Unreal Engine 5, [UE5 Developer Availability 2022-04-05]

[Deleted member 11852]

Why? That's a completely unwarranted conclusion. Throughout the piece we never hear any mention that the PS5 specific IO implementation is what has enabled that demo.

If it's just an SSD, why is Tim Sweeney banging on about nextgen consoles and their I/O? Why did Epic just not demo this on a PC with a fast NVMe drive?

"And Sony really did a fantastic job of implementing a new platform around that realisation that storage could be revolutionised. PlayStation 5 is built not only on a huge body of flash memory, but also a very high bandwidth and low latency framework for accessing it, and for getting it to wherever you need for any type of work

The major innovation with the next-generation console hardware. They have faster CPUs, they have faster GPUs, and that was really important to be able to achieve the visuals that we showed – but the biggest change across console generations is absolutely going to be the IO bandwidth that we're able to achieve with the SSDs that are in next-generation consoles."

SSD performance is reliant on I/O bandwidth but they are not tech same thing.

 

[cwjs]

If it's just an SSD, why is Tim Sweeney banging on about nextgen consoles and their I/O? Why did Epic just not demo this on a PC with a fast NVMe drive?

Because sony is a major investor and production partner! The companies want to work together and highlight eachother, that's how these relationships work. If your tech needs a SSD and is targeting the next generation of consoles, you'll say the name of your partner's console and talk up your partner's SSD, rather than the similar implementations for 50 other platforms.

If you really think epic designed the fundamental technological core of their middleware game engine around a single console (rather than say, uh, the PCs that everyone develops on?) i have a ps5 only bridge to sell you.

 

[function]

Tim Sweeney didn't work on the demo, and by his own admission the engineers know a lot more about UE5 than he does.

If one of the engineers heading up the demo is talking about PC requirements, and how the demo runs on his laptop, I think it's probably the best source for demo requirements at this time - though admittedly I'm relying on translations by others.

And its worth remembering IMO that just because this particular demo's requirements can be met in terms of traditional 2020 PC SSDs, it doesn't mean that UE5 can't also take advantage of the PS5s greater capabilities with more demanding software.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Because sony is a major investor and production partner! The companies want to work together and highlight eachother, that's how these relationships work. If your tech needs a SSD and is targeting the next generation of consoles, you'll say the name of your partner's console and talk up your partner's SSD, rather than the similar implementations for 50 other platforms.

Sony is an itsy-bitsy minor investor with their piddling $250m investment. But you've misunderstood my entire post, this is not about the SSD, this is about system I/O of which the SSD is just one part. Again: "PlayStation 5 is built not only on a huge body of flash memory, but also a very high bandwidth and low latency framework for accessing it, and for getting it to wherever you need for any type of work". Again SSD =/= I/O.

Why did they pick PS5 over Series X? Tim Sweeney says EPIC have had a longer working relationship with Sony and maybe Series X just wasn't ready to run this demo last summer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Throughout the piece we never hear any mention that the PS5 specific IO implementation is what has enabled that demo.

This is thanks to PS5's IO (or input-output) system, which according to Epic's VP of engineering Nick Penwarden, is "the major innovation with the next-generation console hardware.

"It's a key unblocker for what Brian and team have built here," Sweeney confirms. "Rendering micropolygons resulting from a 20 billion-polygon scene is hard enough. But actually being able to get that data into memory is a critical challenge. And as a result of the years of discussions and efforts leading up to that, it was a perfect opportunity to partner [with Sony] to show that effort finally coming to fruition with pixels on the screen.

Perhaps we didn't read the same article.

Only that during the stream, the engineer specifically stated that the demo also ran on a mobile RTX2080 GPU in his laptop that was also running a middle of the road NVMe SSD:

I don't understand Chinese and even if I did, I wouldn't feel inclined to believe the claims of one guy in a chinese livestream I've never heard of, over the words of (the original creator Unreal Engine and CEO of Epic and most probably knows more about UE5 than all of B3D combined) Tim Sweeney's statements claiming he was running a video.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1261779320101572609

Clearly you prefer to believe this demo was running on a windows laptop based off a reddit post (which you retrieved from the Xbox SeriesX's sub where there is absolutely nothing against the demo being shown on a PS5 at all) linking to amateur chinese->english translations of some random chinese livestream, and you also chose to completely neglect or misinterpret all the on-the-record statements from Epic developers and their technically-very-literate CEO regarding the importance of a low-latency and hardware accelerated I/O system to make it possible.

Perhaps one should have some disbelief over the claims that a laptop with a RTX 2080 Mobile (a 9.3 TFLOPs Turing GPU) is running the demo no less than 33% faster than the PS5's GPU (40FPS vs. 30FPS), all of Microsoft's Direct Storage stack is most probably still missing and there's no hardware for data decompression... but I guess that's just me.





Regardless, since we're at the point of choosing to believe which source is more accurate (Epic Games developers vs. a post on a subreddit dedicated to the SeriesX), the conversation has run its course on my end.

 

[PSman1700]

it doesn't mean that UE5 can't also take advantage of the PS5s greater capabilities with more demanding software.

Or faster 7gb/s nvme pcie4 before ds gpu compression. Cant wait to someone going balls to the wall with that.

Other than that, no surprise 2080maxq handling it nicely, TF comparing between archs besides (turing does alot per tf), NV presenation on the 2080maxQ being atleast or more capable vs ps5 seemed correct.
Also, 2080maxQ 9TF base clock, it doesnt clock down, it clocks up actually.

 

[chris1515]

Sony is an itsy-bitsy minor investor with their piddling $250m investment. But you've misunderstood my entire post, this is not about the SSD, this is about system I/O of which tiger SSD is just one part. Again: "PlayStation 5 is built not only on a huge body of flash memory, but also a very high bandwidth and low latency framework for accessing it, and for getting it to wherever you need for any type of work". Again SSD =/= I/O.

Why did they pick PS5 over Series X? Tim Sweeney says EPIC have had a longer working relationship with Sony and maybe Series X just wasn't ready to run this demo last summer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They said they work since long time three to four years ago with Sony since 2017/2016. They had a Ps5 devkit before too. First Sony R&D began one year before Xbox R&D in 2015 and all the SSD patent describing the I/O, the custom controller and so on where filed in 2015/2016. They work since a long time on the I/O system and build the console around it.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ps...nd-sonys-ssd-customisations-technical.118587/

Funny things they beat the goal they had to reach a theoretical maximum of 20 GB/s for the decompression unit in PS5.

 

[cwjs]

Sony is an itsy-bitsy minor investor with their piddling $250m investment. But you've misunderstood my entire post, this is not about the SSD, this is about system I/O of which tiger SSD is just one part. Again: "PlayStation 5 is built not only on a huge body of flash memory, but also a very high bandwidth and low latency framework for accessing it, and for getting it to wherever you need for any type of work". Again SSD =/= I/O.

Why did they pick PS5 over Series X? Tim Sweeney says EPIC have had a longer working relationship with Sony and maybe Series X just wasn't ready to run this demo last summer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's a small investment -- I'm not implying they "bought" access (nobody does that) -- but sony is without a doubt a strategic investor -- the investment is probably much more about shared goals and desire to work together than the straight up dollar sum. It's not shown on MS hardware because sony is their partner right now, not ms.

Ue5 is middleware and is going to have hyper optimized paths for every platform that their customers want to develop on (even mobile and integrated cards.)

Perhaps one should have some disbelief over the claims that a laptop with a RTX 2080 Mobile (a 9.3 TFLOPs Turing GPU) is running the demo no less than 33% faster than the PS5's GPU (40FPS vs. 30FPS), all of Microsoft's Direct Storage stack is most probably still missing and there's no hardware for data decompression... but I guess that's just me.

There's probably not actual a discrepancy here -- assuming the developer claims are true, they're running the demo in engine while working on it, probably with uncapped framerates. For all we know the ps5 runs it at 59fps, but they capped it down to 30 for stability/to control some artifacts we dont know about /etc

 

[chris1515]

It's a small investment -- I'm not implying they "bought" access (nobody does that) -- but sony is without a doubt a strategic investor -- the investment is probably much more about shared goals and desire to work together than the straight up dollar sum. It's not shown on MS hardware because sony is their partner right now, not ms.

Ue5 is middleware and is going to have hyper optimized paths for every platform that their customers want to develop on (even mobile and integrated cards.)

But no one said they will release only an optimized PS5 UE5 demo. The PS5 SSD technology probably at lower speed is ready since a long time probably end of 2016/2017. Fabian Giesen RAD tools game talk about it and it seems they were contacted in 2016 by Sony with the goal to have a 5 GB/s SSD and 20GB/s maximal speed for the Kraken hardware decompressor. This is probably the reason of the long term partnership.

Sony began the R&D with the SSD.

 

[cwjs]

But no one said they will release only an optimized PS5 UE5 demo.

People are claiming reports of it running great on other platforms are rumors or conspiracies, which has always been fanboy bullshit as the engine without a doubt has run fine on multiple target platforms since well before the demo.

(From the lead dev on nanite --

https://twitter.com/x/status/1283068768109752320

"fast SSDS" (plural!) make the runtime side a non issue -- clearly not only talking about one platform with the best in industry ssd)

 

[chris1515]

People are claiming reports of it running great on other platforms are rumors or conspiracies, which has always been fanboy bullshit as the engine without a doubt has run fine on multiple target platforms since well before the demo.

From what Brian Karis of Epic told, there is a big chance the demo will be available at least on PC maybe on consoles and everyone will be able to benchmark it. At this moment we can compare between the different platform.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It's a small investment -- I'm not implying they "bought" access (nobody does that) -- but sony is without a doubt a strategic investor -- the investment is probably much more about shared goals and desire to work together than the straight up dollar sum. It's not shown on MS hardware because sony is their partner right now, not ms.

I don't follow your logic, in what way is a Sony a partner that Microsoft and Nintendo are not?

I think the simple reason Epic chose to demo this on PlayStation hardware is two-fold, the PC architecture just wasn't there - all of the statements regarding I/O and the areas in which we're waiting to see how much improvement Microsoft's Direct Storage API will bring to Windows. And in terms of why not Xbox? Again, like I said above, I think the Series X just wasn't ready to run this demo back in the summer. And this is more about the faster I/O in PS5 covering up deficiencies in what is certainly unoptimised UE5.0 code. This demo was shown a year-and-a-half before the engine is ready - assuming it is even available for use this year.

 

[BRiT]

I don't follow your logic, in what way is a Sony a partner that Microsoft and Nintendo are not?

Maybe he's talking about the 250 Million Dollars investment Sony has in Epic?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Maybe he's talking about the 250 Million Dollars investment Sony has in Epic?

Being an investor is not the same thing as being a partner. I invest in companies, I am in no way in a "partnership" with them. Epic's engine team will partner - in the literal meaning - as much as possible with all hardware vendors because their goal is to ensure their middleware runs on as wide a variety of hardware as possible. It is not in Epic's interest to favour one hardware vendor over others in terms of co-operation.

 

[cwjs]

I don't follow your logic, in what way is a Sony a partner that Microsoft and Nintendo are not?

I think the simple reason Epic chose to demo this on PlayStation hardware is two-fold, the PC architecture just wasn't there - all of the statements regarding I/O and the areas in which we're waiting to see how much improvement Microsoft's Direct Storage API will bring to Windows. And in terms of why not Xbox? Again, like I said above, I think the Series X just wasn't ready to run this demo back in the summer. And this is more about the faster I/O in PS5 covering up deficiencies in what is certainly unoptimised UE5.0 code. This demo was shown a year-and-a-half before the engine is ready - assuming it is even available for use this year.

1. Strategic investment, some signed agreements about marketing and priorities, etc! All their production partners (which is more than just platforms, probably companies like intel, nvidia, etc) have important relationships, but it's incredibly obvious to any but the most naïve observer that sony has some kind of agreement with them right now for showing games on the ps5 (which is agreeable to epic, since they don't really care what order they optimize for consoles in or who's stage they go talk on as long as the engine is running great on both consoles when it actually comes out.)

2. If you think they made a centengine that they couldn't run on PCs I don't really know how to even reason with you. Do you think they're telling everyone developing games on unreal (many big studios, including many run by microsoft) that they'd better all get ps5-spec ssds if they want their games to run?

 

[BRiT]

Being an investor is not the same thing as being a partner. I invest in companies, I am in no way in a "partnership" with them. Epic's engine team will partner - in the literal meaning - as much as possible with all hardware vendors because their goal is to ensure their middleware runs on as wide a variety of hardware as possible.

Completely agree. That investment was the only thing that sprung to mind.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

1. Strategic investment, some signed agreements about marketing and priorities, etc!

Some facts would be helpful. Writing sentences then punctuating them with an exclamation mark may signal your enthusiasm but does not really stand as evidence in itself.

2. If you think they made a centengine that they couldn't run on PCs I don't really know how to even reason with you

Is this a response to somebody else? I never write anything like this.

 

[cwjs]

Being an investor is not the same thing as being a partner. I invest in companies, I am in no way in a "partnership" with them. Epic's engine team will partner - in the literal meaning - as much as possible with all hardware vendors because their goal is to ensure their middleware runs on as wide a variety of hardware as possible. It is not in Epic's interest to favour one hardware vendor over others in terms of co-operation.

You are not a strategic investor, which is the only possible goal a big corp like sony could have with a small money (but still big enough to bankroll entire features in the engine) could have in buying a like 0.01% stke or whatever in a company like epic.

If you're an investor, you surely know that investments happen to prioritize certain equal things in the business's schedule ( for example -- [x] has to launch on every platform at once, but the order it gets done in doesn't matter, so you get to the front of the line so you can promote early), or to cement marketing relationships, or for all kinds of other things. And you presumably also know that a big tech company investing in one of its tech partners isn't doing it to try and get a big roi payment.

Some facts would be helpful. Writing sentences then punctuating them with an exclamation mark may signal your enthusiasm but does not really stand as evidence in itself.



Is this a response to somebody else? I never write anything like this.

First point --
https://www.sony.com/content/sony/e...rategic-investment-from-sony-corporation.html
"
TOKYO & CARY, N.C.--Sony Corporation (“Sony”) and Epic Games, Inc. (“Epic”) are pleased to announce that Sony has agreed to make a strategic investment of $250 million to acquire a minority interest in Epic through a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony. The investment cements an already close relationship between the two companies and reinforces the shared mission to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services.

The investment allows Sony and Epic to aim to broaden their collaboration across Sony’s leading portfolio of entertainment assets and technology, and Epic’s social entertainment platform and digital ecosystem to create unique experiences for consumers and creators. The closing of the investment is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals."


Second point --
I interpreted "the PC architecture just wasn't there " as a claim that nanite couldn't, at the time, run effectively on pc hardware. Maybe i misunderstood?

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Wouldn't the engine dynamically adjust detail levels of the models proportional to the speed of the SSD? Similar to how the distance to objects dynamically adjusts in UE5.

If true, then you could theoretically have a slower GPU showing a higher framerate due to lower quality details on the screen.

... having said that, I'm inclined to take Sweeney's comments as the best informed opinion on this subject...

 

[cwjs]

Wouldn't the engine dynamically adjust detail levels of the models proportional to the speed of the SSD? Similar to how the distance to objects dynamically adjusts in UE5.

Yes, although I imagine it's tied to resolution, rather than independently variable. Seems like a natural goal of the "reyes" philosophy epic has talked up. (maybe not though!)