4 ms·

Off the shelf yes, but wow…. The requirements for Unreal are unreal. Recent versions handle real-time global illumination (Lumen) and dynamically render geomet

by Daub 4y ago

Off the shelf yes, but wow…. The requirements for Unreal are unreal. Recent versions handle real-time global illumination (Lumen) and dynamically render geometry to insane levels of detail (nanite). Both of these are groundbreaking achievements. But having had to install this in a bunch of university computers I can tell you that it comes at a cost. Interestingly, the most significant issue is the space these installations require. We have optimized our installation as much as we can, but we nonetheless had to introduce systems whereby local storage was wiped clean every two weeks.

solardev 4y ago
Wait, disk space was the limiting factor, not GPUs?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I couldn't find the exact video, but Digital Foundry did a great breakdown on the performance bottlenecks in Unreal 5. They showed how disk speed directly influenced asset streaming, and it was pretty interesting to watch. Their HDD-speed drive choked constantly when running the UE5 demo, but a SATA SSD had enough bandwidth to handle the assets. So, it's kinda a weird spot to be. Not every scene was streaming 250mb/s of assets, but when it did the worse drives took a notable hit to performance.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    Are these types of assets typically compressed?
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Depends on the system, AFAIK. Modern consoles have so much disk bandwidth that compression is completely unnecessary, but PS5 and Xbox both have APIs for streaming and decompressing compressed assets. I haven't seen any titles using them, and it's doubtful that we'll reach a point where it's required with modern systems. That being said, compression would be an interesting avenue to explore for SD cards and SATA drives. The performance add can be pretty marginal, but sometimes that's just what these drives need.
- chabad360 4y ago
  Yep, unreal is surprisingly efficient on the graphics side of things, but it also wants 70-something GB just to install and that's before it starts setting up the graphics cache which adds another 40 GB iirc.
  - jupp0r 4y ago
    1TB SSDs are $90.
    - chabad360 4y ago
      Yes, but it's a bit hard to convince your boss to allow buying a lot of them (just 10 is already $900).
      - jupp0r 4y ago
        I found it harder to justify those VR goggles.
    - birksherty 4y ago
      HN is rich and detached from reality in other parts of the world. People still have to manage their savings to buy storage in non rich world.
      - jupp0r 4y ago
        How much is the rest of a VR setup?
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      And thanks to inflation, while $90 used to be like six to eight bags of groceries not that long ago, now it's only two or three. So that's not like you can buy much else with that $90.
    - jbverschoor 4y ago
      And 2TB is like $120
- Daub 4y ago
  Yep. The install size of unreal is a known issue: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7vwGnKSbmE&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7vwGnKSbmE&feature=youtu.be Our lab computors have 500gb of space. Each time a new profile is activated by a student, that eats up around 5 to 10 gig. In addition… Video editing eats up storage space like there is no tomorrow (the Cache requirements of Resolve are another issue). Nanite supports scene with very dance meshes (downloaded directly from Unreals online store). These add up quickly in terms of file size, especially as each comes in several versions, with multiple levels of detail. Ideally we would have liked to install more than one version of Unreal. Unreal updates regularly and files created with each version cannot be guaranteed to be opened by subsequent versions. However, this was one saving we made. There are sample files which are actually very instructive but which we did not install. All of these issues compounded and towards the end of sem we were having a tough time.
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    A 2tb ssd is little over 100. There's no good reason this isn't upgraded
    - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
      Exactly. I don’t understand why universities don’t factor in human costs. If it requires manual intervention every 2 weeks, investing $100 should be a no brainer.
  - Haga 4y ago
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    > Our lab computors have 500gb of space. There's your problem. Development and content creation machines need far more disk than this. It doesn't have to be the OS drive; a data drive or two is usually fine, but 500GB in total is far too little.
MisterTea 4y ago
> The requirements for Unreal are unreal. This has been true since 1998.
- Daub 4y ago
  True. But the recent releases are a little better. We looked into using Unreal at school a few years ago but rejected it. This year was the first time we felt that our lab machines were equal to the task.

by Daub 4y ago

solardev 4y ago

Wait, disk space was the limiting factor, not GPUs?

smoldesu 4y ago
I couldn't find the exact video, but Digital Foundry did a great breakdown on the performance bottlenecks in Unreal 5. They showed how disk speed directly influenced asset streaming, and it was pretty interesting to watch. Their HDD-speed drive choked constantly when running the UE5 demo, but a SATA SSD had enough bandwidth to handle the assets. So, it's kinda a weird spot to be. Not every scene was streaming 250mb/s of assets, but when it did the worse drives took a notable hit to performance.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  Are these types of assets typically compressed?
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Depends on the system, AFAIK. Modern consoles have so much disk bandwidth that compression is completely unnecessary, but PS5 and Xbox both have APIs for streaming and decompressing compressed assets. I haven't seen any titles using them, and it's doubtful that we'll reach a point where it's required with modern systems. That being said, compression would be an interesting avenue to explore for SD cards and SATA drives. The performance add can be pretty marginal, but sometimes that's just what these drives need.
chabad360 4y ago
Yep, unreal is surprisingly efficient on the graphics side of things, but it also wants 70-something GB just to install and that's before it starts setting up the graphics cache which adds another 40 GB iirc.
- jupp0r 4y ago
  1TB SSDs are $90.
  - chabad360 4y ago
    Yes, but it's a bit hard to convince your boss to allow buying a lot of them (just 10 is already $900).
    - jupp0r 4y ago
      I found it harder to justify those VR goggles.
  - birksherty 4y ago
    HN is rich and detached from reality in other parts of the world. People still have to manage their savings to buy storage in non rich world.
    - jupp0r 4y ago
      How much is the rest of a VR setup?
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    And thanks to inflation, while $90 used to be like six to eight bags of groceries not that long ago, now it's only two or three. So that's not like you can buy much else with that $90.
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    And 2TB is like $120
Daub 4y ago
Yep. The install size of unreal is a known issue: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7vwGnKSbmE&feature=youtu.be https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n7vwGnKSbmE&feature=youtu.be Our lab computors have 500gb of space. Each time a new profile is activated by a student, that eats up around 5 to 10 gig. In addition… Video editing eats up storage space like there is no tomorrow (the Cache requirements of Resolve are another issue). Nanite supports scene with very dance meshes (downloaded directly from Unreals online store). These add up quickly in terms of file size, especially as each comes in several versions, with multiple levels of detail. Ideally we would have liked to install more than one version of Unreal. Unreal updates regularly and files created with each version cannot be guaranteed to be opened by subsequent versions. However, this was one saving we made. There are sample files which are actually very instructive but which we did not install. All of these issues compounded and towards the end of sem we were having a tough time.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  A 2tb ssd is little over 100. There's no good reason this isn't upgraded
  - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
    Exactly. I don’t understand why universities don’t factor in human costs. If it requires manual intervention every 2 weeks, investing $100 should be a no brainer.
- Haga 4y ago
- naikrovek 4y ago
  > Our lab computors have 500gb of space. There's your problem. Development and content creation machines need far more disk than this. It doesn't have to be the OS drive; a data drive or two is usually fine, but 500GB in total is far too little.

MisterTea 4y ago

> The requirements for Unreal are unreal. This has been true since 1998.

Daub 4y ago
True. But the recent releases are a little better. We looked into using Unreal at school a few years ago but rejected it. This year was the first time we felt that our lab machines were equal to the task.