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[PaintTinJr]

If ML is run off the GPU, and the XSX has more CUs... Won't the higher clock of the PS5 GPU close the gap somewhat.

Judging by what we've seen of ML so far - ML processing that hardly impacts performance IIRC from MM - then I would expect the PS5 be better at ML for real-time gaming in most situation - where the ML would be less complex/narrow workload.
Theoretically the XsX should be the better at non-gaming ML with more CUs, but that is also assuming that such ML wouldn't saturate the system so badly, that the system would have to reactively downclock to remain in the power profile that the PSU was designed to support, and possibly thermally throttle too - by contrast the PS5 would boost when there were less parallel workloads and pre-emptively pick the optimal (highest ) lower clock (it could) in reaction to the widest parallel workloads, to optimise work done versus power draw throughout.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Judging by what we've seen of ML so far - ML processing that hardly impacts performance IIRC from MM - then I would expect the PS5 be better at ML for real-time gaming in most situation - where the ML would be less complex/narrow workload.
Theoretically the XsX should be the better at non-gaming ML with more CUs, but that is also assuming that such ML wouldn't saturate the system so badly, that the system would have to reactively downclock to remain in the power profile that the PSU was designed to support, and possibly thermally throttle too - by contrast the PS5 would boost when there were less parallel workloads and pre-emptively pick the optimal (highest ) lower clock (it could) in reaction to the widest parallel workloads, to optimise work done versus power draw throughout.

Once again, theoretical ML performance is proportional to both CU count AND GPU clock-speed.

Having more CUs alone doesn't provide as big an advantage when PS5's CU array is clocked that much higher. So the theoretical ML performance differential will be equal to the difference in TFs.

 

[IntentionalPun]

that the system would have to reactively downclock to remain in the power profile that the PSU was designed to support, and possibly thermally throttle too

Neither of these things would ever happen since the Xbox isn't designed to downclock at all, including thermal throttling.

 

[PaintTinJr]

Once again, theoretical ML performance is proportional to both CU count AND GPU clock-speed.

Having more CUs alone doesn't provide as big an advantage when PS5's CU array is clocked that much higher. So the theoretical ML performance differential will be equal to the difference in TFs.

I was under the impression that ML solutions will vary by how they map to the hardware, and that a predictor with many things influencing the prediction will be more parallel, and vice versa. I was presuming that a highly parallel solution running on less parallel hardware will incur performance penalties for solving in more clocks - if the solution perfectly compliments the width of the more parallel hardware. Presumably the final clock - of a prediction ran - on narrower hardware gets lower utilisation than a corresponding wider solution - unless the narrower solution is an even multiple of the predictor algorithm, which would yield lower performance/utilisation per second, no?

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Neither of these things would ever happen since the Xbox isn't designed to downclock at all, including thermal throttling.

ML is also low precision integer computation which doesn't use nearly as much power as single precision floating point.

 

[PaintTinJr]

Neither of these things would ever happen since the Xbox isn't designed to downclock at all, including thermal throttling.

I believe that is only true for software that has passed through xbox certification - meaning it isn't allowed to trigger such a state. Open ended ML solutions running on a console would IMHO trigger both those situations, based on how Cerny talked in the DF interview post-Road to PS5 about how all hardware - before the PS5 paradigm shift - has to work.

 

[IntentionalPun]

I believe that is only true for software that has passed through xbox certification - meaning it isn't allowed to trigger such a state. Open ended ML solutions running on a console would IMHO trigger both those situations, based on how Cerny talked in the DF interview post-Road to PS5 about how all hardware - before the PS5 paradigm shift - has to work.

Why do you think the ML running on a console would be so open ended or need so much power? And why in the world do you think that would somehow bypass Xbox certification?

The entire point is that it's a really efficient way to do something that would otherwise take more GPU power to do/render w/o ML.

They aren't training models...they are just running predictions against that fitted model on the console.. I feel like you aren't understanding that here or something.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

I was under the impression that ML solutions will vary by how they map to the hardware, and that a predictor with many things influencing the prediction will be more parallel,

Yes, but this is inherently no different from any other parallelizable workload on a GPU.

and vice versa. I was presuming that a highly parallel solution running on less parallel hardware will incur performance penalties for solving in more clocks

Yes, but increasing clocks offsets that penalty.

- if the solution perfectly compliments the width of the more parallel hardware.

I would assume this is rarely the case in practice... on any GPU.

Presumably the final clock - of a prediction ran - on narrower hardware gets lower utilisation than a corresponding wider solution - unless the narrower solution is an even multiple of the predictor algorithm, which would yield lower performance/utilisation per second, no?

Right, but now you're talking actual performance, as opposed to "theoretical" which is what you initially stated and I contested.


Fundamentally, practical ML performance is far more impacted by Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) than execution thread level parallelism (e.g. analogous to CU count); hence the need for Tensor cores or AMD's mixed precision packed math hardware solutions. You want to maximise the number of OPs per clock because you'll spend overwhelmingly more time waiting on data from memory than you will doing any useful computation.

Which is why I stated previously, and folks here need to understand, ML performance is massively dominated more by memory latency than anything else.

For ML computation (in order of importance) you want:

1. Lots of registers
2. Big caches
3. Fast caches
4. Lots of memory bandwidth
5. High ILP
6. High thread-level parallelism

CU count only really impacts point (6) above, which is the lowest priority.
Whereas, GPU clocks impacts (3) and (6).

 

[PaintTinJr]

Why do you think the ML running on a console would be so open ended or need so much power? And why in the world do you think that would somehow bypass Xbox certification?

The entire point is that it's a really efficient way to do something that would otherwise take more GPU power to do/render w/o ML.

They aren't training models...they are just running predictions against that fitted model on the console.. I feel like you aren't understanding that here or something.

When I said non-gaming ML, I meant training models and ML that far exceeds the complexity of that used in a game.

That's why I made the distinction between the two applications of ML: gaming and non-gaming.

 

[PaintTinJr]

Yes, but this is inherently no different from any other parallelizable workload on a GPU.

Well it sort of is - in the context of gaming IMHO - because a workload that typically runs for more than x frames on a gpu for a game is a big deferred pass and not typical - because gaming workloads are expected to complete in a frame, and vary in utilisation because gamer interaction creates such varied workloads.

Whereas, non-gaming ML is like an offline render workload IMO, that will take as long as it takes and will consistently hammer the hardware because it is a predetermined workload.

 

[IntentionalPun]

When I said non-gaming ML, I meant training models and ML that far exceeds the complexity of that used in a game.

That's why I made the distinction between the two applications of ML: gaming and non-gaming.

Oh.. gotcha.. now I'm just confused why you even went that direction in this convo but thanks for explaining.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Well it sort of is - in the context of gaming IMHO - because a workload that typically runs for more than x frames on a gpu for a game is a big deferred pass and not typical - because gaming workloads are expected to complete in a frame, and vary in utilisation because gamer interaction creates such varied workloads.

Whereas, non-gaming ML is like an offline render workload IMO, that will take as long as it takes and will consistently hammer the hardware because it is a predetermined workload.

I'm a little lost now, because I presumed we were discussing ML in the context of its application to gaming, e.g. Insomniac's mesh deformation, DLSS etc etc.

These will mostly complete within a frame (DLSS certainly) or at least across a very small number of frames.

 

[3liteDragon]

 

[Anchovie123]

26:06

Q: "What tech are you most exited about for the future of game making?"

A: "The new PS5 storage system. The loading systems there will change the way we think about how we make games. its so fast that, even the idea of unloading the things that are just off screen on the camera, and as the player turns bring them in just in time is possible and that really fundamentally could change how we think about making games."

 

[oldergamer]

Judging by what we've seen of ML so far - ML processing that hardly impacts performance IIRC from MM - then I would expect the PS5 be better at ML for real-time gaming in most situation - where the ML would be less complex/narrow workload.
Theoretically the XsX should be the better at non-gaming ML with more CUs, but that is also assuming that such ML wouldn't saturate the system so badly, that the system would have to reactively downclock to remain in the power profile that the PSU was designed to support, and possibly thermally throttle too - by contrast the PS5 would boost when there were less parallel workloads and pre-emptively pick the optimal (highest ) lower clock (it could) in reaction to the widest parallel workloads, to optimise work done versus power draw throughout.

Not sure why you would think ps5 would be better at ML. Its all cpu or gpu driven. Xsx wins in those categories.

 

[Sinthor]

Not sure why you would think ps5 would be better at ML. Its all cpu or cpu driven. Xsx wins in those categories.

I thought that ML can be used on GPU's as well? Nvidia is doing that, aren't they? Regardless, I think it's the overall performance of the system that will lend itself to ML or ANYTHING ELSE. Not just technical specs and numbers. So it will be interesting to see, assuming ML really is used this generation, how these two systems handle it. For myself....I don't believe that ML will be a big factor. Only thing I can see it being used for really is image reconstruction or upgrading like is done with DLSS. Beyond that, I don't think we'll see much. I think it will be too costly to implement in other areas.

 

[oldergamer]

When I said non-gaming ML, I meant training models and ML that far exceeds the complexity of that used in a game.

That's why I made the distinction between the two applications of ML: gaming and non-gaming.

Its a distinction that doesn't work. There is no such thing as ml for gaming and non gaming. Not only that but xbox is using ML to to apply hdr to games in real time. It can be used to do many things in real-time

 

[Elysion]

There’s something I’m curious about, and this thread might be a good place to ask. I was replaying Xenoblade on Wii not long ago, and something I noticed was the incredibly high density of ground foliage, meaning grass and bushes etc., which really surprised me considering this is the Wii we‘re talking about.

As far as I remember, no other games on Wii or other consoles on that level (PS2, Gamecube, XBox) came close to that amount of ground foliage (at least none of the games I played did). Games back then had mostly flat ground textures, with a few bushes or tufts of grass here and there. In fact, even many PS360 games were still like that; Xenoblade meanwhile has so many grass bushes that the ground is almost fully covered, closer to what we see in games today. Granted, the grass and bushes are just the typical flat cardboard cutouts that were common back then, and they aren’t reacting to the characters‘ movement in any way, but since there‘s so many of them the game world looks much more lush than other games looked at the time.

Is there any particular reason why other games during the 6th generation (or even 7th gen) had mostly flat ground textures, instead of actual grass blades and bushes? I mean, even XBox games like the first two Halos, which ran on a console that was more powerful than the Wii, have very little ground foliage; it‘s all just flat, green textures. Was it purely a hardware limitation that the Wii didn‘t have, or is there some other reason?

 

[oldergamer]

I thought that ML can be used on GPU's as well? Nvidia is doing that, aren't they? Regardless, I think it's the overall performance of the system that will lend itself to ML or ANYTHING ELSE. Not just technical specs and numbers. So it will be interesting to see, assuming ML really is used this generation, how these two systems handle it. For myself....I don't believe that ML will be a big factor. Only thing I can see it being used for really is image reconstruction or upgrading like is done with DLSS. Beyond that, I don't think we'll see much. I think it will be too costly to implement in other areas.

It can. That was a typo. ML is more about supporting specific features and less about total system performance. Ssd speed or certain other features wont have much an impact

 

[alabtrosMyster]

Theoretically the XsX should be the better at non-gaming ML with more CUs, but that is also assuming that such ML wouldn't saturate the system so badly, that the system would have to reactively downclock to remain in the power profile that the PSU was designed to support, and possibly thermally throttle too -

The way I understood it the system won't throttle unless it's about to explode... It's not meant to do this.

I thought that ML can be used on GPU's as well? Nvidia is doing that, aren't they? Regardless, I think it's the overall performance of the system that will lend itself to ML or ANYTHING ELSE. Not just technical specs and numbers. So it will be interesting to see, assuming ML really is used this generation, how these two systems handle it. For myself....I don't believe that ML will be a big factor. Only thing I can see it being used for really is image reconstruction or upgrading like is done with DLSS. Beyond that, I don't think we'll see much. I think it will be too costly to implement in other areas.

AI/ML based physics/image processing/whatever evolves extremely fast, tasks that required days or hours to complete last year run in milliseconds now, and the new algorithms give better results as well.

Careful, some might think you're serious.

He sounds like he knows his stuff, why would anyone think he is not serious ?

This i agree with, MS started good with 360 gen by financing games like Lost Odyssey, but they gave up way too fast and then go full retard with Kinect, and now gamepass is their new thing they try hard with. It's like they always try to get money from you with some weird shit nobody ever asked for, but never do it with concrete stuffs that everyone are asking for, cf. great games... yup couldn't be that simple.

I mean they can do some of their weird shit like Kinect 2.0 or whatever weird idea they had in their big dollar brain, but for me if you don't have the games that make my dick hard, then you are nothing in the videogame industry... to put it in the kindest words possible, Sony also has VR that i'm personally not really into tbh or the psmoves in the ps3 era for example but i don't feel Sony is throwing it at my face all day like MS do with their weird shit like Kinect or gamepass, while Sony also do the essentiel at the simultanuous aka... again, great games, yup it's that simple, this is why i have respect for Sony, and even for Nintendo, but MS.. well no comment.

Thanks, I couldn't have put it better .

 

[Imtjnotu]

26:06

Q: "What tech are you most exited about for the future of game making?"

A: "The new PS5 storage system. The loading systems there will change the way we think about how we make games. its so fast that, even the idea of unloading the things that are just off screen on the camera, and as the player turns bring them in just in time is possible and that really fundamentally could change how we think about making games."

Better than HZD engine!

 

[LiquidRex]

26:06

Q: "What tech are you most exited about for the future of game making?"

A: "The new PS5 storage system. The loading systems there will change the way we think about how we make games. its so fast that, even the idea of unloading the things that are just off screen on the camera, and as the player turns bring them in just in time is possible and that really fundamentally could change how we think about making games."

Exactly what Mark Cerny said in the Road to PS5 presentation.

Is the XSX capable of the same, not just the fact the SSD is slower than that of the PS5 but also the lack of custom Cache Scrubbers will also impact how fast what can be streamed in just as its out of view before coming into view.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Not sure why you would think ps5 would be better at ML. Its all cpu or gpu driven. Xsx wins in those categories.

Demonstrations are good. This question will be put to bed definitively.

 

[SlimySnake]

This i agree with, MS started good with 360 gen by financing games like Lost Odyssey, but they gave up way too fast and then go full retard with Kinect, and now gamepass is their new thing they try hard with. It's like they always try to get money from you with some weird shit nobody ever asked for, but never do it with concrete stuffs that everyone are asking for, cf. great games... yup couldn't be that simple.

I mean they can do some of their weird shit like Kinect 2.0 or whatever weird idea they had in their big dollar brain, but for me if you don't have the games that make my dick hard, then you are nothing in the videogame industry... to put it in the kindest words possible, Sony also has VR that i'm personally not really into tbh or the psmoves in the ps3 era for example but i don't feel Sony is throwing it at my face all day like MS do with their weird shit like Kinect or gamepass, while Sony also do the essentiel at the simultanuous aka... again, great games, yup it's that simple, this is why i have respect for Sony, and even for Nintendo, but MS.. well no comment.

at least gamepass is focusing on delivering games instead of shoving kinect and tv down our throats. i actually think gamepass forced them to rethink their model and build out their first party portfolio. now they have 50% more studios than sony and they seem to have no problems spending a shit load of money on stuff like mlb and outriders every month. i mean looking at their monthly install base, they have 18 million monthly users. thats $180 million in revenue every month. i thought a lot of it was those $1 monthly subs but they are actually growing. up from 12 million early last year.

i really dont think they buy zenimax if it wasnt for gamepass. i mentioned this in another thread, but this article points out why disney, hbo, netflix and amazon are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on mediocre stuff like knives out. because they basically have to fill in those months to keep subscribers from letting their subs expire.

Why Netflix $450M 'Knives Out' gambit is becoming routine as streaming platforms 'feed the beast'

"The name of the game is to have content — good content and a continuous stream of content — to keep the people in your ecosystem," an analyst told Yahoo Finance.

www.yahoo.com

Article mentions how Netflix has a $19 billion budget for content in 2021. thats almost $2 billion a month. MS is way lower at $180 million but thats still good enough to buy a game that wouldve sold 3 million on their system if it wasnt free on gamepass. i think RE8 might be next because while thats a 5-8 million seller, it does those numbers on all three platforms. if MS is willing to share their entire months revenue with Capcom, i think capcom would bite.

i really dont see how thats the same thing as kinect or tv.

 

[LiquidRex]

I wonder why the PS5 controller chip is named after Japanese Whiskey.

 

[Setsuna Mudou]

at least gamepass is focusing on delivering games instead of shoving kinect and tv down our throats. i actually think gamepass forced them to rethink their model and build out their first party portfolio. now they have 50% more studios than sony and they seem to have no problems spending a shit load of money on stuff like mlb and outriders every month. i mean looking at their monthly install base, they have 18 million monthly users. thats $180 million in revenue every month. i thought a lot of it was those $1 monthly subs but they are actually growing. up from 12 million early last year.

i really dont think they buy zenimax if it wasnt for gamepass. i mentioned this in another thread, but this article points out why disney, hbo, netflix and amazon are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on mediocre stuff like knives out. because they basically have to fill in those months to keep subscribers from letting their subs expire.

Why Netflix $450M 'Knives Out' gambit is becoming routine as streaming platforms 'feed the beast'

"The name of the game is to have content — good content and a continuous stream of content — to keep the people in your ecosystem," an analyst told Yahoo Finance.

www.yahoo.com

Article mentions how Netflix has a $19 billion budget for content in 2021. thats almost $2 billion a month. MS is way lower at $180 million but thats still good enough to buy a game that wouldve sold 3 million on their system if it wasnt free on gamepass. i think RE8 might be next because while thats a 5-8 million seller, it does those numbers on all three platforms. if MS is willing to share their entire months revenue with Capcom, i think capcom would bite.

i really dont see how thats the same thing as kinect or tv.

I'm pretty sure the games that stay in the service month over month require payment, or is the model about only having 1 new game per month?
Also they are supposed to somehow keep the lights open in their own studios, as they spend years and years working on a game to have it day1 offered for "free", how do we pay the upkeep of said studios?
You mentioned Netflix as an example, they have 66M costumers in the US alone, nevermind worldwide. They are still not profitable without external investment at this point in time and they have been operating in the streaming model for what, a decade?

Seems to me Phil made some big promises to the higher ups at MS and by the time they realize it's time to write off the losses, he will be far gone. But hey, that's just mt speculation.

 

[Garani]

Exactly what Mark Cerny said in the Road to PS5 presentation.

Is the XSX capable of the same, not just the fact the SSD is slower than that of the PS5 but also the lack of custom Cache Scrubbers will also impact how fast what can be streamed in just as its out of view before coming into view.

Don't forget the priority system. The ability to cancel a transfer in favour of other data is paramount.

 

[reksveks]

I'm pretty sure the games that stay in the service month over month require payment, or is the model about only having 1 new game per month?
Also they are supposed to somehow keep the lights open in their own studios, as they spend years and years working on a game to have it day1 offered for "free", how do we pay the upkeep of said studios?

From the mtx and dlc from other games, and increased revenue split from digital purchases.

Microsoft studio's goals is to get people in the store

 

[Hashi]

...now they have 50% more studios than sony and they seem to have no problems spending a shit load of money on stuff like mlb and outriders every month. i mean looking at their monthly install base, they have 18 million monthly users. thats $180 million in revenue every month.

Yes u right. But thias is 180milion "revenue" (not profit), if they have 100-200games in GP, if they pay 1USD per game per developer/publisher monthly, there's no profit, and there's another costs like infrastructure and people managing GP.
GP at know is cost maker and MS know's that but they have lot of money to loss it.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Yes u right. But thias is 180milion "revenue" (not profit), if they have 100-200games in GP, if they pay 1USD per game per developer/publisher monthly, there's no profit, and there's another costs like infrastructure and people managing GP.
GP at know is cost maker and MS know's that but they have lot of money to loss it.

And the Xbox division has no profit to buy Zenimax for $7.5 billion in a cash transaction either.

Oh wait, cost budgets are ultimately handled at the corporate level where MS makes $50 billion profit per year.

 

[Hashi]

I wonder why the PS5 controller chip is named after Japanese Whiskey.
that

Yes Yamazaki is Japanese Whisky (not whiskey) - they are the only ones who can use it term "Whisky" next to the the Scots. T. Yamazaki was engineer wroking on PS2 and Cell Processor. Maybe that is explentaion. I dont know. But Whisky is better

 

[PaintTinJr]

I'm a little lost now, because I presumed we were discussing ML in the context of its application to gaming, e.g. Insomniac's mesh deformation, DLSS etc etc.

These will mostly complete within a frame (DLSS certainly) or at least across a very small number of frames.

I was initially- other than the specific part about the theoretical non-gaming consideration, which you specifically highlighted and replied to.

I hadn't wanted to focus on the non-gaming aspect, but when writing my first comment (on ML) at the top of the page I started to feel like the term ML - which is a massive topic that I understand a tiny amount about - was being blanket used in the thread to mean the entire field, rather than specifically for gaming, and without giving a comment to how non-gaming ML would fare on PS5/XsX my assertion might have just looked like I hadn't fully considered the XsX hardware fairly with regard to ML in its entirety.

 

[Panajev2001a]

And the Xbox division has no profit to buy Zenimax for $7.5 billion in a cash transaction either.

Oh wait, cost budgets are ultimately handled at the corporate level where MS makes $50 billion profit per year.

So it is the bigger corporate side funnelling money from other businesses to try to crush a competitor propping up a service (GP) that is a loss leader to get gamers in. It shows how the “competition is great” idea is a bit of a joke (most people preach it but do not believe it… if their side is losing it should not be losing by a lot because “hurts competition” or see it in the very short term), but it is expected (Sony did that to SEGA on the manufacturing costs side)… people proselytising it will be the surprised ones when, if they were to succeed, things would change to start reaping profits for all the losses incurred.

 

[Hashi]

And the Xbox division has no profit to buy Zenimax for $7.5 billion in a cash transaction either.

Oh wait, cost budgets are ultimately handled at the corporate level where MS makes $50 billion profit per year.

Not 50 but 44 and most of profits goes to dividend (about 2.24USD/Year/share). Yes they got cash but not 50B.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

So it is the bigger corporate side funnelling money from other businesses to try to crush a competitor propping up a service (GP) that is a loss leader to get gamers in. It shows how the “competition is great” idea is a bit of a joke (most people preach it but do not believe it… if their side is losing it should not be losing by a lot because “hurts competition” or see it in the very short term), but it is expected (Sony did that to SEGA on the manufacturing costs side)… people proselytising it will be the surprised ones when, if they were to succeed, things would change to start reaping profits for all the losses incurred.

Competition is great. And with MS and Sony battling it out with tons of games on GwG, PS+, and more recently PS Now and GP sub plans, it gives gamers options and low prices.

It's not like all the games have morphed into $2 mobile games. Same games by the same big name studios making them.

Think of it like Netflix. I've yet to see anyone shoot it down when for $10-15/mth you get tons of tv shows and movies to watch, when the traditional purist way to support the studios is to go buy every show and movie for $10-20 each, or a season box sets for $40. You can still do that if you really want to support the companies making them.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Competition is great. And with MS and Sony battling it out with tons of games on GwG, PS+, and more recently PS Now and GP sub plans, it gives gamers options and low prices.

It's not like all the games have morphed into $2 mobile games. Same games by the same big name studios making them.

Apple and Google Play Stores did not transition to the modern free to play MTX based economy overnight either… perceived value erosion is a real thing and has no console war flag. If the market changes so will the games being made (some people still live with the illusion that designing free to play MTX based games does not affect the gameplay or game design).

 

[M1chl]

Yes Yamazaki is Japanese Whisky (not whiskey) - they are the only ones who can use it term "Whisky" next to the the Scots. T. Yamazaki was engineer wroking on PS2 and Cell Processor. Maybe that is explentaion. I dont know. But Whisky is better

Is it codename or is the old fella still with Sony?

 

[Hashi]

Is it codename or is the old fella still with Sony?

22 march 2001 (and many more last patent 2020 Sony Semiconductor Solution)

US20020138637A1 - Computer architecture and software cells for broadband networks - Google Patents

A computer architecture and programming model for high speed processing over broadband networks are provided. The architecture employs a consistent modular structure, a common computing module and uniform software cells. The common computing module includes a control processor, a plurality of...

patents.google.com

But I think it is Whisky

 

[Tchu-Espresso]

26:06

Q: "What tech are you most exited about for the future of game making?"

A: "The new PS5 storage system. The loading systems there will change the way we think about how we make games. its so fast that, even the idea of unloading the things that are just off screen on the camera, and as the player turns bring them in just in time is possible and that really fundamentally could change how we think about making games."

But this forum told me the SSD is a gimmick like last gen’s Kinect and that Cerny just lies.

What to believe?

 

[Zoro7]

But this forum told me the SSD is a gimmick like last gen’s Kinect and that Cerny just lies.

What to believe?

Now they’ll say “first party doesn’t count”.

 

[Elog]

There’s something I’m curious about, and this thread might be a good place to ask. I was replaying Xenoblade on Wii not long ago, and something I noticed was the incredibly high density of ground foliage, meaning grass and bushes etc., which really surprised me considering this is the Wii we‘re talking about.

As far as I remember, no other games on Wii or other consoles on that level (PS2, Gamecube, XBox) came close to that amount of ground foliage (at least none of the games I played did). Games back then had mostly flat ground textures, with a few bushes or tufts of grass here and there. In fact, even many PS360 games were still like that; Xenoblade meanwhile has so many grass bushes that the ground is almost fully covered, closer to what we see in games today. Granted, the grass and bushes are just the typical flat cardboard cutouts that were common back then, and they aren’t reacting to the characters‘ movement in any way, but since there‘s so many of them the game world looks much more lush than other games looked at the time.

Is there any particular reason why other games during the 6th generation (or even 7th gen) had mostly flat ground textures, instead of actual grass blades and bushes? I mean, even XBox games like the first two Halos, which ran on a console that was more powerful than the Wii, have very little ground foliage; it‘s all just flat, green textures. Was it purely a hardware limitation that the Wii didn‘t have, or is there some other reason?

It is one of the best ways to make a frame look rich in geometry when it is not. The foliage is almost always graphics without vertices (sometime with movement etc but without advanced effects on light, collisions etc).

I always wonder why not more games use that technique since it is very light on the GPU but adds a lot of 'fake' geometry density to the scene. HZD also did this with great effect. Just look at Hitman 3 - the ground looks barren 90% of the time.

I can see no other reason than development time to avoid non-geometry based foliage - most outdoor scenes look better with it if implemented right.

 

[BGs]

Sony's SSD advantage hasnt exactly shown up in games or even load times so far in multiplats. I was expecting at least 2x faster loads but they are all pretty much identical at the moment. The game sizes being much smaller could be a big advantage in an age where SSDs are expensive and the internal space is very limited. I wonder if Sony will focus on that as a marketing bullet point.

Hoping to see some stark SSD and I/O advantage going forward seeing as how much Sony invested in it at the expense of tflops.

Although you do not feel identified with the whole answer, I take advantage of your message to say some things.

To take advantage of a technology, you must work thinking about it. The important thing is to see that there are AAA games that have load times of 2 seconds (and even lower load times, in some cases "instantaneous" for the player). I mean, the technology works. But it is not "automatic", if you do not think about it it is logical that you cannot take advantage of it. You could get to see possibly absurd things like, for example, a cross-platform "Indie" that takes 20 seconds to load and instead an exclusive "AAA" loads in 0-2 seconds. This could happen.

Although obviously all this will change when multiplatform studios begin to massively use UE5 (and beware that, although it is "cool" to put the UE5 label on games created under UE4, it is not the same as creating them under UE5 from the beginning, be careful with the marketing).

But the important thing is not whether one platform loads a game in 20 seconds and the other in 18 seconds. This is only important in a schoolyard. The purpose of being able to load games with this speed is not so that people spend less time waiting, but the real purpose is to dispense with the usual limitations when designing a game and its playability in order to offer a greater and better overall experience.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

i really dont see how thats the same thing as kinect or tv

Because they are focused on selling you the registration more than their latest great game.

For the arguments about MS not buying the studios, this may well be the case that they wouldn't have bought the studios, or not this many that fast. However, they needed them to remain relevant as a platform holder, I think it was that it or they were to exit out of the console wars (the rumors were founded in my opinion).

 

[Tchu-Espresso]

Now they’ll say “first party doesn’t count”.

That’s easy to say when they don’t have any first party games to speak of.

 

[KingT731]

at least gamepass is focusing on delivering games instead of shoving kinect and tv down our throats. i actually think gamepass forced them to rethink their model and build out their first party portfolio. now they have 50% more studios than sony and they seem to have no problems spending a shit load of money on stuff like mlb and outriders every month. i mean looking at their monthly install base, they have 18 million monthly users. thats $180 million in revenue every month. i thought a lot of it was those $1 monthly subs but they are actually growing. up from 12 million early last year.

i really dont think they buy zenimax if it wasnt for gamepass. i mentioned this in another thread, but this article points out why disney, hbo, netflix and amazon are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on mediocre stuff like knives out. because they basically have to fill in those months to keep subscribers from letting their subs expire.

Why Netflix $450M 'Knives Out' gambit is becoming routine as streaming platforms 'feed the beast'

"The name of the game is to have content — good content and a continuous stream of content — to keep the people in your ecosystem," an analyst told Yahoo Finance.

www.yahoo.com

Article mentions how Netflix has a $19 billion budget for content in 2021. thats almost $2 billion a month. MS is way lower at $180 million but thats still good enough to buy a game that wouldve sold 3 million on their system if it wasnt free on gamepass. i think RE8 might be next because while thats a 5-8 million seller, it does those numbers on all three platforms. if MS is willing to share their entire months revenue with Capcom, i think capcom would bite.

i really dont see how thats the same thing as kinect or tv.

You have to understand that RE7 is the highest selling RE game and according to Capcom they were still shipping over 1M units per year for it. Also take into consideration they just dropped MH Rise which has done over 4M already so I doubt they're in a rush to put their new titles on Game Pass.

 

[ToadMan]

But the important thing is not whether one platform loads a game in 20 seconds and the other in 18 seconds. This is only important in a schoolyard. The purpose of being able to load games with this speed is not so that people spend less time waiting, but the real purpose is to dispense with the usual limitations when designing a game and its playability in order to offer a greater and better overall experience.

You can say this until you’re blue in the face, but the message won’t get through.

“But da load timezzz!” Are about as detailed a tech understanding as anyone cares to have here.

It’s not that “those people” don’t get it, it’s that they choose not to

 

[DarkMage619]

This i agree with, MS started good with 360 gen by financing games like Lost Odyssey, but they gave up way too fast and then go full retard with Kinect, and now gamepass is their new thing they try hard with. It's like they always try to get money from you with some weird shit nobody ever asked for, but never do it with concrete stuffs that everyone are asking for, cf. great games... yup couldn't be that simple.

I mean they can do some of their weird shit like Kinect 2.0 or whatever weird idea they had in their big dollar brain, but for me if you don't have the games that make my dick hard, then you are nothing in the videogame industry... to put it in the kindest words possible, Sony also has VR that i'm personally not really into tbh or the psmoves in the ps3 era for example but i don't feel Sony is throwing it at my face all day like MS do with their weird shit like Kinect or gamepass, while Sony also do the essentiel at the simultanuous aka... again, great games, yup it's that simple, this is why i have respect for Sony, and even for Nintendo, but MS.. well no comment.

Pretty odd to compare Game pass to Kinect when the biggest criticisms against MS in the past is that they didn't focus enough on bringing games to the system. They have also focused on preserving older titles by increasing frame rates, adding HDR, and upping the resolution and respecting previous purchases over remastering and reselling the same games to you. Not too shabby for a company that did weird stuff like Kinect.

You personally might dislike Game pass but it certainly is about games the thing all game consoles should be about. That is why it is popular. I'm glad to see them do something that neither Sony nor Nintendo will do and be rewarded for it especially when it is something those other two companies should excel in, bringing games to their customers.

 

[PropellerEar]

Pretty odd to compare Game pass to Kinect when the biggest criticisms against MS in the past is that they didn't focus enough on bringing games to the system. They have also focused on preserving older titles by increasing frame rates, adding HDR, and upping the resolution and respecting previous purchases over remastering and reselling the same games to you. Not too shabby for a company that did weird stuff like Kinect.

You personally might dislike Game pass but it certainly is about games the thing all game consoles should be about. That is why it is popular. I'm glad to see them do something that neither Sony nor Nintendo will do and be rewarded for it especially when it is something those other two companies should excel in, bringing games to their customers.

DirkMagusDCXIX at fanfiction.net wants to tell you a story about a fantastical universe where MSFT is providing more unique 1st party games than Sony or Nintendo.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Its a distinction that doesn't work. There is no such thing as ml for gaming and non gaming. Not only that but xbox is using ML to to apply hdr to games in real time. It can be used to do many things in real-time

WTF are you talking about? Most ML and DL applications don't have anything to do with games.

Google image search is a ML/DL application that is divorced from gaming. Most of the field of study and research has very little to do with applications in videogames.

It can. That was a typo. ML is more about supporting specific features and less about total system performance. Ssd speed or certain other features wont have much an impact

Incorrect. As I've stated previously, ML computation performance is heavily dependent on the time needed to get the right data from memory (and by extension mass storage) to the execution units. Latency is everything, as ML is dense data computation. So just as high memory bandwidth helps a ton, so will data throughput to the mass storage device. Again, data locality is everything.

E.g. If your using a ML model inference for model animation, and part of that animation data isn't currently in RAM, your performance is fucked. With an SSD with FAST I/O like the PS5, the performance will be massively less fucked. Equally, with a desktop AMD GPU with something like Infinity Cache, this would be an even bigger boon still.

ALL aspects of the system design that impact data transport will impact ML performance, because ML performance is massively data transport limited as opposed to computation limited (especially on GPUs).

 

[Neo Blaster]

at least gamepass is focusing on delivering games instead of shoving kinect and tv down our throats. i actually think gamepass forced them to rethink their model and build out their first party portfolio. now they have 50% more studios than sony and they seem to have no problems spending a shit load of money on stuff like mlb and outriders every month. i mean looking at their monthly install base, they have 18 million monthly users. thats $180 million in revenue every month. i thought a lot of it was those $1 monthly subs but they are actually growing. up from 12 million early last year.

i really dont think they buy zenimax if it wasnt for gamepass. i mentioned this in another thread, but this article points out why disney, hbo, netflix and amazon are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on mediocre stuff like knives out. because they basically have to fill in those months to keep subscribers from letting their subs expire.

Why Netflix $450M 'Knives Out' gambit is becoming routine as streaming platforms 'feed the beast'

"The name of the game is to have content — good content and a continuous stream of content — to keep the people in your ecosystem," an analyst told Yahoo Finance.

www.yahoo.com

Article mentions how Netflix has a $19 billion budget for content in 2021. thats almost $2 billion a month. MS is way lower at $180 million but thats still good enough to buy a game that wouldve sold 3 million on their system if it wasnt free on gamepass. i think RE8 might be next because while thats a 5-8 million seller, it does those numbers on all three platforms. if MS is willing to share their entire months revenue with Capcom, i think capcom would bite.

i really dont see how thats the same thing as kinect or tv.

How many of those 18 million users are monthly payers? Is MS counting those who use $1 promotions and 7-day gift cards? That 180 million monthly revenue seems more like a stretch than an actual value.