Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

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I think you're setting yourself up to be sorely disappointed. PCs will be lucky to be 2-3x as fast by the time the next consoles launch. Those are 500-600w beasts. With a third that power as a ceiling, I'd say the next gen consoles are going to be hard pressed to hit 20x PS360 levels, more likely 10-15x or so. Furthermore, reguardless of your like or dislike of diminishing returns, its a real thing, and the closer you get to realism, the harder it is to tell the difference between power levels. Many polygons spend their time below the size of a pixel now, whats more polys gonna add? How much smoother is a 200k poly model compared to a 20k model with todays techniques? Not a lot.

Still, lighting, shading and IQ are far away from offline CG level. There is plenty of room to improve the graphics, but it's going to be expensive and it will require time.

I hope that the next Xbox will use AMD Graphic Core Next.
 
I think you're setting yourself up to be sorely disappointed. PCs will be lucky to be 2-3x as fast by the time the next consoles launch. Those are 500-600w beasts. With a third that power as a ceiling, I'd say the next gen consoles are going to be hard pressed to hit 20x PS360 levels, more likely 10-15x or so. Furthermore, reguardless of your like or dislike of diminishing returns, its a real thing, and the closer you get to realism, the harder it is to tell the difference between power levels. Many polygons spend their time below the size of a pixel now, whats more polys gonna add? How much smoother is a 200k poly model compared to a 20k model with todays techniques? Not a lot.

If the target is realism, there's a long long way to go yet. Some of the advances might not be as overt as the jumps have been in the past, but we're not close to the point where that power isn't useful and no, the growth of performance hasn't been diminishing.
 
If the target is realism, there's a long long way to go yet. Some of the advances might not be as overt as the jumps have been in the past, but we're not close to the point where that power isn't useful and no, the growth of performance hasn't been diminishing.

I agree the target of realism is a long way off still, but IMO the curve of processing power vs noticeable visual benefit has gone from 75 degrees in the PS-PS2 era, to maybe 45 degrees in the PS2-PS3 era, to maybe 30 degrees now. Back in ~2000, if you had 10x the power, you could throw out 10 times the polys, textures, ect, and see almost 10 times smoother models and textures, today, you can triple the poly count of a 25k poly model, and most people won't even notice. Texture detail has more room to go but even then, you can get nice textures today, how much detail is useful? Is it really important to be able to read the newsprint on a newspaper in a game?

The tech I see as replacements to make things look better, raytracing, new rendering methods, ect, are more than 10x processing power away for consoles, maybe more than 100x processing power away.

You really don't think the power --> visual impact has slowed down at all alpha? Also, are you sure the performance growth hasn't diminished? Seems to me that as of late it has diminished greatly, look at G80 --> GTX 580, theres what, 3x performance gain in ~4 years? On the CPU side, I don't know if we have even double performance in the last 3 years, maybe only just.
 
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I agree the target of realism is a long way off still, but IMO the curve of processing power vs noticeable visual benefit has gone from 75 degrees in the PS-PS2 era, to maybe 45 degrees in the PS2-PS3 era, to maybe 30 degrees now. Back in ~2000, if you had 10x the power, you could throw out 10 times the polys, textures, ect, and see almost 10 times smoother models and textures, today, you can triple the poly count of a 25k poly model, and most people won't even notice. Texture detail has more room to go but even then, you can get nice textures today, how much detail is useful? Is it really important to be able to read the newsprint on a newspaper in a game?

The tech I see as replacements to make things look better, raytracing, new rendering methods, ect, are more than 10x processing power away for consoles, maybe more than 100x processing power away.

You really don't think the power --> visual impact has slowed down at all alpha? Also, are you sure the performance growth hasn't diminished? Seems to me that as of late it has diminished greatly, look at G80 --> GTX 580, theres what, 3x performance gain in ~4 years? On the CPU side, I don't know if we have even double performance in the last 3 years, maybe only just.

Couldn't you have said all this last gen? And the gen before too really? All the same principles applied. Yet, the jump from PS2/Xbox era to PS3/360 era is quite huge. At least as big imo as any previous generation jumps, and that's with much of the power sucked up by a simple increase from 480p to 720p rendering. If the PS3/360 were operating back at 480p, the difference to PS2/Xbox would be even bigger.

Think we have enough power? Look at todays games, they're absolutely choking on not enough power. Running oftentimes at less than 720p (let alone 1080p which is a distant pipe dream) just to squeeze out more graphics, and running often at 25-30 FPS as well. And yet still there's huge graphical flaws, and they're still using every trick and fake in the book just to squeeze a little bit more out of these machines at 28 FPS

Just not touching the base graphics, and running todays games at 1080P, 60FPS, and say, 8x AA, would require who knows how much more power. 2X? 4X? 8X? And that's not even touching the base graphics.

Or, just look at BF3 PC version...or, just imagine what could be done with 4GB, or 8B, of ram vs the 512MB in todays consoles...
 
This talk has happened the last two generations at least,and each time we have big improvements in graphics.
I think by 2015 we will all be happy that they moved onward and upward with power.
 
Indeed I just hope they wait till 2014 or 2015 to get the biggest leap they can without breaking the bank like they did this gen.
 
I agree the target of realism is a long way off still, but IMO the curve of processing power vs noticeable visual benefit has gone from 75 degrees in the PS-PS2 era, to maybe 45 degrees in the PS2-PS3 era, to maybe 30 degrees now. Back in ~2000, if you had 10x the power, you could throw out 10 times the polys, textures, ect, and see almost 10 times smoother models and textures, today, you can triple the poly count of a 25k poly model, and most people won't even notice. Texture detail has more room to go but even then, you can get nice textures today, how much detail is useful? Is it really important to be able to read the newsprint on a newspaper in a game?

The tech I see as replacements to make things look better, raytracing, new rendering methods, ect, are more than 10x processing power away for consoles, maybe more than 100x processing power away.

You really don't think the power --> visual impact has slowed down at all alpha? Also, are you sure the performance growth hasn't diminished? Seems to me that as of late it has diminished greatly, look at G80 --> GTX 580, theres what, 3x performance gain in ~4 years? On the CPU side, I don't know if we have even double performance in the last 3 years, maybe only just.

Many games are still not making full use of HD resolutions on consoles. Many of them use low levels of AA or no AA at all or a blur filter. Polygon counts on main characters are getting close, but many enemies in games use much lower counts. Shadows are far from perfect. Frame rates can still be improved, I'd settle for a steady 30FPS, but many people would like 60.

So going forward, they still need to improve on resolution, polygon counts anti aliasing and frame rate and I'm sure there's lots of room on lighting. I'd love to see all games running on consoles at 1080p and with at least 4xAA before I'd even talk about diminishing returns in terms of quality. You can certainly make arguments that the difference matters less as we approach it, but there's so much they can still do to reach even dvd quality let alone photo realism that I think its a bit early to talk about it.

As for the performance gains, you're not looking at the whole picture. How's that G80 on tessellation or any other DX11 features? There's a number of performance advantages offered over and above a raw flops rating.
 
It would be nice to have some extra power to fix the terrible LOD schemes most games use these days. Hell even Uncharted 2 has an issue with that. Just play the moving train level.
 
Indeed I just hope they wait till 2014 or 2015 to get the biggest leap they can without breaking the bank like they did this gen.

One of them will release by 2014 the latest,and then another six months to a year before we see the big differences. Seems to go that way.
 
I dont know if i laugh or cry...cause supposedly this executive said that the PS4 maybe not much powerful than ps3 and focused on attracting public female too(games with Barbies? Puppies,choice of dresses,Date on line,Call of Duty:Killing bad boyfriends...).


New PS4-Wii like coming(in this case 2013 launch?)?
http://gamingbolt.com/sce-executive-ps4-may-not-have-better-graphics-than-the-ps3

Extract from here
http://www.3djuegos.com/juegos/articulos/72/0/entrevista-james-armstrong-vp-sony-europa/


(maybe it's just your opinion... maybe this executive will be fired...so next xbox will be our last hope?)
 
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I dont know if i laugh or cry...cause supposedly this executive said that the PS4 maybe not much powerful than ps3 and focused on attracting public female too(games with Barbies? Puppies,choice of dresses,Date on line,Call of Duty:Killing bad boyfriends...).\

He's just giving a typical clueless meatball exec answer to hint that they are thinking of next gen but trying to imply how powerful their current gen still is, just typical worthless pr fluff.

Catering to females is key and I believe that means providing a better software experience, so less about games per se, and more about providing a platform that ladies can use day to day. Just look at their current effort Home which is pretty much textbook how not to do anything right and/or how to scare females away from your platform. They need to throw that away and redesign it all from scratch, get social networking tightly integrated and clean, clean and easy media support, shopping, the works.
 
I dont know if i laugh or cry...cause supposedly this executive said that the PS4 maybe not much powerful than ps3 and focused on attracting public female too(games with Barbies? Puppies,choice of dresses,Date on line,Call of Duty:Killing bad boyfriends...).


New PS4-Wii like coming(in this case 2013 launch?)?
http://gamingbolt.com/sce-executive-ps4-may-not-have-better-graphics-than-the-ps3

Extract from here
http://www.3djuegos.com/juegos/articulos/72/0/entrevista-james-armstrong-vp-sony-europa/


(maybe it's just your opinion... maybe this executive will be fired...so next xbox will be our last hope?)


What is (would be) the surprise:?:
 
Here is a perfect example of what I mean, from the polycount thread: http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2010/09/25/strangers-wrath-model-comparison/

I'm hard pressed myself to see any difference in the 20k poly model and the 529k poly model, using 26 times the resources.

there's some pretty obvious advantages to the higher rez model to me. Mostly the clothing stands out a lot better as opposed to blending into the character, but you can also see more 'depth' (not sure that's the right word, I'm not artist) in the face.
 
It would be nice to have some extra power to fix the terrible LOD schemes most games use these days. Hell even Uncharted 2 has an issue with that. Just play the moving train level.
May be Joker 454 "detessellator" should be made a standard part of the graphic pipeline :)
 
I don't think you'll see the same visual leap that you have in previous generations.
I'm sure to tech savvy people looking for it it'll be there, but to the average game buyer who doesn't go around A/Bing everything I'm not so sure.
To my mind the big leap in this generation was HD resolutions. I don't think that 3D is mature enough to have the same effect, and I do think it add significantly to games when it's well done.

I think it's likely that MS and Sony will try and replicate Wii's success, in so far as they will try and have a hook that isn't just "10x" faster, and try and pull in some of the casual crowd that spent $300 on a Wii. I'm not sure they will be successful doing it, and not sure those people would buy another Wii.
 
Wii U - Garden Demo had better graphics on E3 show floor

http://www.nintengen.com has compared the video Garden Demo vs the playable Garden Demo and has found some significant differences between the two. For example:

Screen comparison 1:

The bird's feathers in the back are rounded in the second pic, while in the first they are more pointed due to less polygons on the bird. Also on the tree branch, there is almost no shadows in the first pic, while in the second pic they are many of them.

4lletv.jpg


Starting from the top down, we have 5 sets of screen shots from the Japanese Garden Demo for the Wii U. In each set, the first picture is from Nintendo's E3 presentation demo video when Reggie told the audience that this was an "early sample of what the system can do". The second picture in each set are from the Garden tech demo that was playable in real-time on the show floor.

Reggie had said in an interview that the Garden tech demo presentation was made with early dev kit hardware and was just a small example of what was coming. The show floor demo was improved quite a lot in comparison. Improved polygons, bump mapping and textures on the bird, followed with overall lighting and shadows improvements were added to the playable tech demo. It's really nice seeing Nintendo go the extra mile on a lot of these details that could otherwise be easily missed. The power debate for the Wii U has been ongoing in most the Nintendo forums, but the fact remains that the dev kits are still not finalized yet and improvements are still being made.

This real-time demo has to be a good indicator as to what to expect graphically from the Wii U, but I'm willing to bet that full games made from the ground up on the system will end up looking better than this in the long run. The report that some developers have been able to port full 360/PS3 games looking exactly same in mere weeks to the console is a good indicator of it's power I'd say. Nintendo is not one to show off graphics unless they actually have something to show and are proud of it. This demo to go along with Zelda are amazing examples of what the future could hold graphically in our games to come.

More here:
http://www.nintengen.com/2011/06/wii-u-garden-demo-had-better-graphics.html

Regardless how more powerful SONY and MS next consoles will be, if they ever come out, I dont see them being much of a threat to WiiU's potential prowess in the graphical department.
 
Regardless how more powerful SONY and MS next consoles will be, if they ever come out, I dont see them being much of a threat to WiiU's potential prowess in the graphical department.

Really? Really now?
 
http://www.nintengen.com has compared the video Garden Demo vs the playable Garden Demo and has found some significant differences between the two. For example:




More here:
http://www.nintengen.com/2011/06/wii-u-garden-demo-had-better-graphics.html

Regardless how more powerful SONY and MS next consoles will be, if they ever come out, I dont see them being much of a threat to WiiU's potential prowess in the graphical department.


Cool, and BTW I do agree with you about gfx, there is only so much our eyes can care about, that is why we need A/B comparisons like these one.

Could the extra polygons come from tessellation?



However I am starting to get worried because the touch screen inst a multi touch, but single touch, it may limit very much the gameplay possibilities:!: I hope they reconsider that.
 
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