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[_Spr_Drnk]

There was barely any interaction in any of the new worlds till the last one. It was nothing more then I expect to replace elevators since spinners are not going to have to be considered. Now if each world was fully interactive the second you land I would be impressed.

"Yes, we loaded in the new geometry and rendered the new textures with the correct perspective, but for fucks sake don't stand on any of it - we forgot about physics in the interim, and it's all made of shellac" - Insomiac 2020

 

[HE1NZ]

Ratchet & Clank fell victim of Sony cinematic meme and was 30 fps since Into The Nexus. And nobody cares about it ever since.

 

[Greeno]

As I said, Tim Sweeney may not have been a great example. But you quoting an MS approved 'developer' interview quote, as an unbiased quote, is equally laughable. If same developer had said 'only slightly slower than PS5', do you think that would have got through? No-one in this is covering themselves in glory, but don't quote MS vetted and published sources as 'fact' either.

Developer's quote: "The drive is so fast that I can load data mid-frame, use it, consume it, unload and replace it with something else in the middle of a frame, treating GPU memory like a virtual disk".

Tell me... where can bias come into that quote other than "The drive is so fast"? Do you mean as in they are only showing half-truths? I would like you to try and add anything sensible to that statement that can negate it.

All what I meant with my post is that some claims Innocenceii make are invalidated by that statement. He makes the claim that the Xbox's SSD is bottlenecked and doesn't allow for the memory to be semi-dynamic.

 

[Werewolfgrandma]

"Yes, we loaded in the new geometry and rendered the new textures with the correct perspective, but for fucks sake don't stand on any of it - we forgot about physics in the interim, and it's all made of shellac" - Insomiac 2020

Explain why it's impressive? How do you know it's all actual geometry? You don't get to interact with literally anything in any of the warps. It really just look a really good load screen that's pretty short. Show me a Dev saying what was shown was impossible on anything but the ps5.

 

[_Spr_Drnk]

Developer's quote: "The drive is so fast that I can load data mid-frame, use it, consume it, unload and replace it with something else in the middle of a frame, treating GPU memory like a virtual disk".

Tell me... where can bias come into that quote other than "The drive is so fast"? Do you mean as in they are only showing half-truths? I would like you to try and add anything sensible to that statement that can negate it.

I don't know how to explain your lack of critical thinking any more clearly. If you think I can sue MS for false advertising if their SSD isn't that good, then I can ring your parents to tell them to refund that faulty condom.

 

[Greeno]

I don't know how to explain your lack of critical thinking any more clearly. If you think I can sue MS for false advertising if their SSD isn't that good, then I can ring your parents to tell them to refund that faulty condom.

Look at what I said and look at what you are claiming I said.

I never said that you can sue Microsoft because their "SSD isn't that good". I said you can sue Microsoft if the XSX's storage-memory data transfer can't be done in mid-frame as claimed by the Dirt 5 developer in a Microsoft sponsored interview. The negation of that statement can stand in court against Microsoft.

 

[Lethal01]

How do you know it's all actual geometry?

What would it be? fake geometry? a video in the background? Those are real assets, they look highquality and this showcases them streaming in more data from the SSD that we've really ever seen before. In any of these segments it would be totally possible to stop and walk around normally since once you have a model you can use it of collision.

It's also an extreme case, in games that aren't specifically showcasing just how radically they can change the scene in 2 second you can expect that a lot of load screens and loading segments that would have been there to be completely absent. So yes there will be many times when loading is "instantaneous" but this means you won't even notice it even if it's constantly happening.

This is actually the hardest to showcase because you can't pause a video and say "see, the tunnel that you would have had to add purely for loading is now gone". You will probably have to wait for GDC in a few years to have devs spell out exactly where the loading screens have become invisible to the player.

Some guy tried to say this is no more impressive than opening a door but he totally missed that most games actually have the outside of the door loaded into memory at all times incase the player needs to leave. With this tech you will now actually be able to totally unload the outside of a house as soon as you enter it which frees up memory to be used for actually making the interior and exterior more impressive.

 

[J_Gamer.exe]

Cause the Series X marketing is mostly trash. They haven't shown any games running natively on the Series X yet. We really haven't seen anything running realtime on PS5 either everything is "Captured on PS5" which could mean a multitude of things. Sony has been much more intelligent about their marketing.

As for the Halo pop in and other bad elements could be explained by 343 simply not having the time to compile a Series X build of the game that utilizes the full features set of the console. It could also be explained by sheer incompetence on behalf of the development team. Really it's probably just down to the whole COVID-19 pandemic putting roadbloacks in the development path that they did not has contigency plans for. We'll likely never know.

Did the lucid dream of the SSD that Mark Cerny presented live up to expectations? We've seen the "jump into portal wait 7 seconds for the next level to load" in 2 games now Ratchet and Clank and Astros playroom. The whole "game changing" SSD hasn't been as impressive as the road to PS5 would have led you to believe either.

Both companies will need to show much more than they have to display the claims they've made with the specs of their respective consoles.

From the Series X we've heard words like "conservative" " sustained" and "consistent"
Which is considerably different from the "peak" "variable" "theoretical" messages we've gotten from the PS5 so far. Time will tell, both consoles have very robust architectures and are equally impressive in their own rights.

I remember I, quite sadly, counted the exact times for the ratchet gameplay.

Next-Gen PS5 & XSX |OT| Console tEch threaD

That wasn’t him, that was Jim Ryan. Oh yeah maybe I gotta admit I have trouble reckonizing people by face everyone had to record from their houses so the presentation people used a bunch of post processing to make them look better, they looked off and people thought they were cg rendered on...

www.neogaf.com

2 seconds was max but also it includes the portal travelling through animation which probably only shows once its loaded.

There were some portals that took less and only about a second for some.

For the amount of data being transfered this shows the PS5 SSD and IO is living upto the billing. Bottlenecks are eliminated as promised. So it IS game changing and seems to have delivered exactly as promised.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Okay, so we can all agree that Halo Infinite is a bit of a shit-show at the current moment. Lukewarm reveal reception, an indefinite delay into 2021, HUGE problems at 343i (likely down to upper management sucking ass), and cross-gen with XBO apparently actually holding back next-gen development after all, all being factors into it. We can all agree to this.

With that said...



...videos like this...are unacceptable.

So what's wrong with this video? Well for starters, his entire argument hinges on the idea that the biggest factor why Halo Infinite looked the way it did is because of...the SSD? One thing I ask of tech analysts is to do some research; apparently Halo Infinite was running on a mid-tier PC made for dev tools. That of course doesn't excuse the poor showing, but anyone doing that research (it doesn't take a lot of time to even find the quote) and sees that quote would assume that such a PC probably doesn't have the full (perhaps even partial) XvA implementation the Series X will have.

Another issue with this video is the creator continues saying that MS have not gone as in-depth on their SSD I/O as Sony, which is true...but again, you're a tech analyst, and you're making a public video that you know will be taken as fact by most who watch so....why not put in a bit of effort to see that they have a Hot Chips presentation just 3 days away where they will most likely delve into that very thing (among other hardware features)? Yes we can extrapolate from what we know about the setup so far if hypothetical examples like R&C could run on the hardware, but I'm just wondering....why would you use the shit show of Halo Infinite's current situation as a jumping-off point to ask this question in the first place?

Since people were already asking such a question after the game's showing in June, it kind of stands to reason the only reason this creator is asking it again is to do confirmation bias. To use Halo Infinite as an example that the Series X, in fact, cannot run a game like R&C due to the SSD. But as he literally says earlier in the video, we have not much concrete info on XvA's performance, and due to this we can't give a definitive answer. Now if his answer hinged more on the idea of team talent/management, i.e Insomniac having a better work culture and better management at the top level whereas 343i does not, then that would be fair game because 343i have embarrassed themselves yet again in that department. But seeing that this guy's a game tech analyst, that's obviously not the angle they would be focusing the question on now is it?

So why am I focusing on Innocenceii in particular? Because he's already done disingenuous next-gen tech "analysis" in several prior videos, and has used questionable visual deception in his presentations and omission of key information that they could not be bothered to re-edit in the video proper. They do the same things in this video I've linked, in fact. When I go to see a tech analysis, especially from someone who professes to be knowledgeable in a given field (I believe this guy's claim is that he's a game engine dev?), I expect them to, A) Do their research (official information, patent diving, research on various technological implementations etc.), and B) Present their information as neutrally as possible. I also expect them to base their argument/point of discussion on valid grounds that at least make some sense.

Innocenceii has failed on all of these points, for a good period of time, so it's a bit worrying when many people who want an actual tech perspective on these systems are going to such a compromised source. Granted, he's not the only such person in this regard and this kind of thing also happens with some Xbox names as well (DealerGaming, Dee Batch, MadZ etc.), but most of them don't profess to being technical experts in the field of game development to begin with. They're moreso enthusiasts, like many of us here on this forum. I get the feeling some of the people who do these types of video analysis hide under the guise of a label that carries some sort of authority which in turn intimidates people from questioning them, but that of course also allows them to get away with false narratives and disingenuous information that is rarely challenged.

These sort of people should be held responsible for this type of behavior, because there's very few neutral sources in gaming that discuss gaming tech honestly. My best sources for that have been either here on this forum, maybe a handful of people on Reeee, most of the Beyond 3D forums and that's...just about it. Of course there's also the official tech videos companies like Microsoft and Sony post on various channels that detail aspects of their technologies, but you will never get direct comparisons to competitor offerings in those, that leaves the homework on the viewer to link things together (and most don't bother to do that).

Anyway, that's about it, this was more an "ethics of game tech discussion" kind of thing more than anything else. But has anyone else felt similar watching some of these tech analysis vids from various channels of otherwise very technically knowledgeable people? Doesn't matter if they sway PlayStation, Xbox, PC or even Nintendo; like I said all camps have some fellows who do this kind of thing. But I focus moreso on the ones who very clearly state their positions of authority as engineers, game devs etc. (take Cherno for example; tbh I actually kinda like their content and haven't seen them do the sort of things I notice guys like Innocenceii doing), because again I feel those who carry those sort of badges also carry a position of assumed authority that cuts away at open and honest critique of their analysis and opinion.

He was too generous with 8-channel. It's cheap ass, 4-channel, DRAM-less:

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

He was too generous with 8-channel. It's cheap ass, 4-channel, DRAM-less:

It's economical; latency figures will be at least as good as Sony's since they are both on PCIe 4.0 so 128b/130b encoding. MS also have developments like FlashMap which were designed factoring in SSD setups like the Series systems.

A portion of the reserved 2.5 GB space is probably serving as the cache for the storage drive data, but that would also require a customized controller. Nothing's actually been officially disclosed if that controller Phison have developed is stock or customized on request from MS but if they are implementing features of FlashMap into their I/O setup and using part of the main memory as cache then it would require a customized controller out of necessity.

Things like that would've been nice to get more info on at Hotchips, but maybe teardowns will be sufficient in the future. So yeah, the drive may in actuality be 4-channel (most likely; they could have muxed four chips to a channel via multi-channel if they wanted to use smaller, slower chips to still hit their bandwidth requirements, but that may result in a drive size that's too large since you're then talking 16 chips), but that doesn't really matter too much at the end of the day; their approach comes with advantages and disadvantages, they'd of been long enough aware of their design choice here and develop solutions with it in mind, to the benefit of 1st-party and 3rd-party devs.

Plus in MS's case they want to bring more parity between console and PC so they probably wanted more conservative hardware specs on the SSD with a stackable, scalable solution that could fit with many hardware configurations going forward. Apples-to-oranges solutions between them and Sony tbqh.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

It's economical; latency figures will be at least as good as Sony's since they are both on PCIe 4.0 so 128b/130b encoding. MS also have developments like FlashMap which were designed factoring in SSD setups like the Series systems.

A portion of the reserved 2.5 GB space is probably serving as the cache for the storage drive data, but that would also require a customized controller. Nothing's actually been officially disclosed if that controller Phison have developed is stock or customized on request from MS but if they are implementing features of FlashMap into their I/O setup and using part of the main memory as cache then it would require a customized controller out of necessity.

Things like that would've been nice to get more info on at Hotchips, but maybe teardowns will be sufficient in the future. So yeah, the drive may in actuality be 4-channel (most likely; they could have muxed four chips to a channel via multi-channel if they wanted to use smaller, slower chips to still hit their bandwidth requirements, but that may result in a drive size that's too large since you're then talking 16 chips), but that doesn't really matter too much at the end of the day; their approach comes with advantages and disadvantages, they'd of been long enough aware of their design choice here and develop solutions with it in mind, to the benefit of 1st-party and 3rd-party devs.

Plus in MS's case they want to bring more parity between console and PC so they probably wanted more conservative hardware specs on the SSD with a stackable, scalable solution that could fit with many hardware configurations going forward. Apples-to-oranges solutions between them and Sony tbqh.

Latest severe pop ins and pop outs in Halo don't suggest good performance. It's always nice to speculate and so, but real world results have been all mediocre so far with official load times to quick resume and then poor LOD performance and pop in/out. The system isn't good for direct streaming like PS5, it's a tall mountain to climb without SSD good design and speed or at least a bigger RAM.

 

[martino]

So I finished that video...

He states that the Series X speed isn't sustained and the PS5's SSD is sustained...

Well the Series X 2.4 GB/s of raw and 4.8 GB/s of compressed speed is already confirmed in multiple articles to be the sustained level of performance.

On the other hand the PS5 has stated that their SSD speeds are 5.5 GB/s of raw speed and 8-9 GB/s of compressed speed. The varying amount of compressed speed makes me think that the PS5 isn't garunteed to sustatain that 5.5 GB/s of raw speed otherwise they would have 11 GB/s of compressed speed and not a varying amount, assuming a 2:1 compression ratio. So I think that would put the PS5 at around 4-4.5 GB/s per second of sustained throughput in real world performance scenarios. We still need confirmation on the sustained performance of the SSD.

This video was pretty trash though. He's using the Series X name to compare the PS5 SSD to a Samsung SSD. He also gives very false information regarding the Series X's SSD.

Again no official number but everybody act like those console SSD are first cases where mix/ramdom speed will be same as sequential one....
this is the number telling how different things will be between them streaming data.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Latest severe pop ins and pop outs in Halo don't suggest good performance. It's always nice to speculate and so, but real world results have been all mediocre so far with official load times to quick resume and then poor LOD performance and pop in/out. The system isn't good for direct streaming like PS5, it's a tall mountain to climb without SSD good design and speed or at least a bigger RAM.

I'm just not so sure it can be pinned on the system itself tbh. Keep in mind, Infinite's had a TERRIBLE dev history, switching engines mid-dev, Blam! engine (which they're still using) not being up to snuff, 343i having terrible upper management and unoptimized workspace system setup. Also the fact the demo wasn't running on an actual Series X devkit but a PC possibly approxiamating the system, and therefore not having critical parts of XvA like SFS to utilize...

It's true the Series systems probably don't match Sony's SSD I/O if you want to compare them apples-to-apples, but I see they've taken some divergent approaches which makes direct comparisons difficult. Additionally, in practice MS's solution should be very capable and within ballpark of what Sony is doing, it will certainly be much more capable than what Halo Infinite showed off because honestly that demo isn't a good metric to judge system performance by. Judging the talent/time management/production pipeline skills of 343i, though, is fair game.

 

[DrSammyD]

What a completely disingenuous graph.

Xbox SX did not report their SSD's rating. They reported their sustained read speeds.

 

[DrSammyD]

Also note that >75% of runtime SSD reads are textures, and Sampler Feedback Streaming multiplies texture throughput by 2-3x.

So if you take that 75% of the XBox SX In-practice reads, and multiply it by 3, here's what the graph looks like

 

[onQ123]

Also note that >75% of runtime SSD reads are textures, and Sampler Feedback Streaming multiplies texture throughput by 2-3x.

So if you take that 75% of the XBox SX In-practice reads, and multiply it by 3, here's what the graph looks like

Stop it kid lol

 

[DrSammyD]

Stop it kid lol

Stop what? They wouldn't let me edit my post and combine the two.

 

[Lethal01]

Stop it kid lol

What's incorrect in his post?