Epic Says This Is What Next-Gen Should Look Like

[Heinrich4]

About memory,im remember (if not my mistake in eurogamer/gamesindustry.biz) Crytech talks about expect 8GB RAM(and Carmack wanting 10x more powerfull consoles...) even with procedural can parcialy helping (not everything can efficiently processing in procedural-> complex elements) its not enough for all their porposes,so 4GB just for them would be too little for what they expect for next generation consoles.

Interesting thoughts about procedural generation content here:

http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~iosup/pcg-g-survey11tomccap_rev_sub.pdf

 

[function]

I'd take what Crytek says with a pinch of salt.

Anyone can insist that they need the moon on a stick to do justice to their awesomeness.

 

[pc999]

They should generally have pretty good latency vs HDD's but I would imagine throughput-wise the one in Wii probably lags behind the HDD's in other consoles. Though that's just a theory based on what was availiable back when Wii launched and how cheap they managed to sell it

I'd definitely not expect to see those 400MB/s+ SSD's in consoles any time soon. Definitely not in the upcoming generation. They could add a few GBs at 100-ish MB/s but I would think it would cost about as much to add 1-2GB to system RAM and that would usually help more.

Well you make me want less RAM in there I dont want to wait and wait for the loading times, it start to make me remember those old PC where you start loading stuff and go do something else.

Fast loading times is very important for me!

 

[pjbliverpool]

It is faster mostly due to vastly better seek times. Peak throughput wise I think they are may be around 2-4x faster at most.

Isn't the PS3 using a 2x Blu-Ray drive? Considering you can get 12x drives for the PC now why not just stick one of those in there. Thats a 6x speed increase straight away! It would fill 3GB if RAM in the same time a PS3 could fill it's 512MB.

 

[function]

Well you make me want less RAM in there I dont want to wait and wait for the loading times, it start to make me remember those old PC where you start loading stuff and go do something else.

Fast loading times is very important for me!

Tape drives! Spectrum 48k, Commodore 64, Vic 20! It loads for 6 minutes then crashes (the border to loading screen stops flashing and the tape reaches the end).

If next gen is going to have more than a gig of ram, surely they'll need some form of intermediate storage for the disk.

 

[function]

Isn't the PS3 using a 2x Blu-Ray drive? Considering you can get 12x drives for the PC now why not just stick one of those in there. Thats a 6x speed increase straight away! It would fill 3GB if RAM in the same time a PS3 could fill it's 512MB.

I think the PS3 drive is a CLV drive, where as PC drives are normally CAV, so speeds aren't a straight read across.

I can't find the details, but I think the PS3 is a 2.4 x drive (from memory), and that a 12X PC (Bluray) CAV drive would spin much faster than the noise-a-thon 12x (DVD) 360 drive.

I guess the Wu will have a 4 - 6x Bluray equivalent drive and 1GB of memory (give or take edram).

 

[AlNom]

Just be prepared for loudness and vibrations... The install feature is really a lifesaver.

 

[snarfbot]

there was this magazine that had commodore games in it, and you had to manually type in all the code, it was alot cooler than it sounds.

 

[function]

there was this magazine that had commodore games in it, and you had to manually type in all the code, it was alot cooler than it sounds.

Read errors could slow loading times down a lot.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Wing Commander 3 was the best loading times ever, with 8MB memory and a 2x CD drive it took like 15 minutes to load a mission...

 

[RudeCurve]

Fast optical drives are loud....

I want a 3.5" 500GB - 1TB HDD in my next console. Since games will be larger you'll need the larger HDD for installs.

 

[kagemaru]

I think the PS3 drive is a CLV drive, where as PC drives are normally CAV, so speeds aren't a straight read across.

I can't find the details, but I think the PS3 is a 2.4 x drive (from memory), and that a 12X PC (Bluray) CAV drive would spin much faster than the noise-a-thon 12x (DVD) 360 drive.

I guess the Wu will have a 4 - 6x Bluray equivalent drive and 1GB of memory (give or take edram).

I thought all blu-ray drives are CLV by design, no?

Also, can you post a link stating that ps3's is 2.4? Everything I've read, which has been years ago by now, specifically stated 2x.

I'm actually hoping for 12x blu-ray drives next gen with noise dampening. I know the 360 slim is certainly quieter than my Xenon or Jasper models.

Edit: Though this discussion should probably be moved to the optical disc thread in the main gaming section. >_>

 

[Pete]

Yeah running the AI on the GPU has crossed my mind, but would there be a practical reason to do this on next gen platforms?

I believe AI code is branchy, so CPUs should trump GPUs. I don't know how much being in-order hurts current PPC-based console CPUs, but I imagine the sheer clock speed advantage a CPU has over a GPU would make it that much better for AI.

Plus I remember reading an article in which a console dev stated AI on the current gen is limited by RAM more than compute, and GPUs have little enough RAM for graphics as it is. We may see better AI on next-gen consoles simply due to the oodles of RAM that some people are worrying about taking forever to load up. If nothing else, there'd be that much less memory waiting to be filled from disc.

/end uninformed speculation

 

[hoho]

Plus I remember reading an article in which a console dev stated AI on the current gen is limited by RAM more than compute

I highly doubt that. AI is not like textures or even models that take tons of memory and you can reuse a whole lot of data that you'll be having anyway like physics collision meshes etc.

My bet is that dev was asked something like "what can you do with more RAM" and he gave the standard answer of "everything like graphics, AI, physics, ..." and for some reason the AI part was picked out.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

As far as I know the most processing intensive part of AI is still raycasting, to check for various kinds of visibilities, and probably pathfinding too.

 

[hoho]

Yea but that's purely compute-bound and can reuse the data you are going to have for physics. Nearly no significant extra RAM is needed. To be honest I can't even imagine what kind of AI algorithms could need more than a few MBs in game settings.

 

[pc999]

Just be prepared for loudness and vibrations... The install feature is really a lifesaver.

I really hope not.

As far as I know the most processing intensive part of AI is still raycasting, to check for various kinds of visibilities, and probably pathfinding too.

Yea but that's purely compute-bound and can reuse the data you are going to have for physics. Nearly no significant extra RAM is needed. To be honest I can't even imagine what kind of AI algorithms could need more than a few MBs in game settings.

And GPU friendly, if I am not mistaken.


Anyway if anything need improvments is AI

 

[hoho]

Anyway if anything need improvments is AI

What exactly would you improve in an average corridor shooter and are you sure the reason why those improvements aren't made are due to lack of computing power/memory/whaterver?

 

[TheWretched]

Well... I would remove the "corridor-ism". From a gameplay perspective (not looking at the surrounding stuff like RPG elements etc.), there's been basically no changes since Doom/Wolfenstein. All games rely on "go from a to b and shoot everything that tries to stop you".

And this isn't a hardware limit, either. It's just that publishers and developers don't dare to stray away from the known. But I also think that this is partially the fault of engines like UE and such. I can't "prove" this, though.

 

[hoho]

Also it has absolutely nothing to do with AI

My little theory is that most games are corridors now because of the mass market not wanting a challenge but an interactive movie instead.