By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Former Frostbite Software Engineer Explains the Advantage of the PS5 SSD

Former Frostbite Software Engineer Explains the Advantage of the PS5 SSD - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 05 August 2020 / 2,723 Views

Software engineer Yan Chernikov, who previously worked on DICE and Electronic Arts' Frostbite engine, in a new video discussed the advantages of the use of the solid-state drive in the PlayStation 5 and how developers could make use of it. 

The SSD goes beyond decreasing loading times. For now developers use tricks to hide loading times such as small corridors to break up larger areas or the use of elevators. 

"If that would be possible that means that again you don’t have to split your world up into chunks, you don’t have to worry about like 'Oh, I need this, I need that,'" Chernikov said.

"So, like obviously, if you still need AI running in the background colliding with things and pathfinding and all of that you still need the basic mesh for the world geometry and all that loaded, and you’ll need other assets like always, for example present in RAM. But luckily those assets are generally a lot smaller than really high detailed models and textures and all that stuff.

"So if that were possible, you wouldn’t need to worry about corridors or even worry about splitting up the world into anything. The world could literally be pretty much infinite in complexity and detail, because it’s only showing what you’re looking at. And unless you can look, unless there’s a section where you can overlook the entire world and everything has to be in like max detail – which it probably wouldn’t, because certain things would be so far away that you’d have like some kind of proxy for them, like a lower LOD mesh, or, you know, with Unreal Engine 5.

"I guess some kind of triangle culling thing that just figures out what you actually need all of that stuff for – and unless you have that huge kind of overlooking thing, you know the actual view of the player usually is rather small. And that’s really cool, obviously, if you’re dealing with a level editor where you’re trying to design the world and the developers are using this tool to create this world, and they would want to see a lot of it at once, a lot more than the player usually does. In general, this is really good."

The PlayStation 5 will launch in Holiday 2020.

Thanks GamingBolt.


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.


More Articles

4 Comments
DonFerrari (on 26 May 2020)

He basically doubled on what Cerny shown in the GDC presentation.

  • +2
HollyGamer DonFerrari (on 26 May 2020)

yup , alot of entitled arm chair and self proclaimed engineer downplaying SSD and the important of ultra fast blazing SSD.. Developer has spoken and he is not getting pay by Sony. Now suddenly SSD becoming important LOL. Cerny and Sweeney is genius , They now the future of rendering tech will be denpednt on SSD and storage speed.

  • 0
KratosLives (on 26 May 2020)

article title kind of sounds like the ps5 has an advantage over the xbox series x

  • 0
GoldenHand80 KratosLives (on 27 May 2020)

Exactly which makes believe that both Sony and Microsoft are paying money to some developers and possibly promising them funds and other things to make such statements. All seems like marketing strategies

  • 0