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Forspoken Load Times Are Barely A Second Long On PS5, Has Multiple Graphics Modes

We are literally in here squawking about less than ONE second load difference, on generation one software. I should have paid more attention to the thread, because I thought it was significantly more than that. 1.9 seconds, 1.7 seconds.... JEEZ.

Dudes... this is not a "PS5 win." This is an "PC has caught up in loading capabilities" moment. Less than one bloody second is not going to hamper PC in any way shape or form. Without direct storage, yes it was an issue. With it, as well as much more available ram and cpu power... it's not.


giphy.gif

So you don't like when someone mentions you get better performance and graphics over here... But you don't mind people praising a fraction of a second faster loading vs direct storage first iteration? I wonder if load times mattered last generation, especially for those who been rocking SSD's for the past 10 years? Kinda seems hypocritical, don't you think?
^^ It's incredibly obvious why this thread went the way it did. This is beyond splitting hairs... it's like splitting one atom on those hairs.

What will happen when PC can outdo PS5 load times in direct storage games by .5 seconds? "Whatever bro, it's half a second." xD
 
Epic talked about this in their initial UE5 demo, saying it would only run on the PS5 because of the geometry density and needing to load that in and out of memory as your view moves. Notice how none of the demos available that are cross platform, look as good as the initial demo in this respect. Hmm, is it because Epic was telling the truth perhaps? :pie_thinking:


Of course 1 seconds vs 2 seconds is a total wash when it comes to "loading times" and waiting for games to show up on screen. Even though the PS5 solution is, again, twice as fast right now, in practicality no one will care. It's what the tech enables in the above scenarios that makes the difference for the system. And this is continually ignored by people who don't want to acknowledge it, even though it's being done on shipped products.

In conclusion, PS5 setup still absolutely smokes the MS DirectStorage solution. It doesn't affect the rest of the system performance. And the haters are cheering on the far slower tech. Yeah. that makes sense.

I don't get why people can't just like everything and recognize reality. Yeah the PS5 gpu and cpu don't match up to what's available on the PC. It's not a big deal. Right now nothing can match the PS5 I/O tech. Again, that's just reality. I don't understand what is so hard for some people to just admit this.

I mean my Switch is seriously old and outdated from a tech perspective, and it's by far my favorite system because of the games. It has nothing to do with hardware or anything. But even though I prefer my Switch I recognize what the PS5 has, and does not have. Same with the XSX (that I just got rid of though). It has pros and cons.

Again, really surprised at either the gaslighting that is being attempted or the willful ignorance. I honestly can't tell which it is. Let's move on people.
This has already been debunked. you are 2 years late.
The last 2 demos were more performant and streaming intensive than the first demo.



 

sendit

Member
Nope. A full implementation of Direct Storage and RTX I/O on PC would outclass PS5's SSD.

This right here is Not even a one to one comparison knowing that according to the devs, Forspoken is not fully utilizing the current available Direct Storage let alone the future version of Direct Storage. There were still many bottlenecks that Direct Storage could eliminate that they left untouched.



Because DirectStorage is still a work in progress. The tech is here now on the PS5 for developers to utilize. PC is playing catch in relation to this. Additionally, one would hope the PC would eventually outclass tech from an aging PS5.
 

Three

Member
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sachos

Member
I always find funny how people try to downplay how awesome the SSD tech on the PS5 is, ever since what Tim Sweeney said back in 2020. Sub or near 2 second loads on next gen games is impressive as fuck, no matter how you put it, so can't we just enjoy when a company delivers on their promises?
So far PS5 has delivered on a bunch of their promises for next gen games: really good Ray Tracing implementations on Ratchet and SM, near instant load times on games that properly utilize the I/O hardware and the controller that at first we did not know if it was a gimmick or not.
Only thing missing i would say is to see how much (if at all) can the SSD impact graphics in general or a few more gameplay mechanics enabled by the SSD other than what we've seen from Ratchet.
 
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I always find funny how people try to downplay how awesome the SSD tech on the PS5 is, ever since what Tim Sweeney said back in 2020. Sub or near 2 second loads on next gen games is impressive as fuck, no matter how you put it, so can't we just enjoy when a company delivers on their promises?
So far PS5 has delivered on a bunch of their promises for next gen games: really good Ray Tracing implementations on Ratchet and SM, near instant load times on games that properly utilize the I/O hardware and the controller that at first we did not know if it was a gimmick or not.
Only thing missing i would say is to see how much (if at all) can the SSD impact graphics in general or a few more gameplay mechanics enabled by the SSD other than what we've seen from Ratchet.

The shortest I’ve seen was GT7. Sub 1 second loads is just crazy in my opinion. I’m just happy consoles finally ditched HDDs.
 

Shmunter

Member
The shortest I’ve seen was GT7. Sub 1 second loads is just crazy in my opinion. I’m just happy consoles finally ditched HDDs.
Especially amusing when I'm playing Horizon Chase on my ps5 sitting on the ssd. The most basic arcade racer available and the damn thing loads, and loads and loads.

It just goes to show how irrelevant the storage medium can be without a next gen i/o pipeline to complement it all.
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
I always find funny how people try to downplay how awesome the SSD tech on the PS5 is, ever since what Tim Sweeney said back in 2020. Sub or near 2 second loads on next gen games is impressive as fuck, no matter how you put it, so can't we just enjoy when a company delivers on their promises?
So far PS5 has delivered on a bunch of their promises for next gen games: really good Ray Tracing implementations on Ratchet and SM, near instant load times on games that properly utilize the I/O hardware and the controller that at first we did not know if it was a gimmick or not.
Only thing missing i would say is to see how much (if at all) can the SSD impact graphics in general or a few more gameplay mechanics enabled by the SSD other than what we've seen from Ratchet.
We has instantaneous loading in the cartridge era. Glad we're close to what we once had, instant loading and 60 fps.
 
Moving from mechanical drives to SSDs truly is a transformative experience. The first time I installed a SATA 3 SSD on my PC in 2014 and saw windows boot up in less than 10 seconds, my mind was blow. From then on, game loading times ceased to be a problem. I now have a lower end SN550 as my primary game installation drive, and all games installed launch within a few seconds. The only time I really noticed load times when I moved psyconauts 2 to my HDD having completed the story and to make some room on the SSD. Damn, loading the game on the HDD took ages! That's when you really see how much of a difference even a low end SSD makes to overall system snappiness.
 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
Nope. A full implementation of Direct Storage and RTX I/O on PC would outclass PS5's SSD.

This right here is Not even a one to one comparison knowing that according to the devs, Forspoken is not fully utilizing the current available Direct Storage let alone the future version of Direct Storage. There were still many bottlenecks that Direct Storage could eliminate that they left untouched.


So you don't understand what you posted.
 
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PaintTinJr

Member
The point is the SSD on the PS5 has done nothing to enhance graphics features and that's because it's bottlenecked GPU. Placing emphasis on fast load times is silly. We all want to see what the GPU performs like when it's hammered with RT, higher resolution framebuffers, maximum FPS, and really complicated shaders - none of which the SSD can help with.
..
I think it is a pretty fair assessment in these cross-gen times that the " SSD on the PS5 has done nothing to enhance graphics features", but I would want to ask are you making a distinction between "has done" and "will do"?

Even if load times are comparable just with an enhanced filesystem and use of the CPU cores, L3 cache and RAM (on a PC) to level up to the IO Complex and Velocity Architecture - that are so brief they aren't worth discussing the delta -, the times in themselves weren't the point of the custom silicon in the consoles (or the coming RTX IO) because small loading times could have always existed by scaling back the data loaded to the VRAM for graphics. The reduced latency of the loading by multiples is the paradigm shift IMO.

If it is your belief the IO Complex(or VA) won't "enhance graphics features" by the end of the generation for the PS5(or XsX) I think I understand why you would think that - but I completely disagree.

You coming from a VFX background I suspect you hold the view - like I once did, wrongly IMO - that the maths/algorithms used in graphics should be totally generic to a scene with a catch-all mentality to handle all case situations without unexpected graphical artefacts - which I believed the emerging forms of tracing would provide to simplify rendering pipelines. But since then it has become clearer to me that cheating with VFX isn't leaving games because there will never be enough performance to brute force a full draw distance to the horizon scene - the shift to 720p and above began to start showing the rendering strain with basic lighting shadow fx - and as you can probably describe to us in great detail, even offline VFX for cinema cheat at a distance where the signal and noise of an fx become equal - or probably sooner on lower budget films - so if films cheat, what chance do games have with 16.6ms rendering times?

The reason why the "cheating" aspect is important to the IO complex is because just like lightmap lighting in Quake 3, where the stills of opaque geometry could be passable for from real-time RT the check-in time of the IO complex to allow all sorts of ingenious cheating - such as splitting a frustum into cascades, where pre-calculated RT results can be streamed in and built up like a oil painting (painters algorithm) with just the near cascade rendered in the GPU dynamically but being supplied with a BVH that is created from a base BVH and a BVH diff file, yielding a near-enough full scene RT image and rendered cheaply would enhance the graphics IMO.
 
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John Wick

Member
We are literally in here squawking about less than ONE second load difference, on generation one software. I should have paid more attention to the thread, because I thought it was significantly more than that. 1.9 seconds, 1.7 seconds.... JEEZ.

Dudes... this is not a "PS5 win." This is an "PC has caught up in loading capabilities" moment. Less than one bloody second is not going to hamper PC in any way shape or form. Without direct storage, yes it was an issue. With it, as well as much more available ram and cpu power... it's not.


giphy.gif


^^ It's incredibly obvious why this thread went the way it did. This is beyond splitting hairs... it's like splitting one atom on those hairs.

What will happen when PC can outdo PS5 load times in direct storage games by .5 seconds? "Whatever bro, it's half a second." xD
It's incredibly obvious some users can't but help remind us that their PC GPU's allow for better blah blah blah. That they would trade a second load time for better blah blah blah.
It was always expected at some point the PC will surpass the PS5 in loading speed. But the PC has had SSD's for 10 years but you still can't load games in 1or 2 secs. Will Nvidia RTX/IO need new cards or will it work on current GPU's?
 

Mister Wolf

Member
It was always expected at some point the PC will surpass the PS5 in loading speed. But the PC has had SSD's for 10 years but you still can't load games in 1or 2 secs. Will Nvidia RTX/IO need new cards or will it work on current GPU's?

Even without the GPU decompression(RTX I/O) you wont see a single game this generation or the next requiring the transfer rates of 4.8GB/s Direct Storage can achieve in its current state for asset loading while in game.
 
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assurdum

Banned
R&C and Spiderman's level streaming isn't what makes them look good. They are completely different things. R&C has artwork, and Spiderman is just the same game running at a faster clip with RT reflections. Both of those games can be run on any console/PC without the need for an ultra fast SSD.
That's false. R&C can't run on ps4 absolutely. ND has been quite clear multiple times about it.
 
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NEbeast

Member
We was specifically talking about the PC platform. That article was silly to mention the PC when they don't care about 10-20 secs of loading time. Nearly every game out loads fast enough with just an HDD. Anyone with a standard SSD doesn't even care about the loading times.

Consoles are a different matter.
I knew you would end up in here, anything that shows a console beating PC and you have to come in to defend PCMR.
A Few Good Men You Cant Handle The Truth GIF by SundanceTV
 

winjer

Gold Member
Even without the GPU decompression(RTX I/O) you wont see a single game this generation or the next requiring the transfer rates of 4.8GB/s Direct Storage can achieve in its current state for asset loading while in game.

Probably the biggest advantage Direct Storage will have, is in reducing hitching and stutter from asset streaming, during gameplay. Especially if used in conjunction with Sampler Feedback Streaming.
And this is much better than having a load time of 1s.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
I think it is a pretty fair assessment in these cross-gen times that the " SSD on the PS5 has done nothing to enhance graphics features", but I would want to ask are you making a distinction between "has done" and "will do"?

Even if load times are comparable just with an enhanced filesystem and use of the CPU cores, L3 cache and RAM (on a PC) to level up to the IO Complex and Velocity Architecture - that are so brief they aren't worth discussing the delta -, the times in themselves weren't the point of the custom silicon in the consoles (or the coming RTX IO) because small loading times could have always existed by scaling back the data loaded to the VRAM for graphics. The reduced latency of the loading by multiples is the paradigm shift IMO.

If it is your belief the IO Complex(or VA) won't "enhance graphics features" by the end of the generation for the PS5(or XsX) I think I understand why you would think that - but I completely disagree.

You coming from a VFX background I suspect you hold the view - like I once did, wrongly IMO - that the maths/algorithms used in graphics should be totally generic to a scene with a catch-all mentality to handle all case situations without unexpected graphical artefacts - which I believed the emerging forms of tracing would provide to simplify rendering pipelines. But since then it has become clearer to me that cheating with VFX isn't leaving games because there will never be enough performance to brute force a full draw distance to the horizon scene - the shift to 720p and above began to start showing the rendering strain with basic lighting shadow fx - and as you can probably describe to us in great detail, even offline VFX for cinema cheat at a distance where the signal and noise of an fx become equal - or probably sooner on lower budget films - so if films cheat, what chance do games have with 16.6ms rendering times?

The reason why the "cheating" aspect is important to the IO complex is because just like lightmap lighting in Quake 3, where the stills of opaque geometry could be passable for from real-time RT the check-in time of the IO complex to allow all sorts of ingenious cheating - such as splitting a frustum into cascades, where pre-calculated RT results can be streamed in and built up like a oil painting (painters algorithm) with just the near cascade rendered in the GPU dynamically but being supplied with a BVH that is created from a base BVH and a BVH diff file, yielding a near-enough full scene RT image and rendered cheaply would enhance the graphics IMO.
All I'm saying is this.

The I/O isn't fast enough to help rasterize pixels. It's literally that simple. Once the data is into the framebuffer, it has to be drawn. No amount of I/O speed is going to help the consoles overcome this barrier (nor PC GPUs for that matter). Even if you use the SSD to gather data extremely quickly (i.e. BVHs), you still have to compute the rendering equation - which will always be the bottleneck.
 
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Shmunter

Member
All I'm saying is this.

The I/O isn't fast enough to help rasterize pixels. It's literally that simple. Once the data is into the framebuffer, it has to be drawn. No amount of I/O speed is going to help the consoles overcome this barrier (nor PC GPUs for that matter). Even if you use the SSD to gather data extremely quickly (i.e. BVHs), you still have to compute the rendering equation - which will always be the bottleneck.
The i/o feeds memory, not GPU rasterisation or rendering power, lol. Google the difference.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
All I'm saying is this.

The I/O isn't fast enough to help rasterize pixels. It's literally that simple. Once the data is into the framebuffer, it has to be drawn. No amount of I/O speed is going to help the consoles overcome this barrier (nor PC GPUs for that matter). Even if you use the SSD to gather data extremely quickly (i.e. BVHs), you still have to compute the rendering equation - which will always be the bottleneck.
The render equation in almost anything 3D can be replaced with simple or complex pre-calculation and lookups IMO, like lightmaps, shadowmaps, cubemaps, and so maybe BVH structures - if the foreground frustum cascade chunk can be reduced to a base BVH with a smaller diff BVH for the dynamically moving parts positions/orientations - can also be pre-calculated,for streaming, and if the camera position and orientation can also be known in advance, then even the result of the BVH traversal could be pre-calculated and streamed in too, as if it were dynamic.

The render cost is basically texturing if that type of thing would work like cubemaps - but I'm sure the smart people in the industry will have amazing ways to cheat using the IO complex and VA (and RTX IO) that aren't just theory, like they do every generation with new hw features. I'm surprised you yourself haven't got some amazing ideas to exploit such small multiple frame delay check-in.
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
UE5 seems to have turned the tables on this. Now that consoles have something better than calculator CPU’s things are heading towards higher utilisation.
At higher resolutions you're going to be GPU bound. This gives the cpu some breathing room to brute force this.
 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
All I'm saying is this.

The I/O isn't fast enough to help rasterize pixels. It's literally that simple. Once the data is into the framebuffer, it has to be drawn. No amount of I/O speed is going to help the consoles overcome this barrier (nor PC GPUs for that matter). Even if you use the SSD to gather data extremely quickly (i.e. BVHs), you still have to compute the rendering equation - which will always be the bottleneck.


Watching is fundamental
 
Source: https://novicegamerguides.com/news/...cond-long-on-ps5-has-multiple-graphics-modes/

During GDC 2022, Luminous Engine’s technical director gave a demonstration of some of the technologies that they have incorporated into Forspoken.

In the case of the PS5, they have extremely fast load times thanks to the M.2 SSD in the PS5 console. The load times are so fast that they barely last a second. Compared to the PS5, the PC version can have load times as long as 2 to 22 seconds depending on the hardware.

The PC and PS5 versions will also benefit from the AMD FSR 2.0 implementation. There are different modes available in the game including a Quality Mode and a Native 4K mode. These will offer better performance while sacrificing some visual fidelity.

Microsoft has also helped with the development of the PC version with the Direct Storage support. A regular SSD might not compete with the load times of the PS5 version but an M.2 SSD can come quite close to it.
M.2 doesn't say anything about how perfmant an SSD is all it says is that it's fits the m.2 form factor. What you're looking to say is NVME SSD(as opposed to SATA) or better yet PCIe 3.0/4.0/5.0 to denote the generational performance characterists of the SSD.

When you say m.2 all you're saying is the SSDs physical size is small..
 

sendit

Member
Probably the biggest advantage Direct Storage will have, is in reducing hitching and stutter from asset streaming, during gameplay. Especially if used in conjunction with Sampler Feedback Streaming.
And this is much better than having a load time of 1s.

Advantage in comparison to what?

The i/o feeds memory, not GPU rasterisation or rendering power, lol. Google the difference.

fastnloud GIF
 

assurdum

Banned
I was talking about next-gen systems + PC bro. I never talk about last-gen unless I state it explicitly.
Didn't Nsomniac claimed clearly that R&C is just possible on ps5 hardware? Even via Twitter they replied to the straight question adding that who said otherwise just hadn't a clue how really work. Forgive me but I'm leaning more to believe to them than some tech guys theoryze on the net.
 
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Mister Wolf

Member
UE5 seems to have turned the tables on this. Now that consoles have something better than calculator CPU’s things are heading towards higher utilisation.

Is this really the case? I tried the UE5 city demo at 4K native Epic setting and my CPU utilization was paltry like its always been at high resolutions.
 
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