Sony's PSSG Project - Interview with SCE R&D manager Jason Doig

[xbdestroya]

Ok guys, here's the interview I hinted at yesterday in the Colin McRae (http://forums.e-mpire.com/showthread.php?t=63703) thread.

Hope you enjoy! :smoke:

http://psinext.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=3&m_articles_articleid=722

[Siraris]

Yay :)

[yoshaw]

Thanks Xb :thumbr: +rep for the interview

[Insane Metal]

Cool ! :)

But can anybody make a summary please ? Too much technical info for me ;)

[xbdestroya]

Just read it Insane. ;)

You'll get the idea... I promise!

[wotter]

Great interview Xb!

[Insane Metal]

Just read it Insane. ;)

You'll get the idea... I promise!

Yeah, sorry I´m lazy lol :)

[GTAce]

Great man, thanks for that! +rep.

[antuk15]

Basically its an engine for PS3, they have spent months on it. They have done all the hardwork ( debugging, codeing, fault finding ) so that developers dont have to.

[yoshaw]

Basically its an engine for PS3, they have spent years on it. They have done all the hardwork ( debugging, codeing, fault finding ) so that developers dont have to.

Fixed ;)

[xbdestroya]

Basically its an engine for PS3, they have spent months on it. They have done all the hardwork ( debugging, codeing, fault finding ) so that developers dont have to.

You're missing all the good stuff with that synopsis Antuk. ;)

[Pumpkin Head]

Thanks good read.

[Crossbar]

Basically its an engine for PS3, they have spent months on it.
About three years actually!!!!!

Great stuff, good investment Sony!!!!

Thanks Xb, good questions. :thumbl:

[xbdestroya]

Alright you lazies, I'll provide some of what *I* feel are highlights, for those of you who can't get past two paragraphs without your eyes glazing over. ;)

...The animation system is one of the best examples of this approach, but we have also applied it to other areas as well... such as the traversal of the scene-graph itself and towards processing streams of geometry (we used to call this "Geometry Shading" but then the term was adopted elsewhere!). The geometry processing is a powerful feature we have; it adds a very flexible pre-vertex-shading stage to the graphics pipeline. Using this we can, for example, create procedural geometry on the fly. Again this is simple for a developer to make use of, and PSSG itself manages the task of pipelining the data and running the code in parallel. It's also modular, so you can connect any number of geometry processes together to create a "network" of processing stages for any given effect or situation. We even have GUI tools so that networks can be viewed or edited by an artist...

...This should give us PS3 developers a lot of flexibility to keep up with any changes in the way CPUs and GPUs work in the PC space, where there seems to be a trend back towards unifying everything. PSSG for example, treats the interface between the geometry pipeline (usually running on SPEs) and a vertex shader in the same way as it treats the interface between the vertex shader and the pixel shader. So it's just a backward extension of the pipeline onto the main CPU, where everything is much more flexible. The two things you mention - lighting and particles - are things that we can already drop fairly seamlessly into the PSSG geometry pipeline and run on SPEs. Particle processing especially has an advantage over current GPU based techniques because of the generality of the SPE (and over a traditional CPU as well due to the speed and parallelism of Cell). Using SPEs as a front end to the GPU opens up a lot of interesting avenues and I'd be very surprised not to see people explore them...

...I'm really fired up for this coming generation - Cell in particular is a very powerful and versatile piece of hardware. I think that we've only begun to scratch the surface of the things we can do with it, and I'm very excited to see what people will come up with a few years down the line. The level of improvement shown between generations of software on previous platforms could be even greater on PS3 - and considering how good things are looking right now, I think the future is very bright indeed.

On the industry in general, my personal view is that this generation will see a lot of change in the way things are done - notably the trend towards bigger projects cannot be sustained much longer. While this transition might be hard on some companies, I think ultimately we'll get back to an environment where anyone can make a game. Good technology will stop being a black art, and will become much more of a commodity you can buy in - either pre-packaged or by sub-contracting the right talent per-project (which is what happens in the movie business). What I'd like to do is raise the bar on the quality and value of the technology available, because right now a lot of people still think they're better off on their own...

And of course there's the root of the entire interview, which is that this is the technology thhat forms the basis of the Neon engine, and it's actually being used by many more devs than we've heard about yet; all free of charge.

[GUNDAMSEED]

good as always XB, the more CELL news the better , i am such CELL whore

[Siraris]

XB, did Jason give you any indication of how much next-gen projects cost on PS3 compared to 360 at this point in the game, and how much PSSG could potentially reduce those costs?

[xbdestroya]

XB, did Jason give you any indication of how much next-gen projects cost on PS3 compared to 360 at this point in the game, and how much PSSG could potentially reduce those costs?

Great question. We didn't deal with exact costs, but the answer is a hell of a lot more than last gen for AAA products. It's not so much a cost reduction per say, so much as an efficiency increase (and a hassle aggravation decrease). As time goes on, Collada by itself will have an increasingly beneficial effect in that area. Specific to what Jason's team created themselves though with the art pipeline interface, I think that was a very nice touch.

I have a feeling right now his team is looking at procedural generation in a very serious way, and I'm excited to see what they eventually come up with.

[Crossbar]

XB: Maybe a bit technical question, but did they supply the source code for all those libraries?

If they did it would be great, because it would make it so much more useful and serve as educational material as well for the developers.

[Siraris]

XB: Maybe a bit technical question, but did they supply the source code for all those libraries?

If they did it would be great, because it would make it so much more useful and serve as educational material as well for the developers.

Everything is available to anyone who licenses PSSG.

[xbdestroya]

XB: Maybe a bit technical question, but did they supply the source code for all those libraries?

If they did it would be great, because it would make it so much more useful and serve as educational material as well for the developers.

Hmmm, well from quotes like this:

...We've spent a lot of time analyzing the performance of our code, identifying which sections we should optimize or move onto SPEs, and of course we've applied that knowledge to maximize both PPU and SPE performance. This is a continual process, and although I'm happy with the performance now, we're going to keep improving it. Even if a developer didn't want to adopt our code, they can see how we've approached various aspects of the design, and those design decisions should be informative. If developers do choose to use PSSG they get even more help, as we have instrumentation and performance monitoring functions built in for them to monitor both PSSG and their own code...

That's the impression I get, but I'll confirm for ya. :)

[LiquidEagle]

Great interview. Things got a little intense for me on the technical parts, but overall it sounds very promising and I think this is a great move by Sony's R&D to help out.

I'm still a little hazy on Codemaster's and Neon's use of PSSG though -- is PSSG basically the backbone that Codemasters built around to form Neon? Also, since this is middleware, do you think this has the potential to be like the next Renderware?

+rep :)

[Crossbar]

Hmmm, well from quotes like this:

That's the impression I get, but I'll confirm for ya. :)

Yeah, it seems like that, sorry I really need to read that magnificant piece of writing several times to digest it fully. :angel:

Did he say how many developers are working at SCEI R&D?

[EvilTaru]

Cool. Nice to see good development support to PS3 developers from Sony themselves.

[CreativeWriter]

Great interview again XB. That stuff is fascinating and I can't follow half of it. I wonder how many developers are seriously using PSSG. Jason's answer sounded optimistic (a bit like PR-speak)...

[Domination]

Not bad - this sounds like a winner. So is there a reason why SOE is using Unreal Engine 3? From the like of this middleware, it takes better advantage of the console. Hopefully many 3rd party developers will follow since it is they [Carmack] that usually complain about cost and difficulty.

[xbdestroya]

Ok well Crossbar, after asking Jason I can confirm that almost the entirety of the library is provided as source.

PSSG is definitely being used by multiple devs right now, but Codemasters is one of the largest (and earliest) that has so far decided to go that route. And indeed, it did form the initial basis of their engine development.

[EvilTaru]

Ok well Crossbar, after asking Jason I can confirm that almost the entirety of the library is provided as source.

PSSG is definitely being used by multiple devs right now, but Codemasters is one of the largest (and earliest) that has so far decided to go that route. And indeed, it did form the initial basis of their engine development.

I wonder if the larger developers will use something like that though since they would probably try to make their own multiplatform tools. Wouldn't PSSG be better than UE3 anyway because PSSG is targetting PS3 specifically and UE3 is still designed around a single PC processor? Can't wait to see games like God of War 3 come out, as much as I'm pro-DMC and DMC3 is a better game than God of War, God of War 3 will likely blow anything from Capcom away visually.

[EvilTaru]

Not bad - this sounds like a winner. So is there a reason why SOE is using Unreal Engine 3? From the like of this middleware, it takes better advantage of the console. Hopefully many 3rd party developers will follow since it is they [Carmack] that usually complain about cost and difficulty.

I think Carmack complains because the Doom 3 engine probably wouldn't get much performance out of Cell, thus the cost issue since the PS3 isn't a platform where they can milk their PC tech.

[xbdestroya]

I wonder if the larger developers will use something like that though since they would probably try to make their own multiplatform tools. Wouldn't PSSG be better than UE3 anyway because PSSG is targetting PS3 specifically and UE3 is still designed around a single PC processor? Can't wait to see games like God of War 3 come out, as much as I'm pro-DMC and DMC3 is a better game than God of War, God of War 3 will likely blow anything from Capcom away visually.


Well, depends on what a 'larger' dev is considered I guess (Codemasters not being all that small), but indeed like he said in the interview his expectation is that it will be more readily adopted by smaller dev houses. Honestly I think what's happening is PSSG is turning out to be a bigger hit than they had originally intended, and people are starting to warm up to it. But yeah, obviously devs like Naughty Dog and such are going to go their own route. It's part of the fun/challenge for them I feel!

I'd *love* to have a list of the devs using some of the PSSG library, as it was clearly indicated to me there were several, but I didn't feel it was my place to ask, or even his place to answer. That's just something that's going to have to leak out on it's own as developers feel more comfortable sharing. Though that rate may quicken now that the project has been made 'public,' aka ok to talk about.

[gozirah]

What I would like to know is whether people who are familiar with programming for the cell think there is intrinsic difference in the ceiling of potential between the cell and multi-core x86s. If library development also lends itself to aiding cross platform, it would seem as if there isn't a big shift.

Also, if there needs to be a shift to smaller scale projects, does next gen make that easier or harder? It would seem kind of ironic if it takes more content creators and money to deliver for expectations on x360 and PS3 while those in the industry keep on saying smaller scale is the way we need to go to survive. Someone tell me that the PS3 makes it easier to do AAA and small projects, please.

[xbdestroya]

What I would like to know is whether people who are familiar with programming for the cell think there is intrinsic difference in the ceiling of potential between the cell and multi-core x86s. If library development also lends itself to aiding cross platform, it would seem as if there isn't a big shift.

What does ceiling of potential have to do with code libraries lending themselves to cross-platform development? It's a matter of scale and optimization more than anything in those instances.

Also, if there needs to be a shift to smaller scale projects, does next gen make that easier or harder? It would seem kind of ironic if it takes more content creators and money to deliver for expectations on x360 and PS3 while those in the industry keep on saying smaller scale is the way we need to go to survive. Someone tell me that the PS3 makes it easier to do AAA and small projects, please.

Obviously the next gen makes any and all projects harder; what in the world is the perceived irony? It's because this gen requires so much manpower and money that devs will have to go to smaller projects. I'm not even sure what your last sentence means.

[GodMachine_Iridius_Dio]

I think the largest reason why UE3 is so prevalent is not because it's revolutionary, not because it makes use of the PS3/Xbox360 SOOOO well, not because it's the be-all, end-all engine - It is by no means - I believe the reasoning is that it's familiar, and it is designed from the ground, up, to cater to ease of production.

Right now, I'm not hearing anybody except non-techies and casual gamers screaming about how incredible and revolutionary UE3 is (save for Epic staff, and people who are pretty much obligated to say !!!OMG Teh Enginez izz-Am Teh ROXXORS!)

It's just the first neato wizz-bang new engine of this new generation, and by next year, when you get to see engines that are actually designed specifically for these new consoles, with their strengths, quirks, and weaknesses in mind, UE3 will seem like little more than a quaint rellic.

[JosVerstappen]

Interesting stuff. Sounds to me this is one of the specific things Phil H was talking about when he mentioned sharing lot's of code-knowledge between First Party devs to speed up devtime and minimise problems for the 'difficult' new PS3 architecture for newcomers.

If Sony builds, or already has, a hot free engine for the PS3, it probably is their highest priority to get that spread to the devs to maximise game-results and impress consumers rather sooner than later in the console-lifetime. If they started 3 years ago on this project, and let's say most devs started 2 years and some 3 years ago at their PS3 games, it was too late for most of them to check if this engine was suited. This is probably why this guy is trying to convince more devs now to try it, because it probably is very well rounded up for use now. Sony provided ressources to make that thing free for everyone, and they don't want it to be for nothing.

What I would like to know is what the credentials are from this guy and his team. Is he more of a experienced engine/code-expert from the gamingworld that was assigned by Sony to work on SDK development (coming from SCE London for example), or more of hardware expert from IBM who exactly knows how the Cell works and now trying to optimise and convert this knowledge into an SDK engine.

I also wonder if most talented teams like Naughty D, Insomniac, Zipper, Guerilla, SCE Santa M use this engine, or that they mostly trust on their own expertise. Maybe you should ask him of he had a look in the kitchen of other wellknown PS3-devs (he says his team provides lot's of help with all kinds of Cell-aspects for everyone), and how he thinks his engine holds up against the best. From what I hear (just hints and rumors, not facts) Naughty Dog and Guerilla are probably working on the most advanced PS3-stuff engine-wise, and I don't know if they involve PSSG right now in their works. Could be.

[ddaryl]

that was one of the best interviews I've read. Lots of interesting info, and excellent questions.

Can't wait to see what PSSG produces in a couple of years for devs

[Crossbar]

I think the largest reason why UE3 is so prevalent is not because it's revolutionary, not because it makes use of the PS3/Xbox360 SOOOO well, not because it's the be-all, end-all engine - It is by no means - I believe the reasoning is that it's familiar, and it is designed from the ground, up, to cater to ease of production.

Right now, I'm not hearing anybody except non-techies and casual gamers screaming about how incredible and revolutionary UE3 is (save for Epic staff, and people who are pretty much obligated to say !!!OMG Teh Enginez izz-Am Teh ROXXORS!)

It's just the first neato wizz-bang new engine of this new generation, and by next year, when you get to see engines that are actually designed specifically for these new consoles, with their strengths, quirks, and weaknesses in mind, UE3 will seem like little more than a quaint rellic.

Good points! There is also some comercial risk going with a engine like U3 that Andrew Oliver of Blitz pointed out:
The Unreal engine and toolset is very good and is becoming the obvious choice for many developers, but it's certainly not the only choice. That's where, I feel, a lot of people are making mistakes.

We had this five years ago, when everyone was going on about RenderWare, and I had to defend the fact that we do our own middleware to publishers who were saying, "Look, it's stupid for you to have your own middleware when you can buy RenderWare off the shelf and it's really good, really reliable and everything else."

We just said, "Well ours is good, and ours is really reliable, and we're going to carry on and extend ours because then we can be in control of our own destiny. God knows, something might happen to RenderWare, and then we're knackered." And people thought it was a joke, and it's like, well, it happened, you know?

And just like RenderWare got bought by EA, Unreal - I'd be bloody surprised if they're not in discussions with Microsoft or someone about being bought. I'd be really surprised if they're not. Put it this way - that's what these people do.
http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=20571

I wonder what kind of agreement EA and other companies that has commited totally to UE3 have with Epic, in the case Epic get bought by, let say Microsoft. I hope they have some option of buying out the source code of the engine, so they can secure the future support of the platforms of their choice, by taking over the development of the engine. That is my guess.

The PSSG will hopefully provide some kind of neutral middle ground for small publishers, where they can make certain games without getting to dependant on Epic and such. Depending on how good the crossplatform capabilities of PSSG are, that Jason mentions, I think the PSSG may be what will help leverage the Cell in many crossplatform games. :)

[xbdestroya]

Jos you raise some points, and I'm going to address them case by case to help clarify the situation.

Interesting stuff. Sounds to me this is one of the specific things Phil H was talking about when he mentioned sharing lot's of code-knowledge between First Party devs to speed up devtime and minimise problems for the 'difficult' new PS3 architecture for newcomers.

You know, I honestly don't know, but I don't think so...

The software (games) side and the hardware (R&D) side of the equation are totally seperate, and he and his team don't fall under Phil Harrison's umbrella. I *do* know what you're refering to, and I think that it mainly deals with first party developers sharing techniques and practices to build their own collective knowledge base on the matter of designing to PS3. The PSSG project represents a different initiative altogether, to provide a modular middleware solution directly (and free) from Sony that can help devs otherwise fumbling around quickly begin extracting some performance from the PS3 system and getting a handle on the SPEs. In fact, by having the source code included, even if the dev were to pass on it's inclusion, it's educational if nothing else.

If Sony builds, or already has, a hot free engine for the PS3, it probably is their highest priority to get that spread to the devs to maximise game-results and impress consumers rather sooner than later in the console-lifetime. If they started 3 years ago on this project, and let's say most devs started 2 years and some 3 years ago at their PS3 games, it was too late for most of them to check if this engine was suited. This is probably why this guy is trying to convince more devs now to try it, because it probably is very well rounded up for use now. Sony provided ressources to make that thing free for everyone, and they don't want it to be for nothing.

I think that the word on it is spreading. The initial mental barrier I think for a lot of devs was simply 'oh it's from Sony, so it's either going to trap me or it's going to suck.' But as more and more devs use it (and like it), obviously the more and more devs that are going to feel increasingly comfortable giving it a try. That it was featured at both 'Devstation' and the 'Develop' developer events this year probably indicates it's being properly 'marketed' at this point as well.

I think the ultimate goal with PSSG is to turn it into the *the* turn-key PS3 engine development solution. It's not a full engine in itself from which all games will be built or anything, but it provides an increasingly known quantity that keeps developers from having to shop around extensively with third parties and negotiate with Epic, for example. And they know it has strong support from within Sony and will continue to be built-out. The art assist, the SPE assist, the graphics assist... all of it is focused towards helping the non 'big bank' dev houses create and put out a high quality game while taking some of the internal R&D edge off.

What I would like to know is what the credentials are from this guy and his team. Is he more of a experienced engine/code-expert from the gamingworld that was assigned by Sony to work on SDK development (coming from SCE London for example), or more of hardware expert from IBM who exactly knows how the Cell works and now trying to optimise and convert this knowledge into an SDK engine.

I can't speak to hhis team per se, but he's straight up software. He's been developing for a long long time, and his history at Sony sort begins with engine work at first-party studio Psygnosis. From there he joined the R&D team for PS2 tools creation (he worked on the performance analyzer), and three years ago was tapped to head up the PSSG team.

I also wonder if most talented teams like Naughty D, Insomniac, Zipper, Guerilla, SCE Santa M use this engine, or that they mostly trust on their own expertise. Maybe you should ask him of he had a look in the kitchen of other wellknown PS3-devs (he says his team provides lot's of help with all kinds of Cell-aspects for everyone), and how he thinks his engine holds up against the best. From what I hear (just hints and rumors, not facts) Naughty Dog and Guerilla are probably working on the most advanced PS3-stuff engine-wise, and I don't know if they involve PSSG right now in their works. Could be.

I think all those devs you initially mentioned, will likely use their own stuff; it just seems their style. When your outfit has a long and proud tradition of engine development - as a lot of those studios do - or if it's an area in which you feel your team excels, it's worth it to keep that R&D in house to keep the skills on the team sharp. I view it like this, the devs tat you would normally associate with coming up with their own engine, will probably still do so... but the devs that might otherwise look to UE3 or other licensed solutions, PSSG is for them. That it's free and that Sony will help you make it into 'your own' engine - like with Codemasters - I think provides a good bit of appeal, and hey, it's even multi-platform friendly!

[Sephiroth_VII]

Good interview XB. I'll reccomend that all of you lazy bastards go and read the entire interview. There are a lot of things not in XB's summary.

[edoshin]

I think its the case that rather than the Playstation devs whom we've come to respect such as Naughty Dog and Insomiac adopting the engine, its the other way around where Sony worked closely with these devs, and as such, the knowledge exchange has been incorporated in some part thru lessons learned into this engine.

[curryking1]

God Machine, I totally agree with you, it's like you took the words out of my mouth but made them better. I hardly see the UE3 engine as being the engine that we get the most technically sound games out of.

[xbdestroya]

Thanks Sephiroth. Indeed, everyone get to reading, because every answer Jason gives lends that much more insight. :smoke:

I think its the case that rather than the Playstation devs whom we've come to respect such as Naughty Dog and Insomiac adopting the engine, its the other way around where Sony worked closely with these devs, and as such, the knowledge exchange has been incorporated in some part thru lessons learned into this engine.

Well I just want to emphasize here that the PSSG project does incorporate developer feedback, but it truly is a homegrown middleware solution without roots in Sony's first-party development teams. Part of the mission from the start has been to balance SPE optimization with multi-platform utility. And there are actually several projects afoot at Sony, because remember this is just one of four Euopean software R&D teams Sony runs (albeit the largest), so I'd be itnerested to know what the others are up to as well! ;)

[LaLiLuLeLo]

So it's a middleware engine for getting the a lot of the PS3's potential out(?)

[section]

Yes, also allowing cross platform development both sides. Sony is very sneaky with this thing in my opinion, in a good way. They allow their platform potential to shine and at the same time allow the other PowerPC platforms to get things done, assumingly the Cell being the main platform for the development while the other platforms are ported from that code base.

Assumingly Microsoft does the same thing with their compiler and SDK infrastructures to their competition :)

[OmniCloud]

More evidence that PS3 will have some incredible software...Sounds good XB-i'll read the whole thing later and comment...

[gozirah]

What does ceiling of potential have to do with code libraries lending themselves to cross-platform development? It's a matter of scale and optimization more than anything in those instances.

Okay, I think I get it. So there are lessons to be learned from coding with the cell you can take anywhere. But the cell may be able to do it more efficiently?


Obviously the next gen makes any and all projects harder; what in the world is the perceived irony? It's because this gen requires so much manpower and money that devs will have to go to smaller projects. I'm not even sure what your last sentence means.

All I mean is that better hardware supposedly should give developers more power. So it's ironic that they should step back and say let's do less. Perhaps its not ironic if they do nex-gen quality, but skimp on the quantity.

[Domination]

I think the largest reason why UE3 is so prevalent is not because it's revolutionary, not because it makes use of the PS3/Xbox360 SOOOO well, not because it's the be-all, end-all engine - It is by no means - I believe the reasoning is that it's familiar, and it is designed from the ground, up, to cater to ease of production.

Right now, I'm not hearing anybody except non-techies and casual gamers screaming about how incredible and revolutionary UE3 is (save for Epic staff, and people who are pretty much obligated to say !!!OMG Teh Enginez izz-Am Teh ROXXORS!)

It's just the first neato wizz-bang new engine of this new generation, and by next year, when you get to see engines that are actually designed specifically for these new consoles, with their strengths, quirks, and weaknesses in mind, UE3 will seem like little more than a quaint rellic.

I totally agree with you!