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

GrayChild

Member

When Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart was initially announced, Insomniac's creative director, Marcus Smith, said that the game's dimensional rift gameplay "would not have been possible without the solid-state drive of the PlayStation 5."

However, it turns out that it is indeed possible.

The blog post also confirmed that this would be the first game to utilize DirectStorage with GPU compression.

"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. This means that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC can utilize the same technology for loading data, regardless of the storage device in your system."

DirectStorage is a method for directly streaming data from an NVMe SSD to the GPU, bypassing the CPU and avoiding potential performance bottlenecks. This means that your GPU will handle decompressing game assets instead of your processor, improving performance.

With DirectStorage 1.2, developers can now use the same code for HDDs as well. Although legacy HDDs previously had some level of DirectStorage support, developers just had to jump through some extra hoops to make it work.
 

01011001

Banned
uhh lower res textures used for 720p resolution meaning smaller texture sizes that needs less bandwidth?

I mean, that is very vague terminology.

technically Gears of War 3's Xbox 360 textures were meant for 720p, yet years later when the Xbox One X patch released many were shocked at how high res the textures looked when played at 4K

how much of an issue texture size will be when playing on an HDD is hard to say without knowing how the game loads data.
so we will see
 
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killatopak

Gold Member
I mean, that is very vague terminology.

technically Gears of War 3's Xbox 360 textures were meant for 720p, yet years later when the Xbox One X patch released many were shocked at how high res the textures looked when played at 4K

how much of an issue texture size will be when playing on an HDD is hard to say without knowing how the game loads data.
so we will see
Yeah, I understand. IIIRC Dark Souls also had this when it was ported to PC but as far as I know it isn't really a common occurrence in the past especially console exclusive games which is why plenty of games have mods that increase texture resolution. Increasing texture resolution and cleaning them up are remastered games' bread and butter.
 

01011001

Banned
Yeah, I understand. IIIRC Dark Souls also had this when it was ported to PC but as far as I know it isn't really a common occurrence in the past especially console exclusive games which is why plenty of games have mods that increase texture resolution. Increasing texture resolution and cleaning them up are remastered games' bread and butter.

yeah but especially on PC games, textures aren't meant for specific resolutions, they're meant for specific VRAM sizes.

Ratchet's minimum requirement is a GPU with 2GB of VRAM, so that's what the lowest textures will be designed for, not for any particular output resolution or storage speed.
and given how awful many texture settings were recently I wouldn't even expect them to look good at 720p 🤣
like how The Last of Us Part 1 launched with medium texture settings that looked lower res than PS3 textures.
 
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01011001

Banned
Are there any xbox console games that use this technology yet ?

pretty sure many do yes, but it's not really advertised. it's a bigger deal on PC because PCs do not have a dedicated decompression block and games have less hardware access.

so having an API that allows developers to easily implement GPU decompression is a big deal there (even tho there have been games in the past that did that with proprietary solutions)
 

Topher

Gold Member
Didn't require the SSD after all, but does require the compression tech which wasn't available on PC until late last year. Glad to see this is becoming more widely used. Will be interesting to see some benchmarks when the game launches across the different drive types.
 

killatopak

Gold Member
yeah but especially on PC games, textures aren't meant for specific resolutions, they're meant for specific VRAM sizes.

Ratchet's minimum requirement is a GPU with 2GB of VRAM, so that's what the lowest textures will be designed for, not for any particular output resolution or storage speed.
and given how awful many texture settings were recently I wouldn't even expect them to look good at 720p 🤣
like how The Last of Us Part 1 launched with medium texture settings that looked lower res than PS3 textures.
But isn't that why direct storage is designed for? Faster transfer of files to the GPU? You compensate the lack of size of your vram with how fast you can replace them.

That's the least of TLOU problems in the PC port lol. It's a bad release but I don't blame the devs. I blame Sony for rushing it to coincide with the HBO show.
 

01011001

Banned
Didn't require the SSD after all, but does require the compression tech which wasn't available on PC until late last year. Glad to see this is becoming more widely used. Will be interesting to see some benchmarks when the game launches across the different drive types.

older games exist that used their own way of GPU decompression. so it's not tech that wasn't available, it's tech that wasn't easily implementable.

Rage used GPU decompression when played on Nvidia cards for example, as iD made their own cuda based decompression system for iD Tech
 

Topher

Gold Member
older games exist that used their own way of GPU decompression. so it's not tech that wasn't available, it's tech that wasn't easily implementable.

Rage used GPU decompression when played on Nvidia cards for example, as iD made their own cuda based decompression system for iD Tech

Ah...didn't know that. Thanks.
 

01011001

Banned
But isn't that why direct storage is designed for? Faster transfer of files to the GPU? You compensate the lack of size of your vram with how fast you can replace them.

in a perfect scenario yes, but that would only work with an SSD.

but I doubt that any dev will ever take full advantage of this given how game development is recently... :/


That's the least of TLOU problems in the PC port lol. It's a bad release but I don't blame the devs. I blame Sony for rushing it to coincide with the HBO show.

true. but it was one of the more ridiculous ones. when 8GB of VRAM give you texture quality that an Xbox 360 would he ashamed of having
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Just looking at the spec requirements, it doesn't run that well above 720p textures right? I was also told here that it comes with a slight cost to CPU performance. Is that true?
720p textures aren't a thing. Texture quality is generally independent of resolution and generally comes in 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, 4096x4096 and so on. You can have a high resolution image and low resolution textures, this will result in obviously blurry textures. You can also have high resolution textures and a low resolution image but the perceived texture quality will suffer since the image doesn't resolve them properly. You'll think the textures are low res but it's actually the image that has a low resolution. I think Returnal is a good example. The textures on PS5 look significantly lower than PC's highest despite presumably being the same but that's because the internal res of the image on PS5 is 1080p whereas it can go above 4K on PC, resulting in a cleaner resolve.

Comp.00_15_05_18.Still013.png
 
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shamoomoo

Member
Didn't require the SSD after all, but does require the compression tech which wasn't available on PC until late last year. Glad to see this is becoming more widely used. Will be interesting to see some benchmarks when the game launches across the different drive types.
Though the article is garbage,how did you come to that conclusion?

The irony is that was the whole point of an SSD that Mark Cerny talked about in the road to PS5. If direct storage was that practical on HDDs then there wasn't any reason for SSDs to begin with it,as Sony and Microsoft could've gone with making HDDs more useful for games.

In a recently taken down blog post on Steam (via Wccftech), Nixxes, the developer behind the PC port of Rachet and Clank: Rift Apart, wrote that because of the recent DirectStorage update, you can play the former PS5 exclusive on a hard drive, albeit at its minimum settings
 

Topher

Gold Member
Though the article is garbage,how did you come to that conclusion?

The irony is that was the whole point of an SSD that Mark Cerny talked about in the road to PS5. If direct storage was that practical on HDDs then there wasn't any reason for SSDs to begin with it,as Sony and Microsoft could've gone with making HDDs more useful for games.

In a recently taken down blog post on Steam (via Wccftech), Nixxes, the developer behind the PC port of Rachet and Clank: Rift Apart, wrote that because of the recent DirectStorage update, you can play the former PS5 exclusive on a hard drive, albeit at its minimum settings

I don't get your question. The game runs on HDD when Marcus Smith said it wouldn't be possible without the PS5 SSD.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
720p textures aren't a thing. Texture quality is generally independent of resolution and generally comes in 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, 4096x4096 and so on. You can have a high resolution image and low resolution textures, this will result in obviously blurry textures. You can also have high resolution textures and a low resolution image but the perceived texture quality will suffer since the image doesn't resolve them properly. You'll think the textures are low res but it's actually the image that has a low resolution. I think Returnal is a good example. The textures on PS5 look significantly lower than PC's highest despite presumably being the same but that's because the internal res of the image on PS5 is 1080p whereas it can go above 4K on PC, resulting in a cleaner resolve.

Comp.00_15_05_18.Still013.png
yeah but returnal ps5 vs pc is not 1:1.
Pc version is a very light remaster almost. They got some new textures in there. It's not just a straight port
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Lets see it tested on a 5400rpm laptop drive, because that's the old console standard! And "working" doesn't imply it being seamless, no publisher calls the extreme hitching that can be observed without shader pre-compilation as making a PC game completely broken.
 

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
yeah but returnal ps5 vs pc is not 1:1.
Pc version is a very light remaster almost. They got some new textures in there. It's not just a straight port
Apparently, the texture quality is the same according to DF.
 

01011001

Banned
yeah but returnal ps5 vs pc is not 1:1.
Pc version is a very light remaster almost. They got some new textures in there. It's not just a straight port

they used the same texture quality on both, which you can see if you go really close so that the resolution isn't a factor anymore
 
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Tangerine

Member
But isn't that why direct storage is designed for? Faster transfer of files to the GPU? You compensate the lack of size of your vram with how fast you can replace them.

That's the least of TLOU problems in the PC port lol. It's a bad release but I don't blame the devs. I blame Sony for rushing it to coincide with the HBO show.
Know if it's fixed yet? Is it a good port yet? Last on us on PC...

Want to play it and I don't have a ps5.
 

winjer

Gold Member
uhh lower res textures used for 720p resolution meaning smaller texture sizes that needs less bandwidth?

Pixel resolution is not related to texture resolution.
The closest thing is MipMap LOD bias. But that only determines the range at which higher mips are loaded.
 

Topher

Gold Member
He was talking about PS4. PS4 doesn't have DirectStorage 1.2.

Ah....you are correct. He leads off his statement about PS5 SSD by referencing "previous generations". Timestamped 1:05.



I'm sure when people were saying when Rift Apart was coming to PC and being playable on it with a HDD,they meant exactly like a PS5 with little compromise.

I don't know what you are talking about. I'm not saying any such thing.
 
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Mister Wolf

Gold Member
We've been waiting for Direct Storage for a long time. I'm glad we can finally see it in action. How much will performance cost for decompressing with our GPUs is what I want to know.
 

8BiTw0LF

Banned
There's nothing special about the PS5, nothing.
After it's been out for almost 3 years? You're right. There's nothing special about 3 year old hardware, but this generation is only half way through and the PS5 seems to have a pretty good foundation in this regard.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
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.
 

Kilau

Member
Are people going to be locked into the lowest settings if installing on an HDD or can we pair a 4090 with a 5400rpm clunker and see what starts to fall apart?
 

Topher

Gold Member
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.

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.
 

shamoomoo

Member
Ah....you are correct. He leads off his statement about PS5 SSD by referencing "previous generations". Timestamped 1:05.





I don't know what you are talking about. I'm not saying any such thing.

I'm not talking about you specifically but the chatter of other people with regards to Ratchet and Clank coming to PC.
 
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shamoomoo

Member
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.
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.

 

01011001

Banned
Are people going to be locked into the lowest settings if installing on an HDD or can we pair a 4090 with a 5400rpm clunker and see what starts to fall apart?

I bet all you will have in such a setup is small stutters from time to time... if at all.
 

01011001

Banned
After it's been out for almost 3 years? You're right. There's nothing special about 3 year old hardware, but this generation is only half way through and the PS5 seems to have a pretty good foundation in this regard.

I mean, it wasn't special when it released either.
the consoles were outclassed in every way before they were out, not as much as the last gen systems were, but still.
 
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