in other news I am pleased to say that one of RPS’ new younger staff has finally written something I like
and all it took was beginning a review by referencing the cambridge latin course while hurriedly disclaiming their class status
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it also sounds from that announcement like they’re going NVMe which would be quite nice indeed
it’s sounding a lot like the PS5 value proposition will be “a $1000 PC for half price” which given that there’s a big shrink coming up and that spec is more like $1500 right now and only a year and a half away, should be compelling enough to most people
I also wouldn’t be surprised if they what-the-hell PS1 and PS2 disc compatibility after all this time for the goodwill (they make enough money from the downloads anyway as they’re still an attractive option) though I don’t think across-the-board PS3 emulation will be plausible at launch
seeing as the Wired article specifies 7nm Zen and AMD has already come out and said 3rd generation Zen is PCIe 4.0 ready, it’s probably shooting data down through that link at the speed of Actually Too Fast For A Lot Of Games
I’m seriously into this for the Chibi-Robo vibes at very least
Surprised they actually made an official statement about this to the press
Doesn’t completely line up with stuff like the mysteriously missing buttcracks of PS4 DMC5 though. From now on I will REALLY need to avoid looking at gematsu site comments it seems.
I’ll Bet The Gamers Are Loving This.
it’s quite amazing how every single possible news story seems to be related to this one thing according to some people
It’s almost as if there isn’t an completely open platform where you can publish all kinds of unholy garbage
Where the hell do they think VNs come from anyway
The only thing I want from the PS5 is for it to not sound like a jet engine.
And also to play ALL PlayStation games and not just PS4 games but that’s too big an ask so instead Sony should just copy Microsoft and make the console as silent as possible.
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The coprocessor (???) that’s handling spatial audio and ray tracing is bizarre. I hope we don’t get another generation of chuggy performance because of a push for marginally better lighting.
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if the PS5 is not going to have this then they might as well just literally ‘remaster’ the PS2. make it hdmi compatible and release it for $100 so we can play our disc games on modern TVs
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Raytracing is the real deal, although it’s maybe best to think of the benefits like PSX games moving away from prerendered backdrops. If you look at something like Metro: Train Time, you can run lighting that looks as good as the baked lighting in a highly-staged, static environment game like Last of Us or Uncharted, but in a fully dynamic system. You’re not seeing things you haven’t seen before, but you’re seeing them without near as much meticulous and brittle lighting.
I think these days, with console specs so similar and barely distinguished from PCs, console manufacturers are well placed/forced to make small bets on dedicated silicon. Sony’s PS4 Pro bet on hardware support for their checkerboard upscaling was a very good one; Microsoft’s Xbox One bet on ESRAM was a bad one. And there are a few more surprises like that they usually tuck away that help them punch above their weight.
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Cool, sounds like it has potential to extend AAA looks to midtier studio games. I’m salivating to imagine Demon’s Souls with raytracing
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Sekiro has baked lighting and looks fabulous; the different times of day in levels represent different lightmaps loaded based on the time of day. Their lighting artists spend time tweaking and baking those lights overnights so they need to be skilled to get a lot of iterations out of it. Raytracing for bounce lighting (the most visually impactful method) would have minimal impact on scenes excepting characters, who would get much more grounded in the scene as they absorb bounce lighting from materials (although I suppose this would hit From’s extensive use of dynamic destructible objects like Kuro’s bookshelves). It would allow them to change time of day and weather conditions dynamically, but maybe that’s not a good fit for them.
Its best fit will be in open-world and games with a simulationist bent, getting them closer to looking like meticulous linear worlds.
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When I worked briefly at a videogame company in 2006 (my only time in the industry), as shaders were taking off, I remember speculating with my colleagues about when raytracing was coming. I also remember talking about it when Voodoo cards were just coming out. It’s crazy how long the hacky old model lasted, it’s one of those things like computers being terrible at playing Go that you come to assume will never change, until seemingly out of nowhere (but really because the last piece quietly fell into place) it does
I thought the same thing was happening to VR for a minute there but that one turned into one of the fizzles
As much as things change, general trends remain the same. Pixar’s Cars (2006) was their first raytraced tech, they start using global illumination in 2013, leaving realtime 10-15 years behind, same as always. Nintendo’s Switch is 2017 tech representing 2007 home consoles, just as the 2001 GBA pushed the 1991 SNES and the 2004 PSP represented a 1995 PSX. It gets pushed a few years ahead or behind and that’s everything in competitive advantages, but the iron logic of die shrinks keeps everything roughly close in history’s eyes.
Modern VR is something very different than mid-90s VR and if the hardward R&D weren’t so expensive the small-budget productions we’re seeing might continue indefinitely. As always, the small complaints in the lab and the office become something a lot bigger in the market.
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its not a coprocessor. Its audio tests run on the GPU’s Raytracing tech, for testing how their audio works. There is a dedicated 3d audio chip which is supposed to be really good at the 3D part. But it sounds like they can use the raytracing to actually see where their audio is going and then make adjustments on the audio chip’s output for the game.
I’m guessing the SSD will be a 500gb. Although, I hope they do some R&D because some NVMe drives run really hot. I think a Sata drive would be a lot more practical. Or like, do a sata drive form factor, but pin it out for PCI-E.
Its all interesting, but raytracing currently is pretty lame. While AMD’s Navi will probably have better raytracing performance than Nvidia’s current stuff: I’m doubting its gonna be magnitudes better.
Nvidia’s stuff right now is basically half a foot in, on alternate lighting which doesn’t really look better to me, and kills performance. Yes, I understand that raytracing can make development easier. But right now, its not where it needs to be, to supplant the tons of shader power we otherwise have on tap, to otherwise do cool lighting stuff just fine. Nvidia had some videos trying to show how much better ray tracing is. But they obviously purposefully gimped the shader stuff without ray tracing, to make the difference seem dramatic.
it sounds like Navi may have the power to actually put the whole foot in and take over main lighting duties, with good framerates. or otherwise pick a lane and do it pretty well (I.E. run sound over the raytracing, but maybe take a hit on the lighting to afford that?). But I still expect there to be a lot of supplemental shader stuff to ornament the main raytraced lighting solution. there’s also the holy grail of ray tracing models so no more aliasing. But I doubt we’ll be able to do that for a whole scene any time soon.
Also, i can’t believe they are putting 8 Zen cores in there. Although AMD has made large strides with their power efficiency at speeds which aren’t trying to bleed the edge: still Gonna be some heat. I’m not expecting a small console, like the PS4. This thing will surely be Xbone sized.
*Bloodborne is gonna be so nice on this
AMD can already get an 8c16t part in at a 65w TDP, the question is how efficient will Navi be (Vega 8 or 11: not crazy! Vega 56 or 64: chugging watts!)
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ph hey this game is seriously a good time