Playstation 5 [PS5] [Release November 12 2020]

[Deleted member 11852]

The original PS1 had plastic rails on the CD pickup assembly, because they saved 5 cents.

Which part of the mechanism was this? I've not used an original PlayStation for a decade or more but I recall mine had a flip up top, you'd click the CD directly onto the mounting spindle which was positioned above the housing where the laser was located. I don't recall many moving parts. That's not to say read errors weren't common or drive calibration kits weren't everywhere!

 

[PSman1700]

He probably ment the ps2’s drive assembly. Either the rails or the laser would start to fail in time, even the plastic lid on it (with the turn-able) sony logo was rather flimsy.

 

[Kaotik]

Which part of the mechanism was this? I've not used an original PlayStation for a decade or more but I recall mine had a flip up top, you'd click the CD directly onto the mounting spindle which was positioned above the housing where the laser was located. I don't recall many moving parts. That's not to say read errors weren't common or drive calibration kits weren't everywhere!

CD pickup assembly refers to the whole shebang with the moving laser and all

 

[Entropy]

Leadfree solders are very reliable today, one problem remains the lack of expertise in the field. Americans were late at this, and the expertise is still much less developed than other countries who were planning to get rid of Sn-Pb. I remember some astroturf campaign trying to convince people that the toxicity of lead was a hoax, but the law passed anyway. Even today there are people who honestly think the toxicity is a hoax.

I feel a bit like a broken record, because it was only days ago I wrote the same thing in the Covid thread.
It was almost 500 years ago that Paracelsus (Swiss iatrochemist) observed that the toxicity of a substance depends on the amount. That truth hasn’t penetrated the collective psyche even today. When politicians and media get hold of a substance being toxic, the response is to get rid of it utterly (it’s Poison!) even when that isn’t really warranted from a health perspective. From my chemist point of view, that leads to a society that strains at gnats, and swallows camels.

Of course lead is poisonous in large amounts, particularly for children, which was the reason to get rid of it in leaded fuel back then, because of justified fear of issues for kids in dense urban settings. (It was replaced initially by increasing the amount of benzene to 10%, now typically reduced to 1%. Benzene causes leukemia and so on which is why in my country the new unleaded gastaps were covered with hoods, that promptly broke and fell off, never to be replaced.)

For centuries, glass blowers of ”crystal” glass passed as much as 2 grams of Pb per day through their systems. In contrast to the hatters, they suffered no apparent ill effects, and the use of lead in that kind of glass stopped relatively recently. (The new glass doesn’t have quite the same tone.)

The removal of lead from solder was probably a good idea for the workers in certain sweatshops who inhaled the fumes 12h/day 6days/week. From a worker protection point of view it might have been a better idea to improve their working condition to not inhale solder fumes in general.

Just like with radiation (for those who are more into physics and know that we are constantly subjected to radiation a large part of which originating from within our own bodies,) pushing
down exposure to something like lead way, way below toxicity levels serves little to no purpose. That’s more a reflection of the mind set of the general public where something gets branded as Bad=Evil=MustBeEradicated!

Sorry for the excursion into chemistry and history, I couldn’t help myself.

 

[Globalisateur]

I feel a bit like a broken record, because it was only days ago I wrote the same thing in the Covid thread.
It was almost 500 years ago that Paracelsus (Swiss iatrochemist) observed that the toxicity of a substance depends on the amount. That truth hasn’t penetrated the collective psyche even today. When politicians and media get hold of a substance being toxic, the response is to get rid of it utterly (it’s Poison!) even when that isn’t really warranted from a health perspective. From my chemist point of view, that leads to a society that strains at gnats, and swallows camels.

Of course lead is poisonous in large amounts, particularly for children, which was the reason to get rid of it in leaded fuel back then, because of justified fear of issues for kids in dense urban settings. (It was replaced initially by increasing the amount of benzene to 10%, now typically reduced to 1%. Benzene causes leukemia and so on which is why in my country the new unleaded gastaps were covered with hoods, that promptly broke and fell off, never to be replaced.)

For centuries, glass blowers of ”crystal” glass passed as much as 2 grams of Pb per day through their systems. In contrast to the hatters, they suffered no apparent ill effects, and the use of lead in that kind of glass stopped relatively recently. (The new glass doesn’t have quite the same tone.)

The removal of lead from solder was probably a good idea for the workers in certain sweatshops who inhaled the fumes 12h/day 6days/week. From a worker protection point of view it might have been a better idea to improve their working condition to not inhale solder fumes in general.

Just like with radiation (for those who are more into physics and know that we are constantly subjected to radiation a large part of which originating from within our own bodies,) pushing
down exposure to something like lead way, way below toxicity levels serves little to no purpose. That’s more a reflection of the mind set of the general public where something gets branded as Bad=Evil=MustBeEradicated!

Sorry for the excursion into chemistry and history, I couldn’t help myself.

First I disagree about your whole assessment about the dangers of lead, particularly in limited dose (or not). It really depends of the person ability to get rid of heavy metals, and this can vary a lot depending of age, health, nutrition, DNA etc. As we already eat plenty of heavy metals from food (because of pollution from industries and such), we must get rid of all lead (and others heavy metals) in our products.

Second you are forgetting that many of those solders end up in the nature so they can and will pollute the earth for many years to come, the same earth we use for our crops and livestock, that will end up...in our food.

 

[anexanhume]

People are taking these comments as confirmation of VRS.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/fxqt7h

 

[iroboto]

did we have doubts on this board? I'm pretty sure this was just assumed here.
That's not really an official confirmation of course, but I still think it's there.

There's no reason for it not to be.

Matt's text is sort of funny in that one could interpret his text as MS is missing GE but has VRS, and Sony has GE but is missing VRS.

 

[PSman1700]

Also that calling xbots doesnt seem too professional.

 

[iroboto]

Also that calling xbots doesnt seem too professional.

it's reddit...

 

[anexanhume]

Also that calling xbots doesnt seem too professional.

That’s the reddit post’s title. Neither of the developers quoted used such language.

 

[Mskx]

I mean... Is that dev not just talking about where in the process the Geometry Engine and VRS to their work?
At least without context i don't see this as any confirmation of VRS in the PS5? I mean PS5 is not even mentioned.

 

[anexanhume]

I mean... Is that dev not just talking about where in the process the Geometry Engine and VRS to their work?
At least without context i don't see this as any confirmation of VRS in the PS5? I mean PS5 is not even mentioned.

That post is in a thread titled “Devs react to PS5 specs.”

 

[AlNom]

Is the GE supposed to be more than what is already described for RDNA 1/2's existing culling capability in the primitive units or is it just a rename Or are they just comparing to GCN? The way those two describe GE is a tad odd.

 

[iroboto]

That post is in a thread titled “Devs react to PS5 specs.”

it still doesn't come across as confirmation in either dev posts.

They reference GE which is a culling engine and how that helps cull things before drawing (which during drawing VRS is a function).
In one example they talk about GE, which is not the same function as VRS. In this case he is responding to explain how GE is in some ways similar to mesh shaders.

And in another they talk about how VRS without culling isn't as useful. And that GE will be a bigger saver than VRS.

I still believe that VRS is present, but neither of those are confirmations, at least if you are being strict about sentence comprehension. They both explicitly describe the function of GE. Neither talk about VRS being present in PS5.

 

[MrFox]

Can they really use RDNA2 and remove the VRS hardware?

 

[anexanhume]

Is the GE supposed to be more than what is already described for RDNA 1/2's existing culling capability in the primitive units or is it just a rename Or are they just comparing to GCN? The way those two describe GE is a tad odd.

The GE is part of RDNA. I think the devs are providing exposition on the superseding importance of mesh shaders over just having VRS.

 

[AlNom]

It's kind of a weird thing to compare in a vacuum.

Can they really use RDNA2 and remove the VRS hardware?

Doesn't seem likely. Maybe they haven't discussed it because they're waiting for Marketing to come up with a different name.

 

[Rockster]

I think some of the ambiguity with regards to VRS is potentially patent law. We can be fairly confident the PS5 hardware supports VRS since AMD has patents for it's implementation in hardware and being RDNA2, it must be in there. But MS does hold some specific implementation patents which might limit how they can be used in the PS5, and as such, may need to be leveraged slightly differently to avoid any infringement concerns.

 

[MrFox]

Doesn't seem likely. Maybe they haven't discussed it because they're waiting for Marketing to come up with a different name.

I was thinking maybe they changed something about it for PSVR... They were already altering the effective resolution around the screen space to match the unwarped pixel density, which they considered important enough to do it in software on PS4. And also lowering tesselation according to screen space (this would be done by the GE now).

It looks like whatever they need for VR is already included into RDNA2 anyway, their VR needs for either warped resolution or foveated redering are basically a subset of what the VRS and GE hardware provide.

 

[London Geezer]

I think some of the ambiguity with regards to VRS is potentially patent law. We can be fairly confident the PS5 hardware supports VRS since AMD has patents for it's implementation in hardware and being RDNA2, it must be in there. But MS does hold some specific implementation patents which might limit how they can be used in the PS5, and as such, may need to be leveraged slightly differently to avoid any infringement concerns.

Surely they can just re-patent their own version and even call it PSVRS. They can even announce a logo.