Duderino

Sounds like Gold could be disappearing in a few months time.

Hopefully they do the consumer friendly move and make online play free rather than rolling that paywall into Gamespass.  I could the later happening though as a means to convert more (former) Gold subscribers to Gamespass.

There will come a point where supporting disc HDDs will become prohibitively expensive for developers of AAA games.  The writing is on the wall if you’ve followed postmortems this gen, such as Spider-Man’s.  The time cost to optimize for a mechanical HDD is already quite the investment today.  That is not going to be sustainable for long.
 

I agree with Crispy, many developers will drop HDD support like a rock as soon as they get the go-ahead to ditch the PS4/XBO.

43 minutes ago, TomCat said:

nanite overhead is suppose to be less then Raytracing

Lumen comes at a higher cost than Nanite, which is less of a performance hit compared to Raytracing GI solutions.

The question though is not what the order of costs are, but rather how well they can each scale to Lockhart.   Given this cocktail of new tech can result in resolution and framerate compromises on the PS5, it could be quite a big ask of Lockhart's GPU.

21 minutes ago, TomCat said:

Whaaaaaaaaaat   It was reported that the Epic Technical Demo was about as  gpu intensive as Fortnight

The GPU time spent rendering geo is about the same as Fortnite on consoles... on PS5 at 1440p 30 fps.

I suspect this comparison is not accounting for all the Nanite overhead, just one potion of the costs.

The other big question is how mesh shaders (which I imagine UE5’s nanite relies on) will scale to Lockhart’s GPU.

Both the UE5 PS5 demo and performance reports from nvidia asteroids demo suggest 1440p will likely be the target for this tech on the XSX/PS5.  What quality/resolution that leaves Lockhart at, who knows.

22 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

Outside of Sony first-party titles and I guess CDPR, just about every AAA title "abuses" the $60 value proposition. I dunno what list of AAA titles you guys are playing that aren't absolutely littered with this garbage, but they are the vast majority, not some little abuser's corner.l

Last two games I completed, FFVII:R and Jedi Fallen Order, don’t fall under this generalized umbrella.  Both provided a lot of value for $60.

At a $70 price tag, there will be less pressure for their inevitable sequels to insert micro-transactions.  Same goes for many Sony first party tittles.

The price hike is necessary for tittles that try to retain a good value proposition without all the BS.

As much as I can’t stand micro-transactions and wish they would disappear, I can’t remember the last time I felt cheated by a lack of content in a AAA game due to a paid content wall.  (I do avoid games though that are known for it)

$70 in 2020+ is more than fair.  Games that abuse the value proposition at $60 will no doubt continue to do so at $70, but these tittles alone should not dictate the base AAA game price.  Actually, keeping the $60 price would encourage developers that don’t engage in these kind of practices to start dabbling in more invasive micro-transactions to offset dev costs.

Personally I’m more worried about the impact subscription models may have on micro-transactions prevalence in games moving forward than a $10 price hike.

Sony is rumored to be preparing a bid for Leyou, parent company of Digital Extremes, Splash Damage, and stake holder in Certain Affinity (with option to buy in 2020).

18 hours ago, TwinIon said:

I don't think that I saw this posted, but the AnandTech rundown of the SSD architecture in the PS5 and the Xbox Series X is as complete a picture as anyone has likely put together so far.

 

They certainly seem to think that the PS5's SSD speed will be replicated in high end PCs by the time of release. The decompression hardware is nice, but I didn't get the impression that it's anything that a high end PC couldn't handle, since most tend to have a decent amount of CPU headroom.

 

I'm not sure if this is entirely new, but this little graphic is very exciting:

 

Read the article.  Interesting read.  Fair amount of speculation based on patents and guesses at configuration motivations.  Some healthy skepticism peppered in as well based on educated guesses.  

There are enough unknowns scattered throughout the article though that the final conclusions are still kept relatively modest.  The author is not exactly suggesting that today's high-end PCs will be on even footing with the PS5's file i/o, all aspects considered. Sums that up quite nicely in the closing thoughts:

Quote

Ultimately, it will be interesting to see whether the novel parts of the new console storage subsystems end up being a real advantage that influences the direction of PC hardware development, or if they end up just being interesting quirks that get left in the dust as PC hardware eventually overtakes the consoles with superior raw performance.

On a related note:

 

(1/3) Okay, I got some clarification on why they made RE8 next-gen only, when it was cross-gen previously. With the updated graphic fidelity overhaul they're doing (still in progress), the way RE8 was designed lead to past-gen consoles having a lot of pop-in/long texture loads/

— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) June 13, 2020

(2/3) load times because the game has you travelling through most of the Village and had a lot of load zones. Because there's a bigger focus on exploration this would lead to the last-gen console versions having notable issues, and it was holding back how pretty they could make

— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) June 13, 2020

(3/3) certain scenes. So they decided to drop the last-gen versions of the game to make it so the game had no loading at all (not limited by last gen hardware) and push the graphic overhaul further without the limitations of last-gen tech in mind.

— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) June 13, 2020

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Who is Matt?  Why do you have confidence in what he is saying?  What specific claims is he making between the performance of a game engine on a PC vs. a PS5 driven by their relative performance in SSDs?

All I can gather is he is a verified developer on Resetera and Neogaf.  I do not know what authority he has on this subject, just that this individual is making claims regarding the PS5's capabilities relative to other platforms.

We haven't seen the full picture yet, but between the demos (UE5 + Ratchet) and Tim Sweeney's "best in class" statements on the PS5 i/o architecture, signs currently point to the PS5 being a leap forward in this regard. 

The fact that Playstation first-party doesn't need to target anything less than the PS5 means they are in a unique position to work with this architecture as a baseline.  Hence you might be waiting a while for direct comparisons to PC tittles.

A few examples off the top of my head:

• Faster traversal.
• More seamless cutscene/gameplay transitions between locals.
• Vertex streaming in lieu of LODs (see UE5 demo)
• More contextual animations with sets streaming becoming viable (especially applicable with motion matching)
• Use of data driven simulation and other machine learning based techniques.
• Greater variety of enemy encounters within a given timeframe (see R&C: Rift Apart)
• Less need for invisible walls with enemy navigation (think HZD).
• Long corridors, elevators rides and choke points can go from a requirement to a choice.
• Dynamic event spawning also no longer as limited by data access.
• Larger scale events and gameplay encounters possible.
• Less data occupying RAM, allowing more space for other needs, such as Raytracing BVH memory requirements.
• Potentially improved FX, with the possibility to stream volumetric data and/or flipbooks.
• Gains for anything audio related that requires lots of data access.
• etc

Most of all, faster i/o will reduce development blockers which will lead to greater accomplishments next-gen.  While RDR2 is impressive, it is a testament to what years of optimizations work can do to work around disc HDD limitations.  The western local (open spaces) helps too.

SSD's alone are a big leap, but any extra bandwidth the Series X and PS5 can provide will be a welcome addition.  In the context of this gen it may seem excessive, but in the future quite a lot could be competing for those resources.

4 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

However, I have yet to see anyone make claims that when PS5 games come out, there will be any game released that a high-end gaming PC would not be able to technically replicate.

Personally, I'll wait for the hands on comparisons/benchmarks.

Those claims do exist.  Empty words though without context, which IMO the Ratchet & Clank demonstration did provide.  Depending on how the PS5's architecture is being utilized, you might be waiting a while for comparable examples elsewhere. 

I have little doubt though that high-end PC gaming will close any gap that currently exists, but it may require a few future upgrades in the months and/or years to come.  Engine/game developers will also be looking into ways they can make new resulting tech scale, given the need to target mid range PCs and other platforms.

18 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

 

With raytracing?  There’s as much of a possibility of that as the 3DS has with 3D.  It’s hard to build new gameplay experiences around new rendering techniques.

 

Best I can think of is some maze of mirrors type of thing.

I don't necessarily disagree, but of the rendering advancements out there, Raytracing, or more realistically full path tracing, has the opertunity to change the visual language of games through reflections, emissive objects, and dynamic light bounces. Those could lead to new experiences.

Putting that together in an exciting demo though would be extremely difficult.  Especially relative to what we’ve seen is possible now with the PS5’s SSD.

16 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

The only thing that felt "next-gen" like this in the PS5 presentation for me was the Ratchet and Clank transitions, which were a lot of fun, even if the multi-second buffers between dimensions were a far cry from "zero load times," it was still dramatically faster than anything we've seen lately.

In terms of how gaming could evolve in the upcoming generation, this stands out as a notable "next-gen" leap.  It very clearly illustrates how the PS5 can lead to new experiences not possible on the PS4/XBO.

Raytracing has the potential to do the same, but currently we are lacking a killer demonstration of how it can lead to new gaming possibilities in the XSX/PS5 era.  Minecraft's path tracing looks great, but I don't think it is the game to really sell that.

Hoping that the Xbox July event games will tackle this by showing us some crazy new utilities of the tech that apply to game design.

Lockhart as a portable is incredibly unrealistic.  The Series X has clearly not been architectured with mobile considerations in mind. Not saying in the future it'll be impossible, but definitely not probable.

Epic's actual financial overlords are Tencent anyways . A Sony marketing deal here would be like finding pennies in the back of a sock drawer to them.

23 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

In other words that Sony money is still coming in so Timothy will keep the hype train rolling

Given Tim's earlier statement on how there is no secrete marketing deal, it's far more likely that he is trying to encourage Microsoft, nVidia, AMD and Intel to follow suit.

Unless of course you think Tim is just straight up lying about the PS5 and/or the state of PC architecture.

Additional context for those wondering how all this relates to PCs. 

For PC enthusiasts, the exciting thing about the PS5 architecture is that it’s an existence proof for high bandwidth SSD decompression straight to video memory. Is this enough to get Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD to work together and do it? We’ll see!

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) June 4, 2020

In other words the PS5 I/O block is a new architecture advancement for the industry. There's nothing quite like it (yet) elsewhere.  There are pieces of the puzzle being solved by the tech giants, but they need to work together to make it happen.

8 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

And we are really citing sales when the game is on sale a year after release?

It's only to illustrate how backwards @Xbob42's take is.  

For a new IP from a developer that has not been in the AAA space for decades, Days Gone has done relatively well at becoming a known property.  A jump in the charts a year+ after release supports that.

6 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

You clearly missed my point, which was that the public majority opinion on Days Gone is "Oh yeah, that biker zombie thing, did it come out yet?"

If this week's UK sales are any indication, that really hasn't been an issue during the summer sale.

I'll try to sum this up now that I've completed the game.

If someone reading this thread even remotely likes FF7's cast of characters, just go buy the game.  The remake does a superb job in this department, taking what was already good and making it that much stronger.

But yes, as a forewarning the plot takes some abstract turns with creative liberties, especially as you approach the end.  The original FFVII was not as "out-there" this early into the story.  Not everyone will be on board with that.

No matter, the FFVII Remake is still a clear return to form for Square and the Final Fantasy franchise.  Don't bother listening to anyone suggesting otherwise until you play through the game and form your own opinions.

33 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

Curious what does this mean...  That using this type of rendering, or bringing in Megascans, isn't really feasible for real games?  As I said, I'm not all that tech savy, so just wondering what this translates to.

 

 

Dan is poking fun at people trying to tell God of War's Art Director what is and isn't possible with megascans.

To Raf's point there is more to consider beyond dropping in and instancing lots of scanned assets, such as managing size on disc and the ram unique assets will occupy.  Depending on the game "Megascans everywhere" is probably not the most practical approach.

Hold my beer..

— Raf Grassetti 👾✍🏻 (@rafagrassetti) May 15, 2020

😂

Back to the UE5 stuff:

Yeah just got around to reading the eurogamer article. Jerome did say that normal maps are just tiling surface detail, but in the trailer there is a clear texture streaming issue that makes it look like NMs have unique surface information. So I'm standing by for more info 🙂 pic.twitter.com/5hxMq45K9G

— Andrew Maximov (@_ArtIsAVerb) May 17, 2020

It does look like a normal map streaming in, but it could also be actual geometry detail missing.  Like some kind of texture style mip level, but for vertex data. Hmm....