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Do you guys think the SSD in PS5/Xbox Series X is a gamechanger?
- Thread starter Sid
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I'm really not a technical minded person but I'll try to put together what I can based on what I've read and watched regarding what these ssds can mean for game design.
Lets say there are 4 priority levels of information and assets for a particular game. First and highest priority of the assets must be placed in the ram for immediate access. The second to fourth priority levels can now be placed in the SSD instead thanks to their enhanced speeds and free up space in the ram. Before with HDD's slow speeds you would have had to place lets say the assets of priority levels 1-3 in the ram and the 4th priority level of assets can be streamed from the slow HD. I think this is the general gist of it in a very simplified way. I'm probably off in a lot of ways so maybe someone can correct me.
However, if this is the case you essentially have much more gaming information and assets available much quicker. It's not just assets like higher quality graphics and the ability to create bigger worlds though. It's any type of information and assets a game needs. You may now be able to dedicate more resources to smarter enemies and npcs, more complex and realistic physics simulations, more dynamic and convincing weather effects, maybe more sudden and abrupt land deformation.
Imagine playing a game where you control characters who have power over different nature elements in a wide open environment. One character could cause earthquakes which suddenly transforms the very battlefield while another could call down a rain of meteors causing craters and explosions which further affects the land.
Perhaps an fps where enemies can behave more realistically and dynamically respond to your actions. Developers can draw on these assets knowing they are not as constrained as before. Before I would imagine you would have enemies that are limited in the amount you can show at one time and limited in the amount of logic each could have. With these ssds, you don't need to worry about coming up with work-arounds but instead could just focus on creating.
Lets say there are 4 priority levels of information and assets for a particular game. First and highest priority of the assets must be placed in the ram for immediate access. The second to fourth priority levels can now be placed in the SSD instead thanks to their enhanced speeds and free up space in the ram. Before with HDD's slow speeds you would have had to place lets say the assets of priority levels 1-3 in the ram and the 4th priority level of assets can be streamed from the slow HD. I think this is the general gist of it in a very simplified way. I'm probably off in a lot of ways so maybe someone can correct me.
However, if this is the case you essentially have much more gaming information and assets available much quicker. It's not just assets like higher quality graphics and the ability to create bigger worlds though. It's any type of information and assets a game needs. You may now be able to dedicate more resources to smarter enemies and npcs, more complex and realistic physics simulations, more dynamic and convincing weather effects, maybe more sudden and abrupt land deformation.
Imagine playing a game where you control characters who have power over different nature elements in a wide open environment. One character could cause earthquakes which suddenly transforms the very battlefield while another could call down a rain of meteors causing craters and explosions which further affects the land.
Perhaps an fps where enemies can behave more realistically and dynamically respond to your actions. Developers can draw on these assets knowing they are not as constrained as before. Before I would imagine you would have enemies that are limited in the amount you can show at one time and limited in the amount of logic each could have. With these ssds, you don't need to worry about coming up with work-arounds but instead could just focus on creating.
Yea, instead of limiting to a floor (while in elevator load the floor you selected) or apartment (movement in corridor hides loading of the apartment you are closest to) to what is in front of you (turning hides loading time)
Note that many rooms are variations with the same furniture, books, TVs, pans, ...
If you have 100s of each type every room will feel unique if placements are varied too. Things like books order color, size, age, random... (would not suprice me if game companies have people asking to enter and interview people about their homes)
OP
OP
If this is true, the this will truly be a game changer (especially for open world games)
The poll really needed a "wait and see" option. My policy regarding gaming hardware has always been "wait for real-world benchmarks" and I think that's the reasonable position in this case too. Whatever effect the SSD will have in game design and performance I want to see it in practice. Until then I will take any claims of a transformative effect on games with a grain of salt since the industry has a vested interest in creating as much hype for the next generation as possible. Show me the results in actual games and I'll gladly board the hype train.
With both MS and Sony using SSD it will be standard day one on consoles.
Looks like it will access so fast to assets that you can use all the GPU power just to render what it's on screen, and render as you character move or turn.
In the case of first party games, it'd be idiotic to not do so. Even then, I'm not quite sure about your idea that it won't become standard on consoles for a "very, very long time". Unless there's implicit backwards support for PS4 and Xbox One, there's no reason for developers to waste time crafting levels and duplicating assets all over the place to take into consideration hard drives. No one likes hard drives, SSDs simplify a lot of things for everyone if only because they don't need to seek and have no sectors.
Honestly speaking, I don't think there's a single half decent laptop or desktop that comes with a mechanical hard drive anymore. Anything that comes with a half decent GPU capable of playing some AAA title at 1920x1080@60 FPS at medium settings will come with an SSD. The only thing holding really back developers would be PC SSD speeds - as some are extremely slow compared to top M.2 SSDs - and a desire to support PS4 and Xbox One.
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So... dull environments, fewer NPCs and barren open worlds. GGAs I've posted in another thread, I see next gen consoles something like this
I'm kidding obviously :)
Which is why I said it won't be a standard for a while. PS5 and XSX owners will be a small subset of the overall console userbase for quite some time, as first-party next-gen exclusive games will be a small subset of all released games. It will take at least until the end of the cross-gen phase to consider SSDs the standard.
I hope PS5 games will change right from the get go.
Elsewhere it might take a year or two for publishers to drop cross-gen development and up minimum requirements on PC.
I presume publishers will target the performance level of the Series X for multiplatform development. But that too will be a vast leap over ye olde hard drives.
Elsewhere it might take a year or two for publishers to drop cross-gen development and up minimum requirements on PC.
I presume publishers will target the performance level of the Series X for multiplatform development. But that too will be a vast leap over ye olde hard drives.
To me it sounds like people are saying this is what we'll see:
- In a video player (like Netflix) you have the seek bar and it shows you thumbnails of the video, and you can scrub over the video and with a decent connection instantly jump to any point in the video - so games will be the same. With SSDs as fast as the PS5's you'll be able to instantly load every single section of the game, so you can instantly jump from point to point to point endlessly without any loading.
- On top of this, because everything is loading so much faster than normal SSDs, the framerates will be better.
- The incredible high I/O speeds of the SSD will eliminate most visual problems we've suffered until now (bad LOD, pop ins, lower res textures)
- The SSD is fast enough on the PS5/XSX (to a lesser degree of course) to take the place of RAM for many things, allowing for unrivaled RAM sizes and the game design that allows - this is something that has never before been possible on SSDs.
- The SSD will allow for much much more organic and numerous animation quality in people and objects (because it can instantly load stuff)
- There will be all sorts of new gameplay possible we cannot possibly comprehend right now due to the PS5's SSD (and to a lesser extent the XSX). Think maybe the Doctor Strange movie with the other-world city scene maybe, or just being able to instantly jump to anypoint in the game. But that's only scratching the surface of what will be possible.
- You'll never ever see any loading screens again. And goodbye loading corridors/tunnels/doors.
- There's going to be way, way smaller games sizes because the data will not be duplicated and compression will improve with the SSDs being so fast.
- Since so much focus is being put on speed and load times, games should start all allowing for instant jumps into the last save from the launch icon on the OS, skipping all the normal logos that take away a lot of time in starting games.
I feel like there's about a dozen more points I'm forgetting which we will see when the PS5/XSX hits too. Stuff like the OS being totally responsive at all times and invisible.
There's no doubt a SSD was the biggest upgrade I've ever done on my gaming PC, so consoles getting one is going to be pretty amazing. And they're getting an SSD of the likes we've never seen before. So who knows just how much it will change.
I do think some games as I've said before have much lower limits to what can be changed by an SSD - like Tetris for example, other than faster loading, the need for speed is far far less than some games.
Also what's interesting is to wonder if there's ever going to be gameplay/a need for SSDs far, far beyond the PS5's. What would 10TB/s speeds allow for that 20GB/s doesn't?
- In a video player (like Netflix) you have the seek bar and it shows you thumbnails of the video, and you can scrub over the video and with a decent connection instantly jump to any point in the video - so games will be the same. With SSDs as fast as the PS5's you'll be able to instantly load every single section of the game, so you can instantly jump from point to point to point endlessly without any loading.
- On top of this, because everything is loading so much faster than normal SSDs, the framerates will be better.
- The incredible high I/O speeds of the SSD will eliminate most visual problems we've suffered until now (bad LOD, pop ins, lower res textures)
- The SSD is fast enough on the PS5/XSX (to a lesser degree of course) to take the place of RAM for many things, allowing for unrivaled RAM sizes and the game design that allows - this is something that has never before been possible on SSDs.
- The SSD will allow for much much more organic and numerous animation quality in people and objects (because it can instantly load stuff)
- There will be all sorts of new gameplay possible we cannot possibly comprehend right now due to the PS5's SSD (and to a lesser extent the XSX). Think maybe the Doctor Strange movie with the other-world city scene maybe, or just being able to instantly jump to anypoint in the game. But that's only scratching the surface of what will be possible.
- You'll never ever see any loading screens again. And goodbye loading corridors/tunnels/doors.
- There's going to be way, way smaller games sizes because the data will not be duplicated and compression will improve with the SSDs being so fast.
- Since so much focus is being put on speed and load times, games should start all allowing for instant jumps into the last save from the launch icon on the OS, skipping all the normal logos that take away a lot of time in starting games.
I feel like there's about a dozen more points I'm forgetting which we will see when the PS5/XSX hits too. Stuff like the OS being totally responsive at all times and invisible.
There's no doubt a SSD was the biggest upgrade I've ever done on my gaming PC, so consoles getting one is going to be pretty amazing. And they're getting an SSD of the likes we've never seen before. So who knows just how much it will change.
I do think some games as I've said before have much lower limits to what can be changed by an SSD - like Tetris for example, other than faster loading, the need for speed is far far less than some games.
Also what's interesting is to wonder if there's ever going to be gameplay/a need for SSDs far, far beyond the PS5's. What would 10TB/s speeds allow for that 20GB/s doesn't?
I don't think game designers are particularly shackled by current processing restraints to have their vision materialized. Flying over cities streaming into memory is cool, but Spider-Man and Gravity Rush were able to accomplish the same thing with clever LoD streaming. The reason you don't see many games like that is more that there's no desire.
As always it makes it easier for indie developers to make these big games when the engine support is there though.
But I still think it's a game changer. Not for game design, as MCD said we'll still be doing the same boring fetch quests as always. But I considered suspend/resume the real game changer this gen that made playing on last gen systems infuriating and then Nintendo Switch's version even more of a game changer, to the point I find starting the PS4 a drag, so doing away with loading times almost completely will feel like a very different experience too, especially making dying in the average big game way less aggravating.
As always it makes it easier for indie developers to make these big games when the engine support is there though.
But I still think it's a game changer. Not for game design, as MCD said we'll still be doing the same boring fetch quests as always. But I considered suspend/resume the real game changer this gen that made playing on last gen systems infuriating and then Nintendo Switch's version even more of a game changer, to the point I find starting the PS4 a drag, so doing away with loading times almost completely will feel like a very different experience too, especially making dying in the average big game way less aggravating.
Nice console war drive by in a thread about SSD tech in general for next generation as the baseline, wow.
I feel like some of these are a bit off, but they are getting close. Here's the way I see it:
SSD doesn't get used as RAM, but rather it can fill your RAM with necessary data a rate never seen before (mostly talking about PS5 here as it's far and away the trailblazer in this regard) that is essentially creating a new paradigm for asset streaming. As an example, let's say you're standing on a hill between two cities in GTA6. If you look at the first city it streams in all 7 GB of data (Even that is very hard to imagine for a single vista) while you look at it. Then, as you swing the camera behind you to look at city #2, the RAM dumps the assets for city#1 and the drive loads the entirety of the new assets in city #2 before it's even in view. Another example is one somebody alluded to in another thread with Demon's Souls remake. You could have all the arch stones be portals (like the game Portal) into whole other worlds and seemlessly run in and out of them without a single stutter, because the drive/IO complex is so fast it can load an entire other huge area in effectively a blink. We've never seen anything like this before in games.
I'm not really sure I'd attribute SSD to better framerates just yet. Nor would I say it's going to lead to more rich animations (though that is of course possible, if teams were ascribing that as a limit in their projects). LODs? Absolutely. The "way way" slower game sizes? I'm skeptical, but optimistic, as our assets are about to balloon like crazy.
But let's talk about OS, as that's one of the more exciting bits to me. While I've been beating the drum that blazing fast drive is not just about load screens (as that's an antiquated way to think of loading in a game), I still think there are some incredible changes that could happen on the OS. As you hinted towards, if there was a way they could get around licensing problems then games could theoretically boot straight into gameplay in effectively 1-4 seconds? (hard to know for sure as some games/engines pre-warm data even after loaded from the drive) And that's from a cold boot, not resuming. It would feel like hopping around to various movies in netflix, where the trailers take 2 seconds or so to fade in and start playing. I feel like the OS and the instantaneous nature of all this is going to be almost as exciting as the brain melting visuals and sounds. People will actually want to play more as they will press a button and they are immediately playing.
If the PS5 GPU was more powerful I don't think we'd have anywhere as many threads about what a "gamechanger" the SSD was.
It's great we're going to have much shorter loading times next gen. Really great. But I'll take a beefier GPU any day.
Whatever the benefits these new SSD systems will have I expect it's going to be a year or more before we really see any big changes compaed to current games other than loading times.
It's great we're going to have much shorter loading times next gen. Really great. But I'll take a beefier GPU any day.
Whatever the benefits these new SSD systems will have I expect it's going to be a year or more before we really see any big changes compaed to current games other than loading times.
I haven't seen a single article where developers have even mentioned the GPUs. Devs care about the CPU and SSD (on both consoles). This isn't Sony spin.
You're also reducing it to "shorter loading times," a talking point that has been addressed hundreds of times in every thread on the subject.
I'm not reducing it to that. I just think that's what we'll mostly see from this tech - at first. Which I already said, but you ignored that bit.
Wonder if higher IO would help with, not exactly better frame rate, but more stable frame rate in some cases. A lot of current gen games on PS4, X1 and Switch run into slowdowns not due to what's happening on screen, but due to assets being streamed in the background when you're moving to a new area/location.
So it won't be a game changer because it will take a year into the generation to change the game?
It's only a game changer for consoles.
They'll have PC gaming capabilities now. Less restrictions. Faster load times.
I'm hoping we'll get more seamless procedurally generated "open solar system" games like No Man's Sky - where there are giant worlds that load on the fly in the background, out of view of your draw distance, so we don't have to watch loading screens.
Maybe this coming gen we'll get open galaxies, instead of just open solar systems.
They'll have PC gaming capabilities now. Less restrictions. Faster load times.
I'm hoping we'll get more seamless procedurally generated "open solar system" games like No Man's Sky - where there are giant worlds that load on the fly in the background, out of view of your draw distance, so we don't have to watch loading screens.
Maybe this coming gen we'll get open galaxies, instead of just open solar systems.
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GPU is and always will be a big deal, but the reason why there's not been too much discussion on it (or at least not as much as for the SSD) is down to the fact that we already know what to expect. Better resolution, better framerate, they're gonna be a huge point of discussion next gen as always, but they're still a known quantity. The SSD is the new shiny thing right now and developers have been hyping it quite a bit. I don't think it's "console war" drivel that's driving these discussions tbh, especially when Microsoft and their studios have been talking about it too
Yeah, I'm pretty excited to see it when it's really released, and most likely I'm going to buy one and finally upgrade to a 4k HDR TV from my workhorse Pioneer Plasma.
I just really hope we see some of those amazing things that are possible in the OS and it's not like the Switch OS which is perfectly fine (though the shop takes forever to load imo), but the Switch OS is just boring as all hell. I enjoy the customization of the 3DS so much more. Even the smaller size of the PS5's SSD could be interesting if handled seamlessly by the OS, you should be able to have a large game moved to the SSD while playing another game and still have plenty of speed left over - so you aren't stuck with nothing to do while a 30 minute copy process occurs.
It's funny how little things can really impress you though, I feel like RE4 was full of them for me. From the animation quality, to the zooming on the sniper guns and just the whole package being really special, I'm hoping we see more games that can take advantage of everything the PS5's SSD has to offer and bring it all together in an amazing experience, which is probably no small feat.
The most hard thing to accept right now is to blindly trust how much everything is going to improve and that so much won't be possible without the PS5 SSD. It'll all be a lot easier to sort out after we've seen a dozen or so multiple platform releases from big publishers who would try and find ways to sell the same experiences that first party games are delivering on the new hardware.
But I think both the XSX and PS5 will be really really fun consoles to own, and it'll also bring nice improvements to windows / steam gaming down the road too.
Yeah I still don't think people understand, you very likely won't see load times on the PS5 longer than 2 seconds max, as there's no CPU overhead. There might be longer loading if a game uses procedural assets in a big way though, but I doubt it will be much longer.
It kind of means anyone could work on streaming a big city or large environments, it wouldn't be out of the range of a lot of people because it takes a lot of skill and time and effort to stream a city from only 100mb of data a second. One second for 8 or 9 GB means its a lot easier. Creating all the city and the assets is another matter though.
SSD is a game changer for both consoles. This isn't a console war thing.
I believe it is a game changer in many grades, but the biggest ones are going to be seen in exclusive next-gen games.
Going from the lowest to biggest changes I believe we might see:
- Assets quality
- Texture pop-in and drawing distance
- Instant loadings / fast travel
- Design games without thinking of those restrictions
I put assets quality as the lowest tier because we always have better assets quality every generation due to new GPUs, but this case is a little bit different, because it let's the console have the same GPU and still go for a better assets quality.
Or they could go for the same asset quality and improve the game's FPS, texture pop-in, drawing distance, and loading time.
Third-party cross-gen games will take advantage of the speed and/or quality assets, while exclusive first-party next-gen games will take it even further.
Now, I believe the biggest change we will see will be on VR. It needs a super steady and high FPS rate, draw things as the user see, and set the best quality assets for where the eye is looking. If all those areas are tackled and improved, I believe PSVR games will be best from a technological point of view.
Going from the lowest to biggest changes I believe we might see:
- Assets quality
- Texture pop-in and drawing distance
- Instant loadings / fast travel
- Design games without thinking of those restrictions
I put assets quality as the lowest tier because we always have better assets quality every generation due to new GPUs, but this case is a little bit different, because it let's the console have the same GPU and still go for a better assets quality.
Or they could go for the same asset quality and improve the game's FPS, texture pop-in, drawing distance, and loading time.
Third-party cross-gen games will take advantage of the speed and/or quality assets, while exclusive first-party next-gen games will take it even further.
Now, I believe the biggest change we will see will be on VR. It needs a super steady and high FPS rate, draw things as the user see, and set the best quality assets for where the eye is looking. If all those areas are tackled and improved, I believe PSVR games will be best from a technological point of view.
Yeah! That is fairly minor, but we are getting some incredible bespoke hardware for IO this gen and might free up the crazy strong CPU for other things.
I am having strong flashbacks to the N64 vs PS1 loading times debates, and how the CD was a blessing or a curse for the gaming industry. The shift from no-loading times on cartridges to long-ass loading times on CDs was not a catastrophe, and the return to the glorious cartridge era is not going to be a miracle.
Seriously, loading times change very, very little.Sure, you get into the game faster. Big deal. Welcome to 1990.
Seriously, loading times change very, very little.Sure, you get into the game faster. Big deal. Welcome to 1990.
I don't know. Personally HDR was said to be a gamechanger too.
Personally, HDR didn't really impress me. To me, the only gamechanger in recent years, is VR. I'll never forgot playing AstroBot in VR. Was on the same level as SM64 for me.
Personally, HDR didn't really impress me. To me, the only gamechanger in recent years, is VR. I'll never forgot playing AstroBot in VR. Was on the same level as SM64 for me.
Yeh I thought about this bit aswell... that would be one crazy way to reveal demon's souls.
Lmao
Read the thread? Watch Cerny/NXgamer/TheCherno etc because it is not about loading times only. It is way more than that.
One possible issue I see with the SSD discussion is that, while the examples you posted are no doubt hugely impactful from a developer perspective, the thing that popped into my head as I was reading them was "huh, that's pretty neat". They don't sound like the transformative leap that is building up in people's minds because of the huge focus that is being placed on SSDs.
You really think Sony 1st party exclusives won't take advantage of the SSD, other than loading times? I'm afraid you will be proven wrong within the next week or so.
It'a also a game changer for PCs as the vast majority of AAA games are still designed around consoles and their spinning HDDs. Outside of Star Citizen I haven't seen any game designed around the speed and seeking times of an SSD.
Yeah but third parties will still have lower end rigs and the Xbox One to consider.
It'll be a major leap, but it'll take time. They're going from 5400 RPM drives and skipping straight to top-shelf PCIe flash.
Thank you.
Even in an Series X only topic, devs said the cpu and ssd are what they're most excited about.
That doesn't mean no one cares about three gpu. I agree, this isn't about Sony spin, lol.
It certainly has the potential. I will wait and see how it shows up in actual games before I call it a game changer. It'll be marked improvement in load times to be sure.
Yeah, as a lot of other developers are saying, SSDs will in some ways be the unsung hero this upcoming generation. GPU is always touted by players because it's pretty easy to equate more pixels = more betterer. However, the SSD is going to open whole new doors even if you don't realize it.
That demon's souls example is something we've never done before. It would feel like magic to me. Running in and out of entire different worlds with completely different vistas, soundscapes, etc. (to be clear, I don't think Demon's Souls will actually do this. There are too many problems I could foresee with this approach that would make it impractical for this particular game)
And seeing folks mentioning PC....like SSDs have been a minimum requirement for games for 10 years.
True - but it's nice for PC gamers in that most of us already have SSDs - we've been sitting around waiting for developers to wake up and recognize all this untapped power that's not being taken advantage of!
I honestly don't think the past 10 years of PC hardware has even reached it potential because of the "lowest common denominator" development mentality.
I have a question on this topic if you have the time. Now that the issue of streaming in data in time will be much less of (if at all) an issue, what will be the biggest limiting factor in ncreasing the detail of game worlds? GPU and CPU horsepower, the amount of memory, development realities like time/money?
Having just a beefier gpu would just be more of the same. From what we are hearing from multiple devs, these particular ssds on the new consoles will have a way bigger impact.