Developer: PS5 and Xbox Scarlett SSD Will Improve Load Times and Draw Distance - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 March 2020 / 4,225 Views
Developer My.Games’ Ivan Pabiarzhyn speaking with GamingBolt discussed the inclusion of Solid State Drives (SSD) in the next generation of consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett.
"The performance of the disk subsystem is the narrowest bottleneck of the current generation," said Pabiarzhyn. "And this problem is becoming more urgent every year with the growing trend for open worlds of the size of tens and sometimes hundreds of square kilometers in modern game projects.
"As for the open game worlds, it is impossible to keep the entire game map in RAM, so developers have to add new objects location by location as the player moves forward.
"In order to do this, the developer has to use tricks in the schedule (deterioration of detail and range of drawing objects, using fewer unique objects on the map) and gameplay (limitation of the maximum speed of a player’s movement, creation of buffer zones on the map with a reduced number of unique objects in order to be able to load next zone with more details). Of course, developers do not like to make such compromises, because it affects their games."
"But SSD solves this problem. You can think of SSD as an extension of RAM. Levels should load faster, drawing distances can be increased. It should also allow developers to get rid of such a rudiment as a ‘loading screen’ and make the game as seamless as possible. Fast streaming allows making larger game worlds with richer content locations."
Remedy Entertainment technical director Mika Vehkala did previously say if developers don't optimize for SSDs than loading times won't be faster. First-party games from Microsoft and Sony should be optimized for SSDs to improve the loading times on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett.
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Scarlett will launch in Holiday 2020.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Thanks, I forgot last week about the SSD drives in PS5 and XB2.
In other news the sky is blue and water is wet.
You don't say...?
Huhhh?
Sony created loading screens with their disc based consoles and now they get rid of them 25 years later. What's so special? It's about f*** time!
PC games and loading time existed before PS1. And loading screen wasn't created (besides there existing CD based systems launched before PS1). Besides going to CD was a good thing.
Loading times are very rarely an issue, they aren't THAT bad usually. I prefer rich and detailed worlds to fast loading times any day.
I don't think the an SSD in and of itself is going to be huge. But, it is certainly a significant step forward in some respects. I've always felt like we took a step backwards when gaming moved to optical disks, because of the often terrible load times that destroy emersion. Finally, maybe, we'll start moving away from that. And, of course, the systems will be more powerful in general. Put it all together, and I am looking forward to a noticeable improvement in games next gen, even over the Pro and X.
Since at least PS3 we have had games like TLOU that once you load the game to start you don't notice loading. And if you want to go back to PS1 you had RE1 that hide loads with door opening animation and added to thrill.
Pretty annoying is exaggerated. Waiting 2 min for a 4h play is hardly a problem.
I'm aching to see what that will mean on the type of games we play, I'm ready to be excited.
Good to know again. :)
"You can think of SSD as an extension of RAM." This is lol worthy :p
SSD are faster at reading things than traditional HDDs, but thats still a far cry from reading directly from ram.
Still PCs use even regular/slow HDDs as "extension of RAM" to do cache.
Correct. It's called "Virtual Memory". - In saying that, SSD or not, nothing really replaces large amounts of RAM... Probably just means that we aren't going to see a large increase on the RAM side of the equation so they are trying to talk up SSD's as the next big thing.
The article also states there is "no benefit" to load times if a game isn't programmed for an SSD. That has to be the biggest load of Mc'Shit I have ever read.
An SSD with a transfer rate of 2GB/s is going to load a game much faster than a mechanical HDD in a console that tops out at 80MB/s. - You don't need to build a game to take advantage of that, because it happens automagically, just ask the PC which has been doing it for years.
I'll just comment on not needing to make a game to take advantage of it. Pemalite we can't be totally sure since no game have been made to take full advantage of SSD, there may be some gain on specifically codding for the situation. That after all have been one advantage console had over PCs that allowed weaker HW to meet performance of pricier and stronger HW, specific coding.
Automagically. I like it! Next gen consoles should be able to take care of this SSD load time increase itself, no matter the game and it's programming. Dev's will have to take into account that most early next gen games will be cross gen, so they won't be programmed with only SSD in mind. However, like how a launch game for a next gen console will run decent from a hardware perspective, if you take the time to program very specifically to the next gen hardware for your next game, and only that hardware, then yes, you will end up with a more impressive game and even faster load times by leaving this gen behind. That doesn't mean early games or even BC games definitely won't see any benefits though.
Wohahhoo fantastic. Sure we are going to see a huge step up from 8th gen. I think the Switch Pro has nothing to fear against the two others.
I mean, it would be concerning if new generations didn't improve draw distance.
Yes , but the trouble is the race to leverage the progress of each generation by making everything bigger and better means we have better looking games with the same old pop up that we have seen for years . so hopefully with this push for faster access we will finally see a much overdue improvement .
Sony invented the SSD for faster loading, I guess. It seems cartridges never existed in video game consoles. Finally no more loading screens like in Mario Kart Double Dash or Metroid Prime... wait, there weren't ones in those games?? But the GameCube had discs... so confusing... I think GameCube never existed then...
Why do you single out Sony when the article specifically mentions both the PS5 and NextBox?
You are making yourself pretty transparent here...
Prime had loading screens. They were just hidden by slow to open doors or elevators.
So next gen is a somewhat stronger Pro/One X... but hey, they got an SSD folks!
PS5 is a stronger PS4Pro which is a stronger PS4 which is a stronger PS3 which is a stronger PS2 which is a stronger PS1 which is a copy of SNES we got it.
Seems to be bothering many Nintendo fans... Why would that be.
Bothering?
I think most are making fun of the SSD being the only really new thing apart from a performance increase and the way how much both are putting the SSD forward as if it was the second coming.
The only thing being new? I guess you have insider status and saw both consoles already?
And anyway, isn’t Nintendo the only company to ever do anything new (no matter what), in your world?
The only thing being new? I guess you have insider status and saw both consoles already?
And anyway, isn’t Nintendo the only company to ever do anything new (no matter what), in your world?
And here I'm confused that some time travelers already came from the console release to tell us what was changed or not.
And even if nothing changed and it was just the same console as PS4 but 10x more powerful I would still expect about 100M happy consumer during the lifetime of the console.
For the hardcore and more PC centered individuals maybe. I'll finally be moving on from my Intel Core2Quad and SATA II HDD, to Ryzen 5 and NVMe SSD. It just so happens that last last gen's Win 7 is finally losing support, and prices for newer storage tech like SSD's are finally becoming reasonable for most people now. PS4 and XB1 aren't likely to lose support for a while yet though. Definitely not PS4 anyway. Consoles are for the masses, and SSD tech is finally in that general price territory, so there's little reason for next gen not to have it, other than maybe it's data capacity.
Essay Pro