Another Super Scientific B3D survey! How do you feel about 'diminshing returns' between generations?

I think PS3 to PS4 was underrated. PS3 was mostly sub-720p resolution, often awful frame rates and terrible draw distances with limited geometric complexity. PS4 was a massive advance in all areas. An exponential upgrade. But - if you inject the rose-tinted glasses recollection of how people may recall PS3 games looking and acknowledge that a lot of the improvement were often 'not in your face' I think this explains it. I very much understand it.

In teams of the most revolutionary advances of just graphics on PlayStation, I think it's a toss-up between PS1 to PS2 (not include) and PS2 to PS3 - because so many graphical technique improvements were delivered in this gaming window.

 

Ps4>ps5 transformative.

We are in the process of shifting away from rasterization and Traditional lighting and shading to Ray tracing. This is a fundamentally different method to rendering that over a time will have fantastically different results to our game design and game play

 

Hmmm, some of those choices don't necessarily reflect how I feel about the generational changes.

First to define how I look at the terms used.

• Transformative: Something that fundamentally changes how games are presented and experienced.
• Exponential: Greater than expected increases in how games are presented.
  • IE - either hardware or presentation reaching a level that was inconceivable prior to the launch of the new generation.
  • Alternatively, game presentation and rendering is surprising in that it exceeds anything that can be predicated based on PC hardware evolution.
• Linear: Hardware and/or game presentation is expected and matches what we see in the rest of the gaming industry.
  • IE console presentation in games is predictable based on the previous console generation switch and/or by looking at the evolution of PC hardware and game developement.
  • Alternatively, game presentation and rendering is predictable based on what exists in the PC space. No surprises here.

For me,

• PS1 -> PS2: Transformative.
  • Just like pre-PS1 -> PS1
  • Both represented massive shifts in both presentation (2D to 3D and game sizes, for example) as well as setting the foundation for all console games going forward (solid 3D acceleration, increasing complexity in 3D rendering and a focus on 3D oriented gameplay).
• PS2 -> PS3: Greater than linear but not exponential.
  • Gaming on console at this point was mostly building on what was already established by the PS2 generation.
  • Now, it's just about better rendering, more polygons, more resolution, etc.
  • From this point forward, console hardware and console games with each generation are basically predictable.
  • Game presentation and rendering quality are somewhat surprising, but only in the sense that it approaches that top tier of what developers are doing on PC.
    • Not quite exponential, IMO, as it doesn't exceed what is expected with either game rendering or hardware when compared to the evolution of hardware at the time.
    • For a very brief period console hardware was slightly ahead of industry available hardware (PC).
• PS3 -> PS4: Linear
  • It's exactly what was expected and represented a linear increase fro the previous generation to the next generation.
  • Basically at this point two things are happening.
    • Console and PC hardware are basically in lockstep in capabilities even if consoles can't quite reach the expensive heights of PC hardware.
    • This then leads to game presentation and rendering being exactly what one would expect. A linear increase from the previous gen to that gen.
• PS4 -> PS5: Sub-Linear - needs clarification
  • In terms of expectations of what is possible WRT the hardware that is used, it would be linear.
  • However, it's hard to ignore the effects of hardware and the great slowing of hardware improvements WRT rendering capabilities.
    • This affects the three pillars of what have thus far driven game rendering.
      • GPU speed
      • Memory amount
      • Memory bandwidth
    • This leads to, IMO, a sub-linear progression in rendering quality compared to historical advances in game rendering with each new generation of consoles.
  • Advances in other areas (RT, CPU and IO) will mitigate to an extent the sub-linear progression of game rendering, but I'm skeptical that it will lead to a linear progression WRT to rendering of the visuals in games.

Obviously, opinions will differ from mine WRT the importance or scale of some things, but that's my opinion of it.

Regards,
SB

 

PixelShaders and increased geometry made this transformative for me. Below is GTA San Andreas on PS2 and GTA V on PS3.

 

I think what is muddying the water is that PS5 has several ‘issues’ in that it’s the first cross gen console, it launched in a pandemic and it’s only a year old.

If you look at how games evolve from launch to end of generation you’re comparing console peek to console start - also as Shifty says - with rose tinted glasses.

For me diminishing returns are real, and you have to know what to look for to appreciate the improvements/advancements…just look at the GTA example given!

Either way I appreciate each console launch and what advancement it brings, let’s judge in a couple years or at least on just launch windows for each console…but still the PS5 has been at a disadvantage.

 

I recently played a mix of PS3 and PS4 era games on PC and it’s mostly linear. PS4 to PS5 has the potential to be transformative but it’s early days yet.

 

I'm on that train but too be fair another issue here is the incredibly long dev times we deal with today, a Triple A game is such an enormous, lengthy undertaking anymore. So far we are mostly seeing IMO cross gen games or games with clear prior gen roots.

Basically I dont expect to see "true" next gen games for what another 2-3 years? So what we see now for PS5 is somewhat watered down to what it is capable of. Matrix Demo is a glimpse.

Sony first party hangs it's hat on graphics where MS seems to not care very much (the forza games are nice but still feel like uprezzed experiences to me), so I'm sure Sony has some crazy stuff cooking.

 

I believe it's just inevitable. Same way we don't get double the performance out of each new generation of graphics cards, the faster you get the harder it is to get more speed.

 

Graphics cards update every 2 years at most. It's at least 6 years between console generations.

 

a bit less as we got mid gen refreshes las time, maybe it'll happen again in 3 years ?

 

Ignoring the Matrix Experience, which is the promise of what is to come, I think the design of this generation of consoles has been focused on eliminating many of the shortfalls of previous generation's hardware limitations.

Most games are nailing 60fps, some offer 120fps or intermediate 40fps on 120hz displays. Many at doing framerates above 1440p and some games are closer to 4K native or using reconstruction techniques where it takes an effort to tell the difference between native and reconstructed. Right out of the gate this gen, Insomniac's Spider-Man Miles Morales on PS5 was doing near 4K 60fps and 30fps 1440p-ish with RT, then a few months later a 60fps RT option came out. Draw distances and vast amounts of geometry no longer tank frame rates.

It's a massive array of improvements across the board but few of them are in your face. The new consoles are stupidly more powerful than last, more flops, and better flops (as in better operations that run on the GPU), smarter and better use of RAM, fast I/O meaning RAM is full of useful data and actually decent CPUs.

Like every previous console generation, it will be a while before devs really start tapping into the new hardware. Is was the same on PS2 (compare GTA III to GTA San Andreas, God of War to God of War III), it was the same for PS3 (compare Uncharted to Uncharted 2 or 3 or The Last of Us), and PS4 (compare Infamous Second Son to Ghost of Tsushima, or The Last of Us Remastered to The Last of Us Part II, or AC Black Flag to Unity).

In the first couple of years of every new console generation (incl. PS1 - compare original Tomb Raider to Tomb Raider IV), devs are only scratching the surface. It takes a while to acquire the experience to really make the hardware sing. Everybody who was expecting PS5 (and Xbox Series) to "blow the bloody doors off" in the first year is ignoring the four previous generations of 3D consoles.

 

Thats true for any generational shift.

Its the smalles jump, but its enough of a jump to justify 'next generational leap'. Its what were seeing in the poll and across the board/internet. The more intresting question is what will be next? will we see an even smaller leap next time, more flops or what are going to look at in six or seven years? Hopefully its not streaming yet.

 

Its too soon to judge PS4->PS5, but I cast my vote as a prediction. It already took a long time for PS4 games to really show what that gen could do for real (with some few exceptions that were neraly there early on). I expect that period to be even longer this time.

 

And PC generations are longer now since we can't actually buy new GPUs anyway?

 

It wasn't for the CPU moving from PS3 to PS4. PS3's Cell was vastly more able than the PS4's Jaguar.

 

For ps6 i want matrix demo fidelity in VR at 4k !

 

I wouldn't mind that, actually... Specially if a PS6 pro comes along that can double the framerate on every title, and maybe render RT effects at higher fidelity... Essentially, by year 10, PS5 vanilla will be sony's series S. We could actually get another brick-shitting generational leap again if we can make this one last.

 

Was it? While we do know the jaguars where quite underpowered, in many ways it was an improvement over the Cell/360 cpu.