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My TV downloaded a 1.2GB update the other day. Things are out of control. Games are the worst. If you haven't started one up in a week you need to download an

My TV downloaded a 1.2GB update the other day. Things are out of control. Games are the worst. If you haven't started one up in a week you need to download an important patch - somehow using 6GB in the process. I'm pretty sure there is just next to no effort put into keeping the file sizes down.

bowsamic 3y ago
My wife plays a lot of Counter Strike, but she is also a busy person with a stressful day job. She can't play every day, but because of this, every time she wants to play she has to sit there for 30 minutes to an hour to wait for the update to download.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  This is the exact reason I pulled 1Gbit ethernet to my wifes PlayStation. It's so rare that she has the time to play, so spending 30 minutes or more to pull in updates is preventing her from enjoying what little time she has to play. Switching out the wifi for a physical connection have reduced those download time to just few minutes. The amount of updates to what should be more or less finished products is just insane and I can't understand why the industry doesn't see it as a issue... Well, money but still.
- VBprogrammer 3y ago
  I feel her pain. My 4 year old girl asked really nicely to play "the flying game" (Microsoft Flight simulator 2020) the other week. I got her out of the bath and we were both looking forward to playing but it the downloaded a major update which was still running when I started work the next morning.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  Can’t you set it to auto updated?
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    We only use that computer for Counter Strike right now, it's our old "gaming PC", from when we had more time for that
mft_ 3y ago
Fortnite’s most recent update for PC was IIRC ~44GB and appeared to change fairly little.
- maccard 3y ago
  You mean the season update yesterday that changed the look of the entire map, had a one-off event, came with a new battle pass, added the festival, Lego and rocket league racing modes?
  - mft_ 3y ago
    Unsurprisingly not. I'm referring to an update around the 21st Nov. But thanks for the (snarky) heads up that there's yet another update (29.4GB this time) to download :)
rekoil 3y ago
I was flabbergasted when I went to update a bunch of Samsung TVs in the office the other day and the package Samsung told me to download was 3.1GB! Sure, that package actually contained 2 complete images for different series, but why does a TV OS need a 1.5GB partition in the first place? (And also, why are they bundling two images for different series) Rhetorical question, I know the answer, but my point is nobody actually likes the features that cause this problem.
maccard 3y ago
> you haven't started one up in a week you need to download an important patch - somehow using 6GB in the process. What game was this? No games are pumping out multi GB patches per week unless they're early access on steam, at which point yeah, it's early access. > I'm pretty sure there is just next to no effort put into keeping the file sizes down. This is a silly viewpoint, and I've had this out many times on this site. We do care, the demands are just growing and people have unreasonable expectations. Game sizes have ballooned because expectations are huge. 4k HDR textures are 16x larger than 1k textures. HDR is an extra 25% for the increased bit depth. Textures can be 20x larger than they were 10-12 years ago. Map sizes are increasing (compare cyberpunk to GTA 5 for example). Loading screens are heavily frowned upon so compression becomes a lever to adjust. Audio/VO is highly dynamic and there's absolutely loads of it. Take a look at Overwatch, I play a few hours a week of that game and I still here new voice lines every day. I worked on shipping smaller patches on AAA games at $PREV_JOB. If you compress everything to high hell and back to be stored on disk, you can do a partial update of it anymore. We tried to be tactical and adjust compression/groupings of what would change frequently and what wouldn't, but sometimes we got it wrong. Occasionally large things change and force something akin to a full download. We don't want it, you don't want it, but that's where the content comes from. Then you have the actual logic of patching. If we change a 30MB file, that's part of a 1GB compressed block, then it's a 1GB download. We also need to copy the 1GB we're about to replace somewhere to roll back if you lose connection during the update, plus enough extra space for bookkeeping, extraction, etc. If you think you can fix this, I'm sure most game studios will hire you with the drop of a hat.
- te_chris 3y ago
  Gran Turismo seems to do it fortnightly. I'm on a PS4 and it takes forever to copy these stupid updates due to the slow spinning disk.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  Call of Duty on PS5 hits me with an update about once a week that’s multiple GB in size.

bowsamic 3y ago

My wife plays a lot of Counter Strike, but she is also a busy person with a stressful day job. She can't play every day, but because of this, every time she wants to play she has to sit there for 30 minutes to an hour to wait for the update to download.

mrweasel 3y ago
This is the exact reason I pulled 1Gbit ethernet to my wifes PlayStation. It's so rare that she has the time to play, so spending 30 minutes or more to pull in updates is preventing her from enjoying what little time she has to play. Switching out the wifi for a physical connection have reduced those download time to just few minutes. The amount of updates to what should be more or less finished products is just insane and I can't understand why the industry doesn't see it as a issue... Well, money but still.
VBprogrammer 3y ago
I feel her pain. My 4 year old girl asked really nicely to play "the flying game" (Microsoft Flight simulator 2020) the other week. I got her out of the bath and we were both looking forward to playing but it the downloaded a major update which was still running when I started work the next morning.
mock-possum 3y ago
Can’t you set it to auto updated?
- bowsamic 3y ago
  We only use that computer for Counter Strike right now, it's our old "gaming PC", from when we had more time for that

mft_ 3y ago

Fortnite’s most recent update for PC was IIRC ~44GB and appeared to change fairly little.

maccard 3y ago
You mean the season update yesterday that changed the look of the entire map, had a one-off event, came with a new battle pass, added the festival, Lego and rocket league racing modes?
- mft_ 3y ago
  Unsurprisingly not. I'm referring to an update around the 21st Nov. But thanks for the (snarky) heads up that there's yet another update (29.4GB this time) to download :)

rekoil 3y ago

I was flabbergasted when I went to update a bunch of Samsung TVs in the office the other day and the package Samsung told me to download was 3.1GB! Sure, that package actually contained 2 complete images for different series, but why does a TV OS need a 1.5GB partition in the first place? (And also, why are they bundling two images for different series) Rhetorical question, I know the answer, but my point is nobody actually likes the features that cause this problem.

maccard 3y ago

> you haven't started one up in a week you need to download an important patch - somehow using 6GB in the process. What game was this? No games are pumping out multi GB patches per week unless they're early access on steam, at which point yeah, it's early access. > I'm pretty sure there is just next to no effort put into keeping the file sizes down. This is a silly viewpoint, and I've had this out many times on this site. We do care, the demands are just growing and people have unreasonable expectations. Game sizes have ballooned because expectations are huge. 4k HDR textures are 16x larger than 1k textures. HDR is an extra 25% for the increased bit depth. Textures can be 20x larger than they were 10-12 years ago. Map sizes are increasing (compare cyberpunk to GTA 5 for example). Loading screens are heavily frowned upon so compression becomes a lever to adjust. Audio/VO is highly dynamic and there's absolutely loads of it. Take a look at Overwatch, I play a few hours a week of that game and I still here new voice lines every day. I worked on shipping smaller patches on AAA games at $PREV_JOB. If you compress everything to high hell and back to be stored on disk, you can do a partial update of it anymore. We tried to be tactical and adjust compression/groupings of what would change frequently and what wouldn't, but sometimes we got it wrong. Occasionally large things change and force something akin to a full download. We don't want it, you don't want it, but that's where the content comes from. Then you have the actual logic of patching. If we change a 30MB file, that's part of a 1GB compressed block, then it's a 1GB download. We also need to copy the 1GB we're about to replace somewhere to roll back if you lose connection during the update, plus enough extra space for bookkeeping, extraction, etc. If you think you can fix this, I'm sure most game studios will hire you with the drop of a hat.

te_chris 3y ago
Gran Turismo seems to do it fortnightly. I'm on a PS4 and it takes forever to copy these stupid updates due to the slow spinning disk.
Klonoar 3y ago
Call of Duty on PS5 hits me with an update about once a week that’s multiple GB in size.