A Deeper Look at the PlayStation 5 | Hacker News Reader

A Deeper Look at the PlayStation 5

wired.com

17 pointsjhack15 comments

It's funny, as someone who grew up in the NES days (and played a little Atari and Apple ][), my reaction to every generation after the original PSX is "how could things possibly get better?". And of course, looking back now, I realize how silly I was (yes, I too bought into the hype of the PS3 "super-computer" [0]).

But the PS4/Xbone generation seems to have truly hit a high mark in fidelity, in which there is obviously room for more realistic and complex 3D visuals (especially with VR), but in which the returns seem much more diminishing than in past generations. I would be very happy with a PS5 (though not happy enough to buy it just for this) that rendered Witcher 3 with 60FPS and slightly higher quality, and near-instantaneous load times. I'm sure I'll be wowed once again by how developers take advantage of increased graphical capabilities. But the high mark that's already been reached is satisfying enough. It helps that there's been a renaissance of great indie gaming that hand-drawn (Cuphead) and retro (Shovel Knight, Undertale, Minecraft-likes) games in which graphical rendering does not require continued leaps in next-gen graphics hardware.

[0] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-what-...

For many years, I've felt that model and texture detail in games has been good enough. If games didn't progress much beyond 2010-2011 era graphics, I would be OK with it. The only thing that would blow me away (for a realistic art style) would be better lighting, and ray-tracing seems to be necessary for that. I'm interested in what can be done in a non-realistic style, like Borderlands.

> "how could things possibly get better?"

For everybody else other than Nintendo and Apple, the answer to that seems to be "Better graphics!"

The DS, the 3DS, the Wii, the WiiU, the Switch, the iPad and even the Apple TV Remote have given me more ways to enjoy games than just better graphics.

Looking at eg The last of us part 2, which is coming to ps4 and not being a ps5 exclusive, and various videos on Youtube (eg Unreal engine speed level designs, Quixel material libs), I think the huge moves forward these last years have been in the toolchain.

Now, even small studios (not meaning Naughty dog here) can make really high quality games, since they can buy/license the engine, textures and models, and focus on the game mechanics.

What the next generation brings is more firepower, which likely translates to more dynamic NPC and enemy behaviors. We'll also see the removal of artificial barriers meant to hide eg load times (as mentioned in the article), or workarounds.

Not in the game or console business, just my observations and speculations.

edit: speed level designs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUM2Qc9TP9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFnR43ms1k

quixel, megascans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fC20NWhx4s

etc etc

"The controller (which history suggests will one day be called the DualShock 5, though Cerny just says "it doesn't have a name yet") does have some features Cerny's more interested in acknowledging. One is "adaptive triggers" that can offer varying levels of resistance to make shooting a bow and arrow feel like the real thing—the tension increasing as you pull the arrow back—or make a machine gun feel far different from a shotgun. It also boasts haptic feedback far more capable than the rumble motor console gamers are used to, with highly programmable voice-coil actuators located in the left and right grips of the controller."

I didn't think of having haptic feedback in the ps5 controllers. It's going to be interesting on how it will turn out.

I think this little nugget was interesting, speaking of reducing load times:

> To minimize [rotating harddrive seek time], developers will often duplicate certain game assets in order to form contiguous data blocks, which the drive can read faster.

> "If you look at a game like Marvel's Spider-Man," Cerny says, "there are some pieces of data duplicated 400 times on the hard drive."

400 times! That's a lot. I wonder to what extent or ratio the game is simply redundancy. Likely only smaller assets are duplicated.

edit: also,

> However, game installation (which is mandatory, given the speed difference between the SSD and the optical drive)

I guess this means only a cursory disc check will be performed at game start, from then the rest will be from ssd. That'd be great.

One of Spiderman's developers gave a very interesting talk about this (and more) during the Game Developers Conference this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDhKyIZd3O8

> I guess this means only a cursory disc check will be performed at game start, from then the rest will be from ssd. That'd be great.

That's already the case on the PS4 and Xbox One. The disc is only used to install the game to the hard drive and for copy protection I guess.

Aha, that is likely the case, but I still experience the disc (Spiderman, PS4) spinning for quite a long time after starting the game before spinning down.

Ie, not just a "is the correct disc inserted?"-check. Perhaps some kind of late release of file handle or something, or optimization from the ps4 itself.

I'm glad somebody is sticking with a sensible naming scheme.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my Azure Edge GPU system for Legacy Games 3.11 for Workgroups (built on NT Technology.

The one with SuperDuperSpeed USB4 Gen 4x2 Type-C ports?

Next Microsoft console will be called "Xbox", just "Xbox".

Which is actually more confusing.

> Like the PS5, Scarlett will boast a CPU based on AMD’s Ryzen line and a GPU based on its Navi family

> “There is ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU hardware,” he says

It'd be great if AMD would release a PC version of that GPU soon. The market desperately needs the competition.

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