DF Weekly: 'Bespoke Collection' merch hits the DF Store

Last week, I took to Eurogamer to announce a Warehouse Sale for Digital Foundry merchandise, and this week we have development: new 'Bespoke' merch has hit the DF Store, featuring a fan-made design that really tickled us given our collective predilection for uttering this phrase.

As well as the long-rumoured Bespoke tee, which comes in a double-sided blue/purple gradient design on a black shirt, you can also pick up a nifty metal pin (pictured above). Finally, the Bespoke Collection also includes a sticker pack, with a DF Approved seal of quality, a DF Retro PVM design and two #stutterstruggle frame-time graphs - including one blank design to chart your very own traversal or shader compilation stutters.

We've been working on these designs for the past three months or so - and significantly longer in the case of the PVM design - so it's great to finally see them go on (virtual) store shelves. I think they've turned out wonderfully, having had the chance to test out some of the early samples, and I'm particularly happy that the excellent Bespoke design by community member Dacvak now has the chance to be appreciated by a wider audience.

• See the new Bespoke Collection at the DF Store

DF Direct Weekly #159: PS5 Pro Ultra Boost Mode, Ghost of Tsushima PC Specs, Kingdom Come 2

As well as hawking our new wares, which doesn't come particularly naturally to the Digital Foundry crew, I wanted to briefly discuss why we spend time on merchandise in the first place. After all, surely every minute we spend approving designs, choosing products or tweeting selfies detracts from our actual work, right? Why go through the hassle?

In short, the unfortunate reality of making YouTube videos and writing articles in 2024 is that ad revenue alone just isn't enough to keep the lights on. We're lucky enough to have a wonderful community of supporters that supports our work directly over on Patreon, but that kind of regular contribution isn't for everyone. Selling merch makes sense as a alternative option then, and by buying a shirt or pin, you help us to do the work that we do, while getting a quality item that you (hopefully!) like wearing or looking at.

This support is particularly key as we aim to continue to evolve the tools that underpin a lot of the work that we do, both on PC and console. We want to keep on the cutting edge of video game and hardware analysis, and that requires investment in new software and techniques. The goal here is to both unlock new avenues of analysis and eliminate some of the heretofore necessary drudgery inherent to our current tools. Ideally, that extra efficiency more than makes up for the (relatively limited) time spent developing and marketing merchandise!

• 0:00:00 Introduction
• 0:02:16 News 01: PS5 Pro to receive "ultra boost mode"
• 0:15:50 News 02: Ghost of Tsushima PC requirements announced
• 0:31:05 News 03: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 revealed
• 0:38:38 News 04: Avatar devs disclose game tech
• 1:00:17 News 05: Hands-on with GeForce Now G-Sync
• 1:09:56 News 06: Apple opens the emulator floodgates!
• 1:18:45 Supporter Q1: What does a more PC-like console look like? Would it be worthwhile?
• 1:28:25 Supporter Q2: How could a 5090 improve on today's gaming experiences?
• 1:36:16 Supporter Q3: Why can't Nvidia obtain an x86 license and create x86 CPUs?
• 1:40:38 Supporter Q4: Will The Last of Us Remastered get a PS5 Pro remaster?
• 1:42:32 Supporter Q5: What are your most anticipated PS5 Pro patches to existing games?
• 1:48:36 Supporter Q6: Will Sony release their exclusives on PC on the same day as PS5?
• 1:55:07 Supporter Q7: Can FSR 3.1 save this console generation's image quality?
• 2:03:36 Supporter Q8: If DF released a console motherboard shirt, would Alex wear it?

OK, enough of Digital Foundry meta chat. DF Weekly #159 contained a lot of interesting discussions on actual industry news from Rich, Alex and Oliver this week, as the assembled team took on new details about the PlayStation 5 Pro's 'ultra boost mode' and which games might benefit most from the automatic speed-up it entails, oddities amongst Ghost of Tsushima's recently released PC requirements and the recent addition of G-Sync to GeForce Now.

I was particularly intrigued this week by another topic on the show, which was the reveal of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 by developers Warhorse Studios. I have spent absolutely hours playing the first title for benchmarking purposes, and I was always struck by both its forward-looking performance characteristics and the scale and scope of its world.

It looks like a return to form for the second iteration based on what the trailer reveals, with a more modern version of the CryEngine adapation used in the first game rather than the trendier choice of Unreal Engine 5. The games industry largely converging on a single engine has its strengths - and UE5 is certainly a popular choice for a reason - but I've written before about its downsides too, not least of which is a generation of games that share a lot of the same visual flourishes and limitations. It's exciting to see a major new CryEngine title then, and I agree with developer Tobias Stolz-Zwilling that the original title has 'visually aged extremely well' thanks to that CryEngine heritage.

So far we've seen some noticeable improvements to the level of detail and graphical fidelity in the new game, with Alex specifically mentioning the rendering of naturalistic environments and the sky rendering with volumetric clouds. Oliver also chimed in on the topic, detailing the improvements to indirect lighting, first-person animation and the potential inclusion of ray-traced reflections visible in semi-gloss armour.

It'll be fascinating to see how the game handles its much higher NPC counts too, with the more rural locations in the first game being traded for a pretty sizeable city amongst other environs. We already saw from Baldur's Gate 3 and Dragon's Dogma 2 that CPU limitations stemming from large NPC numbers can be profound even on high-end PC hardware, so we may be looking at another great test game for CPU reviews - not to mention a challenge for current-gen consoles.

This is already a long blog, so I'll just finish off by mentioning that this week's marathon-length show also included some great supporter questions, most relevantly long-time questioner LeftistHominid who asked if Alex would debase his body by wearing an explicitly console version of the DF Motherboard shirt. Our resident PC enthusiast's answer might surprise you, so do check out that question and indeed the full show via the link above.

And finally, the DF Store Warehouse Sale is still running for this week only, so it's a good opportunity to grab some older DF designs at a discount - and of course to check out the new Bespoke Collection items too. As always, thanks for reading all the way to the end - if indeed you did - and for watching and supporting Digital Foundry.