Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2010]

And it's a case where in gameplay at least, triple buffering works really well, unlike Fallout 3 or Resident Evil 5. But I still don't understand if it works on PS3, why not use it on 360? And why uncap the framerate when it only spikes above 30fps by 5fps or so once a minute?

 

Size of EDRAM?

Cutscene is just a cutscene, gameplay matters:

"Also note that the PS3 game runs without a frame-rate cap while overall maintaining an average just a notch below 30FPS - just like Xbox 360."

 

Why would it matter?
You only keep buffers you currently render in EDRAM, when buffer is ready you resolve it into main ram.

If you would have to keep all buffers in edram, we wouldn't see much shadows or other screenspace effects in X360.
Also the inablity to sample those buffers would be slightly annoying as well.

 

Christophe Balestra was a demoscene coder (OXBAB from the group OXYGENE) a long time ago and, as everyone knows, demoscene coders are awesome and never die.

 

Eh, arbitrary. Still a difference/flaw.

If that was the case why the outroar over FF13's lower res cutscenes on 360 (that started well before it was learned the gameplay was sub HD)

 

The same scene suffer of tearing on 360. Yes even in a cutscene. Arbitrary still a flaw/difference not mentioned in the comparison.

 

New article up on Natal & Primesense.

PrimeSense: Beyond Natal
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-primesense-article

Great article.

Tommy McClain

 

Very interesting read, comfirmation of some things, and clarification on others.

Confirms my thoughts that the camera itself is the least interesting, although more interesting than I originally thought, part of Natal.

The software and algorhythms that MS is coming up with for Natal with regards to motion recognition, prediction, and integration is the more interesting bits. I'm hoping at some point DF or someone else will be able to get an in depth interview with someone at MS on the intricacies of Natal.

Looks like camera isn't time of flight as was most commonly thought, but rather an analysis of the image to determine the depth of each pixel. So in theory this should in all cases be faster than a time of flight system. Also mentioned was that this makes the system overall inherently cheaper than a custom time of flight camera/sensor.

Finally direct confirmation that MS removed the custom processor that exists in the reference design of the 3D camera.

Also interesting that the camera itself is far more capable than what MS is specing for Natal. Perhaps to reduce processing/storage requirements. Or perhaps the faster response is limited to a lower resolution as the articles speculates. And that higher resolutions (up to 1600x1200) presumably would require greater processing power, storage, and perhaps be slower to boot.

It's unfortunate that the Prime Sense guys couldn't go into more details (obviously expected since Natal still isn't officially released) about what MS is doing.

And finally, encouraging to see that even if MS doesn't provide support for the Natal unit in Windows, that Prime Sense appears to already have things in motion with other companies to bring the 3D camera system and motion controls to Windows sometime after Natal is released.

Regards,
SB

 

I like the PrimeSense promo video. That's what I'm talking about regarding seamless integration of natural interface with content. The basic ingredients are all shipping already: Voice chat hooked up with POTS, in-movie tags, media playback, "Minority Report" UI, etc.

 

Very interesting indeed, i'm dying to see more details on natal XD

Did anyone around here get to go to Ms' Gamefest 2010? I know it was most likely embargoed, but i'll take any info

Sorry to quote that, english is not my first language, but from what i understood, they didn't really confirmed anything, they only stated that spec wise natal is a bit different than the reference design. The later seemed like it was DF trying to explain the rumors...

But does it mean it can film at that resolution? I always take those kinda specs as a resolution for still pictures, thought if that was the case they would probable do the same for the IR camera too XD

 

I got that from this bit...

I'm assuming this was from PrimeSense stating or implying that the Natal version doesn't include the dedicated SoC. Although it's possible MS could have put in one of their own, with the various rumors though it seems likely that Natal probably doesn't have one in order to reduce cost.

And in many ways makes sense. The description of the default SoC itself doesn't sound like it is capable of doing the things that would be required for Natal to do voice recognition, image recognition, motion tracking & prediction, 3D skeletal mapping, etc.

Although looking at it more closely, MS would need "something" to replace it. As it also handles the connection (USB) between the device and a PC (or other device). In this case it also makes sense for MS to replace rather than remove it. Don't X360 controllers require a security encryption chip in order to interface with the machine? I know of at least one manufacturer who couldn't get a license from MS for the security chip in order to make X360 compatible controllers.

In that case, there may be a cheaper/different chip in place of the SoC that PrimeSense provides with the reference camera. But either way, the reference SoC doesn't appear to be capable of running the things Natal would require.

Regards,
SB

 

It would be great if Digital Foundry did and interview to Remedy on the Alan Wake engine, the last trailer looked great.

 

About just cause 2 anyone has check that the ps3 version use even the temporal AA (dynamic AA, QAA scaled down to 2xAA temporal) with the same trick of mgs 4 to mask the blur of temporal AA? Because the occasional blurried effect remind me to the same jerk effect seen in mgs4, occured when the camera views is in motion.

 

As long as games are optimised to be in single large images through, but then they should always be (I'm betting they still aren't always though). As far as I remember, seek times aren't that great? Copying multiple files to my external HDD is always a pita on PC compared to large single files, which works just fine.

Also, it seems to me that for the 360 in particular there's some kind of cap/bottleneck in place, because there are a few devices that are performing the same where there really should be bigger differences.

 

I wonder if the different ports on the 360 actually matter, keeping in mind that the 120GB file transfer instructions actually recommend not to use the front ports to perform the operation. i.e. Microsoft may have limited the front ports' bandwidth, but perhaps not so much for the rear port, which was intended for the wireless adapter and the HDD transfer tool.

 

If it is using USB 2.0 then yes. I get a pretty much solid 30-35MB/sec read or write speed with barely any fluctuation from single large file to 10's of thousands of extracted files from game(s) (mod backup). Been that with my previous PC to that also had USB 2.0. And going by USB benches 30-35MB/sec seems the norm for USB 2.0. Also note I use a USB HDD.
Obviously the HDD is greatly limited by USB connection as it could do upwards twice the write/read speed if connected via SATA.

 

DVD speed running at 12X max out around 15MB/s. If you install it should give about those number.

 

AlStrong Back port was tested too, same story there.

 

Yeah, but the max speed measured here is half that.