PlanetSide 2 Dev On PS4: "Our Real Bottlenecks Are On CPU"

Since this topic seems to be gathering so much attention here is another take, not from Digital Foundry but from a game developer.

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Our real bottlenecks are on the CPU side. From a graphical fidelity perspective, people will be impressed with what they see on the PS4. That’s always one of those things people are skeptical about. I see every time we post an article like this I always get called out: ‘haha, it’s bullshit he’s saying it’s going to look as good.’ It really does.

Again, the graphical fidelity is every bit as high. The slowdowns we have are on the CPU side more than the GPU side. It’s because we’re tracking and updating so many different players moving on your screen and moving around at once. All that animation and all the audio that’s associated with all those characters running around, all of their projectiles being simulated in their client, all those things end up hitting the CPU, not the GPU.

So, generally when our frame-rates are low, it’s a CPU problem, not a GPU problem. And that’s where we’re optimising right now, to get our CPU running faster so the game is running at a more consistent frame-rate on the PS4.

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Right now we’re running for 1080p. We’re still trying to shoot for 60fps. We’re trying to get a solid frame-rate. So if we go to 30 it’ll be because we want to maintain a completely solid 30fps. But that’s the optimisation we’re working on right now. And we’re still grinding on it.

http://gearnuke.com/planetside-2-dev-ps4-real-bottlenecks-cpu-side-aiming-60-fps-ps4/

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And there's more:

Planetside 2 PS4 Will Show Less Concurrent Players Than PC

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Right now we have per map limits of about 1200 players. Per server there are four continents. So you can have about 3600 to 4800 players on a single server depending on what the continent locking situation looks like on that server, since we do lock continents to focus players onto different continents. [On PS4] our goal is to get as close as possible to doing that. But the number of players is something we’re probably going to have to look hard at as we work on our final optimisation passes. That’s something that might get lowered.

The good news is, the way we lower players wouldn’t necessarily mean there are fewer total players fighting on the map at once. But it might mean your client’s awareness of all the players around you might cut down. So if you’re in a huge fight and there are 300 players around, we already have a bunch of heuristics that slice that number of players down and show you the ones that are relevant to you on a moment to moment basis. On the PS4 those constraints might need to be a little tighter.

Hopefully, if we do our jobs right, that won’t even be perceptible to you. We already have this culling we do for players in the PC game. Unless you’re in the biggest of the big fights, you don’t really notice players popping in and out as the culling algorithm regulates how many characters are being sent to your client at once.

So hopefully on the PS4, although we’ll probably have a more constrained number of players on-screen at once, the gameplay won’t have much of an impact, so you won’t even notice.

http://www.worldsfactory.net/2014/11/21/planetside-2-ps4-will-show-less-concurrent-players-than-pc-no-word-on-release-date#ZietTmTx8Kog0KY1.99

I thought this was out already.

Still not released yet .?

What a sad, sad console.

No games, bottlenecks, delays, false hype and a irate fan base because of it.

Meanwhile on PC, half my CPU is faster than the entirety of "even" the Xbone's OC'ed one.

It's pathetic, two Haswell cores are more than a match for all 6 available ones on either the Xbone or the Quad.

I said this when they announced this game for ps4. That cpu would struggle to run this. But cows didn't want to hear that. Fact is these console CPUS are on struggle

i somehow highly doubt they will get this to 60fps heck i doubt the can get it to stable 30fps unless they use a 10% draw distance. Even on my i5 i drop to mid-high 30's when lots happening on screen

If I remember correctly, when PS2 was in beta/just released the bottleneck was usually in the CPU. Idk if that is still the case since I haven't played the game since release

Planetside 2 is REALLY CPU hungry. I remember hwo hard it was to get to 60fps at launch. That, and it wasn't the most optimized game.

If they can get it to 60fps, i'd be cool, but i'm epxecting a locked 30fps.

wow, this game didn't release yet? smh ok then...

the ps4 just seems like a piece of shit console you have to wait on and compromise yourself for.

anyway, the article seems like preemptive damage control. get ready for the 30fps cows.

somehow its gotten worse ( from my experience ). I barely keep over 30fps on a core i5 4440 ( drops down to 34-35fps in big fights ) after the last couple of updates

These new consoles are fucking weak, more at 11.

This is why it won't be 1080P. Most likely it'll be 900P 30fps if they are lucky. It won't look as good as the PC version, that's for sure. Even that version has some slow down and lag as well.

"Again, the graphical fidelity is every bit as high. The slowdowns we have are on the CPU side more than the GPU side. It’s because we’re tracking and updating so many different players moving on your screen and moving around at once. All that animation and all the audio that’s associated with all those characters running around, all of their projectiles being simulated in their client, all those things end up hitting the CPU, not the GPU."

If they do get this to 60fps it'll have to be 900P or 720P upscaled. All the optimization in the world isn't going to fix the FPS problem they will have with this game. I hope they test this with 100 player playing on the screen, cause if they just do it with 10-15 and think that's good enough, they will be in trouble.

Seems like pc might be the best.

At first they were saying the game will be on ultra/maxed out and now its "Again, the graphical fidelity is every bit as high" give it another six months and it'll be "Again, the graphical fidelity is every bit as Medium". The game doesn't even look good (played it maxed out when it was released and it looked like.............an MMO.)

In order to survive the gen Sony need to release an update that automatically OC the CPU.

How did this game go from a launch game to a launch window game to an over a year after launch game and it still isn't optimized enough to be released? I see it has an official Dec 31, 2014 release date. Any hype I had for the game is gone, hell it's been gone for months now.

Game has always been CPU heavy, my i5 4770k is getting 35-40 during big battles at 1080P. Is this game cross play? I'm wondering if they will scale back the PS4 version to make it more playable on the system

In June they were talking about a "huge graphical upgrade over PC", now there are optimization issues and it is "graphical fidelity is every bit as high", I call PR shenanigans on the PS4 version of this game from day 1.

Maybe it'll be a good port though, my rant is over.

not that i have proof, but i feel like sony just lied about release dates to push units in fear that they would fall behind if they had nothing on the table for a while. They knew these games weren't gonna make their dates. I find it hard to believe that every single game just happened to fall behind on schedule

if it can give my 4790k a good workout, im sure the console versions will run/look terrible

inb4grenadelauncherrage :P

@darkangel115:

They did .....DC supposed to be at launch, Planetside too with many others and they still going to be waiting and adding to the list of games for 2015 then 2016 fanboys going to still list them as coming

There was/is a console command that would tell you if the bottleneck was GPU or CPU (down in the corner of the screen) and it was almost always CPU

Not just PS2 devs basically everyone know by now that both Sony and MS went cheap with their CPUs, they are extremely underpowered, good luck hitting 60fps, not gonna happen.

@silversix_: Hes not referring to the settings dumbass. Hes saying the graphic fidelity is every bit as high as the footage they have shown.

So the games will look pretty, but their fundamentals (like AI and scale) will be just like they've always been.

Even my i7 3770k @ 4.2 ghz isn't enough to keep 60fps in that game. A PS4's CPU has no chance even with a re-write of the engine for the PS4.

Yesterday on the PS2 2 year anniversary stream they showed it off and it is indeed running Ultra settings from the PC. Only thing downgraded is the shadows because on the PC ultra shadows are basically unplayable because they are done on the CPU.

Planetside 2 is not a graphically intensive game. It's got a great mix of dynamic lighting through a defered renderer and a strong art style to make it look great. It's actually a DX9 engine that you can max out with a GTX 570 without problem (I did). The PS4's GPU is more than capable of 1080p60, but the nature of the MMOFPS demands a heavy workload on the CPU waiting for network operations to finish. A faster CPU gives better frames. The game at launch wasn't properly threaded and even now with some huge reworks of the back end, multithreading, and 64 bit, even the most powerful Intel powered machines cannot keep 60fps in big battles thanks to the CPU optimization.

The PS4's CPU is just not going to be enough even if they built a branch of the engine around the PS4 version. They are doing some more intensive CPU optimizations right now that are transferring to the PC version (they merged the console and PC code about three months ago) so we'll see what they can do. I doubt it can do 1080p60 despite that being their goal. I can see them settling for 1080p30.

never buying another AMD console again. what a joke these APUs are

Walk up to your PS4 under load. Hear how loud the fan is. Then put your hand on it. Feel how hot it is?

Even if the yields can handle the CPU increase. What happens when every PS4 red lines... and 10% stop working all together.

Not going to happen.

They really are shit. AMD's entire design sucks. I know Intel is much more expensive but their i3 line is fantastic.

Adding 1 extra mhz to that bitch will prolly make it explode, you know how bad consoles are with heat!

player culling, are they serious? lol 300 person battle and you can't see half the players gg

They already have a very aggressive player culling algorithm. The only change they are making is they are programming it so it's not hardcoded and can be easily customized for each platform (PC 32 bit, PC 64 bit, PS4).

CPU bottleneck has shit to do with Resolution,if you are CPU bottleneck at 1080p just by going 900p you won't stop been bottleneck,on xbox one games that you see in 720p or 900p are not because they are CPU bottleneck but GPU bottleneck the GPU doesn't have enough juice to run at 1080p 60 or 30 so the rest is drop to 900p to speed frames and that will work on CPU bottleneck unless you lower the CPU load you can drop to 720p and you will be just as bottleneck.

They can do it the PS4 isn't running critically hot even that it has an internal PSU,but i think they will switch to compute in a year or 2 to aid the CPU things like animation and other would probably work faster on the GPU since with compute just like Physics do.

Oh really.?

Maybe some of you have forgot this..

The xbox one runs with Forza 5 at 49 degrees Celsious while drawing 125 watts.

The PS4 while gaming was doing so at 44 Degrees Celsious while drawing 131 watts,the PS4 was drawing 6 watts more than the XBO yet ran cooler even that it has a freaking internal PSU which also generates heat,something the xbox one doesn't have,so yeah i don't think it will be over kill a bump to match the xbox one speed.]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-xbox-one-hardware-test

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-hardware-test-playstation-4

@tormentos:

So over clock it then? Take that chance while the momentum is great?

My PS4 gets way hotter "ambient temperature" under load due to case design and power supply than my X1. I have a heat signature gun.

Do you think that jet engine of a fan in the PS4 can spin faster? How do you even know if the yields will support it?

You really need an X1 man. You're credibility on here would increase 10 fold.

ps2 is incredibly cpu intensive on pc since there is so many people running around. My framerate doubled when switching from an AMD cpu(better than the amd console cpu's) to an i5 4670k

No way they get 60 fps for this unless they go to like 720p or some crap.

Games have become coded like shit these days. While it's true the PS4/Xbox One are not the fastest things on the market they are not horrible, especially for an APU.

Intel's attempt at graphics is a joke anyway, so you might get a better CPU maybe but the GPU would be a joke.

Maybe they should work with 343, its the only way to ensure game will work at launch

Right. They don't even have the price:performance thing going for them anymore. They are just flat out worse for cheaper. Best price:performance right now is a 4690k/970 but if you were on a budget you could find an i3 or cheaper i5 that still beats an 8 core AMD, or even that Pentium which costs like $80

So...30 fps then. Dat damage control.

@Couth_: G3258, that thing is a beast.

However PS2 is still single threaded

Lmao consoles. Lmao @m3dude1

And AMD cpu's single core performance is trash which is why this game(and games in general) performs much better on intel cpu's.

This game will struggle to have a consistent frame rate. So many factors in ps2 can influence the frames depending with whats going on. You'd need like a 20-30 fps buffer if you want a 60 fps lock.

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When you have games running at lower resolutions and settings you are more affected by the cpu's max processing power in feeding frames to the gpu since their is less to render, the gpu asks for more data at a faster rate. Then when you put more stress onto the gpu aka resolution & settings, the gpu gets larger amounts of data but at lesser rate since it takes more time to process the data before it asks for more data from cpu. Your not as limited by the cpu, however having a low clocked cpu still puts a limit on the potential allowed since it still has trouble keeping up. Hence the need for fps caps, while resolutions and settings primarily are gpu task , the cpu is one of the main items that determines how well the rest of the system performs. If it cant keep up its a bottleneck.

GPU compute is not the full solution for offloading cpu tasks allowing the cpu not being a bottleneck, while gpgpu coding will be able to offload items like physics, animations, which will relieve cpu cycles for other tasks, the fact that jaguar being 1.6ghz will still hold back the PS4 gpu.

Why can't they use the GPU for the heavy lifting? The PS4 can use the GPU to help out the CPU with compute tasks.

How can Cows put up with this SHIT console? I get it, your mommy and daddy bought you a PS2 but that's no reason to support such trash.

You cant just throw anything on the gpu, only the tasks that are processed in parallel.ie physics, animations things like that. but all the rest of the workloads still have to be done on cpu. cpu still has to process data and feed data to the gpu and other other items. While throwing some of normally more compute heavy tasks normally done on the cpu onto the gpu will save cpu cycles allowing more performance in general to be put elsewhere, but the fact that these cpu's are at best on par with moderately clocked 2009 era AMD quad cores, or intel C2Q's from 2007 which means that with the PS4 you will never see the full potential of the gpu, Because of the lackluster cpu and to the fact that you are offloading tasks to the gpu. The more complex the gpu loads the less gpu resources you have to use. like real time physics.

If the PS2 devs were doing any GPGPU to help the CPU they would have said it already. So your response is kinda irrelevant. Especially the last sentence, that's something that has to do with the design of the software how the resources are used. Here we are talking about consoles with hardly any API overhead and crazy devs like Naughty Dog that optimize on a binary level. But you keep talking about consoles like if they were a PC where most of the potential of the HW is never tapped.

@04dcarraher: Yeah, I understand, but I still think that not many devs are utilizing GPU compute yet. And the PS4 is designed to do that without sacrificing graphics. Cerny said that devs won't be utilizing that properly in the first years. Sony took an opposite approach this time around, both the PS2 and PS3 had a strong CPU, a slow GPU, and little memory. The PS4 has a slow CPU, strong GPU, and more than enough memory, and that is a better approach, the GPU is still the most important hardware in games. Though, because of financial decisions, power and heat limitations, the total power/performance jump isn't as big as previous gens.