Gamespy leaks Xenon specs (?)

[ZoinKs!]

I'm sure at least some devs should have enough pride to be unhappy about the geeky-nerdy image in that 'JAWS' slide.

I thought he looked like Gordon Freeman.

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FMV in games is so 1994. 3d has evolved far enough to render fmv unnecessary.

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Sounds like Xenon's limiting factors will be ram and storage space. 7 gig dvd's will be enough at first but devs should hit the wall after a year or two.

 

[London Geezer]

I'm sure at least some devs should have enough pride to be unhappy about the geeky-nerdy image in that 'JAWS' slide.

I thought he looked like Gordon Freeman.

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FMV in games is so 1994. 3d has evolved far enough to render fmv unnecessary.

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Sounds like Xenon's limiting factors will be ram and storage space. 7 gig dvd's will be enough at first but devs should hit the wall after a year or two.

7GB? What is that? Did i miss something?

 

[jvd]

7GB? What is that? Did i miss something?

think that they said the dvds would be expanded to 7gb per layer . which would mean double layers would be 14gigs ... which isn't that bad .

 

[zidane1strife]

I think its going to come down to ease of development noone knows how complex it will be to develop for the cell. and about the dvd if you look at the best looking pc games out now halflife 2 uses about 4gb of disk space farcry uses about 3gb of disk space as far as audio and art content I dont see it taking that much more space than current pc game and with the speed of the system shouldn't take but a few seconds the decompress data during loading

even with these high spec CPU's the GFX chip is not really going to be a big jump from the current top of the line pc GFX cards so texture sizes are not going to jump to a crazy high resolution and its not going to push a lot more polygons

Look a short/PC shooter(assuming half-life 2 follows the trend, haven't played it yet) would certainly have no problem. But say a next-gen FFXIII-IV? We could be talking dozens upon dozens of models each more than an order of magnitude more detailed than a GT4 car, and what about the world? The areas themselves will become far far more complex, remember a probably significant portion of the current gen.'s power went into providing adequate draw distance, next gen that distance is there, and most of the power's freed to increase the detail of nearby objects(thus highest level detail models for most any object could be more than an order of magnitude that used now in size).

As said Big-ticket games like GTA could certainly become a problem, they'll be seemless on consoles with HD-DVD/Blu-ray and fragmented on ones with dvds.

7GB? What is that? Did i miss something?

think that they said the dvds would be expanded to 7gb per layer . which would mean double layers would be 14gigs ... which isn't that bad .

If that's the case it'll diminish problems.

 

[jvd]

Optical Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon will not use Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Games will come on dual-layer DVD-9 discs. While the media is the same as that of the current Xbox, the usable space on each disc is up to 7 GB. The drive is slated to run at 12X.

Now i'm reading this as each layer the usable space is 7gigs as I can buy a dual layer write dvd for my pc and burn 8.5gigs onto it through both layers

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116228,00.asp

So 14 gigs per dual layer dvd wouldn't be bad if i'm reading this right . It be almost double the current dual layer dvds for the ps2 and xenon . Though not as good as hd-dvd of bluray

 

[Pozer]

Oh no, not the storage argument again. I'm still amazed what Nintedo was able to do with 1.5Gig GC storage. How many discs is RE4?

EDIT: NEvermenind found it is 2 discs, thats 3 gigs for what many claim is the best looking game this gen!

I dont think 7 gigs will be a factor at first, Many 2nd gen games will start coming on 2 discs though. RPGs 3. No big deal. My lord of the rings SE is 5 discs. Don't hear any fanboys bitching about that.

 

[jvd]

Oh no, not the storage argument again. I'm still amazed what Nintedo was able to do with 1.5Gig GC storage. How many discs is RE4?

2 discs

 

[3dcgi]

Optical Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon will not use Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Games will come on dual-layer DVD-9 discs. While the media is the same as that of the current Xbox, the usable space on each disc is up to 7 GB. The drive is slated to run at 12X.

Now i'm reading this as each layer the usable space is 7gigs as I can buy a dual layer write dvd for my pc and burn 8.5gigs onto it through both layers

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116228,00.asp

So 14 gigs per dual layer dvd wouldn't be bad if i'm reading this right . It be almost double the current dual layer dvds for the ps2 and xenon . Though not as good as hd-dvd of bluray

I don't see where you're getting 7GB from. AFAIK 8.5GB is total for both layers.

 

[DopeyFish]

Optical Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon will not use Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Games will come on dual-layer DVD-9 discs. While the media is the same as that of the current Xbox, the usable space on each disc is up to 7 GB. The drive is slated to run at 12X.

Now i'm reading this as each layer the usable space is 7gigs as I can buy a dual layer write dvd for my pc and burn 8.5gigs onto it through both layers

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116228,00.asp

So 14 gigs per dual layer dvd wouldn't be bad if i'm reading this right . It be almost double the current dual layer dvds for the ps2 and xenon . Though not as good as hd-dvd of bluray

I don't see where you're getting 7GB from. AFAIK 8.5GB is total for both layers.

Effective usage space. Microsoft will probably be using something similar to their current Xbox DVD with security layers. The discs themselves will be 8.5 GB, yes... but the actual storage capacity for game data will be less because of the security measures.

 

[passerby]

'DirectX used on virtually all PC games' - I'm nitpicking and playing devil's advocate here, but they sure love to pretend that Linux doesn't exist.

DirectX IS used on virtually all PC games. I think you're fooling yourself if you think that's not true...

Right off the top of my head... Linux Doom 3.

If you want, google search linux games and see the source code with your own eyes.

 

[jvd]

http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php

this is what i got from what you told us to do . NOt very impressive when most of those games are a good 8 years old

 

[PC-Engine]

Well, this generation, real time cutscenes already looked good enough for most games to do away with FMV. I can only expect that next gen consoles will have enough power to render real time cutscenes that are sweet enough to continue this trend.
Only a very very few games rely on FMV today, FF and Xenosaga. And Tekken's final endings...
Next gen, even fewer games will have FMV.

Totally agree. One great example is RE4. I would not want the cutscenes in that game to be FMV.

Look a short/PC shooter(assuming half-life 2 follows the trend, haven't played it yet) would certainly have no problem. But say a next-gen FFXIII-IV? We could be talking dozens upon dozens of models each more than an order of magnitude more detailed than a GT4 car, and what about the world? The areas themselves will become far far more complex, remember a probably significant portion of the current gen.'s power went into providing adequate draw distance, next gen that distance is there, and most of the power's freed to increase the detail of nearby objects(thus highest level detail models for most any object could be more than an order of magnitude that used now in size).

Look at the UE3 and what it's doing. It's not actually using hundreds of millions of actual polygons.

 

[PARANOiA]

'DirectX used on virtually all PC games' - I'm nitpicking and playing devil's advocate here, but they sure love to pretend that Linux doesn't exist.

DirectX IS used on virtually all PC games. I think you're fooling yourself if you think that's not true...

Right off the top of my head... Linux Doom 3.

If you want, google search linux games and see the source code with your own eyes.

Paserby, I like linux too, but I can accept the fact that 99% of 3d games are on PC. And of those, nearly all from the last few years are DX.

To say the linux games library makes up anythingmore than a small fraction of today's game library is ridiculous.

 

[London Geezer]

Look at the UE3 and what it's doing. It's not actually using hundreds of millions of actual polygons.

Well it isn't using hundreds of million of polygons, but it is using hundreds of high res textures.
Imagine a RPG game or a GTA game that needs to look as good as the UE3 and i think that's a lot of data right there...
(and by the way, JUST IMAGINE!!! DROOOL )

 

[Colourless]

Virtually All = Most

And only a tiny minorty of games run on linux or don't use DirectX on Windows. Therefore the statement is TRUE!

 

[PC-Engine]

Look at the UE3 and what it's doing. It's not actually using hundreds of millions of actual polygons.

Well it isn't using hundreds of million of polygons, but it is using hundreds of high res textures.
Imagine a RPG game or a GTA game that needs to look as good as the UE3 and i think that's a lot of data right there...
(and by the way, JUST IMAGINE!!! DROOOL )

That's true but that's what texture compression is for. Don't know if the XGPU can decompress JPEG2000 from DVD on the fly or not, but that would be a HUGE boost in effective DVD storage capacity.

 

[London Geezer]

Look at the UE3 and what it's doing. It's not actually using hundreds of millions of actual polygons.

Well it isn't using hundreds of million of polygons, but it is using hundreds of high res textures.
Imagine a RPG game or a GTA game that needs to look as good as the UE3 and i think that's a lot of data right there...
(and by the way, JUST IMAGINE!!! DROOOL )

That's true but that's what texture compression is for. Don't know if the XGPU can decompress JPEG2000 from DVD on the fly or not, but that would be a HUGE boost in effective DVD storage capacity.

Compression or not, there's a lot of detail in a game that needs to look like the UE3, and when you think there are games the size of GTA:SA and the Final Fantasies and many other HUGE games, things start to get tight... And especially a game like GTA, i wouldn't want to keep swapping discs when i need to get to a specified area. Although i can see how game design could help there.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Well, this generation, real time cutscenes already looked good enough for most games to do away with FMV. I can only expect that next gen consoles will have enough power to render real time cutscenes that are sweet enough to continue this trend.
Only a very very few games rely on FMV today, FF and Xenosaga. And Tekken's final endings...
Next gen, even fewer games will have FMV.

well, I kind of agree with this, sort of. alot of games do rely on prerendered CG this generation. not nearly as much as last though. and next-gen, it will be another significant reduction in the reliance of CG.

Look a short/PC shooter(assuming half-life 2 follows the trend, haven't played it yet) would certainly have no problem. But say a next-gen FFXIII-IV? We could be talking dozens upon dozens of models each more than an order of magnitude more detailed than a GT4 car, and what about the world? The areas themselves will become far far more complex, remember a probably significant portion of the current gen.'s power went into providing adequate draw distance, next gen that distance is there, and most of the power's freed to increase the detail of nearby objects(thus highest level detail models for most any object could be more than an order of magnitude that used now in size).

well said. I am in total agreement with ^this. *nod*

 

[passerby]

Paserby, I like linux too, but I can accept the fact that 99% of 3d games are on PC. And of those, nearly all from the last few years are DX.

To say the linux games library makes up anythingmore than a small fraction of today's game library is ridiculous.

You are corrent. And that is exactly why the sentence is written as such. I thought my choice of words is quite precise.

I'm nitpicking and playing devil's advocate here

But I'm pulling this thread OT.

EDIT: Ah yes. A glance at the dictionary reveals that 'virtually' != 'in reality'. My apologies to Qroach.

 

[akira888]

That's true but that's what texture compression is for. Don't know if the XGPU can decompress JPEG2000 from DVD on the fly or not, but that would be a HUGE boost in effective DVD storage capacity.

I had that idea once (~1999/2000ish) when I was writing my first relatively large 3D application. Suffice it to say it's an extremely horrible concept for so many reasons that I simply don't have the time to write them all down right now.

Problem 1: You're left with 16/32 bit uncompressed texels that clog up the data bus relative to a S3TC/DXTC texture. I never thought of a reasonable way around this that didn't have an unmitigatable flaw.