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PS5’s SSD Combined with Unreal Engine 5 Will Lead to “Big Changes” in Level Design, Developer Says

Rea

Member

"I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline," says White Paper Games' Pete Bottomley.

“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,” Bottomley said. “When you’re creating the larger 3D games that we tend to design at White Paper, streaming the content for the player and knowing how to approach the design of the levels to get them to the most optimal performance takes a lot of time. With quicker loading times, you have less need to design features into loading screens along with the streaming of the content at runtime. Unreal Engine 5 removes the need for this side of development and instead ‘chunks’ the content under the hood. I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline.”
 

"I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline," says White Paper Games' Pete Bottomley.

“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,” Bottomley said. “When you’re creating the larger 3D games that we tend to design at White Paper, streaming the content for the player and knowing how to approach the design of the levels to get them to the most optimal performance takes a lot of time. With quicker loading times, you have less need to design features into loading screens along with the streaming of the content at runtime. Unreal Engine 5 removes the need for this side of development and instead ‘chunks’ the content under the hood. I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline.”
Not just talking about PS5, why only mention PS5 instead of next generation?
 

laynelane

Member
Not just talking about PS5, why only mention PS5 instead of next generation?

This is the only thing I saw that mentioned other consoles:

Of course, we’re still in the early days of this console generation, and it’s probably going to be a while before we see developers really beginning to get the best out of the new consoles. Even so, the potential is quite exciting, and spells some interesting things for the future.

Did I miss something?
 
This is the only thing I saw that mentioned other consoles:

Of course, we’re still in the early days of this console generation, and it’s probably going to be a while before we see developers really beginning to get the best out of the new consoles. Even so, the potential is quite exciting, and spells some interesting things for the future.

Did I miss something?

“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,”

"The faster SSD's", unless PS5 has more than one SSD inside he's talking about multiple SSD's which is obviously the next generation consoles not just PS5. They're also a multiplatform developer, they're not just talking about PS5.
 

93xfan

Banned
“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,”

"The faster SSD's", unless PS5 has more than one SSD inside he's talking about multiple SSD's which is obviously the next generation consoles not just PS5. They're also a multiplatform developer, they're not just talking about PS5.

While I’m partially inclined to believe you, there are those who say only the PS5 can do certain things in Unreal Engine 5. And despite what you might have heard, they’ve only been wrong a few times on the subject… thus far. Who to believe…
 

laynelane

Member
“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,”

"The faster SSD's", unless PS5 has more than one SSD inside he's talking about multiple SSD's which is obviously the next generation consoles not just PS5. They're also a multiplatform developer, they're not just talking about PS5.

Despite PS5 not being in the direct quote, I thought the introductory sentence to the quote implied it:

Speaking in a recent interview with GamingBolt, Bottomley said that the PS5’s SSD, especially when combined with what Unreal Engine 5 will enable developers to do, will allow for some big changes in the future to level design in games in general.

As does the title. Either way, there's no doubt what you're saying is factually correct. We'll see the benefits across both systems.
 
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While I’m partially inclined to believe you, there are those who say only the PS5 can do certain things in Unreal Engine 5. And despite what you might have heard, they’ve only been wrong a few times on the subject… thus far. Who to believe…
Well we all know who the usual suspects are, on this occasion a multiplatform developer is talking about next generation in general. Unless they intend to build a PS5 version separately to other versions and I don't think that's the case.
 

Rea

Member
“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,”

"The faster SSD's", unless PS5 has more than one SSD inside he's talking about multiple SSD's which is obviously the next generation consoles not just PS5. They're also a multiplatform developer, they're not just talking about PS5.

Edit: he's probably talking about faster SSD of ps5. Have to wait for full interview.

 
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Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
I wonder why they didnt ask about xbox series and PC SSD's.

Edit: poster above seems to have a plausible explanation.
 
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It will for sure

It's just 99.9 percent of games are still designed on old engines and just scaled up

I'll be prehistoric before games are actually built from the ground up to take advantage of current-gen

& Covid is only making things worse
I dont think it will take that long. It will be the exclusives on the new consoles only that will have that first, especially with this engine.

This is where the PC will actually hold consoles back. Too many variables, drivers, different parts and not having SSDs as standard will hamper their development.
 

cormack12

Gold Member
It's only first parties that will take advantage of this ultimately. Any game that needs to run on last gen can't have its level design built around SSD (H:FW, GT7 etc.). After cross gen, multi platform games will need to decide if they want to drop PC HDD support purely for SSD. And then lastly, third parties (and first parties wanting to port over to the PC, as Sony are doing), would need to specify PCIe x 4 as the minimum. It's just not going to happen for many years.

SSD in itself will completely change game design for consoles, but with the caveat that any PC game also lists SSD as the minimum requirement. Let's get there first before nitpicking over SSD speeds. This is also the same for games like Flight Sim which have SSD as recommended but not minimum. Ultimately at the base level, it needs to support spinning disks. You can't remove it from the technical design discussions of 'how will we get this done on a 7200rpm HDD as well?'
 

kuncol02

Banned

"I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline," says White Paper Games' Pete Bottomley.

“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,” Bottomley said. “When you’re creating the larger 3D games that we tend to design at White Paper, streaming the content for the player and knowing how to approach the design of the levels to get them to the most optimal performance takes a lot of time. With quicker loading times, you have less need to design features into loading screens along with the streaming of the content at runtime. Unreal Engine 5 removes the need for this side of development and instead ‘chunks’ the content under the hood. I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline.”
Guy who developed two walking sims is definitely qualified in terms of talking about level and game design. Not every developer is equally worth citing.
 

hlm666

Member

"I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline," says White Paper Games' Pete Bottomley.

“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,” Bottomley said. “When you’re creating the larger 3D games that we tend to design at White Paper, streaming the content for the player and knowing how to approach the design of the levels to get them to the most optimal performance takes a lot of time. With quicker loading times, you have less need to design features into loading screens along with the streaming of the content at runtime. Unreal Engine 5 removes the need for this side of development and instead ‘chunks’ the content under the hood. I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline.”
So that made me go look what they make, figuring I may have missed some indie open world game or something.


Not exactly what I was expecting to find.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
i have been saying this many times.
Currently not alot of games utilizing the SSD due to cross gen/ BC.

give it 2-3 more years you will start to see more and more games utilizing it, like RE VIllage.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
i have been saying this many times.
Currently not alot of games utilizing the SSD due to cross gen/ BC.

give it 2-3 more years you will start to see more and more games utilizing it, like RE VIllage.

Village is cross gen.
 

Shmunter

Member
But people here keep saying faster SSD doesn't really matter beyond faster load times and you could do everything with an HDD, and I'm PRETTY sure the average GAF member knows more about this than some game developer (or Mark Cerny for that matter).
Speed to completion in computer related tasks is everything. GPU, CPU, Ram....and finally secondary storage is coming to the party.

You can stream of a DVD, you can stream off a HDD, and now the fasted SSD's. Just like you can math on a cpu from the 90's or render real-time gfx on a GPU from the early 2000's. But each generation improves upon the last by giving more scope for better results and is the foundation to what is possible.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
cdc.jpg
 
But people here keep saying faster SSD doesn't really matter beyond faster load times and you could do everything with an HDD, and I'm PRETTY sure the average GAF member knows more about this than some game developer (or Mark Cerny for that matter).
I doubt that has been said very many times.
 

KAL2006

Banned
I remember the days when the big changes happen on launch or atleast a year after.

Currently there isn't a single first party exclusive PS5 announced since the release of Ratchet. So I guess we will have to wait until 2023/2024 for these types of games.
 

"I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline," says White Paper Games' Pete Bottomley.

“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,” Bottomley said. “When you’re creating the larger 3D games that we tend to design at White Paper, streaming the content for the player and knowing how to approach the design of the levels to get them to the most optimal performance takes a lot of time. With quicker loading times, you have less need to design features into loading screens along with the streaming of the content at runtime. Unreal Engine 5 removes the need for this side of development and instead ‘chunks’ the content under the hood. I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline.”
Huh. I guess Sony's check finally cleared since they're doing a PR statement months after UE5 reveal.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Personally this is great but I'm more excited to see how direct storage and DX12U will expand this on PC.

We've had all this high end kit for years in advance and haven't seen the true impact on games like we're seeing on consoles like the Plantation 5.

This is the most exciting paradigm shift in gaming since the advent of 3d polygon graphics (aka PS1 era). So many new rendering techniques, advancements, and new tricks finally.

People sleep on this thinking they need to see more CG/Pixar-esque visual upgrades when it's all about density of environments and immediacy (to me).

Am I off topic enough?

Tlldr

Let us pray™
 
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jigglet

Banned
Kutaragi said that the PS3 is more powerful than the PS5? Any Proof for this bullshit??
It’s all tongue in cheek of course. But the hyperbole around PS2 and PS3 would have conjured images of a console much more powerful than PS5. It takes a lot of horse power to render literally every hair on a head or to simulate the matrix.
 
I'm getting really fucking tired of this, whatever the fuck it is, glorification of a fucking 1TB soldered storage component or whatever the fuck. There's nothing to fucking talk about. It's not revolutionary and it's nothing special. There's nothing fucking great about it. It will be outdated tech in a year.

This is no better than the PS3's CELL Dragon Ball Z CPU and Xbone's POWER OF THE CLOUD.
 
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"I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline," says White Paper Games' Pete Bottomley.

“There’s a dual approach we can take advantage of as developers not only with the faster SSD’s but also in combination with Unreal Engine 5,” Bottomley said. “When you’re creating the larger 3D games that we tend to design at White Paper, streaming the content for the player and knowing how to approach the design of the levels to get them to the most optimal performance takes a lot of time. With quicker loading times, you have less need to design features into loading screens along with the streaming of the content at runtime. Unreal Engine 5 removes the need for this side of development and instead ‘chunks’ the content under the hood. I think you’ll see some big changes to level design with these two upgrades in the development pipeline.”
It will be a while before we see anything major. My guess is the second wave of games we'll see what the SSD is about. Developers will also have to re-build their asset streaming pipeline around the huge amount of bandwidth the SSD provides. I think we'll see some mind blowing stuff once it happens. Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart was only a taste.

We already know the SSD has played a a big role in the first wave of games on PS5, especially when it comes to streaming high resolution textures and geometry in and out of RAM, we also had a Sucker Punch developer recently state that the SSD allowed them to run cut scenes in realtime with accurate lip-sync which was not achievable on PS4.

The future looks bright.
 
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