60 FPS on my PC! :-)
@JCauthen09 wrote:
We're seeing more performance mode options being thrown in to next-gen consoles, but a resolution step down doesn't seem to widely used. I wonder if that's something Microsoft and Sony frown upon, or is it just a thing with publishers?I'd say most games that offer a performance mode reduce resolution, it's just not as severe as going from 4k to 1080p. Most use a form of dynamic resolution scaling but to more like ballpark 1440p targets or a bit above I think. Going solely off other games this is the sort of thing I'd expect for PGA Tour. I wouldn't personally want 4k @60 Hz as I'd rather take the resolution hit whilst preserving some other graphical aspects. In particular I HATE obvious pop-in for example, as it breaks immersion way more that than a lower resolution surface texture or fewer spectators would.
- oh, so it's been delayed, march used to have two solid releases, now april does 😄
I'm just so glad this comes to pc too, can't wait to play in 4k@120fps on a tv screen (fifa23 hit that with no problems on rtx 3070 so I have similar expectations here)
@MlecznyDuet wrote:
oh, so it's been delayed, march used to have two solid releases, now april does 😄
I'm just so glad this comes to pc too, can't wait to play in 4k@120fps on a tv screen (fifa23 hit that with no problems on rtx 3070 so I have similar expectations here)I have a 4080 and play on a 55" LG CX. Perfect TV as it supports Gsync. Enjoyed playing the last FIFA on it and was butter smooth at max settings at 4k. So I'm curious to see if I can hit similar frames as well.
Just curious on if we're getting any driving or putting ranges, and what type of variety if any. Would be nice to have the launch courses each with their different practice ranges.
@MlecznyDuet wrote:
oh, so it's been delayed, march used to have two solid releases, now april does 😄
I'm just so glad this comes to pc too, can't wait to play in 4k@120fps on a tv screen (fifa23 hit that with no problems on rtx 3070 so I have similar expectations here)My hunch is you'll find PGA Tour rather more graphically demanding than FIFA. Bear in mind that current gen consoles have 60 and 120 Hz modes for FIFA 23 but are only getting 30 Hz for PGA Tour (as originally announced anyway).
Has to be 60 on consoles. It’s ‘next gen’ only.
Imagine releasing a game in 2023 that’s locked to 30fps. Then imagine doing that with a sports game!
It would be laughably poor. They’d never live it down, nor should they.
It's going to be 30fps on Consoles
Whether it matters or not, I guess we'll see
@BuckHasTheBook wrote:Whether it matters or not, I guess we'll see
What do you mean? There's no arguing that there would be a noticeable difference in how the game feels between 30 and 60 fps. Possibly you mean in terms of the impact on sales? That's not something that will really be possible to judge.
Whether it truly deters buyers or not, yes
I'm planning on buying on PC anyhow, so it's of no matter to me personally
