Firmware 3.6 is up
- Thread starter patsu
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Agreed. I think Sony with all their products puts a good amount of effort at the beginning but then their support of their products just starts to wane. That is a trend I have noticed and I had sworn to myself not to buy any more Sony stuff but then I had to get the PS3. Seems like slowly PS3 is also facing that same symptom. They should seriously spend some time and effort to optimize that OS.
I agree with Arwin on this. I would love to have the feature, but not at the cost of game performance.
It shouldn't ahve to though. Any game with VC is already doing everything it needs to ahve cross-game chat. It just needed a common library. Of course Sony screwed that up, so the only solution now is to run a parallel service. And given the amount of RAM the OS is taking, and that MS managed to pull it off in less space, it's certainly doable. At this point it's low proproty, but if Sony were determined to enable open VC, they could do so.
On the topic of Vita's OS, I read that it uses up one of the four cores on the CPU. Is this right? Is there already a thread on PSV's OS? Didn't see one yet.
Yeah you do make a good point. Wonder how MS pulls it off though because the party chat is noticeably higher quality than the VC in game, so wouldn't that mean they run on multiple libraries too?
Yup. It's something they should have made allowances for in the PS3's software design, and it's clear that they didn't. It sure would have been nice for Sony to have made a statement about this some years ago, as it would have saved a whole lot of bitching on the PS blog, but I guess they didn't want to risk making a statement that might be used against them in the competition with 360.
You're a jerk, Sony. A real knee-biter.
Which brings it back to my point. Unless they retrofit, they couldn't do it.
You're mixing arguments. MS managed to pull it off in less space because they provided for it day one. Sony's would conflict with the various custom libraries existing games have been using.
What they still should have done however is offer a unified sdk for just voice-chat alone all future games (and existing ones that volunteer to update to it). And this I do blame them for. Something here is clearly better than nothing, witnessing the many games that go without voice chat that shouldn't have. Plus it's the best step up for the next thing. But at least with Vita they've gone and made some amends, as while for PS3 it would just have been catching up, for Vita it is a clear step ahead of the competition. And they can then take what they learned from there back to the PS4 (and presumably part of it to the PS3).
yes one core from four is reserved for OS in Vita like one spu in PS3.
sony needs better coders for OS or hire MS
Chat is seen (rightly) as part of the system services, and not something specific to a title. The chat engine runs as part of the OS, with whatever hook or library call from within the game to use it. I'm guessing there's some form of chat object that provides an audio stream to the game to mix? Or more likely the audio out from the game is mixed with audio out on the OS.
Many of these services can run on tiny amounts of storage. Some people seem to forget we had entire multitasking computers running multiple apps on 1 or 2 MBs in the 16 bit era! I don't understand what massive RAM resources a chat client could need. Several seconds of audio buffer for each audio in, which'll be kilobytes. Room to decompress and mix them. Working space for the network operation. It should all fit in a SPE's LS! (This is where someone who's actually worked on network VOIP puts me straight
)Maybe they're hoping every PS3 owner will buy the Vita so they can use it to do cross-game chat while playing on the PS3?
Tommy McClain
if they can make combo PS3+Vita for 199 why not
Not really. It's just Sony are being deliberately vague. It's not a lack of RAM holding back voice chat as they claim, because MS proves 512 MB's is enough. It's Sony's lack of vision first, and then, having trimmed back the OS reservation for developers, being unable to take some back for cross-game chat because games rely on it now. And if they provided a decent standard feature - as you say, a standard SDK - they could at least provide cross-game chat for games that feature voice-chat, and potentially allow devs to patch games with an alternative library (Warhawk!).
Vita doesn't make amends. It shows Sony have realised their mistake and bodes well for PS4, but it also means a lot of expectation some of us had regards PSN really was misplaced. I think it's safe to say a decent web browser update isn't happening. In fact the network experience on PS3 isn't going to improve. Sony are now looking at new platforms, and this past year or more of hoping for a worthwhile FW update fizzles out into the realisation that Sony were willing to stop there and just use FW for ancillary features and anti-piracy measures. Gone are the days of looking forward to finding out what a FW update provides.
Chat is seen (rightly) as part of the system services, and not something specific to a title. The chat engine runs as part of the OS, with whatever hook or library call from within the game to use it. I'm guessing there's some form of chat object that provides an audio stream to the game to mix? Or more likely the audio out from the game is mixed with audio out on the OS.
Many of these services can run on tiny amounts of storage. Some people seem to forget we had entire multitasking computers running multiple apps on 1 or 2 MBs in the 16 bit era! I don't understand what massive RAM resources a chat client could need. Several seconds of audio buffer for each audio in, which'll be kilobytes. Room to decompress and mix them. Working space for the network operation. It should all fit in a SPE's LS! (This is where someone who's actually worked on network VOIP puts me straight
BTW Voip its very low even with better codec like G.711 ... 64 kbps for Docsis
they can use worse codecs
http://www.tech-faq.com/voip-codecs.html
160 byte voice per frame
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/cable/ps2209/products_white_paper09186a00801be4ac.shtml
While MS proved it can be done with less memory, wouldn't they need to entirely rewrite the OS to achieve this? Last I checked, the PS3 OS works in a modular way, so the more features you wish to add to your game, the more memory it takes up.
Also, I'm not sure this would indicate anything with the browser. Wouldn't they have access to all available memory for something like the web browser, unlike games?
The argument is that Sony could have provided a new library for games to voluntarily adopt that would provide a standard cross-game VC mechanism.. RAM would be no limit for something that was intended for new games and which should not take up much memory for the basic task. Of course, a cross-game VC mechanism would probably necessitate some server investment on their part, but as far as the PS3 is concerned, not so much.
The fact they've not troubled themselves indicates that they don't care to bring non-revenue producing features into the PS3 at this time, and they're likely going to use those features to sell PS4 instead.
While I agree it's possible, I don't think offering a new library for voluntary use is a good way to go either. With something like cross game chat, it's probably best for it to be all or nothing. So if it can't work across all games, maybe it's best not to do it. The general public generally usually aren't the most aware of things like this and in the case of games that wouldn't support it, they may think the feature is broken.
Yap, this should be feasible since we know many MP games have in-game voice chat, and voice codec is extremely light weight. By doing it in-game, we should not need to incur the multi-Mb memory in a separate OS memory partition.
If Vita has cross game chat, that means they are prepared to spend on the servers too.
Would be interesting for someone to interview Shuhei in more depth. ^_^
They may be working on something else.
That prototype is said to run in dev units, which has more memory.
OTOH, Shuhei's explanation is not convincing because they can run PlayTV in the background today. The latest software revision can save H.264 video, probably simple profile, while a game is running. Dealing with audio should be a fraction of that setup.
That said, I still think that the crown jewel is party management, not necessarily voice chat.
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