Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2011]

[bkilian]

With one of best graphics, A.I. (it won awards from the A.I. community), etc.; I like the way they were "doing something wrong." I wish more developers would do just that.


Really? I thought the best game graphics award, for the past 2 out of the 4 years the PS3 has been around, has gone to PS3 exclusives. Feel free to come up with whatever excuses you like.

No, you don't understand, I was not saying the game wasn't good, I was saying I disbelieved they had left any significant RAM free. No developer worth his salt would leave RAM sitting on the table. Heck, if nothing else, I would be unrolling loops to improve performance, and tabling up on things I would normally be calculating in real time.

Best game graphic award from what? Except for Uncharted, I personally prefer the 360 exclusives in terms of graphics compared to the PS3 exclusives. I was completely not impressed by Killzone 2.

 

[Barso]

There's no doubt that the PS3 has won the graphics award with it's exclusives. And what makes that more amazing, is the fact that it's done with a GPU that is not as good as the xbox360 GPU.
If that is true then it's surely testament to the strength of sony's first party studios.
I have played nothing on the 360 that looks like god of war 3 or GT5. I know GT5 screen tears and has framerate drops but I think alot of people miss the fact that there are 16 cars on track with those amazing premium car models.
I would love sony to go with upgraded CELL and an amazing GPU next gen.
They have the tools in place so capitalize on that.
I think the only problem sony will have next gen is the fact that microsoft seem to be doing alot of cosying up to third parties at the moment and getting them on their side. Microsoft has the bank balance but we don't know what their shareholders are thinking.
I would love to see sony back on top because if they fail next gen, it could well see them pull out of the console race and the thought of microsoft being number one makes my bones shiver.

 

[eastmen]

There's no doubt that the PS3 has won the graphics award with it's exclusives. And what makes that more amazing, is the fact that it's done with a GPU that is not as good as the xbox360 GPU.
If that is true then it's surely testament to the strength of sony's first party studios.
I have played nothing on the 360 that looks like god of war 3 or GT5. I know GT5 screen tears and has framerate drops but I think alot of people miss the fact that there are 16 cars on track with those amazing premium car models.
I would love sony to go with upgraded CELL and an amazing GPU next gen.
They have the tools in place so capitalize on that.
I think the only problem sony will have next gen is the fact that microsoft seem to be doing alot of cosying up to third parties at the moment and getting them on their side. Microsoft has the bank balance but we don't know what their shareholders are thinking.
I would love to see sony back on top because if they fail next gen, it could well see them pull out of the console race and the thought of microsoft being number one makes my bones shiver.

Sony is willing to invest alot of money into games.

You mention GT5 it was in development for 5 years and during that time MS was able to put out 3 forza titles . Its rumored budget was not much further off than the buget for all 3 forza titles also.

This is really sony's strength. Killzone 2 had a reported buget of 40m . That is higher than the rumored budget of Halo 3 which is a game that sold many times more than killzone 2.

If sony's fortunes don't turn around they may not be able to afford the spending that they do.

 

[djskribbles]

Sony is willing to invest alot of money into games.

You mention GT5 it was in development for 5 years and during that time MS was able to put out 3 forza titles . Its rumored budget was not much further off than the buget for all 3 forza titles also.

This is really sony's strength. Killzone 2 had a reported buget of 40m . That is higher than the rumored budget of Halo 3 which is a game that sold many times more than killzone 2.

If sony's fortunes don't turn around they may not be able to afford the spending that they do.

You also have to consider that PD developed GT PSP during that time. GT5, GT5P and GT PSP equal close to 13m in sales in just ~2.5 years. I'm not sure how many copies Forza 1-3 sold (2005-11), but I would guess it's less than that, and who knows how the development costs compare between those 6 titles. I'm sure PD is doing more than just fine covering development costs. It was rumored that GT5P alone covered the development costs of GT5, and GT5 alone sold 5.5m (up to Dec. 6th) and will probably hit ~8-9m lifetime.

Is it really fair to use Halo 3 and KZ2 to compare Sony and MS as a whole? Halo 3 is by far MS' best selling FP title and KZ2 is probably one of the worst case examples for Sony.
I'm sure Sony's developers are doing just fine...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ehh, the theoretical flops edge on PS3 is in the CPU though, where it's hard to get at them to actually make the games look better, which is what everybody actually wants

If the flops edge was in the GPU I'm pretty sure we'd be talking about a different story.

But peak flops != sustainable flops, which is where you can have a big, powerful system outperformaned by a smaller, leaner system that uses it's resources more effectively.

This is Console 101 stuff and pretty much everyone here should be familiar with that by now! And another point for Console 101 is that "looks prettier" != best performance, so a claim a console has one best graphics awards does not indicate that the console itself is the more capable.

But the whole issue of most powerful console is far bigger and complex than can be dropped into a general articles thread, and requires information to analyse these boxes in different areas of performance that we just don't have. Hence it's a dead-end discussion that serves no purpose other then to unearth some rather closed perceptions and generate a lot of noise.

Hence from this point forth it'd be best if the "which console is best" line was dropped (forcibly if needs must) and the thread can be returned to grandmaster's investigations of particular titles.

 

[BRiT]

*ahem* This is a thread to discuss Digital Foundry Articles, not to be a pissing contest over who loves their beloved console the most and why that is. Keep discussion on point or they will be removed.

 

[BadTB25]

And sanity on this board can now return to normal.
Thanks Shifty...I was wondering when you would show up.

 

[kagemaru]

Yeah thanks guys, not even sure what started that.

On topic, I really can't wait for DF to break down the Crysis 2 demo. Played it briefly this morning and it looked pretty good. The animation still sticks out as a sore spot IMO but overall it looks as good as I expected a console crysis to look.

 

[TheWretched]

I don't agree with "unused RAM is wasted RAM"... at least as long as we are talking of stuff different to caches. My PC has 6GB of RAM but only uses 18%... does that mean that Ubuntu/GNU is badly programmed? No... the rest is used for buffering, mostly, unless I start a RAM intensive program.

What I am trying to say is, that Killzone 2 probably did all they wanted and still had free RAM... maybe because they optimized it to low RAM usage and then a firmware update came, freeing up RAM. There's not need to use more RAM if it already does what you are trying to do.

 

[AlNom]

I don't agree with "unused RAM is wasted RAM"... at least as long as we are talking of stuff different to caches. My PC has 6GB of RAM but only uses 18%... does that mean that Ubuntu/GNU is badly programmed? No... the rest is used for buffering, mostly, unless I start a RAM intensive program.

Surely you see how comparing a fixed platform to one that is volatile is completely flawed, especially when it comes to RAM consumption.

What I am trying to say is, that Killzone 2 probably did all they wanted and still had free RAM... maybe because they optimized it to low RAM usage and then a firmware update came, freeing up RAM. There's not need to use more RAM if it already does what you are trying to do.

What relevance is there in some magical future update that affects reserved RAM? The point was developers making full use of available resources at the time of development. To borrow your linux example, we aren't knocking devs for not making use of some imaginary additional RAM that gets added to the system in the future.

This line of discussion is Off-topic enough.

 

[Devious]

Tech Analysis: Crysis 2 Demo

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Hmm, so how can stereoscopy that's actually not true stereoscopy (as expected from the tech presentations) work in practice? How does it compare to, say, Killzone3?

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Is the lighting the only real technical stand out here? It seems like it, from the report. It seems DF briefly covered the texture and geometry pop-in and shadow issues at the end. I would be interested in knowing, if any other technical implementations make the technical radar. There were a lot of compliants about laggy controls, but DF said they were swift.

On another note, how can something that isn't S3D be called S3D? Isn't that like calling Killzone's LDR lighting, with effects, HDR lighting? Isn't it, also, like saying, "Killzone 2's version of HDR lighting is not true HDR lighting..."?

 

[AlNom]

Is the lighting the only real technical stand out here?

There are a number of things that could be mentioned, but it essentially amounts to a rehash of all their presentations, not necessarily things easily pointed out in some old beta code or even worth describing until the final game arrives.

 

[Neb]

Good article.

 

[ShadowRunner]

On another note, how can something that isn't S3D be called S3D? Isn't that like calling Killzone's LDR lighting, with effects, HDR lighting? Isn't it, also, like saying, "Killzone 2's version of HDR lighting is not true HDR lighting..."?

Because it is S3D?
Stereoscopy is just presenting 2 seperate images, one from each eye. How seperate images are created is a different matter. There are 3 distinct ways ive seen so far, Full rendering of 2 seperate frames (killzone), rendering of second frame based on first frame but with usage of depth information from within game(crysis), and just rendering of second frame based on first frame using straight image processing of the 2D image (2d -> 3d on samsung tvs)

IMO the 2D + depth is the way forward for console 3D, UNLESS it is possible to render 2 frames without serious sacrifices elsewhere (ie Stardust, Sly cooper). I was sceptical of the crysis approach, until i saw samsungs 2d -> 3d conversion which really impressed me considering it is based on just a 2D image, i am convinced 2d + depth can give great results without the need to make big sacrifices elsewhere.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I'm sceptical about any 2D process for something like video games.
2D conversions may work for certain types of a movie's shots where there's little depth variation, like character close-ups - but these are very rare in any game's actual interactive scenes.

Doing stereo with more work is the right way, just as it was the right way to move to 32 bit color from 16 bit, even if it required double the computing power in pixel pipelines. Today noone would consider rendering in 16-bit to get higher frame rates and stereo should be the same.

 

[L. Scofield]

Is the lighting the only real technical stand out here? It seems like it, from the report.

You make it seem like it's no big deal. Realtime GI, even a basic form like this, is a huge advancement in realtime graphics.

About the 3D:

“James Cameron has seen Crysis 2, and he loved what he saw because his eyes are trained for 3D more than anyone else’s, and that makes me confident that we have a super-high-end 3D experience on all formats.”

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/crytek-james-cameron-loves-crysis-2

Can't complain

 

[NotTarts]

I'm sceptical about any 2D process for something like video games.
2D conversions may work for certain types of a movie's shots where there's little depth variation, like character close-ups - but these are very rare in any game's actual interactive scenes.

Doing stereo with more work is the right way, just as it was the right way to move to 32 bit color from 16 bit, even if it required double the computing power in pixel pipelines. Today noone would consider rendering in 16-bit to get higher frame rates and stereo should be the same.

True, but is it worth the huge IQ drop to have true S3D?

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

You make it seem like it's no big deal. Realtime GI, even a basic form like this, is a huge advancement in realtime graphics.

About the 3D:



http://www.next-gen.biz/news/crytek-james-cameron-loves-crysis-2

Can't complain

I'm just saying that the compromises to almost every other technique used in the game probably leaves plenty processing power to do HDR with GI. I mean MLB: The Show does HDR (day/night cycles) with GI at 1920x1080/60fps. That's all I'm saying. It's impressive, but can't any team of devs make 1 technique impressive by sacrificing most other techniques? Consoles CAN supposedly, handle 4096x4096 textures, but at what cost?

On the topic of S3D, James endorses Crytech technique. If he was such a big fan, how come he didn't even choose that technique for Avatar's 3D? The technique Crytech uses is far from new.

True, but is it worth the huge IQ drop to have true S3D?

We have 2D games that made huge IQ drops to have...2D! At least this adds something to the gameplay experience, right? Plus, there are "true" S3D (if something is labeled "true", that means the others are false) games that are 720p. Some devs seem to be able to improve on the original 2D 720p IQ even after going to 3D 720p for the sequel.