What Atari needs to do with the VCS in 6 months...

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32 minutes ago, leech said:

Seems to me to be faster on better optimized operating systems like Linux.  Like my Thinkpad that has two nvme drives in a Raid 0 is sick fast.  Applications pretty much start instantly.  If it weren't for network lag and such, everything would be just scary fast.  Guess I could do a disk benchmark or something on the VCS vs my thinkpad for giggles.

For game loading, I think one of the bottlenecks is it has to load large amounts of data into main RAM, then copy it over to video RAM.   This would still be the case for Linux.  Both Windows and Linux boot in seconds, but game loading is disappointingly slow.

[youxia]

What I meant was more about how the differences are so small that I don't really observe them anymore. Unlike the HDD to SSD jump, that was pretty significant. Games...I don't know, for me they load fast enough. The only loading times I still "feel", longer than few seconds are on R* games and NMS start up.

 

Anyway, when I was buying that NVM (500GB) it wasn't that much more expensive than normal SSD, so it's a good choice for the OS/program disk.

Edited January 26, 2021 by youxia

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28 minutes ago, youxia said:

What I meant was more about how the differences are so small that I don't really observe them anymore. Unlike the HDD to SSD jump, that was pretty significant. Games...I don't know, for me they load fast enough. The only loading times I still "feel", longer than few seconds are on R* games and NMS start up.

 

Anyway, when I was buying that NVM (500GB) it wasn't that much more expensive than normal SSD, so it's a good choice for the OS/program disk.

a Gen-3 NVMe is supposed to be nearly 6X faster than SATA,   but when you see a game load tests where a games loads in say 40 seconds on a SATA and 38 seconds on an NVMe,  it's clearly not performing like it should.   I find the bigger games I play do still have a significant load time on my NVMe drive.

[explorer]

Atari VCS NEED A WIKI SITE!!! NOW!!!

 

?

[Matt_B]

4 hours ago, leech said:

For sure, let's name a few.  GTA (all of them), Assassin's Creed... oh hell ANYTHING that is third person and supports analog movement is better on a controller.

The plethora of games he mentioned like Dead Cells are also better on a controller.

Meh. I played Dead Cells to a finish with keyboard. Perhaps it's just a case of the best controller being the one you're used to.

 

Games designed for consoles first and also released on PC are obviously going to be quite playable with controllers too. I'd struggle to think of that many that were PC first that I don't prefer keyboard and mouse with though.

[youxia]

I grew up with microcomputers and later PCs, haven't used a controller till I got PSX ~1998. There are very little AAA PC-first games being made these days, I'd struggle to name any. It doesn't matter anyway...Tomb Raider or Driver would play better with a controler too when they first came out.

 

I know there's a deep-seated opposition to controllers in PC gamer circles, but I don't think it has anything to do with actual reasons, more of a throwback to the old pcmasterrace vs consoles beef.

[leech]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

a Gen-3 NVMe is supposed to be nearly 6X faster than SATA,   but when you see a game load tests where a games loads in say 40 seconds on a SATA and 38 seconds on an NVMe,  it's clearly not performing like it should.   I find the bigger games I play do still have a significant load time on my NVMe drive.

A lot of this is because of compression.  I bet the load up is fine, but it still has to decompress to memory which is where your bottle neck will be, as it will stress cpu and memory.  Granted that is just a guess.

[leech]

1 hour ago, youxia said:

What I meant was more about how the differences are so small that I don't really observe them anymore. Unlike the HDD to SSD jump, that was pretty significant. Games...I don't know, for me they load fast enough. The only loading times I still "feel", longer than few seconds are on R* games and NMS start up.

 

Anyway, when I was buying that NVM (500GB) it wasn't that much more expensive than normal SSD, so it's a good choice for the OS/program disk.

In my experience, most games do actually load a tad faster off of ext4/Linux than under Windows.  You can really notice when they have a progress bar between levels.

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1 minute ago, leech said:

A lot of this is because of compression.  I bet the load up is fine, but it still has to decompress to memory which is where your bottle neck will be, as it will stress cpu and memory.  Granted that is just a guess.

That's likely part of it too

 

It's interesting that the PS5 does decompression in dedicated hardware probably to work around this bottleneck.

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7 minutes ago, leech said:

In my experience, most games do actually load a tad faster off of ext4/Linux than under Windows.  You can really notice when they have a progress bar between levels.

I/O in general always feels slower on Windows,  but I've never measured it side by side.

[leech]

28 minutes ago, zzip said:

I/O in general always feels slower on Windows,  but I've never measured it side by side.

In the case of this, at least for the most part the I/O slownwss isn't hidden in animations and such as much as on mobile devices.

[MrMaddog]

1 hour ago, youxia said:

I know there's a deep-seated opposition to controllers in PC gamer circles, but I don't think it has anything to do with actual reasons, more of a throwback to the old pcmasterrace vs consoles beef.

That was back in the 90's when it was mostly FPS & RTS games on the PCs which do require the precision of a mouse.  Nowadays PC games are mostly console ports & indie platformers which play better with a gamepad anyway.  (Is it really hard to just buy an Xbox contoller or even a cheap $20 Logitech gamepad?)

 

(Personally I prefer using a mouse for FPS games but I can get by with a Xbox gamepad unless it's a tactical shooter like Rainbox Six.  Thinking about using a DualShock with it's gyroscopes on a Steam Link device.)

 

[leech]

6 minutes ago, MrMaddog said:

That was back in the 90's when it was mostly FPS & RTS games on the PCs which do require the precision of a mouse.  Nowadays PC games are mostly console ports & indie platformers which play better with a gamepad anyway.  (Is it really hard to just buy an Xbox contoller or even a cheap $20 Logitech gamepad?)

 

(Personally I prefer using a mouse for FPS games but I can get by with a Xbox gamepad unless it's a tactical shooter like Rainbox Six.  Thinking about using a DualShock with it's gyroscopes on a Steam Link device.)

 

I generally prefer gamepads if 1) analog movement is supported.  2) platformer games (it is just more comgortable than squishing fingers onto arrow keys for me) 3) if rumble is useful in game.

There is also HOTAS support which is awesome.

 

P.S. I also will flip to mouse / keyboard if I need to shoot things with precision!  So PC is still master race!

[mr_me]

Anyone try a Steam controller.  It has a mouse/trackpad on a game controller.

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7 hours ago, zzip said:

The video I watched had too many parts that needed to be removed to get to the RAM.   Everything you take out has the potential to get lost or break.   Maybe they did it wrong, IDK.   But I would want a device that has RAM that is intended to be user upgraded to just have a compartment lid that pops off.   Like the STe, or even better, modern laptpops

They obviously knew it needed an access panel for the ram.  It was omitted to save cost.

[leech]

1 hour ago, mr_me said:

Anyone try a Steam controller.  It has a mouse/trackpad on a game controller.

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They obviously knew it needed an access panel for the ram.  It was omitted to save cost.

I've hooked my Steam Controller up to the VCS, can't remember if it worked or not.  The DS4 worked as a mouse though. 

There was talk on the Atari Discord about maybe doing a revision with an access panel on the bottom.  Kind of hard to figure out with the way the case is designed.  Doesn't help that the motherboard has the ram on the bottom with the cpu on the top and the two m.2 slots on the top as well. 

To be fair, it's not hard to open up and put them in yourself, assuming you have the basic skills of putting together a PC.

[Matt_B]

11 hours ago, youxia said:

I grew up with microcomputers and later PCs, haven't used a controller till I got PSX ~1998. There are very little AAA PC-first games being made these days, I'd struggle to name any. It doesn't matter anyway...Tomb Raider or Driver would play better with a controler too when they first came out.

 

I know there's a deep-seated opposition to controllers in PC gamer circles, but I don't think it has anything to do with actual reasons, more of a throwback to the old pcmasterrace vs consoles beef.

No, there's no deep-seated opposition to controllers from me. I use them all the times with consoles, and at least some of the time with PC games. I've even got a GPD Win which is pretty much limited to playing games with the built-in controller, as the tiny keyboard on it is only really good for the occasional press.

The problem is rather that I lose two-thirds of my Steam library when I tick the Controllers (full) box while absolutely everything is playable with a keyboard and mouse, even if they're not always optimal.

 

You're generally right in that modern AAA games support controllers well. It's just that most indies still don't, and they're the ones that the VCS is more likely to meet the hardware requirements for.

[mr_me]

10 hours ago, leech said:

I've hooked my Steam Controller up to the VCS, can't remember if it worked or not.  The DS4 worked as a mouse though. 

There was talk on the Atari Discord about maybe doing a revision with an access panel on the bottom.  Kind of hard to figure out with the way the case is designed.  Doesn't help that the motherboard has the ram on the bottom with the cpu on the top and the two m.2 slots on the top as well. 

To be fair, it's not hard to open up and put them in yourself, assuming you have the basic skills of putting together a PC.

The ps4 trackpad looks uncomfortable as a gaming mouse.

 

I haven't seen any notebook computer that has more than one or two screws to access ram.  The VCS not only has all those screws, there are a number of other things to disconnect that can break if you're not careful.  Skills are more in line with notebook computer repair than PC maintenance.  With no bottom access panel, ram should have been on top.

[youxia]

6 hours ago, Matt_B said:

You're generally right in that modern AAA games support controllers well. It's just that most indies still don't, and they're the ones that the VCS is more likely to meet the hardware requirements for.

Well, for sure, I'd never get rid of KBM totally. If you like Dead Cells I recommend Noita, it's quite amazing. I tried to play it with controller, which is possible, but mouse works much better.

 

16 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

That was back in the 90's when it was mostly FPS & RTS games on the PCs which do require the precision of a mouse.  Nowadays PC games are mostly console ports & indie platformers which play better with a gamepad anyway.  (Is it really hard to just buy an Xbox contoller or even a cheap $20 Logitech gamepad?)

Not back in the 90s, when it made much more sense - I'm talking about now. I made a similar post (about gamepads being generally superior) on a strictly-PC gaming forum recently and it went down as a sacrilege

 

About VCS, if I had one, I'd just buy a small wirelss handheld keyboard and a mouse and keep it around as a secondary option. This way it works even from a couch or armchair. Modern optical mouses are surprisingly precise even when used on some silly surface like a thigh or an armrest.

Edited January 27, 2021 by youxia

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16 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

That was back in the 90's when it was mostly FPS & RTS games on the PCs which do require the precision of a mouse.  Nowadays PC games are mostly console ports & indie platformers which play better with a gamepad anyway.  (Is it really hard to just buy an Xbox contoller or even a cheap $20 Logitech gamepad?)

And the PC controller situation back in the 90s wasn't great either.   You either had these analog sticks that weren't great for precision left/right/up/down games and they broke easy,  or Gravis-style game pads that were OK,  but keyboard was just as easy to use.

 

Nowadays using PS4 or Xbox style controllers works much better..  those have been refined over the years and are great controllers.

[zzip]

14 minutes ago, youxia said:

Well, for sure, I'd never get rid of KBM totally. If you like Dead Cells I recommend Noita, it's quite amazing. I tried to play it with controller, which is possible, but mouse works much better.

 

Not back in the 90s, when it made much more sense - I'm talking about now. I made a similar post (about gamepads being generally superior) on a strictly-PC gaming forum recently and it went down as a sacrilege

 

About VCS, if I had one, I'd just buy a small wirelss handheld keyboard and a mouse and keep it around as a secondary option. This way it works even from a couch or armchair. Modern optical mouses are surprisingly precise even when used on some silly surface like a thigh or an armrest.

I wonder if a controller keyboard attachment like this can be used as a PC keyboard?