StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

[eye0h]

Ray Reconstruction will provide many exciting possibilities for the hardware.

I've been really checked out of the whole ray tracing thing since I got an ELI5 a couple years ago. Can someone explain what exciting possibilities means with examples? Does Ray tracing allow developers to do more gameplay wise? It always just seemed like a fad but I'm really not knowledgable about it at all.

 

[Lancelot]

I've been really checked out of the whole ray tracing thing since I got an ELI5 a couple years ago. Can someone explain what exciting possibilities means with examples? Does Ray tracing allow developers to do more? It always just seemed like a fad but I'm really not knowledgable about it at all.

RT has been leveraged in many ways for games currently available on the market. It can offer a much more accurate lightning solution, a better shadows solution or outright better reflections, Switch 2's capabilities in this regard will be unmatched in the console space and with RR... They can essentially reduce the amount of rays used to pull it off to further cheapen the usage of RT, just more bang for their buck.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I've been really checked out of the whole ray tracing thing since I got an ELI5 a couple years ago. Can someone explain what exciting possibilities means with examples? Does Ray tracing allow developers to do more? It always just seemed like a fad but I'm really not knowledgable about it at all.

It allows devs to more easily do quality lighting and reflections.

The Switch 2 is likely far too weak to use it to do much outside of a couple edge cases. Ray tracing is far too demanding for most games for the PS5 and Xbox Series X (with Spider-Man 2 being the only game to use it without massive performance or resolution issues)

(Ray tracing is also used everywhere outside of video games and is used in every animated film… It’s very much not a fad)

 

[Paraspikey]

hey didn't remove anything from that tweet. It's just a YouTube embed that broke when they made the video private. That's different from the 2016 Switch announcement tweet, which has the video embeeded on Twitter, not YouTube.

If that's the case, then disregard it. I was trying to find if it was an embed, and I couldn't find anything like a screenshot of the tweet, and nothing pops up on Internet Archive, so I assumed it wasn't. I edited it to say to disregard if it was an embed.
It's weird that the Lite trailer would be the only one with a YouTube link embedded, though they announced it via a 6-minute video anyway, so that makes sense.

 

[darthdiablo]

I've been really checked out of the whole ray tracing thing since I got an ELI5 a couple years ago. Can someone explain what exciting possibilities means with examples? Does Ray tracing allow developers to do more gameplay wise? It always just seemed like a fad but I'm really not knowledgable about it at all.

Examples without and without RR start at around 7:15 of video

 

[LiC]

If that's the case, then disregard it. I was trying to find if it was an embed, and I couldn't find anything like a screenshot of the tweet, and nothing pops up on Internet Archive, so I assumed it wasn't. I edited it to say to disregard if it was an embed.
It's weird that the Lite trailer would be the only one with a YouTube link embedded, though they announced it via a 6-minute video anyway, so that makes sense.

You can tell it's a YouTube embed because of the youtu.be link left behind in it now, which is not visible in the archived version. And although the embed doesn't seem to load in the archive, I did poke around in its HTML and confirm that it was a YouTube embed.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

To add onto this discussion

There have been literally 0 examples of Ray Reconstruction DLSS 3.5 used in lower quality or more limited raytracing situations. It's currently only available in path traced games (which are massively beyond the capabilities of current consoles) and we'll see how effective (and how cheap!) it is in situations where RT is just used for basic reflections.

A non-ML denoiser could potentially produce better results (either performance or image wise) for more limited RT situations, we'll have to see.

 

[eye0h]

(Ray tracing is also used everywhere outside of video games and is used in every animated film… It’s very much not a fad)

my goat miyazaki would NEVER use those wizard photons

 

[ILikeFeet]

I've been really checked out of the whole ray tracing thing since I got an ELI5 a couple years ago. Can someone explain what exciting possibilities means with examples? Does Ray tracing allow developers to do more gameplay wise? It always just seemed like a fad but I'm really not knowledgable about it at all.

ray tracing (at a very very high level) has been used for decades now. right now it's about rendering via ray tracing. it's a simpler method of rendering (but more expensive) than rasterization (more complex but faster). devs can spend less time tweaking lights, shadow methods, and reflection methods

To add onto this discussion

There have been literally 0 examples of Ray Reconstruction DLSS 3.5 used in lower quality or more limited raytracing situations. It's currently only available in path traced games (which are massively beyond the capabilities of current consoles) and we'll see how effective (and how cheap!) it is in situations where RT is just used for basic reflections.

A non-ML denoiser could potentially produce better results (either performance or image wise) for more limited RT situations, we'll have to see.

it's been shown off for UE5 already. we have to wait until the UE5 plug-in to update to test very low resolutions

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I could see Nintendo EPD making some path traced StarFox 99 game that looks like StarFox 64 with good lighting (ala Half Life raytraced), but we'll see how else (if at all) NVIDIA's ray reconstruction is used.

 

[SNP]

So seeing some people saying two SKUs doesn’t make sense because it won’t save money for Nintendo (or doesn’t save space much without the cartridge slot), but have anyone considered that maybe Nintendo will do 2 SKUs with the exact same price?

Standard (physical + digital) and digital only (but bigger storage).

 

[ILikeFeet]

ray reconstruction isn't limited to path tracing. Cyberpunk can have it enabled, as well as Nvidia's UE5 demo

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Isn't Ray reconstruction only available in RT Overdrive mode for Cyberpunk (which is path traced?)

 

[lattjeful]

I do wonder if Nintendo stands to gain performance improvements from Ray Reconstruction. Not that we'll just be able to turn raytracing off in Nintendo games, but considering Ninty's severe aversion to anti-aliasing, I'd imagine the denoising step in their pipeline is quite heavy to compensate, even for rasterized stuff? Could make a big difference compared to something like Cyberpunk that iirc forces TAA on you, smoothing over a lot of the edges. (And even then, there's a performance uplift just based off of the sheer amount of stuff, for lack of a better term.)

 

[Lancelot]

Isn't Ray reconstruction only available in RT Overdrive mode for Cyberpunk (which is path traced?)

You can force it onto the another modes, it's not exclusive to anything.

 

[lattjeful]

Isn't Ray reconstruction only available in RT Overdrive mode for Cyberpunk (which is path traced?)

Apologies for the double post everybody.

RR is only available in the path traced mode right now because it's what they focused on when it came to both training the algorithm and on the development side of things. It'll eventually be used and available across all RT modes.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Isn't Ray reconstruction only available in RT Overdrive mode for Cyberpunk (which is path traced?)

it's unlockable for regular RT via ini changes. Nvidia hasn't fully trained it on multiple RT solutions, but it works well as is

 

[Pokemaniac]

Nope. The Wii doesn't have a Gekko processor in it: it runs Gamecube games on the Broadway processor after it underclocks itself. Same with the Espresso inside the Wii U. This is possible because, save obvious generational differences, the architecture is mostly the same— PowerPC processor with an AMD GPU.

BC works across GCN, Wii, and Wii U like it did specifically because there were basically no generational improvements, with one notable exception. There were a few additional bells and whistles on the Wii over the GCN, but the system was ultimately fairly literally an overclocked GCN. Similarly, the Wii U CPU is basically 3 Wii CPUs duct taped together, while the GPU is the one major upgraded component, but with a built in special BC mode.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Isn't Ray reconstruction only available in RT Overdrive mode for Cyberpunk (which is path traced?)

This is a result of the feature being relatively new and untested. It has been made clear in interviews that it is not specific to path tracing workloads.

 

[LiC]

microSD Express Doubles Speeds, New SD Express Speed Classes Introduced

SD Association (SDA) today announced the latest evolution of SD Express memory cards doubling microSD Express memory card speed up to 2GB/s, plus four

www.businesswire.com

Remember this commit?

soc: tegra: fuse: enable apbmisc_base access for T239 · OE4T/linux-tegra-5.10@dd163bf

Enable apbmisc_base register space access for Tegra239 chips, as this is required for various API's in SD express mode. Bug 3584095 Change-Id: I200fe49beba4013845512d287f9e14124679851c Signed...

github.com

To be clear, this just means that T239 can make use of SD Express cards, not that Nintendo's hardware will do so. But I personally expect Nintendo to keep on supporting the slow-ass UHS-I SD cards people are using on their current Switch models, and if an SD Express reader gives them a convenient way to do that while also giving access to the faster current cards, that would make a lot of sense.

 

[Paraspikey]

You can tell it's a YouTube embed because of the youtu.be link left behind in it now, which is not visible in the archived version. And although the embed doesn't seem to load in the archive, I did poke around in its HTML and confirm that it was a YouTube embed.

Thank you, I’ll edit the post to remove mention of it.

 

[Ojoloco]

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

This is a result of the feature being relatively new and untested. It has been made clear in interviews that it is not specific to path tracing workloads.

I mean, yes, I'm just saying we have no examples of it used in more limited situations that are semi-plausible on consoles currently.

It's just one of many denoisers. In situations with more limited or lower quality ray-tracing, it may not outperform non-ML denoisers or could come at a huge performance cost. We just have no examples.

 

[darthdiablo]

Translation:

jpsoldier: Will GTA6 be released on Switch 2?

NecroFelipe: Yes

 

[Meelow]

Translation:

jpsoldier: Will GTA6 be released on Switch 2?

NecroFelipe: Yes

If true it will probably be in the announcement trailer (if the game is announced of course).

 

[Skittzo]

Can't ray tracing also be used for certain physics or logic simulations? I swear I saw something about it helping design non-euclidean geometry or something nuts like that

 

[Paraspikey]

Translation:

jpsoldier: Will GTA6 be released on Switch 2?

NecroFelipe: Yes

How many third party games do people seemingly know about that hasn’t leaked yet via other outlets? The game coming to Switch 2 makes sense, since we know more about its hardware, it’ll definitely be able to run well with not much downside. These are just massive games, I’d assume we would see more people back up these claims very soon, no?

Maybe that’s a reason why we know so much about the hardware side of things. A lot of major teams are working with the hardware/devkits, more so then most previous Nintendo consoles.

 

[eye0h]

Translation:

jpsoldier: Will GTA6 be released on Switch 2?

NecroFelipe: Yes

Imagine if that's how they premiered it, in a Switch 2 First Look Trailer. Would be legendary.

Also necrofelipe is a journalist, I don't think he is making any serious claims. I feel like if he had a scoop that big he wouldn't reveal it in a twitter thread over an article but idk maybe that's just how he does stuff.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Can't ray tracing also be used for certain physics or logic simulations? I swear I saw something about it helping design non-euclidean geometry or something nuts like that

yes, they can. physics, audio, spatial. anything that involves traversal through space/time

 

[lemonfresh]

Imagine if that's how they premiered it, in a Switch 2 First Look Trailer. Would be legendary.

the meltdowns from console warriors would be funny at least

 

[BreakAtmo]

RR does effectively cheapen the cost of RT relative to the quality you're getting out of it. As you said, its primary goal is to denoise RT while not interfering with the information DLSS needs to produce a high quality image. Because of that, you have the performance savings of DLSS available to you (rendering the frame, including the RT effects, at a lower internal resolution to save frame time) without sacrificing quality..

It should be compatible with DLSS concurrency, right? An extra frame of latency is probably worth it.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Remember this commit?

soc: tegra: fuse: enable apbmisc_base access for T239 · OE4T/linux-tegra-5.10@dd163bf

Enable apbmisc_base register space access for Tegra239 chips, as this is required for various API's in SD express mode. Bug 3584095 Change-Id: I200fe49beba4013845512d287f9e14124679851c Signed...

github.com

To be clear, this just means that T239 can make use of SD Express cards, not that Nintendo's hardware will do so. But I personally expect Nintendo to keep on supporting the slow-ass UHS-I SD cards people are using on their current Switch models, and if an SD Express reader gives them a convenient way to do that while also giving access to the faster current cards, that would make a lot of sense.

I broadly think Nintendo's willingness to retain UHS-I support ends at the point where it requires a second, non-overlapping slot. They're probably not going to go super out of their way to do it.

 

[bmfrosty]

Remember this commit?

soc: tegra: fuse: enable apbmisc_base access for T239 · OE4T/linux-tegra-5.10@dd163bf

Enable apbmisc_base register space access for Tegra239 chips, as this is required for various API's in SD express mode. Bug 3584095 Change-Id: I200fe49beba4013845512d287f9e14124679851c Signed...

github.com

To be clear, this just means that T239 can make use of SD Express cards, not that Nintendo's hardware will do so. But I personally expect Nintendo to keep on supporting the slow-ass UHS-I SD cards people are using on their current Switch models, and if an SD Express reader gives them a convenient way to do that while also giving access to the faster current cards, that would make a lot of sense.

I like to be optimistic about this. https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...peeds-New-SD-Express-Speed-Classes-Introduced -

The latest generation of microSD Express uses the PCIe interface delivering a 1,969 megabytes per second (MB/s), nearly 2 gigabytes per second (GB/s) speeds by using the PCIe Gen4 x1 lane as defined in the latest update to the microSD Addendum version 8 specification. microSD Express was introduced with 985 MB/s speed maximum data transfer rate and the NVMe upper layer protocol in the SD 7.1 specification. The increase in speed gives product designers more storage options and SSD level performance for a variety of size constrained devices requiring easily repairable or upgradeable storage.

Maybe they're updating the spec for absolutely no reason at all since it's supposedly a dead format.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I like to be optimistic about this. https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...peeds-New-SD-Express-Speed-Classes-Introduced -

Maybe they're updating the spec for absolutely no reason at all since it's supposedly a dead format.

either they have vendors willing to make some cards to test the waters, or they're throwing a hail mary in hopes of the public pushing companies to make them

 

[Skittzo]

yes, they can. physics, audio, spatial. anything that involves traversal through space/time

FTL confirmed

 

[Concernt]

I broadly think Nintendo's willingness to retain UHS-I support ends at the point where it requires a second, non-overlappint slot. They're probably not going to go super out of their way to do it.

SD Express and/or UHS-2 seem like genuinely viable ways to solve a lot of the problems that the expandable storage for a next gen console question creates. Here's hoping.

 

[Meelow]

Imagine if that's how they premiered it, in a Switch 2 First Look Trailer. Would be legendary.

Also necrofelipe is a journalist, I don't think he is making any serious claims. I feel like if he had a scoop that big he wouldn't reveal it in a twitter thread over an article but idk maybe that's just how he does stuff.

I mean giving the money to Rockstar to have them announce the game alongside Switch 2 would be genius. The reaction and hype alone would be insane.

And not necessarily, he might want to protect his sources and/or doesn't want to confirm anything he isn't 100% sure of yet.

 

[Atheerios]

I like to be optimistic about this. https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...peeds-New-SD-Express-Speed-Classes-Introduced -

Maybe they're updating the spec for absolutely no reason at all since it's supposedly a dead format.

Yeah I don’t think this is it. This article is also from today.

SD Express Got an Update But It Still Won't Make the Format Work

The dream of SD Express remains just that – a dream.

petapixel.com

Another issue with SD Express is heat management. PCIe is great because of its speed, but the cards can get very hot. Because they are so thin, an SD card that attempts to run at the same speed as a CFexpress will get so hot the plastic will melt unless it is thermally throttled, which will drop performance and defeat the purpose of using PCIe to begin with.

That, in short, is why SD Express was dead on arrival when it was announced and remains deep in the ground to this day. Lexar said it was making SD Express cards two years ago, but those never came to market and the company hasn’t mentioned the format since. Cards from other manufacturers that have come to market have — unsurprisingly — not impressed

 

[lemonfresh]

I mean giving the money to Rockstar to have them announce the gane alongside Switch 2 would be genius. The reaction and hype alone would be insane.

And not necessarily, he might want to protect his sources and/or doesn't want to confirm anything he isn't 100% sure of yet.

I will be f5ing the purple site all day if that happens

 

[eye0h]

And not necessarily, he might want to protect his sources and/or doesn't want to confirm anything he isn't 100% sure of yet.

he said it's coming to switch ng that's confirmation already article or not

 

[LiC]

Yeah I don’t think this is it. This article is also from today.

SD Express Got an Update But It Still Won't Make the Format Work

The dream of SD Express remains just that – a dream.

petapixel.com

This author seems to have an admitted personal vendetta against SD Express. It's kind of weird.

I think you can just set these articles aside and say the most obvious reason why SD Express cards wouldn't be used is the fact that they simply don't exist on the market.

 

[Machrider]

Yeah I don’t think this is it. This article is also from today.

SD Express Got an Update But It Still Won't Make the Format Work

The dream of SD Express remains just that – a dream.

petapixel.com

Yikes at the heat comment. No wonder no cameras out there really use SD Card Express.

Nintendo really actually does in this case have a 100% valid reason to make proprietary cards. There's nothing widely available that works at the speed that they probably want, and having one set of cards made by Nintendo would ensure developers can be assured of a certain speed/performance.

 

[bmfrosty]

Yeah I don’t think this is it. This article is also from today.

SD Express Got an Update But It Still Won't Make the Format Work

The dream of SD Express remains just that – a dream.

petapixel.com

There's plenty of argument for and against. The best for argument is that Nintendo could support the format all on their own and make the market for it happen. The argument against that I keeps seeing is power draw and heat, and both of those are manageable. For heat, it can just be policy backed up in software to not run it too hard for too long. It's the exact same thing for power management. Yeah - one could draw 1.8w of power on it's own, but if the console has 16 gigs of ram, then that's 8 seconds to completely fill ram. Less if compression is thrown in. Sustained transfer at speed is where you start getting into trouble. Power draw and heat probably scale fairly close to linearly with data rate/time. Idle power draw on NVMe media can be really really low. It becomes the difference between sustained lower power draw for lower speeds with regular SD vs bursty power draw with SDExpress and fast speeds.

 

[Brawlz]

I have no idea what Ray Reconstruction is, but the name is kickass.

 

[bmfrosty]

Yikes at the heat comment. No wonder no cameras out there really use SD Card Express.

Nintendo really actually does in this case have a 100% valid reason to make proprietary cards. There's nothing widely available that works at the speed that they probably want, and having one set of cards made by Nintendo would ensure developers can be assured of a certain speed/performance.

CFExpress (what cameras and the Xbox Series use) is the same, but different form factor. CFExpress established itself in the prosumer camera arena early, and got picked up by the xbox since they have no real size concerns and it was already an established product line.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

It allows devs to more easily do quality lighting and reflections.

The Switch 2 is likely far too weak to use it to do much outside of a couple edge cases. Ray tracing is far too demanding for most games for the PS5 and Xbox Series X (with Spider-Man 2 being the only game to use it without massive performance or resolution issues)

(Ray tracing is also used everywhere outside of video games and is used in every animated film… It’s very much not a fad)

I could see Nintendo EPD making some path traced StarFox 99 game that looks like StarFox 64 with good lighting (ala Half Life raytraced), but we'll see how else (if at all) NVIDIA's ray reconstruction is used.

These are the most bizarre trains of thought you could lead to, the fact that you think it’s too weak but can also do path tracing is crazy.

And to look like 64 graphics at that, sir if you believe the former you cannot expect the latter. These are two opposing situations. If it’s too weak and you use the PS5 and Series as comparison, it won’t be doing path tracing. If it’s doing path tracing it’s cause it’s more than enough. Pick one.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

These are the most bizarre trains of thought you could lead to, the fact that you think it’s too weak but can also do path tracing is crazy.

And to look like 64 graphics at that, sir if you believe the former you cannot expect the latter. These are two opposing situations. If it’s too weak and you use the PS5 and Series as comparison, it won’t be doing path tracing. If it’s doing path tracing it’s cause it’s more than enough. Pick one.

I’m pretty sure you can significantly lower the cost of ray tracing if you make the geometry simple enough. I’m talking about a game that looks like an N64 game but is path traced as a novelty thing as those games look interesting when modded with path tracing.

I’m not talking about Nintendo’s main games doing this, just maybe one ever to experiment with doing the hyper simplistic geometry plus path tracing approach.

 

[robertman2]

Super Mario 64 RT or I'll put an elaborate story into a Mario game, while Miyamoto is forced to watch

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Super Mario 64 RT or I'll put an elaborate story into a Mario game, while Miyamoto is forced to watch

Super Mario 64 RT looks pretty bad and is available now, lol. The PC modding community is obsessed with making it look like the shitty promotional material for some reason.

 

[lemonfresh]

wave race rt or bust