Could PlayStation 4 breathe new life into Software Based Rendering?

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So what are you guys thoughts on software based rendering on PS4 now that we have a good example?
 
So what are you guys thoughts on software based rendering on PS4 now that we have a good example?
Proven to work + looks good. Scales well to big scenes. Animation system seems too limited for AAA character animations. They have a fully custom CSG/SDF content production pipeline that is not compatible with existing commercial modeling, texturing and animation softwares. That would be a big problem for wide adaptation in big AAA games.

I love how they abuse the GCN 64 bit atomics for plotting the points to the screen. If I inderstood properly, they pack depth in high bits, pack other stuff in low bits and use 64 bit atomic min to guarantee that the closest point remains. This makes porting to PC hard, since the PC graphics APIs only expose 32 bit atomics.

Too bad we never see how well this would run on Xbox One, as Media Molecule is PS4 exclusive. ESRAM would be perfect for point rendering. Atomics sidestep ROPs (another PS4 advantage). Also 1080p at 64bpp = 16 MB < 32 MB.
 
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Suck on that, 32 bit atomic PCs! Oh wait, that's my PC too! :(
 
Proven to work + looks good. Scales well to big scenes. Animation system seems too limited for AAA character animations. They have a fully custom CSG/SDF content production pipeline that is not compatible with existing commercial modeling, texturing and animation softwares. That would be a big problem for wide adaptation in big AAA games.

I love how they abuse the GCN 64 bit atomics for plotting the points to the screen. If I inderstood properly, they pack depth in high bits, pack other stuff in low bits and use 64 bit atomic min to guarantee that the closest point remains. This makes porting to PC hard, since the PC graphics APIs only expose 32 bit atomics.

I wouldn't expect any AAA games to go this route any time soon but I can see 'The next Minecraft' coming from a dev using software based rendering.
 
I'm not really sure why but my mind has been running wild thinking about what could come out of this.
I think GPGPU rendering on PS4 is going to work a lot better than most people expect because of the changes made to the APU which makes it more of an MIMD approach.
 
Proven to work + looks good. Scales well to big scenes. Animation system seems too limited for AAA character animations. They have a fully custom CSG/SDF content production pipeline that is not compatible with existing commercial modeling, texturing and animation softwares. That would be a big problem for wide adaptation in big AAA games.

I love how they abuse the GCN 64 bit atomics for plotting the points to the screen. If I inderstood properly, they pack depth in high bits, pack other stuff in low bits and use 64 bit atomic min to guarantee that the closest point remains. This makes porting to PC hard, since the PC graphics APIs only expose 32 bit atomics.

Too bad we never see how well this would run on Xbox One, as Media Molecule is PS4 exclusive. ESRAM would be perfect for point rendering. Atomics sidestep ROPs (another PS4 advantage). Also 1080p at 64bpp = 16 MB < 32 MB.

They certainly have opened the door to others trying their hand at this by openly sharing though, so I really hope every platform gets a serious attempt at this ...

And looking at what Oculus was doing creating similar 3D sculpting tools and handing them over to real life sculptors, VR is definitely an area where this technology, content creation included, could make it big.
 
Back to the original question: Looking at the PS4 APU as one MIMD processor (Xeon Phi / Cell) with
~2TFLOPS & 8GB GDDR5 what do you think can be done?

Think about things like the sand in Journey, weather effects in Drive Club or the hair/fur in some games then think what can be done if the games was built around these effects from the start knowing that the compute power is there.
 
Think about things like the sand in Journey, weather effects in Drive Club or the hair/fur in some games then think what can be done if the games was built around these effects from the start knowing that the compute power is there.
My Little Pony Petting Zoo Desert Edition? :runaway:
 
Maybe I missed it, but anyone not mentioning the utterly phenomenal stuff going on in Resogun (still my go-to game when everything else bores the frack out of me) in this thread, is bonkers. Photo mode in this game should be illegal: stop and navigate through what seems to be millions of voxels/cubes, particles, lights. It's madness.
So you are all bonkers cause you didn't mention this game. Or maybe it just has nothing to do with this thread and I'm the bonkers one.
 
Maybe I missed it, but anyone not mentioning the utterly phenomenal stuff going on in Resogun (still my go-to game when everything else bores the frack out of me) in this thread, is bonkers. Photo mode in this game should be illegal: stop and navigate through what seems to be millions of voxels/cubes, particles, lights. It's madness.
So you are all bonkers cause you didn't mention this game. Or maybe it just has nothing to do with this thread and I'm the bonkers one.

Page 4 https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1711922/
 
Maybe I missed it, but anyone not mentioning the utterly phenomenal stuff going on in Resogun (still my go-to game when everything else bores the frack out of me) in this thread, is bonkers. Photo mode in this game should be illegal: stop and navigate through what seems to be millions of voxels/cubes, particles, lights. It's madness.
So you are all bonkers cause you didn't mention this game. Or maybe it just has nothing to do with this thread and I'm the bonkers one.
Resogun has a photo mode???
 
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