https://gamingbolt.com/ps5-could-support-v-sync-and-backwards-compatibility-patents-suggest

Quote:
Backwards compatibility is something that we all crave in our consoles, and it seems Sony might be making plans to have that in the PS5 in a pretty huge way as well. According to a separate patent, which was recently updated by Sony, the PlayStation 5 might be looking to replace the concept of remasters by inherently having the ability to playing remastered versions of older PlayStation games through emulation.

“Each asset such as a texture called for by legacy software such as a legacy computer game software has a unique identifier associated with it,” the patent reads. ” The unique identifier can be rendered by imposing a hash on the asset, and then the asset stored with its identifier in a data structure. An artist remasters the textures for presentation on a higher resolution display than envisioned in the original software, and stores them back in the data structure with their identifiers. The original software is then played on the higher resolution display, with asset (such as texture) calls being intercepted, identified, and the data structure entered to retrieve the remastered asset having a matching identifier. The remastered asset is then inserted on the fly into the game presentation.”

Definitely sounds interesting. Of course, registering patents is something companies do all the time, and we shouldn’t take it as confirmation that either of these technologies will be included in the PS5, but it still seems quite likely.

I knew waiting for the nex-gen was a good idea! Buying a PS2 again was on my mind. Guess now I'll just have to wait...

It would appear that what this patent describes is something that emulators on the PC have been doing for years.

This patent is a complete bullsh*t. I am just playing a game and downloaded a fan made patch. It's a program that includes multiple patches for different games. And one feature of that program is exactly what this patent describes; you can extract a texture and replace it with something other on the fly without modifying the original game files:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=53121

"Textures swapping is a feature of some of the patches that allows the replacement of the original textures in the target game with new textures that have no restrictions in size other then the maximum size supported by the video card (at least 4096x4096 in Direc3D9 shader model 3.0 and newer cards). Several pixel formats are supported and in all supported games, even those whose engines only support 16 bit 256x256 textures (as it happens is most early Direct3D games), it is possible to swap the original textures with high resolution, 32 bit textures.

This feature is refered to as texture swapping because the original textures within the game's files are never modified. The patches just tell Direct3D (or OpenGl) to use a replacement texture, instead or the original, for rendering."

Another example I have seen of this usage are... well, various nude modes that do exactly this. Some emulators support texture packs for various games, but I'm not sure if they work on the same principle.

Retarded patent laws strike again.

"Backwards compatibility is something that we all crave in our consoles"

Funny. Whenever a console doesn't have it, the console maker and their fanboys argue that no one really cares about backwards compatibility.

Anyhow, I mostly lost interest in consoles. For the majority of older consoles and PC games, I got my "backwards compatibility" right on my PC, in a much more convenient and versatile package.

The hardware specs of the PS5 could still be interesting to PC gamers, as consoles generally provide the baseline for future hardware requirements of multiplatform game releases.