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Bigger Than Godzilla: Why Are Games Using So Many Gigabytes?
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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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I have a problem with that last sentence. Because larger files do take longer to load from storage into main memory, and then longer to load into VRAM from main memory. Also, with larger files, you can't keep them cached and ready to be reused, because you have to free that memory for other large files.
Your argument might be true if computers generally had RAM and/or VRAM larger than the entire game. But when games are 200+GB and typical main memory is 16-32GB for most folks, and only 64-128GB at the higher end, you know data will have to be shuffled around. VRAM situation is more dire: typical is 6-8GB, high end is 12-16GB and absolute max is 20-24GB.
Yes, faster storage and faster RAM help, but all those loads and unloads of huge chunks of data do take up time, cause stutters, or absurdly long loading screens despite the high performance components.
OPTIMIZE YOUR GAMES. Lossy compression is fine, and uncompressed assets should be optional downloads.
Decompressing an asset so that it can be used is an operation that takes processor cycles as well. It's why Titanfall 1 came in so high on storage requirements at the time, because in order to meet CPU performance targets, they had to leave audio uncompressed. In this case, huge texture asset files are often LODs, high detail versions for when you're up close and low detail versions for when you're far away, so that the machine is always loading the right size version of the asset rather than just always using the best quality one in a worst case like you seem to be implying. This takes up a lot of storage space, but it means they aren't wastefully using high detail assets for a mountain a mile and a half away.
Uncompressed WAV files, lol I'll never get over that
It doesn't even make sense. Simple compression algorithms like in use by FLAC or AAC are pretty much free to decompress on CPUs from this century and the cpu cycles you save by not doing wasteful IO of huge files from storage easily makes up for that.
I'm sure game devs can make some argument to not use 'expensive' compression, but not using any is just wasteful.
...sounds good though, i guess??