Playstation 5 Catch-All

Very pretty. I am still blown away by how great AC: Odyssey, The Witcher 3, and other current generation games look so I am not in a bit hurry.

That was pretty impressive.

What will be impressive is the budget to make something that looks this good.

As a graphics programmer, currently developing in UE4, my jaw dropped with that tech demo. I'm waiting to see what the catch is, but what they showed was amazing. I really want to see the underlying tech of what they just accomplished.

That looks nice, particularly the last couple minutes.

Though I did find it hilarious that they put in a wall squeeze bit when that's exactly the kind of thing that the SSD should render obsolete.

I know nothing about creating video game graphics.
But stuff like "the artists wont have to be concerned over poly counts, draw calls or memory" and "film-quality assets", "without wasting any time optimizing" sounds like a bunch of bad PR speak.

But damn, it looks good.

On the other hand, the demo, especially the earlier parts, very much reminded me of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which I am playing currently. And sure, this looks better. But after the first short time of being impressed, I am not sure it matters that much anymore.

Dyni wrote:

That looks nice, particularly the last couple minutes.

Though I did find it hilarious that they put in a wall squeeze bit when that's exactly the kind of thing that the SSD should render obsolete.

Am SSD won't render that obsolete because as is evidenced by that demo, we developers will just push the limits every time thus requiring load points like that.

I'd rather have a loading screen than a wall squeeze where I have to hold a button to load the game. But a wall squeeze is better than a suddenly slow walk-and-talk.

The dynamic lighting and auto LOD stuff is nice, but like y'all say, that stuff looks pretty good right now. I want to know if this engine can render solid armor over fleshy creatures without ugly clipping or stretching of the armor. That's one graphics breakthrough I've been waiting many years to see.

I saw some speculation that the PS5s SSD speed is a killer app that made this possible and that the XBSX won’t be able to run UE5 with this fidelity due to their inferior SSD. Will be interesting to see if that’s true. Would be ironic if MS put so much effort into superior terraflops yet have tech that can’t keep up with PS5.

I’m sure in reality they’ll both be just fine though.

Docjoe wrote:

I saw some speculation that the PS5s SSD speed is a killer app that made this possible and that the XBSX won’t be able to run UE5 with this fidelity due to their inferior SSD. Will be interesting to see if that’s true. Would be ironic if MS put so much effort into superior terraflops yet have tech that can’t keep up with PS5.

I’m sure in reality they’ll both be just fine though.

If you needed that much data, that fast, to make that small portion of a game you would need a lot bigger than a TB SSD.

I doubt that the differences between the two consoles will be noticeable by anyone not watching Digital Foundry videos.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I doubt that the differences between the two consoles will be noticeable by anyone not watching Digital Foundry videos.

Agreed. I'd be very surprised if this wasn't shown on PS5 first because of $$$. Both consoles are going to be able to put out incredible visual detail. Pitting their speculative capabilities against each other this early on seems pointless. The only thing that's clear to me so far is that this console generation is going to be the biggest jump we've had in a long time.

On an episode of Kotaku Splitscreen centered around the PS5 reveal, Jason Schreier mentioned that he has spoken to several developers stating that PS5 is the most excited they've been about a console in 20 years. Why? Who the hell knows. I certainly couldn't tell you based on what Sony has shown so far, but hopefully we'll find out in the next few months.

For kicks, I went back to watch the Unreal 4 tech demo that was put out just before the XB1/PS4 generation:

The jump between the two demos is obvious, but I think the most interesting bit is that the UE4 demo was shown on a PC, while the UE5 demo is already running on PS5 hardware as a baseline.

EvilDead wrote:
Docjoe wrote:

I saw some speculation that the PS5s SSD speed is a killer app that made this possible and that the XBSX won’t be able to run UE5 with this fidelity due to their inferior SSD. Will be interesting to see if that’s true. Would be ironic if MS put so much effort into superior terraflops yet have tech that can’t keep up with PS5.

I’m sure in reality they’ll both be just fine though.

If you needed that much data, that fast, to make that small portion of a game you would need a lot bigger than a TB SSD.

I mentioned this in the game dev thread, but I hope that both consoles offer a local archiving system where you could hook up a 6 TB backup drive. It would take about 15 minutes to read a 100 GB game to your console's 1 TB SSD. That's faster than most people's internet, and avoids redownloading things that would catapult you toward a data cap. I'd really like it to work like how the Switch archives things but have a local option. You can manually force games not to archive.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I mentioned this in the game dev thread, but I hope that both consoles offer a local archiving system where you could hook up a 6 TB backup drive. It would take about 15 minutes to read a 100 GB game to your console's 1 TB SSD. That's faster than most people's internet, and avoids redownloading things that would catapult you toward a data cap. I'd really like it to work like how the Switch archives things but have a local option. You can manually force games not to archive.

Completely with you on that. I'd really like to retire my PS4 Pro and keep everything on it on the PS5 (a lot of that's PSVR games, since most of those don't have physical releases); even though I put a 2TB drive in the PS4, the last two years I've been had to figure out what I want to delete every time I install a new game. Every time I buy a phone/tablet/music player, I try to get enough storage so that I never have to worry about available space; it would be great to at least to get close to that with my console.

Prompted by this, I double-checked what we know about storage. According to this Eurogamer article, largely based on Digital Foundry information, we'll be able to install additional internal storage that meets Sony's specs, although it's likely it will be slower and thus can't be the drive the game runs from. We'll also be able to add external storage, and the article speculates that you might be able to run PS4 games directly from it, but definitely not PS5 games. It certainly seems like having archving software that can transfer from the external to the "main" drive would be a no-brainer, but based on how Sony has handed the launch of the PS3 & PS4, I wouldn't be surprised if that's not available at first.

Dyni wrote:

On an episode of Kotaku Splitscreen centered around the PS5 reveal, Jason Schreier mentioned that he has spoken to several developers stating that PS5 is the most excited they've been about a console in 20 years. Why? Who the hell knows. I certainly couldn't tell you based on what Sony has shown so far, but hopefully we'll find out in the next few months.

My guess is it has something to do with the GDC talk that Mark Cerny walked everyone through. I was only able to keep up with parts of it, but it sounds like there was some real engineering going on to make sure the PS5 made it easier to get the most bang for your buck and therefore be an exciting platform to develop on. In comparison, the Xbox One Series X sounds like someone looked for a bunch of parts at the store that had big numbers, smacked 'em together, and said "It's powerful! Yay! Teraflops!"

Which means it might be an ironic reversal of the Xbox 360 and PS3, even though the PS3 itself was a heavily engineered machine... but it wasn't engineered for ease of use or for better game development. It was a fancy processor capable of doing incredible things but was a pain for game development. The 360 wasn't necessarily better engineered, but because it more closely resembled a PC, just about every developer at the time (including John Carmack!) were singing its praises as the easiest game console to develop for ever.

For kicks, I went back to watch the Unreal 4 tech demo that was put out just before the XB1/PS4 generation:

The jump between the two demos is obvious, but I think the most interesting bit is that the UE4 demo was shown on a PC, while the UE5 demo is already running on PS5 hardware as a baseline.

This is where me being jaded comes into play. The only two elements of that demo that look obviously inferior are the lighting engine, which we knew we'd see improvements on this generation by now, and the magma, which there wasn't really an emphasis on liquid tech in the new UE5 demo. Otherwise, that UE4 demo still looks really good, better than most of the games using the engine, and also performs better than even the prettiest games using the engine this generation.

In other words, I've seen carefully crafted tech demos enough in my life that I don't trust 'em, and anything pretty will become "meh" in a few years as we get used to it being the new normal. That people can look back at the UE4 demo and talk about the new one being "leaps better" just has me feeling like we all forget what it was like to be tricked by the Killzone 2 (2?) demo.

The biggest takeaway from the UE5 demo for me (and they were hitting it pretty hard in the commentary) is how much less work it takes to build assets for the engine. You build your highest resolution assets, and you're done. Whether that's true in practice or whether things will still need tweaking is an open question, but that is a huge deal. My understanding is that one of the biggest expenses in AAA game development is creating high resolution assets then tweaking them at lower levels of detail (or vice versa, maybe, depending on the workflow).

BadKen wrote:

The biggest takeaway from the UE5 demo for me (and they were hitting it pretty hard in the commentary) is how much less work it takes to build assets for the engine. You build your highest resolution assets, and you're done. Whether that's true in practice or whether things will still need tweaking is an open question, but that is a huge deal. My understanding is that one of the biggest expenses in AAA game development is creating high resolution assets then tweaking them at lower levels of detail (or vice versa, maybe, depending on the workflow).

Yeah, I really hope this is for reals.

Rumor has it there's a PlayStation 5 reveal set for June 3rd. It's not confirmed because 1) rumor and 2) the coronavirus has everything in flux, but that's theoretically the target date. It will not reveal everything about the system but will be the first of a summer-long marketing campaign.

ccesarano wrote:

Rumor has it there's a PlayStation 5 reveal set for June 3rd. It's not confirmed because 1) rumor and 2) the coronavirus has everything in flux, but that's theoretically the target date. It will not reveal everything about the system but will be the first of a summer-long marketing campaign.

That'd be fantastic if true. Looks like it's going to be sometime in June but the closer they can make it to May (and that's pretty close) the better. Also, anything to distract me during the last couple of weeks waiting for The Last of Us: Part 2 to arrive will be welcome.

I am excite! I'm especially interested in the extent of backwards compatibility - I've still got my collection of PS2–4 games, for which I still have a backwards-compatible PS3 plugged into my system*. I'd love to replace both the PS4 and the PS3 with one PS5.

Also of interest for me:

  • Storage expansion - I hate having to uninstall a game just to install a new one, and inevitably installed a larger internal drive on the PS3 (actually upgraded twice!) and both the base PS4 and the PS4 Pro. Those latter two I actually installed a larger drive on before I even booted them up.
  • Further confirmation of PSVR compatibility with PS5 (how well will it track the DS5 since it doesn't have a big glowing light pointing at the camera?) and possible information about PSVR2.

*no, with the exception of Red Dead Redemption, which I still haven't finished, I haven't actually played a PS2 or PS3 game in the last five years. That's not the point. *harrumph*

Reveal on the 4th June

Evan E wrote:

Also of interest for me:

  • Storage expansion - I hate having to uninstall a game just to install a new one, and inevitably installed a larger internal drive on the PS3 (actually upgraded twice!) and both the base PS4 and the PS4 Pro. Those latter two I actually installed a larger drive on before I even booted them up.

I'm really hoping they support an archive drive similar to how the Switch automatically archives things (to the cloud). With the size of games these days, redownloading them is impractical with caps and most internet speeds. You could transfer a big game from an archive drive within 15 minutes or so to the internal SSD. I don't particularly like the solution they have for the Series X where you have to buy more SSDs for space.

And yeah, I've replaced all my PS3 and PS4 hard drives with SSDs or hybrid drives at certain points. I'm really hoping for a 1 TB NVMe drive of some sort and USB HDD archiving system.

Excellent! Love these new console reveal events even if hype does take over a little too much

Can't wait to see what Housemarque is cooking up, a look at what Bluepoint is working on & I'm hoping for Gran Turismo 7 & a new Ratchet & Clank to be shown off.

I'd love to see a new IP in there & lastly some gameplay from Horizon 2 or whatever the follow up is called.

Spikeout wrote:

Can't wait to see what Housemarque is cooking up,

Are they still working on Stormdivers? I hope they've been developing something else at the same time, because it's been a while. Then again, if Stormdivers is supposed to be a AAA game, maybe all of their resources are focused on that...

Mario_Alba wrote:
Spikeout wrote:

Can't wait to see what Housemarque is cooking up,

Are they still working on Stormdivers? I hope they've been developing something else at the same time, because it's been a while. Then again, if Stormdivers is supposed to be a AAA game, maybe all of their resources are focused on that...

They stopped work on Stormdivers in January and put it on indefinite hiatus.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Mario_Alba wrote:
Spikeout wrote:

Can't wait to see what Housemarque is cooking up,

Are they still working on Stormdivers? I hope they've been developing something else at the same time, because it's been a while. Then again, if Stormdivers is supposed to be a AAA game, maybe all of their resources are focused on that...

They stopped work on Stormdivers in January and put it on indefinite hiatus.

I didn't know that! On the one hand, I feel bad for them, because they spent quite a lot of time and money on Stormdivers, obviously. On the other hand, well, I was never really interested in the game, so it's not as if I'll be missing much. I just hope they can recover from what I'm assuming is a loss for not releasing the game, because I do want them to continue developing games.

Edit: Okay... Now I'm reading their January post on their website, and I am super excited for whatever game is coming. It sounds like it should be soon! (At least the announcement should be coming soon.)

Housemarque. I still play Resogun to this day. I may not revisit Alienation or Nex Machina as often, but when they were in the mix I was addicted to them just the same. Sad to hear about Stormdivers. Maybe they can resurrect it down the road. Whatever they put out next I'll be there wallet in hand!

Spikeout wrote:

Excellent! Love these new console reveal events even if hype does take over a little too much

Can't wait to see what Housemarque is cooking up, a look at what Bluepoint is working on & I'm hoping for Gran Turismo 7 & a new Ratchet & Clank to be shown off.

I'd love to see a new IP in there & lastly some gameplay from Horizon 2 or whatever the follow up is called.

I'm tempering my expectations and going in pleasantly surprised if we get more than an "exciting sneak peek" at an upcoming Ubisoft game and this year's Call of Duty.

This is basically part one of Sony's several-month-long marketing plan, so yeah, best not to expect the most amazing reveals. No doubt they got some third-party line-ups in mind as well as first-party, but expect something like... I dunno, Knack 3.

RnRClown wrote:

Housemarque. I still play Resogun to this day. I may not revisit Alienation or Nex Machina as often, but when they were in the mix I was addicted to them just the same. Sad to hear about Stormdivers. Maybe they can resurrect it down the road. Whatever they put out next I'll be there wallet in hand!

I still play those three on a semi-regula basis, especially Alienation. So, so good!