Details on the new Toshiba fab in Oita

[Panajev2001a]

With a Reyes-like renderer spatial and temporal AA come ( almost ) for free ( well they are hidden behind lots of other things... )

I see AA as a necessity at 480p, but not at 720p or 1080p... only good texture filtering ( against shimmering ).

 

[Vince]

With a REYES-like renderer spatial and temporal AA come ( almost ) for free ( well they are hidden behind lots of other things... )

Exactly...

 

[Panajev2001a]

Vince... unless you do everything procedurally you will still need displacement and texture maps plus some developers might still try to do regular style rendering without using micro-polygons.

PRman guys lamented about the GB of I/O data that slows down rendering...

Some of that IS textures...

Some developer might want to use very HIGH resolution textures and 3D Textures and they take quite a bit of memory.

We might not got for tons of multiple texture layers, but we still have support for single texturing and we cannot ask developers to do everything procedurally.

Some will want to use phot-realistic textures and we cannot blame them for it...

I think that screen tiling won't slow down rendering much and will save quite a bit of e-DRAM.

 

[Vince]

Vince... unless you do everything procedurally you will still need displacement and texture maps plus some developers might still try to do regular style rendering without using micro-polygons

I was expecting Procedural, HOS, and compression schemes (perhaps finally the rise of the Wavelet?) as the norm.

 

[bbot]

"Some developer might want to use very HIGH resolution textures..."

Yes, just like in those screenshots of Silent Hill 3. I don't think you could get that realistic looking skin without hires textures. Lots and lots of polygons won't be of help in this case.

 

[Vince]

Yes, just like in those screenshots of Silent Hill 3. I don't think you could get that realistic looking skin without hires textures. Lots and lots of polygons won't be of help in this case.

I beg to differ bud. Going by David Brickhill's GDC presentation on PS3-level meshes, he predicted characters composed of 800,000 polygons. With LoD and one main character, you can model the dustmite crawling on Heather's skin next time...

 

[Paul]

beg to differ bud. Going by David Brickhill's GDC presentation on PS3-level meshes

Whoa whoa whoa, do you have a link on this? Or more information, I want to know.

Not saying your lying, I just wanna read about it.

 

[megadrive0088]

this is alot to absorb. I would hope PS3 has a good AA method as well as enough samples of it to do away with aliasing alltogther, when it is combined with the high resolution the PS3 will have to offer.


Panajev - if cost and transistors/die-size were no object - I would advocate a super GS Visualizer - a combination of both worlds.

this device would be several billion transistors - would have both super super mega fast polygon drawing of very tiny polygons, as well as lots of hardwired based effects, as well as a powerful front end, of PUs+APUs for programmability. it would have both tremendous fillrate (512 pixel pipes!)and tremendous work being done on each pixel. in this fantasy world for GPUs, we have an L1 cache-like eDRAM of say 128MB, and these do take up transistors. but its not on a bus. its actually part of the logic. then, we have 2-4 GB of an L2 cache-like eDRAM that does NOT take up transistors, it conected to to chip on a very wide bus.

ok forget that. none of that made sense. but you can see what i was getting at. trying to solve the problem of rendering by both massive amounts of tiny polygons AND awesome hardwired effects (that are fast) PLUS the programmablity of a CPU for additional FX.

nevermind, this is all kinda worthless but I was trying


the real PS3 will probably be VERY close to your educated estimates.

 

[megadrive0088]

I gotta say, this year is a bit early for real PS3 talk. we are all just in the speculation mode with very little concrete info other than the Sony Patent.
but NEXT YEAR, starting at GDC will be VERY interesting, as PS3 spec solidifies and actual silicon becomes a reality.

 

[MfA]

You think hair wont shimmer if you create it from polygons? Anti aliasing isnt gonna get any less important ...

 

[Brimstone]

Has Sony applied for any patents for texture compression methods? Or geometry compression?

 

[bbot]

Yes, just like in those screenshots of Silent Hill 3. I don't think you could get that realistic looking skin without hires textures. Lots and lots of polygons won't be of help in this case.

I beg to differ bud. Going by David Brickhill's GDC presentation on PS3-level meshes, he predicted characters composed of 800,000 polygons. With LoD and one main character, you can model the dustmite crawling on Heather's skin next time...

Thise polygons still need to be colored, and skin usually has blemishes. Wrapping a hi-res texture on a 3d model composed of many polygons seems the way to go.

 

[cybamerc]

Panajev2001a:

> I see AA as a necessity at 480p, but not at 720p or 1080p

I hope Sony doesn't share your opinion. Good AA will be an absolute requirement next gen.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yes, but 4x AA is a bit too much at 720p and 1080p... more like 2x MSAA at 720p and 1080p and 2-4x MSAA at 480p.

 

[London Geezer]

What will a HDTV cost when PS3 comes out i wonder, it would be like a joke having such a powerful beast output at 640*480.

HDTV will be standard in 2005, your not going to see stores selling analog TV's. The price will be just like an average TV set now.

YEAH.... maybe in the US....

 

[cybamerc]

Panajev2001a:

> Yes, but 4x AA is a bit too much at 720p and 1080p

I disagree. 4x AA is the absolute minimum of what is acceptable. One of the things I'm most looking forward to in the next gen is improved IQ. Just bumping up the resolution won't cut it. With more polys come more jaggies and some solid AA will be needed. 4x AA will be acceptable (and should be required for all games) but 8-16x AA should be the goal IMO.

 

[_phil_]

Yes, just like in those screenshots of Silent Hill 3. I don't think you could get that realistic looking skin without hires textures. Lots and lots of polygons won't be of help in this case.

I beg to differ bud. Going by David Brickhill's GDC presentation on PS3-level meshes, he predicted characters composed of 800,000 polygons. With LoD and one main character, you can model the dustmite crawling on Heather's skin next time...

Thise polygons still need to be colored, and skin usually has blemishes. Wrapping a hi-res texture on a 3d model composed of many polygons seems the way to go.

With so many polys ,you could go for 2-3 blends of a rather simple procedural shading, + eventually some vertex normal shading tricks.

 

[London Geezer]

Panajev2001a:

> Yes, but 4x AA is a bit too much at 720p and 1080p

I disagree. 4x AA is the absolute minimum of what is acceptable. One of the things I'm most looking forward to in the next gen is improved IQ. Just bumping up the resolution won't cut it. With more polys come more jaggies and some solid AA will be needed. 4x AA will be acceptable (and should be required for all games) but 8-16x AA should be the goal IMO.

what u're saying might be right, but remember that what u need is something that looks pretty much like a DVD IQ... and we're not even getting those insane 720p or 1080p on DVD's at the moment... 720p without anti alisasing or maybe with a bit of 4x AA will be just fine... considering that the amount of HDTV's in 2005 will not be as big as someone here thinks it will... i think that the japanese, american and european markets will have to be treated on the same level, since there are more games sold in europe than in japan. things are starting to get better, and i genuinely do not see HDTV as the standard in 2005 here in europe. Devs and sony will have to think about that...

 

[V3]

Talking about Toshiba

http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20020429S0023

Toshiba Corp. is set to pull its weight in the configurable-core market this week, when it describes a media processor architecture billed as configurable and extensible.

That should be interesting.

 

[Panajev2001a]

That could be based on Cell... Toshiba has invested tons of money into Cell as well and guess what... Cell is modular and scalable, just what Toshiba wants