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Equanimity

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,991
London
Astro's Playroom looks like one of those games where they put in a flashy transition just for the sake of it:


Loading time comparison made by Kenzodielocke :
giphy.gif

giphy.gif

8s vs 2.5s
 

Stike

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,036
That's (probably) dev kit compared to (pre-?)production hardware. Staggering!
 

MGPanda

Member
Feb 25, 2018
2,476
This is going to be an absolute game-changer. Having SSDs on modern consoles is easily the biggest advantage this generation has going for it.
 

haveheart

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,076
Looks great in Astro Playroom.

For GodFall it seems that the reload is not a full reset but rather a respawn, right? After the first respawn you can see the boss walking back to his position and the cast ring pop out.
 

cyrribrae

Chicken Chaser
Member
Jan 21, 2019
12,723
Thats optimisation more likely. Its been a while.
Might be a bit of both. But undoubtedly they optimized the opening stages more since the last build. Still very impressive either way. I think the flashy animation actually does it justice. But yes, it'd actually be nice to see BC games to compare apples to apples.
 

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,351
Forgive me for being the downer in the room but, if you've played Astro recently, you'll remember that you respawn instantly in PS4 Astrobot too. Astro is just that powerful!


The 2.5 second stage loading is a great improvement though!
 

RedSparrows

Prophet of Regret
Member
Feb 22, 2019
6,482
I'm really looking forwards to load times in the seconds*

*being used as the be-all-end-all in warring threads.
 

Deleted member 5028

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,724
Looks great in Astro Playroom.

For GodFall it seems that the reload is not a full reset but rather a respawn, right? After the first respawn you can see the boss walking back to his position and the cast ring pop out.
Yep, kinda like Prince of Persia 08. That was a game with an underrated respawn system of which this seems to be similar.
 

haveheart

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,076
Yep, that's what it looks like.
Yep, kinda like Prince of Persia 08. That was a game with an underrated respawn system of which this seems to be similar.

Yes, certainly a good feature but it doesn't really show off the SSD's power, which is amazing w/o a doubt.

Of course, it depends on the assets of the specific game but I don't think that us expecting the SSD to reduce loading times of PS4 games to roughly a quarter of the original loading times it too unrealistic.
 

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,351
Oh wow, I forgot how fast it was. That's about as quick as the PS5's footage.

Yeah it's basically instant!

Respawning in small platforming levels shouldn't require any loading really. I think we'll see the better demonstrations when we see how fast games load for the first time or how fast you load into stages. Respawning is such a variable in games depending on the complexity of the scene. I mean, I respawn in like a second even on something like RDR2.
 

Kenzodielocke

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,840
Thats just a respawn not a reload.
Game data doesnt leave RAM so it isnt showing off the SSD.
You can literally see the enemy who just killed the guy in the background.


This is basically like falling down in Tony Hawk 1+2.
Okay why isn't every game loading that fast then? We know that it's a respawn. People aren't daft.
 

MnM

Alt-Account
Banned
Mar 9, 2020
1,008
SSD is the best thing could happen for next gen. So excited.
 

Black_Stride

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
7,388
Okay why isn't every game loading that fast then? We know that it's a respawn. People aren't daft.
Games that dont kick the stage out of RAM at respawn do allow your character to respawn that fast.
All the way back to games like Jak and Daxter if the stage wasnt booted the respawn was near instant.
Almost every Call of Duty game has near instant respawning because the majority of the stage if not the entire stage sits in RAM.

This specific example from Godfall isnt "that great" an example of the SSD at work because we see it isnt kicking the stage or AI out of RAM on respawn.

Astros is a better example because its loading the whole stage in like 2 seconds.


P.S Games that stream data in delete the portions you have passed so when you need to respawn it has to reload that section.
I could sit and hunt down examples of games that load stages or atleast portions of stages where death and respawn are very very quick because all the game is doing is moving the camera back and spawning a player entity.
If the game needs to reset the stage it adds more time.
Godfall doesnt seem to even be resetting the stage it just continues that state with a new player entity.
 

score01

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,699
Good to see we are looking ~2 seconds loads across a few PS5 games now. Hope this trend continues - definitely a big QOL improvement.
 

Gamer17

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
9,399
Good to see we are looking ~2 seconds loads across a few PS5 games now. Hope this trend continues - definitely a big QOL improvement.
Exactly and in few months, once they start implementing the oodle texture that they all got last month to them with the kraken , it will be reduced even further
 

ray_caster

Member
Nov 7, 2017
663
Games that dont kick the stage out of RAM at respawn do allow your character to respawn that fast.
All the way back to games like Jak and Daxter if the stage wasnt booted the respawn was near instant.
Almost every Call of Duty game has near instant respawning because the majority of the stage if not the entire stage sits in RAM.

This specific example from Godfall isnt "that great" an example of the SSD at work because we see it isnt kicking the stage or AI out of RAM on respawn.

Astros is a better example because its loading the whole stage in like 2 seconds.


P.S Games that stream data in delete the portions you have passed so when you need to respawn it has to reload that section.
I could sit and hunt down examples of games that load stages or atleast portions of stages where death and respawn are very very quick because all the game is doing is moving the camera back and spawning a player entity.
If the game needs to reset the stage it adds more time.
Godfall doesnt seem to even be resetting the stage it just continues that state with a new player entity.
Pretty much this. Also keep in mind that loading a stage may also mean processing data, such as executing scripts, converting data to and from interchange formats, or just doing general computation which may take significant time and would not be sped up by fast disk reads to a noticeable degree.
 

Timlot

Banned
Nov 27, 2019
359
It's hard to really judge these as "loading times". It's more like streaming pre-fetched data. If you're walking down a linear path the game knows to have that transition data ready to go.

I'd rather see a back compact game loading from start for a better one to one comparison of improvements. It would be based on just SSD raw throughput vs optimized in game section streaming.
 

Roytheone

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,140
This is going to be an absolute game-changer. Having SSDs on modern consoles is easily the biggest advantage this generation has going for it.

It will also be great for pc gamers since engines will now be build to actually make use of SSD's. It's a big win for everyone! Very exciting.
 

Iwao

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,781
2 seconds across the board is a great start.

They were aiming for "no load times", and I think this is as good as that.
 

Deleted member 49611

Nov 14, 2018
5,052
User Warned (Permanent Thread Ban): Platform Warring
it's a nice improvement but not a "game changer" and this is the feature that Sony is using to market the console? lol.
 

Gamer17

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
9,399
User Banned (Permanent): Console wars, multiple prior bans for console wars, previously permanently banned for similar behaviour but reduced to 3 months on appeal

Iwao

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,781
it's a nice improvement but not a "game changer" and this is the feature that Sony is using to market the console? lol.
Yikes.

There will always be a transition effect at least for visual reasons, so I think it will never be actually "instant" even if the loading data itself would be.
Good point, Cerny said something to this effect.
"As game creators, we go from trying to distract the player from how long fast travel is taking - like those Spider-Man subway rides - to being so blindingly fast that we might even have to slow that transition down,"
 

Loud Wrong

Member
Feb 24, 2020
13,894
I have no frame of reference for the examples used. When I see a game like Destiny 2 loading much faster, then it will hit home for me what a great change this is, which it quite obviously is, but I just want to see an example that shows how bad things were compared with how great they are now. I'm sure that's coming whenever they show off backwards compatibility, or when Bungie shows off the enhanced version of their game.
 

Ewaan

Member
May 29, 2020
3,568
Motherwell, Scotland
it's a nice improvement but not a "game changer" and this is the feature that Sony is using to market the console? lol.

Loading times aren't the only benefit of the SSD. The SSD with the use of Oodle Texture and Oodle Kraken can read speeds of ~16.5GB/s. This means that you can clear and re-fill the whole of system RAM in less than a second. You can literally call things from storage to RAM as the player turns the camera at those speeds. This will allow for more detailed, dense environments and greater possibilities in game design. It really is the revolutionary aspect of this generation.
 

dom

▲ Legend ▲
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
10,445
Thats just a respawn not a reload.
Game data doesnt leave RAM so it isnt showing off the SSD.
You can literally see the enemy who just killed the guy in the background.


This is basically like falling down in Tony Hawk 1+2.
There is loading in those GodFall gifs. There is a difference between each death. Plus there is an obvious loading circle. Of course it's not fully reloading all assets into RAM but there is some asset loading going on.
 

Herr Starr

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,226
Norway
Thats just a respawn not a reload.
Game data doesnt leave RAM so it isnt showing off the SSD.
You can literally see the enemy who just killed the guy in the background.


This is basically like falling down in Tony Hawk 1+2.

Ideally, that's how it should always work. However, my experience is that a lot of games take the "easy" way and just reload the level (flushing everything currently in RAM and VRAM) instead of having to restore every single object in the level to a specific save game with all the bugs that could lead to. That's why so many games have hideously long load times.

Games like Max Payne had instant reloads back in the day. The devs had to work really hard to make that happen.
 

Azerach

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,196
Good decision to show the optimized stuff first. None of that 35s load time nonsense.
 

Dirtyshubb

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,555
UK
I have no frame of reference for the examples used. When I see a game like Destiny 2 loading much faster, then it will hit home for me what a great change this is, which it quite obviously is, but I just want to see an example that shows how bad things were compared with how great they are now. I'm sure that's coming whenever they show off backwards compatibility, or when Bungie shows off the enhanced version of their game.
The demon's souls comparison is pretty good for that.