Can Bethesda's programmers shorten the loading times for PS3's version of oblivion?

[Angelcurio]

Bethesda is very known for thei lack of optimization in their titles. As Shifty said, their games simply dont get much more better with new hardware, being Morrowind the prime example. So, even though things could get better, i would not expect the ps3 version to look any different, sans a little better load times by default thanks to default HDD and that more data could be replicated in the disc due to the size of the Blu-ray.

 

[Bad_Boy]

taken from gaf via the november issue of OPM

Aside from this new content, you might be wondering if the PS3 version of Oblivion sports any technical improvements over the 360 version. The answer: sort of. "It has a lot of technical niceties," Howard says, "just [as a result of] the development time. One of the things that always bothered us was how the distant landscape looked. You'd get this very perceptible line of where stuff is loaded and where it's not loaded, and then it pops in. On the PS3, it's a lot more seamless. We did some new shaders for how it takes information from the background to the foreground and blends all that together. It's a slightly cleaner image." The results are subtle, but noticeable.

But what about more sweeping changes to things like animation, textures, or basic gameplay? Turns out, the team wasn't interested in rebuilding the game from the ground up. "That's the game we want to have out there," Howard says emphatically. "It's Oblivion. It's Oblivion on the PC, it's Oblivion on the 360, it's Oblivion on the PS3. Even if we had the ability to, for instance, redo all the art, I wouldn't want to do that. That's Oblivion; that's the art; that's how it looks."

 

[ERP]

You see the same comments (deservedly so IMO) about SOE when looking at the likes of Untold Legends on PS3. That game is lacking in many features found in other titles, so you can only assume they're just not that good overall.

I agree with those who rate Bethesda as poor programmers overall. There engines are...clunky. On PC they don't scale well with better hardware, they seem to miss some optimizations (see the hacks for Morrowind that could get your frame rate for example), they don't seem efficient in the loading department, and in Oblivion they're a bit behind the graphical times too. I dare say this is because as developers the engine isn't a big concern and they're more interested in the game and content. As such, I also agree it's unlikely Oblivion on PS3 will have any loading advantages. I doubt it'll have an frame-rate advantages either. I just don't think Bethesda care about framerate at all.

I want to make this clear........
There are very few games that impress me, or that I look at and say how did they build that. And both Morrowind and Oblivion are in that list.

It is true that Bethesda does seem to have less of a focus on what most here consider the technical side (using the Net Immerse engine for example) of things. But technology goes far beyond pushing bleeding edge graphics, you should not undervalue the engineering required to build and ship something the size of Oblivion or even Morrowind. I really don't think it's necessary to pooh pooh their engineering talent, I'd be willing to bet that they have better engineering talent than most. It's probably just not focussed on the "graphics" side.

Oblivion is Oblivion and I wouldn't expect any major changes for PS3, they will probably have fixed some of the easier to address problems.

 

[LunchBox]

About loading at a shorter period...

If they do, It would be greatly appeciated
Although I'm still kind of sad that they took out those dead npc(s) with exposed boobies on the newer copies of the game.

 

[Darkon]

You see the same comments (deservedly so IMO) about SOE when looking at the likes of Untold Legends on PS3. That game is lacking in many features found in other titles, so you can only assume they're just not that good overall.

I agree with those who rate Bethesda as poor programmers overall. There engines are...clunky. On PC they don't scale well with better hardware, they seem to miss some optimizations (see the hacks for Morrowind that could get your frame rate for example), they don't seem efficient in the loading department, and in Oblivion they're a bit behind the graphical times too. I dare say this is because as developers the engine isn't a big concern and they're more interested in the game and content. As such, I also agree it's unlikely Oblivion on PS3 will have any loading advantages. I doubt it'll have an frame-rate advantages either. I just don't think Bethesda care about framerate at all.

I also agree but this wasn't always the case, Terminator: operation scour and Rampage where damn good looking games back in the old days rivalling even Doom in GFX department

 

[Rolf N]

I also agree but this wasn't always the case, Terminator: operation scour and Rampage where damn good looking games back in the old days rivalling even Doom in GFX department

Yeah, I wanted to mention Daggerfall, which had pretty impressive graphics tech for its time, but then I think that was a licensed engine (X-Engine? Egosoft?) as well.

 

[swaaye]

Daggerfall used their own engine I'm sure. They also made a full 3D engine (Quake competitor) for some Terminator games, Future Shock and Skynet, and that was used for their Elder Scrolls: Redguard (or Battlespire?) game as well (with hacked in 3dfx support). That later engine was Xengine.

 

[Supernatural]

Will the PS3 version of Oblivion use HDR like the 360 version?

 

[Supernatural]

double