General Next Generation Rumors and Discussions [Post GDC 2020]
- Thread starter BRiT
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That's the same thing and basis for my serviette maths. Sebbbi posted that an ideal virtual texture (only loading parts of textures you will be needing to draw the visible surfaces on screen) engine would need about 7 MB/s for 720p*. From that, I extrapolated 63 MB/s for 4K. however, that's for games using virtual texturing which are very few and far between. That idea even extended to virtual meshes last gen, but the tech never took off in a big way. I don't know why, but there it is. Most games still load textures up front well in advance of using them. I don't think anyone can guess how engines will develop over next gen between the consoles and PCs. I expect a fair degree of divergence, converging on ideal streaming solutions towards the generation end rolling into the next, but I could be very wrong.
* Note that Sebbbi implemented in in Trials (dunno which version) where user created levels could include every single object into one level and it was all just streamed. So he kinda knows what it takes to pull off virtual texturing.
And he's at Unity now AFAIK; fingers crossed we get his graphical brilliance into our favourite Indie engine!
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Betanumerical
Veteran
you could only store the assets of the OS that aren’t needed straight away and can deal with having a relatively high latency on the SSD. You cannot store the entire OS on the SSD the performance would tank.
That's the same thing and basis for my serviette maths. Sebbbi posted that an ideal virtual texture (only loading parts of textures you will be needing to draw the visible surfaces on screen) engine would need about 7 MB/s for 720p*. From that, I extrapolated 63 MB/s for 4K. however, that's for games using virtual texturing which are very few and far between. That idea even extended to virtual meshes last gen, but the tech never took off in a big way. I don't know why, but there it is. Most games still load textures up front well in advance of using them. I don't think anyone can guess how engines will develop over next gen between the consoles and PCs. I expect a fair degree of divergence, converging on ideal streaming solutions towards the generation end rolling into the next, but I could be very wrong.
* Note that Sebbbi implemented in in Trials (dunno which version) where user created levels could include every single object into one level and it was all just streamed. So he kinda knows what it takes to pull off virtual texturing.
I'd be very curious to see that post from sebbbi again. The new consoles should both feature the hardware for "texture space shading" or "sampler feedback" as Microsoft is calling it. One of the use-cases is the hardware can identify where it would sample a texture before actually streaming the texture into VRAM(RAM on console), so you can selective load the correct tiles in a virtual texturing engine. Basically it pairs very well with the tiled-resources hardware that was talked about but didn't get used much. Maybe we'll see a return to virtual texturing. I think Unreal Engine somewhat recently has started to add virtual texturing support. Microsoft is claiming potentially huge savings in VRAM, but it would also save on IO bandwidth from the SSD. PS5 should handle this quite easily with it's disk speed.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dire...edback-some-useful-once-hidden-data-unlocked/
If I remember correctly tier 1 that was in the consoles had some limitations, so in the end devs ended up rolling their own software version.
Don't know if the limitations that caused that was fixed enough in the latter tier or not. Hopefully.
This is false. MS said their decompression chip has a theoretical maximum output of 6GB/s. 4.8GB/s is stated as the typical output. It's not clear if 6GB/s output is ever even physically attainable as the device is configured, though I assume it probably is as a best case scenario.
D
Deleted member 11852
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Sony said:
This is a nice clarification. Mark Cerny is an incredibly precise guy when it comms to communication and I'm sure there were a few who wilfully interpreted the "we tested the 100 PS4 games" comment, which was ripe for mis-interpretation and this could have been avoided by just saying the "vast majority" of the whole library would be playable.
This is what happens when you use a GDC tech talk as your first comms packages for a nextgen console. This is not Mark Cerny's fault, this is Sony PR's fault. Wasn't Sony centralising marketing amid-layoffs last October supposed to improve communications?
How could anybody think this tech talk in isolation would be a good thing to market through all the regular consumer-facing comms?
edit: typos. pre-coffee post.
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This is what happens when you use a GDC tech talk as your first comms packages for a nextgen console. This is not Mark Cerny's fault, this is Sony PR's fault. Wasn't Sony centralising marketing amid-layoffs last October supposed to improve communications?
How could anybody think this tech talk in isolation would be a good thing to market through all the regular consumer-facing comms?
Agreed. I don’t see the need to reinvent the wheel.
Me if I was the PS marketing lead:
“Let me see the promotion and marketing plan for the PS4 2013.”
“Here you go.”
“Grab a pen. I need you to make some edits.”
“Got one!”
“See all these thirteens and fours?”
“Yes.”
“Change them to 20s and 5s and give it to the marketing team to execute.”
Tkumpathenurple
Veteran
Okay then, 6.0000001GB/s
I suspect the 6GB/s figure will be along the lines of the ~20GB/s figure Cerny gave for the best case scenarios of the Kraken decompression chip i.e. very rare. 4.8GB/s as the lowest common denominator is pretty good though.
The headroom until hitting the PS5's base speed of 5.5GB/s is probably going to be quite convenient for developers. They can focus on getting the most out of the XSX's 4.8GB/s knowing they can plonk the same code on the PS5 and have it just work.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Except it won't be the minimum. If Microsoft are saying 6Gb is "typical", it means it can go slower under some circumstances and faster under others. It's likely a median of observed throughput through considerable testing. Thats' why that used "typical" and not minimum or guaranteed.
I think the times quoted were for the stock PS4/Pro HDD. I was fully willing to put a big SSD in my Pro but the DigitalFoundry testing was disappointing - the times not the article.
He did. When he started talking about backwards compatibility and before he went into the section about boost mode and having tested the top 100 games. Plus, you know, the last year+ of them saying the PS5 was BC with PS4, fullstop.
The Microsoft SSD isn't really that fast in fact it will be on the low end of NVME drives by the time the consoles come out.
Unless the 2.5GBps isn't true.
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Deleted member 11852
Guest
Can you provide a quote? I'm not seeing it.
It must get a bit frustrating. He said exactly that, but people didn't understand because they can't interpret the context of the numbers; they just hear the numbers. "Less than a hundred games are BC?!
"Before the reveals i was considering ps5 for it’s ssd, but after reading alot, and seeing comments like this, the xsx/bcpack eith their api/velocity engine, and how consistent, they arent far off in the end, ssd aint the reason anymore.
Liar.
Metal_Spirit
Regular
I wll add more. If they really could reach 6 Gb in a sustained way, why would they state on the official Xbox séries X 4.8 Gb as the maximum speed compressed?
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/03/16/xbox-series-x-tech/
So Microsoft is not even promoting 6 Gb... maybe that’s a theoretical maximum speed, but if it was something they could easily reach, it would be on the official specs webpage.
No, Microsoft's 6GB is equivalent to Sony's 20GB it ain't happening.
Sony's raw speed is almost as fast as Microsoft theoretical best.
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