Mefisutoferesu
Regular
360-to-PS3 Ports: Why the Lowered Texture Resolution?
- Thread starter bigsilly
- Start date
There's nothing we can do, we hold remarkably little power when it comes to decisions like that. It's not just internal company politics that are requiring parity now either, there are external force as well.
nAo said:
That's Sony's fault though, both for coming late to the party, and for having a far unfriendlier environment still to this day. It's hard to find anyone that wants to work on PS3 because of it. I volunteered to be PS3 only at this new shop I'm at, and I still get looked at with bewilderment for having done so, and daily pity for being stuck working on "that thing".
What's your job title? Playstation 3 Martyring Engineer?
That's exactly what I mean. I've heard different stories (you're talking about the Bogart mess, right?), but the internet loves to latch onto the conspiracy theories, because the internet loves to hate.
MazingerDUDE
Regular
One interesting example is Overlord
These 200% shots were taken from a capture at yoda-dip-jp
http://yoda.dip.jp/Game/Overlord/Overlord_05_360.png
http://yoda.dip.jp/Game/Overlord/Overlord_05_PS3.png
They lowered the texture quality from the 360 version in many parts, however the normal maps are significantly more detailed in the PS3 version. I remeber COD4 had similar textrue examples.
I wonder if normal map costs less memory than having higher quality texture
These 200% shots were taken from a capture at yoda-dip-jp
http://yoda.dip.jp/Game/Overlord/Overlord_05_360.png
http://yoda.dip.jp/Game/Overlord/Overlord_05_PS3.png
They lowered the texture quality from the 360 version in many parts, however the normal maps are significantly more detailed in the PS3 version. I remeber COD4 had similar textrue examples.
I wonder if normal map costs less memory than having higher quality texture
Lemme know when Uncharted goes multi-platform.
It all this goes back to Sony's domination the last 2 gens. From that you have a LOT of very aggressive and vocal fanboys who demand that devs fullfill the promises of superiority that Sony made to the public. Anytime that doesn't happen, they're quick to claim "lazy developer."
Until just about every PS3 version looks and runs better than the 360 version, they'll keep up their crusade. Had the situation been reserved, you'd hear just as much about "how amazing the PS3 is and how they always knew it would turn out like this."
Too bad studios feel the need to cater to them and shame on the gaming journalists who prey off this for site hits (most!).
Uncharted has the best this gen but megatextures is overrated going by quake, resistance 1 has better textures.
Do you get paid more ?
I don't know about other cities, but around LA if you know PS3 and are willing to work exclusively on it then you can earn more because PS3 coders are in high demand but low supply. So when I started interviewing a few months back, I decided to capitalize off the current situation and switch to being a PS3 only coder. Truth be told, I really shouldn't be complaining since the hardcore PS3 fans like the ones on this very forum have helped created the demand, and the tougher PS3 work environment has helped limit the supply of willing coders, which is now letting me cash in.
AlphaWolf said:
Ironically, I found a way to deal with it from the very people on this forum! I noticed that whether or not not something is better or different on other platforms doesn't matter to many here, because they simply choose to ignore it. So I tried the same "out of sight, out of mind" idea when I started my new job. Initially, I had both PS3 and 360 dev kits on my desk. I immediately gave away the 360 kit to someone else, that way I can focus 100% on PS3 and not miss any of the 360 niceties, hence out of sight out of mind. It worked, I've gotten used to being PS3 only. Occasionally I'll have a bit of a relapse, like when I inadvertently see a fellow 360 graphics dev single step debugging hlsl code, and it will make me green with envy. But then I just go talk with a Wii coder about their debugger and I feel better all over again
Yes, just as I thought. It's reassuring to know economics is still working. I hope you find opportunities to exercise PS3 specific features despite subjected to multi-platform constraints.
Ironically, I found a way to deal with it from the very people on this forum! I noticed that whether or not not something is better or different on other platforms doesn't matter to many here, because they simply choose to ignore it. So I tried the same "out of sight, out of mind" idea when I started my new job. Initially, I had both PS3 and 360 dev kits on my desk. I immediately gave away the 360 kit to someone else, that way I can focus 100% on PS3 and not miss any of the 360 niceties, hence out of sight out of mind. It worked, I've gotten used to being PS3 only. Occasionally I'll have a bit of a relapse, like when I inadvertently see a fellow 360 graphics dev single step debugging hlsl code, and it will make me green with envy. But then I just go talk with a Wii coder about their debugger and I feel better all over again
I use Visual Studio from time to time. Is the 360 dev kit based on that environment. It is one of my favorite dev environment.
From Jeremy's Qore podcast, it sounded like the PS3 tool set may be unstable sometimes. If so, there is indeed a large gap.
But hey, this is perhaps why people appreciate NaughtyDog and Insomniac. Those crazy people rock even under dire working conditions (Not forgetting other PS3 and ex-PS3 devs here).
patsu said:
You can use Visual studio for both 360 and PS3 development, I did so at the last shop I was at. At this new place I'm trying Slickedit on recommendation form others and it's pretty good as well.
patsu said:
Ya it can get irritating sometime. I just recently spent 8 days straight with a dev friend at Naughty Dog trying to figure out why gcmReplay wouldn't reliably work, and going over other bugs with it. It works now....mostly, but theres another display corruption issue they are looking into for me as well
Likewise with the debugger, every update seems to break something, the last one made it take 10+ seconds each time to single step debug code. They since gave me a custom version of it that fixed that problem, but it crashes after about every 10 or so runs. On the plus side, other PS3 devs here can thank me since you're all benefiting from tool fixes right about now that I've been nagging them about Fafalada said:
Looks like I missed this one earlier. Someone else also mentioned resolution in reference to how much memory ideally is needed, but I'm not sure I see the relation of the two. Resolution may limit how big your textures ultimately need to be, but you still have other limits like how many maps you need to draw a given face. Take the simplest example, rendering a single full screen quad with a single 1024x1024 texture. Not much memory needed. Now add a normal map to that. Then, say a detail map. Hmm, perhaps also a gloss map. In all those cases the amount of on screen pixel coverage is the same, but the memory needs are different in each one. So given a totally predictable situation, with everything sorted and structured perfectly, your memory needs will still depend on how many maps you need to get the look you want. Now, throw the unpredictability of games into the mix, like say where a player with a variety of new textures suddenly teleports in front of you, or a see through the walls gun sight makes you instantly see a whole new section of level, etc, and the need to have even more textures instantly available grows. Software solutions help, but I think we're still at the point where we just need more memory available to avoid visual fidelity loss.
TimothyFarrar
Regular
Quick refresher: 720P < 1Mpix, 1byte per compressed texel at 180 MB gives roughly a 180:1 ratio of texels to output pixels. Now take into consideration that you can only see 1/6 of the full 360 deg view at a time, still 30:1 ratio of texels to output pixels. Throw in overdraw at 3x (for what is both on and off screen), now down to 10:1 ratio of texels to output pixels. Point being that virtual texturing can easily work without a tremendous amount of memory.
As for non-virtual texturing and streaming, IMO Uncharted does this right. Have some really good hi-resolution textures streaming in, and dual texture all the surfaces, but the key is have unique blending between the tiled dual textures. Makes the textures go a long way, keeping things looking unique. Doesn't use a lot of memory either...
Memory doesn't have to be an issue for quality textures when done right on either 360 or PS3.
Which games use virtual texturing? I've never worked on one before, nor do I know people who have so I'm curious to see what it looks like in action in a real game.
Here's the thing, Uncharted's textures look great. There were two problems though.
First, there didn't seem to be a lot of variety in a given play area. For example, maybe you were in a 'forest' area and everything looked like foliage. Or, you were in an indoor ruins area, and everything looked like rickety wood or stone. What was there looked amazingly good, but there wasn't a lot of variety there until you made it to a new area.
Secondly, there was texture pop. If you did happen to run too quickly to an area that had textures that were a bit different than the area you were just in, then it would look all low res for a second and pop, the correct texture would then stream in.
Both of these scenarios to me point to not enough ram. In fact, the entire level design of Uncharted seems catered to deal with a low ram scenario, in that areas were all carefully designed to have a certain specific look and were generally confined. The next level may look totally different and really good, but once you were in an area it was like ok, this is the "stone and slight green area" and that's what you would be looking at for the next bit of play. With the more traditional texture streaming methods, it seems like they would have been able to spruce up the variety of a given area somewhat more if they had more ram.
Different games seem to make different sacrifices to deal with limited ram. For example, GTA4 has more texture variety than Uncharted in a given area, in that you can walk about two blocks and see many different looks in it. But whats there doesn't look as good as Uncharted. Uncharted looks really good in a given area, but the look doesn't change much in that given area. So it seems to me like GTA4 decided to sacrifice some visual appeal for texture variety in a given area, whereas Uncharted decided to sacrifice texture variety for better visual appeal in a given area. In either case, both design choices were made to deal with limited ram.
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djskribbles
Legend
textures only popped in when levels first loaded. other then that, texture pop wasn't that noticeable.
