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PS4 Architect Mark Cerny: 'Cloud won't work well to boost graphics'

P

pslayer666

Member
Didn't he already say this in that IGN interview a few days ago?

cloud is great for online matchmaking and such he said, but not really for graphics etc.....


I think he's right, don't you?
 
K

King_Moc

Banned
So he's saying that a measly few MB every second (if you're lucky) being sent at a latency of > 50ms won't be able to do much graphics wise? Colour me shocked.
 
S

StanTowers

Member
It's not like MS ever claimed they would boost graphics with the cloud, right? All they said was with cloud offloading physics, ai and stuff would be possible.
 
R

Row

Banned
StanTowers said:
It's not like MS ever claimed they would boost graphics with the cloud, right? All they said was with cloud offloading physics, ai and stuff would be possible.
Click to expand...

Yes, but they don't deny the possibility and are clearly hoping such a line of thinking gets latched onto by dense consumers
 
F

fastford58

Member
StanTowers said:
It's not like MS ever claimed they would boost graphics with the cloud, right? All they said was with cloud offloading physics, ai and stuff would be possible.
Click to expand...

I am pretty sure that near the beginning of the cloud talk there was talk of better graphics through the power of the cloud. The cloud is a miasma of bullshit.
 
J

jaosobno

Member
StanTowers said:
It's not like MS ever claimed they would boost graphics with the cloud, right? All they said was with cloud offloading physics, ai and stuff would be possible.
Click to expand...

How the Xbox One draws more processing power from cloud computing

"So when you walk into a room, it might be that for the first second or two the fidelity of the lighting is done by the console, but then, as the cloud catches up with that, the data comes back down to the console and you have incredibly realistic lighting," Matt Booty, General Manager of Redmond Game Studios and Platforms, told Ars.
Click to expand...
 
Y

Yagharek

Member
StanTowers said:
It's not like MS ever claimed they would boost graphics with the cloud, right? All they said was with cloud offloading physics, ai and stuff would be possible.
Click to expand...

When MS state "infinite powar of the cloud" they want you to make the assumption without them having to say it.
 
F

Frumix

Suffering From Success
jaosobno said:
"So when you walk into a room, it might be that for the first second or two the fidelity of the lighting is done by the console, but then, as the cloud catches up with that, the data comes back down to the console and you have incredibly realistic lighting," Matt Booty, General Manager of Redmond Game Studios and Platforms, told Ars.
Click to expand...
Yay! I love pop-in.
 
B

Birathen

Member
StanTowers said:
It's not like MS ever claimed they would boost graphics with the cloud, right? All they said was with cloud offloading physics, ai and stuff would be possible.
Click to expand...

Wasnt there some pr junk being flinged about how the Xbone with the ~cloud magic~ would be ten times as powerful then a Xbone without it? Or was that befor a Xbone without clodacces wouldnt work at all?
 
N

nib95

Banned
jaosobno said:
How the Xbox One draws more processing power from cloud computing
Click to expand...

Utter tripe. Microsoft is so full of shit. This new console release has really exposed them. Unless all the lighting is pre-baked (the opposite of next-gen) and the scenes are set up in such a way that they do not need to be updated very often at all (extreme linear, point and click etc), this would never work. Next gen is all about dynamism, from lighting, shadows, procedural simulations, waves, damage, physics etc, all latency sensitive tasks. That stuff is ether to the Cloud, and absolutely not suitable.

Best use of cloud is simply as dedicated servers for improved latency and reduced lag in online gaming.
 
N

Neuromancer

Member
StanTowers said:
It's not like MS ever claimed they would boost graphics with the cloud, right? All they said was with cloud offloading physics, ai and stuff would be possible.
Click to expand...

"One example of that might be lighting," [General Manager of Redmond Game Studios and Platforms Matt Booty] continued. "Let’s say you’re looking at a forest scene and you need to calculate the light coming through the trees, or you’re going through a battlefield and have very dense volumetric fog that’s hugging the terrain. Those things often involve some complicated up-front calculations when you enter that world, but they don’t necessarily have to be updated every frame. Those are perfect candidates for the console to offload that to the cloud—the cloud can do the heavy lifting, because you’ve got the ability to throw multiple devices at the problem in the cloud."

Booty added that things like physics modeling, fluid dynamics, and cloth motion were all prime examples of effects that require a lot of up-front computation that could be handled in the cloud without adding any lag to the actual gameplay. And the server resources Microsoft is putting toward these calculations will be much greater than a local Xbox One could handle on its own. "A rule of thumb we like to use is that [for] every Xbox One available in your living room we’ll have three of those devices in the cloud available," he said.

While cloud computation data doesn't have to be updated and synced with every frame of game data, developers are still going to have to manage the timing and flow of this cloud computing to avoid noticeable changes in graphic quality, Booty said. “Without getting too into the weeds, think about a lighting technique like ambient occlusion that gives you all the cracks and crevices and shadows that happen not just from direct light. There are a number of calculations that have to be done up front, and as the camera moves the effect will change. So when you walk into a room, it might be that for the first second or two the fidelity of the lighting is done by the console, but then, as the cloud catches up with that, the data comes back down to the console and you have incredibly realistic lighting."

Does that mean that Xbox One games will feature graphics that suddenly get much more realistic as complex data finally finishes downloading from the cloud? "Game developers have always had to wrestle with levels of detail... managing where and when you show details is part of the art of games," Booty said. "One of the exciting challenges going forward is a whole new set of techniques to manage what is going to be offloaded to the cloud and what’s going to come back.”
Click to expand...
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/...s-more-processing-power-from-cloud-computing/
 
T

toddhunter

Member
On a related note, the ios game starbase orion was just patched to allow (optional) cloud processing for AI. Apparently this results in a 5x performance boost assuming your net is working.

Thought it was just worth throwing out there for context. This is where Microsoft can be somewhat correct with their claims of 10x the power, whilst letting other outrageous ones run free.
 
B

Bedlam

Member
Yagharek said:
When MS state "infinite powar of the cloud" they want you to make the assumption without them having to say it.
Click to expand...
And let's not forget the oddly specific (and hilarious) claim that the cloud makes the Xbone 40 times stronger than the 360 (only 10 times without cloud). That also suggests it affects everything, graphics included:

“It’s also been stated that the Xbox One is ten times more powerful than the Xbox 360, so we’re effectively 40 times greater than the Xbox 360 in terms of processing capabilities [using the cloud]. If you look to the cloud as something that is no doubt going to evolve and grow over time, it really spells out that there’s no limit to where the processing power of Xbox One can go.”
 
S

StanTowers

Member
Ok the articles made me cringe. I haven't really followed news under the cloud aspect. Man, those journalists have been had.
 
Audioboxer

Audioboxer

Member
toddhunter said:
On a related note, the ios game starbase orion was just patched to allow (optional) cloud processing for AI. Apparently this results in a 5x performance boost assuming your net is working.

Thought it was just worth throwing out there for context. This is where Microsoft can be somewhat correct with their claims of 10x the power, whilst letting other outrageous ones run free.
Click to expand...

There's a difference between a single, simple game getting benefit out of an internet connection, and something that's touted as an OS-wide benefit.
 
S

Spinluck

Member
BREAKING NEWS: Microsoft responds to Cerny's statement.

"With our billions of transistors and Kinect 2, 8GB of GDDR5 RAM was an afterthought during development".

"Knack sucks".
 
E

Eusis

Member
Bedlam said:
And let's not forget the oddly specific (and hilarious) claim that the cloud makes the Xbone 40 times stronger than the 360. That also suggests it affects everything, graphics included:

“It’s also been stated that the Xbox One is ten times more powerful than the Xbox 360, so we’re effectively 40 times greater than the Xbox 360 in terms of processing capabilities [using the cloud]. If you look to the cloud as something that is no doubt going to evolve and grow over time, it really spells out that there’s no limit to where the processing power of Xbox One can go. I think that’s a very exciting proposition, not only for Australians, but anyone else who’s going to pick up the Xbox One console.”
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's part of why some of us were further put off by Microsoft: for the most part everything Sony was saying was at least within the realm of reality now, but the cloud has ended up being their "4D", except rather than just a stupid marketing term to sound cool it's playing up the capabilities of something that exists above and beyond what reality will even permit. You could probably get some really neat asynchronous functionality as Forza's showing, but not the system magically running that much better.
 
T

Tobor

Member
toddhunter said:
On a related note, the ios game starbase orion was just patched to allow (optional) cloud processing for AI. Apparently this results in a 5x performance boost assuming your net is working.

Thought it was just worth throwing out there for context. This is where Microsoft can be somewhat correct with their claims of 10x the power, whilst letting other outrageous ones run free.
Click to expand...

That game is turn based. Latency won't be an issue.
 
A

abic

Banned
Neuromancer said:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/...s-more-processing-power-from-cloud-computing/
Click to expand...

Theoretically what he's saying is possible - carefully managed game design and engineering graphics design could see some use but for very specific types of games.

The bigger issue is I don't know right now why developers would dedicate bandwidth to this.

The point of consoles is standardizing the end user platform so you design against one spec as opposed to pc. To be fair there is already some heterogeneity on consoles with the different skus but focusing on the issue - offloading these calculations to the cloud introduces heterogeneity in the end user platform and numerous issues occur like :

Work is just as much of not more but gets enjoyed only by a subset of players.

Pop in

All cloud computing must be non vital, if not game is rendered useless after servers go offline.

Increased QA QC of user experience depending on user network environment.



In general the history of cloud computing as used on the PC platform for billion dollar titles like Wow, Maple Story, lineage say that graphics have to be computed locally while data (stats, hit verification, entity location on map) can be computed remotely.

Plainly speaking, Microsoft is talking horseshit.
 
A

abic

Banned
iMax said:
I can see it being used for AI, crowds, maybe trees. Not necessarily improved graphics, though.
Click to expand...

Remember, none of this cloud stuff is exclusive to Microsoft.

Any platform, any developer and any publisher can use the cloud.

If it makes Xbox One 40x more powerful, it also makes PS4 40x more powerful.

Cloud is not a Microsoft invention.
 
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