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[In Cold Blood]

A pretty interesting interview with AMD over the future of gaming tech, and how Sony adopted the older Primitive Shaders and MS adopted the newer Mesh Shaders as it became the industry norm moving forward.
While the XSX has Mesh Shaders, it can also utilise Primitive Shaders as well.

Of interest is that they confirm that a number of Sony First Party studios have already incorporated Primitive Shaders into their games, while no one has really used Mesh Shaders yet.

It's a pretty big article and there is some interesting take aways.
Its in Japanese so you will need to use a translation for it.

https://www-4gamer-net.translate.go...=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

[Sneakysnake]

You mean to tell me that Sony was hesitant to adopt a new trend? Shocker...

 

[Kataploom]

Maybe they mean first party studios because clearly Fortnite is already using it... This gen tech adoption is unprecedentedly slow...

 

[In Cold Blood]

You mean to tell me that Sony was hesitant to adopt a new trend? Shocker...

From what I could understand, Mesh Shaders had a deep relationship with Direct X 12, and as Primitive and Mesh Shaders are quite similar, Sony just adopted them.
It also appears that Sony First Party studios have been quicker to adopt the use of Primitive shaders than other studios adopting Mesh Shaders.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Maybe they mean first party studios because clearly Fortnite is already using it... This gen tech adoption is unprecedentedly slow...

I know. Mesh Shaders have been around since 2018 and we still don't have them getting used.
On the XSX we have SFS which will absolutely help with memory management, especially on the Series S, yet no one had adopted it.
I don't know how much is required on the engine level to use them, or if it's just required on the API alone.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

A pretty interesting interview with AMD over the future of gaming tech, and how Sony adopted the older Primitive Shaders and MS adopted the newer Mesh Shaders as it became the industry norm moving forward.
While the XSX has Mesh Shaders, it can also utilise Primitive Shaders as well.

Of interest is that they confirm that a number of Sony First Party studios have already incorporated Primitive Shaders into their games, while no one has really used Mesh Shaders yet.

It's a pretty big article and there is some interesting take aways.
Its in Japanese so you will need to use a translation for it.

https://www-4gamer-net.translate.go...=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Most of these features aren't being used yet. Expect to see this stuff down the line once devs are acclimated to all the new tech found in PS5, DX12 and Xbox Series. Perhaps by 2024 well be seeing games with mesh shaders, sampler feedback streaming, Direct Storage GPU decompression etc.

 

[Kataploom]

On the XSX we have SFS which will absolutely help with memory management, especially on the Series S, yet no one had adopted it.
I don't know how much is required on the engine level to use them, or if it's just required on the API alone.

I'm thinking this is most probably a transition gen and it will remaind like that for the most part of it or this will be a very long gen, like one literally lasting 10 years or so...

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

You mean to tell me that Sony was hesitant to adopt a new trend? Shocker...

Sony doesn't need to use AMD's best tech because they are the market leader, games will be built for PS5 1st and foremost no matter what it's specs and features are. Sony can instead focus on making their console lose less money on every sale etc. MS doesn't have that luxury and it behooves them to use the full RDNA2 feature set on Xbox as that means both Xbox and PC(DX12U) have feature parity.

 

[Hobbygaming]

Yeah for Nanite they are using compute for density and vertex shaders for the bigger triangles which can achieve the same results as mesh shaders. Mesh shaders were supposed to be a good solution for static geometry but it looks like some software solutions are working just fine

 

[Hobbygaming]

Primitive + compute shaders seem to be the software way to achieve similar results as mesh shaders

 

[Topher]

Sony doesn't need to use AMD's best tech because they are the market leader, games will be built for PS5 1st and foremost no matter what it's specs and features are. Sony can instead focus on making their console lose less money on every sale etc. MS doesn't have that luxury and it behooves them to use the full RDNA2 feature set on Xbox as that means both Xbox and PC(DX12U) have feature parity.

The article indicates mesh shaders are not part of AMD's tech. This is incorporated into DirectX 12. So this is really about how to organize data structures programmatically is what I'm reading. The article says this was about "adopting standards" for the same AMD architecture. Microsoft choose to standardize mesh shaders over primitive.

 

[ACESHIGH]

I'm thinking this is most probably a transition gen and it will remaind like that for the most part of it or this will be a very long gen, like one literally lasting 10 years or so...

Should last long. PC tech is not advancing at a breakneck pace like in the 90s or early 00s. I can't believe I can still game pretty decently on a mid range PC from 2013 with an RX 580 I got a few years ago. Unprecedented longevity.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Most of these features aren't being used yet. Expect to see this stuff down the line once devs are acclimated to all the new tech found in PS5, DX12 and Xbox Series. Perhaps by 2024 well be seeing games with mesh shaders, sampler feedback streaming, Direct Storage GPU decompression etc.

There are a number of demo's showing performance with and without mesh shders gives a boost of between 500-1800%.
I understand that's game dependent, but they are leaving alot of untapped potential on the table.

 

[twilo99]

I wonder if it was reversed and Sony adopted mesh instead, I bet we would have way more games using them now. Being market leader makes a huge difference when it comes to adopting new tech.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Well first parties using Primitive Shaders certainly sounds better than first parties not using Mesh Shaders, even if the latter is newer and theoretically better (Or is it, with Geometry Engine? Who fucking knows)

It's interesting how many years ago AMD introduced this and it's only catching on the most in Sony first party titles

 

[93xfan]

Most of these features aren't being used yet. Expect to see this stuff down the line once devs are acclimated to all the new tech found in PS5, DX12 and Xbox Series. Perhaps by 2024 well be seeing games with mesh shaders, sampler feedback streaming, Direct Storage GPU decompression etc.

It's a bummer we aren't seeing it yet, but hopefully no pro models and also hopefully a longer generation.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Well first parties using Primitive Shaders certainly sounds better than first parties not using Mesh Shaders, even if the latter is newer and theoretically better (Or is it, with Geometry Engine? Who fucking knows)

It's interesting how many years ago AMD introduced this and it's only catching on the most in Sony first party titles

That's the benefit of Sony's first party studios only having to code to their one consoles strengths. I do wonder if this might change in lue of them doing more PC ports.

From MSs point of view they have Mesh Shaders built in to their DX12U, which is for both PC and Xbox.
The main issue would be that the majority of GPUs out there don't have Mesh Shader abilities.

 

[Hobbygaming]

I wonder if it was reversed and Sony adopted mesh instead, I bet we would have way more games using them now. Being market leader makes a huge difference when it comes to adopting new tech.

This is kinda funny (not making fun of you) because the PS2 actually had mesh shaders and no I'm not joking

 

[Hobbygaming]

There are a number of demo's showing performance with and without mesh shders gives a boost of between 500-1800%.
I understand that's game dependent, but they are leaving alot of untapped potential on the table.

Yeah, game dependent is right.There's also performance tests that show compute shaders can be faster than mesh in some instances. We'll have to wait and see

 

[Tripolygon]

Primitive shader is not the older version of Mesh Shaders. Primitive shader was proposed as the standard by AMD in 2017 while 2018 Nvidia proposed their implementation which Microsoft adopted in 2019 into DX12U in the form of Mesh Shaders. Primitive shaders still exist in AMD GPUs starting from Vega to RDNA 3.

On AMD GPUs Primitive shaders is what enables Mesh Shaders. How it functions depends on what API you are using it with. In DX12 it functions as Mesh Shaders, but it is the same Primitive Shaders in all AMD GPUs.

Mr. Wang
Certainly, Mesh Shader was adopted as standard in DirectX 12. However, the new geometry pipeline concept originally started with the concept of tidying up the complicated geometry pipeline, making it easier for game developers to use, and to make it easier to extract performance. In other words, it can be said that both AMD and NVIDIA had the same goal as the starting point of the idea. To put it bluntly, Primitive Shader and Mesh Shader have many similarities in terms of functionality, although there are differences in implementation.
So did AMD abandon the Primitive Shader? As for hardware, Primitive Shader still exists, and how to use Mesh Shader is realized with Primitive Shader , it corresponds to Mesh Shader with such an image.

Mr. Wang
Primitive Shader as hardware exists in everything from Radeon RX Vega to the latest RDNA 3-based GPU. When viewed from DirectX 12, Radeon GPU's Primitive Shader is designed to work as a Mesh Shader.

 

[Kataploom]

That's the benefit of Sony's first party studios only having to code to their one consoles strengths. I do wonder if this might change in lue of them doing more PC ports.

From MSs point of view they have Mesh Shaders built in to their DX12U, which is for both PC and Xbox.
The main issue would be that the majority of GPUs out there don't have Mesh Shader abilities.

Sony games are some of the most demanding PC games out there and not because they look better, they're counting on users PCs to brute force more often than not, specially at launch

 

[onQ123]

This is kinda funny (not making fun of you) because the PS2 actually had mesh shaders and no I'm not joking

Vector Units used to put in work

 

[Rea]

Mesh shader is not hardware implementation, at least in AMD's GPUs, even Xbox SX gpu has Primitive Shaders as hardware but using Mesh shader API. If my reading is correct.

"By the way, according to Mr. Wang's explanation, the XSX GPU is also based on RDNA, so it is equipped with a Primitive Shader, and it is an implementation form that utilizes this as a Mesh Shader from DirectX 12.""

Edit: Primitive Shaders hardware can also use Mesh shader implementation.

 

[CGNoire]

Those exspecting mesh/primitive shaders to Produce Results on Par with Nanite are in for a Rude Awakening.

Wake me up when we dont require devs to confirm there use to even "notice" them.

 

[TheRedRiders]

Primitive shader is not the older version of Mesh Shaders. Primitive shader was proposed as the standard by AMD in 2017 while 2018 Nvidia proposed their implementation which Microsoft adopted in 2019 into DX12U in the form of Mesh Shaders. Primitive shaders still exist in AMD GPUs starting from Vega to RDNA 3.

On AMD GPUs Primitive shaders is what enables Mesh Shaders. How it functions depends on what API you are using it with. In DX12 it functions as Mesh Shaders, but it is the same Primitive Shaders in all AMD GPUs.

Mr. Wang
Certainly, Mesh Shader was adopted as standard in DirectX 12. However, the new geometry pipeline concept originally started with the concept of tidying up the complicated geometry pipeline, making it easier for game developers to use, and to make it easier to extract performance. In other words, it can be said that both AMD and NVIDIA had the same goal as the starting point of the idea. To put it bluntly, Primitive Shader and Mesh Shader have many similarities in terms of functionality, although there are differences in implementation.
So did AMD abandon the Primitive Shader? As for hardware, Primitive Shader still exists, and how to use Mesh Shader is realized with Primitive Shader , it corresponds to Mesh Shader with such an image.

Mr. Wang
Primitive Shader as hardware exists in everything from Radeon RX Vega to the latest RDNA 3-based GPU. When viewed from DirectX 12, Radeon GPU's Primitive Shader is designed to work as a Mesh Shader.

I said something similar a while ago.

The pipeline is different on a software level, Mesh shaders replace the pipeline while Primitive Shaders modify the old one, the goal is the same however which is to grant graphics access to compute shader functionality.

The hardware necessary for Mesh and Primitive Shaders to function has been in all AMD GPU's since Vega, in the from of NGG fast path (next-generation geometry). This includes RDNA 1 as well but it most likely lacks driver support.

All AMD documentation and white papers support this.

Incorrect, as I've pointed out already, AMD have highlighted zero changes to their GPU architecture to accommodate Mesh Shaders, AMD's ISA on RDNA 2 makes no mention of Mesh Shaders either.

The whole point of Mesh/Primitive Shaders is to send compute based workloads to the GPU without the bottlenecks of a compute shader. All the Primitive Shader stages are fully programmable according to AMD documentation and patents.

As I mentioned before, LeviathanGamer2 (who specialises in gaming hardware architecture at a degree level) has covered this already.

Seems like Mark Cerny went with Primitive Shaders because he didn't want to force developers into adopting a new pipeline (which would have been the case with Mesh Shaders).

It's good to hear that first parties have started to use this feature as well, might explain some of the impressive performance and graphics we've been seeing in games like R&C, Demon's Souls and HFW.

It's also important to note that none of these games use a micro-polygon rendering system similar to Nanite, which is what you can achieve with Primitive/Mesh Shaders. So it's likely the developers are still scratching the surface on this feature. The best is yet to come.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Yeah, this gen has been pretty terrible for anything new. We are heading inton3 years into the gen and there hasn't really been any next gen games.

Major shame.

 

[Three]

Those exspecting mesh/primitive shaders to Produce Results on Par with Nanite are in for a Rude Awakening.

Nanite uses primitive shaders so this doesn't make sense.

 

[TheRedRiders]

Those exspecting mesh/primitive shaders to Produce Results on Par with Nanite are in for a Rude Awakening.

Wake me up when we dont require devs to confirm there use to even "notice" them.

They're more flexible than Nanite, there's always going to be trade-offs.

 

[CGNoire]

Nanite uses primitive shaders so this doesn't make sense.

Maybe thats true but the R&D epic is doing and The results speak for themselves. Noone is catching up anytime soon. Epic caught everyone with there pants down.

 

[CGNoire]

They're more flexible than Nanite, there's always going to be trade-offs.

If bye tradeoffs you mean completely unnoticable results to the consumer with out pointing the results out then yes. No one paying attention during Epics UE5's presentations needed the benefits spelled out for them. It was obvious.

 

[TheRedRiders]

Maybe thats true but the R&D epic is doing and The results speak for themselves. Noone is catching up anytime soon. Epic caught everyone with there pants down.

Lol

If bye tradeoffs you mean completely unnoticable results to the consumer with out pointing the results out then yes. No one paying attention during Epics UE5's presentations needed the benefits spelled out for them. It was obvious.

Other than Fortnite what game is using Nanite and Lumen? Almost none.

By the time they do the industry will catch up, especially Sony first parties.

By trade-offs I mean on the developer side of things, Nanite struggles a lot with foliage and deformable geometry. Let's not forget the shit performance.

 

[CGNoire]

Lol


Other than Fortnite what game is using Nanite and Lumen? Almost none.

By the time they do the industry will catch up, especially Sony first parties.

By trade-offs I mean on the developer side of things, Nanite struggles a lot with foliage and deformable geometry. Let's not forget the shit performance.

Deformable geometry for enviroments outside of foliage isnt a big deal for 99% of games made. As far a characters go they wont be able to reap the benefits of nanite outside of armor, gadgets, accessories, weapons etc..

They also added foilage support in most recent update. There are animation limitations on the foilage but im sure they will find work arounds. Event tbougj its working.

12 years ago Carmack was all about researching virtualized geometry solutions using SVO techniques and most other industy leaders werent very optimisitic about the progress including eventually Carmack himself which quickly abandoned the tech for awhile. Since then outside of that austrailian company most people werent even discussing it anymore. Epic kept R&D8ng it in secret and didnt reveal that fact untill 2020 catching most studios completely off guard. Considering how much printed money Epic has made from Fortnite over the last number of years and how much they have had to spend on what seems to be a very robust R&D team and fact they have already been working on this nearing 10 years leads me to be very skepticle about how fast the dev darlings around here can respond. I just dont think Spiderman 2 is gonna have some impressive use of virtualized geometry but I fully espect to be gaslit here left and right about its "technical" merits as it pertains to an "next gen" exclusive.

On another note: I think the best use case for Nanite characters is Robots with an industrial design aesthetic....think Armored Core.

 

[Allandor]

I know. Mesh Shaders have been around since 2018 and we still don't have them getting used.
On the XSX we have SFS which will absolutely help with memory management, especially on the Series S, yet no one had adopted it.
I don't know how much is required on the engine level to use them, or if it's just required on the API alone.

The big problem with the Directx API is, if you plan the game and write it, DX12 is much more demanding for the developer. Mesh Shaders, ... doesn't make it better. But performance is still good enough without that stuff, so there is no work invested into this. Also xbox one support might have to do with it, because when you don't use it, the code can also be used for xb1. Also the code is more or less directly PC compatible. So less work for the developer to support all platforms at once.
On PS5, the developer doesn't really have a choice. The PS5 exclusive API must be used if the developers wants to deliver a game for that platform. Because a game must be ported/coded for the PS5 API directly, the code gets automatically more optimized, even if it gets just "adopted". Supporting PS4 always needs extra work. And than there are better tools on Sonys side (from what can be heard from developers using both).

As far as I know APIs from MS, there are many, many ways to reach a target and most of the time it is up to the developer to experiment under which conditions which is the better solution. That doesn't make it easier to create an optimal experience. Often you just don't know there is another, less demanding method to reach the same goal until you find it by "accident". At least this is my experience after after ~20 years working with many MS "APIs" in the business sector.

 

[Lysandros]

Primitive shader is not the older version of Mesh Shaders. Primitive shader was proposed as the standard by AMD in 2017 while 2018 Nvidia proposed their implementation which Microsoft adopted in 2019 into DX12U in the form of Mesh Shaders. Primitive shaders still exist in AMD GPUs starting from Vega to RDNA 3.

On AMD GPUs Primitive shaders is what enables Mesh Shaders. How it functions depends on what API you are using it with. In DX12 it functions as Mesh Shaders, but it is the same Primitive Shaders in all AMD GPUs.

Mr. Wang
Certainly, Mesh Shader was adopted as standard in DirectX 12. However, the new geometry pipeline concept originally started with the concept of tidying up the complicated geometry pipeline, making it easier for game developers to use, and to make it easier to extract performance. In other words, it can be said that both AMD and NVIDIA had the same goal as the starting point of the idea. To put it bluntly, Primitive Shader and Mesh Shader have many similarities in terms of functionality, although there are differences in implementation.
So did AMD abandon the Primitive Shader? As for hardware, Primitive Shader still exists, and how to use Mesh Shader is realized with Primitive Shader , it corresponds to Mesh Shader with such an image.

Mr. Wang
Primitive Shader as hardware exists in everything from Radeon RX Vega to the latest RDNA 3-based GPU. When viewed from DirectX 12, Radeon GPU's Primitive Shader is designed to work as a Mesh Shader.

Thanks for putting an end to the long running misunformation (i think we broke a record on that front for this generation) on this thread at least (i know this was explained before in other posts). This is essentially part of the "Full RDNA2 feature set, XSX's true superiorty is yet be unlocked" narrative. Yet i think it will still last until the end of the generation without any substance.

 

[Riky]

Mesh Shaders were always going to become more relevant towards the end of the gen, I think we'll see more use of Sampler Feedback Streaming first, especially in Xbox first party games.

 

[Physiognomonics]

Mesh Shaders were always going to become more relevant towards the end of the gen, I think we'll see more use of Sampler Feedback Streaming first, especially in Xbox first party games.

Someone has not properly read the thread I see. Mesh shaders are just a software implementation based on NVidia API but in all AMD GPUs since Vega the hardware that enables this (software implementation) is primitive shaders, nothing more. And primitive shaders are already used in a few 1st party titles on PS5.

Besides with Nanite the Mesh shaders API is completely useless and only primitive shaders (for big polygons) + nanite (for small polygons) are necessary.

 

[gundalf]

Cool stuff but implementing such proprietary tech is mostly exclusive to AAA dev.
Getting RTX and DLSS in Unity already took ages and I don't know if that is out of beta stage.

 

[Arioco]

Mesh Shaders were always going to become more relevant towards the end of the gen, I think we'll see more use of Sampler Feedback Streaming first, especially in Xbox first party games.

And that's when Series S will finally be pushing PS5 pretty hard, right? Can't wait!

 

[Arioco]

There are a number of demo's showing performance with and without mesh shders gives a boost of between 500-1800%.
I understand that's game dependent, but they are leaving alot of untapped potential on the table.

Problem is The Matrix demo already uses Mesh Shaders and Primitive Shaders (confirmed by one of its devs) and it doesn't seem to have a great level of performance. And in fact in runs ever so slightly better on PS5 and it's "old", Primitive Shaders, despide MS collaborating with Epic for that demo.

 

[Cherrypepsi]

isnt all that stuff already being done in the most impressive way by UE5 Nanite?

 

[RoboFu]

Soo how much more fun do these add to a game? 10% more fun?? 25%!!??

 

[Thebonehead]

Soo how much more fun do these add to a game? 10% more fun?? 25%!!??

100% more Warrioring

 

[Riky]

Yeah, this gen has been pretty terrible for anything new. We are heading inton3 years into the gen and there hasn't really been any next gen games.

Major shame.

Forza Motorsport will be the first, AAA studio with an engine built from the ground up for next gen only consoles.

We've been through the Mesh vs Primitive shaders debate before, it's granular control over the pipeline that is the major difference and for Xbox the grouping size which is increased over vanilla RDNA2.

But you'll get some idiots still claiming its an DX12U term despite it being introduced by Nvidia.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Both systems can use both types. They're using a similar RDNA2 architecture, which supports both.

But, Xbox is tuned more for Mesh Shaders and PS5 is tuned more for Primitive Shaders.

I don't need an article to tell me this. Just common sense.

Problem is The Matrix demo already uses Mesh Shaders and Primitive Shaders (confirmed by one of its devs) and it doesn't seem to have a great level of performance. And in fact in runs ever so slightly better on PS5 and it's "old", Primitive Shaders, despide MS collaborating with Epic for that demo.

MS's work on the Matrix demo was exclusively for the Xbox Series versions; they sent people from The Coalition to help Epic with optimization of the demo on Series X and Series S.

MS had no direct involvement in assisting in optimizations for the PS5 version.

Primitive shader is not the older version of Mesh Shaders. Primitive shader was proposed as the standard by AMD in 2017 while 2018 Nvidia proposed their implementation which Microsoft adopted in 2019 into DX12U in the form of Mesh Shaders. Primitive shaders still exist in AMD GPUs starting from Vega to RDNA 3.

On AMD GPUs Primitive shaders is what enables Mesh Shaders. How it functions depends on what API you are using it with. In DX12 it functions as Mesh Shaders, but it is the same Primitive Shaders in all AMD GPUs.

Mr. Wang
Certainly, Mesh Shader was adopted as standard in DirectX 12. However, the new geometry pipeline concept originally started with the concept of tidying up the complicated geometry pipeline, making it easier for game developers to use, and to make it easier to extract performance. In other words, it can be said that both AMD and NVIDIA had the same goal as the starting point of the idea. To put it bluntly, Primitive Shader and Mesh Shader have many similarities in terms of functionality, although there are differences in implementation.
So did AMD abandon the Primitive Shader? As for hardware, Primitive Shader still exists, and how to use Mesh Shader is realized with Primitive Shader , it corresponds to Mesh Shader with such an image.

Mr. Wang
Primitive Shader as hardware exists in everything from Radeon RX Vega to the latest RDNA 3-based GPU. When viewed from DirectX 12, Radeon GPU's Primitive Shader is designed to work as a Mesh Shader.

Damn, that settles the debate then. Unfortunately bad-faith actors and warriors will still keep going on about "PS5 can't use Mesh Shaders (or Series can't use Primitive Shaders, for that matter)" without realizing how they actually work on AMD GPUs.

I think people expecting a magical performance lead for Series X later in this gen need to come back down to reality.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Deformable geometry for enviroments outside of foliage isnt a big deal for 99% of games made. As far a characters go they wont be able to reap the benefits of nanite outside of armor, gadgets, accessories, weapons etc..

They also added foilage support in most recent update. There are animation limitations on the foilage but im sure they will find work arounds. Event tbougj its working.

12 years ago Carmack was all about researching virtualized geometry solutions using SVO techniques and most other industy leaders werent very optimisitic about the progress including eventually Carmack himself which quickly abandoned the tech for awhile. Since then outside of that austrailian company most people werent even discussing it anymore. Epic kept R&D8ng it in secret and didnt reveal that fact untill 2020 catching most studios completely off guard. Considering how much printed money Epic has made from Fortnite over the last number of years and how much they have had to spend on what seems to be a very robust R&D team and fact they have already been working on this nearing 10 years leads me to be very skepticle about how fast the dev darlings around here can respond. I just dont think Spiderman 2 is gonna have some impressive use of virtualized geometry but I fully espect to be gaslit here left and right about its "technical" merits as it pertains to an "next gen" exclusive.

On another note: I think the best use case for Nanite characters is Robots with an industrial design aesthetic....think Armored Core.

You forgot the part where Epic were "caught by surprise" by Sony SSD I/O for PS5 and had to rewrite their I/O pipeline in UE5 to support it.

Also I think you're underestimating how much platform holders (particularly Sony & Microsoft) keep in touch with companies like Epic. Whatever stuff Epic were R&D'ing for UE5 over the years, I'm sure a couple of their folks were sharing insights, maybe even demonstrations, to people at Sony, Microsoft, AMD, Nvidia. People in this industry tend to talk somewhat with peers at other companies, especially in the case of platform holders with 3P devs & pubs.

So I don't think Epic caught anyone off guard with UE5 and if anything, Sony caught them off-guard with how feature-packed PS5's SSD I/O subsystem was, to the point Epic had to rewrite theirs. But systems like PS5 & Xbox Series were always going to be prepared for UE5, just like how PS4 & XBO were able to run UE4. Why would it be otherwise?

Lastly you're underestimating Insomniac's skills and talent. I don't know what engine they use specifically, but they already have one of the best-looking games of the gen so far in Rift Apart, and they're absolutely going to push past that with Spiderman 2. I think you're going to be quite surprised with what stuff Spiderman 2 is pushing on the technical side; Sony are definitely going to invest heavily into a big marquee release to, among other things, be a showcase of what the PS5 can do.

There are a number of demo's showing performance with and without mesh shders gives a boost of between 500-1800%.
I understand that's game dependent, but they are leaving alot of untapped potential on the table.

TBF those are very limited demos that are doing nothing other than generating polygonal data. There's very little (if any) game logic, physics, AI etc. running on those.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Both systems can use both types. They're using a similar RDNA2 architecture, which supports both.

But, Xbox is tuned more for Mesh Shaders and PS5 is tuned more for Primitive Shaders.

I don't need an article to tell me this. Just common sense.



MS's work on the Matrix demo was exclusively for the Xbox Series versions; they sent people from The Coalition to help Epic with optimization of the demo on Series X and Series S.

MS had no direct involvement in assisting in optimizations for the PS5 version.



Damn, that settles the debate then. Unfortunately bad-faith actors and warriors will still keep going on about "PS5 can't use Mesh Shaders (or Series can't use Primitive Shaders, for that matter)" without realizing how they actually work on AMD GPUs.

I think people expecting a magical performance lead for Series X later in this gen need to come back down to reality.

The PS5 doesn't have Mesh Shaders, it uses Primitive Shaders only.
Iit doesn't make.any different tho as they pretty much do the same thing.
The only real distinction is that Mesh Shaders has become the default standard. What I found interesting was that it was actually decided by Microsoft which one would be the default industry standard via what they adopted for Direct X 12.

So for a performance point of view I don't think there is much to be gained from using either. I don't think you are going to get any extra performance boost by using Mesh Shaders on the XSX and Primitive Shaders on the PS5.
If more third party devs start to implement it they will be using Mesh Shaders. I think from what I have read that it's pretty easy for them to convert Mesh Shaders to Primitive Shaders, meaning both consoles will get the same benefit.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

Lastly you're underestimating Insomniac's skills and talent. I don't know what engine they use specifically, but they already have one of the best-looking games of the gen so far in Rift Apart, and they're absolutely going to push past that with Spiderman 2.

IMO R&C Rift Apart stands head and shoulders above any game released this gen as the only truly looking next-gen game.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

IMO R&C Rift Apart stands head and shoulders above any game released this gen as the only truly looking next-gen game.

If I had to pick between two, Rift Apart & HFW would be in that running. I probably lean to HFW though; the level of detail and fluidity in that game, given it's cross-gen, is impeccable. The expansion will be PS5-only so I'm really interested to see how it utilizes that system without needing to account for PS4 like the base game does.

 

[Riky]

The PS5 doesn't have Mesh Shaders, it uses Primitive Shaders only.
Iit doesn't make.any different tho as they pretty much do the same thing.
The only real distinction is that Mesh Shaders has become the default standard. What I found interesting was that it was actually decided by Microsoft which one would be the default industry standard via what they adopted for Direct X 12.

So for a performance point of view I don't think there is much to be gained from using either. I don't think you are going to get any extra performance boost by using Mesh Shaders on the XSX and Primitive Shaders on the PS5.
If more third party devs start to implement it they will be using Mesh Shaders. I think from what I have read that it's pretty easy for them to convert Mesh Shaders to Primitive Shaders, meaning both consoles will get the same benefit.

Yes the major difference is shortening the pipeline for developers when using mesh shaders. Also the total grouping was raised on Series X compared to standard RDNA2.
I don't see this as a major difference between the consoles, it could be a major help to Series S in the long run.

 

[SlimySnake]

IMO R&C Rift Apart stands head and shoulders above any game released this gen as the only truly looking next-gen game.

It doesnt stand head and shoulders above Horizon FW. Especially in its open world levels.