The Digital Foundry perspective on the big reveal.
Yes, we finally saw the console, we know what it looks like and how gigantic it is — but …
The Digital Foundry perspective on the big reveal.
Yes, we finally saw the console, we know what it looks like and how gigantic it is — but crucially, yesterday’s PlayStation 5 reveal also delivered software and lots of it. It was our first opportunity to see the extent to which Sony and its partners delivered on the vision set out by Mark Cerny in the articles and presentations we’d seen so far. What we got was technologically astonishing in several places and diverse in scope, encompassing both console exclusives and an array of cross-generational releases. It was a flavour — a taste — of the next-gen experience to come a few short months from now.
Sony certainly didn’t make it easy for us though, kicking off proceedings with a bizarre Grand Theft Auto 5 trailer pulled from PlayStation 4 footage, while delivering the whole presentation via bandwidth-challenged, poor quality streaming at 1080p30 — a baffling decision when 4K media was (and is) available. Similar to the PS4 Pro livestream from 2016, it was difficult to fully appreciate everything Sony had to offer. It was like trying to sell a Blu-ray movie to the masses by showcasing a badly re-encoded hooky DVD in its place — and it was particularly impactful to the first PS5 title we saw: the new take on Marvel’s Spider-Man, featuring Miles Morales.
Thankfully, the quality of key titles shone through the macroblocking and we saw a definite pay-off to the specs reveal delivered by Mark Cerny a few months back. After the GTA5 episode and the Spider-Man teaser, we swiftly moved into proper showcase territory, kicking off with one of the highlights of the event: Ratchet and Clank on PlayStation 5. A closer look at the trailer asset reveals a native 4K resolution, and a basic density of detail far beyond its already impressive PS4 and PS4 Pro predecessors. Indeed, there’s a good argument that what we’re seeing here is significantly beyond the fidelity of the Ratchet and Clank CG movie — it’s a breathtaking example of art, technology and imagination coming together to produce something that looks simply fantastic.
The Digital Foundry team convenes to present their thoughts on the official reveal of PlayStation 5.
From a technological perspective, perhaps the real breakthrough is the game’s dimensional rift mechanic, which sees Ratchet and Clank teleporting nigh-on instantly through very different domains at full fidelity with no sign of streaming issues or pop-in — validation perhaps for Sony’s super-specified solid-state storage solution, capable of streaming up to 5.5GB/s of data. Interestingly, slight hitches are noticeable, something we’d expect to see Insomniac clear up by launch, but also adding further to the authenticity of what was delivered. It’s work-in-progress code, after all.
And yes, we also saw judicious use of real-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing — the kind of technological leap we could only envisage in the most optimistic scenarios possible when we first started to ponder next-gen console specs back in 2018. And yet there it is, in a game we expect to ship with the machine’s launch, running at what the pixel counts suggest is indeed full native 4K (no mean feat when RT is involved). Developer Insomniac talked about ray tracing effect’s on Clank’s chrome-like finish but the game’s lavish reflections work — particularly on the ground — may also lean into hardware RT.
How can we tell? Screen-space reflections (SSR) are a hallmark of this particular console generation, and while they do look good, visual artefacts and discontinuities are easily noticeable. Partially obscured objects on-screen don’t provide the visual data to deliver fully accurate reflections, while anything that isn’t being rendered on-screen at all can’t be reflected. Ratchet and Clank side-steps these issue and looks wonderful as a result. However, there do seem to be some limits to the reflection implementation: not everything gets reflected, suggesting that hardware RT may have its limits.
Insomniac’s Ratchet and Clank looks brilliant and showcases PS5’s graphics horsepower and state-of-the-art storage technology.
