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Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

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Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#121

How long have consoles used almost exclusively AMD hardware? It seems like Xbox One/PS4 were the first generation this was true, is there any lock-in in this market? How many consoles are sold vs. desktops and laptops?

Depends on how you define AMD and exclusively. This is the first generation that AMD has got both a CPU and GPU into successful mainstream consoles. The Wii, Wii U, and Xbox 360 have an ATI GPU (from before AMD bought ATI). Going back further, the Gamecube has an ArtX GPU (from before ATI bought ArtX).

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#122
> the new console isn’t just a spec-boosted upgrade of the PS4, like the PS4 Pro was.

Has any of Sony's next-generation consoles just been "spec-upgraded" versions of previous ones? What a weird comment.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#123

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

Raytracing is a good thing, not so much because of the better graphics, but because it enables produce nice graphics with less sophisticated engines and less artist input. A lot of the lighting etc. is currently baked into textures, hard coded, hand-optimized. This takes a lot of time. With raytracing, a lot of this comes "for free", so smaller / indie dev teams can produce games with AAA level graphics.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resolution isn't an indication of image quality. Just like megapixel chasing in photography. Sure it's 4k, but it's heavily compressed, just like the terrible audio quality you get still to this day. They aren't streaming you 100GB.

It’s been a long time since I took a class on compression, but I wonder if 4K has worse image quality than 1080P at the same bitrate. Anyone know?

All else being equal, yes. The devil is very much in the details though.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#125
post #122

> the new console isn’t just a spec-boosted upgrade of the PS4, like the PS4 Pro was. Has any of Sony's next-generation consoles just been "spec-upgraded" versions of previous ones? What a weird comment.

I read it as a clarification that they were not writing about a PS4 Pro V2, but actually, truly the PS5.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#126
post #101
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soli uses radar, so the scale of minority report is achievable. It's just that the target use case with soli is geared towards gesturing at your mobile device.

I’ve no idea what your argument is. My point is that a “Minority Report interface”, which you specifically wanted, is hampered by the “gorilla arm” problem. You pointed to the Google Soli thing, but that does not (from what I can tell) seem to solve the gorilla arm problem either, and even if it did , a “Minority Report interface” would still have the gorilla arm problem.

I guess I should have simply said gesture UI. Of course, I'd like eye-tracking and voice UI too.

I simply said "Minority Report interface" to help people visualize the idea. How about Iron Man's Jarvis? Would you have had a silly little rant over that too?

[Update]

Jarvis video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx7RCJvoCMc

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#127

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

Both PS4 and Xbox One came out just as 4K was starting to get into market (prob a bit ahead of where 8K will be when PS5 launches), and it was frustrating that we had to wait 4ish years to get 4k support. Committing to 8K early means the same box will serve the early adopters as well as everybody else without a mid-cycle upgrade.

I generally think there will be limited urgency to upgrade to 8K any time soon (benefits over 4K seem incremental and we're not close to done w/ that transition yet) in the home, but love that Sony is making a strong stake for technical leadership.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you run 4K video through things like Handbrake? They've been proven to seriously reduce the amount of space (and, therefore, bandwidth) that video files need, and considering that 4K videos have about three times the resolution [1] they have a lot of space to gain from it. I would guess that there are appliances that can run some flavor of compression in real-time to get 4K to stream well. Yes, it will take more…

precompressed content at 4K h.265 is pretty damned good at even relatively high compression. I also prefer the degredation method h.265 uses over h.264. For 720p-1080p it can actually go both ways, the higher the resolution the better h.265 is as the compression algo. However, that means nothing for live streaming as generally speaking "live stream" compression really tends to suck a lot. And as to the above, a lot o…

"but even then I'm doubtful. Also, I'd expect 8K gaming on even next gen's console to be closer to Wii model quality than what we see in 1080p gaming today."

That's something I kinda wish more game ethusiasts would pick up on. There's not really a such thing as "4K" or "1080P" or whatever; it's more about fill rates and other numbers and the question of how much you can push at 1080P or whatever, vs. what the developer tries to push.

There's actually a couple of PS2 games that push 1080 (can't remember if it's P or i) with the right setup. But obviously, there's a quality stepdown.

There's no particular reason other than lack of hardware outputs the PS3-era machines couldn't push 4K games. They'd just have to be very, very simple games. I recall being impressed in the PS2 era by Katamari Damacy, which seemed to be one of the few games of its era that noticed that if you only allocate like 10 polygons and a teenytiny texture for a game world object you can have a crapton of things happening on the screen, at a high frame rate, and build a game around it. I can only imagine what a full-powered, brand-new Katamari Damacy would look like on even a Switch today.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#129
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 8K support definitely seems bizarre considering 4K seems barely supported properly in even most PS4 games. Or if it is supported, you have to play the game in 30fps instead of 60fps @1080. 4K gaming on PC, even with decent hardware, is still somewhat hard to hit comfortable frame rates.

The PS4 works fine as a 4K Blu-ray player though. Having the hardware to support 8k output means you have that covered when it becomes widespread

PS4 (even the Pro) cannot play 4K Blu-rays. I'll predict that the PS5 won't be powerful enough to handle 8K AV2 video or whatever ends up coming out.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says right in the title. "Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details: 8K graphics, ray tracing, SSDs, and PS4 backwards compatibility"

At this point, the hardware on the PS5 sounds powerful enough to provide backwards compatibility for the PS3 (and all of its predecessors). That would appeal to some people who have old consoles/games collecting dust in their basements/attics.

Don't tease me. Backwards compatibility with with PS3 AND PS4 would be beyond amazing.
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