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Forums - Gaming Discussion - In Theory: How SSD Could Radically Change Next-Gen Games Beyond Faster Loading (Digital Foundry Video)

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Massive voxel octrees...that's what I'm hoping for,



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mjk45 said:
Cobretti2 said:
Cool and all but when the game is 50GB plus it doesn't leave much space for installing games / patches etc..

Getting tired of consoles having incomplete games that the gamers user test and all they do is patch all the time with day 1 patches and having to uninstall games to install others. these systems will never become a Retro console as these new system replayabilty is zero once you can no longer get patches for games, I guess when every gen since 3 they keep releasing "enhanced" versions of the game and people keep buying they will go down this path.

You have to look at what came before, before patching you were stuck with what was on the disc for good or bad , no hd's , and you had to to load from disc every time, sure the digital world has uncertainties and convenience has a price where the reliance on the platforms and publisher support is much larger now,but things like patching can be mitigated by saving ,it's not just a console thing either.

Basically next-gen should give us a similar experience to what we had with the Nintendo 64... Super fast, low latency ROM loads directly into Ram in almost real time.
It means developers can be more efficient with Ram usage as they have much more bandwidth to stream textures and meshes to DRAM in real time.

Let me be clear though, NAND is not a replacement for lots of fast Ram, but it does mean Microsoft and Sony can cut back and save money on Ram... And thus shift the burden back onto developers, So the video with the Radeon Graphics SSD is not a good example, that is for professional datasets that exceeds the Ram buffer on GPU's.

The PC however, doesn't need it as much as Consoles as the PC has lots of available Ram with massive System and GPU memory pools.

Patching is here to stay though.

Also one thing to keep in mind is that the Switch uses solid state storage, but still has load times with some games, it's all down to the developer and how they manage memory.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

I'm kinda skeptical given a game like Star Citizen still has long loads. PC doesent make load times instant either with high end specs.

There is enough evidence SSD can speed up load times. A faster CPU also increases load speeds. I assume RAM also plays a role. Therefore increased load speeds is coming.

Virtually no load times though? I am doubtful.



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mjk45 said:
Cobretti2 said:
Cool and all but when the game is 50GB plus it doesn't leave much space for installing games / patches etc..

Getting tired of consoles having incomplete games that the gamers user test and all they do is patch all the time with day 1 patches and having to uninstall games to install others. these systems will never become a Retro console as these new system replayabilty is zero once you can no longer get patches for games, I guess when every gen since 3 they keep releasing "enhanced" versions of the game and people keep buying they will go down this path.

You have to look at what came before, before patching you were stuck with what was on the disc for good or bad , no hd's , and you had to to load from disc every time, sure the digital world has uncertainties and convenience has a price where the reliance on the platforms and publisher support is much larger now,but things like patching can be mitigated by saving ,it's not just a console thing either.

Well you only had to load from the disc if we're talking about disc based systems.

While your points are basically true, how many major releases do you recall that were buggy to the point of borderline unplayability back in the old days?  I honestly can't recall that many.  Nowadays it's fairly common.  Developers are definitely using patches as a cop out.



Mr Puggsly said:
I'm kinda skeptical given a game like Star Citizen still has long loads. PC doesent make load times instant either with high end specs.

There is enough evidence SSD can speed up load times. A faster CPU also increases load speeds. I assume RAM also plays a role. Therefore increased load speeds is coming.

Virtually no load times though? I am doubtful.

They always overhyped new features.  I seem to recall claims that PS2 graphics would be on the level of Pixar movies.  Still don't think we've reached the level of Toy Story in video games.



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JWeinCom said:
Mr Puggsly said:
I'm kinda skeptical given a game like Star Citizen still has long loads. PC doesent make load times instant either with high end specs.

There is enough evidence SSD can speed up load times. A faster CPU also increases load speeds. I assume RAM also plays a role. Therefore increased load speeds is coming.

Virtually no load times though? I am doubtful.

They always overhyped new features.  I seem to recall claims that PS2 graphics would be on the level of Pixar movies.  Still don't think we've reached the level of Toy Story in video games.

Have you seen Toy Story recently? Its not that impressive. The models and textures haven't aged particularly well. CGI movies are created with expensive computers only intended to create polished visuals. Current consoles can also create more impressive games when all they focus on is basically visuals. For example, Detroit is more visually stunning than Toy Story.



Recently Completed
River City: Rival Showdown
for 3DS (3/5) - River City: Tokyo Rumble for 3DS (4/5) - Zelda: BotW for Wii U (5/5) - Zelda: BotW for Switch (5/5) - Zelda: Link's Awakening for Switch (4/5) - Rage 2 for X1X (4/5) - Rage for 360 (3/5) - Streets of Rage 4 for X1/PC (4/5) - Gears 5 for X1X (5/5) - Mortal Kombat 11 for X1X (5/5) - Doom 64 for N64 (emulator) (3/5) - Crackdown 3 for X1S/X1X (4/5) - Infinity Blade III - for iPad 4 (3/5) - Infinity Blade II - for iPad 4 (4/5) - Infinity Blade - for iPad 4 (4/5) - Wolfenstein: The Old Blood for X1 (3/5) - Assassin's Creed: Origins for X1 (3/5) - Uncharted: Lost Legacy for PS4 (4/5) - EA UFC 3 for X1 (4/5) - Doom for X1 (4/5) - Titanfall 2 for X1 (4/5) - Super Mario 3D World for Wii U (4/5) - South Park: The Stick of Truth for X1 BC (4/5) - Call of Duty: WWII for X1 (4/5) -Wolfenstein II for X1 - (4/5) - Dead or Alive: Dimensions for 3DS (4/5) - Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite for X1 (3/5) - Halo Wars 2 for X1/PC (4/5) - Halo Wars: DE for X1 (4/5) - Tekken 7 for X1 (4/5) - Injustice 2 for X1 (4/5) - Yakuza 5 for PS3 (3/5) - Battlefield 1 (Campaign) for X1 (3/5) - Assassin's Creed: Syndicate for X1 (4/5) - Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for X1 (4/5) - Call of Duty: MW Remastered for X1 (4/5) - Donkey Kong Country Returns for 3DS (4/5) - Forza Horizon 3 for X1 (5/5)

Mr Puggsly said:
JWeinCom said:

They always overhyped new features.  I seem to recall claims that PS2 graphics would be on the level of Pixar movies.  Still don't think we've reached the level of Toy Story in video games.

Have you seen Toy Story recently? Its not that impressive. The models and textures haven't aged particularly well. CGI movies are created with expensive computers only intended to create polished visuals. Current consoles can also create more impressive games when all they focus on is basically visuals. For example, Detroit is more visually stunning than Toy Story.

I have seen toy story lately.  The textures aren't as good, but the animation is still better.  And the lighting and shadows. But I'm not going to get into a whole thing about it.  Point is that the PS2 wasn't even near that level. 



JWeinCom said:
mjk45 said:

You have to look at what came before, before patching you were stuck with what was on the disc for good or bad , no hd's , and you had to to load from disc every time, sure the digital world has uncertainties and convenience has a price where the reliance on the platforms and publisher support is much larger now,but things like patching can be mitigated by saving ,it's not just a console thing either.

Well you only had to load from the disc if we're talking about disc based systems.

While your points are basically true, how many major releases do you recall that were buggy to the point of borderline unplayability back in the old days?  I honestly can't recall that many.  Nowadays it's fairly common.  Developers are definitely using patches as a cop out.

While there are some who use patching as a cop out it's not all negative, as to buggy games pre patch there were plenty but since the world was less connected you didn't have  the awareness that you have today or the critical audience feedback,I started gaming on a secondhand C64 moved onto Amiga then PC and consoles, so I have been gaming for over 30 years and I recall bugs ranging from nuisance value up to game breaking ever since I started, now whether it is worse or better today, I don't know.

What I do know that the more complex the system the more things can go wrong and with today's games becoming more complex as well as more open and less linear, the chances of bugs have increased, the numbers of bug testers you see in game credits is a testament to that, the response of using day one patches and patching when necessary to fix the problem seems to me to be driven by publishers preferring not to hold back releases when a day one patch will do the job.

Last edited by mjk45 - on 29 December 2019

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Random_Matt said:
Loved that spiderman demo, cherry picking best case scenario. Perhaps they should of shown RDR 2 load times instead, wonder why.

because Spiderman is a Sony game, so they were able to get the devs to whip up a demo and make sure it's running as intended/doesn't encounter bugs

additionally Insomniac held an hour long presentation at GDC earlier in the year, which mainly focusses on how the HDD speed was a major obstacle they had to work around https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDhKyIZd3O8