Damn. There goes any chance of me getting a decent trade-in value on my psvr.
If I were to hazard a guess, it's probably present on the gpu. The communication from Sony hasn't been the best with lots of omissions. I mean, they revealed the new controller yesterday and didn't confirm that it had a 3.5mm audio jack. That confirmation came from another employee.I expect VRS capability is there in hardware and Sony may simply refer to it as something else.
Would be utterly bizarre to leave the feature out, especially in the console space.
Theoretically yes, in PS4 some of Sony's GNM APIs are thin-bordering-on-non-existent. I.e. you're shoving data into GPU registers, it doesn't get lower level than that. That said, given the challenges backwards compatibility ((Pro and PS5) has brought, Sony may have a fatter native PS5 API (GNM+, GNM2 whatever) that fattens some of these functions.If vrs capability is in the hw and sony hasnt done any software optimizations to exploit it, can it still be used in games by devs?
I'm sure vrs is part of RDNA 2. It might not be in PS5 though, people forget these are custom chips.
If the underlying logic blocks of hardware that support VRS is in RDNA2 then Sony would have had to make a conscious decision decision to remove it, leaving a hole in the layout. It's work to remove logic blocks and more work to engineer around the problem you just created. You absolutely only remove functionality from an existing die design if it's taking up massive amount of transistors/die-space and you need that space for something else and don't want to - or can't - go larger.
This is not a console-specific thing, this is a semiconductor thing.
Locked clock was the only thing and that was recent.Then I suspect PS5 will have it. I just find it odd how Microsoft emphasise they have VRS. There seems to be a theme of them emphasising a thing the opposition doesn't have such as them emphasising the locked clock rate.
If the underlying logic blocks of hardware that support VRS is in RDNA2 then Sony would have had to make a conscious decision decision to remove it, leaving a hole in the layout. It's work to remove logic blocks and more work to engineer around the problem you just created. You absolutely only remove functionality from an existing die design if it's taking up massive amount of transistors/die-space and you need that space for something else and don't want to - or can't - go larger.
This is not a console-specific thing, this is a semiconductor thing.
What I understand is that VRS is MS's patented software implementation of non uniform rasterizatio/shading used in DX12. That software requires certain hardware features for it to work, and AMD's RDNA has such features along with any modern DX12 ultimate compliant GPU.
PS5 probably has the same hardware features, but might not include a similar software in their API to to leverage it, but the HW is exposed enough for devs to implement it on their own.
And then, there is the question of patent infringment. Devs may have to be carful with their own software implementation of non-uniform shading for it to not infringe on DX12 VRS patents, or maybe they might not care or not know about the patents. MS might care or not as well.
So even if it is there in hardware they would have to reinvent the wheel on a per game basis to get it working. Heck even that may end up infringing.
could all beThat's how it seems to be to me...
A possible solution might be that devs don't bother. Another might be that after many devs not bothering MS open-sources the thing.
Or some key devs might bother to reinvent a wheel that does similar enough work without infringing on MS's specific patent and they disclose that shit to other devs. Maybe AMD or sony's ICE themselves already have done just that and it is all part of the standard libraries of the PS5 devkit.
Simultaneously, some devs might unkowingly infringe on MS's patent (or maybe playing-dumb-unkonwingly) and nobody will bother to check and nothing special will happen.