Come up with another usage then. You guys keep saying "a game isn't next-gen unless it's using the SSD". It's completely a joke with the rationale with the Sony warriors here. You complain about hardware not being fully taken advantage of, but you only have the SSD->VRAM innovation to use as an example. What other piece of hardware in the PS5 is supposed to stand out among all the other hardware? Or is it that the other hardware pieces are just "average" compared to the next-gen systems.
The ONLY people complaining about this cross-gen shit is ----- wait for it ---- Sony warriors! Not a single fan of other platforms are complaining. That tells me a LOT about the mentality of Sony gamers (i.e. elitist and irrational) on these boards.
i have some examples not strictly related to the ssd (i mean, not all of them)
numbers of dinobot on screen at the same time, the reveal of the first horizon had multiple tallnecks (the biggest dinobot in the game) on screen at the same time while the final game only had one on screen with other minor small dinobot around to control the area, and if we talk about dinobot, the original game only had 5-8 between small, medium and big dinobot on screen at the same time (with different ratio, like 2 trex and maybe 2 small dinobot, so 4 in total to stay in the rendering budget), a more powerfull cpu and gpu would be necessary to push more polygons and having more stuff on screen in general (humans, dinobot, natural fauna etc.), i don't need to tell you that you can't make a massive battle with a fuckload of stuff on screen without enough rendering power, especially when dinobots are not your average throw away enemies but super high detailed mini-boss with high polycount for each one of them.
the dinobot in the first one had a very limited range of movements from their original point on the map, with a better cpu\ssd\ram you can improve that, it was very frustrating trying to allure a dinobot into an area of another dinobot to make them fight just to have the dinobot return into his starting position after 100 mt...
the physics and destruction is exactly the same as horizon 1, more present during setpieces, and trees, rocks and some plants in the open world (the game director confirmed this word by word in a recent interview when directyl asked about destruction), exactly like H1 (believe me, i have 150 hours on that game), don't tell me that a powerfull ryzen cpu can't do massively better in term of destruction compared to an old jaguar, and before you answer, remember your beloved avengers game and how destruction on pc with the setting maxed out was far better than the console version that also had severe framerate problems with a lot of debris on screen.
I vaguely know that nvidia can do a lot of physics via gpu and that amd can't do the same as easily if i remember well, and why even suffocate the gpu when you have a powerfull cpu just for that.
flying mounts, i don't know if guerrilla lied about the inability of doing super fast flying mechanics while maintaining all the details because the hard disk was too slow, but if they didn't lied, that's another one to add to the list, and i bet that guerrilla knows more than you about their game\engine.
Level design and how they design set pieces, i don't need to tell you how squeezing into a tunnel to load the set pieces would be a problem of the past with an ssd instead of an ancient 5400rps hard disk.
They don't even have cpu power to spare to add ragdoll to human enemies and dinobot, if you look closely you can see how they use the same precanned death animations system even on forbidden west (yes, even when you see the enemy flying from the mammouth because of the explosion, they literally glue on the ground with a fixed position the moment they touch the ground), and obviously you can't add ragdoll on the ps5 and not in the ps4 version, is too much of a noticeable difference, so again, the lower common denominator wins), and before you answer, yes, ragdoll can be pretty heavy on the cpu, especially in a game with a lof of bodies on screen that can be moved by explosions or giant enemies (but you already know that)
Onestly the lack of ragdoll can be a design choice, but i don't believe that for a second since guerrila is the people who made this,
As far as i know, you are limited by the ram when you have to render a lot of different type of enemies on screen at the same time, ps5 has double and faster ram than ps4, plus ssd fuckery, again, you can't do a massive battle between humans, dinobot etc. when you can't render more than 5 type of enemies at the same time.
You say that horizon doens't use portals, sure, but imagine this scene, you are fighting a huge dinobot and he destroy the ground where you stand and aloy fall into a complete different area, you can't do such a fast change of scene without an ssd without losing details or slowing down a bit to load the next scene, and that is just a stupid example, every scene that demand a seamless change of scene is fucked by the ps4 hard disk.
another one you noticed in the last trailer of HFW, the lack of realistic reaction from some grass and other vegetation, and a sand tech that look exactly like yellow snow tech from ps4 gen, even the small craters after an explosions are clearly pre-canned and not dynamic, people pull their hairs off for that details and i'm here thinking that it look worse than the mud deformation on rdr2...
Sorry for the lack of technicality and my english.