PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)

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is there a headphone or headset jack on the ds4 ? can the heaset jack allow game music wirelessly transfer ?

headphones are helpful for the games like the last of us where the gameplay is based on sound .
 
itsmydamnation said:
what is costly about an IP camera? for 1gbps switching its dirt cheap. the benefit is distance and that can be a huge one.
Click to expand...

Putting in another Ethernet PHY or adding in a Firewire PHY to support a camera input socket based on one of those. USB 3.0 is likely included on the SOC/APU.

Regards,
SB
 
Human hearing positions sounds in 3D space using two audio sensors. If you capture the audio at source in the same way as our ears do, you can capture a 3D soundscape. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BinauralPaper.ogg

This 3D audio can be calculated by a game's audio engine to provide very immersive audio without needing surround sound audio gear, meaning it's as cheap for a player to use as a pair of headphones. You could get highly representative audio in a battlefield, for example, with the player able to hear exactly where the shots are coming from, and a suppressor working correctly instead of just muffling the audio. In something like COD, that could be quite phenominal as a standard feature, and as cheap as a decent DSP.
 
In game binaural through the pad would definitely be a big win. Not everyone has a surround sound setup, and those aren't necessarily even as good.

If you could combine it with the 3D cameras to generate audio that was correct for the orientation of your head then it would add an incredible amount to atmosphere. A first person survival horror with audio that changed as you tilted or moved your head would be amazing.

Add the binaural processing of game generated surround to the OS and it could be a "configure once for your account, use in any game" feature that was automatically available for all games.
 
That's what I'm thinking. You could have OS level settings with a per user personalised calibration to get it just right. Although it might be somewhat jarring as the 3D positioning will be centred on you, whereas the typical first-person camera viewpoint is going to be some feet in front of you. Effectively a sound positioned 6 feet in front of you will sound like it's coming from the TV. I can't guess as to how well it'll fit or feel awkward without trying it. If it's pulled off though, it'd make some genre absolutely incredible, every bit as good as 3D head vision but at a fraction of the cost. Games like Alan Wake with an immersive walk in the woods where you listen to the sounds, can hear something following you. Ghostly whispers in your ear. Racing where you hear the cars coming up alongside. FPS where you can hear enemy positions. Adventure games where you have to stop and use your hearing for getting your bearings. A game where you're kidnapped and have to log audio clues to work out your position and find your way back.

I think we're at a point now where this can be calculated suitably accurately and cheaply to work. early efforts at positional audio were ropey at best, maybe explaining why audio hasn't been advanced as much as it could have. If it's not working properly, may as well just stick to stereo/5.1.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Human hearing positions sounds in 3D space using two audio sensors. If you capture the audio at source in the same way as our ears do, you can capture a 3D soundscape. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BinauralPaper.ogg

This 3D audio can be calculated by a game's audio engine to provide very immersive audio without needing surround sound audio gear, meaning it's as cheap for a player to use as a pair of headphones. You could get highly representative audio in a battlefield, for example, with the player able to hear exactly where the shots are coming from, and a suppressor working correctly instead of just muffling the audio. In something like COD, that could be quite phenominal as a standard feature, and as cheap as a decent DSP.
Click to expand...

This has existed in the PC space for quite some years now with rather mixed results for gaming and spatial audio in movies. Most of the time the spatial distinction is relatively flat. And it has never been able to replace what you can get from 4 speakers.

It's still interesting tech, however. And when it does work it's somewhat impressive. But it tends to work well less often than not working well.

Regards,
SB
 
Do what? Cap the RAM BW? At first it sounds a bit crazy, but if we compare to PS3 which had 8 CPUs and more float power on a more limited bus, perhaps Sony's experience was enough to say 20 GB/s is all that's needed for the CPU, especially if it's not handling some of the workloads Cell was? Sony actually have more experience of 8 cores in a console than AMD at this point and this may be a sensible cost saving. Not sure what other benefits there are (less heat, smaller buses, equals cost saving to me).

I'm also wondering the value of a GPU seeing a CPU's L1 cache. That's very low level, like the data the CPU thread is currently working on before being written out to RAM, or just written out. Synchronising jobs so the GPU is wanting data just when the CPU is working on it can't be easy (I don't understand APU differences at all, BTW ;)).
 
This is consistent with how standard APUs are designed. The CPU side has memory bandwidth consistent with a top-end AMD desktop chip. The crossbar path for the modules appears to be the same width.
The coherent Onion interface is somewhat slower, probably due to a reduction in the uncore clock, which would influence their bandwidth. Possibly this was due to the choice of Jaguar, which might be specced for a lower uncore than desktop chips, or it was done for power reasons.

I'm not entirely certain there aren't mobile APUs with similar uncore speed reductions.

That GPU has a massive direct feed to external memory is also consistent with standard APUs, and the fact that it is incoherent is consistent with the desire to not swamp the coherent side of the chip.

AMD's uncore and system request queue that harkens back to the advent of AMD's Opteron apparently hasn't been completely replaced yet. A component of the long latency to hits in the other L2 is probably a wait in the system request queue. It should be noted that ping-pong latencies between L2s have always been this long for AMD chips since they've had multicores.
 
Lots of stuff in there! I wish I could read japanese.

The drive doesn't have a CD pickup at all
The OS is BSD (no real surprise, but finally confirmed)
4K gaming isn't impossible, but they focus on 1080p for now
It's not HSA, but a proprietary customization by Sony (?)
They still haven't decided how to address BC
 
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