Next-Generation NVMe SSD and I/O Technology [PC, PS5, XBSX|S]

[Silent_Buddha]

Just watched that video and it’s clever, but also really not true. Yes, you could do parts of what happens in this game on older consoles. But it’s not comparable to what is happening here, as there are several instances where you are not on rails and so on. Just rewatch the DF video on this game and interview with the developer and go back to this video, and you will see that R&C does much more than was possible in previous generations, thanks to the SSD.

Portals within environments (Portal 2) and between worlds (Prey) existed on PS3/X360. Sure, Insomniac are doing some nifty things with it in R&C, but none of it is impossible on PS3/X360 level of hardware with PS3/X360 level of graphics fidelity. What PS5 and its SSD allows them to do is do this stuff at greater graphical IQ than at any previous point in history. But the tech itself and what they are doing can certainly be done on previous generations of hardware. Obviously at lower fidelity but with the exact same mechanics and gameplay.

The tech is a great showcase for the new I/O stack in that you can get greater graphical fidelity with less memory than in the past. But it definitely isn't anything new or anything impossible on older hardware, what's new is how it's being done but the end result (mechanics and gameplay) is the same.

Regards,
SB

 

[Karamazov]

at this rate FS 2020 does not do anything new than previous FS.

 

[PSman1700]

Portals within environments (Portal 2) and between worlds (Prey) existed on PS3/X360. Sure, Insomniac are doing some nifty things with it in R&C, but none of it is impossible on PS3/X360 level of hardware with PS3/X360 level of graphics fidelity. What PS5 and its SSD allows them to do is do this stuff at greater graphical IQ than at any previous point in history. But the tech itself and what they are doing can certainly be done on previous generations of hardware. Obviously at lower fidelity but with the exact same mechanics and gameplay.

The tech is a great showcase for the new I/O stack in that you can get greater graphical fidelity with less memory than in the past. But it definitely isn't anything new or anything impossible on older hardware, what's new is how it's being done but the end result (mechanics and gameplay) is the same.

Regards,
SB

Well said. There was some other game doing something similar aswell, cant remember the name but you could warp at will.
Rift Apart’s just doing it at higher fidelity which is a given since were on newer generations.
That and rift apart does quite fine on much slower nvme drives aswell.

 

[Arwin]

The “just” that you use, combined with the suggestion that the higher fidelity isn’t necessarily related to the 100x increase in storage speed, is what I have issue with in this discussion.

 

[Karamazov]

some just need to downplay because reasons even if it's in contradiction with what the R&C devs themselves explained and how it would have not been possible on last gen.
hell some would tell you that warping two levels was possible on super nintendo so nothing new ! ignoring how much data is really moving in those warps.

 

[iroboto]

Given Ratchet and Clank is being used as the SSD benchmark I throught this video might be of interest.

I am sure insomniac are beating the SSD because they can, but is it really as key to the game as it was marketed as?

too much dismissal without enough evidence. The technology is there for streaming loading etc, sure. But to maintain the fidelity that R&C has is what requires a faster hard drive. If one wants to debate that the 9GB/s after decompression is required, then that shouljd be tested by finding the absolutely slowest NVME gen 4 drive there is and seeing how it performs (and ideally some drives in-between). It's worth while determining when the game drops off a cliff with respect to performance; but just saying is not needed isn't enough for me. I have serious doubts here that a 50MB/s drive is sufficient from all the past titles that we know, but I also doubt a developer would push a game to the maximum throughput of the drive.

 

[zed]

Given Ratchet and Clank is being used as the SSD benchmark I throught this video might be of interest.

I am sure insomniac are beating the SSD because they can, but is it really as key to the game as it was marketed as?

I think this video is just trolling for clicks, to gain revenue
embarrassingly bad theory, you could see they loaded 4 or 5 sections one after another with maybe 1 second intermission between them, something that is no where close to fitting into memory.

 

[pjbliverpool]

the guy is just wrong even if he his a programmer he obviously did not listen to what devs said about their game, they dump everything of one level to load the other almost instantly, the only other way to do it would be to have a lot more ram, and obviously PS5 could not do it with a standard HDD.
And he omits to talk about the crystals that are not on rails sequences and shift between two complete levels in less than a second, putting down his on rail trick theory.

too much dismissal without enough evidence. The technology is there for streaming loading etc, sure. But to maintain the fidelity that R&C has is what requires a faster hard drive. If one wants to debate that the 9GB/s after decompression is required, then that shouljd be tested by finding the absolutely slowest NVME gen 4 drive there is and seeing how it performs (and ideally some drives in-between). It's worth while determining when the game drops off a cliff with respect to performance; but just saying is not needed isn't enough for me. I have serious doubts here that a 50MB/s drive is sufficient from all the past titles that we know, but I also doubt a developer would push a game to the maximum throughput of the drive.

I think the video is pretty specific in that it's challenging the claim that those gameplay elements are impossible without the PS5 SDD. At one point he does state all the tricks in R&C are genuinely using the SDD (and therefore would see slower performance on a slower drive) but that the SDD is not the only way to achieve those gameplay elements.

I agree there's some merit to the argument that achieving those gameplay elements at that exact level of visual fidelity may have proven challenging without such a fast SDD though - all other things being equal of course.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

at this rate FS 2020 does not do anything new than previous FS.

Gameplay and mechanics? Nope, nothing new really compared to previous FS games, including version 1.0 back in 1982.

Graphics fidelity? Hugely upgraded and similar to Ratchet and Clank leveraging new technology is part of why the presentation is such a leap over previous games in the series. Where it's the use of the new I/O stack for R&C, it's the use of cloud data for FS.

The flight model? Incrementally upgraded.

So, people that saying that there's nothing new are certainly wrong, but that's completely different from saying that what's being done couldn't possibly be achieved on older hardware. The graphics and presentation, yes, not possible at this fidelity on previous hardware. The gameplay and mechanics of the gameplay? Absolutely can be done on previous generations of hardware.

Just because someone didn't think of doing something until X point in time doesn't mean it couldn't have been done prior to that if someone had thought of it. The Atari 2600, for example was fully capable of doing an FPS shooter if someone had thought of doing one. After all, it has at least one rather rudimentary "3D" first person space flight simulator on it. It's only a small step from that to doing a rudimentary FPS on the machine. Will it look like crap? Hell yeah. Is it possible? Again, yes.

Regards,
SB

 

[mr magoo]

Gameplay and mechanics? Nope, nothing new really compared to previous FS games, including version 1.0 back in 1982.

Graphics fidelity? Hugely upgraded and similar to Ratchet and Clank leveraging new technology is part of why the presentation is such a leap over previous games in the series. Where it's the use of the new I/O stack for R&C, it's the use of cloud data for FS.

The flight model? Incrementally upgraded.

So, people that saying that there's nothing new are certainly wrong, but that's completely different from saying that what's being done couldn't possibly be achieved on older hardware. The graphics and presentation, yes, not possible at this fidelity on previous hardware. The gameplay and mechanics of the gameplay? Absolutely can be done on previous generations of hardware.

Just because someone didn't think of doing something until X point in time doesn't mean it couldn't have been done prior to that if someone had thought of it. The Atari 2600, for example was fully capable of doing an FPS shooter if someone had thought of doing one. After all, it has at least one rather rudimentary "3D" first person space flight simulator on it. It's only a small step from that to doing a rudimentary FPS on the machine. Will it look like crap? Hell yeah. Is it possible? Again, yes.

Regards,
SB

You are so right that everything else seems wrong.

 

[Karamazov]

what's shown in R&C could not been done last gen like devs said and that's it. You can twist thing how you want you would never get the same results, even just taking two levels of R&C on PS4 so with PS4 fidelity you could never swap those two on the fly with the PS4 hardware and HDD, of course if you reduce fidelity to something ugly that could work but what's the point ?
So you can do FS2020 physics on PS4 by using PS1 graphics ?
Non sense.
Oh and they never claimed that was some totally new and exclusive gameplay mechanics by the way. People on internets maybe did that.

 

[PSman1700]

You are so right that everything else seems wrong.

Some have the need to downplay because reasons. Anyway, R&C isnt really doing anything new conceptually wise, the idea of warping oneself to another different location without loading has been done before. Claiming the SSD is the only way to stream such much fidelity aint that new either, CP2077 did this aswell and it released before rift apart.

If Rift Apart could be done in the same fidelity as the PS5 on PS4, well, obviously not. Thats not just the SSD, its the whole system together. It could be done, but at reduced fidelity.

 

[Karamazov]

nah don't bother with CP2077, nothing new there, can be done on PS1

 

[JPT]

Why is this a discussion? I mean R&C PS5 does one thing that could not be done before.
It uses "all its graphics memory"* for assets, dumps it and loads new assets in about a second. This is not possible without SSD and this gen of console tech. Could it be done on XSX, I assume so. But it could not be done on older generations.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

what's shown in R&C could not been done last gen like devs said and that's it. You can twist thing how you want you would never get the same results, even just taking two levels of R&C on PS4 so with PS4 fidelity you could never swap those two on the fly with the PS4 hardware and HDD, of course if you reduce fidelity to something ugly that could work but what's the point ?
So you can do FS2020 physics on PS4 by using PS1 graphics ?
Non sense.
Oh and they never claimed that was some totally new and exclusive gameplay mechanics by the way. People on internets maybe did that.

Sure, the graphics and presentation of ANY game this generation, ALL AAA games can't be done on previous generation hardware ... at this generation's graphics fidelity. R&C is nothing new there.

But everything that R&C does outside of graphics and presentation can be done on previous generation hardware. Would it look worse? Yeah, because it's older generation hardware. Could everything else be the same, outside of graphics? Yeah.

I suppose it would help clear up confusion if people would be more specific with what they claim is and isn't possible on previous generation hardware. Instantaneous portals from one area to another? Absolutely doable on previous generation hardware and in fact there are games that do it. Instantaneous portal to an entirely new world/level? Absolutely doable on previous generation hardware and there are games that do that as well. Outside of graphics and presentation, R&C does nothing that couldn't be done on previous generation hardware. Would it be done in the same way? Obviously, no. Would the result be the same with Zero load times? Absolutely, yes. Would it look worse? It would most definitely look worse.

But as I've stated, absolutely R&C at the graphics fidelity it exists at on PS5 certainly couldn't be done on previous generation hardware. Just like Cyberpunk 2077 at PC ultra quality can't be done on PS5 or XBS-X. Does that mean that PS5 and XBS-X can't do Cyberpunk 2077? Dirt 5 at PS5/XBS-X quality can't be done on XBS-S or previous generation consoles. Does that mean that Dirt 5 couldn't be done on previous generation hardware?

This is getting absolutely silly.

Regards,
SB

 

[Nisaaru]

Why is this a discussion? I mean R&C PS5 does one thing that could not be done before.
It uses "all its graphics memory"* for assets, dumps it and loads new assets in about a second. This is not possible without SSD and this gen of console tech. Could it be done on XSX, I assume so. But it could not be done on older generations.

But was it necessary?

 

[goonergaz]

But everything that R&C does outside of graphics and presentation can be done on previous generation hardware. Would it look worse? Yeah, because it's older generation hardware. Could everything else be the same, outside of graphics? Yeah.

I suppose it would help clear up confusion if people would be more specific with what they claim is and isn't possible on previous generation hardware. Instantaneous portals from one area to another? Absolutely doable on previous generation hardware and in fact there are games that do it. Instantaneous portal to an entirely new world/level? Absolutely doable on previous generation hardware and there are games that do that as well. Outside of graphics and presentation, R&C does nothing that couldn't be done on previous generation hardware. Would it be done in the same way? Obviously, no. Would the result be the same with Zero load times? Absolutely, yes. Would it look worse? It would most definitely look worse.

But as I've stated, absolutely R&C at the graphics fidelity it exists at on PS5 certainly couldn't be done on previous generation hardware. Just like Cyberpunk 2077 at PC ultra quality can't be done on PS5 or XBS-X. Does that mean that PS5 and XBS-X can't do Cyberpunk 2077? Dirt 5 at PS5/XBS-X quality can't be done on XBS-S or previous generation consoles. Does that mean that Dirt 5 couldn't be done on previous generation hardware?

This is getting absolutely silly.

Regards,
SB

Why stick to last gen? On 8 bit we had Elite where you could instantly go between whole galaxies in a couple of seconds.

Seriously though it’s apples to oranges, what R&C is doing is swapping out the entire graphics capacity and assets that the console can do at any one time and completely swapping those out with another completely separate scenario within a couple of seconds.

That’s never been done before without compromising the current world level and would not be possible on any previous generation as it’s being done here without the previously mentioned cutbacks.

I think what is upsetting people is the ‘nothing new’ comments, it’s really not accurate, unless you have some examples where a game world is running at its best fidelity and is completely swapped out for the same level of fidelity in a completely new environment within a couple of seconds?

Could this be done with more memory? Yeah, kind of I guess if you have enough RAM to load up the entire game and wait for the initial load…but with R&C I can instantly load any section of the game in a couple seconds, I guess load the initial level and background load the rest. But are any games doing this? Not that I know of.

 

[Karamazov]

last gen people were complaining and arguing constantly how gameplay graphics were worse than cutscenes and now that we can have high fidelity everywhere it's considered useless, and nothing much from last gen.

 

[snc]

last gen people were complaining and arguing constantly how gameplay graphics were worse than cutscenes and now that we can have high fidelity everywhere it's considered useless, and nothing much from last gen.

to be honest for now nothing change in this department, still gameplay graphics are worse than during cutscenes

 

[turkey]

I think this video is just trolling for clicks, to gain revenue
embarrassingly bad theory, you could see they loaded 4 or 5 sections one after another with maybe 1 second intermission between them, something that is no where close to fitting into memory.

I am not sure, although it is slightly out of the ordinary in that it's not about his own development tricks and experience.

For reference Jon is the founder of Travellers Tales and is a battle hardened 16bit Dev who mastered the Saturn and at least worked commercially into the PS3 era.

He knows a huge amount on tricks and exploting known patterns or situation to get more out of a system.

The point being you could make the gameplay with less, the way the Devs do it or claim to do it (PR?) is unlikely to be the only way to achieve it.

I thought it interesting as it's a somewhat counter narrative although on the PR speak not their implementation, by an actual developer rather than a journalist or random e.t.c