The Sony news and discussion thread

[ratsoalbion]

[skidoosh]

wouldn't most of the people interested in this small a difference between the systems be in the pc gaming world anyway? I mean if you don't have a 4k tv it only has minimal effects on only certain games if I understood this correctly?

I think you're sort of right. It's just a lot cheaper to jump in here. You can grab one of these for £350 and a 4k TV starting at about £400 but an Nvid 1080 is about £650-700 and a 4k monitor at £300 upwards.

[Flabyo]

What's the support for HDR like with 4k monitors? I've heard not many of them have it.

[skidoosh]

I honestly don't know. Never even knew it was I thing I was supposed to "want" until this morning mate

[ratsoalbion]

Hmmm, possibly because the processor-intensive nature of HDR leads to increased input lag (not a desirable feature in a dedicated VDU)?

[Flabyo]

I ask cause I'm more likely to replace the ageing monitor on my development Mac than I am my gaming TV at the moment, so a decent monitor with HDR would be an interesting stopgap as the current PS4 will support that shortly.

[Sinclair Gregstrum]

From my understanding HDR is a pretty new development, certainly more recent than 4K itself. Many older 4K sets from before this year won't have the feature at all, and it's not even standard on lower-end/smaller 4K sets today (looks like you'll get it on a 40 inch £500-ish Samsung, but it's not present on Sony or Panasonic sets until you start climbing the price ladder quite a bit)

There are also two standards - Dolby HDR and HDR Pro. It's the latter that seems to have been more widely adopted (although manufacturers keep unhelpfully re-badging it to make it sound like it's their tech and confuse things further), and it's also the latter that Xbox One S and PS4 Pro support. If you've got Dolby HDR you're shit out of luck.

So basically if you have a 4K TV, if it's more than 12 months old you may not have HDR, and if you do have HDR it may not be the right sort!

Clear as mud!

[skidoosh]

From my understanding HDR is a pretty new development, certainly more recent than 4K itself. Many older 4K sets from before this year won't have the feature at all, and it's not even standard on lower-end/smaller 4K sets today (looks like you'll get it on a 40 inch £500-ish Samsung, but it's not present on Sony or Panasonic sets until you start climbing the price ladder quite a bit)

There are also two standards - Dolby HDR and HDR Pro. It's the latter that seems to have been more widely adopted (although manufacturers keep unhelpfully re-badging it to make it sound like it's their tech and confuse things further), and it's also the latter that Xbox One S and PS4 Pro support. If you've got Dolby HDR you're shit out of luck.

So basically if you have a 4K TV, if it's more than 12 months old you may not have HDR, and if you do have HDR it may not be the right sort!

Clear as mud!

That's amazing I'm laughing my ass off now

[Suits]

I think they've got the branding of it down pretty well though, or the name at least. It is what it is, a PS4 Pro.

Aimed at the professionals or the serious tech thirsty crowd.

I'm happy it exists I suppose, I bought a PS4 back in May I think, being fully aware that the 'Neo' was on the horizon.

I don't see the need or even the want as of yet to get one. Like most have already said, I don't own a screen that can make the difference relevant yet and there's no killer app for it. I can still play the PS4 exclusive titles I bought the PS4 for, so I sit quite happily - for now.

Long plan is to go all out on my number 1 console choice, which is the Xbox and the Scorpio coming out next year. That will also be the time I look to upgrade my TV to a device that can use the extra standards the new consoles provide.

So generally regards the new Sony machine - meh.

[countstex]

From everything I've heard and read in the past 6 months the impact of HDR is far greater than the impact of 4K and at a much lower computational cost. A couple of extra bits per pixel requires a lot less grunt than 4x the number of pixels on the screen. And colour banding is something I notice quite a bit, were as sitting 2-3 meters from my TV screen the difference in 1080 vs 4K will be mostly unnoticeable. Frankly I've rather spend the money on a 4K screen from my PC and have a HDR 1080 screen for my TV, should such things be a reality.

Oh and supporting HDR could also mean you will need a new Surround Amp, as many older models will not support the HDMI2 standard needed for true HDR. Something that has me questioning Sony's claim of adding HDR to exitising PS4s given, i believe, they only have HDMI1.4 ports...???

[chase210]

I only understand half of these fancy words.

[Suits]

I only understand half of these fancy words.

And what makes it harder still is that any footage or screen shots don't highlight the benefit unless you have the screen to view them !!

Although I have to admit that Mass Effect looked noticeably sharper and detailed running on the Pro.

[Scrustle]

I was actually rather pleased with this PS4 Pro reveal. Although they did spend way too much time talking about how great 4K is, heaping on piles and piles of meaningless buzzwords. They even admitted to it themselves. But I have no interest in 4K, and likely won't for a long time. It seems like kind of the wrong thing to be focusing on games these days too. The technology isn't really there yet, since most people don't have 4K TVs either, and so far it seems the games they showed running in "4K" actually weren't. The Pro isn't even powerful enough to do that.

But despite all that I was happy to hear that they're allowing for the extra power to be used for other purposes in a 1080 mode. That's what I was hoping for. Better frame rates, more detail, etc. I really hope that ends up being something that developers put at least some effort in to. If nothing else a frame rate boost would be very much appreciated, and probably the easiest thing to do. Outside of making games run at 1080 which didn't before, I suppose. But it goes to show that there's still way more to do for 1080 if you have the extra power, despite Sony trying to make us believe that there's not in the very same presentation.

This HDR thing seems somewhat interesting though. While many people say it actually is a big deal, much like the whole 4K thing, it's not something you can really communicate without being able to see it first-hand. The footage they've shown of games running in "HDR" just look like they cranked up the saturation way too far. While colour banding and such isn't something I've noticed being a problem with any TV I can remember having, I can see how giving more colour depth to games could be useful. Much more useful than simply making an image sharper when I don't even have anywhere to fit a TV big enough for that to make a difference.

Although, since I'm not looking to get a 4K TV, I believe that means I won't be able to take advantage of HDR at all though, right? I get the impression that HDR is only supported on certain 4K TVs right now, and I'm sure the industry would think that adding it to HDTVs would be pointlessly going backwards. Then again, I guess by the time I get around to buying a new TV, 4K HDRs will probably be the only option anyway, and be much cheaper, whether that extra resolution will be useful to me or not.

There were a couple of other things I was wondering about with this too. Would it be possible to run these games in that 1080 Pro mode on a 4K TV? Like if you told the console to display in 1080 rather than 4K, would that then make games run in that mode? That seems logical to me, and that's how I would probably want to play, even on a 4K TV. Also, I wonder whether Sony will use this 1080 Pro mode to allow them to get away with bullshots and the like. Showing trailers and screenshots of that mode, maybe even rendered in 4K, even though most people won't get that experience with the game itself. I can see them doing that. Oh, and Final Fantasy XV. That was briefly shown in the sizzle reel at the end of the presentation. That obviously means they've been working with Squeenix to make the game take advantage of the Pro somehow. I wonder what that'll be like. Also at E3 the FFXV team said they didn't know Scorpio was a thing until that announcement. So I wonder if they'll bother to do a similar "Scorpio mode" or something, and how that will compare.

[gallo_pinto]

But despite all that I was happy to hear that they're allowing for the extra power to be used for other purposes in a 1080 mode. That's what I was hoping for. Better frame rates, more detail, etc. I really hope that ends up being something that developers put at least some effort in to. If nothing else a frame rate boost would be very much appreciated, and probably the easiest thing to do. Outside of making games run at 1080 which didn't before, I suppose. But it goes to show that there's still way more to do for 1080 if you have the extra power, despite Sony trying to make us believe that there's not in the very same presentation.

As I understand it (and granted, it's so early that a lot of this information could change), the frame rate improvement would not be about boosting frame rate in 1080 mode, such as pushing it from 30 to 60. It would be to stabilize the frame rate and keep it from dropping (like Blighttown in Dark Souls). Kotaku goes pretty in depth in this article here: http://kotaku.com/the-ps4-pro-will-help ... 1786366610.

Then again, it could be just that one developer who was saying that, so I guess we'll know better as the games start coming out.

Also, I wonder whether Sony will use this 1080 Pro mode to allow them to get away with bullshots and the like. Showing trailers and screenshots of that mode, maybe even rendered in 4K, even though most people won't get that experience with the game itself. I can see them doing that.

I think they will absolutely start doing this and that's one of the things that most annoys me about the splitting of the generation. In the actual live stream, there was small text at the bottom of the screen over a lot of the videos explaining that this was all captured on a Pro and displayed on a 4K TV and that visuals would vary depending on the TV monitor and the setup. I expect that to become standard on trailers and ads now too.

[Scrustle]

As I understand it (and granted, it's so early that a lot of this information could change), the frame rate improvement would not be about boosting frame rate in 1080 mode, such as pushing it from 30 to 60. It would be to stabilize the frame rate and keep it from dropping (like Blighttown in Dark Souls). Kotaku goes pretty in depth in this article here: http://kotaku.com/the-ps4-pro-will-help ... 1786366610.

Then again, it could be just that one developer who was saying that, so I guess we'll know better as the games start coming out.

There seems to be a lot of inconsistent messaging around this point. In Sony's official FAQ for the Pro (under "What benefits does PS4 Pro provide when played on a non-4K HDTV?") it does mention that games in that mode may be "able to render higher or more consistent framerates", depending on what the developer decides to do. So maybe some games will be able to make the jump to 60fps. I guess it'll most likely be in games with smaller levels, rather than massive open world games, but I think that extra power would be enough to do it with quite a few games. A lot of console games, even if they do have frame dips, are artificially limited to 30fps. They could run at something significantly higher, but are limited to maintain a more consistent rate. So in some cases it wouldn't exactly be a jump from 30 to 60, but more like 40/45 to 60.

That said, I can see simply the more consistent frame rate being the more likely thing. Probably easier to do, and I imagine developers (or their superiors, rather) will more likely want to go for better detail, since the average consumer can identify that more easily. I wouldn't hate a more consistent frame rate with shinier graphics, since getting a solid 30fps in a game that would otherwise struggle would be appreciated, but it would still be a bit disappointing when something could achieve 60fps, but chooses not to.

[Flabyo]

If a game runs at 30fps on the PS4, and it's maxed out the pipeline in the process, its not going to magically go at 60fps on the Pro.

It's not *that* large a leap in performance. A game that's chosen to run at 30fps might also have made a lot of assumptions in the code based on that (you're not meant to, but rarely is game code 'perfect' given the time pressures we work under) and not all of those are easy to patch around.

Games where they've cut things *back* to hit 60fps on the PS4 will find it easier I think, they'll have extra time to throw at things. So a game like Streetfighter 5 might do more with lighting and textures on the Pro. Developers will up-res some textures, maybe add in some extra detail (more foliage, more procedural clutter), possibly push out the draw distance. That sort of thing.

I might be wrong, I'm out of the loop when it comes to console dev (I've been over in iOS land for a few years now) and those I know who would know obviously can't talk about it yet.

[gallo_pinto]

There seems to be a lot of inconsistent messaging around this point. In Sony's official FAQ for the Pro (under "What benefits does PS4 Pro provide when played on a non-4K HDTV?") it does mention that games in that mode may be "able to render higher or more consistent framerates", depending on what the developer decides to do.

Oh, I hadn't seen that. Fair point. You're right though, the messaging has been a bit scattered. It must be really hard to market this thing. I have been wanting to buy a PS4 for a while now, but when I saw the Neo leak, I decided to wait it out and see what would come of it. I don't think I've been convinced to get the Pro though. I guess I can wait a bit longer and see what people are saying about what the Pro can do once it's out in the wild.

[Scrustle]

Even if it's rare that games all will just run at 60fps, I was kind of expecting that that wouldn't be the case. Just hoping that maybe some of the games that would benefit the most from it might get it. I'm still interested in picking one up, but as was my plan before, I'm also going to wait to see exactly how this all pans out. Maybe wait until Digital Foundry get their hands on one to see what it can do, or if some game comes along which takes advantage of it in some really impressive way.

Improved draw distances would be something I'd like to see games do better though. That is one thing that has always slightly annoyed me, the way in some games you can clearly see the edge of the different LODs, and stuff pops in really conspicuously. Shadows too. There are some games out there where they look really good for the most part, but have oddly low detail shadows in comparison to the rest of the graphics. Kind of stands out a bit. It's not that common a problem, but when I do see it, it's pretty off-putting. Hopefully that's something the Pro can fix.

I just remembered another thing about all of this too. What about multiplatform games? Specifically PC games. Will they somehow be able to take advantage of this Pro mode somehow? Or will they just ship the game with the Pro mode level graphics as default? Like For Honor, that seemed quite a bit different in the Pro mode, although perhaps that was what the PC version would look like on max/high settings. Paragon though had completely different level assets. How will the PC version of that compare? How will other games do it? I guess making Pro mode the same as the PC version on max/high settings will be the most common route.

[Flabyo]

Also it seems that patches to update older games may not be free. Sony are leaving that to individual developers and publishers to decide.

The bigger players will most likely go for free updates, but smaller devs with less cash floating around would be perfectly right to expect to be paid for the work involved. An interesting one this.

[chase210]

Long as Bloodborne gets a patch!