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globalisateur on 04 August 2016
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Intrinsic said:

To be honest, if i had my way this thrwad would have been about a deep analysis into how console operating systems work, but i have realized that absolutely no one seems to talk about them. 

I mean we have endless breakdowns of game framerates, tons of "walkthroughs" of the UIs of the consoles, but not a single in depth analysis to what makes anything in there what it is. So this thread is hopefully to get people talking and if we are lucky some that know how these things work can share that info with the rest of us.

But some guidelines. I'm asking specifically for the PS4 OS cause we at least know that the XB1 is using a stripped down version of Windows 8/10. So onto the topic points.

 

  1. What does the console really do with that 2.5-3GB of reserved RAM?
  2. Why is it that we have operating systems that are leaps and bounds more functional than what we have in consoles which run on significantly less memory. (we can have an entire windows operating system on as little as 2GB of ram.
  3. Why can my android phone keep my game state saved in the background for any number of apps or games I'm playing yet my console can do this for only one game at a time?
  4. Why are features so hard to implement and take forever to come along when everyone that owns the console is using the exact same OS and running it on the exact same hardware?
  5. Why can we not use the consoles we have to build "small" apps for the console?
Those are my top 5 questions. If anyone has more please put them up. And if anyone has the answers to these questions pls post and I'll add it to this OP. thanks!!!!GB

 

1 - My theory is that because devkits only have 8 GB too. This 8GB model we have was supposed to be the 8 GB devkits used for 4 GB consoles before they decided to give 8GB to devs. They reserve a lot of ram because the devkits need it to properly work. Impossible to develop games with 7GB for instance without the devkit debugging software so no game can use 7 GB of ram (until they give devs some devkits with 12 or 16 GB of ram).

3 - Technically PS4 can store the state of a game while running an app too. Try to start spotify while playing a game, your game will be put on standby automatically. But the game will need all the memory it needs + a good portion of CPU and GPU ressources, even in standby, so you can only do it for one game. A PS4 isn't a phone, it's not meant to run 10 (small) apps in the background, remember that a game always need to be run on the background even if your are in the main menu. But actually the PS4 can run at least 2 apps and one game simultaneously: playing spotify in background + backgrounded game + foreground app.