What will next-gen games look like? [2019+]
- Thread starter ultragpu
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The need to support BC for PS4/X1 means that like now, you'll increasingly just get a tiered system (like now).
For example a great looking game like Jedi Fallen Order. That footage was likely on a high end PC. Every console will then get dumbed down some amount, going in order X1X, PS4 Pro, base PS4, and base X1. Next gen you will just append PS5/X2 to the beginning of that list, for at least the first year or two.
As I predicted iterative consoles basically makes console more like PC always was. How a game looks depends a lot on what you're running it on.
For example a great looking game like Jedi Fallen Order. That footage was likely on a high end PC. Every console will then get dumbed down some amount, going in order X1X, PS4 Pro, base PS4, and base X1. Next gen you will just append PS5/X2 to the beginning of that list, for at least the first year or two.
As I predicted iterative consoles basically makes console more like PC always was. How a game looks depends a lot on what you're running it on.
That's not a matter of supporting BC, but creating cross-gen titles, which is something every generation faces. Competition with other games targeting next-gen exclusively is what will make devs either move on from this gen or not (same as every other gen 
). You either create a game that's PS4+5 to sell to the PS4+5 install base, with reduced appeal to the fresh PS5 audience, or target PS5 exclusively having a smaller potential market but a far higher appeal in that market.
Though PS2 had a huge install base when PS3 was released, and even having a limited uptake, I believe only a handful of titles were cross-gen. Mostly devs moved forward instead of trying to get more from the 100 million old PS2 users.
). You either create a game that's PS4+5 to sell to the PS4+5 install base, with reduced appeal to the fresh PS5 audience, or target PS5 exclusively having a smaller potential market but a far higher appeal in that market. Though PS2 had a huge install base when PS3 was released, and even having a limited uptake, I believe only a handful of titles were cross-gen. Mostly devs moved forward instead of trying to get more from the 100 million old PS2 users.
The short answer is no/very unlikely. There is a massive difference in how cinematics and games are created. Mainly involving the controlling of the camera, being able to deal with edge cases. Taking all sorts of liberal short cuts that games can’t.
Because of this, don’t expect that.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
There are a lot of reasons for that, however, that may or may not be applicable anymore.
- The progress of technology, especially node shrinks, is slowly greatly.
- The technology used between PS2 and PS3 was vastly different.
- Having something work across different generations of devices was uncommon outside of videos (movie DVDs for example) and audio (music CDs for example). The proliferation of smart phones and tablets has vastly increased peoples expectations of their applications or games working even if they buy a new device (as long as it's the same family of devices).
- The move to digital libraries means that people are going to have even larger expectations of their stuff working across generations. While this can certainly just be addressed with backwards compatibility either through software or hardware emulation, it's only a small step forward to have games made for the current generation work on the previous generation. Especially now that the pace of technology has slowed so significantly.
- This also means that for studios that are at risk of failing at the start of a new generation due to a much smaller potential consumer base (most of them), the risk of going to a new generation is mitigated greatly.
- The cost of development will be slightly higher, but the risk of catastrophically lower sales is significantly lower. Something that couldn't be said of past generations.
This also means that the effort to make a game targeting the next generation work on the previous generation is easier. I expect the next generation to have significantly more titles that work on both generations of consoles. The big question is whether that will last throughout the next "generation."
If the next PlayStation and Xbox generation doesn't bring in full generation cross generational play, I fully believe that the next consoles after that will. The only thing that would disrupt that, IMO, is some massive paradigm shift in technology. Whether that means moving away from silicon based processors or a radically different way of doing things.
Regards,
SB
I didn't think of that, but the prevalence of phones and tablets has totally changed the expectations of the modern gaming audience.
really it's only people that were console gamers going back to PS3 generation and earlier that would find it acceptable that games bought digitally dont just carry forward.
As a 40 yr old, i can accept it, but i doubt a 10yr old is going to think it's OK.
really it's only people that were console gamers going back to PS3 generation and earlier that would find it acceptable that games bought digitally dont just carry forward.
As a 40 yr old, i can accept it, but i doubt a 10yr old is going to think it's OK.
Games bought for PS4 will carry forwards due to BC. That doesn't mean games made for PS5 also have to work with PS4
For the vast majority of games - I agree with you. However, games such a "Detroit: Become Human" have achieved a high level of quality and cinematics that rivals many pure CGI/offline showcase demos. All from a sub 2TF box with a mediocre pussy (err, cat... Jaguar).
Seriously, if someone asked me which game was the most impressive PS4 game from a "graphics standpoint" this generation, I can easily say it was Detroit: Become Human. Waiting for the PC edition now...
Lol. In some ways you’ve identified the one game that is basically a big cinematic.For the vast majority of games - I agree with you. However, games such a "Detroit: Become Human" have achieved a high level of quality and cinematics that rivals many pure CGI/offline showcase demos. All from a sub 2TF box with a mediocre pussy (err, cat... Jaguar).
Seriously, if someone asked me which game was the most impressive PS4 game from a "graphics standpoint" this generation, I can easily say it was Detroit: Become Human. Waiting for the PC edition now...
Yea I guess if a game is that controlled then; yes perhaps we can definitely get there. Not much game play though.
No doubt DBH has many QT related interaction (mostly dealing with story branching), however, world traversal and object interaction isn't no different than Red Dead Redemption 2 (just a more confined world). And games like Until Dawn (although an earlier title) has the same style and features similar to DBH. And both have enjoyable gameplay mechanics. It may-not be for all, but for me and others the gameplay is more engaging and satisfying than most other traditional open-world gameplay.
It may be to the ire of some texture artists, but the more the industry moves towards 3d scanning assets and photogrammetry instead of making textures and models from scratch will increase photorealism.
*Already photogrammetry is in a number of shipped games dating back years but it could become more widespread across the industry.
*Already photogrammetry is in a number of shipped games dating back years but it could become more widespread across the industry.
But the dude was free roaming in that Rebirth demo even interacting with objects that have physics. I know it still lacks AI and other things but the quality of the graphics was the same as the trailer. But I agree in a free cam mode you can see more flaws and short comings more often. I suppose Horzon 2's real time cutscene would be pretty much like that perhaps?
Yes, photogrametry should be the standard and what PBR is to this gen for next gen. The pipeline for streaming high fidelity 3d scanned asset with 4k or 8k texture, POM and with high density geometry should bring a quite significant leap in visual. I think Quixel would be the next gen Speedtree for fast content creation. But of course first party studios have their own magic.
That wouldn't pass the test for what current games and their level of dynamism now call for.
Cutscenes are doable though.
So for a hypothetical PS5 powered by that Gonzalo scoring close to a 2080 in Firestrike, what would the inevitable Horizon 2 look like graphically
UE4 Rebirth ran on a 1080 Ti no raytracing.
I'm sceptical about that we see such Details in nextgen Games because they didnt have not enough Ram to do it. With the speculated 16-24 Gbyte Ram in PS5 /Scarlett the graphical Jump is very low. They need 32-64 Gbyte Ram for a real generation Jump in Graphics. On a german Forum a Insider in the Gaming Business have already seen the Ram Amount of the nextgen Consoles and he was upset about that they put such a low Amount of Ram in the new Consoles, he says also that a fast SSD cannot solve the Ram Problem. Think about the last Generations where the Ram increase about a Factor of 16x. And now only 3 Times.
https://www.pcgames.de/Playstation-5-Konsolen-265878/News/sony-zielgruppe-1293339/
In this Article Sony says that they continue on focusing Core Games with cinematic , cutscene Elements. This is not that what i have hope for a new Consolegeneration. I want to see complex Simulations , better KI, Physics, and more choices for the Player in a Game, more alternatives Routes . Focusing only on Graphics, QTE's and Storyline is not a real improvement.
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No they don't.
Rubbish. 1) You aren't going to get 32-64 GBs RAM. It's stupidly expensive. It's a ludicrous suggestion and waiting for that to be affordable means effectively skipping next-gen and jumping straight to PS6 in 2025. 2) Read up on streamed assets and how little RAM is actually needed if an engine is optimal to the number of pixels. 3) The SSD alleviates a huge amount of RAM requirements if fast enough. You may need 2GBs of AI in RAM if you can only shift 150 MB/s back and forth to HDD, but when you can write that entire 2 GBs to SSD in a fraction of a second, you don't need to cache it all.
You also place a lot of faith in a tiny little article that only mentioned 3 goals AFAICS, one of them including 'graphics'. It's saying Sony is focussed on AAA games. Nothing at all about shunning simulations, KI, physics, or choices. Go to the source, the WSJ article. All it's saying is Sony themselves are focussing on enabling and producing big AAA games as, "The thinking is, the official said, that people buy a console to play high-quality games available only on that platform, not smaller games also available on smartphones." The discussion wasn't really at all about the features of the games which are completely open to the devs to use the hardware however they choose.
You also place a lot of faith in a tiny little article that only mentioned 3 goals AFAICS, one of them including 'graphics'. It's saying Sony is focussed on AAA games. Nothing at all about shunning simulations, KI, physics, or choices. Go to the source, the WSJ article. All it's saying is Sony themselves are focussing on enabling and producing big AAA games as, "The thinking is, the official said, that people buy a console to play high-quality games available only on that platform, not smaller games also available on smartphones." The discussion wasn't really at all about the features of the games which are completely open to the devs to use the hardware however they choose.
Yes i know the economically Reasons why Ram is actually not so cheap i understand that. But the Question is if the jump in Graphics not so big , will the People buy nextgen Consoles?
You can not stream any data. New rendering methods require more RAM. Alone raytracing acceleration structures are pretty big. In addition, with streaming, you always have to have at least the visible amount in RAM, and if you want a generational jump in graphics, you do not want to just double that. It just does not work that way. A Ps4 with only 1,5 Gbyte Ram did not have the same Graphics as with 8 Gbyte Ram. Not even with an SSD. And the Lifetime of SSD' s are shorter compare to conventional HD's , think about if Data Streaming on Ps5 is a permanent Concept. Each generation has had 16x as much RAM as before. People still seem to forget that. Therefore, every time you saw a bigger jump in quality.Even the jump to Xbox One /Ps4 Vanilla will hardly be visible unless there is significantly more RAM. Current games offer no clue as to what you want to see in the graphics. And no, there have not been any "compromises" so far. ~ 16x every time since six generation.
Ok , Nextgen Console are not in they're final Stage , maybe we see some Ram changes in the End.
For me personal i want better Physics, AI, and more 60 Fps games , i hope all Nextgen Games has a Performance Mode to play in 1080p .
The actual amount needed is way smaller than the current solutions were every texture is stored in memory even when only a tiny part of the texture is drawn. Sebbbi's has spoken at length on the maths of what's actually needed. There appears to be a fault at the moment with the forum search functionality so I can't pull up the reference post that spells it out.
You canna defy the laws of physics! It doesn't matter what we had before if it's technologically impossible to have that now. Back then, PC RAM amount doubled every year, so five years later, 16x the RAM was the norm. That's no longer happening. The logical expectation is that engines will change because the technology has. Instead of large pools of slow RAM and really slow storage, we'll have small pools of fast RAM and super fast storage, and the engines will adapt to best use this new shift in the balance between speed and capacity.
Except...
How exactly can a larger amount of RAM be achieved? What's your proposed solution to the fact it just costs way too much?
The Response is Yes
Complete repost of the miniscual amount of ram actually needed for rendering as well as the trivially low streaming bandwidth needed, in an attempt to educate Karma.
......
@AlBran dug up these posts by Sebbbi that discuss memory usage per frame and overall needs of engine streaming and virtual textures.
From 2011 - https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1588434/
"1080p would require a tile cache of 2.25x and 2560x1600 4.44x size compared to 720p"
"As 720p requires only around 6.7 MB/s to stream all required texture data, even current network connections have more than enough bandwidth for streaming... however hiding the constant 200ms network latency would require lot of additional research."
From 2012 - https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1655866/
aaronspink: "In the console space, using 2GB as a disk cache alone will make for a better end user experience than 2x or even 3-4x gpu performance."
sebbbi: "I completely disagree with this. And I try now to explain why. As a professional, you of course know most of the background facts, but I need to explain that first, so that my remarks later aren't standing without a factual base."
...
sebbbi: "More memory of course makes developers life easier. Predicting data access patterns can be very hard for some styles of games and structures. But mindlessly increasing the cache sizes much beyond working set sizes doesn't help either (as we all know that increasing cache size beyond working set size gives on average only logarithmic improvement on cache hit rate = diminishing returns very quickly)."
......
@AlBran dug up these posts by Sebbbi that discuss memory usage per frame and overall needs of engine streaming and virtual textures.
From 2011 - https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1588434/
"1080p would require a tile cache of 2.25x and 2560x1600 4.44x size compared to 720p"
"As 720p requires only around 6.7 MB/s to stream all required texture data, even current network connections have more than enough bandwidth for streaming... however hiding the constant 200ms network latency would require lot of additional research."
From 2012 - https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1655866/
aaronspink: "In the console space, using 2GB as a disk cache alone will make for a better end user experience than 2x or even 3-4x gpu performance."
sebbbi: "I completely disagree with this. And I try now to explain why. As a professional, you of course know most of the background facts, but I need to explain that first, so that my remarks later aren't standing without a factual base."
...
sebbbi: "More memory of course makes developers life easier. Predicting data access patterns can be very hard for some styles of games and structures. But mindlessly increasing the cache sizes much beyond working set sizes doesn't help either (as we all know that increasing cache size beyond working set size gives on average only logarithmic improvement on cache hit rate = diminishing returns very quickly)."