The fact that it's not true is pretty strange. If you bought a Geforce 256 AV at launch, what was that fancy T&L engine being used for? Pretty much nothing. If you bought a GF3Ti at launch, what were those fancy pixel and vertex shaders being used for? Nothing. There weren't any games that used them.
i did not expect i would need to spell it out for you, fearsome, but here you are:
if i bought a gf256 at launch, i, and the many others like me, would find the greatest value in doing
R&D on it. same with gf3. same with every new piece of sparkling pc video hw. there'd be a wave of tech demos, new engines/engine enhancements, and new GPGPU tasks or what you could generally call a
utility bump caused by the new part. that's what a desktop platform is best at - providing the hw and sw ground for nurturing 'cutting edge' technologies. the fact that you would not see complete products on the market until much later does not give the consoles the 'technical lead' one ounce - consoles do one thing good - they make things easy for
productisation, which is often mistaken by laymen for 'technological superiority'. bullshit. ask any of the console developers who've worked on launch-window titles what superiority did the platform offer them compared to their 'last gen' development desktops - you may be surprised. do consoles have the special sauce here and there - of course they do. does that make them significantly tech superior - no, it makes them more
efficient at what they do. something which the desktop
usually offsets by sheer brute force depreciation in as long as 6 - 12 months later.
i don't give a rats ass if some kid in suburbia could reap the technological benefits from his brand new console 1 or 2 years earlier than the same tech level from his desktop - that does not tell anything about the tech level of his desktop vis-a-vis his console. developers determine what's advanced and what not. publishers and marketing drones determine what that kid sees and what not. capiche?
The question isn't "was it doable?" Of course it was doable. Doom 3 actually runs pretty well on a GF4Ti. You said it was being done, which isn't true.
done. as in R&D done. not shipped to stores shelves done. unless you think doom3 was the first piece of sw on a destop to ever demonstrate convincing per-pixel lighting and normal maps.
When a new hardware paradigm of PC hardware comes out, it's generally a year or so before we see software that really uses the hardware.
you may see the shift in a year. i see the shift in months, sometimes shorter. game productisation for the desktop market is a *bitch*. and technology edge for one of the sides has *nothing* to do with it.
Your initial claim was that what differentiates the PC space is that the software that really pushes the new hardware is immediately available.
no. let me refresh your memory (bolding for emphasis plus ed):
darkblu said:
point is, i can immediately put the technology in the pc to good use, with the console i have to wait for it to mature [read: i have to wait for somebody to do something worthwhile with it that would reach me through the stores shelves and with the publisher's blessing]. that's why for me consoles usually start to get interesting only after they've de jure lost whatever tech lead they had had before desktops. but by that time they already have the good titles and the producers' dedication for original, worthwhile games (due to mastery of the hw, large user base, or whatever). in this regard the wii is an exception for me - yes, there's technology in it that will take maturing (the control scheme) but i can already get good return of my consumer's money for it at launch. is that as good as a system seller - well, if you want to enjoy the controls, no other platform out there offers that, so yes, it can be a system seller.
This is not about whether or not consoles have a technological advantage. It's about your silly claim that PC developers are quicker to fully utilize their hardware than console developers.
i hope that by now you've realised how silly
your interpretation of my words was.
pc devs are not quicker at tech utilisation - they are
just as fast, but also they're *way* slower at productisation. and that's their 'technological disadvantage' in the public eyes.
And COD3 is basically a DX9 game, judging by the shots and vids. How long has PC DX9 hardware been out? Is it really 4 years now? I guess it's using SM3.0, judging by the way HDR is in everything now, so that's only what, 2 years old? But it's nice to see that DX9 software development is finally maturing, because it sure wasn't anything to crow about in 2002.
and i somehow thought here that the 'technological superiority' of the 360 would allow for some
conspicuous quantitive advancements over the obsolete desktop tech. stupid me.
Discussing the details of an unreleased game and having played it are pretty different, no? You claimed tha when it came out, you'd already seen that kind of thing in so many games to the point where it wasn't impressive anymore. Now "seen" means "discussed on a message board?"
jeez, fearsome, what's up with you tonight? where did i say i had seen it 'in so many games'? care to quote me? i was saying i had a general clue what platforms halo as a project passed through - that in response to your definitive statements on halo's origins.
This isn't about gameplay. This is about your unfounded claim that PC software development doesn't need time to mature into the graphics hardware the way console development does.
maybe because pc software development may not need to mature the same way - you can run folding@home on your sm3 destop gpu as we speak - it'd be curious to know what can you do with a non-mature xenos at the same time.
And if you're using RS vs RL as an example, you really need to refresh your memory by taking a look at some screenshots and vids or something.
i just took your advice and refreshed my mem and i stand corrected on the RS vs RL parallel - my memories of RS using higher quality textures on the pc seem false, it must have been some other SW game taking place in tatuine landscape that i recall. my bad. the gameplay experience comments, though, do stand.
