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Ok, time to ask, SSDs and still we have pop in.

This is relevant to both Xbox and PS5, but as PS5 has a faster SSD it's even more of a glaring example.
So we an SSD in the PS5 and XSX that promised us no load times and no pop in.
Well, 3 years in and we still have the same issue with pop in that we had in the HDD era of last gen.
Wether its first party games or third party, there is no difference.
With the PS5 we have the SSD giving the maximum speed straight out of the box, unlike the XSX which relies alot more on software, so it's not going to get any faster in the future than it is now.
To me it looks like the cause of the pop in has nothing to do with the SSDs, but rather it is always going to be limited by the RAM and bandwidth, so by my reckoning it's something that we will still have throughout this generation.
With the XSX maybe the Sampler Feedback Streaming could help mitigate this once it gets exploited, but we don't know yet.

Do any of you still think the SSDs are going to erase pop in down the track?
 

MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially

Haemi

Member
There are two types of pop-in:
1. loading related. Caused by small bandwith or other bottlenecks (decompression) on the way from the drive to where the data is needed.
2. Draw distance related pop-in. To reduce load on cpu, gpu objects at a greater distance are shown with less detail or are completely removed. Has nothing to to with the harddrive.
 
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When will people realize ssd's are not magic unicorns. I cant wait till ratchet and clank gets ported to pc and people are running it on potato ssd's.
It's not about SSD speed at all. It's about how I/O is used. On PC I/O (decompression and stuff) is done by the CPU. Now just look at Spiderman and what kind of CPU it needs just to run above 60fps. And even with the most powerful CPU the game still drops under 60fps in some scenarios where it's locked 60fps on PS5 with a potato CPU (around Ryzen 2700).
 
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skit_data

Member
We’re 2 years into the gen, most games are crossgen anyway so engines aren’t built to utilize the faster storage. I think it’ll probably be another 2 years before we really see big games that have been built entirely around the specs outside of some first party titles.
 
You need to play ratchet. The industry needs more insomniacs
Rift Apart didn't revolutionise gaming at all. The part where you keep travelling through portals at the start were a series of disguised loading screens. Then the rest of the game is just semi-open world ratchet.

Real SSD revolution would be being able to rift yourself over to other planets almost instantly rather than use the spaceship like in previous games.
 
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SLB1904

Banned
While some engines are not designed particularly well, pop in is a loading issue fundamentally so yes it does have to do with the drive being used.
Don't chat shit. Every engine has a limititation how far it can render. Guerrilla explain that in 2013 with killzone tech talk. If the engine is program to render a certain distance. There is nothing the drive can't do because there isn't nothing there to load
Rift Apart didn't revolutionise gaming at all. The part where you keep travelling through portals at the start were a series of disguised loading screens. Then the rest of the game is just semi-open world ratchet.
Where in the hell you got this from? Did you just made up on spot?
 
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Don't chat shit. Every engine has a limititation how far it can render. Guerrilla explain that in 2013 with killzone tech talk. If the engine is program to render a certain distance. There is nothing the drive can't do because there isn't nothing there to load

Where in the hell you got this from? Did you just made up on spot?

Don't know about you but I played the game m8.
 
Doesn't matter how good hardware is if developers dont advantage of it
It's so funny we live in a time where there's one platform (NSW) that's so ridiculously underpowered, developers are basically forced to put some effort into optimization and then still games run at sub 30 most of the time. And then there're two other platforms (XSX/PS5) that are so powerful that the same developers just don't care about proper optimization, they just shave off a couple months development time and throw their assets into their engines build tools and call it a day, again resulting in subpar performance but for different reasons.
 

[Sigma]

Member
I dunno why really but ive never been more annoyed by pop ins within the first 2 years of owning a new console. I dunno if it's because the games look so clean for the most part that pop ins tend to stand out more or what. It's annoying in GT7, in the the tower in Returnal. I mean, it's there in the intro in Horizon Forbidden West. Like you got to be fuckin kidding me? The intro? Like you don't see that? You couldn't fuckin clean that shit up on the PS5 version Guerrilla?🤮 I saw that, I immediately closed application.
 
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SLB1904

Banned
How is it based on feelings? Rift Apart didn't revolutionise game design, it's that simple.

In what way did it revolutionise game design?
Fighting the boss through dimensions without loading

Loading difference levels assets on the flight hitting a gem.

And I'm not even talking about the stuff you saw in the trailers.

The question is. If ratchet didn't revolutionise game design.
Please show me another game that does the same. Just one please go on
 
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Fighting the boss through dimensions without loading

Loading difference levels assets on the flight hitting a gem.

And I'm not even talking about the stuff you saw in the trailers.

The question is. If ratchet didn't revolutionise game design.
Please show me another game that does the same. Just one please go on

>Fighting the boss through dimensions without loading

This boss?


Disguised loading screen into an extremely small arena where you can't even travel outside of it to explore the rest of the planet. Just like the portal sequence at the start where you transition from a portal into a LITERAL on rails set piece into another portal into a tiny pirate ship to fight some bad guys.

>Loading difference levels assets on the flight hitting a gem.

???

If you could warp between planets in an instant rather than using the spaceship that would be revolutionary. This game isn't at all. I can bring up countless games which have disguised loading screens if you want.

 
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SLB1904

Banned
>Fighting the boss through dimensions without loading

This boss?


Disguised loading screen into an extremely small arena where you can't even travel outside of it to explore the rest of the planet. Just like the portal sequence at the start where you transition from a portal into a LITERAL on rails set piece into another portal into a tiny pirate ship to fight some bad guys.

>Loading difference levels assets on the flight hitting a gem.

???

If you could warp between planets in an instant rather than using the spaceship that would be revolutionary. This game isn't at all. I can bring up countless games which have disguised loading screens if you want.

I thought you play the game. What happened ?
 
The broken planet my dude. The broken planet. And the boss I'm talking about is not nefarious lol

Do you mean the blizon crystals on the broken planet?

You realise these crystals just warp you to a small closed off area. Basically the same as the little pocket dimensions you open with the rift tether. That's nothing, show me warping between actual planets without needing the spaceship to disguise the loading times and i'll be impressed.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Nobody has promised there will never be pop-in again. Yes, pop-in due to data not loading fast enough should more or less be eliminated (have you ever seen a texture pop in late in a PS5 game?), but you are still limited by how much stuff the GPU can render at once. It can't render the whole world at full detail all the way to the horizon, that should be pretty obvious.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
It's a shame SSDs are only used for fast loading times and nothing else rather than revolutionising game design like we were told it would.

I wonder if we'll see truly revolutionary games design this gen. As long as developers create games for the largest possible market, ie. previous gen machines and low-specced PCs without SSDs, we'll only enjoy faster loading times. I'd hoped that Sony's PS5 exclusives games would show the way, but now Sony is also targeting the PC market so who knows if the higher-ups at Sony are willing to publish games with such steep PC requirements.
 

Beechos

Member
Do you mean the blizon crystals on the broken planet?

You realise these crystals just warp you to a small closed off area. Basically the same as the little pocket dimensions you open with the rift tether. That's nothing, show me warping between actual planets without needing the spaceship to disguise the loading times and i'll be impressed.
I played and beat the game day 1 and dont remember much from it either lol. Maybe they mean those little hidden areas in every level where you go into the rift and theres some power ups/outfits.
 
I wonder if we'll see truly revolutionary games design this gen. As long as developers create games for the largest possible market, ie. previous gen machines and low-specced PCs without SSDs, we'll only enjoy faster loading times. I'd hoped that Sony's PS5 exclusives games would show the way, but now Sony is also targeting the PC market so who knows if the higher-ups at Sony are willing to publish games with such steep PC requirements.
I really hope so too but the SSD is starting to smell like a nothing burger.

You'd think if it was able to "rewrite the rules of what a console can do" and be the "biggest leap since 2D to 3D" there would already be many games showing off this new tech.
 
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I played and beat the game day 1 and dont remember much from it either lol. Maybe they mean those little hidden areas in every level where you go into the rift and theres some power ups/outfits.
That's even less impressive than blizon crystals. They are very tiny rooms being disguised as "alternate universes".

 
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Don't chat shit. Every engine has a limititation how far it can render. Guerrilla explain that in 2013 with killzone tech talk. If the engine is program to render a certain distance. There is nothing the drive can't do because there isn't nothing there to load

Where in the hell you got this from? Did you just made up on spot?
As I already said every engine is different but it's like I said its also a loading limitation, how fast the data is fed from the drive to the memory. You being rude still doesn't make you correct, there are loads of tests available that prove my point to varying degrees.

Why do you think these new consoles use SSD drives? Come on you can't be that nieve?
 

winjer

Gold Member
I think you are probably talking about LOD pop-in. Not textures.
In this case it has to do with CPU and GPU performance. As well as with how the engine deals with LOD transitions.
 

nkarafo

Member
I'm still using HDDs for gaming on my PC. Sometimes i transfer the games i currently play on the SSD to see the difference.

The only difference is loading times. And, in the case of a couple of games streaming stutters reduce a bit, though that might be placebo. There are no other differences in pop-in or other graphics related issues. Basically, i'm still playing most games through the HDD without issues.

So faster medium only helps in loading times and maybe some stutters. That's it. Don't expect crappy engines to be fixed by pure brute forcing. I mean, look at Unreal Engine 4. You can can have the best parts money can buy and you are still going to get intense stutters thanks to the new trend of shader compilation. Developer incompetence will always be a bottleneck, not the hardware. And don't fall for the marketing. PS5's SSD speed marketing was the same bullshit Sega pulled of with "blast processing" and you guys fell for it.
 
I blame people vastly over hyping the SSD.
sony done a great job marketing the SSD in PS5 it seems. people have unrealistic expectations from it as a result.

it's not just about having a fast SSD...everything else needs to be updated too. game engines, faster memory, faster cpus/gpus, etc otherwise you're still gonna have bottlenecks or limitations.

the best we can hope for on consoles is the move to UE5 games and other engines getting updated. on PC directstorage needs to be adopted. fast cpu/gpu/pcie/ram is not a problem with PCIE 4/5 or DDR5.
 
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nkarafo

Member
Fighting the boss through dimensions without loading

Loading difference levels assets on the flight hitting a gem.

And I'm not even talking about the stuff you saw in the trailers.

The question is. If ratchet didn't revolutionise game design.
Please show me another game that does the same. Just one please go on

You don't know what's going on under the hood. Maybe all these assets fit to RAM so they get pre-loaded before you access them. You don't know how much RAM an area uses while it plays. So you are assuming things as well as the other guy.

Metroid Prime on the Gamecube would load the area you are in and all the areas connected to that in RAM. It wasn't just one area filling all the RAM. This meant there was very little or no loading when you loaded the very next room. But there wasn't any secret sauce, Gamecube is a slow, DVD based console without an HDD. It was just loading more different areas, including one or two you would probably not visit, in RAM while you were playing in real time. So Ratchet could as well be the same thing.
 

Topher

Gold Member
I really hope so too but the SSD is starting to smell like a nothing burger.

You'd think if it was able to "rewrite the rules of what a console can do" and be the "biggest leap since 2D to 3D" there would already be many games showing off this new tech.

It is far too early to write off SSD as a "nothing burger" when devs are still having to make games that support HDD. Remember, PC gamers haven't even had DirectStorage tech for very long. In any case, if all we get out of SSD is faster loading times, smaller game footprints and no pop-in then that is fine too. I certainly don't see the need to outright downplay the technology.
 
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DarkestHour

Banned
Fighting the boss through dimensions without loading

Loading difference levels assets on the flight hitting a gem.

And I'm not even talking about the stuff you saw in the trailers.

The question is. If ratchet didn't revolutionise game design.
Please show me another game that does the same. Just one please go on

You fell for the marketing. There was nothing revolutionary about what that game did. Many games can load new areas without a loading screen.
 
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DarkestHour

Banned
It's so funny we live in a time where there's one platform (NSW) that's so ridiculously underpowered, developers are basically forced to put some effort into optimization and then still games run at sub 30 most of the time. And then there're two other platforms (XSX/PS5) that are so powerful that the same developers just don't care about proper optimization, they just shave off a couple months development time and throw their assets into their engines build tools and call it a day, again resulting in subpar performance but for different reasons.

Like with every generation the coolest games in terms of technicality achievement will come out near the end of its lifecycle. It's nice that developers can basically brute force on the PS5/XSX right now, but there's also been some cool stuff going on so far and it will only get better with time.
 
It is far too early to write off SSD as a "nothing burger" when devs are still having to make games that support HDD. Remember, PC gamers haven't even had DirectStorage tech for very long. In any case, if all we get out of SSD is faster loading times, smaller game footprints and no pop-in then that is fine too. I certainly don't see the need to outright downplay the technology.
There have been various next gen exclusive games which still haven't shown it off.

If the SSD was such a fundamental gamechanger in game design then Sony would pump out at least one game which showed the full extent of it's capabilities 2 years in to the PS5 life cycle. What they have produced so far hasn't shown this at all.
 
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