PC Gamer: Turns out Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart CAN run on a hard drive thanks to DirectStorage 1.2

I'll admit that I bought into the SSD hype though after Cerny's deep dive, but really neither console lived up to the marketing. Xbox hasn't really delivered on being the "most powerful console". And let's not forget Microsoft was extremely proud of their SSD tech too. Trademarked "velocity architecture". So yeah......all this "secret sauce" isn't really special at all.

The SSDs have kinda delivered with respect to load speeds and stuff like Quick Resume, though. The problem is, many people aren't interested in hyping up stuff as unsexy as that.
 
What? The whole point of the SSDs was for gameplay play design and quality of life improvement over HDDs. Around 8:35 and upwards explained by Cerny the reason the PS5 SSD is what it is.



And I thought it was going to lead to something more than just faster load times, but that is essentially all it is. That's fine, but Cerny pitched it to be quite a bit more than that.


The SSDs have kinda delivered with respect to load speeds and stuff like Quick Resume, though. The problem is, many people aren't interested in hyping up stuff as unsexy as that.

Sure.....QR is a nice feature for Xbox. But as I said above, the pitch was SSD was going to be something revolutionary for gamers. It really isn't. Don't get me wrong. I love the short or non-existent load times. I just thought it was going to be something more.
 
And I thought it was going to lead to something more than just faster load times, but that is essentially all it is. That's fine, but Cerny pitched it to be quite a bit more than that.




Sure.....QR is a nice feature for Xbox. But as I said above, the pitch was SSD was going to be something revolutionary for gamers. It really isn't. Don't get me wrong. I love the short or non-existent load times. I just thought it was going to be something more.
We're just getting out of the cross-gen period, I am hopeful they'll do some cool stuff with it.
 
Wow, shocking...



Well, not that shocked. Studios keep trying to pull the "it's impossible in other systems", yet time and again we keep getting the ports. It's time we call bullshit on devs trying to pull this out.
 
The ps5 was just the same step up we've seen every gen but we were tricked by marketing. There is absolutely nothing special about it vs xbox or pc. It just has a faster ssd than xbox.

The pro will launch and all will be forgotten.

I don't think, or hope many will be tricked again.

Looking forward to the digital foundry on this.

Hopefully direct storage will be a hit on pc and it needs to roll out more.
It took 3 years for PC to be able to run it at 720p on a HDD, but it was all bullshit? What are you smoking? Technology moves quickly.
 
It took 3 years for PC to be able to run it at 720p on a HDD, but it was all bullshit? What are you smoking? Technology moves quickly.

It didn't take three years. It could have launched anytime. Sony have just decided to port it now.

Let's see what digital foundry says first.

My post is the truth, I stand by it and I bet many others do too.

Both these consoles have proven again to just be a decent ish jump over the previous gen. Nothing more.
 
I bet all you will have in such a setup is small stutters from time to time... if at all.
Bernard Cribbins Crying GIF
 
The SSD controller in PS5 is still pretty exotic by todays standard. Wouldn't you agree?

Not really. It's just a tri-core ARM CPU.
What is really unique is the file system and API.

Here is a quote from Cerny

There's low level and high level access and game-makers can choose whichever flavour they want - but it's the new I/O API that allows developers to tap into the extreme speed of the new hardware. The concept of filenames and paths is gone in favour of an ID-based system which tells the system exactly where to find the data they need as quickly as possible. Developers simply need to specify the ID, the start location and end location and a few milliseconds later, the data is delivered. Two command lists are sent to the hardware - one with the list of IDs, the other centring on memory allocation and deallocation - i.e. making sure that the memory is freed up for the new data.
 
That is a good point and I hope they do, but just hard to maintain excitement about something that isn't realized three years later.
I always took his RtPS5 as him using the I/O as a way to help the PS5 achieve a "punch above it's weight" overall output. Remember, pre-launch it was it's TF disadvantage that was touted as the reason it would be an exclusives machine for most and series x would win head to heads. We know how that turned out. The PS5 is really efficient in what it does when you look at the specs. Mocking Cerny is probably the most ridiculous thing ever written here and we know that's saying something.
 
I always took his RtPS5 as him using the I/O as a way to help the PS5 achieve a "punch above it's weight" overall output. Remember, pre-launch it was it's TF disadvantage that was touted as the reason it would be an exclusives machine for most and series x would win head to heads. We know how that turned out. The PS5 is really efficient in what it does when you look at the specs. Mocking Cerny is probably the most ridiculous thing ever written here and we know that's saying something.

Well.....to be clear, I am not mocking Cerny. I think he was sincere in everything he said in that presentation. I just don't the tech has lived up to the hype. Like Mr Moose Mr Moose said, that may still happen. And yeah, on the Xbox side it hasn't lived up to its hype either. PS5 with its 9TF 10TF GPU stands toe to toe with XSX.
 
Well.....to be clear, I am not mocking Cerny. I think he was sincere in everything he said in that presentation. I just don't the tech has lived up to the hype. Like Mr Moose Mr Moose said, that may still happen. And yeah, on the Xbox side it hasn't lived up to its hype either. PS5 with its 9TF 10TF GPU stands toe to toe with XSX.
No I know you're not. But there are some that do. As far as it living up to the hype, how do we know it hasn't? The ps5 should never be as powerful as it is but if part of that is due to the I/O in the PS5 then I guess it does. I haven't watched it since launch but I think he attributed a lot of its architecture and ability to the I/O.
Edit. Topher Topher there's info in winjer winjer post above
 
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No I know you're not. But there are some that do. As far as it living up to the hype, how do we know it hasn't? The ps5 should never be as powerful as it is but if part of that is due to the I/O in the PS5 then I guess it does. I haven't watched it since launch but I think he attributed a lot of its architecture and ability to the I/O.

Yeah, I don't know much about how SSD may or may not help the system overall. You very well could be right about that. I'm really talking about seeing game designs change dramatically due to all this new IO tech. R&C is the only game that I'm aware of that has really utilized this in a meaningful way.

Edit: Saw winjer winjer 's post. I see what you mean.
 
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People are going to pick on that quote all the want, but given the time period the game was in development and when it released, he wasn't wrong.

They were really pushing it at the time.
 
I would like to see some gameplay running at the minimum specs before passing judgement so we don't get a

0abWVEQ.gif

"Look, exactly like PS5"-situation

Edit: I'll add that what really struck me with R&C Rift Apart was the pretty much seamless transitions from cinematics to gameplay, like
"upclose camera showing all small details zooming out and swingin around - bam you're controlling the character". That stuff felt different from stuff I've played before.
 
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Sony's PR was horseshit, and nobody with the hardware to run this game properly would ever run it on a HDD.

Both of these statements can be true.
 
Well.....to be clear, I am not mocking Cerny. I think he was sincere in everything he said in that presentation. I just don't the tech has lived up to the hype. Like Mr Moose Mr Moose said, that may still happen. And yeah, on the Xbox side it hasn't lived up to its hype either. PS5 with its 9TF 10TF GPU stands toe to toe with XSX.

To be fair. I believe the only things xbox said were that it was a 12tf monster or something.

I believe both the consoles have delivered on their power envelope. It's just no games have even attempted to do what Cerny said games would do on the ps5 thanks to its special IO.
 
To be fair. I believe the only things xbox said were that it was a 12tf monster or something.

I believe both the consoles have delivered on their power envelope. It's just no games have even attempted to do what Cerny said games would do on the ps5 thanks to its special IO.

Microsoft bragged about Xbox Series X being the "world's most powerful console". It was overhyped. And yeah, I get that devs haven't tried to really utilize the tech in their designs, but that was my expectation for this gen that never really became a reality. Like I said, before I bought into the hype. So maybe that's just on me. I'm fine with it now. Faster load times are also a great thing.

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Microsoft bragged about Xbox Series X being the "world's most powerful console". It was overhyped. And yeah, I get that devs haven't tried to really utilize the tech in their designs, but that was my expectation for this gen that never really became a reality. Like I said, before I bought into the hype. So maybe that's just on me. I'm fine with it now. Faster load times are also a great thing.

0x0.jpg

What is wrong with using that in your marketing?

If I had a 350bhp car and yours was 312bhp is it not OK for me to say the most powerful car?

Then your car comes out and beats me in a 0-60? That's just embarrassing for me...doesn't make the statement untrue?

We had a lot of people, myself included saying they bet games would be exactly the same with souped up graphics and we had numerous people pointing at the unreal engine 5 tech demo saying there would be no squeezing through gaps, there would be a complete shift in development and how games played.

I remember many people talking sense but many crazy convos and it was all fueled by that Cerny talk and unreal 5 engine tech demo.

We got sold bullshit and all of us fell for it.

Soon, it will all move to talking about how good the pro console is and then the ps6 and next xbox afterwards. Hopefully a majority will not be fooled again.
 
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Still, 12-channels isn't standard by any means. But I agree, Kraken combined with the controller are indeed unique.

12 channels is a way to get the 5.5gb/s with slower flash. Modern SSDs use faster flash with only 8 channels.

Since the controller is just an soc of arm cpus, it means it's programmable. So it can use kraken or any other compression system that comes in the future. As long as it's not heavier than what those cpus can process.
But kraken can also be used by other systems, including PCs.
 
"DirectStorage is designed to leverage the speed of fast PCIe NVMe SSDs, but the technology is also compatible with SATA SSDs and even traditional hard disk drives.
The exemplification of this meme right here:
6lzkp6.png



Yes DirectStorage is - storage device agnostic (why wouldn't it be) - but the whole point of using it with NVMEs is that traditional approaches(via CPU and external bus) are slower than the I/O of the drive, so compressing data actually kills performance on an SSD.
If you load things off of a Mechanical (or optical) disc, the I/O is so slow, that the classic CPU decompressor will actually run orders of magnitude faster - meaning you get load-performance improvements anyway, and switching to GPU DirectStorage optimization does - basically nothing.

Or if you want a direct practical example from recent history - Hardware decompressors were not introduced by PS5/XSX - both PS4/XB1 had them too, but they went almost entirely unused because optimizing for their custom hw was a waste of time, when the same CPU decompressor that ran on other platforms, loaded things just as fast anyway.
 
What is wrong with using that in your marketing?

If I had a 350bhp car and yours was 312bhp is it not OK for me to say the most powerful car?

Then your car comes out and beats me in a 0-60? That's just embarrassing for me...doesn't make the statement untrue?

We had a lot of people, myself included saying they net games would be exactly the same with souped up graphics and we had numerous people pointing at the unreal engine 5 tech demo saying there would be no squeezing through gaps, theerw would be a complete shift in development and how games played.

I remember many people talking sense but many crazy convos and it was all fueled by that Cerny talk and unreal 5 engine tech demo.

We got sold bullshit and all of us fell for it.

Soon, it will all move to talking about how good the pro console is and then the ps6 and next xbox afterwards. Hopefully a majority will not be fooled again.

Something can be technically true and still be overhyped marketing bullshit. XSX has not lived up to that marketing. Sorry, but it just hasn't.
 
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Just basic data management math.

We'll see how it looks; you can pull off any gameplay concept w/o some crazy I/O complex but doesn't mean it'll look good.

The future is still going to involve always having crazy good I/O and both developers and gamers will be better off for it once we can break from from low I/O drives.
 
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What is wrong with using that in your marketing?

If I had a 350bhp car and yours was 312bhp is it not OK for me to say the most powerful car?

Then your car comes out and beats me in a 0-60? That's just embarrassing for me...doesn't make the statement untrue?

We had a lot of people, myself included saying they net games would be exactly the same with souped up graphics and we had numerous people pointing at the unreal engine 5 tech demo saying there would be no squeezing through gaps, theerw would be a complete shift in development and how games played.

I remember many people talking sense but many crazy convos and it was all fueled by that Cerny talk and unreal 5 engine tech demo.

We got sold bullshit and all of us fell for it.

Soon, it will all move to talking about how good the pro console is and then the ps6 and next xbox afterwards. Hopefully a majority will not be fooled again.
Xbox took it down in 2 weeks? Replaced with "most powerful xbox" when they started losing head to heads. This statement from R&C dev took 2 years to be eclipsed and needs the help of Direct storage.
 
It runs at 720p 30 FPS at "very low" settings with an HDD. To run it at better res, frames, and settings, it does require an SSD, which makes sense.

At this point, though, most gaming PCs have SSDs, so it is not that big of an issue.
 
I look forward to a more technical discussion and not some immature gotcha rant that all of us here are not even versed enough to legitimately critique.

Otherwise, this will be a benchmark for console ports.

I love new tech and software being implemented.
 
And I thought it was going to lead to something more than just faster load times, but that is essentially all it is. That's fine, but Cerny pitched it to be quite a bit more than that.




Sure.....QR is a nice feature for Xbox. But as I said above, the pitch was SSD was going to be something revolutionary for gamers. It really isn't. Don't get me wrong. I love the short or non-existent load times. I just thought it was going to be something more.
I'm no game dev but I will say I never bought into the whole SSD hype. It has certainly brought some benefits Luke's the ones that have. Even mentioned but nothing that moves game design forward.


For me, I was just relived at the choice of CPU in both and was initially impressed by Xbox on paper raw hardware numbers ( even though in reality we have not seen much done with those extra Tflops)


Best parts of this gen for me has been to see a lot more 60FPS games. And devs just letting us choose settings. Backwards compatibility for games in my backlog from last gen getting boosted.


And we got some " my old console couldn't run this game this well" moments with Stuff like cyberpunk and the plague tale games, Rachel and clank, MS flight simulator, Elden ring etc. I don't think it's been all bad. Hasn't been so much a leap forward as it has been a polishing of what we already know….. I mean we did get some good remasters and some of them I never played the first time round and am seeing what I was missing out on… albeit with a more polished presentation.


I don't o ow what leaps and bounds people were expecting but even if we consider the most advanced PC games like star citizen. Outside of scope, and graphics, there is no new profound gameplay mechanics happening. And people wonder why Nintendos games stay in charts longer all while running on 'weak' hardware.


And what do we want from a next gen experience? How much of that is realistic? Are we talking big open worlds with native 4K and 60FPS with every object in the world having physics applied? Day night cycles with weather and wind that blows every tree and bush? NPCs with seemingly endless AI driven conversions? We are sort of there….. but not quite.
 
A lot of people ignoring that DirectStorage part...
Basically this. DirectStorage tech was not ready 3 years ago for the PC.

Additionally, it's still too early for people to say all it is "faster loading". Development takes time, 4-5 years on average. The games released recently have barely scratched the surface of this tech (if at all).
 
SSD in consoles wasn't tout to be revolutionary, due to them having SSD, but the implementation of it, so CPU just ask the some small circuitry to transport data to (V)RAM and it didn't have to go the path from storage, through CPU (where it gets uncompressed, processed, etc) and then to RAM, which basically stall a large part of the CPU.

Idea wasn't new at the time, Nvidia had this in their servers, for years, which was used to academic research, ML training and all that juicy stuff. However console made it a solution for everyone.

So this running off of HDD more than prove the viability and benefit for such technology to exist in game space.
 
PC has more ram to deal with data transfers, which consoles don't have. The qeustion was never if it could run on slower ssd's.

And cerny is right, only because of the SSD they could do stuff like that on a console a PS4 wouldn't be able to handle it. I don't think he ever talked about PC.

Fanboys did there usually bending of reality to form some delusional statement that was never made to fit there bill.
 
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So instead of using the ultra-fast SSD, you just use the ultra-fast GPU memory instead?

I wonder just how much GPU VRAM you need for this to be really be consistently feasible, once you've exhausted the GPU's VRAM then you're back to slogging data off the very slow HDD.
 
So instead of using the ultra-fast SSD, you just use the ultra-fast GPU memory instead?

I wonder just how much GPU VRAM you need for this to be really be consistently feasible, once you've exhausted the GPU's VRAM then you're back to slogging data off the very slow HDD.

The minimum required GPU is a 960, a GPU with 2GB VRAM.
 
We are talking about minimum presets that will look worse than 2016 ratchet on PS4. At what point does context kick in and we determine the two versions are similar in name only?
 
I was told this was impossible.
Considering that Ratchet and Clank is compressed that is a ton of data. And even with a fast SSD it would take some time to load the entire game uncompressed into ram. I don't even know if a PC exclusive would even target that amount of ram.
 
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No offense, but in 2023 who the fuck is running modern games off a mechanical HDD? A 1TB SATA or M.2 NVMe drive is like $35-45. That will get you like 500MB/s(SATA) or 3500MB/s(NVMe).
 
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