Author Topic: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?  (Read 12563 times)

Offline PyroMenace

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #40 on: Thursday, September 08, 2016, 03:35:43 AM »
But it says its going to have 4k and HDR support, so it does.

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #41 on: Thursday, September 08, 2016, 04:09:20 AM »
4K and HDR support doesn't mean it can play Ultra BR discs.  It can stream in 4K HDR for sure, but there was no mention of a new disc player at the Sony meeting, apparently.  Oversight?  Can't tell.  I haven't checked any gaming news yet today.  It may be that it does get one after all.  But as of yesterday, the buzz was that it does not.

Edit:  Nope, sorry.  It's definite.  The PS4 Pro does not get an Ultra BR disc drive.  The Engadget guy asked the question, and got back a negative from Sony.

Offline Xessive

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #42 on: Thursday, September 08, 2016, 12:30:16 PM »
4K and HDR support doesn't mean it can play Ultra BR discs.  It can stream in 4K HDR for sure, but there was no mention of a new disc player at the Sony meeting, apparently.  Oversight?  Can't tell.  I haven't checked any gaming news yet today.  It may be that it does get one after all.  But as of yesterday, the buzz was that it does not.

Edit:  Nope, sorry.  It's definite.  The PS4 Pro does not get an Ultra BR disc drive.  The Engadget guy asked the question, and got back a negative from Sony.
That is so weird. Sony owns Bluray! The Xbox One S has a 4K Bluray drive.. Weird.

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #43 on: Thursday, September 08, 2016, 02:08:26 PM »
Quote
“Our feeling is that while physical media continues to be a big part of the games business, we see a trend on video towards streaming,” he said. “Certainly with our user base, it’s the second biggest use case for people’s time on the system so we place more emphasis on that area.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/08/playstation-boss-andrew-house-ps4-pro-our-approach-isnt-reactive-this-time-around

I think they wanted to come in at the $400 price point, and they're still smarting from how much the original Bluray cost them on the PS3.  The complaint I've read often is that if this is meant to be a premium-tier system, then it should include UHD BR and get priced higher.  The consumer-friendly price says otherwise, doesn't it.  For all Sony's protestations that this is an optional step up from vanilla PS4, their actions tell me they hope it will sell like gangbusters across their userbase, gain them new buyers, and become the future norm for PS4.

What sense does it make to buy a $300 1.8TF PS4 Slim when $400 buys a 4.2TF Pro?

Offline MysterD

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #44 on: Thursday, September 08, 2016, 04:00:17 PM »
Eurogamer / Digital Foundry - 3 hours with PS4 Pro...
...with their thoughts on the system's specs/power; performance; & how the checkerboarding upscale to 4K is working + how it varies in quality from game-to-game.

Offline MysterD

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Offline Cobra951

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #46 on: Wednesday, September 14, 2016, 05:22:44 AM »
Interesting, but there's too much fudging back and forth to try to balance the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.  For one thing, the console has shared memory, which may be seen as a negative by PC owners used to the poor performance of integrated hardware accelerators.  But in fact, dual-gated VRAM was a godsend on the early 80s micros.  Graphics and program data coexist, and are immediately accessible to both the CPU and the display hardware.  There can be no quicker path from rendering to the screen, when a system is designed from the ground up to use the same memory for all processors.  Modern consoles, like that old Atari 800 I'm thinking of, are so designed.  Also, the memory in the AMD card is DDR3 while the Pro's memory is GDDR5.  I just don't see how these solutions are very comparable.  And then there's the question of how does the PC version of a game compare to its console counterpart.  They're two different programs.

"For science!"  Yeah, well, I can see that, definitely.  I guess in my day, I'd enjoy such an exercise at work too.

Offline gpw11

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #47 on: Wednesday, September 14, 2016, 09:26:57 AM »
"For Science!"  aka "We literally have nothing to do at work today"  That article doesn't tell consumers anything at all.

Anyways, I'm in the market for a PS4 now that games have been coming out/are starting to come out more. Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted 4, EA Sports is hitting the generational sweet spot, FFXV looks interesting, and Persona 5 does as well.  I also have like 50 PS plus games on the PS4 to keep me occupied.

I don't know which way to go though.  The Slim got a price reduction (here at least) and is bundled with Uncharted 4.  The Pro is (reasonably) more expensive but is it even worth it? I mean, I think the games that would really benefit from it would come out on the PC as well and it's not like I'd be buying a 4k TV anytime soon.

I think I'm going slim.   

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #48 on: Wednesday, September 14, 2016, 02:28:24 PM »
The pro is way more powerful, like 2.5 times, for a 33% higher price.  That power applies to a hell of a lot more than resolution.  If your screen is 1080p, you can get better frame rate or better detail from games that "open up" on the Pro.  (Expect most big titles in the future to have special Pro modes.)  To me, there's no question.  The way forward is the Pro, particularly if you don't yet have a PS4.

Offline gpw11

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #49 on: Wednesday, September 14, 2016, 03:16:33 PM »
You make a good point.  You may have actually just changed my mind there but I'm still going to wait on it a bit. 

Offline MysterD

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #50 on: Wednesday, September 14, 2016, 04:25:00 PM »
Eurogamer / Digital Foundry - Rise of the Tomb Raider: PS4 Pro vs. PC.

As you could've guessed: PC wins.
Some special effects (i.e. some lighting, some DoF is missing, etc) + texture quality is MISSING in PS4 Pro version, whereas those who can handle native 4K at "Very High" settings on PC have more going on.

Though, Eurogamer / DF do thing PS4 Pro version looks really good; just not on the level of PC version at 4K on "Very High" settings.

Click here for Video from Eurogamer + DF comparing PC vs. PS4 Pro for Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Offline PyroMenace

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #51 on: Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 08:55:23 PM »
I got one, my first next gen console. PSN had a sale going with Bloodborne complete for $20 so I grabbed that too.

Offline PyroMenace

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #52 on: Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 02:22:51 AM »
Man its been sometime since Ive used a console other than to watch movies. The weird shit they do really is baffling. The download progress screen for games is just a clever bait and switch which doesnt actually show the full progress of the download, EVEN THOUGH IT SAYS IT HAS DOWNLOADED THE FULL SIZE, it only means it has downloaded enough to where you can actually play while it downloads the rest in the background, so certain options wont be available unbeknownst to the user. I hope there's an option to change this. 

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #53 on: Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 07:06:30 AM »
Really?  Do tell.  I've been keeping an eye on it.  Over double the power for $400.  There's no reason to buy the original system anymore.

I'm surprised it doesn't tell you where you are in your download.  The Xbox gives you a percentage of the current install process right on the home page, and if you go to Games and Apps, you see detailed updating stats on the download--bandwidth, and bytes loaded out of bytes total.  Are you sure you don't have a similarly detailed page somewhere?

Offline PyroMenace

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #54 on: Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 08:05:57 AM »
That's what is so bizarre about it. You can bring up a progress screen which shows you how fast it's going and how much gigabyte's it's downloading. I had the PS4 up and running for sometime, it literally showed that it downloaded the full 36 gigabytes when it finished. Showed the game as installed when I launched it, then in the menus the first option I had was to play it offline or online and I only had one choice,online wouldn't work since the "full game wasn't installed" despite the contrary of what the console OS had told me. I had to look into the game information screen to show that actually half the game downloaded for me to play. I'm not sure if any other game does this but it's the most bizarre instance of digital delivery I have experienced.

Offline W7RE

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #55 on: Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 11:31:51 AM »
On the Xbox One, some games support running them before the whole thing is downloaded. In these cases though, you'll get a popup saying that the game is ready to start, but the download progress will still show that it's only partially complete.

Offline Xessive

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #56 on: Thursday, November 17, 2016, 01:09:15 PM »
I know The Division and Uncharted 4 have options to start playing when a "playable" amount is downloaded, then it downloads the rest while you play. Uncharted 4 also asks you if you want to start downloading the Singleplayer or Multiplayer first.

Offline MysterD

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Offline Xessive

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #58 on: Thursday, November 17, 2016, 10:34:10 PM »
Eurogamer - "Why are some PS4 Pro titles running slower than base hardware?"
Yeah, Digital Foundry ran some tests comparing the games. It looks like the source of the issues is that even on 1080p the PS4 Pro renders at higher resolution then downsamples, which looks nicer (less aliasing, smoother edges) but does take a performance hit.

The difference is minor though, a few frame drops. Devs are looking into them and the expectation is that most of these games were never made with the PS4 Pro in mind and that newer games will work as intended for the Pro.

Offline Cobra951

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #59 on: Thursday, November 17, 2016, 11:08:45 PM »
Yeah, Digital Foundry ran some tests comparing the games. It looks like the source of the issues is that even on 1080p the PS4 Pro renders at higher resolution then downsamples, which looks nicer (less aliasing, smoother edges) but does take a performance hit.


That's, kind of, asinine?  If the game is designed for 1080p rendering, and the display res is 1080p, it's pretty dumb to go an extra mile, then high-tail it back.  The developers already made it look as good as they were able, including filtering and maybe even AA.  If you can't improve it, at least leave it in as good a state as you found it.

Offline Xessive

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Re: Are you ready for the Playstation 4.5?
« Reply #60 on: Friday, November 18, 2016, 04:21:17 PM »
That's, kind of, asinine?  If the game is designed for 1080p rendering, and the display res is 1080p, it's pretty dumb to go an extra mile, then high-tail it back.  The developers already made it look as good as they were able, including filtering and maybe even AA.  If you can't improve it, at least leave it in as good a state as you found it.
One would think. Even on PC I don't use the Nvidia "Dynamic Super Resolution" option, which is basically rendering at a higher resolution and downsampling it to the lower screen resolution. It does technically give smoother edges and a sharper overall look but it's rarely worth the drop in performance. I generally prefer running native resolution on whatever screen I'm using. The one exception being my 4KTV where I will frequently run 1080p.