Welcome to the brand new Digital Foundry Direct Weekly, where the team stop work on their projects for a couple of hours to catch up, talk tech, answer questions from our rather awesome backers on the DF Supporter Program – and in the case of this week, battle numerous technical gremlins – and a giant fly.
Topics up for discussion this week include Doom Eternal's ray tracing upgrade (covered in-depth after this filming right here) along with Sony's strategic acquisitions of Housemarque and Nixxes – two tech powerhouses capable of some incredible work. Housemarque looked like a logical buy, but PlayStation's decision to swoop on Nixxes came out of the blue. All we can really say here is that this studio is one of the unsung heroes of the development community and we can't wait to see what their association with Sony yields.
We also spend some time talking about Ratchet and Clank's brand new 120Hz support, which sees fidelity mode move up to 40fps from 30fps. This is something we're going to spend a little more time looking at because it's potentially very exciting – games typically tend to target 30fps or 60fps – and the gap is wide. The new 40fps support sees a new frame delivered every three screen refreshes on a 120Hz screen, so you get consistent frame-times but you also get higher frame-rates – and the results are impressive.
