Project Scarlett

DrDamn

So just caught last section or so of MS E3 presser. Project Scarlett gets some scant new details. Have to say the PS spoiler tactics of that Wired article a month or so ago seem to have worked quite well in that what they announced was all stuff Sony had already said. Zen2, check, Navi, check, custom, check, SSD being a big game changer, check. Ray Tracing hardware, check. Thunder successfully stolen.

Sounds like some good stuff in the main conference though. Nice to see Flight Simulator back.

Some interesting points of note. “Most powerful console (we’ve ever built)”. I don’t think it’s a secret that they absolutely aim to retain the console power crown. They aren’t sure of it yet though.

No mention of the rumoured 2 SKU approach. Keeping it under wraps or a change of direction/misdirection?

No numbers yet. Talking in terms of 4x the power of the X1X. That can’t be 24TFlops, that’s not realistic, but what then? More CPU terms? Or is it the FP16 thing which can basically double your throughput and the reality is that it’s a 12Tflop GPU? (That’s still mighty impressive).

Overall nice to hear a lot more from both talking about what the new generation will bring in things other than resolution and graphics. Fun times ahead.

DrDamn

Also, what is going on with that dude’s beard????

Alex

Yeah, it’s pretty much exactly what Sony announced, which was not a huge surprise. It’s still so far from actual launch there’s no point nailing down the stats, as things like memory capacity and clock speeds will be tweaked right up until release.

The marketing spiel was in overdrive though, like with the X announcement. At one point some guy goes, “we’ve never seen framerates this high”, about 120hz. Also, there was some guy going on about “SSD and solid state drive”, which are obviously the same thing. I know it’s designed to pull in the casual viewer, but the least they could do is get the tech stuff right.

DrDamn

Alex I re-watched that “combining the SSD with the solid state drive” comment a couple of times and still can’t quite work it out. He might of been saying SSE, but what’s one of those? 😁

Alex

They spoke about using the SSD as extended RAM, so maybe SSE is Solid State Extended or something.

DrDamn

Alex It was “a combination of the SOC and Solid State Drive” - clearer when you know what it is, but did sound very odd at the time.

Couple of extras I noted from listening again, GDDR6 use confirmed. Sony haven’t confirmed memory tech yet, and there is some talk of some sort of HBM2/GDDR4 combination. MS also confirmed VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) support - Sony yet to confirm this but they have confirmed other aspects of HDMI2.1 so fairly safe to assume this is a given.

Brave

Main conference was great, I thought. Almost made up for Sony not being assed. We keep saying it but Game Pass is only getting better and better.

PSO2 made me happy until they pissed all of Europe off. Outside of that, lots of intriguing stuff; loads of good indie stuff that I’ve been reading about in Wireframe for the last few issues made an appearance, Gears 5 escape mode sounds mad, 12 Minutes looked very intriguing, Halo Infinite made me want to dive back in. There was a ton more,60 games in total and it seemed like most were “World Premieres”.

Oh and Double Fine are now part of Microsoft. That’s a big bold move, and a good fit actually. They should have been utilising DF more this gen imo.

Oh yeah. Elden Ring is now a thing. That’s cool. I wonder if Elder Scrolls trademark lawyers are getting twitchy. It seems close but not close enough :)

Alex

DrDamn OK that makes sense. The “we’ve never seen framerates this high” comment is still balls. That guy has obviously never looked at the floor in an FPS. 😅

Overall I thought the conference was average. It started great, with the Cyberpunk 2077 stuff and the bit with Keanu Reeves was probably the best ‘celeb’ E3 moment ever. Just really fun and delightful. The rest of it was fine, lots of games and release dates, but nothing really new or mind-blowing. The big problem though was the complete lack of any gameplay. Pretty much every trailer was just shiny CG stuff. That felt like a big regressive step for these sorts of conferences.

The console ‘reveal’ was a bit disappointing, as they basically didn’t announce anything we didn’t or couldn’t guess. Yes, it’s based off of AMD’s latest tech, and will have an SSD. Not much to chew over. I guess as Damn says Sony really stole their thunder with that Cerny interview a few months ago.

Anyway, it was a decent conference, but in a year where it should have been an open goal it felt like it hit the post a bit.

Edit: oh yeah, another highlight was the new MS Flight Sim. So happy that’s still a thing. Also it looked fantastic.

Alex

Watching the DF video on the latest AMD tech, there was an interesting bit about ray tracing in Navi. According to AMD they aren’t doing proper hardware raytracing, they say that’s a few years away. Their plan is to use compute units to do ray tracing with shaders.

Seeing as this is the tech going into the next Xbox and PlayStation, this is a bit weird. It makes sense for Sony as they never actually said they were doing hardware ray tracing, just that they’d have ray tracing support. But if that’s the case then what are Microsoft talking about?

DrDamn

Not got time to watch the video yet. Both will have hardware ray tracing - MS have been more specific but I’ve heard from a reliable source who would know that Sony have it too. What that entails may be a differentiating factor, however it may be that this is one of the areas of custom support/collaboration they have. Both Sony and MS have registered and recently updated patents in related areas which support this too.

Time will tell on the extent and usefulness, but I think both will have some form of dedicated hardware support for RT. MS have confirmed, Sony wouldn’t have mentioned it if it wasn’t properly supported in some way. Existing platforms can support RT - just at very, very, very low framerates, so to mention it means there is something there to back it up.

Alex

I still think it’s weird if the next consoles have full hardware ray tracing support and it’s not an AMD thing.