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Control UE File Size | PS5 Version is ~40% Smaller than Xbox Series X's

I believe nobody can use DirectStorage yet... it is planned to reach developers this year.

Edit - At least that is the state of it on PC Windows... maybe there is a version on Series X being used?
Late this year. Even if MS meets the schedule... good luck with dev implementation (updating their engines). It will take a lot of time to see it rolled out in games. Time is the premium here.

By contrast Sony has that edge in time, not just the hardware itself.
 
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ethomaz

Banned
Developers don't have access to the velocity architecture?

That doesn't make any sense to me.
At least a key part of the Velocity Architecture is not ready yet... DirectStorage will launch late this year.

That means no developer (even MS first party studios) can use DirectStorage... it is not even available in GDK.

What doesn’t make sense?
 
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ethomaz

Banned
Just weird that they would talk about the I/O so much but then the developers can't use the hardware decompressor which is a big part of it.
I believe you can use...
But not use DirectStorage API.
You can direct call the decompressors units... there is probably a ISA for that... and MS have a more friendly driver for these calls too.

You need to take in mind a lot of things MS said in PR is still in development... it is their plan.
 
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I believe you can use...
But not use DirectStorage API.
You can direct call the decompressors units... there is probably a ISA for that... and MS have a more friendly driver for these calls too.

You need to take in mind a lot of things MS said in PR is still in development... it is their plan.

You're making it sound like they rushed the release of the console.
 

Allandor

Member
Simple reason. The ps5 version is build just for the ps5. The Xbox version is readable on all current Xbox devices. If they would make an xbox series version, it would also shrink in size. If they would even offer smart delivery it could be smaller. But they made just one version "to rule then all" ;)
 

ethomaz

Banned
You're making it sound like they rushed the release of the console.
I don’t know... I know these things I posted are not ready/available for developers.

They plan to rollout this year.

Remember that DirectStorage is not about Xbox only... it is about PC development... so there is no way to say it is not on the planed schedule.
 
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Simple reason. The ps5 version is build just for the ps5. The Xbox version is readable on all current Xbox devices. If they would make an xbox series version, it would also shrink in size. If they would even offer smart delivery it could be smaller. But they made just one version "to rule then all" ;)

I read a comment a few pages back that said there's actually two different versions of the game on Xbox. One for the Xbox One consoles and the other for the Series consoles. It's not like it's plain BC or anything.
 

longdi

Banned
Simple reason. The ps5 version is build just for the ps5. The Xbox version is readable on all current Xbox devices. If they would make an xbox series version, it would also shrink in size. If they would even offer smart delivery it could be smaller. But they made just one version "to rule then all" ;)

yeah it seems this is all there is to it. MS unifying api across Xbox and PC. developers are free to go as long as they meet this. and no wonder control file size is same across MS platforms.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
The GDK does not support direct storage I believe. Yet
I believe nobody can use DirectStorage yet... it is planned to reach developers this year.

Edit - At least that is the state of it on PC Windows... maybe there is a version on Series X being used?
Not sure it is actually used/activated

Direct Storage is available on Xbox. It will come on PCs later.

Source (Xbox.com): "This newest member of the DirectX family is being introduced with Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S and we plan to bring it to Windows as well."

This is part of the Velocity Architecture on Xbox Series X | S.
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Simple reason. The ps5 version is build just for the ps5. The Xbox version is readable on all current Xbox devices. If they would make an xbox series version, it would also shrink in size. If they would even offer smart delivery it could be smaller. But they made just one version "to rule then all" ;)
yeah it seems this is all there is to it. MS unifying api across Xbox and PC. developers are free to go as long as they meet this. and no wonder control file size is same across MS platforms.
Incorrect. All these are different versions. Xbox Series X version is 42.4 GB. Xbox One version is 42.1 GB.

It's not running in backward compatibility mode either. You can see all the different versions on the Xbox Store as well. For example, this bundle contains (and shows separately) both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S versions. Whereas this page specifically lists the Xbox Series X | S version.

These are all different versions, and there is 0 evidence to suggest that they are the same.
 

nowhat

Member
TLOU2 is linear and it's gigantic.
No, it's wide linear, hence the game size. If it were a linear game, it would be around 20GB - but given the width, it's like having four linear games and it balloons up to 80GB. no I'm not really being serious
 

Godfavor

Member
Direct Storage is available on Xbox. It will come on PCs later.

Source (Xbox.com): "This newest member of the DirectX family is being introduced with Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S and we plan to bring it to Windows as well."

This is part of the Velocity Architecture on Xbox Series X | S.

It actually says that it has been introduced (clever wording here). But the GDk does not support it yet it seems.

Devs would rather use the GDK that is unique between consoles and PC rather than optimize the game on each platform. It is way more effecient due to deadlines
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
It actually says that it has been introduced (clever wording here). But the GDk does not support it yet it seems.

Devs would rather use the GDK that is unique between consoles and PC rather than optimize the game on each platform. It is way more effecient due to deadlines
No clever wordings really.

Introduced with Xbox Series means this is the first time this tech is coming out. And it will come later on PCs.

Nowhere does it say or imply that this tech also isn't available on Xbox. Here is another quote from an Xbox engineer: "Earlier this year, Microsoft showed the world how the Xbox Series X, with its portfolio of technology innovations, will introduce a new era of no-compromise gameplay. Alongside the actual console announcements, we unveiled the Xbox Velocity Architecture, a key part of how the Xbox Series X will deliver next-generation gaming experiences. We’re excited to bring DirectStorage, an API in the DirectX family originally designed for the Velocity Architecture to Windows PCs!" -- Direct Storage is Coming to PC.
 

sinnergy

Member
Doesn’t it also contain the last gen versions ? Would explain the larger size . They could’t on PS5 as there is no way to expand the internal storage . So you have to keep files small
 
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Godfavor

Member
No clever wordings really.

Introduced with Xbox Series means this is the first time this tech is coming out. And it will come later on PCs.

Nowhere does it say or imply that this tech also isn't available on Xbox. Here is another quote from an Xbox engineer: "Earlier this year, Microsoft showed the world how the Xbox Series X, with its portfolio of technology innovations, will introduce a new era of no-compromise gameplay. Alongside the actual console announcements, we unveiled the Xbox Velocity Architecture, a key part of how the Xbox Series X will deliver next-generation gaming experiences. We’re excited to bring DirectStorage, an API in the DirectX family originally designed for the Velocity Architecture to Windows PCs!" -- Direct Storage is Coming to PC.

This does not say that is available to devs, just introduced on series consoles. Have you seen SFS in use on any game ? It is part of the same api as well.

The game file size is way bigger on xbox consoles and pc than PS5. It does suggest that the ps version is compressed and Xbox is not, that's a fact.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
This does not say that is available to devs, just introduced on series consoles. Have you seen SFS in use on any game ? It is part of the same api as well.
Direct Storage is part of the Xbox Velocity Architecture. Even Dirt 5 is using it. No developer will say 'okay, we are using SFS in this game, but not VRS'. Why would they release information like this?

If games are using Velocity Architecture, it is safe to assume that they are using all or a combination of the 4 components of XVA. And if any dev has used XVA, it means it's available to all.

There is not even a single article on the web that says that Direct Storage is not currently available on Xbox or it will come in the future. You can Google.

The game file size is way bigger on xbox consoles and pc than PS5. It does suggest that the ps version is compressed and Xbox is not, that's a fact.
No, it does not say that Xbox version is not compressed. It just means that compression on PS5 (the end result) was better. PS5 compiled the same game and assets in 25 GB, while Xbox did it in 42 GB. That's because the compression/decompression tech is different in both consoles.

Sony spent the most focus on data handling in PS5. 50 percent of Mark Cerny's presentation was about storage solutions, compression, and data handling.

It's incorrect to assume that Remedy 'forgot to' or 'didn't compress' the Xbox version, while they still had time to support DualSense and Activities features on the PS5, and even create guides for PS+ users with customized artwork.
 

Godfavor

Member
This is pure speculation of your part. The fact is that GDK does not support velocity architecture and the fact that the file size is the same for PC's with HDD in mind.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
The fact is that GDK does not support velocity architecture
Where are you basis this claim on?

I can believe neither XSX nor PS5 devs, especially third parties, are done with re engineering their games (how are models stored, how can you break them apart and stream intelligently, etc...) around the low latency and very high throughput SSD’s and the new I/O API’s, but you keep making this statement and offer no backup for it whatsoever.
 
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MonarchJT

Banned
compression used in ps5 could at very best top at 15% better (at very best) is very ignorant to think that is like 100% ..this thread it won't age well once you find out what's going on
 

Shmunter

Member
compression used in ps5 could at very best top at 15% better (at very best) is very ignorant to think that is like 100% ..this thread it won't age well once you find out what's going on
Could be less need for multiple LOD assets on PS5 if the architecture is able to generate lower LOD in real-time using that geometry engine sauce. But to see that happening in a 3rd party multi platform title 🤔

Completely speculative.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Do you have any reference on that?
One could be the MS provided and Sony provided decoder max throughput: “over” 6 GB/s vs “max of” 22 GB/s. Both consoles can go over the average decompression rate they quoted (4.8 GB/s for XSX and 8-9 GB/s for PS5) using RDO lossy pre-processing on top that much we have been told by both (PS5 only need GPU assistance in decoding when applying a particular pre-processing step BC7PREP for that texture format, we know a bit less of the BCPACK unit).

We do know that Kraken can compress very well with Oodle Texture used to prepare the data: http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-oodle-kraken-and-oodle-texture.html

Also, despite most of the games being texture assets there is still a lot of data that gets compressed through zlib on XSX and Kraken on PS5 and we know Kraken compressed better snd decompresses a lot lot faster (hence why Sony chose it, they went for a very high bandwidth low latency SSD solution and a slower decompression unit would have bottlenecked it).
 

Godfavor

Member
Where are you basis this claim on?

I can believe neither XSX nor PS5 devs, especially third parties, are done with re engineering their games (how are models stored, how can you break them apart and stream intelligently, etc...) around the low latency and very high throughput SSD’s and the new I/O API’s, but you keep making this statement and offer no backup for it whatsoever.


Direct storage will be available as a preview on pc this year.
Xbox and PC use the same api for it: GDK
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
compression used in ps5 could at very best top at 15% better (at very best) is very ignorant to think that is like 100% ..this thread it won't age well once you find out what's going on
You could explain a bit more what you think is going on instead of sounding this smug :).
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius

Direct storage will be available as a preview on pc this year.
Xbox and PC use the same api for it: GDK
Being available as a preview on PC does not mean it is not available for production on Xbox. You know you can have the same dev tools and availability/ feature flags per platform, right ;)? Welcome to runtime checks and/or pre-processor directives :).

“Alongside the actual console announcements, we unveiled the Xbox Velocity Architecture, a key part of how the Xbox Series X will deliver next generation gaming experiences.” —> translation: it is available for PC, but only in preview state for the PC backend of the GDK. You know like UE, Unity3D, etc... have multiple platform backends/targets?

Why neither XSX nor PS5 is getting full advantage of their SSD’s and new low level API’s? Because it is hard (this might explain why they did not go nuts with the SSD bandwidth and I/O pipe as much as Sony did, they bet on developers needing a while to take advantage of it and by then maybe they think they can release a HW refresh with a faster SSD):
[...] To get data off the drive, an OS submits a request to the drive and data is delivered to the app via these queues. An NVMe device can have multiple queues and each queue can contain many requests at a time. This is a perfect match to the parallel and batched nature of modern gaming workloads. The DirectStorage programming model essentially gives developers direct control over that highly optimized hardware. [...]
 
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Stooky

Member
Could be less need for multiple LOD assets on PS5 if the architecture is able to generate lower LOD in real-time using that geometry engine sauce. But to see that happening in a 3rd party multi platform title 🤔

Completely speculative.
I wish they would talk about what they did for next gen versions like insomniac did.
 

Godfavor

Member
Being available as a preview on PC does not mean it is not available for production on Xbox. You know you can have the same dev tools and availability/ feature flags per platform, right ;)? Welcome to runtime checks and/or pre-processor directives :).

Of course, but in the file info on my series X says "GDK" on Control, so who knows.

Maybe devs have not used the specific optimized GDK for xbox ( or whatever it is called) as the file size on control is the same as PC that must run on HDD.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Of course, but in the file info on my series X says "GDK" on Control, so who knows.
Again, using the GDK is not the issue, GDK surely has an XSX target platform so that is hardly the point. I do not believe this is the reason the game is bigger (loading times would be impacted more if it were not IMHO).

Maybe devs have not used the specific optimized GDK for xbox ( or whatever it is called) as the file size on control is the same as PC that must run on HDD.
Possibly a lack of optimisation on the packaging side by the dev. PS5/XSX/PC all seem to take the same time to stream the highest resolution LOD for the assets just that the console versions seem to start from a higher LOD level for textures than PC seems to use for now and thus makes it seem that the next generation consoles have less streaming issues.
 

onesvenus

Member
One could be the MS provided and Sony provided decoder max throughput: “over” 6 GB/s vs “max of” 22 GB/s. Both consoles can go over the average decompression rate they quoted (4.8 GB/s for XSX and 8-9 GB/s for PS5) using RDO lossy pre-processing on top that much we have been told by both (PS5 only need GPU assistance in decoding when applying a particular pre-processing step BC7PREP for that texture format, we know a bit less of the BCPACK unit).

We do know that Kraken can compress very well with Oodle Texture used to prepare the data: http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2020/09/how-oodle-kraken-and-oodle-texture.html

Also, despite most of the games being texture assets there is still a lot of data that gets compressed through zlib on XSX and Kraken on PS5 and we know Kraken compressed better snd decompresses a lot lot faster (hence why Sony chose it, they went for a very high bandwidth low latency SSD solution and a slower decompression unit would have bottlenecked it).
But the decoder max throughput involves both geometry and textures.
He was claiming Oddle Texture is more efficient than BCPack.
Without knowing which ratio of geometry to textures was used to achieve that max throughput I think we cannot say that Oddle is more efficient than BCPack.
 

martino

Member
But the decoder max throughput involves both geometry and textures.
He was claiming Oddle Texture is more efficient than BCPack.
Without knowing which ratio of geometry to textures was used to achieve that max throughput I think we cannot say that Oddle is more efficient than BCPack.
Where are bcpack data coming from ?
is there even any data on that ?
i want to see them is they are.
For me it's a tech existing only on paper for now.
 

MonarchJT

Banned
Could be less need for multiple LOD assets on PS5 if the architecture is able to generate lower LOD in real-time using that geometry engine sauce. But to see that happening in a 3rd party multi platform title 🤔

Completely speculative.
100% no it's an old gen title they did nothing like that just added rt reflections
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
But the decoder max throughput involves both geometry and textures.
He was claiming Oddle Texture is more efficient than BCPack.
Without knowing which ratio of geometry to textures was used to achieve that max throughput I think we cannot say that Oddle is more efficient than BCPack.

Look at the link I added, it is biased as it comes from the Oodle Engineers but it does show decompression rates of Oodle Texture and Kraken going very very close to the max 22 GB/s decode rate.

MS does separate the zlib decoder and BCPACK ones when they talk about throughput and say that they support higher rates than 2:1 using RDO, but the max throughput is still quoted at “over” 6 GB/s and we can safely assume that it does not mean 12-20 GB/ when they say “over 6 GB/s” there.

oIkggdI.jpg
UHFlkb3.jpg
 

kuncol02

Banned
Again, using the GDK is not the issue, GDK surely has an XSX target platform so that is hardly the point. I do not believe this is the reason the game is bigger (loading times would be impacted more if it were not IMHO).


Possibly a lack of optimisation on the packaging side by the dev. PS5/XSX/PC all seem to take the same time to stream the highest resolution LOD for the assets just that the console versions seem to start from a higher LOD level for textures than PC seems to use for now and thus makes it seem that the next generation consoles have less streaming issues.
Control is so bad on technical level (textures not loading corectly, missing map, no audio during cut scenes, terrible shimmering and temporary artifacts, no HDR, loading times) that I really wouldn't be reading anything from how it run or how much space it takes.
 

MaulerX

Member
This is all very interesting and could mean numerous things.

Do we know what settings the XSX is running at? Maybe it's poorly optimized. Maybe it runs at higher settings thus the game is simply bigger.

We'll have to wait and see.
 

mrmeh

Member
Even best case... the percentages don't add up add for a compression v compression comparison advantage... same idiot continuing to console war. If its the same size as the pc version then it is quite clear that time has been spent redeveloping the PS5 version but not optimising for VA/Series. That's fine, Sony did money hat it..

There is plenty of info out there discussing Series X features about decompression, the issue on the pc is that there is little hardware to support it. Nvidia were apparently going to roll out Direct storage support to there new cards (not that you will be able to buy one this year!).

Over the next few years we should see small game sizes on all platforms due to better compression and less asset duplication, Hopefully this is a sign of things to come but there is little evidence to suggest this is Sony specific.
 

Godfavor

Member
Again, using the GDK is not the issue, GDK surely has an XSX target platform so that is hardly the point. I do not believe this is the reason the game is bigger (loading times would be impacted more if it were not IMHO).


Possibly a lack of optimisation on the packaging side by the dev. PS5/XSX/PC all seem to take the same time to stream the highest resolution LOD for the assets just that the console versions seem to start from a higher LOD level for textures than PC seems to use for now and thus makes it seem that the next generation consoles have less streaming issues.

Assets on the ps5 are decompressed on the fly through hardware and streamed through the ssd

On xbox they are already uncompressed (or compressed very little) and the same amount of data is going through the ssd.

That's what I believe
 
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