Carmack's Hands On Impressions of Xbox 360 & PS3

I would educate myself on proper Cell development paradigms before making such silly statements in the future.

 

Umm that can be discussed since what counts is whats goes on "under the hood". So to say technically and not artwork for creating illusion of better looking graphics.

So as long as a dev says PS3 is superior then it is OK, he is a good dev and all but if he points out flaws then he is bashed (as other devs have been when doing it even though they give credit to Cell etc).

How about all the devs who squezes in 'only possible on Cell/PS3' in their video walkthroughs/interviews, are they X = $ony?

And how about what he said about the Cell, that it theoretical has more computing power than the xbox360 CPU, does that remove some stenches of his white coat?

 

Yes, the majority of Carmacks disdain for the PS3 is a memory architecture that resembles that of the PC and not the radical Cell architecture itself. That makes perfect sense.

 

You guys should understand that Carmack speaks from a multiplatforms perspective, so having less memory to start with can be a big hassle. If you're developing a PS3 only game you don't care that much about such an issue

 

But dont forget the PC has far more memory (RAM/VRAM) in each pool.

 

What The F@#$....

GreekDNA,

First of all, it's realize.

Secondly, did you even read his commentary? He said PS3 will run at least as fast as the other platforms, it'll just take more work to get it at that state. And then he bitched about why it would take more work.

All the while demoing an engine designed around reducing production time (aka, work).

As for console superiority, has that been "proven" yet? I mean, with shipping titles developed simultaneously yet with equal talent and time and gumdrops? And how does this relate to the validity of JC's comments?

 

Now, that's not true and please stop trying to put words into my mouth and paraphrasing things I never said. I did not say Carmack had no concept of the power of the PS3. He clearly states that the 360 and PS3 are closer than any other 2 consoles so his opinion is pretty evident. What I did say is that he doesn't really care for the PS3 architecture - which is probably why id hired a PS3 engine specialist to optimize their id Tech5 engine on the PS3 (a task Carmack did not want to undertake).

There is no question Carmack has adapted to multicore processor development on the PC, but he is on record as preferring single core high MHz processors. As for Cell development, bringing multicore development paradigms that work on other multicore processors onto the Cell without adapting them to suit the radical architecture of the Cell will usually result in poor performance.

 

I agree, the PS3 O/S footprint is a major pain point for his cross platform engine and I tend to agree with him. I also happen to think the O/S contains a lot of baggage that could probably be virtualized on as needed basis.

 

Yes, finally some logic creeps into yet another "you complain about PS3 therefore you must be an incompetent fool" thread on B3D. First off, console specific devs will rarely, if ever, knock the machine they are deving on. The success of said machine is their bread and butter, why in heck would they knock it or do anything to bring it down? Second, multi console devs will rarely, if ever, post their true negative thoughts of a particular platform on public forums for fear of possible repercussions.

Whats cool about Carmack is that he's free of all such chains. He's already a millionaire, he's his own boss, and he's multi platform. So he can say anything he damn well wants, and on occasion will do just that. The fact that some here are insinuating that Carmack must be a noob because he complains about the PS3 goes along way to showing how far bias goes on this forum.

Seriously, if some people think that Carmack doesn't have enough brains to figure these machines out, then few ever will. Fyi, there are far, far more difficult programming tasks out there than coding on a PS3.

 

First of all, thanks for moving this out of technology and it's mainly become a thread for apologists. Calling Carmack out when your own ability to comprehend any of the technical hurdles he faces daily is non existant defines "stupid." It's even worse than arm chair quarterbacking as atleast people often understand the game of football when blurting at the screen. Here most of you have no clue (including me) about any of this stuff yet you are attempting to discredit one of the most respected individual's in their industry. I sincerely hope your console of choice performs amazing sex acts as I can't explain such blind faith over an entertainment device.

Once you stop nitpicking at the comments and look at it from a broad scope it's not as bad as things seem. As nao put it, he's looking at this from a multiplatform perspective. To add to that, he's looking at things from a BUSINESS perspective. He has a financial responsibility to his firm and it's employees. He can't spend X amount of money on the PS3 just so fanboys on the net can go "LOL! Carmack rules! PS3 PWNS!!!" If he can distribute that time (money) over all platform for a universal gain, it's the best decision for his business. To argue with that is quite silly.

However, he recognized the impact to his business by having sub par PS3 games so he did he what was necessary to bring the PS3 version upto par. He hired a well known top level PS3 programmer. Hard to fault him for such actions, isn't it?

I know for some of you unless the PS3 just absolutely destorys the 360 and even the PC, it's not good enough and it must be the A/B/C's fault but reality doesn't work that way. These are business decisions not personal ones.

 

I would think if Carmack had infinite time, he would optimize the engine for Cell himself, as much as possible. Seeing as id is still a small team, he doesn't have infinite time, and probably made the right call in bringing in someone else.

Anyone know how many employees id has working on this game?

I'm surprised so many people dislike his work. He works with a small development team and they turn out some great stuff, considering. The guy is obviously extremely smart and talented.

 

Goodness me... what have people turned into ?

As nAo implied, the new engine seems to be (still) a work in progress. I bet they have tons of things they want to roll out for the initial release. Give JC some more time (and deals ). Once the situation stablizes, I am sure there will be more opportunities to optimize the engine even more for different platform in the future.

Out of the lot of PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PS3, only the last chap has a NUMA architecture and a split memory pool, so JC's team -- heck even I -- will balance things in a non-PS3 centric way at this stage.

If I were you, I would cheer him on, rather than to put him down. I can certainly see Sony pouring in resources just like they did for Epic, once JC gains good momentum.

 

Not to mention raising his young son and doing all the other things he does besides programming

Assuming their website is up-to-date, they've got 34 employees. I don't mean to demean Mr. Hollenshead's job, but I guess one could say there are 33 people working on it directly.

This is probably the core studio only:

I guess there would be overlapping ?

 

From what I understand ID is and always has been a small team of people. They keep it small to a)maximize profit and b)to make communication easier during development. Considering how talented he is, he's really able to pull quite a bit of weight.

Yeah, the man is literally a Rocket Scientist.

 

And a trillion others on machines between ZX81 and AtariST. Of course people would only remember those if they played games in that era.

Was MidiMaze something you worked on as well?

He's being held hostage by his gf... dressed in an Imperial Guard uniform, chains and whips, making him wear a MuuMuu face mask...Or was that supposed to be Princes Leia slave outfit... On second thought, bad mental image.

Real men programmers know it's never the hw fault....or their fault for that matter.
It's always the compiler.

 

Far more memory in each pool? I doubt 320MB~ VRAM is the current mainstream, let alone Mac.

 

If we have a rep system here...you would get +infinity

Look, at the current stuff he's showing, it freaking amazing. A multi-platform running at 60fps...it looks very good...He makes some disparaging remarks about the PS3, and now he's a noob, stupid, lazy? Has anyone else managed to do what he has done?

 

yes i read his commentary but i feel like his adding those statments in just to prove that " hey ill add these comments in just to show im not really biased" and he also contradicts that statment by following with a " I wouldnt bother going down that rat hole "

i could be wrong but then again i couldn't care less

CJ

OUT.

 

Carmacks main complaint is development, i don´t see how that can be argued when he has 3 platforms, where one has a completely different set of development tools and of which he just doesn´t have the knowledge needed to optimize the engine (why else hire a Cell expert?).

In my dream world Carmack would be working exclusively on PS3 titles and with his aparent extraordinay skills it could be some very special stuff he could churn out.

I remember an old story, maybe an old "plan file" from Brian Hook, one of the guys that worked at id software, he had been fighting some kind of coding problem for days, he went to Carmack that took a whole few seconds to fix it. His comment was something like "he really is that good" Brian Hook wrote the 3dfx Open GL glide wrapper afaik.

 

Irrelevent, I didn't say UE3 was better (I'm no fan of UE3 titles so far either from an art direction standpoint), the subject was about the skin shaders. The main character from the movie has plasticy old Doom-engine look and his hat looks like it coulda been ripped right out of D3 art assets. What am I comparing to? How about Crysis, Heavenly Sword, even Bad Company. iD's character models always look like wax figures who have ingested too much colloidial silver and came down with Argyria.

Tech5 looks like a step forward in the content creation pipeline from an artists point of view, and the outdoor areas even look better now, but for some reason, iD's character work always leaves me feeling like they're rank amateurs.