PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)

[Pixel]

And so the developer optimizations for consoles begins: Large inefficiency discovered in Killzone Shadowfall. Next game could possibly double polygon budget.

Just like we saw mid and late gen games from previous generations of consoles take large visual leaps above launch titles.

 

[scf]

And so the developer optimizations for consoles begins: Large inefficiency discovered in Killzone Shadowfall. Next game could possibly double polygon budget.

Where is that from?

 

[Gradthrawn]

In other words both consoles are running multiple apps simultaneously? The only difference is that they are all visible on screen simultaneously on the XB1?
I dont see what is so unique that Sony wont be replicating in the future. The only thing impossible to replicate is displaying something that comes directly from an external source. Its so close, both appear almost identical to me and I wonder why Sony hasnt done it too.

The difference is likely in reserved resources. From my understanding, there is a dedicated amount of memory and CPU resources reserved for the PS4 OS. We also know there must be some level or some type of GPU time reserved or available to the OS (on PS4) to display its overlays (notifications and so forth). That doesn't mean there's enough reserved resources to actually display the app that's running in the background ("simply" using memory and CPU) along with the actively running game (at the same time). Particularly if Lalaland's supposition that the apps are being tombstoned is true. If an app is being displayed I assume it must have a framebuffer somewhere and is likely using memory bandwidth in addition to CPU time, memory space and GPU time. So while there may be enough reserved resources to allow a user to seamlessly jump between apps (one at a time) there may not be enough reserved resources, or reserved resources of all types, to display them at the same time. That's my guess, at least.

EDIT

In other words, we know the PS4 has reserved CPU time and Memory space. We don't how much of the other resources that it would need to display an App and a Game at the same time are reserved (GPU time, memory bandwidth, whatever else I'm missing) and what is reserved is enough to display both simultaneously.

 

[patsu]

And so the developer optimizations for consoles begins: Large inefficiency discovered in Killzone Shadowfall. Next game could possibly double polygon budget.

Just like we saw mid and late gen games from previous generations of consoles take large visual leaps above launch titles.

Where did you get this ?

 

[3dilettante]

I believe that came from the post-mortem about the demo version they used for the PS4 announcement.

That would have been on an older version of the code, so I'd expect a good chunk of optimization has come along since then.

 

[onQ]

In other words both consoles are running multiple apps simultaneously? The only difference is that they are all visible on screen simultaneously on the XB1?
I dont see what is so unique that Sony wont be replicating in the future. The only thing impossible to replicate is displaying something that comes directly from an external source. Its so close, both appear almost identical to me and I wonder why Sony hasnt done it too.

PS4 is suspending the game when the OS Apps are up while Xbox One is running them both side by side.


I think Xbox has 3 levels while PS4 has 2.


PS4 you're either in the game or at the OS Apps with the Xbox One you can be in the game , the OS Apps or both side by side.

 

[Arwin]

The Xbox One has these modes, from the top of my head (and a little bit simplified). The following pertains to CPU/GPU only, not memory as I think these are fixed (say, 5GB for Game, 3GB for OS, though we don't have any confirmation of these numbers on either platform I believe)

- game only (90% of resources for game)
- game with OS app snapped (40% of resources for game), so showing both game and OS/App at the same time in 3:1 vertical split screen mode, similar to how Windows 8.0 supports it (but 8.1 goes further, allowing 5 Apps snapped side by side, and no fixed division)
- game with OS on foreground (10% of resources for game, so game can still send notifications and such, keep network connection, etc.)

I don't think the PS4 has the 'middle' mode, and whatever you don't have at launch, it will be hard to catch up on.

That's the general thing here - there are some tough choices made at the start of the new cycle. It's easier to drop something if it doesn't work than add something that you were missing, especially if all games need to support it / be tested against it.

 

[dumbo11]

The Xbox One has these modes, from the top of my head (and a little bit simplified).

I don't think the PS4 has the 'middle' mode, and whatever you don't have at launch, it will be hard to catch up on.

No - that's wrong.
http://kotaku.com/the-five-possible-states-of-xbox-one-games-are-strangel-509597078

The interesting modes are basically:
- running = game is fullscreen, with an optional snapped application.
- constrained = TV/OS UI is fullscreen, with the game snapped.

 

[Arwin]

Looking at actual video, it seems to me that you have game running, game running alongside an App, and suspended to OS (where you see a picture of the game with or without the App you had open). What was impressive in the videos I've seen is that you can have a browser open as an app next to the game you are running, and the demo was browsing to youtube and then running a youtube movie.

Not all games will likely support doing anything when the app is active though - I assume most of them will pause.

 

[dumbo11]

Not all games will likely support doing anything when the app is active though - I assume most of them will pause.

I think that would be differentiated by 'multi/single-player'?
- background for single-player is 'pause'. (pause the game)
- background for multi-player is 'minimize'. (keep the connection open, maintain world state, render a thumbnail)

The PS4 would appear to be similar, but without background applications/games drawing to the screen.

 

[Ceger]

Looking at actual video, it seems to me that you have game running, game running alongside an App, and suspended to OS (where you see a picture of the game with or without the App you had open). What was impressive in the videos I've seen is that you can have a browser open as an app next to the game you are running, and the demo was browsing to youtube and then running a youtube movie.

Not all games will likely support doing anything when the app is active though - I assume most of them will pause.

The onscreen display is the result of the 3 OS's. What you see is simultaneous display of 2 active virtual machines layered via the 3rd. The hardware is architected to support them all running concurrently if necessary. It is further architected as all virtual space, including compute resources, thus how cloud can be integrated seamlessly as the technology catches up.

It is a different paradigm in methodology that looks at the hardware beyond the physical console itself.

 

[patsu]

You can always introduce such abstraction when cloud gaming tech matures.

Old games will just not use cloud. New games can.

Software platform is flexible in this sense.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PS4 is suspending the game when the OS Apps are up while Xbox One is running them both side by side.


I think Xbox has 3 levels while PS4 has 2.


PS4 you're either in the game or at the OS Apps with the Xbox One you can be in the game , the OS Apps or both side by side.

Two points. 1) With the demonstrated task switching, there's no great use of the 2 graphics layers. It's not like the OS is showing anything over the games.

2) Side-by-side could be done with two layers. Shrink game on one side, app on other.

IMO, the reason Sony hasn't shown side-by-side is because they don't think gamers want it, and I'd agree with them. Maybe YT walk throughs while you play would be a good use of game+app, but otherwise I think gamers are interested in playing the game and not watching TV or reading Twitter feeds at the same time.

 

[Pixel]

And so the developer optimizations for consoles begins: Large inefficiency discovered in Killzone Shadowfall. Next game could possibly double polygon budget.

Just like we saw mid and late gen games from previous generations of consoles take large visual leaps above launch titles.

Where is that from?

Where did you get this ?

Found it on Neogaf. I can confirm its true. Its only available on the powerpoint presentation because they are notes the lead tech added.
Website
http://www.dimension3.sk/2013/05/killzone-shadow-fall-demo-postmortem-talk/
Direct link->
http://www.dimension3.sk/downloads/Valient_Killzone_Shadow_Fall_Demo_Postmortem_4web.pptx

You also NEED a full fledged powerpoint program like Office to read the notes. Don't use Microsofts free Powerpoint Viewer 2007 limits users from reading note (or watching videos) included in powerpoint presentation unfortunately.

Related to this optimization of shader outputs use of vertexes I noticed these notes:

"It turns out that our geometry pass is heavily vertex limited.

We as coders have only limited set of optimization opportunities.
We can reduce the amount of drawn primitives by effective culling,
but when thats not enough and we’ time comes for a good old low level optimizations.

Sorting by shaders is an easy one. It worked before, it still works and it is essentially for free.
Another easy one is to increase the threshold for minimum bone influence for a skinned vertex.
Artists tend to be a bit protective about all the minor motion details, but we could not find any
real example where such small influence really matters. Facial animations might be the exception.

We gained minor improvement by compressing our vertex formats better,
for example storing the normals in a packed 32 bit format."

 

[Brad Grenz]

I haven't seen any indication that game and OS app are running simultaneously o the PS4. The X1 is running them simultaneously while snapped, and I imagine certain aspects in the background as well.

Some apps on PS4 must continue running in the background. For example Music Unlimited, and of course party chat. In most cases an app that is not visible does not need to be running, though. Of the use cases shown for Snap only the Twitch.tv chat window actually seems useful. Since the Xbox One gives over two display panes to games and PS4 only gives them one that wouldn't pose any barrier to adding a similar feature. It's just a question of resource stealing from the game, I'd think.

 

[onQ]

Two points. 1) With the demonstrated task switching, there's no great use of the 2 graphics layers. It's not like the OS is showing anything over the games.

2) Side-by-side could be done with two layers. Shrink game on one side, app on other.

IMO, the reason Sony hasn't shown side-by-side is because they don't think gamers want it, and I'd agree with them. Maybe YT walk throughs while you play would be a good use of game+app, but otherwise I think gamers are interested in playing the game and not watching TV or reading Twitter feeds at the same time.

Sure they can do the Side By Side OS & Game but what will happen when someone wants to use video broadcasting with the share button? I don't think they would want the in game OS to be too resource heavy.

Unless they are planing to offload the OS to the Clouds.

 

[patsu]

PS3 could run PlayTV in the background. PS4 should have the capacity too.

The problem is how many can you run together. e.g., What about RemotePlay + PlayTV or NetFlix ?

I expect the initial PS4 OS to be pretty rudimentary.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sure they can do the Side By Side OS & Game but what will happen when someone wants to use video broadcasting with the share button? I don't think they would want the in game OS to be too resource heavy.

Video broadcasting is low power. Just route the output through the video encoder and stream. The OS processor may even handle that without any impact on the rest of the system, because video encoding is a discrete OS function that doesn't need to be tied in with the game in any way.

Unless they are planing to offload the OS to the Clouds.

Would be slow and laggy and require an always-on internet connection and...would be a very bad idea.

 

[Brad Grenz]

The video encoder hardware can even multiplex to add a camera feed as PIP and voice commentary while streaming with no additional system resources needed.

 

[Mianca]

@ patsu: I've got to admit that I'm an ardent fan of "rudimentary" operating systems - and hope SONY iust keep it clean and simple. Multitasking is great - but that should best be done via simple taskbar switching, imo. No need to run several apps simultaneously on one screen or even have fancy "peek" views.

I really don't see the point in all that picture-in-picture / side-by-side stuff.

At first glance, it might sound kind of cool to watch a movie while playing a game while video-chatting with your friends while looking up stuff on the web while watching TV news - and all of that at the same time on the same screen. I personally don't consider it very practical and really don't see how that's supposed to be the next big thing in home entertainment, though.

For the handful of cases in which it does make sense, I bought a tablet