The old and unwieldy GTA4 thread*

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Wow. all 10's from IGN! I was waffling on purchasing GTA4 on launch day, but now, and especially after watching the video review, this game looks fantastic.
 
That's what IGN UK says about those two versions:

For those wanting to know which version looks better, the edge goes to the PS3. The textures and framerate are comparable, but the PS3 has far less pop-in.

While GTA IV is pushing the PS3 and 360 to the limit, it also runs amazingly well. Sure, there are framerate hitches here and there and (particularly on 360) there is some texture pop-in, but it actually runs better than I expected.

The 360 has richer colors, but the PS3 has better anti-aliasing making it look a little cleaner. Because GTA IV can preload onto the PS3 hard drive, the in-game loads are faster. Don't worry Xbox owners, the load times are rarely more than 30 seconds and don't occur very often. The slight visual edge goes to PS3, but the 360 is no slouch.

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/869/869381p5.html
 
That is the same thing the regular IGN (American?) review says.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/869/869381p5.html

BTW, does it bother anybody the IGN review seems to be the only one out? I'm just wondering if they were allowed to debut their review early because it was so positive. Similar to ubisoft waiving NDA for 9+ reviews.

Nah. IGN paid for exclusive rights. You can see why - they get massive traffic for being the first. They get exclusive rights for a lot of previews/reviews.

I'm very impressed that all the voices (must be hours of dialogue), seperate TV channels, internet sites, videos etc. fit into 7GB. Very impressive. What's more impressive, is that reviewers haven't mentioned any obvious repetition of dialogue (something which killed Assassin's Creed for me).

Can't believe people might be upset over some pop-in - a game without pop-in (and huge draw distance) is very rare these days...and to have an open world game without pop-in would be nigh on impossible until ps4/720. As long as it has a nice fade effect I'm a happy chappy.
 
No, seriously media does not pay to get the coverage.

Whatever the case, the official embargo lifts Sunday. So IGN did something to be allowed the first review, right? I mean it could also be just a favor to the most important online reviewers, but who knows?
 
Usually the publisher will shop the exclusive around, trying to see what the outlets are giving it and make their decision based on whichever one gives it the highest review. Some outlets stick to their guns and either dont reveal the score at all, or give a range of what the score is.

My guess is IGN just flat out said it was getting a 10, and that made up Take 2's mind. Undoubtedly if they were to give it a lower score that would decrease their chance for getting the exclusive review, so you really have to take such exclusive reviews with a grain of salt. Especially when the game gets a 10 in the graphics department.
 
I'm very impressed that all the voices (must be hours of dialogue), seperate TV channels, internet sites, videos etc. fit into 7GB. Very impressive. What's more impressive, is that reviewers haven't mentioned any obvious repetition of dialogue (something which killed Assassin's Creed for me).

Can't believe people might be upset over some pop-in - a game without pop-in (and huge draw distance) is very rare these days...and to have an open world game without pop-in would be nigh on impossible until ps4/720. As long as it has a nice fade effect I'm a happy chappy.

Just wait, there will be comparisons on the sound as well, did they 360 have to do with 64kbit AAC while the PS3 got 128kbit :)
 
Ok, now I'm totally confused :(
Makes sense to me. There really is no reason for either the PS3 or 360 to be faster. Heck, even the HDD shouldn't make a big difference in this game if the HDD-less code is written well.

A hard-drive has no reason to reduce pop-in unless you are streaming bandwidth bound, e.g. travelling at 300 mph through a dense city. This myth keeps getting repeated again and again. Reduced loading times makes sense, as the initial dataset is large and must be accessed ASAP, but not pop-in unless the data is poorly organized on the disc.

Even with caching there is little basis for a harddrive to make a big difference. You can't get data in time for the current frame even with a harddrive, so you need to predict a few frames ahead. Making that prediction 50 frames ahead to accomodate an optical drive is really no harder.
 
*sigh*.... and now try to explain that even "more in-depth" to the rest of the internets. :(
 
Even with caching there is little basis for a harddrive to make a big difference. You can't get data in time for the current frame even with a harddrive, so you need to predict a few frames ahead. Making that prediction 50 frames ahead to accomodate an optical drive is really no harder.
Maybe they allocated idle SPEs for decompression of read-ahead data?
 
Even with caching there is little basis for a harddrive to make a big difference. You can't get data in time for the current frame even with a harddrive, so you need to predict a few frames ahead. Making that prediction 50 frames ahead to accomodate an optical drive is really no harder.

What happens if the "look ahead" is not far enough when the action gets heavy ? What kind of issues would the viewer see ?
 
A hard-drive has no reason to reduce pop-in unless you are streaming bandwidth bound, e.g. travelling at 300 mph through a dense city. This myth keeps getting repeated again and again. Reduced loading times makes sense, as the initial dataset is large and must be accessed ASAP, but not pop-in unless the data is poorly organized on the disc.

I don't think you need to be traveling at 300mph, you just need to do something different to what the game engine expect you to do to cause pop in.

I agree with you I think poorly organized data is probably the main culprit of pop in. Fragmented hard drive or not having enough space on the DVD to organize your data optimally is probably the main cause of pop in. Still fragmented hard drive can be defrag, if you run out of space on DVD to organized your data the solutions are less desirable.
 
Well maybe they could have more RAM in the next generation to attack these kinds of situations with brute force.

Yeah right.
 
I'm still waiting for some members comparision, I remember site pretending the ps3 rendition of DMC4 being better than the 360 one...

We know that the 360 version is 720P AAx2, I'm not sure that the ps3 can do better.
For pop up it sound strange to me too due to memory architecture of the 360.
For me something doesn't add up.
 
I'm still waiting for some members comparision, I remember site pretending the ps3 rendition of DMC4 being better than the 360 one...

We know that the 360 version is 720P AAx2, I'm not sure that the ps3 can do better.
For pop up it sound strange to me too due to memory architecture of the 360.
For me something doesn't add up.

29zbk3d922.gif


Thats, apparently a gif of the 360's pop up. I say apparently, because I didn't make it.
 
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q111/scape13/29zbk3d922.gif

Thats, apparently a gif of the 360's pop up. I say apparently, because I didn't make it.

YOP, hugly... really hugly.

I posted more about that on the "multi platform devs etc." thread.
As I am not sure this is the good place to discuss the issue ;) (my bad between)

EDIT I've seen your response (but don't want to post something that could be a PM), you're right but may be it could be a good idea to chose one of these threads for coherency, may be mods should give their opinion on that matter, no?
 
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