Sony Epic Games interview: PCs will need to catch up to PS5's SSD

[SimpleG]

26 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

That's what I'm saying! I feel like they told us what we were gonna get and then we got it this gen. The features were there, and stuffl like sharing gameplay, SharePlay where people can play your games digitally without being next to you, and suspend/resume were as advertised and got better over time.

I maybe misremembering but I thought they were adamant that the consoles were 4k and they struggle to even get close to that with upscaling?

[SaysWho?]

1 minute ago, SimpleG said:

I maybe misremembering but I thought they were adamant that the consoles were 4k and they struggle to even get close to that with upscaling?

 

PS4/XBO weren't 4k machines.

[JPDunks4]

I saw some Tweets going around that Epic China did a presentation about the demo, and stated the entire demo would run the same on a typical high speed SSD and 2080 Super on PC but with better performance.   So again, until we ever see a side by side comparison to show what Sony's SSD actually does in real time vs a high end PC, it's hard to really know or believe any of this PR speak.

[SimpleG]

Just now, SaysWho? said:

 

PS4/XBO weren't 4k machines.

Should have been more clear when I meant the mid gen refreshes 

 

[SaysWho?]

Just now, SimpleG said:

Should have been more clear when I meant the mid gen refreshes 

 

 

XBOX does a pretty good job. For PS4 Pro, I know they pushed HDR and that it supported 4K.

 

Most people buy the base consoles, anyway. The Pro and X are by all accounts upgrades, but what they advertised when this gen began is more or less what we got. In MS's case, they pushed TV shit, but it was there, so they didn't overpromise.

[JPDunks4]

10 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

XBOX does a pretty good job. For PS4 Pro, I know they pushed HDR and that it supported 4K.

 

Most people buy the base consoles, anyway. The Pro and X are by all accounts upgrades, but what they advertised when this gen began is more or less what we got. In MS's case, they pushed TV shit, but it was there, so they didn't overpromise.

In Xbox's Case, the Cloud Computing and "Power of the Cloud" was overpromising, as it never really came to any kind of actual benefit.  Crackdown Multiplayer was a shell of what was originally promised.

[AbsolutSurgen]

Cerny promised that the supercharged PC architecture would have the GPU used for asynchronous compute and physics modeling. During e3 they talked about the power of Sony to give us curated exclusive content for gamers via music and video unlimited. 
Up to you to determine whether you think they met those. 

[Duderino]

Tim Sweeney is not saying anything outlandish here, unless of course you were not taking Mark Cerney at his word during the PS5 presentation.

 

Seems like there was and still is a lot of selective listening happening.  Not that a degree of skepticism isn't warranted. Sony is challenging the status quo here.

[crispy4000]

42 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

I saw some Tweets going around that Epic China did a presentation about the demo, and stated the entire demo would run the same on a typical high speed SSD and 2080 Super on PC but with better performance.   So again, until we ever see a side by side comparison to show what Sony's SSD actually does in real time vs a high end PC, it's hard to really know or believe any of this PR speak.

 

If true, it means that nothing in the demo was pushing the PS5's SSD to its limit either.  That'd be a really exciting thing for next-gen as a whole all considered.

[SaysWho?]

12 minutes ago, Duderino said:

Tim Sweeney is not saying anything outlandish here, unless of course you were not taking Mark Cerney at his word during the PS5 presentation.

 

Seems like there was and still is a lot of selective listening happening.  Not that a degree of skepticism isn't warranted. Sony is challenging the status quo here.

 

Some people like sun-levels of degrees.

[SimpleG]

15 minutes ago, Duderino said:

Tim Sweeney is not saying anything outlandish here, unless of course you were not taking Mark Cenery at his word during the PS5 presentation.

 

Seems like there was and still is a lot of selective listening happening.  Not that a degree of skepticism isn't warranted. Sony is challenging the status quo here.

When it comes to video games and things like tweets,interviews,promos and press releases , I treat it as 5% truthful and 95% hyped bullshit.The general scumbagery of the industry is too high to not be skeptical of everything they say.

[Mr.Vic20]

I'm really happy with Sony and MS's efforts this go around!  They could have just phoned it in and few would have complained. PC users don't need to be defensive about consoles finally not sucking on a hardware level. This is great news, and we should all be very excited because the bar is being raised, and that can only lead to more power for high end developers and indie devs alike! PC will move on to DDR5, PCIe 4.0 (catch up intel!), and crazy fast NVME drives, along with the next generation of GPUs all by the middle of 2021. PC is also due to finally move on from 16Gb being the typical gaming rig's sweet spot. So there will be a lot of growth as a response to this generation's consoles, and I've VERY excited to see this after a fairly long run of predictably boring upgrades. Bring it! 

[SimpleG]

1 minute ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

PC users don't need to be defensive about consoles finally not sucking on a hardware level.

I dont really see that on this board or are you just talking in general?

[SaysWho?]

3 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I'm really happy with Sony and MS's efforts this go around!  They could have just phoned it in and few would have complained. PC users don't need to be defensive about consoles finally not sucking on a hardware level. This is great news, and we should all be very excited because the bar is being raised, and that can only lead to more power for high end developers and indie devs alike! PC will move on to DDR5, PCIe 4.0 (catch up intel!), and crazy fast NVME drives, along with the next generation of GPUs all by the middle of 2021. PC is also due to finally move on from 16Gb being the typical gaming rig's sweet spot. So there will be a lot of growth as a response to this generation's consoles, and I've VERY excited to see this after a fairly long run of predictably boring upgrades. Bring it! 

 

I have noticed around the interwebs that a portion of the pushback to this news is REALLY fanboyish, either from PC gamers who get weirdly defensive about a console being powerful (as if PC gaming is going anywhere), or from Xbox gamers who said teraflops a lot recently and God forbid the other system is really good and developers and journalists are stoked.

[Mr.Vic20]

1 minute ago, SimpleG said:

I dont really see that on this board or are you just talking in general?

Yah, more in general, I think most here know whats up! 

[Duderino]

2 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

 

Some people like sun-levels of degrees.

Yup, there are some truly awful hot takes happening right now across the web.  Lots of people that obviously don't want these PS5 statements to hold water.

 

2 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

When it comes to video games and things like tweets,interviews,promos and press releases , I treat it as 5% truthful and 95% hyped bullshit.The general scumbagery of the industry is too high to not be skeptical of everything they say.

As I said, a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted.  It's not every generation that a console launches with notable market leading tech.

[Greatoneshere]

21 minutes ago, Mr.Vic20 said:

I'm really happy with Sony and MS's efforts this go around!  They could have just phoned it in and few would have complained. PC users don't need to be defensive about consoles finally not sucking on a hardware level. This is great news, and we should all be very excited because the bar is being raised, and that can only lead to more power for high end developers and indie devs alike! PC will move on to DDR5, PCIe 4.0 (catch up intel!), and crazy fast NVME drives, along with the next generation of GPUs all by the middle of 2021. PC is also due to finally move on from 16Gb being the typical gaming rig's sweet spot. So there will be a lot of growth as a response to this generation's consoles, and I've VERY excited to see this after a fairly long run of predictably boring upgrades. Bring it! 

 

This echoes my own feelings as well. I love my high-end PC and I mostly game on it but I do play the PS4 often enough due to its exclusives. A powerhouse PS5 can only help the PC side of things, so if all they say is true this is could be very interesting.

[SimpleG]

1 minute ago, Duderino said:

As I said, a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted.  It's not every generation that a console launches with questionable market leading tech.

Took care of that for ya  

 

2 minutes ago, Duderino said:

Yup, there are some truly awful hot takes happening right now across the web.  Lots of people that obviously don't want these PS5 statements to hold water.

 

Gamers are so tribal

[crispy4000]

11 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Took care of that for ya  

 

I don't think there's anything questionable about Sony saying they made a better SSD and Epic confirming it.

 

It's strange to even suggest that Epic is only saying this because they were (supposedly) paid to.  Wouldn't it just fall flat on their face if they were wrong?  Other developers are listening to them, using their engine tech.  It's about setting expectations for them too.

[SimpleG]

1 minute ago, crispy4000 said:

 

I don't think there's anything questionable about Sony saying they made a better SSD and Epic confirming it.

 

It's strange that we're even suggesting that Epic is only saying it because they were supposedly paid to.  Wouldn't it just fall flat on their face if they were wrong?

I wasnt being serious , just busting balls

[SimpleG]

2 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Wouldn't it just fall flat on their face if they were wrong?

Gamers have battered wives syndrome with short memories, so not really. How many times have we seen "GAMEPLAY" tossed around and we a know its horse shit and we call them out , and we still buy the damn thing.

[Duderino]

15 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Took care of that for ya  

 

Gamers are so tribal

The idea of the PS5's I/O stack being a notable step forward is not all that far-fetched.  Question away though.

[SimpleG]

Just now, Duderino said:

The idea of the PS5's I/O stack being a notable step forward is not all that far-fetched.  Question away though.

See my above post, I was fucking around

[Duderino]

1 minute ago, SimpleG said:

See my above post, I was fucking around

Ok.

[crispy4000]

1 minute ago, SimpleG said:

Gamers have battered wives syndrome with short memories, so not really. How many times have we seen "GAMEPLAY" tossed around and we a know its horse shit and we call them out , and we still buy the damn thing.

Developers don’t.  If they’re being told the PS5 SSD is “god tier” when it isn’t, we’ll know sooner rather than later.

[JPDunks4]

I don't think people are questioning if PS5s SSD tech is ahead of current PCs and the Xbox.

 

All I've seen is people questioning the comments that the demo was only possible on a PS5 due to that tech.  And I think it's perfectly fair to ask, how would a high end PC and XSX run the same demo, and what would it look like without the SSD tech.  Because if a high end PC and XSX can run that demo identically then yeah it's a bit misleading to try to say it's only possible on PS5 due to the SSD.

[SimpleG]

39 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

I don't think people are questioning if PS5s SSD tech is ahead of current PCs and the Xbox.

 

All I've seen is people questioning the comments that the demo was only possible on a PS5 due to that tech.  And I think it's perfectly fair to ask, how would a high end PC and XSX run the same demo, and what would it look like without the SSD tech.  Because if a high end PC and XSX can run that demo identically then yeah it's a bit misleading to try to say it's only possible on PS5 due to the SSD.

And then Epic says this kind of stuff and makes me question it

Edit: this is misinformation Ignore it

thanks @Duderino

[JPDunks4]

1 minute ago, SimpleG said:

And then Epic says this kind of stuff and makes me question it

 

When I see examples of Ray Tracing tech, I typically see the same scenes with ray tracing turned off so I can clearly see the difference and how the tech actually changes games.  We used to see this as well with other new PC tech like PhysX, ect.   

 

I just think if you are going to try to highlight your new tech and how it's going to push everything beyond what's out there, run a side by side comparison to highlight those differences.  Seems like it'd be pretty easy to do.  

[AbsolutSurgen]

What we should care about is the end result in games. No one has seen any games that are taking advantage of the god-tier storage, and what compromises need to be made for the SeX SSD (let alone a 2022 gaming PC with 32GB of main ram, a 12GB+ DDR6 on the video card plus a PCIe 4.0 SSD that is using DirectStorage).

Will the slower SSDs and higher latency cause a meaningful difference?  Why can’t RAM caching on a PC offset this?

IMHO, people are overreacting to a single demo -  just like they were when they learned that PS5 would have less TFlops than SeX. 
[On a side note, I hope Sony has a good cooling system on those NAND chips to avoid thermal throttling. Because if they are being used in a way that makes a meaningful difference to a PCIe4.0 drive, they are going to generate a LOT of heat.]

[Duderino]

The proper translation of the Epic China presentation:

 

Quote

-The Epic guy is saying the first scene(Lumen) can run at 40fps on his notebook, not the whole demo.

-If its a 1080P screen, 2 triangle per pixel, make some compression on vertex, than you still can run this demo, no need very high bandwidth and IO like PS5.

-UE4.25 implemented asynchronous/overlapped loading (Because bottleneck was the CPU). They overhauled their shaders to work well with the event-driven loader. This gave them >50% loading speed improvement.

-In the final UE5 scene, compression and careful disk layout avoided the need for high speed SSD. The workload wasn't that high.

-Guy mentioned they can run the demo in the editor at 40fps, not 40+ but did not specify resolution.

-Currently Nanite has some limitations such as only works on static meshes, doesn't support deformation for animation, doesn't support skinned character model, supports opaque material but no mask.

-Lumen costs quite a bit more than Nanite.UE5 could eventually be a hybrid renderer using both Lumen and Raytracing in the future.

 

That colteastwood guy loves to fudge numbers and stretch the truth.  I've had the misfortune of stumbling on his YouTube videos from time to time.

[SimpleG]

16 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

When I see examples of Ray Tracing tech, I typically see the same scenes with ray tracing turned off so I can clearly see the difference and how the tech actually changes games.  We used to see this as well with other new PC tech like PhysX, ect.   

 

I just think if you are going to try to highlight your new tech and how it's going to push everything beyond what's out there, run a side by side comparison to highlight those differences.  Seems like it'd be pretty easy to do.  

One would assume that for all the money Epic has they could afford a middle of the road PC to run it on. Imagine the shit storm if it could out run $800-$1000 PC or even a top of the line big money build. Instead of us bickering back in fourth we all would be sitting here mouth agape going 

[SimpleG]

Just now, Duderino said:

The proper translation of the Epic China presentation:

 

 

That colteastwood guy loves to fudge numbers and stretch the truth.  I've had the misfortune of stumbling on his YouTube videos from time to time.

Ahh my bad , thanks I’ll avoid him in the future 

[Duderino]

So it sounds like with some concessions and careful planning it was possible to get this demo running without the PS5 SSD's level of bandwidth.

 

Given this was only a tech demo, I would expect actual games to have more overhead to contend with.  What that means, who knows yet.  Looking forward to seeing what the actual games can do and how this applies to each platform.

[Duderino]

Informative article from PCgamer that clarifies a few things:

 

Quote

The Unreal Engine 5 tech demo looks pretty amazing, but it was supposedly run on a PlayStation 5, not a gaming PC. So what kind of PC do we need to get that kind of quality?

 

I couldn't get any exact specifications from Epic, but on a conference call earlier this week I asked how an RTX 2070 Super would handle the demo, and Epic Games chief technical officer Kim Libreri said that it should be able to get "pretty good" performance. But aside from a fancy GPU, you'll need some fast storage if you want to see the level of detail shown in the demo video.

 

Sony was heckled a bit for its focus on the PlayStation 5's storage speed, and if all you're imagining is loading screens disappearing more quickly, it does seem like an odd focus. But it's about moving beyond loading screens entirely, to the point where "you can bring in [the demo's] geometry and display it despite it not all fitting in memory," says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. 

 

In other words, the storage needs to be fast enough to keep up with the player, allowing the game to seamlessly increase the complexity of distant objects as they get closer without 'popping in' more detailed models—something we've gotten used to seeing.

 

To that end, Unreal Engine 5 is being "optimized for next-generation storage." The PlayStation 5 storage tech is "god-tier," says Sweeney, while PCs have some catching up to do. That said, "on a high-end PC with an SSD," and especially with an NVMe SSD, we should get "awesome performance" from Unreal Engine 5 games. (With a good GPU and CPU too, of course.)

 

[Mr.Vic20]

@legend , not sure if this was posted elsewhere, but it goes into pretty good detail on what Lumen is and how it contracts to RT. In essence, its several techniques combined to more or less mimic RT lighting at a lower cost.