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New PS4 Details: Automatic Caching Games Not Install

M

mangochutney

Member
c0de said:
So it will start caching again when you play the game again? This makes no sense at all.
Click to expand...
No, what you say is what makes no sense at all.

It wouldn't remove the cache as soon as you eject the disc.

Look at how your browser caches data. By default it will have say a 1GB cache limit. You browse around and work up 500MB of cache, you close your browser.

Does that data disappear? No.

So you open your browser the next day and browse around and some of your previous website visits load up a bit quicker, you browse some more and reach the 1GB limit.

Now, it will remove entries in the cache with the earliest last accessed dates to make way for new files - but if you never reached that 1GB limit in 10 years all the data would still be there from day one.
 
GribbleGrunger

GribbleGrunger

Dreams in Digital
RaikuHebi said:
Yoshida is using the wrong terminology. Up till now everything we've heard is about full installs in the background. Yoshida has just used the wrong word to describe it.
Click to expand...

Oh my GOD

NOT install but caching data
Click to expand...

This is what Cerney said and not once does he refer to this process as INSTALLING:

"So, what we do as the game accesses the Blu-ray disc, is we take any data that was accessed and we put it on the hard drive. And if then if there is idle time, we go ahead and copy the remaining data to the hard drive. And what that means is after an hour or two, the game is on the hard drive, and you have access, you have dramatically quicker loading... And you have the ability to do some truly high-speed streaming."
Click to expand...
 
JonathanPower

JonathanPower

Member
Commanche Raisin Toast said:
-fresh PS4
-pop in KZ
-it starts to copy over 40GB of data onto my drive as i play it
-i turn it off and put in CoD
-it starts to put in 49GB of data as i play it
-repeat until hdd almost full
-put in knack and it starts to copy over data as i play
-when it gets close to running out, the KZ data begins to delete

this is how cache works, yes? or does it delete the data from the hdd as soon as i take out the game disc? this is what i was hoping for in the other threads.
Click to expand...

Yes, exept that It's not going to install 49GB of data to the HDD. It's going to install a lot less than that, as you only need some specific data for caching.
 
R

RaikuHebi

Banned
GribbleGrunger said:
Oh my GOD
Click to expand...
In my opinion what he is trying to say is:

"The game will not be one big install at the start you have to wait for. It will install the game in the background as you play."

Otherwise it goes against everything we've heard up until now and caching doesn't seem very efficient way of doing things to me.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Hmm not sure how accurate that is. Sometimes things get lost in translation when Yoshida speaks up. :p If the PS4 really did automatic caching for games you'd figure the system would forcefully reserve 50GB of the hard drive at all times. Instead the KZSF box clearly states that it needs 45GB of free space to work.

I wouldn't get my hopes up about this.
 
I

IdreamofHIME

Member
It needs to be cleared up in an official statement, a poorly written article with spelling mistakes and people here have different meanings for the same jargon word is only adding to the confusion for me.
 
GribbleGrunger

GribbleGrunger

Dreams in Digital
RaikuHebi said:
In my opinion what he is trying to say is:

"The game will not be one big install at the start you have to wait for. It will install the game in the background as you play."

Otherwise it goes against everything we've heard up until now and caching doesn't seem very efficient way of doing things to me.
Click to expand...

So link me to what you've heard about installing. I'll post this again:

"So, what we do as the game accesses the Blu-ray disc, is we take any data that was accessed and we put it on the hard drive. And if then if there is idle time, we go ahead and copy the remaining data to the hard drive. And what that means is after an hour or two, the game is on the hard drive, and you have access, you have dramatically quicker loading... And you have the ability to do some truly high-speed streaming."
Click to expand...

Where does the creator of the PS4 say that the process is installing? Yoshida says it's NOT installing, it's caching.
 
O

omnislayer

Member
RaikuHebi said:
In my opinion what he is trying to say is:

"The game will not be one big install at the start you have to wait for. It will install the game in the background as you play."

Otherwise it goes against everything we've heard up until now and caching doesn't seem very efficient way of doing things to me.
Click to expand...
unfortunately I agree with this, I'm starting to think Yosh is using the wrong terminology here.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
JonathanPower said:
Yes, exept that It's not going to install 49GB of data to the HDD. It's going to install a lot less than that, as you only need some specific data for caching.
Click to expand...

Guess I'll just post this again then:

Gamasutra said:
However, PlayGo "is two separate linked systems," Cerny said. The other is to do with the Blu-ray drive -- to help with the fact that it is, essentially, a bit slow for next-gen games.

"So, what we do as the game accesses the Blu-ray disc, is we take any data that was accessed and we put it on the hard drive. And if then if there is idle time, we go ahead and copy the remaining data to the hard drive. And what that means is after an hour or two, the game is on the hard drive, and you have access, you have dramatically quicker loading... And you have the ability to do some truly high-speed streaming."
Click to expand...

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php?page=3

The entire game gets cached/installed (which word you use here isn't really important, and people are making way too big a deal out of it) on the HDD.
 
N

NotXbox one

Banned
bY7uu0g.png

https://twitter.com/yosp/status/372326407117889536

:)
 
GribbleGrunger

GribbleGrunger

Dreams in Digital
RoadHazard said:
Guess I'll just post this again then:



http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php?page=3

The entire game gets cached/installed (which word you use here isn't really important, and people are making way too big a deal out of it) on the HDD.
Click to expand...

He's talking about Caching which has just been verified by Yoshida. And the words ARE important. AN install is permanent and a cache isn't.

edit: You use this to prove YOUR point?! WHAT? This provides even more evidence that it's NOT installing it's caching. In other words you can't install a disc which means what Cerney is talking about and what Yoshida just verified HAS to be caching.

bY7uu0g.png
 
M

mangochutney

Member
RoadHazard said:
Guess I'll just post this again then:



http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php?page=3

The entire game gets cached/installed (which word you use here isn't really important, and people are making way too big a deal out of it) on the HDD.
Click to expand...
It is important because installing something is permanent, caching is not.

So if the console requires installation and most games turn out to be 40GB in size you'd only get 10 games on your system before you have to start deleting data.

With caching, as it is not permanent, you would get however many games will fit based on the mandatory install part - and if we take Killzone's 7GB mandatory part and said after formatting and taking away the OS requirements we assumed 450GB usable space and allowed 40GB for caching - you could fit around 58 games on your console before you had to start managing data.
 
J

jett

D-Member
mangochutney said:
How?
Click to expand...

What do you mean how? Do you think the HD and BD drive in the PS4 are magical, mystical beasts with lightning fast speed? Look at Naughty Dog games on the PS3. They do this already. All of their games take several minutes to boot up because they cache a portion of it on the HD every single time.
 
L

Lion

Member
Okay if I understood clearly. What people thought was the problem is that they would require 50GB for every game they wanted to play.

So lets say I play Killzone, it installs while I play (takes 50GB) so I don't really have to wait for the install process to happen, this we knew. The problem would come after if I wanted to play Knack and I would need also to install it and so now I would be using 100GB of the HDD space. Then if wanted to play COD I would have 150GB less on my HDD and so forth.

What this news is telling is that, after you finish with a game you will have back your 50GB install so you can utilize them on another game you might want to play. That is what differentiates the "caching" from the "install". The install implies you will lose HDD space permanently while the caching tells it only would last until you stop playing a game session of a particular game.
 
M

mangochutney

Member
jett said:
What do you mean how? Do you think the HD and BD drive in the PS4 are magical, mystical beasts with lightning fast speed? Look at Naughty Dog games on the PS3. They do this already. All of their games take several minutes to boot up because they cache a portion of it on the HD every single time.
Click to expand...
That is because it is removed after you finish playing the game. If it is not removed and kept in cache - like how every single web browser works - it doesn't need to do it every single time.

Edit: I should also add that even if they didn't take that path (which is the most efficient load-time wise, but not disk capacity wise), and went with per-session caching or limited the available cache space to say 50GB, then it still doesn't affect it as per the quotes people have posted above on how PlayGo works - whatever is required to get the game running is part of the mandatory install and anything else happens in the background - not upfront.
 
B

Byakuya769

Member
Doesn't make sense for it not to be an install given what the producer of Killzone said about jumping into the game. If this was just caching, wouldn't Killzone have to go through that 2 minute initial caching every single time you put the disc in? If you install it, you have that initial time, and every subsequent time you jump right to the menu.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
GribbleGrunger said:
He's talking about Caching which has just been verified by Yoshida. And the words ARE important. AN install is permanent and a cache isn't.
Click to expand...

The post I was replying to was claiming that the full 49 GB (or whatever) won't be cached, but a lot less. That's false. Cerny clearly says that the entire game will eventually be cached, and the game boxes we've seen clearly state space requirements consistent with the entire game being cached. And it might not be a permanent cache, but that also doesn't mean that there's just one 50 GB HDD area that's shared between all games' caches as many in this thread seem to think. I think it's much more likely that each game will take what it needs, without touching the caches of other games, until some space limit is reached. Then the least recently accessed game cache will probably be deleted to make room for new data.

mangochutney said:
With caching, as it is not permanent, you would get however many games will fit based on the mandatory install part - and if we take Killzone's 7GB mandatory part and said after formatting and taking away the OS requirements we assumed 450GB usable space and allowed 40GB for caching - you could fit around 58 games on your console before you had to start managing data.
Click to expand...

There's no 7 GB mandatory install for KZ. That's just how much data you need to download before you can start playing the digital version (although I believe it's actually 7.5 GB), it has nothing to do with the disc version. The disc version will be fully cached on the HDD as you play, you don't have a choice there.
 
B

BloodMoney

Banned
so now that reviewers have their hands on the systems... when are we going to hear if the hardware supports TRIM? This system begs for an SSD.
 
C

c0de

Member
GribbleGrunger said:
If it was permanent it would be an install and Yosh would have answered differently. This article is correct. You don't have to worry about filling your HDD up.
Click to expand...

He just wanted to make clear that you don't have to install the data - it happens automatically and works more like a cache. If it's not permanent, it is useless and will kill disks faster than many people can imagine.
 
R

RaikuHebi

Banned
GribbleGrunger said:
So link me to what you've heard about installing. I'll post this again:



Where does the creator of the PS4 say that the process is installing? Yoshida says it's NOT installing, it's caching.
Click to expand...
What you've posted there is exactly what I've said. You're just getting caught up in the semantics of caching versus installing.
 
L

Lion

Member
Is caching in the sense that you are not accessing the data directly from he BD drive but rather from the HDD.

jett said:
What do you mean how? Do you think the HD and BD drive in the PS4 are magical, mystical beasts with lightning fast speed? Look at Naughty Dog games on the PS3. They do this already. All of their games take several minutes to boot up because they cache a portion of it on the HD every single time.
Click to expand...

And I agree. The only way I think is possible is that they are able to squeeze just enough data in the beginning (or boot up) to be able to have a seamless/consistent way to deliver the data streamed from the HDD. That's why I thought Yoshida said you can still partially install games like on current consoles.
 
G

Gonff

Banned
Caching large files like that is bad for the HDD and will drastically reduce it's lifespan. I'd prefer manually installing/deleting data, personally.
 
B

Briarios

Member
I'm technologically illiterate - the most I can mange is to post useless thoughts on Internet message boards, but isn't this better? Being able to access data simultaneously from the Blu-ray and the HDD allows for more options for the developer. Isn't that how they were able to get GTAV running so well on the current gen systems? In fact, wasn't there a pop-up issue if you installed the whole game?
 
Q

QaaQer

Member
c0de said:
He just wanted to make clear that you don't have to install the data - it happens automatically and works more like a cache. If it's not permanent, it is useless and will kill disks faster than many people can imagine.
Click to expand...

I'm leaning towards this interpretation. HDD installs offer so many advantages because seek/read times are an order of magnitude quicker than for BR drives for loading and streaming data that it would be really shitty if Sony did not let devs take advantage of that.

I think Yosh is trying to get the point across that you wont have to wait 20 minutes to start playing a game, not that the game files aren't going to be on your hard drive.

If on the other hand, the PS4 will be using the disk for streaming etc, ewww.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
JonathanPower said:
You are assuming that what Cerny said means the entire game gets cached on the HDD. However, what Yoshida is saying suggests that this is a wrong assumption.
Click to expand...

How can "as the game accesses the Blu-ray disc, is we take any data that was accessed and we put it on the hard drive" mean anything else? If all data that is accessed from the BD gets put on the HDD, the entire game is gonna end up there. Then he says that "after an hour or two, the game is on the hard drive". "The game" can hardly mean anything other than "the entire game".
 
J

jett

D-Member
GribbleGrunger said:
It does make sense. You can't install a game from a disc, you can ... only ... cache ........ i....t. I'm Sooooooooo ... tired. lol
Click to expand...

It means the PS4 doesn't have the user-level option of fully installing any game you wish, whether the game itself supports it or not. Unlike the XBOX 360.
 
H

hurzelein

Member
So no Full-Disk Installation but instead the caching process every time while I play the game?

Why wouldn't Sony let me install it full, I want to get rid of the drive-noises. Playing Beyong that was the most annoying thing ever.

Why don't you give me options Sony?

___

Or am I wrong?
 
GribbleGrunger

GribbleGrunger

Dreams in Digital
RaikuHebi said:
What you've posted there is exactly what I've said. You're just getting caught up in the semantics of caching versus installing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, ok, Yoshida doesn't know what he's talking about, Cerney meant to say Installing and Yoshida was wrong about you can't fully install games on the PS4 from a disc because caching is EXACTLY the same thing. The HDD will be full from 'caching' games because there's no difference between 'caching' and 'installing'. Carry on.
 
M

Mandoric

Banned
RoadHazard said:
The post I was replying to was claiming that the full 49 GB (or whatever) won't be cached, but a lot less. That's false. Cerny clearly says that the entire game will eventually be cached, and the game boxes we've seen clearly state space requirements consistent with the entire game being cached. And it might not be a permanent cache, but that also doesn't mean that there's just one 50 GB HDD area that's shared between all games' caches as many in this thread seem to think. I think it's much more likely that each game will take what it needs, without touching the caches of other games, until some space limit is reached. Then the least recently accessed game cache will probably be deleted to make room for new data.



There's no 7 GB mandatory install for KZ. That's just how much data you need to download before you can start playing the digital version (although I believe it's actually 7.5 GB), it has nothing to do with the disc version. The disc version will be fully cached on the HDD as you play, you don't have a choice there.
Click to expand...

That's how it worked on the OG Xbox, isn't it? That was a pretty clever solution.

More clever would be letting you flag your favorite titles to stay on permanently. If this is happening, it also explains telling people the space requirements on the box.

I don't think full caching should necessarily be enforced, though. There's a lot of situations like FF's massive FMV files or the X360 titles that have an install disc/play disc split where copying everything over is useless or even hurts performance. But it wouldn't amaze me if launch titles, especially multiplats, weren't fully-baked enough to want to add this complexity.
 
C

ckohler

Member
Salvor.Hardin said:
This isn't making any sense.
Click to expand...

XN7ggxY.jpg


Please read what I'm about to post very carefully...

The PlayGo system built into the PS4 automatically installs/caches the game data onto the hard drive while you play. However, this does not remove the requirement of having the disc in the drive in order to play.

Shu simply meant you can't play a disc game without it being inserted. What he meant was that he didn't need to insert the disc during the demo because he was playing the digital download version, which does not require a disc.

The way PlayGo works for disc based games is that the entire game is slowly copied (cached) to the HDD, in the background, automatically. You don’t tell it to "install". There is no manual “install” option. It just happens in the background. They system does this for you. Here is a direct quote from Mark Cerny:

Mark Cerny said:
“So, what we do as the game accesses the Blu-ray disc, is we take any data that was accessed and we put it on the hard drive. And if then if there is idle time, we go ahead and copy the remaining data to the hard drive. And what that means is after an hour or two, the game is on the hard drive, and you have access, you have dramatically quicker loading… And you have the ability to do some truly high-speed streaming.”
Click to expand...

http://bit.ly/HlLnm0
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
hurzelein said:
instead the caching process every time while I play the game?
Click to expand...

No, clearly not, because that would make the whole exercise pointless. I'm almost positive game A's cache stays on the HDD even as you play game B and that starts getting cached. There will obviously be a limit for how many games can be cached at any one point (they probably won't allow the HDD to get completely filled up with game caches), but re-caching every game every time you play it (if you've played something else in-between) would be really dumb.
 
V

VanWinkle

Member
THANK GOODNESS. So now I basically just need to make sure I have 50GB free at all times for my physical games. That is not bad at all.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Mandoric said:
More clever would be letting you flag your favorite titles to stay on permanently. If this is happening, it also explains telling people the space requirements on the box.
Click to expand...

That would be nice, but I doubt it. It's more likely that the console just automatically deletes the least used caches when your HDD space is running out, which would kind of have the same outcome I guess.

Mandoric said:
I don't think full caching should necessarily be enforced, though. There's a lot of situations like FF's massive FMV files or the X360 titles that have an install disc/play disc split where copying everything over is useless or even hurts performance. But it wouldn't amaze me if launch titles, especially multiplats, weren't fully-baked enough to want to add this complexity.
Click to expand...

It would be clever if devs can flag certain things as "don't cache", such as video files, because those can just as well be streamed off the disc. But given the space requiremens we've seen on KZSF and COD this seems not to be the case. Rather, everything on the BD will get cached. On the plus side, that means the disc won't have to be read at all after a while, except for verifying that you own the game.
 
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