Sony's cooking something for GDC?

Sorry, but that just smells. Reserving 96 MB of RAM for a rarely used background function? That probably some half of PS3's are never going to use? And that's even if an online communicaty would need that, which it won't. 96 MB is great if your store graphics data and rendering it, but it's no use in a server that gets update with a trophy every once in a while. Or will every Apartment be hosted on your PS3? Will you need ziggerbytes of upload for people visiting your place?

The online service I can wel believe, not least because it's tooted as something big and innovative, but it's basically nothing more than Live! with a fancy frontend - which is what i've come to expect of 'big' announcements ;) But attributing the OS footprint to this is nuts. In the bizarre case this service is the reason for the OS RAM requirements, this is a stupid blunder by Sony. Bloatware, basically. I don't want to spend 64 MB on a glorified text messenger, thank you very much!

I agree, no matter how cool and exciting such a feature would be, in the end it is al about priorities and balance and if this turns out to be true then the priorites are definitely screwed up at Sony and I can not see the reason the 96MB would have to be reserved all the time for a function that might be used in many cases very rare and that could be loaded then...
 
"No, it's 96Mb hard limit (64Mb main ram + 32Mb vram). It's reserved by the OS the whole time. I hope they finally have a decent use for it."

Barbarian, is that 96MB taken by the OS just for DEVKITS or the actual PS3? I read that the actual PS3's might utilize less memory for the OS.
 
im guessing this is the major surprise that got mentioned months ago which never eventuated (ie 'its visible when u turn on the ps3' )
this could be the single thing that diverts the flow from wii to the ps3, uber-everquest

Scaled or rendered? 360 scales. Rendering at a higher res would be a big deal, but scaling... no.
yeah scalings only marginally better than the original, rendering at 720p though would be a huge improvement
 
I agree, no matter how cool and exciting such a feature would be, in the end it is al about priorities and balance and if this turns out to be true then the priorites are definitely screwed up at Sony and I can not see the reason the 96MB would have to be reserved all the time for a function that might be used in many cases very rare and that could be loaded then...
I think this memory reservation thing is just an austerity policy enforced by Sony to foster the developers to use more processing power and less memory, they will release parts of the reserved memory when the time is right.

They've already used the same practise with the PSP.
 
I think this memory reservation thing is just an austerity policy enforced by Sony to foster the developers to use more processing power and less memory, they will release parts of the reserved memory when the time is right.
They've already used the same practise with the PSP.
Not sure they do that to promote processing power over memory. The thing with the background OS is once you set a limit, the first games are tied to that. If you need to increase the limit, you can't. Thus when you spec the machine, without implementing all 236 activities you want the OS to be able to handle, you have to set a limit for how much those activities might want. Thus you set the limit high, and over time as you find you don't need so many resources to implement the OS activities, you can bring the OS footprint down.
 
Would be pretty sweet if you could pull up your own Home or visit
someone elses 3D home in the middle of a game.

If you ever wish to pull up your own home or visit somebody else in the middle of the game, you should return the game to the store, and the developer should fire the game designers.
 
I think this memory reservation thing is just an austerity policy enforced by Sony to foster the developers to use more processing power and less memory, they will release parts of the reserved memory when the time is right.

They've already used the same practise with the PSP.

First of all, I'm curious if that 96MB number is accurate. If it is accurate I'm stunned by how much memory they are reserving.

If it is accurate I hope they release that memory ASAP.
 
First of all, I'm curious if that 96MB number is accurate. If it is accurate I'm stunned by how much memory they are reserving.

If it is accurate I hope they release that memory ASAP.


Maybe after there major update that is cooming, they might have a better idea of the resources needed and they can release some of the restrictions, we will see I guess, but the rumour that this home thing would require 96 MB of memory I can't for the life of me find to be of any weight...
 
Maybe after there major update that is cooming, they might have a better idea of the resources needed and they can release some of the restrictions, we will see I guess, but the rumour that this home thing would require 96 MB of memory I can't for the life of me find to be of any weight...

Platon,

I have heard so many rumors, attempts at speculation, and hints about the number that I don't know what to believe. Previously, I remember a developer saying on a forum that only the devkits reserved 96MB. Since then I have heard the 96 number tossed about and I have heard that the real number is half that.

Now, Barbarian has made a very bold statement. I trust him. He seems to be a very straitforward and honest person. I have no reason to doubt him, but I would like some clarification if possible. Because that number is simply huge in my opinion. Look at the tremendous functionality of the 360 that only utilizes 32Mb of RAM for the OS. I just don't see why Sony would think 96MB of RAM is needed.

In my opinion RAM is a very precious thing. I think since the PS3 is primarily a GAMING console that the RAM should be reserved for where it's most useful: GAMES!
 
In Kens speech real-time was the fourth dimension, people being able to enter your "apartment" when you are online is real-time interaction. This is what he had in mind, like it or not.

yeah people being able to enter my apartment through a door a rootkit left open...THX SONY SCNR :devilish:

Note on the Rumors:

They are just Rumors. The Home thing makes sense to me anything else (Eyetoy making Objects out of photos WTF?) does not.
 
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Platon,In my opinion RAM is a very precious thing. I think since the PS3 is primarily a GAMING console that the RAM should be reserved for where it's most useful: GAMES!
But it is, the remaining ram is reserved for the games primarily ;)
The games look gorgeous already with the ram that is there, of course one can always ask for more.
Personally, I welcome added functionality beyond gaming. Besides, if the ram is reserved for the "4D" virtual world, it'll be a sort of game by itself, like Animal Crossing and Sims etc...
A Google Earth type evolving "lobby" would indeed be cool. Each and every online connected PS3 shown as a spot of light, forming PS3 cities as seen from space, being able to zoom in and see a virtual model of your house, P2P connections shown as connecting lines, you could track social connections network like in that "theory" where every person can somehow be connected to any person in the world ... hey maybe they could integrate the PSP gps into the system, so as when you get out of your house and take your PSP with you, your friends would be able to track (and your enemies stalk :) ) you.
 
The PS3 is NOT a gaming console, Sony don't want it to be branded. It's "interactive entertainment". There was a minor brouhaha recently when the Edinburgh International Games Festival became the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival to satisfy its prime sponsor, Sony. So if they make their games slightly worse, but gain a lot in terms of functionality appealing to singstar/myspace/mii users, they are OK with that tradeoff.

I don't see how they could "release" back the memory - console games don't use "any memory available", they are tuned to an exact size. And newer games must still run on older PS3s with firmware dating before the "release".
 
I don't see how they could "release" back the memory - console games don't use "any memory available", they are tuned to an exact size. And newer games must still run on older PS3s with firmware dating before the "release".

It's easy to see how they can - they did with the PSP.
 
yeah people being able to enter my apartment through a door a rootkit left open...THX SONY SCNR :devilish:

Note on the Rumors:

They are just Rumors. The Home thing makes sense to me anything else (Eyetoy making Objects out of photos WTF?) does not.

There have been a lot of developments in this area, where you take a shot from a photo or a camera, and recreate a 3D image from this. If beforehand you know the general 3D characteristics of what you are looking at, it is not impossible - some demos of this have been going around last year. But it's not that likely either. Perhaps it is more like the Sims platform or some kind of Second Life setup.

Anyway, my take is generally that so much speculation rises up whenever there are Sony related rumors that the actual announcement usually turns out underwhelming, however good it was initially. ;) So I'm just going to nicely wait and see ...
 
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