Former Naughty Dog Technical Director Breaks Down PS5 SSD’s Importance

The next generation of consoles is just around the corner (at least if they don’t get delayed anyway), and with a new set of consoles comes a host of new technologies. Yesterday we got Sony’s deep dive into their next console in the PS5. A lot of hoopla has been made about it in various ways. One thing that was highlighted was the console’s SSD. Now someone with some experience in the field breaks it down.

Former Technical Director for Naughty Dog Andrew Maximov took to his official Twitter to take about the importance of the SSD. It comes down to the ability to render and to what distance you can render that stuff, from things like enemies to minor things like the bark of a tree. With the PS5’s new SSD technology, higher resolution versions can be rendered. You can see his whole breakdown below for a clearer picture.

We still have yet to see this kind of thing in practice with the PS5, or the Xbox Series X for that matter. It’s hard to conceptualize these things without seeing them, so hopefully we will soon.

Just saw the new @PlayStation #PS5 presentation. Great job @cerny! Since I routinely have to explain to people why I'm excited for an SSD for rendering I thought I'd write a little thread to explain. Case in point: Uncharted 1 to Last of Us transition: pic.twitter.com/4Q75NEuigy

— Andrew Maximov (@_ArtIsAVerb) March 18, 2020

The jump in quality between the 2 is quite staggering yet both utilized identical graphics hardware. Tons of work went into improving the look by the graphics engineers and the artists, but all of this has to be facilitated by managing a lot more data fast.

— Andrew Maximov (@_ArtIsAVerb) March 18, 2020

Towards the end of a console cycle a huge amount of work goes into scripting just the right data to be loaded and rendered just at the right time. And the designers and engineers who do that largely remain thankless as it's not the sexiest job. Yet it's what makes this possible.

— Andrew Maximov (@_ArtIsAVerb) March 18, 2020

Even with current gen hardware we can render most single objects at lifelike detail. Every hair in Drakes stubble was a triangle.
We can render vast spaces by using smart LoD systems.
But we can't store all of the super detailed high res versions for all objs in memory at once.

— Andrew Maximov (@_ArtIsAVerb) March 18, 2020

So the ability to load in the highest resolution version of any asset just in front of you and drop it immediately as you turn around means that every tree can have 3d bark and moss and ants marching on it just when needed, without blowing up the budget. It's going to be great <3

— Andrew Maximov (@_ArtIsAVerb) March 18, 2020

Now producing all of this content at this level of fidelity is an extremely complicated issue of it's own, but we are working on it 🙂 @PlayStation – happy if this helps share the excitement. Keep it up!

— Andrew Maximov (@_ArtIsAVerb) March 18, 2020