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“PS5 Is the Least Constrained Hardware We’ve Ever Worked On” R&C Game Director

Aggelos

Member
Anticipation Popcorn GIF


Time to watch this thread



giphy.gif
 

Tygeezy

Member
I'm excited to see what Insomniac does with psvr 2. They have experience with oculus making VR games, and their last game stormland was very good. They just make good fun games in general.
 

Md Ray

Member
I guess first party studio Insomniac has never worked on PC games before.

I think a more intriguing issue is whether an Insomniac guy thought of that statement himself or if someone in the PS PR department wrote it for him.
PC also has some constraints that devs need to take into account. It's not always about the GPUs and CPUs. For e.g. Windows's storage stack is still far behind PS5's and will be until it gets DirectStorage and devs code for it.
 

Tygeezy

Member
The price to performance is what it is. a 1TB SSD that matches the speed of the PS5s is almost $500 on its own. The more impressive part is the IO, I don't believe that's fully replicable on PC as all parts are separate, even with PCIE 4.0. Linus tried to and ended up with egg on his face if I recall.
I believe you need PCIE 4.0 along with a RTX 20 series and up, and even then you need software support at the OS level that isn't available and the game needs to be programmed for RTX I.O in mind. In short, it's not available yet, but will be in the future. PS5 has an actual leg up this generation over pc in some respects; that really hasn't happened in forever... Like perhaps ps2 era?
 

skit_data

Member
I love reading through the evolution of what ppl think of a studio :nougat_rofl:

Insomniac... is now a studio that has never made any game on any platform than PS. Now doesn't know anything about developing on or for PC. Things changed really quick. Yes, obviously they are now owned by Playstation. They don't have to say these things, right? Maybe PS has a gun to their head... say these things or your budget gets cut.

I mean is there any studio who is a 1st party that we're supposed to "trust" How are we supposed to feel about anything any of the Bethesda studios say now? Shills too? The salt in ppl vag/butt over this :messenger_tears_of_joy:
Altough I agree with your point about 1st party studios having a gun against their head, the fact that Insomniac would not have developed for any other platform than PS is simply not true:

YysAked.jpg


Edit: To me, they come across as one of the developers that have worked with the broadest range of specs and platforms over time
 
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Altough I agree with your point about 1st party studios having a gun against their head, the fact that Insomniac would not have developed for any other platform than PS is simply not true:

YysAked.jpg
Wow, they have quite a bit of work on Magic Leap One! Who the hell knew. That makes me wonder... could they be working on a VR game 🤔
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
From another interview today:

"With the SSD, it’s easy to say there are no load times, and look how fast we can load this other area, but it has all sorts of knock-on effects. We don’t need to be as careful with how we package our data. All of the assets for an area don’t need to be collated on the spinning hard drive to get the right streaming speed out of it.

It makes the game smaller on your hard drive; it means we can patch it more easily. That’s a nice bonus. We unload the things literally behind you from a camera perspective. If you spun the camera around, we could load them before you see that. That lets us devote all of our system memory to the stuff in front of you right now, that you need to experience in that moment." -- Mike Fitzgerald, Technology Director, Insomniac Games.

Some pretty cool points in there about how PS5's SSD and I/O are making life easier for developers. Interestingly, he also added:

"Behind the scenes, there’s so much to peel back about the SSD and the I/O around it. We’re just scratching the surface of it. As a developer, that will be really cool to see how it turns out. I love seeing what the other internal PlayStation studios are doing, we have an awesome relationship with them."
 

Zeroing

Banned
I’m pretty sure that anything compared to the over complicated system that was the PS3 …. does looks easy! That is the lesson Sony learned
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned

PS5 Means More to Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart than Better Visuals​

Through the preview sessions, Insomniac’s developers seemed super-enthused to work on the PS5. Usually, studios tend to talk about how they circumvented hardware constraints on consoles to make better games. For Daly and his team though, this wasn’t exactly the case.

“Game development is always constrained,” he says. “But one of the reasons we are so excited to work exclusively on PS5 is because it is the least constrained hardware we've ever worked on. The new features of the console give us opportunities to take our games further than we've taken it before.”

Interestingly, he points to some of its more bespoke features rather than the obvious bump in visual and processing improvements that you’d expect from a generational leap in console hardware.

“And now that I've had experience working with a super fast hard drive 3D spatial audio and controller haptics and adaptive triggers, I would see the lack of those things as much more of a constraint than anything that the console gives us,” he says. That said, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart will ship with two modes allowing for 30fps and 60fps gameplay options.

Source: IGN

This feels good.

Happy GIF
 

Md Ray

Member
I wonder if PC Subdset Overdrive can take advantage of more Than 8 gigs of video ram and 8 gigs of system ram.
It doesn't. More than 8GB of VRAM + system RAM? Not many games do that even if you try to push them harder. Maybe RDR2 can with every setting turned up. Even then system RAM is very occasionally pushed beyond 8GB even now.
Also, I must add that hardware monitoring apps like afterburner don't actually show the real RAM+VRAM usage of the game, it's caching mostly.
 

sn0man

Member
It doesn't. More than 8GB of VRAM + system RAM? Not many games do that even if you try to push them harder. Maybe RDR2 can with every setting turned up. Even then system RAM is very occasionally pushed beyond 8GB even now.
Also, I must add that hardware monitoring apps like afterburner don't actually show the real RAM+VRAM usage of the game, it's caching mostly.
Right which is part of what makes PC comparisons tough. I wouldn’t personally say that a 16GB RAM 10GB VRAM PC is more constrained than a 16GB console, but there are plenty of folks on laptops with 8GB shared.

I think it’s fun to speculate how a PS5, with its admittedly impressive SSD, could punch above its weight but really a developer could develope a PC game and have some crazy texture or LOD setting that only targets the .01% RTX 3090 users with their 20GB of VRAM (same for like 64GB RAM, 16 core 32 thread processors).

it’s a PR statement and I assume it’s to be taken in the world of consoles.
 

Md Ray

Member
From another interview today:

"With the SSD, it’s easy to say there are no load times, and look how fast we can load this other area, but it has all sorts of knock-on effects. We don’t need to be as careful with how we package our data. All of the assets for an area don’t need to be collated on the spinning hard drive to get the right streaming speed out of it.

It makes the game smaller on your hard drive; it means we can patch it more easily. That’s a nice bonus. We unload the things literally behind you from a camera perspective. If you spun the camera around, we could load them before you see that. That lets us devote all of our system memory to the stuff in front of you right now, that you need to experience in that moment." -- Mike Fitzgerald, Technology Director, Insomniac Games.

Some pretty cool points in there about how PS5's SSD and I/O are making life easier for developers. Interestingly, he also added:

"Behind the scenes, there’s so much to peel back about the SSD and the I/O around it. We’re just scratching the surface of it. As a developer, that will be really cool to see how it turns out. I love seeing what the other internal PlayStation studios are doing, we have an awesome relationship with them."
This means very high detailed geometry and textures.
Parks And Recreation Reaction GIF

Can't wait to see what Naughty Dog has in store for us! God damn, they're gonna blow us away.
 
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sn0man

Member
From another interview today:

"With the SSD, it’s easy to say there are no load times, and look how fast we can load this other area, but it has all sorts of knock-on effects. We don’t need to be as careful with how we package our data. All of the assets for an area don’t need to be collated on the spinning hard drive to get the right streaming speed out of it.

It makes the game smaller on your hard drive; it means we can patch it more easily. That’s a nice bonus. We unload the things literally behind you from a camera perspective. If you spun the camera around, we could load them before you see that. That lets us devote all of our system memory to the stuff in front of you right now, that you need to experience in that moment." -- Mike Fitzgerald, Technology Director, Insomniac Games.

Some pretty cool points in there about how PS5's SSD and I/O are making life easier for developers. Interestingly, he also added:

"Behind the scenes, there’s so much to peel back about the SSD and the I/O around it. We’re just scratching the surface of it. As a developer, that will be really cool to see how it turns out. I love seeing what the other internal PlayStation studios are doing, we have an awesome relationship with them."
Yeah. This shit! This right here. This is what makes the PS5 interesting. They can kinda head back towards the NES days of development where most stuff is kind of “in memory” and we are just constrained by what a CPU/GPU can actually render.
 
EEEEEEEEVERYTHING is damage control in your minds cause that's the only thing you can think of for your own plastic of choice when it comes to getting slack from the devs i.e. eSRAM remember those days?

Now ofc from your pathetic PoVs this must look like damage control when a first-party dev praises its owners cause those are the only kind that praises your plastic of choice.
 

Md Ray

Member
Right which is part of what makes PC comparisons tough. I wouldn’t personally say that a 16GB RAM 10GB VRAM PC is more constrained than a 16GB console, but there are plenty of folks on laptops with 8GB shared.

I think it’s fun to speculate how a PS5, with its admittedly impressive SSD, could punch above its weight but really a developer could develope a PC game and have some crazy texture or LOD setting that only targets the .01% RTX 3090 users with their 20GB of VRAM (same for like 64GB RAM, 16 core 32 thread processors).

it’s a PR statement and I assume it’s to be taken in the world of consoles.
The storage stack part is indeed constrained compared to the consoles right now, there's no doubt about that which is why DirectStorage is being added and RTX IO is being introduced.
 
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sn0man

Member
I believe you need PCIE 4.0 along with a RTX 20 series and up, and even then you need software support at the OS level that isn't available and the game needs to be programmed for RTX I.O in mind. In short, it's not available yet, but will be in the future. PS5 has an actual leg up this generation over pc in some respects; that really hasn't happened in forever... Like perhaps ps2 era?
For some reason I thought Xbox 360 in 2005 had some better advantages like a 3 core 6 thread setup and/or the built-in cache to just do 1280x720 with “free” MSAA. It was only maybe ahead for a year or two but there felt like a moment there.
 
Wow, they have quite a bit of work on Magic Leap One! Who the hell knew. That makes me wonder... could they be working on a VR game 🤔
On that note, I think it's important to specify that Edge of Nowhere, Unspoken and Feral Rights are all games developed for Oculos, so they indeed already have quite the experience with VR games
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
This means very high detailed geometry and textures.
Parks And Recreation Reaction GIF

Can't wait to see what Naughty Dog has in store for us! God damn, they're gonna blow us away.
Indeed, my friend. I'd also put Sony Santa Monica on that list, assuming they started Ragnarok's production exclusively for PS5 hardware right from the beginning.

During that on-rails section with the giant statue, I kept thinking about how insane God of War boss fights would look in a PS5 exclusive game!
 

Tygeezy

Member
On that note, I think it's important to specify that Edge of Nowhere, Unspoken and Feral Rights are all games developed for Oculos, so they indeed already have quite the experience with VR games
Don't forget Stormland! Yeah, they will for sure be doing a psvr 2 somewhere down the line given their VR experience.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
I swear I'm having a deja vu from past gen's launch, when the devs praised the consoles for how easy it is to develop games now, and yet the games never took longer to make, were never delayed that many times, and never required so many patches at launch...

So call me sceptical but I'm not falling for that talk again. I mean, we're almost halfway through 2021 and it was almost completely dry so far, many games that were suppost to be released at the end of 2020/begining of 2021 got postponed with no new release date, second half isn't looking to be much more packed either, most likely gonna be dry as well other than new BF and CoD. So I'll give this gen ~3 years to see how it'll play out, but I honestly don't expect fireworks before middle of 2022.
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
The price to performance is what it is. a 1TB SSD that matches the speed of the PS5s is almost $500 on its own. The more impressive part is the IO, I don't believe that's fully replicable on PC as all parts are separate, even with PCIE 4.0. Linus tried to and ended up with egg on his face if I recall.

Yeah, that apology video was hilarious. He just didn't understand what the PS5 SSD was about at all.
Or just $190.

 

Papacheeks

Banned
Well it's literally a PC, and this time it doesn't have a terrible laptop APU in it, so yes.

No pc SSD has the I/O and sad raw speeds yet. Iv seen 7gb/s read speed but only 5gb/s write.
Insomniac? They worked on Xbox One at the beginning of last-gen (Sunset Overdrive) and they also ported that game to PC not too long ago.

Insomniac also did a VR game for PC.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Don't forget Stormland! Yeah, they will for sure be doing a psvr 2 somewhere down the line given their VR experience.
I hope they launch a Venom or Spider-Man game as a PSVR 2 exclusive launch-title. Just like PS5 and Miles Morales.

That thing -- along with Astrobot 2 VR and a Half-Life Alyx as launch titles -- will sell PSVR 2 like hot cakes.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Exactly how it would play out if an xbox 1st dev said the same thing about the series x.

These threads are best avoided

When MS shows us some truly cool shit that their hardware can do that isn't just frame rate and resolution then we can swoon over them too.

They need to show games that can show off what they picked for hardware. SO far all they've shown is BC, some better RT in third party games, and higher framerates at 1080p.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
Insomniac has been at the forefront of console development since the PS2. People slept on them prior to Spiderman but thankfully the masses have kind of woke up.

Truly masters of the craft.
 

Tygeezy

Member
I hope they launch a Venom or Spider-Man game as a PSVR 2 exclusive launch-title. Just like PS5 and Miles Morales.

That thing -- along with Astrobot 2 VR and a Half-Life Alyx as launch titles -- will sell PSVR 2 like hot cakes.
The swinging and web shooting would be excellent in first person VR. The melee could be kind of tricky because at the moment only hand based combat is any good (boxing, swinging swords). I played a beat em up called path of the warrior and you pressed physical buttons to kick and it was serviceable, but not great. Dodging/parry would also seem kind of difficult... If anybody is up to the task, insomniac would probably be the one to bet on, but I think a first person VR game in the ratchet and Clank universe is a natural fit.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
I'm sure it's a great console to develop for but I'd prefer non first party sources for this kind of stuff.

Why? FIrst party are going to have a more intimate relationship with hardware engineers at the lab over at playstation that are always testing stuff. You think third party who have to work on multiple hardware configs are going to utilize specialized customizations PS5 has?

You would have to be blind not to see the difference between third party use of the hardware and first party. Hell even Returnal has a lot of specialized things going on when it comes to the ssd. I bet what ever their next game is they might leverage the PS5 even more.
 
I'm sure it's a great console to develop for but I'd prefer non first party sources for this kind of stuff.

Actually they've worked with DX since 2012 till 2019 ( since 2014 on DX12). Fuse, Sunset Overdrive, Song of the deep, Stormland. There are some smaller games for Android and iOS in between
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
The swinging and web shooting would be excellent in first person VR. The melee could be kind of tricky because at the moment only hand based combat is any good (boxing, swinging swords). I played a beat em up called path of the warrior and you pressed physical buttons to kick and it was serviceable, but not great. Dodging/parry would also seem kind of difficult... If anybody is up to the task, insomniac would probably be the one to bet on, but I think a first person VR game in the ratchet and Clank universe is a natural fit.
They could limit melee to buttons or web shooters (like Iron Man PSVR).

With PSVR 2 haptic feedback on headset, imagine getting spider tingling vibrations via haptics on the side where the attack is coming from. Damn!
 

01011001

Banned
it's almost like it is a new console and they almost exclusively work on console hardware...

how is this news? that's almost as redundant as the pr speech you always hear when a new console or phone launches "this is our most powerful console/phone yet"
YEAH NO SHIT IT IS! it's the new one... it's expected to be better than the old one...
 
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