News DirectStorage Reduces 'Forspoken' Load Times to Less Than Two Seconds

[Admin]

Forspoken developer Luminous Productions showcases the improvements DirectStorage brings to its open-world game - from NVMe SSDs through SATA SSDs and even spinning-disk drives.

DirectStorage Reduces 'Forspoken' Load Times to Less Than Two Seconds : Read more

 

[hotaru.hino]

I thought DirectStorage and the like was meant to help reduce load times or pressure while in-game, rather than the initial load, so large amounts of assets can be shifted around "instantly" rather than needing something like a loading hallway or whatnot.

 

[salgado18]

I thought DirectStorage and the like was meant to help reduce load times or pressure while in-game, rather than the initial load, so large amounts of assets can be shifted around "instantly" rather than needing something like a loading hallway or whatnot.

It is that, too. But if it does one, it should do the other too.

I'm actually thinking if it could be useful in allowing higher-quality assets on a scene, since you can now load from disk only a room or area at a time, postponing the loading of the next room to when you open the door. That could be a big improvement.

 

[hotaru.hino]

It is that, too. But if it does one, it should do the other too.

I'm actually thinking if it could be useful in allowing higher-quality assets on a scene, since you can now load from disk only a room or area at a time, postponing the loading of the next room to when you open the door. That could be a big improvement.

In the case of initial loading like what this test was showing, the CPU is just as responsible as the storage speed for determining the loading time, and PCIe 3.0 drives pretty much hit the "CPU wall" as mentioned in the article. Like if you think about it, Windows typically uses about 1.5GB-2.0GB of RAM after booting (assuming we have a fresh build). If loading were really all about shuffling data around, Windows should load in less than a second from a PCIe SSD. But it doesn't.

Though having another go at thinking about this, this game may be loading only just enough assets to get you going and it loads in the rest later.

 

[cryoburner]

Title:

DirectStorage Reduces 'Forspoken' Load Times to Less Than Two Seconds

Actual Content:

A 71% increase in SSD throughput in DirectStorage compared to Win32 only delivers a 0.2 second improvement (around 10%) in load times, reducing it from 2.1 seconds to 1.9 seconds.

So, "technically true", at least with that exact hardware, in that specific area of the game, but the title is rather deceptive. Lowering the load time from 2.1 seconds to 1.9 seconds should make for an imperceptible difference, and is not exactly headline-worthy. And we don't even know if that "less than two second" load time is even representative of typical load times in the game, as these are marketing materials from the game's developer.

If DirectStorage had cut the load time in half, that could be more notable, though even going from a two second load time down to one second wouldn't make much of a difference, since it was already rather low to begin with. Even the SATA SSD's 3.7 seconds wouldn't be much of a concern. Or if it reduced stutters and pop-in while playing the game, though that might be more difficult for their marketing department to convey. Since it sounds like it can run from a platter-based drive, the differences from one SSD to another will probably be rather insignificant though.

 

[USAFRet]

And elsewhere...

DirectStorage shows minor load-speed improvements in real-world PC demo

CPU bottlenecks make the impact of DirectStorage on load times relatively small.

arstechnica.com