General Next Generation Rumors and Discussions [Post GDC 2020]

[manux]

AMD's new mobile 8core/16thread cpu probably gives us good idea on how the similar cpu could work on console. Interesting to see how those base clocks and turbo clocks are on mobile versus consoles. Looking at the turbo responsiveness makes me feel better about sonys decision to change clocks dynamically.

Ryzen 9 4900H 8/16 3.3 GHz 4.4 GHz 45 W
Ryzen 9 4900HS 8/16 3.0 GHz 4.3 GHz 35 W

AMD is able to go from idle (1.4 GHz) to turbo (4.4 GHz) in just under 20 milliseconds, or one frame at 60 Hz. Compared to our Intel chip, which took ~40 milliseconds to go from idle to turbo (1.1 GHz to 4.1 GHz) but then another 40 milliseconds to jump up another 100 MHz. This should imply that AMD’s system can be more responsive, but not only that, AMD’s system went +100 MHz above the advertised turbo, whereas the Intel system was actually -300 MHz down.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1570...ook-business-with-the-ryzen-9-4900hs-a-review

 

[Scott_Arm]

20ms is not fast enough. If the intent is to dynamically adjust based on the needs at the time the only way that makes sense is to adjust within a frame. 1ms or less, preferably in us.

 

[manux]

20ms is not fast enough. If the intent is to dynamically adjust based on the needs at the time the only way that makes sense is to adjust within a frame. 1ms or less, preferably in us.

20ms is from full idle, i.e. 1.4Ghz to turbo. Sony should have better because it's from base clock to little bit lower or from little bit lower back to base clock. Also sony could have more customization done there. I'm not expecting frame to frame adjustments but it should not be too bad for sony.

It would be interesting to know how much those highest end mobile chips are binned. i.e. are the console cpu's also around 35/45W or a little bit higher/lower. It would also be interesting to get one of those laptops and try avx2 loads to see what's up.

 

[Barrabas]

we bought loads of them and then deployed software solutions built on the tech that to people who also bought loads of them.

So how many million Kinects of the 35 million did your team buy ?

 

[eastmen]

One thing to remember is that Kinect is still in active development at MS. The current version is in HoloLens 2

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3269870/microsoft-project-kinect-for-azure-sensor-hololens.html

This article has some more information including a pretty good picture of how small the new sensor package is

I would not be surprised if an even newer version of the Kinect makes it into a possible vr headset for xbox or even a future wmr spec

 

[Scott_Arm]

Kinect definitely makes more sense in the VR/AR space.

 

[fehu]

Kinect definitely makes more sense in the VR/AR space.

I remember playing with the dance and the sport kinect games on the 360, and then looking at a wii and instinctively thinking "this stuff is prehistoric, I've seen the future and the future will be kinect only! Amen!"
Ok, maybe not that articulated, but it makes very much sense at a party too.

 

[iroboto]

I remember playing with the dance and the sport kinect games on the 360, and then looking at a wii and instinctively thinking "this stuff is prehistoric, I've seen the future and the future will be kinect only! Amen!"
Ok, maybe not that articulated, but it makes very much sense at a party too.

yea, I mean, fantasia on XBO and the dancing games are signficantly more advanced, as is FRU.
Sadly, no one really cracked kinect motion controls aside from some basic children's games.

I think the reality is, people don't want to exercise while playing unless the goal is to exercise.

Considering how effective nintendo has been with gaming and fitness, I am fairly shocked xbox didn't follow along.

The fitness series were not terrible by any means when it was available.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I remember playing with the dance and the sport kinect games on the 360, and then looking at a wii and instinctively thinking "this stuff is prehistoric, I've seen the future and the future will be kinect only! Amen!"
Ok, maybe not that articulated, but it makes very much sense at a party too.

I liked Kinect for 360 quite a bit. I saw a lot of promise in having Xbox move on to deliver in a whole bunch of different areas, like voice control, motion control, kinect games and running standard pc-style applications on the console. It didn't end up delivering on any of those things. It was all half baked and they ended up giving up on pretty much all of it. Kinect would have to come with massively reduced lag, and maybe that's possible now with better external interfaces, faster processes, faster IO. But I think devs just struggled to find anything good to do with it.

 

[fehu]

But I think devs just struggled to find anything good to do with it.

Why didn't they asked me?

This

Or this where you aim with the right hand and reload with the left, and crouch to take cover

Or a physical endless runner

Or VR with precise hand tracking without expensive controllers and lighthouses

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sadly, no one really cracked kinect motion controls aside from some basic children's games.

I think the reality is, people don't want to exercise while playing unless the goal is to exercise.

I think the sad reality is designers failed to realise potential, same as motion controls. Subtle feedback could have been employed to make games better, like reacting with a 'duck' when the player instinctively dodges at bullet fire with a twitch of their body. What it needed was a completely new approach to thinking about input beyond events and triggers. It needed devs to think about intent and how to read and implement those intentions, such as when a controller's movements are becoming more pronounced with flicks up in the air, the player is trying to make a jump and finding it hard so apply a little assist.

It's going to be a long time before we get another chance at adaptive intention-based game control.

 

[Scott_Arm]

@fehu I think latency and reliability of the tracking were an issue. The latency would have made twitchy games difficult. Tracking for me worked very well, but some people had hard times with it just not working well.

 

[iroboto]

I think the sad reality is designers failed to realise potential, same as motion controls. Subtle feedback could have been employed to make games better, like reacting with a 'duck' when the player instinctively dodges at bullet fire with a twitch of their body. What it needed was a completely new approach to thinking about input beyond events and triggers. It needed devs to think about intent and how to read and implement those intentions, such as when a controller's movements are becoming more pronounced with flicks up in the air, the player is trying to make a jump and finding it hard so apply a little assist.

It's going to be a long time before we get another chance at adaptive intention-based game control.

i actually think Half-Life Alyx may have cracked it; even for Kinect. It would be the same format, just not in VR.

 

[BRiT]

FYI: Xbox Lockhart Rumor and Discussion now has it's own thread: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/xbox-lockhart-general-rumors-and-speculation-spawn.61679/

 

[RobertR1]

Kinect definitely makes more sense in the VR/AR space.

there’s a ghetto way of making the Kinect sensor act as a positional tracking device for vr units. The legend lives on.

 

[cheapchips]

i actually think Half-Life Alyx may have cracked it; even for Kinect. It would be the same format, just not in VR.

The grab and pull stuff might work ok. Judging your hands distance/depth might be problematic on a flat screen. How you would you move and look without controllers?

 

[iroboto]

The grab and pull stuff might work ok. Judging your hands distance/depth might be problematic on a flat screen. How you would you move and look without controllers?

Gotta bring back that light gun accessory

 

[JPT]

surprised he's still updating that thread. He just seems to keep moving on with his own compression work

He also shipped a bunch of games, he worked at Valve and worked on Portal 2 and CSO:GO etc. He worked on Halo Wars.
https://sites.google.com/site/richgel99/

Something is bothering me in all this talk about compression and effective bandwidths.
Aren’t textures already compressed data? We aren’t transferring plain text files, but structures that are already stored in compressed formats - so how much can we realistically expect an additional general compression scheme to yield? It’s related to the question above - I feel confused about what people are really saying, bandwidth wise.

As the interview with Andy Garvin gave me some more understanding. I am wondering what game assets gets streamed most and what will benefit most from compression.
Looking at this, which is Richgel99s work https://www.khronos.org/blog/google...to-khronos-gltf-3d-transmission-open-standard
it seems that texture compression is a big thing. And then it also comes down to which formats the GPU supports, at least that is what I think.
But also what I learned in the Andy Garvin interview, domain specific compression is also a great way to go. But Kraken seems to be a more general one, but its omph might be good enough for developers to use (better than zlib https://developer-tech.com/news/2020/mar/18/sony-mark-cerny-deep-dive-ps5-developers/), instead of making their own compressors. And since RAD Tools used it and that comes with SDKs I belive, it might be the better solution again overall, compared to rolling your own.

Time to market and getting games produced faster/cheaper will also factor into it I guess. If you can ship 4 games for the PS5 in the time it takes you to ship 2 for XSX, that must worth something to someone in the production chain? But that is a big if, who knows, looking forward to see the first games for XSX and PS5.

 

[BRiT]

Spun off Memory Pool of Series X into a thread of it's own since people keep bringing it up: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...36-gb-s-memory-pools-of-series-x-spawn.61681/

 

[PSman1700]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...I7hTTbFTXz_Ni4Kf57dhp08P1cL73D-ud0uBv01Exf9Js

I dont think it's serious. Eurogamer article.

''Sony patents pet-like "feeling deduction" robot companion for gamers''