Remedy is in Control for PlayStation 5

The Control team discuss the potential of PlayStation 5’s new features

STREAMING WILL BECOME SOMETHING THAT WE DON’T REALLY HAVE TO WORRY SO MUCH ABOUT.

Sony keeps teasing us with titbits of PlayStation 5 news, and on p54 we’ve gathered up all the latest info on Sony’s next console. But what does it all really mean for developers? We catch up with Control developer Remedy and ask what the future holds.

“Ray tracing is a fundamental shift in how to approach computer graphics,” says Tatu Aalto, lead graphics programmer at Remedy, as we jump straight into one of PS5’s biggest graphics features.

Aalto goes into more detail: “Gradual improvements in processing power and programmability have made it possible to do very accurate material shading and effects on the previous generation already, but for global connectivity games have used either precomputed static data, or relied on incomplete screen space information. Ray tracing is not just a single effect, but a leap towards actually resolving that global connectivity in real-time.”

POWER PLAY

Will PlayStation 5’s specs, such as a faster CPU, a more powerful GPU, and an SSD, aid developers in making better games?

Lead programmer Sean Donnelly uses Control’s move to a semi-open world to illustrate how PS5 could help developers. Control streams and loads chunks of data as you move between environments and this ate into what the CPU could do.

“With the extra burden of a detailed destruction system, it’s safe to say we hit the limit on what could be achieved on older CPUs,” says Donnelly. “When it comes to the PS5, faster hardware is always appreciated and will make life easier in the short term. But it’s the new SSD that really stands out; essentially streaming will become something that we don’t really have to worry so much about and it will free up some extra CPU bandwidth in the process.”

Without an SSD, Donnelly explains, streaming would become a bottleneck and restrict the content quality of PlayStation 5’s games. But with an SSD it won’t be a problem, and developers’ expectations for creating more detailed, dynamic worlds can be met.

“For something like Control that could translate to an even deeper destruction system, richer, more detailed worlds, and simple quality-of-life improvements like instant reloading after dying.”

SSD-TECTED

Technical director Mika Vehkala agrees, and says the inclusion of an SSD will allow Remedy to stream in “more data at runtime, allowing us to have much more detail in the game worlds than before”. But a bonus aspect of harnessing an SSD is that games will require smaller install sizes, “since there is no need to duplicate data to compensate for slow seek times that optical drives and HDDs have”.

Realistically install sizes over time on PlayStation 5 probably won’t reduce as developers will be drawn into creating more high-fidelity content. “If games would stay the same in terms of scope and visual quality it’d make loading times be almost unnoticeable and restarting a level could be almost instant,” says Vehkala, adding: “However, since more data can be now used there can also be cases where production might be cheaper and faster when not optimising content, which will lead into having to load much more data, leading back into a situation where you have about the same loading times as today.”

Basically developers will take the new toys inside PlayStation 5 and push them to their limits, nullifying any real speed in install times or file size reductions.

“It is almost the same as with CPU and GPU enhancements,” reflects Vehkala. “You could do things faster or you could add more content and run things the same 30fps as before; often times it is the latter.”

Where there will an upscale in performance courtesy of the new hardware is in the the new console’s UI and software.

“We tend to forget that it’s not just about getting better graphics in games with a new console, but it’s that the overall experience of using and playing on the console will get significantly better,” says comms director Thomas Puha. “PlayStation

THE OVERALL EXPERIENCE OF PLAYING ON THE CONSOLE WILL GET SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER.

5 is about making a really smooth, quick-to-load experience, and a hardware base that’s easy to use for us developers, which is great, because it allows us to harness the hardware power quicker.”

Puha also puts the brakes on every game being 60fps, 4K experiences. “We game developers can make 60fps games even on PlayStation 1! It’s always about compromise: are you focussing on visuals, physics, AI, and such things or purely framerate? The new hardware will be powerful, yes, but also expectations are that graphics will be even more detailed, more destruction, etc and it’s always a compromise as to where we focus.”

FILM EFFECT

What’s clear from speaking with Remedy is how the next gen will be about more than hardware. Teams will still need to be creative.

“Technology will definitely allow us to create even more lifelike experiences, there’s no question about that,” says Control’s game director, Mikael Kasurinen, who will look to complement ray tracing with other techniques. “When used correctly, live action provides delightful results that would’ve never happened with in-game solutions.”

Turn to p54 to read our 50 reasons to be excited for PlayStation 5.

Control was used to showcase Nvidia’s ray tracing tech, so expect realistic reflections like this on PlayStation 5.

Subtle things, such as the real-time reflection of a character in a screen, add to the sense of immersion.

Advances in graphics won’t stop Remedy from using live action.

Light is reflected and coloured realistically when ray-traced.

Ray tracing is used to render scenes in film CG because it looks and feels real – as will PS5 games.

Ray tracing can be applied to all surfaces in a scene to ensure fractured wood and broken marble looks very realistic.

Mixing ray-traced effects such as enhanced shadows, reflections, and lighting simultaneously creates a photorealistic scene.