Spider Man is taking advantage of that. That’s even before the console launch. Eliminating load times alone is big.
I really don’t want to answer this same thing again but here we go...
Spider man is a game that loads it’s world data first at base lod/mips, and in this situation will load very fast, in seconds. Once your main data is loaded it will then load in extra data such as increased LODs and mips, effects and the like, and using a priority based proximity lookup will load them in as required so that objects next to you load first, further away loads last. Basic stuff.
This same speed increase will be seen on a bog standard SSD on a bog standard pc. Or on SX.
The reason spider was chosen, was because of the above. It loads very quickly in these cases and calls data even quicker because you don’t need to load all your assets up front. NOTHING the Spiderman demo did, is not possible on a conventional SSD on a pc.
This isn’t saying that it’s bad, or wrong, it’s simply saying it’s not as important as you may think. The demo could have been on a base ps4 and would have been much the same, *with a little tinkering*, using some modified calls and the SSD.
Most games do NOT load this way. They load their data up front, and have a much larger memory requirement on load. For example, stick an SSD only a top range pc and you wot be loading CoD instantly, instead it will be quicker but not much.
SSDs do NOT eliminate loading. They simply make the loading of assets into and out of memory quicker because they randomly read data faster. So if your base game has a requirement of loading low memory assets first, then putting you ingame, then calling higher mips and LODs once there, it will do that extremely fast compared to a game that requires a large sized bsp be loaded, then all it’s assets called into memory.
Unless you game is specially built for this purpose you won’t see much speed increase, and it certainly won’t be instant. Now that’s not to say that next gen this won’t change. In fact I would bet my house on it. But that change requires a substantial rewrite to how your game engine works and quite frankly most don’t do that. It also requires a faster memory access speed to work in conjunction with it.
Another issue... Spiderman is a very low quality game in a high quality suit. If you actually look at it, it’s world is low detail, it’s textures are low resolution for the most part but masked with high frequency detail blending. It’s a gorgeous game yes, but it’s also a very basic game from a TEXTURE stand point. This means it’s also very easy on memory requirements. Open world games are usually built this way because you tend to move around the environment quickly and assets need to be swapped in and out of memory quickly on the fly. But next gen? Those textures will double, quadruple in not only size, but also in quantity. You will be seeing higher polygon models, with higher resolution textures, and in a higher quantity - this shits not free, and takes up a substantial amount of memory. In fact, textures wise, it’s an exponential increase just to go up in quality. Textures are not created as a normal image (inthat they can be any resolution). They have set resolutions. If you want a higher res texture than 2048x2048 then your only option is 4096x4096 (or 2048x4096). That’s four times the memory requirement for a jump in texel density. If you want to go higher it’s another 4x the previous increase. This is why it’s very common to see base textures that look fine use detail normal mapping to increase up close minute surface detail - for example on Spider-Man’s suit.
So what does it all mean, Basil?
It means Spiderman was picked because it was a best case scenario to show the feature off. It means not every game will work that way and some will load the same they do now. It means that even with all these advancements in loading asset speed, you will still see massive jumps in how much you have to load, making them have even less of an impact.
Don’t get me wrong, SSD tech is brilliant. But some of you really do think you’re getting instant loading for everything. You’re not going to get that in moat cases. You will get masked loading working better, I.e pre-caching of assets in set cases in special ways without any large interruption to the player. Other wise known as loading behind a menu, or a cinematic, or an elevator, or a forced waking section. But these can be minimised now
Remember that this will apply to BOTH consoles. And PC.
There is no physical way around this barrier. If you want instant loading, you will need to load all data that will be called during gameplay upfront into memory, and 16gb/32gb memory isn’t going to cut it.(And no, you can’t just use the SSD as virtual ram, because even with a rumoured peak SSD speed on ps5 of 5.8gb/sec you’re still far far slower compared to gddr6)
So best case scenario is that most games will load a bit quicker, some will load instantly with masked loading or, if they are simple games, just there and then. But tricks will still be used, of course, to minimise all this.
I mean from a cold boot to windows in 2 seconds, stick my password in and everything is THERE. Click the Internet? It’s there. Open after burner? It’s there. Open my C drive? It’s there. Do all the above at once? No delay, hanging around, no waiting for shit to load in the background and that awkward moment where you ask “did I actually double click that icon?” ITS THERE.
www.playstationlifestyle.net
And yes we know not the same case as gpus but the point still stands it's possible since Sony has released models with different features at different price points.
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