Playstation 5 [PS5] [Release November 12 2020]

PS5 going full XBONE

https://patentscope.wipo.int/search...0129908&tab=PCTBIBLIO&_cid=P20-KBUO6U-87137-1

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I remember this being one of the nicest features of the XB OS, but I believe they removed it later.

Yeah, that always seemed like a pretty cool feature for the XB1. There have been plenty of times when I've been playing something with a bit of grind, in which case I like to stick on a podcast. A PIP would be quite welcomed for that.

That said, I bought a Fire tablet for pretty much that purpose.
 
That's true in theory. However, in practice, you have maybe 8GBs for game assets (and 4+ for game code and runtime content). That'd be 2GBs of data for every room. That's a lot of content. Maybe in a specialist game with a limited scope, like a game that takes place in an old house, you could have a 100 GB game with 40-50 rooms, but in something large, an Uncharted or COD, that'd be too much data being too expensive to make (unless there's progress in that side of things. Maybe ML object modification will result in huge libraries of reusable assets?) and resulting in too big games.

A lot of the data can still be repeating, you may even have GBs of similar assets.

I've mentioned it a couple of times before; I would think it's likely that procedural textures, or even objects in a No Man's Sky type of method applied to mundane objects like telephone/chairs, etc. If anything outrageous fires out of the system, it should easily be picked up by testers and the core value of that item adjusted. I doubt it'd be able to be applied to too many items though, otherwise it'd just be a random mess. Variances based on room colours or make things consistent.

Honestly, I doubt we'd get much of something like this. Maybe only for some large textures.
 
To be honest, I don't even know what the hell it is!

Maybe it's not the UI that's important, maybe its the inline functionality. What is it showing exactly?

Yes, that seems to be the case. It is not the UI what is being patented here, but a method to make it simple for the user to interact with that content.

From google translate

problem to be solved by the invention
[0003]
when a plurality of types of content are displayed at the same time, the user performs operation input to each content while switching the content to be operated. In such a case, it may be difficult for the user to know which content is currently being operated
[0004]
to provide an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program capable of easily recognizing a content to be operated when a plurality of types of contents are switched and operated to be operated

It's basically a way of telling you which content is active. Not the biggest innovation of the year. A slightly glowier border around the active content is probably enough.

What is interesting is that Sony may offer the possibility of having a sidebar on the screen while you are playing. Or a pop-up with maybe netflix,twitch and things like that.
 
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What is interesting is that Sony may offer the possibility of having a sidebar on the screen while you are playing. Or a pop-up with maybe netflix,twitch and things like that.

Sounds like Xbox Snap from 2013-2017. I miss that. ;(

Tommy McClain
 
An idea is never patented. Patents are only about an implementation and there's a million ways to implement the exact same idea.

CLAIM 1 is always the actual claim of the patent, everything else is just context.
A main screen display control unit for displaying a main screen including main content, a sub screen display control unit for displaying a sub screen including sub-content of a type different from the main content at the same time as the main screen, and a main screen for the main screen. A switching operation from a mode for accepting an operation to a mode for accepting an operation on the sub-screen, and an operation accepting section for accepting an operation , wherein the sub-screen display control section is switched to a mode for accepting an operation on the sub-screen. In this case, the information processing apparatus is characterized in that the sub screen is highlighted .

Look like it's just a function to swap the main/secondary screens, and another function to switch control to the secondary screen without making it primary. And also the UI highlights the secondary screen to indicate it has controller input.

Would they need a separate button on the controller for this, like the share button? Share+direction or some combination. PS+Share+Option vulcan pinch...
 
Would it impact the internal rendering resolution of the game?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that when the sidebar is open, the main game panel takes up 3200x1800 pixels, which would be the best option:
  1. Supersample (albeit, slightly) from 3840x2160.
  2. Lower the internal rendering resolution to 3200x1800.
The first world probably be most straightforward. The latter wouldn't give you enormous gains, and would likely manifest as a slightly more stable framerate.

In an era of dynamic resolutions though, would option 2 be easy enough to implement?
 
The curious part there is "A main screen display control unit for displaying a main screen including main content, a sub screen display control unit for displaying a sub screen including sub-content of a type different from the main content". What do they mean by 'unit'? I'd take that to mean hardware. Is the patent for a hardware-level secondary buffer and a means to overlay and swap between them, including redirecting IO?
 
The curious part there is "A main screen display control unit for displaying a main screen including main content, a sub screen display control unit for displaying a sub screen including sub-content of a type different from the main content". What do they mean by 'unit'? I'd take that to mean hardware. Is the patent for a hardware-level secondary buffer and a means to overlay and swap between them, including redirecting IO?

I remember when I first saw a patent that my then corporate patent lawyer had filed on something I co-created (on our behalf) and I could not reconcile what I had created with the language used.
 
I remember when I first saw a patent that my then corporate patent lawyer had filed on something I co-created (on our behalf) and I could not reconcile what I had created with the language used.
"It's for whisking eggs. Just turn the handle to make them frothy."

"Method and apparatus for the agitation of fluids, wherein a plurality of elements receive motion from a motion-imparting unit and engage in motion in contact with the fluid such that the fluid may or may not change its properties, such as, though not limited to, increasing the viscosity of the fluid or aerating the fluid."
 
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Those games aren't unloading assets just because they are out of view, though. Not exactly sure how Doom works but COD keeps chunks of the level in memory in a radius around the player. Stuff behind the player is still in memory. That's different from all this talk about loading in assets just as they enter camera view, or mid frame, or whatever.

Ofc a lot is still in memory. We are still talking about hdds here. Im referring to the overall concept of swapping out resources on the fly in a more finely tuned manner. Cod2019 keeps the base of the level intact but agressively swaps out lods depending on what your looking at.

It doesnt have to be everything swapped, thats why i said the concept can go further with ssd as standard and more powerful hw behind it. You dont have to keep anywhere near as much in ram sparing even more resources for games than the games are already optimized to do.

My main point was that they are already doing more fine resource swapping on the fly with hdd. And next gen will take it further.
 
The curious part there is "A main screen display control unit for displaying a main screen including main content, a sub screen display control unit for displaying a sub screen including sub-content of a type different from the main content". What do they mean by 'unit'? I'd take that to mean hardware. Is the patent for a hardware-level secondary buffer and a means to overlay and swap between them, including redirecting IO?
It's just all the parts of a game console and a game controller. In order to describe a software patent they must describe all elements from the game controller up to the screen behaviour. Including there's ram where the two softwares are running from, there's a cpu executing the softwares, there's a display for the interface, a game controller to send user control commands, etc...

They are not even patenting a method for PiP apps and game, it's just about how to give the user control to either in an ergonomic way. It's literally just a patent about highlighting which of the primary/secondary app currently have the user control.
[0011]
 The information processing device 10 may be, for example, a home game machine or a personal computer. As shown in FIG. 1, the information processing device 10 includes a control unit 11, a storage unit 12, and an interface unit 13.
[0012]
 The control unit 11 includes at least one processor such as a CPU, and executes programs stored in the storage unit 12 to execute various types of information processing. A specific example of the process executed by the control unit 11 in this embodiment will be described later. The storage unit 12 includes at least one memory device such as a RAM, and stores a program executed by the control unit 11 and data processed by the program.
[0013]
 The interface unit 13 is an interface for data communication with the operation device 20 and the display device 30. The information processing device 10 is connected to each of the operation device 20 and the display device 30 via the interface unit 13 in a wired or wireless manner. Specifically, the interface unit 13 includes a multimedia interface such as HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) in order to transmit the video data supplied from the information processing device 10 to the display device 30. Further, the operation device 20 includes a data communication interface such as a USB (Universal Serial Bus) in order to receive an operation signal indicating the operation content of the user received by the operation device 20.

It's a horribly boring patent, but it sure hints that they're possibly doing an apps/game PiP on PS5. For me that's pretty much it. 99% of patents are boring, but I love browsing them because it shows what they have put R&D effort into whether it ends up in a product or not, and sometimes it involuntarily shows features that haven't been unveiled yet. It can equally be an entirely new fresnel production method for VR lenses with TIR control and masking (I hope they do that one: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=US235226113) or it can be "press a button to highlight your selection" kind of crap. You never know what you're gonna get..
 
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With my layman’s head that simply looks like the ability to have a hint video within the game showing you how to either get past a tricky point or just have a specific PiP window in general.

I really miss my PiP TV, I used it all the time, keeping an eye on football and allowing me to edit videos while people were watching the TV. It would be pretty cool to do this without having to change channels again.
 
Would it impact the internal rendering resolution of the game?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that when the sidebar is open, the main game panel takes up 3200x1800 pixels, which would be the best option:
  1. Supersample (albeit, slightly) from 3840x2160.
  2. Lower the internal rendering resolution to 3200x1800.
The first world probably be most straightforward. The latter wouldn't give you enormous gains, and would likely manifest as a slightly more stable framerate.

In an era of dynamic resolutions though, would option 2 be easy enough to implement?

Would VRS be a better fit. This works exactly by feeding a mask, the overlay is simply another mask. If designed at a platform level then whatever API is used for the feature could merger the system and game masks?

It would not be lossless on any recordings or stream but perhaps that's acceptable compromise for freeing some gpu load to process whatever is in the picture in picture.
 
With my layman’s head that simply looks like the ability to have a hint video within the game showing you how to either get past a tricky point or just have a specific PiP window in general.

Yeah could be, I recall earlier this year some PlayStation podcasts reporting that Sony had filed a patent for an AI hint system, and a quick google shows this got wide coverage [IGN].
 
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