Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2020-2021] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[iroboto]

@13.00

uh quickly speak to the differences if
13:02 any between
13:03 the two platforms of course there's
13:06 differences and i
13:07 talk a lot with of the engineers and and
13:10 many team members about i mean
13:11 ultimately both machines are like great
13:13 like they're really well really well
13:16 built and
13:17 like i said it's early days so there's
13:19 still a lot of
13:20 just system level issues and bugs that
13:22 impact performance or
13:24 cause crashes and things like that it's
13:26 just that that's all gonna get
13:28 get better um sony kind of stocked (stuck with) what
13:32 worked
13:33 and and their development software and
13:36 tools were like pretty
13:37 stable and good pretty early on and it's
13:40 one of the things that people don't
13:41 really see like all of these
13:42 impact like the performance that that
13:44 the consumer gets
13:46 uh microsoft opted to change um
13:49 quite a lot of things um which on the
13:52 long run are probably good but of course
13:54 we had just
13:55 it's just a bigger hurdle for us devs
13:57 early on to kind of like oh we gotta
13:59 rewrite a bunch of different things to
14:00 really take advantage
14:02 um of specific features and you know
14:05 that's not
14:06 um that's not like a huge negative or
14:10 anything it's just
14:11 what software development um is like but
14:14 maybe that
14:14 explains other things you know like
14:16 there's all this discussion like about
14:18 teraflops this and i'm just like man
14:20 it's just like
14:21 this is numbers like ultimately like the
14:23 tools and everything just matters so
14:24 much more and how all of that is brought
14:27 um together matters so much more than
14:30 just
14:31 just purely the uh purely the numbers

just quoting this here so that people stop shitting on DF for putting this out there as if they are trying to save face for MS. They talk to devs, they put it out there and took a lot of flack for it. But developer on record now indicating the importance of developer tools and the challenges faced with MS GDK.

And yea, it looks like Series S is a major pain point for developers as well (for cross gen titles)

 

[snc]

Seems XBSX is starting to widen the gap in terms of resolution differences, or maintaining a closer 4K presentation.

I think they based nextgen patch on ps4pro and xox versions as difference in pixel count is far above paper theoretical difference

 

[thicc_gaf]

@13.00

uh quickly speak to the differences if
13:02 any between
13:03 the two platforms of course there's
13:06 differences and i
13:07 talk a lot with of the engineers and and
13:10 many team members about i mean
13:11 ultimately both machines are like great
13:13 like they're really well really well
13:16 built and
13:17 like i said it's early days so there's
13:19 still a lot of
13:20 just system level issues and bugs that
13:22 impact performance or
13:24 cause crashes and things like that it's
13:26 just that that's all gonna get
13:28 get better um sony kind of stocked (stuck with) what
13:32 worked
13:33 and and their development software and
13:36 tools were like pretty
13:37 stable and good pretty early on and it's
13:40 one of the things that people don't
13:41 really see like all of these
13:42 impact like the performance that that
13:44 the consumer gets
13:46 uh microsoft opted to change um
13:49 quite a lot of things um which on the
13:52 long run are probably good but of course
13:54 we had just
13:55 it's just a bigger hurdle for us devs
13:57 early on to kind of like oh we gotta
13:59 rewrite a bunch of different things to
14:00 really take advantage
14:02 um of specific features and you know
14:05 that's not
14:06 um that's not like a huge negative or
14:10 anything it's just
14:11 what software development um is like but
14:14 maybe that
14:14 explains other things you know like
14:16 there's all this discussion like about
14:18 teraflops this and i'm just like man
14:20 it's just like
14:21 this is numbers like ultimately like the
14:23 tools and everything just matters so
14:24 much more and how all of that is brought
14:27 um together matters so much more than
14:30 just
14:31 just purely the uh purely the numbers

just quoting this here so that people stop shitting on DF for putting this out there as if they are trying to save face for MS. They talk to devs, they put it out there and took a lot of flack for it. But developer on record now indicating the importance of developer tools and the challenges faced with MS GDK.

And yea, it looks like Series S is a major pain point for developers as well.

Seems to mainly be moreso for cross-gen games on last-gen engines. And to some extent, it could also be Remedy's engine isn't as flexible as other cross-gen game engines (like Metro Exodus's).

One thing about all of this I'm generally always scratching my head on though is, why some of these developers peg the Series S as such a pain when the Nintendo Switch exists. Maybe it's due to the fact Microsoft mandates Series games have to work on both systems, so if a developer wants to do something for Series X they have to make sure a version can also run natively on Series S. Meanwhile, they don't have to develop on Switch (or Switch Pro, which will surely be less powerful than Series S as well in most aspects, though it might have better image upscaling due to DLSS).

Remedy's one of the few devs I've seen somewhat persistent on frustration with Series S as something to work on. Maybe they're more the exception when it comes to this than the rule, because I honestly haven't seen too many other devs complaining about working on the platform (aside from the GDK issues of course). A few extra quotes from a handful here and there isn't going to really change that being the exception considering the sheer amount of developers (even AAA devs) in the business. That said, is there a chance Microsoft mandating native versions of games for the S could end up hamstringing them later in the generation? Maybe there is.

The Remedy dev's right in that making a Series S version isn't as easy as turning down resolutions and graphics options. So maybe the better question is, will the extra work in scaling down from X to S become so much that devs either use S as the base and just scale up, or just skip Series development, particularly if they're medium-sized teams doing mid-tier games and don't have focus on PC? Especially in likelihood of a Switch Pro eating into Series S's audience.

Here's the thing though; there aren't a lot of those kind of developers out there. If they're mid-sized teams doing mid-tier games, they probably already work on PC and that's an environment with a lot more volatility in terms of configurations to keep in mind than Series X and S. So why would putting in some time to tune performance for Series S be a dealbreaker? The same can be said for the large dev teams; they work on PC as well, plus some of them have done ports to much weaker hardware like the Switch so...where's the issue?

I get to thinking sometimes that it's coming down more to publishers who want to be cheap and save on costs related to system ports. So if that's the case, of course you will have developers who reflect some of that. I'm not necessarily saying that's the case with Remedy, but it's a possibility to keep in mind. I'm guessing some ways Microsoft could alleviate frustrations with this small block of devs who aren't necessarily having an easy time with Series S, is ease on mandates for native ports to the S. Just open that up the way Nintendo has with the Switch, and let devs handle versions of games on it via streaming.

The main audience looking to something like Series S probably won't be too fussed if some games have to be played through Xcloud as sole option, and that just creates stronger reliance from those customers on GamePass, which Series S was pretty much designed for in the first place (a cheap GamePass-friendly gaming box). And that also keeps those particular 3P devs happy because they can just focus their resources on Series X and that in turn helps Series X versions of 3P games be even more competitive with PS5 ones (and more often than not bettering them in performance), which creates strong optics for MS and the Series X.

 

[snc]

@13.00

uh quickly speak to the differences if
13:02 any between
13:03 the two platforms of course there's
13:06 differences and i
13:07 talk a lot with of the engineers and and
13:10 many team members about i mean
13:11 ultimately both machines are like great
13:13 like they're really well really well
13:16 built and
13:17 like i said it's early days so there's
13:19 still a lot of
13:20 just system level issues and bugs that
13:22 impact performance or
13:24 cause crashes and things like that it's
13:26 just that that's all gonna get
13:28 get better um sony kind of stocked (stuck with) what
13:32 worked
13:33 and and their development software and
13:36 tools were like pretty
13:37 stable and good pretty early on and it's
13:40 one of the things that people don't
13:41 really see like all of these
13:42 impact like the performance that that
13:44 the consumer gets
13:46 uh microsoft opted to change um
13:49 quite a lot of things um which on the
13:52 long run are probably good but of course
13:54 we had just
13:55 it's just a bigger hurdle for us devs
13:57 early on to kind of like oh we gotta
13:59 rewrite a bunch of different things to
14:00 really take advantage
14:02 um of specific features and you know
14:05 that's not
14:06 um that's not like a huge negative or
14:10 anything it's just
14:11 what software development um is like but
14:14 maybe that
14:14 explains other things you know like
14:16 there's all this discussion like about
14:18 teraflops this and i'm just like man
14:20 it's just like
14:21 this is numbers like ultimately like the
14:23 tools and everything just matters so
14:24 much more and how all of that is brought
14:27 um together matters so much more than
14:30 just
14:31 just purely the uh purely the numbers

just quoting this here so that people stop shitting on DF for putting this out there as if they are trying to save face for MS. They talk to devs, they put it out there and took a lot of flack for it. But developer on record now indicating the importance of developer tools and the challenges faced with MS GDK.

And yea, it looks like Series S is a major pain point for developers as well.

also Remedy dev said that teraflops is only a number and how problematic is to develop on xss (he laughed at some internet experts that says "its very easy to say that you just lower resolution and texture quality...that is just nowhere near")

 

[Jay]

And yea, it looks like Series S is a major pain point for developers as well.

Positive was that he said it was mainly for older titles, new ones you take it into account from the start.

Also as he highlighted the change to GDK was a pain but done for future development, so hopefully it doesn't take years to yield the benefits.

 

[iroboto]

Positive was that he said it was mainly for older titles, new ones you take it into account from the start.

Also as he highlighted the change to GDK was a pain but done for future development, so hopefully it doesn't take years to yield the benefits.

bumping the whole feature set up to FL12_3 and SM6.6 would relieve a lot of tons pain points from last gen. So I do agree today it will suffer, but as they let go of last gen and move into the newer more efficient techniques for geometry handling, texture streaming etc. Hopefully those Series S limitations won't be hit as quickly.

 

[dobwal]

also Remedy dev said that teraflops is only a number and how problematic is to develop on xss (he laughed at some internet experts that says "its very easy to say that you just lower resolution and texture quality...that is just nowhere near")

LOL. Easy is a relative term. He basically describes the whole process of supporting Control on the new hardware platforms as "sucked".

 

[Jay]

LOL. Easy is a relative term. He basically describes the whole process of supporting Control on the new hardware platforms as "sucked".

He also said it was because it was an old game, context also matters.

Game development will be taking it into account from the start from now on.
In the end it will be about whether the pros outweigh the cons, in terms of MS market share and users being able to afford/justify a console etc.
Dev's as always will get to grips and work with it.

 

[thicc_gaf]

also Remedy dev said that teraflops is only a number and how problematic is to develop on xss (he laughed at some internet experts that says "its very easy to say that you just lower resolution and texture quality...that is just nowhere near")

Yeah TF are only a number but a lot of us knew that for a long time, and there's really no reason to reiterate on it at this point except (in my opinion) to feed some of the more toxic sides of the online "console war" discourse, because the implication (or better to say the idea of inferred implication that some people latching onto the quote could have) is that A: Microsoft only discussed TFs (they didn't) and B: there's "nothing else" technically impressive about Series system designs outside of TF (also inaccurate interpretation). I don't see any reason to yet again double down on an obvious known thing (TFs aren't everything) except to feed into one or both of those narratives implicitly.

Or maybe this is more a case of gamers online having poisoned the well of nuanced technical discussion on the consoles in most spaces so badly that even if developers are bringing up these points as means of educating viewers and enlightening them, a lot of the people who are going to end up discussing the contents of these sort of videos will just latch onto anything they can to push reaffirmed notions they may have against certain platforms, while still missing the larger context of the comments they're aping. And, for my own self I'd just rather devs not so easily net themselves into using phrasings or in some cases even focusing on certain sub-topics that have since been turned into bullet points for toxic online discussions about these systems by some people in various spots.

Just looking at the differences between X and S, after the specs were known at least some around logically assumed there'd be some degree of work in tuning S-friendly versions of these games too. Differences in memory bandwidths, memory setup (not in terms of virtually segmented memory but things like literal parallel memory channels), the GPUs obviously etc. There's still going to be some work in that even when the GDK is 100% up-to-date.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

LOL. Easy is a relative term. He basically describes the whole process of supporting Control on the new hardware platforms as "sucked".

From his comments:

- Having to develop for cross-gen sucks, because an engine made for X generation won't magically scale for X+1 generation of consoles, and QA becomes a massive undertaking when several consoles are targeted. He specifically mentioned feeling sorry for the team behind Halo Infinite.

- This time, having to develop for cross-gen sucks even more because Microsoft introduced two consoles with very different performance tiers. He mocked the internet experts who claim that developing for the Series S is just "downscaling render and texture resolution" from the SeriesX. "It just doesn't work that way"

- The SeriesS became the lowest common denominator for Gen9, and it will be holding back both the PS5 and the SeriesX (at least for a smaller team with limited resources like his).

- We should expect the new engine they're working on to show a massive improvement in graphical fidelity once they're getting rid of Gen8 compatibility

 

[dobwal]

Tflops is just a metric that easily marketable because it gives everybody a base level of performance. The devil is in the details where we get to parse out a finer understanding of the performance offered by the hardware but that takes a level of comprehension that can't be easily gained through a limited number of sentences in marketing materials that targeting the masses.

It would be nice if Sony, MS, Nintendo, and devs could send out a horde of media marketeers to descend on the forum-goers of this world to give fine-grain details about the next-gen hardware and games, but it doesn't seem like that's the type of marketing that anybody wants to regularly engage in.

Nevertheless, the situation is not perfect, but B3Ders should be smart enough readily use metrics like Tflops within a context that correlates with all the details we have at our disposal.

 

[snc]

Yeah TF are only a number but a lot of us knew that for a long time, and there's really no reason to reiterate on it at this point except (in my opinion) to feed some of the more toxic sides of the online "console war" discourse, because the implication (or better to say the idea of inferred implication that some people latching onto the quote could have) is that A: Microsoft only discussed TFs (they didn't) and B: there's "nothing else" technically impressive about Series system designs outside of TF (also inaccurate interpretation). I don't see any reason to yet again double down on an obvious known thing (TFs aren't everything) except to feed into one or both of those narratives implicitly.

Or maybe this is more a case of gamers online having poisoned the well of nuanced technical discussion on the consoles in most spaces so badly that even if developers are bringing up these points as means of educating viewers and enlightening them, a lot of the people who are going to end up discussing the contents of these sort of videos will just latch onto anything they can to push reaffirmed notions they may have against certain platforms, while still missing the larger context of the comments they're aping. And, for my own self I'd just rather devs not so easily net themselves into using phrasings or in some cases even focusing on certain sub-topics that have since been turned into bullet points for toxic online discussions about these systems by some people in various spots.

Just looking at the differences between X and S, after the specs were known at least some around logically assumed there'd be some degree of work in tuning S-friendly versions of these games too. Differences in memory bandwidths, memory setup (not in terms of virtually segmented memory but things like literal parallel memory channels), the GPUs obviously etc. There's still going to be some work in that even when the GDK is 100% up-to-date.

don't over think my comment, is just points what I've found interesting from interview (imho tf are quite good indicator of performance if we talking about same or similar arch. tough not perfect)

 

[Scott_Arm]

I find it interesting that the Remedy dev said it took more effort to rewrite things for the new Xbox platform, when it's the one that's support to be high level APIs that make cross gen easier. I wonder if it's not so much the graphics api as it's the other system level stuff that's very different.

 

[Jay]

I find it interesting that the Remedy dev said it took more effort to rewrite things for the new Xbox platform, when it's the one that's support to be high level APIs that make cross gen easier. I wonder if it's not so much the graphics api as it's the other system level stuff that's very different.

As he said, it's things like tool and xdk to gdk.
Sony's are an evolution, MS a lot bigger change.
Tricky enough moving gens, and things not being mature, but to have them thrown out for new ones that's even less mature and unknown makes it even harder.

 

[BRiT]

I find it interesting that the Remedy dev said it took more effort to rewrite things for the new Xbox platform, when it's the one that's support to be high level APIs that make cross gen easier. I wonder if it's not so much the graphics api as it's the other system level stuff that's very different.

I had two initial reactions. First one being, yeah the GDK likely feels and operates differently than the XDK setup they've been using forever. Second one being, maybe it's all the I/O changes needed to get the most out of the NVMEs, considering it's an entirely new set of APIs. The same old Win32 style I/O used for decades on PC and Xbox won't get the new benefits, so it's now a different codepath between the two until Velocity Architecture is released for PC too.

I'm curious what the PS4 I/O and PS5 I/O APIs looks like.

 

[dobwal]

From his comments:

- Having to develop for cross-gen sucks, because an engine made for X generation won't magically scale for X+1 generation of consoles, and QA becomes a massive undertaking when several consoles are targeted. He specifically mentioned feeling sorry for the team behind Halo Infinite.

- This time, having to develop for cross-gen sucks even more because Microsoft introduced two consoles with very different performance tiers. He mocked the internet experts who claim that developing for the Series S is just "downscaling render and texture resolution" from the SeriesX. "It just doesn't work that way"

- The SeriesS became the lowest common denominator for Gen9, and it will be holding back both the PS5 and the SeriesX (at least for a smaller team with limited resources like his).

- We should expect the new engine they're working on to show a massive improvement in graphical fidelity once they're getting rid of Gen8 compatibility

Most of his issues come from having to port a title from the older gen platform to a newer gen platform. He goes on to state it took months just to getting working on the new platforms and spending a lot of times on fixing things like lighting and textures because they weren't working right. Like the poster above stated, he mentioned it will be much easier when games are developed from the ground up on the new platforms.

Series S just represents just one of a number of hardware configurations that will serve as the lowest common denominator. Do you think without the XSS, PC support from AAA games would be limited to gpus with 10 Tflops and above? You think the GTX 1050 or RX 530 will lose support anytime soon. The vast majority of AMD apus still don't come close to gpu performance of the XSS.

 

[thicc_gaf]

I had two initial reactions. First one being, yeah the GDK likely feels and operates differently than the XDK setup they've been using forever. Second one being, maybe it's all the I/O changes needed to get the most out of the NVMEs, considering it's an entirely new set of APIs. The same old Win32 style I/O used for decades on PC and Xbox won't get the new benefits, so it's now a different codepath between the two until Velocity Architecture is released for PC too.

I'm curious what the PS4 I/O and PS5 I/O APIs looks like.

Maybe MS should share more on those I/O APIs they have internally, because the systems themselves are clearly able to do great stuff with the SSDs and several 1P games demonstrate this. As far as DirectStorage goes it seems it'll be a ways out still.

don't over think my comment, is just points what I've found interesting from interview (imho tf are quite good indicator of performance if we talking about same or similar arch. tough not perfect)

Fair enough; TF measurement has its uses for sure. For instance in terms of raw compute data-crunching capability of course, but also for things like what the L0$ bandwidth across the chip will likely be (or very close to it, unless the design is just outright flawed with high-latency L0$ xD).

 

[Proelite]

I am curious as to what work on the GPU compute doesn't scale / scales poorly with resolution. I only think of simulation (i.e physics) and AI. Geometry is scales with game clock so the S isn't that far behind X / PS5. Raster operations scales linearly resolution too.

I doubt we'll see much AI / ML done on consoles for this gen, all consoles are going to be severely lacking in this regard. Is it possible for physics + other simulations to use 3+ teraflops of compute?

@TheAlSpark @Dictator any input?

 

[Scott_Arm]

I had two initial reactions. First one being, yeah the GDK likely feels and operates differently than the XDK setup they've been using forever. Second one being, maybe it's all the I/O changes needed to get the most out of the NVMEs, considering it's an entirely new set of APIs. The same old Win32 style I/O used for decades on PC and Xbox won't get the new benefits, so it's now a different codepath between the two until Velocity Architecture is released for PC too.

I'm curious what the PS4 I/O and PS5 I/O APIs looks like.

Yah, could be. Just interesting that the point of high level apis is to ensure some level of forwards compatibility, but if you keep rewriting the apis every time the hardware platform changes you lose that benefit, especially if you end up rewriting things that are trivial. On the other side Sony is supposed to be more low level, but it seems like they only changed the api in places where they absolutely had to, so it's a bit easier to adapt to from a developer perspective. That's how I interpreted it, and it's kind of interesting.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Do you think without the XSS, PC support from AAA games would be limited to gpus with 10 Tflops and above? You think the GTX 1050 or RX 530 will lose support anytime soon. The vast majority of AMD apus still don't come close to gpu performance of the XSS.

I know the amount of efforts in QA for PC hardware below the game's minimum specs (such as APUs or the RX530) is non-existant and for hardware below the recommended specs is a tiny fraction of what's expected on consoles.
The expectations of performance, stability and visuals for the game running on a low-end 5 year-old GPU are completely different than the ones for a 4 month-old console.

Regardless, he specifically mentioned the Series S as holding the other consoles back and that has hardly anything to do with what I think.
I was the 3rd user to quote this developer on this information in this thread.