ATI - PS3 is Unrefined

[zidane1strife]

I haven't seen it talk in the downloadable video, neither have I read anything like it. It ws blinking and doing some simple facial expressions, but nothing as radicl as a smile or a furrowed brow, that'd ruin a static SSS solution...

Well I recall that happening. I think I saw it in my full ps3 conference vid I had. I'll look up the dvd-r and recheck it again if no one can verify this info.

 

[mckmas8808]

How far away do you sit from your TV when playing? Anything below 20" would be too small, at least for most people's living room...

In a typical setup you are right. But people like Titanio have different setups in their house that will allow them to have a second screen (i.e. flat screen computer moniter).

 

[ROG27]

Precisely.

SM2a is better than SM2 and mostly better than SM2b, by the way. NVidia was very ambitious when it built the Geforce FX (the original SM2a GPU) and put a hell of a lot of features/capabilities into SM2a - hence SM3 doesn't look very different when you take away vertex texturing and dynamic branching. I think there's a fair argument in saying that NVidia got distracted by features and let the performance suffer in FX.

But dynamic branching, particularly, is a big big miss in RSX. NVidia really would need to pull a big one with a G71-derived RSX (which I don't for a second believe, by the way) because G70's dynamic branching is nothing more than glorified static branching.

What RSX lacks in finesse and features, it partly makes up in brute performance.

Cell saves the day, though. It has 100+ GFLOPs of spare computing power over XB360 to come to the rescue. There's no choice about doing particle generation, tessellation and other fancy vertex work on RSX, so Cell will do what CPUs have traditionally done. If you take that "spare power" and compare it with any P4 or A64, you can see it's plenty :smile:

As far as I can tell, most of the changes with DX10 are focussed on geometry. Xenos is only a subset of it (and some of DX10 is PC-specific, anyway). In terms of geometry, then, we're still in the dark as to the value of Xenos's features - much as we are over the efficiency gains that a unified shader architecture provides. After all, v1.0 is often not very good.

So, we gotta wait and see.

Jawed

Jawed, you are extrapolating theoretical performance gain into what you believe will be realworld output. So far zidane1strife's observations seem to be the only real evidence of how these consoles will perform. I know it takes a while to get a grasp of new hardware, but when new hardware is struggling in the performance area (especially when it's touted as being more efficient)...you have to ask the question...is it really going to perform like they say it's going to on paper? Maybe the PS3 solution as a whole is more usable. Usability, after all, is the crux of not only which will perform better, but which will show us tangible results that may live up to the expectations (or at least get near to them).

 

[Brimstone]

It may be a lame reason--I do not believe it's a lame excuse. Back a year ago, or so, when the keyboard/mouse adapter was first sold for the Xbox I heard a lot of outcry about how people who used these should be banned from Xbox Live, since it gave them an unfair advantage.

I believe this thinking is much more prominent in the console space given that everyone starts at a level playing field.

.Sis

Some decide to use Racing Wheels to control their cars. I'd say that gives an advantage, but I don't see the need to force match making between those with regular pads and racing wheels. People decide what they want to do.

Peoples internets connections aren't equal, some people have better broadband service than others.

Not everyone with a next-console will have the same quality of displays. Some won't be HD.

Not everyone will have surrond sound speakers.

A secondary display for a game is just a nice convience to those willing to make the effort to set up dual screens. In a lot of single player games, like EA sports games, it would be really nice to have extra information displayed. Will it give an edge in an online game, sure, but it elevates the overall enviroment of the game by having a player better coordinate with teammates. This is a good thing considering how many fools just wander around aimlessly not giving a crap about their teammates. When it comes to serious online play between clans, roughly the same percentage of people with dual displays would be on each side.

 

[mckmas8808]

I haven't seen it talk in the downloadable video, neither have I read anything like it. It ws blinking and doing some simple facial expressions, but nothing as radicl as a smile or a furrowed brow, that'd ruin a static SSS solution...

Here you go. Click here

 

[aaronspink]

Didn't Ken say this was built into the OS? And didn't Sony say that one person could be watching a Blu-ray movie, while another person could be on the internet on a second screen? I think this to is corporated inside the O.S.

Glad to see people fighting against a positive thing that they wouldn't even have to use.

How is it a positive thing if they spend resources on something that won't effect games? They could also strap on a heater, a BBQ grill, and hell, why not a could beer coolers to the thing, and yes, you might be able to spin it as positive, but that won't make it better at games or make it so games actually utilize the functionality.

And lets be honest, anyone who has 2 HDTV displays certainly isn't going to be using a PS3 to play DVDs or HD-DVD or BR.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

[aaronspink]

Don't you play an RPG like Dungeon Siege? You have to open the inventory to equip items and you switch those screens by hitting keys even though things around you are moving.

um, not really helpful. It is a focus change to go to the inventory screen regardless.

Or for chat, it's usually overlayed when playing MMORPG or FPS.

Cause thats what voice chat is for.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

[Geo]

I'm liking the beer cooler thing tho. Tho maybe as a licensed 3rd party option.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Well, the head talks indeed, but the deformations aren't extreme enough to give away if the SSS is static or not...

 

[expletive]

That strikes me as an incredibly lame excuse. I mean, extend that logically and it gets real ridiculous real quick.

Why?

 

[Brimstone]

Take one of the best selling games like Madden Football. It easy to imagine extra info displayed on a secondary screen being usefull. In Madden so much information is available in the game like the current stamina level of a player, player mismatches, possible substituion you may want to make from the bench, playbook audibles, and so on.

In a baseball game, you could have a batting lineup order, bullpen display, defense position overview, pitch counts, wind direction, and so on. Some of these things can be displayed on one screen say like wind direction, but it adds clutter to your main screen. It would be nice to remove more stuff off the main display onto a secondary display.

Imagine a Sim City game, when you click on a building like a residential zone, the secondary screen updates with another layer of detailed info different from what the main display shows. Income levels, real estate values, crime levels, trafic flow, charts, graphs, and so on.

 

[overclocked]

Precisely.

SM2a is better than SM2 and mostly better than SM2b, by the way. NVidia was very ambitious when it built the Geforce FX (the original SM2a GPU) and put a hell of a lot of features/capabilities into SM2a - hence SM3 doesn't look very different when you take away vertex texturing and dynamic branching. I think there's a fair argument in saying that NVidia got distracted by features and let the performance suffer in FX.

But dynamic branching, particularly, is a big big miss in RSX. NVidia really would need to pull a big one with a G71-derived RSX (which I don't for a second believe, by the way) because G70's dynamic branching is nothing more than glorified static branching.

What RSX lacks in finesse and features, it partly makes up in brute performance.

Cell saves the day, though. It has 100+ GFLOPs of spare computing power over XB360 to come to the rescue. There's no choice about doing particle generation, tessellation and other fancy vertex work on RSX, so Cell will do what CPUs have traditionally done. If you take that "spare power" and compare it with any P4 or A64, you can see it's plenty :smile:

As far as I can tell, most of the changes with DX10 are focussed on geometry. Xenos is only a subset of it (and some of DX10 is PC-specific, anyway). In terms of geometry, then, we're still in the dark as to the value of Xenos's features - much as we are over the efficiency gains that a unified shader architecture provides. After all, v1.0 is often not very good.

So, we gotta wait and see.

Jawed

I think you are WAY OUT jawed in your last posts here.
What your basically saying is that a PS3 with G70(i stick with this cause it cant get worse right?) would suck compared to Xenon using theoretical schemantics that you "assume" is correct, theres NOTHING that proves this.
If there had been a unified chip on the market you could atleast have any reference but it still wouldnt get anything "proved" . In the end this just brings a tone to the thread thats begs for it to get ugly IMO.

I find your latest senteces a little funny because you basically says there what i think is
the only thing that we do know and agrees with you.
But the rest i think just builds up an unhealthy climate for threads like this that has been more clean then i thought it would.

 

[mckmas8808]

How is it a positive thing if they spend resources on something that won't effect games? They could also strap on a heater, a BBQ grill, and hell, why not a could beer coolers to the thing, and yes, you might be able to spin it as positive, but that won't make it better at games or make it so games actually utilize the functionality.

And lets be honest, anyone who has 2 HDTV displays certainly isn't going to be using a PS3 to play DVDs or HD-DVD or BR.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

Nice to know you have an imagination.

Just face it this is one of the things that Sony has an advantage at and get over it. It's ok for Sony to actually have something good every once in a while. And it is you spinning this advantage to a disadvantage or possible problem. Playing a game on a HDTV and having a game guide in the second screen is a good option. Stop downplaying it.

 

[expletive]

Nice to know you have an imagination.

Just face it this is one of the things that Sony has an advantage at and get over it. It's ok for Sony to actually have something good every once in a while. And it is you spinning this advantage to a disadvantage or possible problem. Playing a game on a HDTV and having a game guide in the second screen is a good option. Stop downplaying it.

I dont htink anyone is saying its a disadvantage, just that it wont produce any compelling benefit in terms of games or sales.

A lot of the examples for this tend to be ways to make games fit the dual display model rather than the have the dual display model rise out of necessity for games we have. There has to be an intrinsic need for 2 displays for it to get ANY kind of penetration/acceptance whatsoever.

Like i stated earlier, there is practically NO support for this in the PC gaming space, and the PC gaming space is one whose audience and hardware is much more suited for it.

EDIT: and to be fair, people are equally ciritcal of the 'gimmicky' revolution controller, and EVERYONE who owns a rev will have one.

 

[Sis]

Playing a game on a HDTV and having a game guide in the second screen is a good option.

No, it's a solution in search of a problem. That's primarily the issue at hand.

.Sis

 

[expletive]

No, it's a solution in search of a problem. That's primarily the issue at hand.

.Sis

Thanks, verbalized much better than I did.

 

[scificube]

Well it would certainly be a solution to my problem.

Co-op games.

I would love to be able to enjoy my co-op games on a screen of my own...such as Halo1/2, Baldur's Gate, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Perfect Dark...RPGs, etc on my own screen while my buddy play with on his own screen. I would love to do this WITHOUT two copies of the game and for the matter WITHOUT the need for two systems. I'd do friggin cart-wheels actually...well maybe not but such a feature certainly would paint a big ole smile on my face.

I think this is just about the most practical/valuable application of dual-output on the PS3 and I don't think I would be nearly alone in my appreciation of being able to do this.

On a more specific note...I'd LOVE to be able to bring six of my buds over and start up some team games of UT2007....or both or teams fighting some other teams online...instant addiction....and if MS could do this with the X360....four player co-op without two copies of Halo3 or two X360s!...that would be pure ownage plain and simple.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's ok for Sony to actually have something good every once in a while. And it is you spinning this advantage to a disadvantage or possible problem. Playing a game on a HDTV and having a game guide in the second screen is a good option. Stop downplaying it.

Ordinarily the moment you need to look at something not shown in the game screen, it's not time-critical data and can be facilitated readily through a menu. Though I'm sure uses for dual screen can be found, I doubt any game will find dual screen essential, or even provide a bonus. Inventory screens, stat screens, and everything else can be handled without having a negative impact on gameplay with only one screen. Things like radars and maps will be useable I guess as they won't clutter the main screen, but I don't know anyone who'd have two TVs next to each other to use this feature. Most TVs sit on a stand of adequate size to carry that TV. A second TV will need to be placed on the floor or other table. This isn't a setup that people will keep in their living room. It's something people will have to arrange for the game that supports it, and that's a faff that most people aren't going to go to. If a dev can easily defer a radar or map onto the second output, I guess it might make it's way as a feature. If any real work needs to be done to incorporate a second display to show the info already available in the single screen version of the game, it won't happen. There just won't be enough people with a dual screen setup to benefit from the effort of writing for them.

 

[mckmas8808]

Well it would certainly be a solution to my problem.

Co-op games.

I would love to be able to enjoy my co-op games on a screen of my own...such as Halo1/2, Baldur's Gate, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Perfect Dark...RPGs, etc on my own screen while my buddy play with on his own screen. I would love to do this WITHOUT two copies of the game and for the matter WITHOUT the need for two systems. I'd do friggin cart-wheels actually...well maybe not but such a feature certainly would paint a big ole smile on my face.

I think this is just about the most practical/valuable application of dual-output on the PS3 and I don't think I would be nearly alone in my appreciation of being able to do this.

See this is the imagination that our fellow developers need. Not the hating, it's not going to work, and why should they do that people here. There's probably a dozens of things that the second screen could be used for but some of you guys think that it's a non-factor.

And to expletive people were wrong in doubting the Revolution controller. If I did then I'm offically saying I'm sorry. The only real thing that I have questions about is that I want to know if the shell was going to be including to give the devs and gamers a normal to play their Madden, NBA Live, Mortal Kombat, etc franchises.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Well it would certainly be a solution to my problem.

Co-op games.

I think this is just about the most practical/valuable application of dual-output on the PS3 and I don't think I would be nearly alone in my appreciation of being able to do this.

Unfortunately, driving two similar displays at the same time would require twice the effective fill rate from the GPU. So how could the developers make their game work well in dual-screen mode? Make the single player game only use half the available fillrate? Make the co-op game half as detailed as the single player? Or?