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[Xplainin]

Yes, another SSD thread, but one that I want to see kept specifically on the issue of actual game benefits.

With the delay of both XSX and PS5 game reveals I am just musing over the tech of both consoles, and wondering what benefits they will bring over the other.
Here are some of my reasons for doubting the PS5s SSD will make any visual difference above the generational leap of using an SSD for both consoles.

No doubt the PS5 will have quicker loading and resume times. On the same game the PS5 SSD will load up the RAM twice as fast as the XSX.
There's no debate on this. It is what it is.

One of the examples given as to where the PS5 could outshine the XSX is in the UE5 demo when she was flying through the city at great speed. It was put that the amount of textures etc streaming quickly will be able to be fed into the PS5s RAM quicker on the PS5 Than the XSX. While this is true that the PS5s SSD will stream in quicker to the RAM, it's also true that the PS5s RAM will fed the GPU which actually draws the image, 120gbs slower than the XSXs RAM can, and the PS5s GPU is less powerful than the XSX GPU to draw the image on screen.
Also, just how many GBs of data do you think the scene of the girl flying through the city will be use? If That scene used 6GBs of data, neither the XSX or PS5s RAM would have been exhausted, and both would have been able to have fed the RAM to keep it full during that scene.
Not only that, but in a scene like that, or the Spiderman one demoed by Sony, the buildings fly past so quickly that you cannot observe any detail in those assets as they blur past you. Any developer worth his salt would not waste system resources or human resources to fully code and pack in the textures and mesh levels that would be used on a static image. Its exactly the scenario where VRS and lower mesh models would be used.

Open worlds are used as another example. So how much data is going to be used on an open world like say RDR3 or GTA6? In no way would either of those games need to pump more than 2.5gb of data from the SSD into RAM in any extended example. I mean, they could let you fly through the open world using a car going at 500km/h, but again, no developer worth his salt is going to put the time or resources into asset details when the world is flying last you at break neck speeds and details cannot be observed.

So at this point I dont see any way the PS5s SSD speed, while an impressive feat from Sony, is going to add anything to game detail.or design over and above what the XSX will.

This isn't a thread trying to downplay the actual speed of the PS5 SSD, or trying to say the XSXs SSD is just as fast, as it isnt. I am actually really interested to see where I might be wrong.

 

[iHaunter]

At the very least, Playstation's first parties will take advantage of it. I expect the New Horizon Zero Dawn game to have far higher quality textures and a much more vast world. No LODS babybee

 

[GHG]

Gravity Rush 3.

Do it Sony you cowards.

 

[Xplainin]

Gravity Rush 3.

Do it Sony you cowards.

For sure games like that are gonna blow what a traditional HDD could ever think of doing, but in those fast paced games devs will use the new tools for efficiency like VRS, Mesh Shading and culling to reduce the required compute power needed traditionally.

 

[bumleforce]

I think the SSD ps5 has will be good for fighting games as you will get into a match even faster. Same with racing games. Outside of that just the initial loads.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

Time travel games where the environment can change rapidly around the player.

But also a new type of multiplayer game would be possible whereby players can portal hop across a vast map to defend or attack areas of interest.

 

[Xplainin]

I think the SSD ps5 has will be good for fighting games as you will get into a match even faster. Same with racing games. Outside of that just the initial loads.

Yep agree.

 

[Captain Hero]

Now give me a Motorstorm game

 

[Xplainin]

Time travel games where the environment can change rapidly around the player.

But also a new type of multiplayer game would be possible whereby players can portal hop across a vast map to defend or attack areas of interest.

We saw that with Medium, changing the scene instaniously. Maybe in a scene that is moving quickly and changing on the fly there could be a difference.
Medium was quite stagnant.

 

[Empire Strikes Back]

Having a fast streaming from disk to RAM makes you have more effective RAM, the whole 30s to 1s thing. Now you need to design a game that requires that much effective RAM and you’re done. I’m sure your game could be downgraded to run on a disk with half of the speed, but then the question becomes “would it be worth $60 in comparison with the other version?” or “is it even playable?”.

This is only one aspect of it, though. You have things like the UE5 demo that not only the flying part requires extreme streaming of geometry, but Nanite in itself is based on that. Then that streaming concept now influences graphics, etc.

I’m no dev, but as a player that likes to watch and know what tricks devs use there’s one thing I know for sure: give something to them and they will make things you’d never imagine. It has been like that since ever, expect no different from the I/O leap from both next-gen consoles.

 

[megreotsugua]

Any game can be created even if it has only HDD. But asset fidelity would be compromised.

If horizon zero dawn 1 put a game mechanic that you can mount a flying robot and you can fly anywhere in the map, if they put that in and made it the priority, then the game wouldn't have looked as good as it is now.

If God of War made the fight between Kratos and Stranger like a dragon ball fight where they can punch each other and fly a kilometer long distance, then GoW wouldn't look as good as it is now.

The thing with the PS5 SSD is that it is so fast that it could work like a RAM functioning as a cache. So devs will not have to compromise graphics if they want to implement a game design that will have to render a lot of assets in a short amount of time.

I could imagine an inter dimensional fight between Kratos and Thor while the game still looking next-gen. Also Horizon Zero Dawn 2 with flying mechanic go anywhere you want while the game still looking better than the UE5 demo.

 

[SometimeLaterToday]

Like others have touched on already, the exclusives will probably make the best of it.

However, just like the PS3 and the PS4, full optimization for the console's architecture will only most likely happen towards the end of its lifetime, when everyone gets past adapting to it and starts treating it as a given, like with Uncharted 4, Spiderman, God Of War, HZD and Detroit: Become Human.

Though not an exclusive, whenever I played RDR2, I sometimes still couldn't believe my eyes over how Rockstar managed to create that kind of a world. Imagine what they will do with GTA 6. The only problem Rockstar will be facing in the future, will be in regards to the writers and storytelling, since the best of them have slowly but surely been leaving over time.

 

[trapanesenyc]

Gravity Rush 3.

Do it Sony you cowards.

100000% yes. A fully vertical city that is more detailed and occupied than #2. Also being able to fly exponentially faster is the perfect way to show off the SSD.

 

[vpance]

Open worlds are used as another example. So how much data is going to be used on an open world like say RDR3 or GTA6? In no way would either of those games need to pump more than 2.5gb of data from the SSD into RAM in any extended example. I mean, they could let you fly through the open world using a car going at 500km/h, but again, no developer worth his salt is going to put the time or resources into asset details when the world is flying last you at break neck speeds and details cannot be observed.

Cerny said around 4GB worth of assets for what's on screen at any moment is what they expect for next gen games. That is, if you can turn around in 0.5s which is typical for OW games then with the 9GB/s SSD that's enough to meet that mark.

With a slower SSD you might be able to make up for that by pre-caching assets in RAM, but that just takes away more of a precious resource.

 

[MayauMiao]

I expect no loading screen when I enter every building in Fallout 5.

 

[Sorc3r3r]

Any game can be created even if it has only HDD. But asset fidelity would be compromised.

If horizon zero dawn 1 put a game mechanic that you can mount a flying robot and you can fly anywhere in the map, if they put that in and made it the priority, then the game wouldn't have looked as good as it is now.

If God of War made the fight between Kratos and Stranger like a dragon ball fight where they can punch each other and fly a kilometer long distance, then GoW wouldn't look as good as it is now.

The thing with the PS5 SSD is that it is so fast that it could work like a RAM functioning as a cache. So devs will not have to compromise graphics if they want to implement a game design that will have to render a lot of assets in a short amount of time.

I could imagine an inter dimensional fight between Kratos and Thor while the game still looking next-gen. Also Horizon Zero Dawn 2 with flying mechanic go anywhere you want while the game still looking better than the UE5 demo.

This has fascinated me.
Interesting indeed.
Full disclosure, i am completely ignorant on the hardware side of the things so I'm going to trust you until diverse note.

 

[Xplainin]

Cerny said around 4GB worth of assets for what's on screen at any moment is what they expect for next gen games. That is, if you can turn around in 0.5s which is typical for OW games then with the 9GB/s SSD that's enough to meet that mark.

With a slower SSD you might be able to make up for that by pre-caching assets in RAM, but that just takes away more of a precious resource.

The majority of assets and code in RAM isn't used once and discarded. Its reoccurring. So of that 4gb, maybe 95% of it is used over and over and over. So the SSD doesnt need to feed 4gb of data into the RAM every second.

 

[megreotsugua]

The majority of assets and code in RAM isn't used once and discarded. Its reoccurring. So of that 4gb, maybe 95% of it is used over and over and over. So the SSD doesnt need to feed 4gb of data into the RAM every second.

Devs can make it 'reoccurring' or they can choose not to. And with the speed of the PS5 I/O, they don't have to do this anymore. There will be gigabytes of assets moving in and out of the RAM as you move through the world. That gigabytes of data can result in a more varied textures and/or more details likes the UE5 demo.

 

[Xplainin]

Devs can make it 'reoccurring' or they can choose not to. And with the speed of the PS5 I/O, they don't have to do this anymore. There will be gigabytes of assets moving in and out of the RAM as you move through the world. That gigabytes of data can result in a more varied textures and/or more details likes the UE5 demo.

If That's true then the size of games is going to be hundreds and hundreds of gigs each. The cost to develop is going to go through the roof, and the time to make a game will stretch even longer.

 

[turtlepowa]

I think it's good for d**k measuring contests and exclusive games, but other than that i don't see any advantages and as you don't have a direct comparison for exclusive games it'll be hard to tell what it did exactly.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The majority of assets and code in RAM isn't used once and discarded. Its reoccurring. So of that 4gb, maybe 95% of it is used over and over and over. So the SSD doesnt need to feed 4gb of data into the RAM every second.

That is how games have been designed...keyword “have been” . This frees people to do what you said when they want to not just because they have to because of RAM limitations and/or external I/O ones...

 

[Stiflers Mom]

Any SSD would be so much better than what we have in this gen.

 

[Panajev2001a]

If That's true then the size of games is going to be hundreds and hundreds of gigs each. The cost to develop is going to go through the roof, and the time to make a game will stretch even longer.

Games are already hundreds of GB, a lot of time is wasted now trying to reduce assets variety or fake it with mixing existing pieces.

 

[Lethal01]

Open world games will be a big one for many reasons.

Having more available Vram due to having to keep less assets in ram since you can stream in so much per frame. Allowing you to have higher quality or more diverse assets, And allowing for more memory intensive graphical effects.

Being able to make the world look more seamless for the same reason. for example you may be able to create a cityscape that has a bunch of openings showing an underground portion of the city that you couldn't have done at that quality if you had to keep it all in ram

Being able to seamlessly transition into giant buildings that house their own levels at any time. Some may think this is already possible but it usually has to be very carefully orchestrated OR the buildings have to be low enough quality that you can have it ready in ram for whenever the player wants to go inside.

Less restrictions on dynamic events in the city due to being able to pull any enemy, vehicles, npc, animation, etc into ram instantly.

better cutscenes, once again you can now make cuts that happen anywhere in the world without having to switch to a video file.
You could have a phone conversations between two characters doing their own thing in two totally different locations that fill the ram to the brim.

 

[Panajev2001a]

One of the examples given as to where the PS5 could outshine the XSX is in the UE5 demo when she was flying through the city at great speed. It was put that the amount of textures etc streaming quickly will be able to be fed into the PS5s RAM quicker on the PS5 Than the XSX. While this is true that the PS5s SSD will stream in quicker to the RAM, it's also true that the PS5s RAM will fed the GPU which actually draws the image, 120gbs slower than the XSXs RAM can, and the PS5s GPU is less powerful than the XSX GPU to draw the image on screen.

What allows scenes with that amount of detail and very high variety is the SSD I/O speed and latency, GPU bandwidth and GPU shading power (both systems seem evenly matched in terms of bandwidth per FLOP, unlike Xbox One X and PS4 Pro).

The problem with the new systems is that RAM only grew minimally in size compared to their predecessors: Xbox One X to XSX is a mere 4 GB more, comparing the base consoles we have a single generation c increase compared to the 16x increase we used to have.
SSD’s keeping it fed and reducing the need to keep lots of “only potentially useful” data around at a low CPU cost are a key feature of the new generation of consoles and their longevity.

 

[cormack12]

It depends, there will probably still be many use cases but they all pertain to 'detail'.

Current and cross gen
Third party games in dev will still use traditional streaming at launch. So in terms of the two boxes they both have a pool of RAM to populate. PS5 has the SSD which can complement the RAM pool. In real world terms, this could mean higher detail assets can occupy that space for use. But there is a space tradeoff. Higher detail assets means more space to store them.

Both boxes will still work in the same way, PS5 just has more useable space of the required speed/quality which means higher fidelity raw assets can be utilised. However, the extra horsepower in the Xbox can potentially be used for higher quality ray tracing etc. in that rendered environment. The PS5 can do this as well but the counterweight is the raw power and thus HQ of the Xbox. The 'real world', visual delta is just speculation, until we actually see it though. It might be large, it might be small. So it becomes a comparison of HQ assets versus HQ RT etc. Which has the biggest impact on the 'scene' for the player?


First party games built to be last gen compatible will still be designed around the limitations of the 5400rpm drive and Jaguar CPU. You'll probably get side benefits such as quicker loader screens and better texture quality due to the extra space and storage/API improvements.

First party games built specifically for the PS5 with the current streaming tech, you'll probably see a large bump in what can be pushed to the screen, but there will still be constraints like polycount budget etc. However, given the speed there should be higher fidelity raw assets and very few 'winding passages' or 'lift rides'. Having said that you are still constrained by the storage space. This is a bit of an unknown at the moment. They should theoretically be able to use all the features like dedupe that Cerny spoke about to keep sizes down while using HQ textures but we just don't know for certain yet. We'll have to wait until something like Godfall publishes its final size in GB.


New world
If first party developers update their engines to use Nanite and Lumens equivalents then they can change from traditional streaming to the new Nanite tech. However, this will be some work (and probably depends on the evaluation of the UE5 source code next year). Most Sony first parties use their own custom engines (some third parties do as well obviously, and they will need to do the same).

Changing to Nanite (or a custom equivalent) changes how the assets are rendered. But it's scalable to work across HDD and SSD. The lower the hardware, the less asset quality you can push to the screen. It remains to be seen how much the delta between a traditional SSD and the PS5 SSD is. There is also the question of diminishing returns and again, storage constraints. The PS5 might be able to theoretically push 8k assets to the screen, but games are not going to ship with them (certainly not if they are supporting PC and XsX). First party titles may use some really HQ assets for certain screen items or models. Xbox will still be able to push those assets to the screen for Nanite but not as many at the same detail, their compromises might be more 2K and 4K only or something. But then you talk about dimishing returns. For example the RoF 4K texture pack for everything was 86GB, but was only reaaaallly noticeable in certain scenes for certain items. Not everything needs to be at extreme fidelity and though polycount budget may disappear, I think storage capacity may just become another soft budget.

After the assets are loaded the XsX will have the raw grunt to have a higher level of RT again though, for example. So peripheral details like shadows might be higher quality etc. However, many studio's under MS use Unreal, so they'll be ready to jump in as of next year upon release. Sony will have a dependency on absorbing that tech into their custom engines - as will third parties like Ubisoft, EA and others.

The PS5 can/will be able to do ray tracing and can choose to leverage lumens as a 'good enough alternative for RT' but the XsX is simply more powerful so in future, a PS5 studio may choice to use lumens because of the low cost but it isn't as 'poppy' as true RT. They may choose to actually use whatever RT their console is capable of as well. MS studio's may choose to use UE5 but also leverage the power in their machine to have full RT (rather than lumens) for a heavier/distimguishable difference from the PS5.

So basically I think it comes down to which is going to have the biggest impact going forward. HQ assets or HQ RT when compared to lumens or RT from a less powerful GPU. First party titles on PS5 will also be able to leverage that travelling in the world speed as well at high velocity (e.g. Spiderman/Horizon) using the HQ assets that Nanite will allow.

 

[SuperLupeRap]

100000% yes. A fully vertical city that is more detailed and occupied than #2. Also being able to fly exponentially faster is the perfect way to show off the SSD.

Sure, but what OP is saying is that can also be done on XSX perfectly fine.

I think what OP is asking is how does the PS5 SSD translate into something for the gamer that he can only experience on the PS5.

 

[TheWisp]

I hope a Sonic game releases that takes advantage of the SSD's...

 

[Xplainin]

Games are already hundreds of GB, a lot of time is wasted now trying to reduce assets variety or fake it with mixing existing pieces.

That is how games have been designed...keyword “have been” . This frees people to do what you said when they want to not just because they have to because of RAM limitations and/or external I/O ones...

The ex EA developer who did a reaction to the UE5 demo said that the little demo shown there would be a couple of hundred GB alone.
A full game by that count would be terabytes in size.
How do you feel about buying a new SSD drive for each game?
Reality is things will continue to be done the same way, just to stop games getting too big in size.

 

[Paracelsus]

Space travel with space battles and exploration could be a big thing, or large scale naval battles/large scale wars (not like an RTS), in third person as you wreck a fortress with troops, catapults and arrows from a distance.
If it's a good system I hope they don't waste it on boring OTS cinematic games.

 

[Knitted Knight]

If God of War made the fight between Kratos and Stranger like a dragon ball fight where they can punch each other and fly a kilometer long distance, then GoW wouldn't look as good as it is now.

I was going to write a list of games that would see an improvement but after reading this I went into a completely different world imagining a new DBZ game using the PS5 SSD. The possibilities are insane indeed. Thank you, it actually created hype.

 

[AudioSlave92210]

Every games: no lod transition and good texture and models quality.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The ex EA developer who did a reaction to the UE5 demo said that the little demo shown there would be a couple of hundred GB alone.
A full game by that count would be terabytes in size.
How do you feel about buying a new SSD drive for each game?
Reality is things will continue to be done the same way, just to stop games getting too big in size.

There already are hundreds of GB games and I expect developers to change a bit how the games are produced, compressed, and packaged but also maybe how they are distributed. SSD becoming a cache for network delivery and dynamic Blu-Ray installs? Hybrid methods that do not go the full hog as UE5 demo did? Games with less padding and 25 hours of content instead of 40 hours but a lot more detail?

 

[Ar¢tos]

Paired with the Zen2 cpu, the very fast SSD can create MUCH better VR games (whenever psvr2 is out). Maybe we will finally get a next-gen looking open world game on VR (Skyrim looks last gen on psvr).

 

[killatopak]

Maybe something like Asura’s Wrath planetary boss first boss battle. Except it’s not a cutscene or QTE.

 

[megreotsugua]

better cutscenes, once again you can now make cuts that happen anywhere in the world without having to switch to a video file.

And this will free up a lot of disc space so that there will be more space for high quality assets.

 

[MoreJRPG]

No doubt the PS5 will have quicker loading and resume times. On the same game the PS5 SSD will load up the RAM twice as fast as the XSX.
There's no debate on this. It is what it is.

We need to see the Velocity architecture in practice before we make these claims.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

Any and all games coming to the system. is enough of an example for you?

 

[ZywyPL]

It's really hard to predict until shown TBH. I mean, that UE5 demo was great looking, but would anyone noticed/knew it's because of the SSD, and not simply because of more graphical power and memory unless said so? I think without tech breakdowns by the devs themselves like GDC presentations it will be hard if not impossible for us, the end consumers, to tell this is possible because of this, this is possible thanks to that, without SSD this would've been impossible, and so on.

 

[geordiemp]

It's really hard to predict until shown TBH. I mean, that UE5 demo was great looking, but would anyone noticed/knew it's because of the SSD, and not simply because of more graphical power and memory unless said so? I think without tech breakdowns by the devs themselves like GDC presentations it will be hard if not impossible for us, the end consumers, to tell this is possible because of this, this is possible thanks to that, without SSD this would've been impossible, and so on.

Current gen high end PCs have enough memory and TF and dont look anything like that UE5 demo.

 

[wipeout364]

 

[Ascend]

Games are already hundreds of GB, a lot of time is wasted now trying to reduce assets variety or fake it with mixing existing pieces.

Games are so large because files are duplicated multiple times to reduce seek times and increase loading/streaming speed. That is no longer necessary with the SSDs. All else being equal, file sizes would be smaller than they are currently. Obviously higher quality assets are going to be used now, so, I don't really expect file sizes to grow that much for the consoles. At least not initially. It might even be reduced at the start of the gen.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Games are so large because files are duplicated multiple times to reduce seek times and increase loading/streaming speed. That is no longer necessary with the SSDs. All else being equal, file sizes would be smaller than they are currently. Obviously higher quality assets are going to be used now, so, I don't really expect file sizes to grow that much for the consoles. At least not initially. It might even be reduced at the start of the gen.

Which is why I do not think it is much of a problem.

 

[Azurro]

Cutscenes are going to be way better, as the game will actually be able to go between locations back and forth. The typical radio communication between player and random info dump will have a chance to actually show something on screen of what the radio operator is actually talking about.

 

[Andodalf]

We need to see the Velocity architecture in practice before we make these claims.

Beyond that, loading a game is not simply a matter for moving data to ram, a lot more has to happen, games can need loading times even with little new data. If it was just a matter of raw data throughout, so many games would have way faster loading times than they do. Look at PC games for examples. And this isn’t just a matter of I/O overhead.

 

[Xplainin]

We need to see the Velocity architecture in practice before we make these claims.

Velocity Architecture is more related to running in-game, rather than an initial boot up. Purely loading data into the RAM, PS5 will do it twice as fast.
My question is wether in game it will mean much compared to the XSX.

 

[Ascend]

Velocity Architecture is more related to running in-game, rather than an initial boot up. Purely loading data into the RAM, PS5 will do it twice as fast.
My question is wether in game it will mean much compared to the XSX.

It all depends on what the developers choose as a base streaming speed, and how much they are willing to adapt the game for specific hardware.

I don't think they will be going for anything faster than the slowest PC NVMe drives if the games are multiplatform, possibly even SATA SSDs. They want as wide an audience as possible after all.

Exclusives are another story.

 

[Xplainin]

There already are hundreds of GB games and I expect developers to change a bit how the games are produced, compressed, and packaged but also maybe how they are distributed. SSD becoming a cache for network delivery and dynamic Blu-Ray installs? Hybrid methods that do not go the full hog as UE5 demo did? Games with less padding and 25 hours of content instead of 40 hours but a lot more detail?

These are the questions I have as well.
Games cannot just increase their size to the point of taking up space required to have these full streaming assets people are thinking it will.
There are still limitations that will have to be kept.

 

[Birdo]

Just Cause 5.

 

[geordiemp]

These are the questions I have as well.
Games cannot just increase their size to the point of taking up space required to have these full streaming assets people are thinking it will.
There are still limitations that will have to be kept.

Take a 45 GB god war game, take out all duplicates, add Kraken compression. and then fill out either 1x 100 GB Blu ray or 2 x 100 GB blu ray disks.

Either way its easily doubling asset quality potentially if a dev wants to, and we can esily predict Sony first party will go ham.