Thread by @Gavavva

I feel I need to do a follow up post based on my thread yesterday. That thread was meant to be a layman’s terms, simple to understand for anybody type entry to SFS. It wasn’t supposed to be a complex in-depth tech talk. 1/11

Heck, I didn’t even go into advanced features of the later revisions such as how you only load the mip required (which I thought I covered but didn’t) or how you only load the part of the mip that’s drawn. 2/11

So, I have a few updates for you. I spent a little time talking with various people from both Microsoft AND Sony, and will do my best to clear some things up for you based on *current* knowledge. 3/11

First of all, the XSX is RDNA 2 based, and will be using SFS in hardware,
not software. As you can imagine, doing it natively with custom hardware is extremely well optimised and much faster than software. 4/11

As for PS5? Can it do it at all? Yes, of course. I never mentioned this, as it was obvious to me but clearly not to you. I’m told it’s a mish-mash Od RDNA 1 and 2 with custom bits. HOWEVER, while consoles as old as PS4 supported basic SF in hardware (it’s quite old)... 5/11

...they didn’t support the more current updates to how things are done. HOWEVER (again), this is where things get fuzzy. I’m trying to get a straight answer on if PS5 supports this via hardware or software (shader). 6/11

It’s possible to support this on software based shader, of course, however that would be much much more slower and clearly not be ideal when compared to a dedicated hardware solution. On speaking with... 7/11

... a Principal Graphics Engineer from Sony, he did his best to answer me but is of course bound by NDA. I won’t put a spin on whether his answers made me lean one way or the other, you can read them in the thread and decide for yourself. But he... 8/11

...will try and get back to me today, if NDA allows him to discuss this in public.

So *as of right now*, nothing has changed, we are still in a position of dedicated hardware for XSX, and and software for PS5. In which case, this all still stands. 9/11

I’m going to assume at the very least they have dedicated hardware for the old style SF, which is far less impressive but still good in its own right of course, as this was in current gen consoles. However from what I can gather, Sony may have... 10/11

...taken a different route to Microsoft here.

I’ll keep you all posted on my findings as they come in, and please, one last thing. I’ve had some hostility from posting what should have been a help write up. If you feel you need to do that, do it elsewhere. Thanks. 11/11 ❤️💚💙