Tachikoma said:
Caching the area around the spawnpoint into memory would require a cache in active memory of about 2gb, thats a large portion of memory to "spend" on data that would become obsolete the moment the player switches area or progresses further, not to mention the process of duplicating this data to memory would impact overall performance and destroy the active memory area where predictive precaching is stored (there are no loading screens as you explore, only when warping from one area to the next). GPS maps work in entirely different ways than games, you're working with a vector based map that streams in only one layer of detail at a time, as anyone who has used a gps device or google earth will know, gradually panning across a map delivers a generally smooth, seemless experience while jumping from one zoomed in portion to another causes a delay while the map area is parsed, that delay is the game equivolent of a loading screen. I put it to you that duplicated data within a GPS device would use infinitely less storage space than duplicting the data stored in a spawn location for this game, the draw distance is insane, and thus beyond the intial high lod assets you would need virtually the entire citys low lod assets stored in memory too. As I said the patch will likely reduce load times by adjusting the starting point with a less aggressive lod prefetch, resulting in more "beer eye" for the first 10 seconds and shorter overall times. The engine as it is right now does already use memory storage for persistant data, which has a footprint of around 320mb, and stored the character data, statistics, and persistant world data, as well as the model data of fellow players that join during an active session, and the multiple forms of every weapon you possess. While they will no doubt be able to find tune aspects of the streaming system beyond adjusting initial lod setup, the method you suggest would only really be feasible if there was only a disk version, and if ALL 8gb of memory for the system was available to games (which as we all know, it isn't). |
Draw distance for GPS ranges from the entire continent to 15 pixels per meter (in our case) :p The data duplication is in the smart indexing rather than repeating the data itself, except for the textures that replace the vector ground type backgrounds when zoomed out far.
Anyway it's apples and oranges. I was thinking of a disk cache, but indeed a 2GB file on the ps4 drive would already takes 18 seconds to read / write under optimal circumstances. HDDs have been stagnant in that area unfortunately.
I hope they can fix it a bit. I keep playing DC because it loads so fast, always luring me to do one more challenge. And yes a track based racer can more easily optimize the start state on disk than open world games. It's just that if you add subtitles to your game like 'prepare to die', I say add subtitles to your development process 'prepare to restart fast'. That makes all the difference to me between a frustratingly hard game and one that offers an enjoyable challenge.
I would be fine with pop in, visible lod adjustments / texture streaming when you respawn. Hide it in an expanding fog or something. The first thing I usually do after respawning is check my inventory.
