I'm getting antsy with X360

You must not have your Xbox hooked up to your HD set. I played FarCry again recently and the thing hurts my eyes. Seriously. I put in COD2 and it's just pleasing to watch. It may be arguable whether it's a huge leap--though I think it is a welcome and needed leap--but to compare it to an Xbox game is crazy.

 

Can't find anything (although I haven't really tried that hard!). I do remember though that HL & Deus Ex on the PS2 looked relatively atrocious (esp HL).
What I do remember clearly from the PS2 launch era was that there were high-end PC's that were comparable to the PS2 but they weren't as widespread a phenomena as they are now. These days you can get a pretty decent gfx card for a few 100 whatever currency.
Still, I'd contend that the jump between this & next-gen can't be purely about graphics. I mean 3D, for example, became more fully realised (& I mean a whole qualitative leap) between PS1 to the PS2 but you just won't notice it between xbox & 360 or PS2 & PS3. I'd say that the xbox & PS2 did enough of a good job simulating an explosion for your brain to go with it, to enjoy the game. I reckon maybe that's why some people are going to be disappointed with this gen - because they're looking for something from next-gen gaming without necessarily knowing exactly what it is. Ooh, I've come over all mystical.
Anyway, I haven't had much sleep so carry on & don't pay too much attention.

 

But slider may I comment for a second? We haven't seen what true next-gen games look like on the PS3 or Xbox 360. Stop looking at launch titles and labeling or viewing them what next-gen is all about.


Thanks.

 

Yeah to say COD2 looks worse than a Xbox game is really overexaggerating. Sure it's not the best I've seen. But it looks head and shoulders above any Xbox game especially in HD. For comparision check out COD2 on Xbox Vs. COD2 on the 360. Night and Day difference.

 

I think another factor you're all over looking is the resolution jump.

You have to have about 3X the power just to render the same game in 720P as 640X480. Lets say the X360 is some factor more powerful than Xbox1. Lets say it's 5X, or maybe 10X. Well, right off the bat 3X is getting sucked up. Or to get a game to look really next gen, like Gears of War, they almost have to do double duty so to speak.

Now, we have yet to see the PS3 to see if this is common to all next gen consoles or just X360.

I guess the good part is the hi-res jump will only have to be dealt with once..I think 720P is fine for a long time. Even if 1080P displays become common I will expect 720P to remain the rendering standard, as it's a nice balance of resolution without using too much power.

 

i was mainly referring to the lighting in splinter cell which is superior to COD2, also the textures and walls in SC are bump mapped and very nice looking whereas the textures in COD are flat and fairly ugly. When you have some situations like these where a last-gen game is better than next-gen, it's easy to see why people would not be blown away.

it's much cleaner because of the higher res, but basically nothing more than a ramped up xbox+ game. Don't get me wrong, I love COD2, 2nd favourite launch game after Kameo, but graphically it's not that great.

 

Yup. Which almost completely goes to waste on SD.

I started playing Kameo on my old set and switched to my HD projector later. While a casual observer might mistake Kameo for a very pretty Xbox game on SD, in HD there's no doubt it's next-gen.

 

Maybe 3x the fillrate. The rest of the system could really be the same for all we know. That's if we only take into account the increase in resolution and not the increase in everything else, such as geometry, textures, shaders effects etc.

I think people keep using this "power" notion a bit too frivolously, throwing around "5X more powerful" and all without really delving into details. Like you just did, a 3X increase in resolution (and only that) only needs more fillrate, not more "power", which per se is a very vague notion.
I'm not saying the X360 isn't many times more capable than Xbox, but just saying it's nX more powerful just doesn't cut it.

 

Of course, but dont you also need 3X the shaders for 3x the pixels, etc? I'm not that technically smart but I think we can make very rough estimations.

Of course as well, but again for fun you can do it very roughly, knowing it is not accurate though.

For Xbox, figure it's a 4 pipe GPU at 233. Figure Xenos is 48 ALU.8 for vertexs, break it down like a "traditional card", figure it being like a 20 pipe card. 20 to 5. So you're at 5X. But then we have to double the clockspeed roughly. So you're at 10X. This does not account for differences in the pipes (xenos pipes might be better, being more modern, then again a pipe is a pipe they haven't changed much), other architecture differences (should be mostly improvements by Xenos), Memory speeds (have not scaled as well as pipes so may be a negative) etc. But roughly 10X might be a good try..


Of course there is a lot of approximations, but it's fun..

 

It might be fun, but it's also quite useless in the end. I really don't want to spoil your fun though, i'm just saying that if we talk technical, we talk technical. If we talk "for fun", then it's another matter, with discussions where the Ps3 is 2X more powerful than X360 because it does 2TFlops...

 

I wasn't! Don't really understand what you're getting at? I know you're a firm believer in all things next-gen (esp the gfx) and good for you. My point was that maybe "we" should look elsewhere in games for that factor x.

 

i think perfect dark zero on the rooftop escape mission (i think it's the 3rd. i just started playing it.) is a good showcase of some stuff that simply couldn't have been done last gen. the graphics there are incredible.

 

...and the coop. As much as I absolutely hate many aspects of the single player game, Rare did an exceptional job of making coop better than any game I had every played before. It's a shame that the game overall feels like they are just going through the motions.

 

Oh well that elsewhere will probably be the physics and animation (esp. facial animation). I guess I read you the wrong way. My bad. But I still do think we will get that graphical jump that we receive from the PS1 to PS2.

 

I wonder if most of the ppl who critisize 360 for not having true next gen visuals have anyone played or has seen Fight Night 06 ?!!! The game looks as good as the demo that has been shown in Ps3 E3 presentation and that just by itself says a lot.The true next gen is already here ppl: not in couple of months, not when E3 comes around, not when PS3 launches, it's already here

 

I didn't notice anyone criticising the 360 for it's gfx - well not in the last few posts anyway.
FN 06 looks amazing in static not so great in motion unlike GR:AW which I think is fluid enough to convince all that next-gen is here.

 

Halo (XBox) and Rogue Leader (GC) were launch games..

 

I agree. GRAW has excellent SP animation, but I wish FN 06 could have been a little better. The graphics for both games are excellent though.

 

The truth is, many of us drooled while watching that Killzone(PS3) video. All I see in most XB360 games is what was missing from this gen. Higher resolution textures, more dynamic lighting, but nothing that mimics Killzone. Target videos really have been a negative on current game visuals for XB360 launch titles.

I wanted those Madden video's from last year to be the real deal, but dissapointment was the order of the day. Animation really hasn't improved much with XB360 games.

Ubisoft seem to be primed to lead the way, with some of the most impressive visuals. I think XB360 just needs its RE4, MGS3, something that reeks of high production value. Art direction is seriously lacking in many titles aswell.


GRAW impress me, just being able to see so much of the city.

 

Truth be told, I followed graphics hardware on PC's pretty closely..and I had never heard of Gigaflops before PS3..I mean a review of a new GPU on say, Anandtech, or many other sites, might mention things like the number of pipelines, but never gigaflops.

That's how I kinda figured it was bunk.