Beyond3D Forum - Console Technology

Server based game augmentations. The transition to cloud. Really possible?

Shifty Geezer — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:35:40 GMT

From what I gather reading here and there (haven't found a good XB1 summary yet), though MS aren't going with distributed computing as some theorised, they are going with server based game upgrades.

I see asked this back in 2006...

But here we are, for real. What will the end experience be like? How much economical processing power can a server bring to each user? If MS have 300k servers, what sort of processing power will that bring to each user? How do you manage fluctuating workloads? How to devs target jobs for their games on a server-based compute network?

Technical Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox .

BRiT — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:03:23 GMT

This is the thread for the technical comparison between the Sony PS4 and the Microsoft Xbox console.

This is NOT for non-technical comparisons, nor is it for what you would have preferred or what you would have liked or for the business comparisons between the companies approaches. Blind fanboy postings will not be tolerated.

Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox is here: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=63567

Lighting of Killzone: Shadow Fall Slides

onQ — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:08:24 GMT

http://www.guerrilla-games.com/publications/

http://www.guerrilla-games.com/prese...Postmortem.pdf

http://www.guerrilla-games.com/prese...hadow_Fall.pdf

Feasibility of distributed computing across consoles over the internet *spawn

Xenio — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:41:29 GMT

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brimstone (Post 1733933)

$499 and low specs doesn't make sense. Also some guy from AMD said Avatar like graphics when speaking to xbox magazine.

there's no reasons at all to believe that microsoft will not sell the console at loss, they ever did this from 2001.

As time is passing by, I believe that Infinity will use cloud to help computing to compute 3d graphics, microsoft servers+ seti@home style with consoles that are not playing (but always on, alway connected)

if 10% of the whole sales are playing in a moment, each console should have 10x the specs, 10,2 TFs and I'm not considering microsoft servers (similar to nvidia cloud 3d servers), maybe those servers have tons of AMD racks built in, so the 10 TF per console can be even low.
Anyway 5 TF per console should be trivial to obtain.

Xbox Infinity 1.2 TF sold at 349$
Xbox Infinity 5+ TF cloud Service and Live Gold (2 years) 499$ or 349$+ 15$ every months

can move engines feed rapidly the GPU with data from internet?

Would GTA V be possible on Wii U?

Commenter — Sat, 04 May 2013 09:29:39 GMT

Ok, the impression I'm getting from the technical specs of the Wii U so far are that the machine has a better graphics card than the PS3/Xbox 360 but Nintendo actually put a worse CPU in there which is quite a feat in itself considering the hardware in those two machines is at least 7 years outdated now and this was supposed Nintendo's bid to recapture some of the core gamer market.

Now the question is, would the Wii U be able to handle one of the most technically demanding games (I presume) shortly to be released without serious quality cutting? It's well known that GTA games are demanding on both CPU and GPU as the poorly optimised PC port of GTAIV demonstrates but they have a lot of physics going on in the game that would show up the shortcomings of a weak cpu, as some developers who have worked on the Wii U have bemoaned.

The ESRAM in Durango as a possible performance aid

Rangers — Sat, 04 May 2013 07:11:23 GMT

So, yeah. I've been wondering about this for a while, spurred by some of ERP's posts and a post or two by fafalada (programmer who posts in neogaf/here as well i believe)

The crux seems to be that low latency of the ESRAM can help the GPU be more efficient.

Of course I'm not a programmer or know that much about tech, so maybe some others can weigh in I hope.

Basically, what kind of cool things could be done PS2 style with the ESRAM?

Software Rendering vs Hardware Rendering.

Cyan — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:44:13 GMT

Well, I have always been a fan of software rendering, especially because I started as a PC gamer in 1996 and back then CPU speed was more important that GPUs because hardware acceleration wasn't that fast.

Hardware acceleration was incredible when it came out but there was a time when Software rendering had some features which weren't possible with hardware rendering.

You can clearly see which features were removed in Quake, the best iD game have ever programmed, imho, which art style remains unique to date, in this great article.

Some differences are really curious.

http://www.quaddicted.com/engines/software_vs_glquake

I can also recall Need for Speed having some exclusive features if you chose the Software renderer in the graphics options, although on the contrary to Quake it looked allegedly better if you had a 3D accelerator graphics card -which I had then, although sometimes I switched to software rendering just to compare-.

Tim Sweeney was a great advocator of software recently until 2008 or so.

http://techreport.com/news/14313/epi...aming-platform

Btw, I use DirectQ for Quake 1, which keeps the software features of the title and uses Direct3D.

It's very easy on the GPU and laptop friendly, achieving great performance without much effort.

I get 200+ frames per second on Quake at 768p using DirectQ on my i5-2450M processor while I throttle it to 1,7GHz-.

If I don't throttle the CPU it can go up to 3.0GHz max, but I don't let the laptop achieve that speed to avoid unnecessary heat and high frequencies I don't need for the uses I give to this laptop.

Advances in Artificial Intelligence for next generation, & advanced AIs in videogames

Cyan — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:21:29 GMT

Online games are more and more common nowadays, and even so a well-programmed AI can be very valuable in many situations or story-driven games, to the point that some of those AIs are really admirable.

Artificial intelligence can make the difference in those games to become more rewarding and even masterpieces when played at higher difficulty levels, especially when they have a choice of actions and are able to behave in a very unpredictable fashion.

Whether it is a companion's AI -i.e. Skyrim or Bioshock Infinite- or an opposing AI, an advanced behaviour, adding to this an unique situational awareness, certainly helps a lot to increase immersion, adding a nice component of believability.

This certainly can make games more dynamic or realistic. Humans are unique and so it is human intelligence, and trying to make your console or computer act in a similar way to human intelligence sounds very challenging.

If an AI can pull off enough unpredictabiliy to simulate human choices that's certainly an achievement, especially when logic is applied to those choices, and it can interact logically with its surroundings.

I never play MMOs because of the always online thing, but an MMO with AIs when you are offline could be very interesting, for instance.

Here are some examples of great AIs:

Bioshock Infinite, an article about the behaviour of the AI.

"An Effin' AI In BioShock Infinite Is More Of A Human Than I Am"

The Barbarian AI in Age of Empires 2 HD. It certainly plays an amazing game and can perform actions human can't do.

To me one of its most incredible achievements is that it can lure boars just like humans, which is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in an AI.

AI that teaches itself to play NES games, it can get very good at some of them. It can pull off some tricky and some fascinating moves:

Autonomous agent AI playing a clone of Super Mario Bros with great results, beating a level and again making things human can't do.

More about autonomous agent AIs and Multi-seed agent AIs -more advanced versions of mono seed autonomous agent AIs (shown in the video)-

http://geneura.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/863/

Fan made Reaper Bot from Quake 1. It learnt from the players moving around the map and was great at pathfinding.

It was programmed by Steven Polge back in the 90s, and Epic hired him afterwards.

Halo has always had a great AI.

I would like to add an apparently fine AI who can turn rogue and fail in some conditions.

Skyrim "Radiant AI" can sometimes work great, but it's kind of cheap and have very fun reactions at times.

My favourite:

Skyrim, beware the door lol:

More Skyrim:

Some more:

Skyrim trick cabbage shot and how the Skyrim react after throwing a simple cabbage, sigh:

Finally and additionally, I just wanted to point out that the AI in some chess games is simply amazing.

I wonder if we will see an improvement in AIs this next generation which is about to begin.

Console Launch Delays -- Technical Implications

babcat — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:45:44 GMT

One thing I have learned over the years, is that when a company givesa tentative date for anything, to expect delays. This happened with the PS3. If I remember correctly, it was delayed a couple of times. So, what would the tech implications be if there is another delay with the PS4 or Xbox 720?

Could there perhaps be....

Process shrinks?

Changes in hardware?

Adjustments in clock speed?

My personal hope is that both of these consoles are delayed for as long as possible. Personally, I think both consoles should wait for a process shrink. Since neither company cares about top notch graphics anymore, they could push their current systems for a couple more years, make as much money from them as possible, and then launch the next gen consoles after the current ones are completely milked. If we are lucky, consumers might get a bump in clock speed, memory speed, or a couple extra CUs.