Pretty fuckin hilarious that you got people on this thread thinking they know more than the CEO of Epic Games and the guy behind the creation of UE who actually understands the tech behind all this. Every time they talk about the PlayStation 5, they specifically praise it’s storage architecture (AKA the SSD) because it’s a key piece of tech that was used to demonstrate one of UE5’s highlight features, Nanite. Why is it a big deal then and why did they choose to show the demo off on PS5? It’s because of the SSD’s ability to load in highly detailed geometry (approx. changing detail/LOD per frame on 20 million triangles, through the primitive shaders feature) in a matter of seconds through 16GB of GDDR6 RAM. Cerny talks about this during the “Road to PS5” event, he talks about how RAM is being used more efficiently since it only has to contain data for the next 1 second of gameplay. (Compared to PS4 containing data 30 seconds prior to it actually being used, inefficient use of RAM) Just being able to load high-quality assets ON THE FLY has a huge impact on game design, which we have yet to see in 2-3 years when devs get more and more familiar with the hardware itself. That demo approximately contained about 100’s of billions of triangles being crunched down to just about 20 million at very high speeds (SSD bandwidth) per frame depending on how close to/far away from an object you are. (LOD’s won’t be noticeable) Especially, during that last sequence of the demo where she starts flying, what you’re seeing is highly-detailed geometry being instantly streamed in from the SSD and through RAM with no visible pop-ins. Now, obviously the Series X can this demo, low-end and high-end PC’s can run this demo, hell even smartphones will be able to run this demo. That’s the whole point of an engine like this, it’s supposed to be scalable to run on the appropriate hardware. But will it run the demo with the same level of geometric detail being streamed in at instantaneous speeds? No. Like Sweeney said, PS5’s storage architecture blows high-end PC’s out of the water and yea he isn’t wrong. A high-end PC with the current architecture it uses won’t be running the demo at the exact same geometric level as the PS5. This reminds me of the time when Linus Tech Tips literally mocked Sweeney for saying that PS5’s storage architecture is way ahead of current high-end PC’s. Then the guy literally proceeds to bring out a $1,900+ SSD and talks about how it has a higher read/write speed than the PS5’s SSD, only to put out an apology
video a few days later. My point being, the hardware you saw Nanite being demonstrated on (PS5) is the absolute best hardware (AS OF RIGHT NOW) that’s capable of handling geometry at that level of fidelity. PC’s are gonna be adopting this tech in the near-future as well, this is a win-win situation for gamers in the end and helps drive the industry forward.
And LOL at the ones thinking Sony’s 1.4% stake/investment in a company already worth billions means “SONY PS5 EXCLUSIVES ON EPIC STORE” “THEY PAID THEM FOR DEMO” “MARKETING DEAL”. If it was a marketing deal, then why the hell didn’t I see PlayStation themselves advertising it on their social media handles that very same day the demo was shown off? I mean, they paid Epic right, would be a waste of money if you don’t even bother to advertise it on your social media handles which have a massive following as well.
Anyone expecting a massive difference between these two consoles when it comes to third-party games are pretty much setting themselves up for disappointment. Both of these consoles are gonna be awesome and more capable than people think and the future of gaming is looking brighter than ever before. Whether you’re “team blue” or “team green” or an “Xbot” or a “Sony pony”, we’re all gamers in the end and all I see is that, we’re in for a hell of a treat next-gen.
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