I'm talking about the cutscenes that you think are (or can be) used to mask loading, not MLB 2k7 stadium loading, or most intralevel stuff.
Ok so indeed cutscenes used to mask loading. So then back to where you said this:
The best way of course is that you start streaming post-cutscene data before the cutscene as seen in Uncharted games.
How can you load post cutscene data before the cutscene? If you are using all the memory in the machine to display a section of a level, where would you stream these new assets to in memory? That confused me until you posted this:
A linear fps should be designed around a streaming solution.
Which makes more sense now because then you are not speaking in the general sense, you are talking about games that are designed to only show a small subsection of a level at a time and hence will have spare memory into which to stream new assets to. That is far too limiting though in the general sense of gaming because it very much limits your design. Hence why most people just play a video to mask the loading. That way they can design the game as they like and use the machines entire available memory to display it (minus a buffer for video), then start playing a video during a transition while streaming new assets in the background, then when video is done user is back to a new section that is using all available memory again to display what's there.
What you are describing is far more limited in both scope and design, and all but requires that every game be designed such that during a transition the player needs to be shoveled somewhere in the level that only needs a small subset of memory to display so that the rest of the assets can be discarded from memory and new ones loaded in there. These new assets likewise also have to also represent a small subset of the new level otherwise they won't fit into memory. This is all fine and dandy if your priority is streaming and not game design, but it simply won't work with so many types of games out there.
Which brings me back to my original point where if a video is indeed used to mask the loading of a new section then it shouldn't hog all the bandwidth of the storage device.
Having not played the game I don't see how you can say this. Playing the beta the low res effects aren't noticable during gameplay at all, certainly nothing like PS2 quality. By no definition was Killzone 2 "greatly blurred" either, quincunx gets far too much of a bad rap.
What size tv do you play on, and at what distance? I'm genuinly curious because KZ2 is the only game I've ever played that got me to take my glasses off and wipe them thinking that they were dirty, only to realize that no, the game actually looks that blurry. It's the blurriest game I've ever played by far. Likewise on particle effects in KZ3, they really stand out as being low res, but I noticed that really easily in many PS3 games. Like Uncharted 2, it's particle effects look bad to me as well and really stand out like a sore thumb even though they tried to smooth them out. For refernce, my eyes are 12 feet away from a 65" screen, hence why I'm curious what your viewing setup is. Maybe that would explain why stuff that is patently obvious to me is totally not noticed by others.
