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[cormack12]

CoD introduced this last year I think, and Flight Sim 2024 seems to be leaning into it pretty heavily, so is this the future?

Especially when you compare something like the recent Space Marine 2 HD texture pack clocking in at 90GB, just to sit there on your HDD - is it not better to just stream it on demand for that section then discard it from cache later?

What do you think GAF? The future? As we approach an ever increasing always online gaming exoeriences?

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

sure but... what are you even "buying" a that point?

 

[IAmRei]

i don't like it. always online kills locations that doesn't have much networks.

 

[Fess]

This absolutely sucks and needs to end. Had no idea that this was a thing. They’re going to put this behind a subscription eventually.

 

[Killer8]

It makes sense for something like Flight Sim where you have something like 2 petabytes of data for the entire world to load in.

For everything else, gamers made their bed by whining incessantly about install sizes. It just makes logical sense for game sizes to grow over time as detail and fidelity increases, but gamers are too retarded to realize this and think everything comes for free.

Hard drive space is this sacrosanct thing and people just refuse to upgrade it like every other component in their setup. We deserve the diarrhea future of our own making.

 

[{insert code here}]

90GB won't be considered large in a few years.

 

[JimboJones]

I wonder what the total install size for flight simulator would be if you had to download all the hi res textures.

 

[Robb]

Maybe, but not for me. I’m not buying always online singleplayer titles.

 

[winjer]

It's a stupid solution, for a problem that doesn't exist.
Just stream textures locally, it's faster and doesn't waste internet bandwidth.

 

[T4keD0wN]

No lol. Flight sim streaming world/weather data is reasonable and pretty much necessary for the game to function,

Texture streaming is not necessary, nor reasonable and thanks to existing tools like PS5s ssd being faster than any consumer internet connection and DX12u features like directstorage being available were guaranteed this wont become the norm.

 

[TheRedRiders]

Textures will slowly start to bottleneck storage, we're already seeing this slowly, FF7Rebirth is a good example.

I believe neural texture upsampling will be one of the key solutions.

 

[Fahdis]

If most of you know, they now have proprietary tech that can do petabytes of transfer of data.

Fiber-optic data transfer speeds hit a rapid 301 Tbps — 1.2 million times faster than your home broadband connection

The researchers hit a rate of 301 terabits per second — equivalent to transferring 1,800 4K movies over the internet in one second — using existing fiber-optic cables.

www.livescience.com

When we get this in our hands is another story.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Why would I want to rely on the internet for this? There are only disadvantages for the player.

 

[deriks]

Microsoft introduced with XOne arrival, and never really took off for a lot of reasons. Nowadays I guess it could benefit more with better resolution here and there, but I don't see becoming "the next thing". Internet still is inconsistent even in first world places, so chances are that will be cool to use, but will never beat local real time rendering

 

[TheRedRiders]

If most of you know, they now have proprietary tech that can do petabytes of transfer of data.

Fiber-optic data transfer speeds hit a rapid 301 Tbps — 1.2 million times faster than your home broadband connection

The researchers hit a rate of 301 terabits per second — equivalent to transferring 1,800 4K movies over the internet in one second — using existing fiber-optic cables.

www.livescience.com

When we get this in our hands is another story.

It's going to take years for this to become widespread, especially on an international scale.

 

[Haint]

90GB won't be considered large in a few years.

Storage space and price per gigabyte stopped improving like a decade ago my guy. The mainstream SSD's 99.9% of people have in their systems have been stuck at 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes for like 10 years at this point. My 10 year old system has a 1TB Nvme drive, my 1.5 year old system has 2TB Nvme's. Bald faced collusion among the handful of NAND manufacturers has seen to it that price per gigabyte is not allowed to drop meaningfully. When the post-Covid surplus actually started to drive prices down dramatically, every producer--in lock step--shut down manufacturing to reinflate prices. With only 2-3 manufactuers, HDD's are the same story. I paid around $90 for 7200rpm 256MB Cache CMR 3TB drives in my 10 year old system, the same amount today will buy you even less, they'll be 3TB 5400RPM 64MB SMR drives.

 

[Fafalada]

CoD introduced this last year I think, and Flight Sim 2024 seems to be leaning into it pretty heavily, so is this the future?

Strictly speaking there were implementations of streaming storage since 2003 or thereabouts (much less data to stream back then, and as the internet got better, so did game bandwidth needs).
But in 2 decades since we still haven't come anywhere close to a practical general purpose solution (or rather - the attempts at those failed to gain traction - as there were a few). Cloud providers are probably best positioned to actually do this - but none of them took a serious attempt at it yet - so hard to tell if we'll ever crack it.
As long as it remains a hodge podge of special cases adoption will continue to be snail-pace though.

I believe neural texture upsampling will be one of the key solutions.

Data escalation is on a lot more than just textures - and in any case, for imagined datasets to compete with real-data in fidelity (and not look awful), you'll need a model that's as big as the data-itself, so that's not much of a tradeoff to download. But sure - maybe one day games themselves will just be 'imagined' on the fly by an AI agent instead of built somewhere up-front.

Why would I want to rely on the internet for this? There are only disadvantages for the player.

If well implemented you can start playing games with minimal wait times (instead of waiting on local installs) it's basically a match for video-streaming in terms of 'instant-on' but without the input-latency tradeoffs (and potentially much lower data-rates over prolonged usage). It's also computationally cheaper than streaming so it works better commercially (video-streaming is still a loss-leading model).

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

If well implemented you can start playing games with minimal wait times (instead of waiting on local installs) it's basically a match for video-streaming in terms of 'instant-on' but without the input-latency tradeoffs (and potentially much lower data-rates over prolonged usage). It's also computationally cheaper than streaming so it works better commercially (video-streaming is still a loss-leading model).

I'll wait.

 

[Quasicat]

When a game on Game Pass clocks in at almost 100gb, I just stream it anyway. I’m not going to use up my limited ssd space for a Game Pass title when streaming looks really good. It may not look as good as it running on the ssd, but most Game Pass games are long term rentals for me anyway.

 

[Parazels]

Didn't Nvidia promise to apply AI for improving texture resolution in their future DLSS iterations?

 

[mitch1971]

sure but... what are you even "buying" a that point?

Next gen we'll be buying the 'thought' of the game.

 

[yurinka]

CoD introduced this last year I think, and Flight Sim 2024 seems to be leaning into it pretty heavily, so is this the future?

Especially when you compare something like the recent Space Marine 2 HD texture pack clocking in at 90GB, just to sit there on your HDD - is it not better to just stream it on demand for that section then discard it from cache later?

What do you think GAF? The future? As we approach an ever increasing always online gaming exoeriences?

I think it's stupid and nonsensical, and that their devs should learn to optimize. What they do can be included in a 50GB disc as other devs do.

There's no reason to require an internet connection for this, or to wastser server costs. I think this only exists because MS wants to say they use their Azure servers for something related to gaming other than cloud gaming.

Textures should be streamed from the BD disc/SSD, not from servers. Regarding the future, I know that at least a few studios are experimenting with AI to enhace texture quality in real time while loading or 'streaming'.

Meaning, they load an original texture that is in lower quality/resolution and it gets improved via AI when loaded, reducing the loading time and storage space but getting a better quality / bigger / more detailed final texture. Something that I assume could be used not only for normal games, but I think it's a great fit for remasters/remakes.

 

[nnytk]

I had a pretty wild thought recently. Nobody ever asked for GameCube or PS2, even PS3 era games to disappear. Gameplay has improved quite a bit through different generations, but videogames have been focusing way too much on bells and whistles. Except for Nintendo, they still make games like Sony and Xbox used to during previous gens. Gameplay and fun first. Experimentation even.

I want more AA games. More condensed, fun experiences. Ultra HD 8K streaming texture packs are the exact opposite direction afaik.

I want more games, less focus on monetization and wild budgets, shorter dev cycles and less fixation on graphics.

So please, don't put texture streaming in my games. Yuck!

 

[nemiroff]

I think it's stupid and nonsensical, and that their devs should learn to optimize. What they do can be included in a 50GB disc as other devs do.

There's no reason to require an internet connection for this, or to wastser server costs. I think this only exists because MS wants to say they use their Azure servers for something related to gaming other than cloud gaming.

Textures should be streamed from the BD disc/SSD, not from servers. Regarding the future, I know that at least a few studios are experimenting with AI to enhace texture quality in real time while loading or 'streaming'.

Meaning, they load an original texture that is in lower quality/resolution and it gets improved via AI when loaded, reducing the loading time and storage space but getting a better quality / bigger / more detailed final texture. Something that I assume could be used not only for normal games, but I think it's a great fit for remasters/remakes.

Good luck optimizing 2 000 000+ Gigabytes of MSFS2024 data for a SSD.

 

[Putonahappyface]

Yeah I'm 100% not touching games where this is compulsory.

 

[kevboard]

texture sizes will absolutely plateau with the current gen. so I doubt it.
SSDs are also getting bigger and bigger...

Flight Sim of course is an outlier here. that game allows you to fly anywhere on the entire planet. and they are constantly adding additional details and high quality assets to new areas on the globe. so in that game's case, you of course need cloud texture streaming

 

[yurinka]

Good luck optimizing 2 000 000+ Gigabytes of MSFS2024 data for a SSD.

You don't need 2TB of data for a game at all.

 

[Akuji]

Whats the problem with optional Downloads? 90gb texture Pack, either ur PC is expensive so that ur likely to have 4tb+ of space or it doesnt really concern you.

U dont do super high texture Packs on a 3050.

 

[{insert code here}]

Storage space and price per gigabyte stopped improving like a decade ago my guy. The mainstream SSD's 99.9% of people have in their systems have been stuck at 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes for like 10 years at this point. My 10 year old system has a 1TB Nvme drive, my 1.5 year old system has 2TB Nvme's. Bald faced collusion among the handful of NAND manufacturers has seen to it that price per gigabyte is not allowed to drop meaningfully. When the post-Covid surplus actually started to drive prices down dramatically, every producer--in lock step--shut down manufacturing to reinflate prices. With only 2-3 manufactuers, HDD's are the same story. I paid around $90 for 7200rpm 256MB Cache CMR 3TB drives in my 10 year old system, the same amount today will buy you even less, they'll be 3TB 5400RPM 64MB SMR drives.

My guy, I literally just picked up a 4TB ssd for my laptop. I end up buying new hard drives every 3-5 years upgrading various devices and every iteration I pay around the same price as the previous iteration getting faster, higher-capacity drives in the process. Not saying you're wrong, I'm saying the money I just spent only got me 1TB 4 years ago and today it got me 4.

 

[mrqs]

Yes. For now, textures. Then, lighting. Step by step we will go towards a world where most of it is streamed, AI upscaled/fine-tuned and you'll only be running the base game logic.

 

[Griffon]

Tech illiterate people are so easily impressed by magic words and are quick to misunderstand what it means.

No, there are no games that stream textures from the web, it's a stupid idea.

 

[newtypepilot]

OP, let me introduce you this friend who's a nigerian prince...

 

[Punished Miku]

The real solution is to make much uglier games.

 

[cormack12]

Tech illiterate people are so easily impressed by magic words and are quick to misunderstand what it means.

No, there are no games that stream textures from the web, it's a stupid idea.

 

[killatopak]

No thanks to always online.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Judging by my experience with 4K textures in Space Marine 2 it’s way easier to run out of VRAM than to run out of space.

 

[Goalus]

I think it's stupid and nonsensical,

What a surprise, wouldn't have expected that.

 

[llien]

Cherny told me that oversized games are caused by games being HDD drive friendly and packing multiple copies of related assets together.

30+ copies of the same thing being norm.

And that PS5 needed less drive space, since it has an SSD and does not need anything "packed together".

How did that story unfold, GAF?

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Cherny told me that oversized games are caused by games being HDD drive friendly and packing multiple copies of related assets together.

30+ copies of the same thing being norm.

And that PS5 needed less drive space, since it has an SSD and does not need anything "packed together".

How did that story unfold, GAF?

Most of games retained their PS4 size despite more assets, more visual variety and better texture fidelity. Some even became smaller.

Games like CoD and Flight Sim are glaring exceptions. And even Black Ops 6 individually without CoD HQ tripe is around 70-80 something gigs.

 

[nemiroff]

You don't need 2TB of data for a game at all.

2 000 000 GB is 2 000 TB.

And yes; MSFS2024 really needs it. Plus, in the future it'll be many, many times that.

With that said, I agree MSFS2024 is sort of an edge case. But it also proves that other games could take advantage of the same systems in the near future.

 

[Griffon]

oh...

With that said, it's still dumb for 99.9% of games, a slow moving globe is a unique use case (and incurs a lot of additional costs for the publishers).

 

[Ronin_7]

2 games use it.

'more prevalent'

LMAO

 

[Team Andromeda]

i don't like it. always online kills locations that doesn't have much networks.

That may have been a valid point some years ago. I think most people have access to decent broadband or 4/5G. Let's face it most of us are now connected to the internet 24 hours a day

Yes, some places that don't, like some near me in rual Wales, but then those houses don't have running water and have outside toilets.
Streaming in a texture, is the least of their worries

 

[yurinka]

2 000 000 GB is 2 000 TB.

Well, even worse. It's even more nonsensical to waste all that space.

And yes; MSFS2024 really needs it. Plus, in the future it'll be many, many times that.

With that said, I agree MSFS2024 is sort of an edge case. But it also proves that other games could take advantage of the same systems in the near future.

Games don't need that at all. These FlightSim guys just need to learn to optimize.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

for physical copies, the disc/cartridge needs to have 100% all game data on it--simple as that

slap it on 10 blu-rays if needed, dont care; or make a UV-ray disc or something

 

[nemiroff]

Well, even worse. It's even more nonsensical to waste all that space.

Games don't need that at all. These FlightSim guys just need to learn to optimize.

...Why are you doing this to yourself? It's perfectly fine to not know everything. But actually pretending otherwise just ends up making you look completely lost.

It's time for you to read up on MSFS2024's tech. I promise it's interesting. It's innovative and is pushing traditional limits.

Edit: Or are you maybe just fucking with me... Sometimes I can't tell around here.