Just when everyone thought that they knew a lot about the upcoming PlayStation 5, its former Principal Software Engineer thinks otherwise. According to him, there are many things that haven’t been revealed in leaks or speculations and that most specifications are still well hidden from the public eye.
So the person in question is Matt Hargett. As mentioned earlier, he used to be the former Principal Software Engineer for the PS5. In a Twitter thread discussing the possible features of the upcoming console from Sony, Hergett replied to one of the tweets saying, “Many, many things haven’t shown up in leaks. There are plenty of secrets that are being well kept.”
Many, many things haven’t shown up in leaks. There are plenty of secrets that are being well kept 🙂
— Matt Hargett (@syke) April 20, 2020
From the looks of it, it does seem that Sony is doing a good job of keeping its most anticipated device a secret prior to its official reveal. Needless to say, the public will be in for a surprise upon the much-awaited launch of the PS5. Thankfully, there are a few things that are most likely to be confirmed. They are as follows:
Variable Rate Shading
According to most observers, the upcoming PS5 console will come with what’s called Variable Rate Shading in its rendering processes. For gaming tech noobs, it’s a technology that allows a device’s GPU to allocate resources more effectively while rendering an image. And as everyone would know, gaming consoles are all about the GPU.
While complex images would still require more resources from the GPU, simpler images will use up fewer of them thanks to Variable Rate Shading. This would result in an overall efficiency in the system and would improve the performance of the PS5, making the gaming experience much smoother with higher frame rates.
Ray Tracing
A feature that has even been confirmed by the PlayStation 5’s System Architect, Mark Cerny, is the support for Ray Tracing. Again, for those who don’t know, “ray tracing is a rendering technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light as pixels in an image plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with virtual objects. The technique is capable of producing a high degree of visual realism, more so than typical scanline rendering methods, but at a greater computational cost” (Wikipedia).
According to Cerny, the PS5 will have Ray Tracing baked into its hardware, which will result in performances matching those of the best gaming PCs. As far as processing power is concerned, the PS5’s CPU will have the ability to vary its frequency depending on the graphic intensity of the game being played.
Machine Learning Technology
Now, this is more of a speculation but it has some pretty strong backing. It has to do with the fact that the PS5 and all future consoles will make use of Machine Learning Technology. The director of Yakuza, Toshihiro Nagoshi, said that the next generation will see the return of the “programmable era”.
By that, he means that with the rate graphic processing technology has been advancing, it’s bound to reach a limit. When that happens, the only way to improve would be to develop AI and Machine Learning to achieve better software optimization. This of it as the Computational Photography element in today’s smartphones where software optimization matters more than the hardware used.
This has certainly hyped everyone up even more for the upcoming gaming console from Sony. Regardless of what’s known or unknown, it is pretty evident that the PS5 will be a technological marvel and will set a benchmark for gaming tech. Unless the Xbox Series X is better, of course.