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Inside Playstation 4 Pro: How sony made the first 4k games console
- Thread starter PackAPunchedMick
- Start date
RocknRola
Member
Shame. Sony should get that sorted out if they can.
Tripolygon
Banned
The chance of this ever happening is very slim.
dead monkey uk
Member
Good read, as someone who has a 1080p plasma (love the response time) and does not intended to upgrade to 4k for at least a year, I am looking forward to getting hands on with 1080 modes with ultra settings. Mass Effect is going to be a treat.
I thought Sony would go with PS4k as the console name, but reading articles like this show Sony were right to avoid that. owners of 1080 screens have plenty to look forward to. 1080 at ultra settings may in many titles be more impressive than 4k mode.
I thought Sony would go with PS4k as the console name, but reading articles like this show Sony were right to avoid that. owners of 1080 screens have plenty to look forward to. 1080 at ultra settings may in many titles be more impressive than 4k mode.
RocknRola
Member
Yeah, doubt they'd introduce this to just the Pro should it ever happen too. Ah well. It would most definitely be useful though.
it really seems a well thought upgrade, without breaking the bank. Hope it is successful and can help to improve future strategies for console refreshes/generations.
I do not plan to upgrade, but seems they have considered many variables when designing it, from cost, to performance an reliability for old games.
I do not plan to upgrade, but seems they have considered many variables when designing it, from cost, to performance an reliability for old games.
CouchMaster
Member
Brad Grenz
Member
Yes, checkerboard has you shading twice as many sample so it should result in a more accurate image.
Texture and shading quality with checkered can be identical to native 4k.(At least opaque surfaces and when nothing moves.)
Geometry rendering is pretty close to old good MSAA trick, so at 4k shading/textures are 1080p resolution.
Currently checkered should give better quality, but geometry is easier to implement and is faster.
We should see lot of improvement on both and new combinations and methods in future.
The ID buffer is really big news and can be used for plenty of things.
Why would one opt for geometry only then? Is it something that we would expect to happen often down the line, when games eventually become more demanding and Pro's juice is not enough anymore for checkerboard? ( i mean for example titles of 2018-2019 where gfx fidelity will be increased)
Checkerboard is more demanding for hardware and takes more work to be implemented.
Sony
Nintendo
I think the 4k name is avoided to prevent the shitstorm it would cause by it not supporting 4k Blu-Ray playback..
I understand that, what I want to know if geometry only rendering is the first -easy- compromise that Pro will have down the line, when fidelity in games will be increased. Thus they will opt a sacrifice in image quality (resolution) in order to meet higher fidelity.
Is my reasoning completely wrong or a possibility?
Also, on another note, can someone explain to a noob like me what the actual deal with 8.4 TFlops for 16 bit actually means for games?
boneyjangles
Member
You hit the nail on the head. I would much rather increased fidelity (or framerate?) at 1080p.
We've been promised 1080p gaming since the PS3 launched, and it's still not really come to fruition. Now we are abandoning it and jumping to quasi-4k resolutions? Insanity. It's a ridiculous jump in power vs 1080p, hardly anyone has 4k tvs.
I can't help but thing on Sony's part this loosely related to trying to sell 4k tvs. And on Microsoft's side, they have a score to settle with being the perceived generational weakling.
Lets increase fidelity and realism at 1080p, When I think of amazing game engines, with beautiful lighting, sharders and artistry, the last thing that impresses me is the resolution it's running at, because that's just a minor aspect of picture sharpness.
The only reason I can think for this is maybe 60fps or increased fideltiy at 1080p is more CPU bottlenecked, bumping the res is GPU bottlenecked, and we have a big GPU increase, with just a small CPU increase.
Lots of info about the resolutions for the games that are not native 4k. Looks like 1800p is the norm for now, which imo is a great outcome if you checkerboard it to 4k. Also great to hear Shadow of Mordor can go native 4k but has a dynamic framebuffer. Deus Ex also great with the 1800 ~ 2160p dynamic buffer with checkerboarding.
Really hope FFXV has a 1800p checkerboard to 4k with HDR.
Really hope FFXV has a 1800p checkerboard to 4k with HDR.
Then I guess we will see many native 4K AAA games even in this generation, maybe Naughty Dog will be capable to make The Last of Us 2 at native 4K
It gives perfect edges to polygons and it's easy to add FXAA or similar on top of it to get very sharp edges.
In future games will use things like TAA with jittered shading location within pixel to get better resolution to textures as well. (Even on geometry rendering.)
These AA methods will continue to evolve and we will be seeing more use for ID buffer as well.
I really doubt they will want to do that.
With reconstruction methods they will get overall a better quality to graphics.
Perhaps slightly softer, but a lot more happening than simply pushing raw pixel count.
AbandonedTrolley
Member
On the back is perfect for the PSVR Processing Unit to be plugged so it's not a constant eyesore at the front.
DangerMouse
Member
Yup, it's good to see again. He did a great job with this on the OG PS4 too, with the customization they had done for it as well back then.
No because BF1 will have a PS4Pro patch which will make the entire hardware available to that mode. You just can't have a 30fps target vs 60fps target scenario.
The main problem going ahead is games pushing the target to 60fps knowing that PS4Basic can't reach that target, just so they can sell that their game is 60fps because PS4Pro can reach it.
This will lead to a lot of messy situations especially when Microsoft reveals their guidelines for Scorpio.
DISSESHOWEDO
Banned
Many of you will be even more surprised when Sony announces the Dualshock 4 Pro! 
Omnistalgic
Member
Hey!!!! Hooray for laymen terms!!!
BiGBoSSMk23
A company being excited for their new game is a huge slap in the face to all the fans that liked their old games.
Wow. What a dumb fuck up.
NXGamer
Member
In regards to your first question, yes geometry solution uses simpler hardware solution (MSAA) to generate a native 4k buffer but the same shader passes. Much lower overhead and simple to implement into all/99% of engines. Smaller teams, timescales and possibly extravagant titles will use but Dev own options like we have from mass effect, Deus ex and Shadow or mordor for example will still happen. The thing to remember is nothing here is really "free" just low cost than other options so it will still be down to Dev to choice what suits them, engine, scope.
For the second it is half precision calculation, this is really no good for geometry and will be used for shader passes and effects. The TFLOPs level is really best to ignore, as this is just the sum of the parts. In essence they can shade/compute twice as much information at half the detail level. I.e. 2 hands painting a wall but with thinner brushes.
thelastword
Banned
Geometry rendering is perfect for the devs who are too engaged to improve their current wares.......like the Witcher 3 devs. One dev a couple of days using GR and you get a massive boost in iQ and lots of overhead for a significant performance/framerate boost.
So yes, one of the most important things about this article is how easy it is to do a conversion. Even spending 2-4 weeks or less to massively improve your game through checkerboarding, tweaking TAA for the best IQ etc... is the best marketing for most studios for their older games. Also reading from another article, it's no wonder Cerny asserted that lots and lots of games are going to get Pro patched. They made it extremely easy....
Having said that, it's the first time I've seen developers being privy to so many ways/techniques in developing their games. GR, CBR, pixel jittered framebuffers, dynamic framebuffers (well how it's suppose to be with native being engaged about 90% of time). Then you have devs scaling from 1080p like the Paragon guys. Apparently ND is looking at it's options and I'm really looking forward to how they piece things together for their final image. I'd really want to read up on that.
In the end, whatever method you use, the ID buffer is there to ensure your game has great IQ. It's certainly the best dev feature I've read about for a very long time, really innovative and important to alleviate aliasing issues for good. So maybe now Insomniac games can finally put some AA on their so called CG looking titles. It has always been lost on me, how these guys have not been focusing on better AA for their titles, it should have been a requirement for the type of titles they were developing.
So yes, it's strange but certainly welcomed, that with this mid-gen refresh is where a developer can be so unique in how he renders his image, what he uses, what he does not. Some developers are not using checkerboarding. I'm sure developers will use other base resolutions apart from 1920*2160p and checkerboard to 4k as well......So the best case scenario is the developer who uses checkerboarding to save perf and to maintain a high resolution, properly tweaks their TAA, get a well oiled combination of 16bit and 32 bit floats in their pipeline to improve performance, as well as using the primitive discard accelerator for further efficiencies and perf improvements on top of that. Then we're talking about the improved CU count for better GPGPU and better AC instructions, making it more streamlined. I think the combination of techniques or whatever else devs/sony come up with will be really interesting going forward. Hell, it may be possible to use checkerboard rendering and geometry rendering in tandem, so it really feels like a new generation in that regard, only it's not difficult to program for.
Really looking forward to the individual breakdowns going forward, my Pro is already pre-ordered anyway, but interesting that the article did not touch on HDR which is another dynamic that adds so much to the picture as it relates to resolved detail and better color depth.
So yes, one of the most important things about this article is how easy it is to do a conversion. Even spending 2-4 weeks or less to massively improve your game through checkerboarding, tweaking TAA for the best IQ etc... is the best marketing for most studios for their older games. Also reading from another article, it's no wonder Cerny asserted that lots and lots of games are going to get Pro patched. They made it extremely easy....
Having said that, it's the first time I've seen developers being privy to so many ways/techniques in developing their games. GR, CBR, pixel jittered framebuffers, dynamic framebuffers (well how it's suppose to be with native being engaged about 90% of time). Then you have devs scaling from 1080p like the Paragon guys. Apparently ND is looking at it's options and I'm really looking forward to how they piece things together for their final image. I'd really want to read up on that.
In the end, whatever method you use, the ID buffer is there to ensure your game has great IQ. It's certainly the best dev feature I've read about for a very long time, really innovative and important to alleviate aliasing issues for good. So maybe now Insomniac games can finally put some AA on their so called CG looking titles. It has always been lost on me, how these guys have not been focusing on better AA for their titles, it should have been a requirement for the type of titles they were developing.
So yes, it's strange but certainly welcomed, that with this mid-gen refresh is where a developer can be so unique in how he renders his image, what he uses, what he does not. Some developers are not using checkerboarding. I'm sure developers will use other base resolutions apart from 1920*2160p and checkerboard to 4k as well......So the best case scenario is the developer who uses checkerboarding to save perf and to maintain a high resolution, properly tweaks their TAA, get a well oiled combination of 16bit and 32 bit floats in their pipeline to improve performance, as well as using the primitive discard accelerator for further efficiencies and perf improvements on top of that. Then we're talking about the improved CU count for better GPGPU and better AC instructions, making it more streamlined. I think the combination of techniques or whatever else devs/sony come up with will be really interesting going forward. Hell, it may be possible to use checkerboard rendering and geometry rendering in tandem, so it really feels like a new generation in that regard, only it's not difficult to program for.
Really looking forward to the individual breakdowns going forward, my Pro is already pre-ordered anyway, but interesting that the article did not touch on HDR which is another dynamic that adds so much to the picture as it relates to resolved detail and better color depth.
LelouchZero
Member
The dawn of great console image quality is upon us, Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PS4 Pro is going to be amazing!
Many of you will be even more surprised when Sony announces the Dualshock 4 Pro!
About that...
Saberus
Member
Least now this is confirmed for SATA III
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps4-pro-has-replaceable-hard-drive/1100-6444663/
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps4-pro-has-replaceable-hard-drive/1100-6444663/
Neuromancer
Member
Do only SSDs support SATA III or do regular HDDs support it too?
WeAreStarStuff
Member
I was initially very upset about the lack of UHD player, but hell I know I'm going to buy this thing on launch. Already told my fiance that I need to get a 4k TV.
As a developer let me just say no.
NO.
A lot of engines tie logic to framerates. What you're asking for is a total dismantling and re-haul of several engines just for the purpose of...being able to take advantage of a console that only existed on paper when the PS4 launched? A game that will have been several years old by the time it releases?
Dynamic scaling is an entirely different thing altogether. Funny that you should applaud MS for doing dynamic scaling and prepping for the Scorpio considering Sony has also done the exact same thing with its own mid-gen titles with Pro patches.
But yeah, to mandate that game logic should not be tied to framerate is as crazy as mandating god-rays on all games, or not allowing chromatic aberration on all titles, etc. It would be absolutely insane to mandate. No no no no no.
Unknown?
Member
Ah common sense! Thanks! I think people complaining about that just want something to complain about. The complaint train is dead and the hype train is moving, sorry!
PS4K sounded better to me at first but then I realized that the general public would automatically dismiss it if they didn't have a 4K TV. PS4 Pro is the best name they could give it because it's still a PS4, but just a little better. If you're in the market for a PS4 and have the disposable income to spend an extra $100 to get a Pro, you should, regardless of owning a 4K TV at the time.
But, another way to look at it is that not everything really needs FP32. Plus, from what I understand, you can use IN16 instead of INT32 in most cases without a loss in quality.
Regular supports it too. It's a normal HDD in the unit. Not that it will probably make any difference to normal HDD loading times. I'm still intrigued as to how SSDs perform on the SATAIII compared to the Base PS4.
The generations aren't shorter.
The Artisan
Member
Everything needs a patch to get advantage.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Games need to be patched to utilize the Pro upgrades. All older games which are not patched will run with the base clock to make it 1 : 1 with the OG PS4.
All games released after Pro will have mandatory Pro support in it though, so this "forced base" mode only applies to older games. The Pro support can be just as simple as maintaining 1080p resolution, but it's still going to be present in all games going forward.
Shin-Ra
Junior Member
USB 3.1 Gen 1 is the same as USB 3.0 with signalling up to 5Gbps.
FP16 doesn't degrade anything that doesn't require higher precision.
Pathfinder
Member
Damn you, Sony, for exploiting my "new hotness" gadget weakness like this...
Would you mind coming in to every PS4Pro thread for the next 6 weeks and put this as the first post
n0razi
Member
Don't forget...
- SATA3 vs SATA2 (should see a big increase in performance using SSDs)
- 802.11ac vs 802.11n (should see a huge increase in wireless performance)
- Better Remote Play performance
I don't even have a 4K/HDR TV but those reasons are enough for me to upgrade.
they should add an option for compatibility in the system setting, and have it on by default and allow the user to toggle the clock speed. They need to add as much value and incentive for people to consider getting the system or even upgrade. I would love to play games like Until Dawn running at rock solid frame rate.
This makes sense.