Does disk space affect graphics?

[patsu]

That's why they have HDD in every PS3 to manage the (dynamic or static) cache. Some games also stream from both BR (low priority like dialogue) and HDD (high priority like textures) at the same time.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That's why they have HDD in every PS3 to manage the (dynamic or static) cache. Some games also stream from both BR (low priority like dialogue) and HDD (high priority like textures) at the same time.

Yes but even on PC which uses HDD exclusively, Devs have to manage load times balanced against texture quality and data sets...

And I did note that even with HDD assistance, load times for BRD is still about the level of DVD.

As someone noted previously, HD video cutscenes and HQ audio is a far better use of the space provided by BRD. Other than that, for actual game data, you'll be limited in the same way you are with DVD with loading/streaming speed being a key factor in loading times.

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

yea long games like mass effect 2 and JPRGS do require more space because of the sheer content on there, though Halo odst is an odd one. Installed odst is only 3.2gigs and the halo multiplayer is also 3.2gigs. it could have fit on one disk but i believe MS was trying to make it look like a better deal. Not to get off topic but you gotta admit ODST is overpriced as hell.

Well, I haven't looked at the actual sizes of these games, but if true, then it could be a good example of choosing to go for the extra disc-reading speed that 3.2GB affords by virtue of only using a single layer disc (a layer on the 360s DVD format actually holds only 3.4GB).

So in this case they may have put the multi-player on a second disc so that the load-times would stay relatively fast even for Arcade users. Such a consideration makes sense particularly in a multi-player scenario because large differences in load-times mean that people who installed the game on HDD will still have to wait for Arcade owners to load the game for disc. This could be an even stronger consideration with a game like Halo, that is expected to sell perhaps to a larger percentage of Arcade users than some other games.

We're starting to see some creative solutions here for the Arcade units on the one hand and the limits of DVDs on the other - if I didn't have a HDD in my 360 for instance, I give up my favorite tracks like the Nurburgring and Le Mans, and have about 100 cars replaced by generic looking models.

 

[patsu]

load times for BRD is still about the level of DVD.

It depends on what they are trying to do. As long as it's reasonable enough, there may be less incentives to make it faster than DVD (e.g., they may be streaming most of the time from HDD cache anyway).

In any case, some developers have more sophsticated load management facilities. So they can afford to do "more".

 

[Arwin]

That's why they have HDD in every PS3 to manage the (dynamic or static) cache. Some games also stream from both BR (low priority like dialogue) and HDD (high priority like textures) at the same time.

Yeah, but not games that we can compare across the two platforms though, so we'll never really know. Also in comparison to PC, there's the added problem of the 2.5" HDD being that much slower than a 3.5" HDD found in a typical desktop, and finally I have a sneaking suspicion that the PS3's HDD filesystem may slow things down a tad as well, but that's purely speculation.

Still, load-times for games like Uncharted 2 using constant streaming and combination of BD to HDD and HDD to RAM seems to yield some very good results.

 

[Neb]

Take into account that a texture of twice the width and heigth (say 512x512 -> 1024x1024) will have 4x the pixels and 4x as big in size. That is more work for GPU and more VRAM getting filled up. For example got lots of 4kx4k DXT5 skins for Shift each taking ~22MB with 11 mips (~11MB if DXT1 compression format). Vanilla textures are DXT1 1024x1024 ~700KB 11 mips.

 

[TurnDragoZeroV2G]

Well, I haven't looked at the actual sizes of these games, but if true, then it could be a good example of choosing to go for the extra disc-reading speed that 3.2GB affords by virtue of only using a single layer disc (a layer on the 360s DVD format actually holds only 3.4GB).

So in this case they may have put the multi-player on a second disc so that the load-times would stay relatively fast even for Arcade users. Such a consideration makes sense particularly in a multi-player scenario because large differences in load-times mean that people who installed the game on HDD will still have to wait for Arcade owners to load the game for disc. This could be an even stronger consideration with a game like Halo, that is expected to sell perhaps to a larger percentage of Arcade users than some other games.

We're starting to see some creative solutions here for the Arcade units on the one hand and the limits of DVDs on the other - if I didn't have a HDD in my 360 for instance, I give up my favorite tracks like the Nurburgring and Le Mans, and have about 100 cars replaced by generic looking models.

Probably has more to do with using different versions of the engine. Between Halo 3 and ODST, it was updated to allow HDD installs to decrease load times, rather than having the adverse effect of actually INCREASING them (since Bungie's streaming was never meant to deal with the installed situation). If the multiplayer was on the same disc, then when anybody went into a multiplayer game, it would slow down their loading, and subsequently, the loading of the match for anyone else in there. That would have meant either a) installing ODST and slowing down MP, or b) not installing ODST, slowing down ODST,

 

[joker454]

Don't you think that all depends on which game you are playing?

Not really. Fmw is a crutch that's been used over the years to get around realtime rendering shortcomings. In more recent times it's also been used to mask loading. But it has far too many limitations. What if you want to play through a game with a different character? Do we need to render multiple cutscenes, one with every playable character? What if a character comes out of the water all wet then a cutscene hits, do you need to create two cutscenes one with him wet and one with him dry? What if I blow up a building, then a cutscene plays. Will that building still be there in the pre-rendered cutscene? Fmw is just two restrictive, it forces design decisions and bad continuity by it's mere presence. I think as far as in game cutscenes go, it will eventually go the way of the dodo.

Having a hard time picturing that. It's almost certain that games will become bigger in size (storage) next generation. Thats how it has always been going, or do you think that the ideal has been reached?

Bigger? Yup. Order of magnitude bigger? Nope. It's hard enough to fund projects that fill up a dvd worth of content. Add digital distribution in the mix and 50gb games make no financial sense.

Well, I haven't looked at the actual sizes of these games, but if true, then it could be a good example of choosing to go for the extra disc-reading speed that 3.2GB affords by virtue of only using a single layer disc (a layer on the 360s DVD format actually holds only 3.4GB).

The layer switch only matters if you do it frequently in succession. So if you had to load 10 textures and loaded them as layer 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, etc... then the hit is large. For purposes of games it's not as big of a deal because you pack entire areas together on a given layer. Entering ice cave? Switch to layer 2 and load all ice cave data from there. Entering pit of doom? Switch to layer 1 and load all data from there. For the most part the layer switch penalty is easy to avoid. Games with virtual texturing though do make it a bit trickier.

 

[Arwin]

The layer switch only matters if you do it frequently in succession. So if you had to load 10 textures and loaded them as layer 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, etc... then the hit is large. For purposes of games it's not as big of a deal because you pack entire areas together on a given layer. Entering ice cave? Switch to layer 2 and load all ice cave data from there. Entering pit of doom? Switch to layer 1 and load all data from there. For the most part the layer switch penalty is easy to avoid. Games with virtual texturing though do make it a bit trickier.

Well you probably know better than I do, but I wasn't actually referring to the physical penalty of switching layers, but to a limitation on 360's DVD drives that mean it will reduce its maximum speed from 12X to 8X for all dual layer discs.

 

[eastmen]

Is DD a real issue ? on the pc side there are many mmorpgs at 20 gigs or higher that allow you to download and install the game and expansions.

lotro lets you do it and my install was over 20 gigs.

Wow also lets you do it but will stream more data as you approach new zones.

 

[Boxercide]

Misinformation about drive speeds is rampant.

Refer here:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=913202&postcount=55

 

[sebbbi]

How difficult would it be for devs other than id to implement such a system? Not to insult other devs but we are talking about a id here.

It's not that big deal for the game engine side (if you have some extra CPU horsepower left to do all the needed stuff to manage the system), but the content creation tools and toolchain might need big modifications. Basically the bigger engine and the more sophisticated content creation platform you have, the more work is needed.

But that's pretty much my point of view. As we are developing games to digital distribution (XBLA, etc) we do not need to worry about DVD/BR seek times and erratic disc transfer rate. It's much easier to stream pages from hard drive (almost zero latency and much faster transfer rate). Virtual texturing keeps much smaller set of texture data in memory compared to standard streaming techniques (less wasted pixels), but this also means that the system is much more latency sensitive. So correct distribution of data to the disc is crucial to keep the latency tolerable.

 

[Crossbar]

Misinformation about drive speeds is rampant.

Refer here:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=913202&postcount=55

Thanks, it´s pretty obvious there is also a strong incentive to keep game content as small as possible on DVDs as the more of it can be localised to the disk area with the highest read speed. The uneven read speed does not encourage any developer to take advantage of the full DVD even if they wanted to and can you keep it to a single layer disc there is an additional bonus with regard to load times.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Misinformation about drive speeds is rampant.

Refer here:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=913202&postcount=55

Sure but I'm refering to real world games as examples.

For example MW2 initial loading times...

http://www.lensoftruth.com/?p=16236

Loading: CoD: MW2 manages to mask the load times during each of the mission briefings and story narrations. So, if you are simply playing through the game the load times will not affect the gameplay experience. But, if you decide to replay a mission and want to skip the narrations, the Xbox 360 version has the quicker load times. On average, the PlayStation 3 takes 27 seconds to load while the Xbox 360 takes only 19 seconds. Also note that the PlayStation 3 version does not have a mandatory install.

Load Time 1: PlayStation 3 – 14 sec / Xbox 360 – 14 sec
Load Time 2: PlayStation 3 – 40 sec / Xbox 360 – 25 sec
Load Time 3: PlayStation 3 – 30 sec / Xbox 360 – 20 sec
Load Time 4: PlayStation 3 – 26 sec / Xbox 360 – 18 sec

Also in regards to streaming off BRD vs DVD in MW2 again.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-modern-warfare-2-face-off?page=2

In the shots below, we see the 360 rendition transition from a medium-quality texture to the full version in just one second via an HDD install, while it takes four seconds streaming from DVD. The PS3 version on the other hand takes eight full seconds, kicking off with a very low-quality asset that you don't see at all on 360. While the impact is limited to certain scenes only, it does suggest that an optional install for the Sony platform would have been worthwhile.

And Assassins Creed II, BRD + HD mandatory install vs. DVD only.

http://www.lensoftruth.com/?p=16415

Loading: Both systems had very close load times. In our samples, the PlayStation 3 averaged at 22 seconds whereas the Xbox 360 averaged at 19 seconds. The PlayStation 3 did have a mandatory 1526mb install which took around 4 minutes.

Bayonetta

http://www.lensoftruth.com/?p=17470

Loading: This game redefined loading. We typically focus on load times between levels, but Bayonetta, once again, was unique. With the game-play, anytime you collected an item, the game would pause and an image would display across the entire screen with a description. On the Xbox 360, this was quick and smooth. With the Playstation 3, this would also require a loading progress bar before the image would appear. But the loading issue wasn’t only with objects. Even when you went into your menu, the Playstation 3 would pause to load, while the Xbox 360 would jump right in. We wondered if an mandatory install would have cleaned up this issue on the Playstation 3 and which leads us to wonder why Sega decided against a mandatory install for the Playstation3.


Load Time 1: PlayStation 3 – 21 sec / Xbox 360 – 14 sec
Load Time 2: PlayStation 3 – 32 sec / Xbox 360 – 16 sec
Load Time 3: PlayStation 3 – 43 sec / Xbox 360 – 19 sec
Load Time 4: PlayStation 3 – 48 sec / Xbox 360 – 19 sec

The PS3 consistently has longer load times and longer streaming times compared to DVD when art assets are relatively equivalent. I could keep on posting comparisons, but that should get the point across.

Drive stats are misleading...

Regards,
SB

 

[Trejser]

Sure but I'm refering to real world games as examples.
Drive stats are misleading...

Regards,
SB

So how is this possible?

"Tie. Both versions had about the same amount of load time coming in around 18 seconds or so. But considering that the PS3 had no mandatory install and load times were equal was very impressive."

 

[George]

Sure but I'm refering to real world games as examples.

For example MW2 initial loading times...

http://www.lensoftruth.com/?p=16236



Also in regards to streaming off BRD vs DVD in MW2 again.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-modern-warfare-2-face-off?page=2



And Assassins Creed II, BRD + HD mandatory install vs. DVD only.

http://www.lensoftruth.com/?p=16415



Bayonetta

http://www.lensoftruth.com/?p=17470



The PS3 consistently has longer load times and longer streaming times compared to DVD when art assets are relatively equivalent. I could keep on posting comparisons, but that should get the point across.

Drive stats are misleading...

Regards,
SB

What are you willing to bet that if you look at the ps3 game disc for MW2 you will see references to the 360 on there? Unless you master a disc and develop a game with bluray in mind you won't get the most out of it. Comparisons on multiplat games will likely favor the 360.. (the 2 consoles ARE different down to the media/drive used)

bayonetta is the worst port in how long?

Drive speed is not a major bluray isse

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157

 

[PeterT]

Since the whole DVD space argument is coming up again, I'd like to add one recent observation I made. I primarily game on PC and buy my games via various DD services (so publishers have every reason to minimize download sizes -- bandwidth isn't free). Most of the recent big-budget games I bought are around 8-10 GB in size, with some outliers down and some up (mostly MMOs, but also eg. GTA4). So it seems that, even when targeting primarily current-gen consoles and trying to conserve space, a single DVD is no longer quite sufficient.

In any case, I'd answer the question in the title with a clear "yes", the room for discussion is only in extent.

 

[Prophecy2k]

I also find most of the discussion here quite ridiculous - although in some cases, still informative - when the underlying logic in many posts is so obvious... you know, like this:

if more disc space means better graphics 
and if PS3 has more disc space
then PS3 has better graphics

Edit: also, ODST itself is a single disc game, the second disc only contains multiplayer.

I tried and tried to resist the urge but i couldn't... Laa-Yosh the only person bringing this kind of sentiment into the thread is you. Frankly the above logic is all in your head, and if you re-read all the initial posts without your "champion the cause against teh PS3 fanboyz" glasses on, you'd have been able to properly see that folk were simply attempting to answer the OP's question in a more theoretical sense rather than your more "practical" outlook (which i've said many times that no-one has disagreed with).

 

[eastmen]

Since the whole DVD space argument is coming up again, I'd like to add one recent observation I made. I primarily game on PC and buy my games via various DD services (so publishers have every reason to minimize download sizes -- bandwidth isn't free). Most of the recent big-budget games I bought are around 8-10 GB in size, with some outliers down and some up (mostly MMOs, but also eg. GTA4). So it seems that, even when targeting primarily current-gen consoles and trying to conserve space, a single DVD is no longer quite sufficient.

In any case, I'd answer the question in the title with a clear "yes", the room for discussion is only in extent.

Steam has Crysis at 7006 MB. Warhead at 6243MB. Stalker at 5605MB.

Fallout 3 , oblivion and other games are all under 8 gigs also on my hardrive though they are from the discs and not steam.

 

[ShadowRunner]

Getting back to the original question, rather than BD vs DVD again, does disk space effect graphics? Of course it does!!

It would be funny to see the games of today being run from a 1.4mb floppy disk

Regardless of weather the difference between DVD vs BR capacity effects graphics at the moment there is little doubt more storage than DVD will be required at some stage in the future.

Also more storage capacity could lead to games that were not possible before, for instance i would like to see a game that goes back to prerendered backgrounds like the PS1 final fantasy games, but uses high bitrate 1080p FMV for the backgrounds (backgrounds that are so dynamic that the animation loop is a minute long for each background! ), the quality of the graphics in this case would have a correlation to the amount of disk space required.