Does disk space affect graphics?

[assen]

Artists like this a lot

Yeah, those who pay the artists' salaries are the ones that don't like virtual texturing.

But - true - this is a case where having bigger media would help; for our next project we discussed moving to a simplistic form of VT, but estimated we'd need about 8 GB for the desired pixel density and number of levels, for the terrain only.

 

[zaftxx]

wow lots of replies and information here, based on reading all the comments the conclusion is that more space is great for non ingame portions (FMV, CG) but actual ingame graphics Ram and gpu is what matter.

one thing i noticed was that sequels of games have gotten smaller.
for example Assassins creed 2 was 6.4 gigs but Assassins creed 2 was 5.2 gigs yet its bigger and looks better.

 

[joker454]

Uncharted 2's cutscenes are all video files (not realtime). So, i guess that in Uncharted 2's case Blu Ray really helped as there probably more than 20 GB of video in there.

PS3 games use fmv for cutscenes to mask load times. You normally do *not* want to use fmv in a game because it's locks you in to one look, it's better to go in engine anytime you can. That way you can make the cutscenes be variable, like change the lighting on different play throughs, change the weather, allow character customizations to be reflected in the cutscene, etc. Given the choice, you are better off ditching fmv and doing all cutscenes in engine. It gives you far more flexibility, and matches the game itself much better. Like if you character is bleeding or has had his shirt torn just before a cutscene, then that can carry over to the cutscene if it's done in engine. At this point I feel fmv's days are numbered, next gen I'd be surprised to see it still used for in game cutscenes. I think it will be relegated to intro cutscenes only.

This is an assumption based off the fact that we haven't seen many. I would strongly propose that had the 360 been initially released with a Blu-ray drive, the landscape would have been different.

Yup it would have been different, we would have used the entire 25gb to annoy pirates by unnecessarily using all the disc space. Note though that the game itself would still be made as small as possible to be compatible with future down-loadable services which are coming. Keeping games as small as possible is the smart business move, anyone that doesn't follow that will be crying in a few years when they get totally excluded from the lucrative download market. PS3 games will face this as well, but when games like MGS4 are added to a future download service you will see how magically they will not be ~35gb in size, yet still retain the same game.

 

[patsu]

wow lots of replies and information here, based on reading all the comments the conclusion is that more space is great for non ingame portions (FMV, CG) but actual ingame graphics Ram and gpu is what matter.

one thing i noticed was that sequels of games have gotten smaller.
for example Assassins creed 2 was 6.4 gigs but Assassins creed 2 was 5.2 gigs yet its bigger and looks better.

It would depend on the projects, budget and developers.

The key thing is if there are extra space, the art (e.g., more variety in different levels) and technology (e.g., Virtual Texture) can make use of it.

It does have its downside (e.g., increased cost, harder to make into downloadable games).

The people will make the most difference. So you'll get different answers from different people based on their mindset and other circumstances.

 

[N_B]

PS3 games use fmv for cutscenes to mask load times. You normally do *not* want to use fmv in a game because it's locks you in to one look, it's better to go in engine anytime you can. That way you can make the cutscenes be variable, like change the lighting on different play throughs, change the weather, allow character customizations to be reflected in the cutscene, etc. Given the choice, you are better off ditching fmv and doing all cutscenes in engine. It gives you far more flexibility, and matches the game itself much better. Like if you character is bleeding or has had his shirt torn just before a cutscene, then that can carry over to the cutscene if it's done in engine. At this point I feel fmv's days are numbered, next gen I'd be surprised to see it still used for in game cutscenes. I think it will be relegated to intro cutscenes only.

Games like Uncharted use FMV because it looks better than the actual game. Isn't that important? Doesn't FMV free you from limitations of in-engine scenes, like tearing, drops in framerate, resolution (eg. FFXIII's FMV cutscenes are 1080p native). An impressive scene could look that much more impressive as a video, especially if the in game engine has serious faults, like the PS3 version of Bayonetta.

 

[Arwin]

wow lots of replies and information here, based on reading all the comments the conclusion is that more space is great for non ingame portions (FMV, CG) but actual ingame graphics Ram and gpu is what matter.

one thing i noticed was that sequels of games have gotten smaller.
for example Assassins creed 2 was 6.4 gigs but Assassins creed 2 was 5.2 gigs yet its bigger and looks better.

You cannot make any useful conclusions from this though without knowing the details on how the 'budget' was spent.

The quality of graphics is dependent on a number of factors, in no particular order:
- streaming speed from the drive and/or hdd
- RAM
- strength of the GPU
- programming algorithms used (this is a complex one and includes anything from procedurally generated content to compression technologies for streaming content, textures, etc.)
- quality of the AI artists
- space available on disc
- structure of the game and its environments

A game like Uncharted 2 uses a lot of the above in combination. For instance, by designing their levels in such a way that they can be efficiently streamed, by optimising streaming speed through caching from BD to HDD and from HDD to RAM, they have found a way to be able to push a lot of graphical content through their game that beyond a shred of a doubt pushes the limits of one DVD. That said, there is also little doubt that they could have split the game over various levels, since the game is, except for one level, completely liniar. However, there are some definite advantages in having all the content on one disc.

Notice also that there are complicating factors. For a DVD player for instance, if you run a game on a single layer, you get much better speeds than when you run a game on a DVD double layer. For a Bluray disc, this is not an issue.

If you want to limit yourself to strictly disc related graphical differences, they would seem to usually have to do more with the amount of content rather than the quality of an individual environment. Simply put, if you have 20 levels that look best of you throw at least 1 GB per level at them, you can still make 1 GB levels if you just cut back on the number of levels from 20 to, say, 8. Only in rare cases where content was designed for a platform with a higher capacity and you're going to try to fit it onto a smaller capacity platform will you sometimes see some downscaling of actual graphical quality, because cutting down on the content is a much more complex issue when you're working with a finished game. You're now seeing more and more 360 games that use more than one disc, that's for sure, and they're big ones too (to name three big recent ones: Halo ODST, Forza 3, Mass Effect 2)

Even Laa-Yosh's rants about FMV not being relevant to the discussion isn't as clear cut as it may seem - some games use FMV to start the game with, because you can load game data while you're streaming FMV from the disc at the same time more efficiently than you can just load game data, and therefore mask load-times, allowing the game to start with a better looking environment quicker for lesser apparant load-times. And if you want to tell a story anyway, it may be much easier to create FMV than to render the 3D in realtime, as this saves a lot of work testing whether the graphics you're putting in that section will always be rendered at a sufficient quality. That time you save there can then be spent on making other parts of the game looking better. Etc etc etc.

Well, you can go on for a loooong time. It's probably easier to focus on particular games ...

 

[George]

PS3 games use fmv for cutscenes to mask load times. You normally do *not* want to use fmv in a game because it's locks you in to one look, it's better to go in engine anytime you can. That way you can make the cutscenes be variable, like change the lighting on different play throughs, change the weather, allow character customizations to be reflected in the cutscene, etc. Given the choice, you are better off ditching fmv and doing all cutscenes in engine. It gives you far more flexibility, and matches the game itself much better. Like if you character is bleeding or has had his shirt torn just before a cutscene, then that can carry over to the cutscene if it's done in engine. At this point I feel fmv's days are numbered, next gen I'd be surprised to see it still used for in game cutscenes. I think it will be relegated to intro cutscenes only.

Don't you think that all depends on which game you are playing? FMVs would serve well for the majority of games and in-engine cutscenes rarely have this variety you speak of. Realtime in-engine cutscenes also tend to limit what can be shown in those scenes.

Which games use FMVs to mask load-times? When you have HDD caching, installs and whatever else bolsters the PS3s ability to load data from storage, what kind of load-times do you need to mask... unless you are doing something wrong?

Yup it would have been different, we would have used the entire 25gb to annoy pirates by unnecessarily using all the disc space. Note though that the game itself would still be made as small as possible to be compatible with future down-loadable services which are coming. Keeping games as small as possible is the smart business move, anyone that doesn't follow that will be crying in a few years when they get totally excluded from the lucrative download market. PS3 games will face this as well, but when games like MGS4 are added to a future download service you will see how magically they will not be ~35gb in size, yet still retain the same game.

Having a hard time picturing that. It's almost certain that games will become bigger in size (storage) next generation. Thats how it has always been going, or do you think that the ideal has been reached?

Games are not going to get small just to accommodate digital downloads and digital downloads don't necessarily have to replace or damage physical media sales. They can be 2 separate markets catering to different kinds of games.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Virtual texturing offers many advantages compared to normal texturing systems.

Yeah, sorry, I was mixing up two things here. Virtual texturing on its own is certainly a welcome feature.
The completely unique texturing approach that id takes with Rage (and the quality they're aiming for) is something beyond the tech itself, and that's what I don't expect to become a norm.

 

[zaftxx]

You cannot make any useful conclusions from this though without knowing the details on how the 'budget' was spent.

The quality of graphics is dependent on a number of factors, in no particular order:
- streaming speed from the drive and/or hdd
- RAM
- strength of the GPU
- programming algorithms used (this is a complex one and includes anything from procedurally generated content to compression technologies for streaming content, textures, etc.)
- quality of the AI artists
- space available on disc
- structure of the game and its environments

A game like Uncharted 2 uses a lot of the above in combination. For instance, by designing their levels in such a way that they can be efficiently streamed, by optimising streaming speed through caching from BD to HDD and from HDD to RAM, they have found a way to be able to push a lot of graphical content through their game that beyond a shred of a doubt pushes the limits of one DVD. That said, there is also little doubt that they could have split the game over various levels, since the game is, except for one level, completely liniar. However, there are some definite advantages in having all the content on one disc.

Notice also that there are complicating factors. For a DVD player for instance, if you run a game on a single layer, you get much better speeds than when you run a game on a DVD double layer. For a Bluray disc, this is not an issue.

If you want to limit yourself to strictly disc related graphical differences, they would seem to usually have to do more with the amount of content rather than the quality of an individual environment. Simply put, if you have 20 levels that look best of you throw at least 1 GB per level at them, you can still make 1 GB levels if you just cut back on the number of levels from 20 to, say, 8. Only in rare cases where content was designed for a platform with a higher capacity and you're going to try to fit it onto a smaller capacity platform will you sometimes see some downscaling of actual graphical quality, because cutting down on the content is a much more complex issue when you're working with a finished game. You're now seeing more and more 360 games that use more than one disc, that's for sure, and they're big ones too (to name three big recent ones: Halo ODST, Forza 3, Mass Effect 2)

Even Laa-Yosh's rants about FMV not being relevant to the discussion isn't as clear cut as it may seem - some games use FMV to start the game with, because you can load game data while you're streaming FMV from the disc at the same time more efficiently than you can just load game data, and therefore mask load-times, allowing the game to start with a better looking environment quicker for lesser apparant load-times. And if you want to tell a story anyway, it may be much easier to create FMV than to render the 3D in realtime, as this saves a lot of work testing whether the graphics you're putting in that section will always be rendered at a sufficient quality. That time you save there can then be spent on making other parts of the game looking better. Etc etc etc.

Well, you can go on for a loooong time. It's probably easier to focus on particular games ...

yea long games like mass effect 2 and JPRGS do require more space because of the sheer content on there, though Halo odst is an odd one. Installed odst is only 3.2gigs and the halo multiplayer is also 3.2gigs. it could have fit on one disk but i believe MS was trying to make it look like a better deal. Not to get off topic but you gotta admit ODST is overpriced as hell.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

for example Assassins creed 2 was 6.4 gigs but Assassins creed 2 was 5.2 gigs yet its bigger and looks better.

AC2 has some significant texture budget cuts compared to the first game, at least as far as I can tell. They're re-using a lot of textures between different characters, environment texture variety isn't as good (especially in outdoor nature areas) and so on.
I suspect it's the result of the dynamic lighting and daytime system, but who knows for certain.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Even Laa-Yosh's rants about FMV not being relevant to the discussion isn't as clear cut as it may seem - some games use FMV to start the game with, because you can load game data while you're streaming FMV from the disc at the same time more efficiently than you can just load game data, and therefore mask load-times, allowing the game to start with a better looking environment quicker for lesser apparant load-times.

That's still stretching the meaning of graphics considerably. I would not list loading times as a part of a games graphics even in extreme cases like the lazy loading in Halo 2.


I also find most of the discussion here quite ridiculous - although in some cases, still informative - when the underlying logic in many posts is so obvious... you know, like this:

if more disc space means better graphics 
and if PS3 has more disc space
then PS3 has better graphics

Edit: also, ODST itself is a single disc game, the second disc only contains multiplayer.

 

[sebbbi]

Yeah, sorry, I was mixing up two things here. Virtual texturing on its own is certainly a welcome feature.
The completely unique texturing approach that id takes with Rage (and the quality they're aiming for) is something beyond the tech itself, and that's what I don't expect to become a norm.

Agreed. Not many companies have resources to hand paint a 128k*128k texture for their game titles (that's 16384 1024x1024 textures).

But a huge unique virtual texture speeds up development of "normal" games as well. Most graphics artists have to worry about not adding too many decals in their scenes, as every visible decal must be rendered once a frame (adds a cost). With unique virtual texture, you can decal as much as you like during the production without needing to worry about performance cost. And you can bake GI/AO/SH/etc easily to a virtual texture (no extra cost during frame rendering). Naturally this way you "waste" a huge amount of disc space to get a minor speed up to your frame rate, to save some content creation costs (no need to optimize decals and texture resolution) and to save some RAM.

It's quite funny how virtual texturing at the same time increases the disc usage, but reduces the needed disc transfer rate compared to common texture streaming systems (bigger percentage of pixels loaded are actually used). Lets see how well the technology is used in the future. It could become a "brute force" time saver that wastes a lot of storage space for lazy developers, or it could become something that allows huge unique looking worlds.

 

[Dr. Nick]

snip.

How difficult would it be for devs other than id to implement such a system? Not to insult other devs but we are talking about a id here.

 

[zaftxx]

AC2 has some significant texture budget cuts compared to the first game, at least as far as I can tell. They're re-using a lot of textures between different characters, environment texture variety isn't as good (especially in outdoor nature areas) and so on.
I suspect it's the result of the dynamic lighting and daytime system, but who knows for certain.

hmm if thats the case why not use all of the space on the dvd? kind of odd.
there are more definitive examples like burnout. burnout revenge on 360 was around 4.4 gigs but paradise a vastly better looking game and bigger at 3.2 gigs.

 

[NRP]

I think DeanoC's new game uses virtual texturing. But then again, Deano is a god among men.

How would virtual texturing affect current content creation pipelines? Could devs just switch over to this method, or does it require rebuilding the content pipeline?

 

[Dr. Nick]

hmm if thats the case why not use all of the space on the dvd? kind of odd.
there are more definitive examples like burnout. burnout revenge on 360 was around 4.4 gigs but paradise a vastly better looking game and bigger at 3.2 gigs.

Compression? Better use of the resources they had at their disposal? Games from early in this generation aren't as efficient as the games released now and I'm sure a year from now I'll find my self saying the same thing about game released this year.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Lets see how well the technology is used in the future. It could become a "brute force" time saver that wastes a lot of storage space for lazy developers, or it could become something that allows huge unique looking worlds.

Isn't there a chance for better and better compression rates if the source texture has more and more repetition? Sure, Rage is gonna take up two discs because of the uniqueness, but if someone just uses virtual texturing for the things you've mentioned then there could be a lot of room for compressing the texture atlas to tiny sizes.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

hmm if thats the case why not use all of the space on the dvd?

Because whatever the bottleneck is, it is a runtime issue. They could pack three times as many textures on the DVD but it still wouldn't help them to actually display them on your TV if they don't have enough free memory.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I think DeanoC's new game uses virtual texturing. But then again, Deano is a god among men.

Yeah, it's Brink.

How would virtual texturing affect current content creation pipelines? Could devs just switch over to this method, or does it require rebuilding the content pipeline?

It would probably need a high end custom level editor, with integrated decaling, painting and UV tools... I'm not sure about the characters, they could probably be made the traditional way and have an additional compiling step to bake them into the texture atlas.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Also have to take into account one key factor when determining whether increased disk space = increased rendering quality.

Drive speed. You cannot discuss this without taking into account drive speed.

If Textures for example were twice as large which would NOT equal twice the visual upgrade, you'd also have twice the loading time.

The more data on disk is used to render any given scene the longer your load times are going to be. We already see PS3's BRD often lagging behind the X360's DVD in level load times with equivalent and sometimes lower quality art assets. I believe it was MW2 (or was it AC2?) that had double the loading time for the BRD version on PS3 versus the DVD version on X360. With a partial install, it was still slightly longer than the DVD only (non-installed) version on X360.

So yes, you could possibly make an incredibly detailed world (well if we ignore the limitations of RSX and memory pool), but at the cost of incredibly long level load times.

I dunno about others, but I'd rather not wait a couple minutes everytime I went to a different level/map. And this is, of course, assuming your console even had the memory available to hold all this data. And if we go to streaming in assets, you're going to be even more limited by the speed of the drive.

Regards,
SB