Kojima "Blu-Ray is too small for Metal Gear Solid 4."

[DieH@rd]

MGS1 had over 10 hours od voice sounds. It was the ONLY reason that game end up on 2 discs.

Who knows what will Kojima do for his last MGS game...

 

[Gollum]

I'm not going into the rest of the BluRay vs DVD discussion again, but I think it's best to keep in mind that Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance was one of the larger Xbox 1 games out there. Neither MGS2 nor MGS3 are small games on the PS3, and Kojima uses in-game engine storytelling a lot, which does require a lot of vertex animation data, textures, sound, and so forth. Even the PSP's MGS: PO is 1.3gb, and it is telling that both in that game and in the Ac!d games the in-game engine story-telling have been skipped. I've always presumed that was because they didn't have room for them.

See, what you may forget is that whereas in the game, you don't only spend more time in the same area, but the player and the AI create a lot of the animation, which contains a lot of recycled material. But scripted animation for whole scenes of several minutes long takes a fair bit of space. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point it becomes cheaper to have those animations on the disc pre-rendered and compressed as a kind of AVC format, simply because only showing the 2d representation of one view of a detailed 3D world is a form of compression in itself.

Oh, and stop this 'single layer 50GB disc' nonsense please. He's simply talking about 50GB dual layer discs, which haven't been used for games yet at this point.

I disagree. First of all, who on this planet is still using vertex animation? The games industry completed the move to bone animation years ago. What you seem to forget is, that animation data is typically small, very small compared to the rest of art assets. A typical single animation usually only takes up place in the low kb range, you'd have to have a crazy amount of complex animation in your game to have it fill up more than just 1 GB of space IMO. Even with extremely complex bone setups, countless motion-captured characters on screen and lots of stuff going on, the animation data for that would barely be a fraction of the size of the same scene as a pre-rendered HD CGI sequence. Even if Kojima had 20 hours of animated cutscenes, animation data are no logical explanation for his hunger for more space...

 

[LunchBox]

what i don't get is...
why are people complaining about Kojima's thirst for more space?
it's within reach of the console in question,
there is no forseeable added cost for the consumer,
if it ends up giving the game the coveted "bells and whistles"
it's not really the consumer's problem to care for...


I could understand the discussion on it's technological merits on how the space is/will be utilized,
but i don't get is (i'm reiterating )...
why are some people so offended that Kojima wants to use that space?

 

[baten]

what i don't get is...
why are people complaining about Kojima's thirst for more space?
it's within reach of the console in question,
there is no forseeable added cost for the consumer,
if it ends up giving the game the coveted "bells and whistles"
it's not really the consumer's problem to care for...


I could understand the discussion on it's technological merits on how the space is/will be utilized,
but i don't get is (i'm reiterating )...
why are some people so offended that Kojima wants to use that space?

Most people that are "offended", feel so since it seems that Kojima is justifing the need for HD disks (be it BD or HD-DVD) - which some would like to remain un-needed for as long as possible, maybe even until digital distribution takes over and disks are no longer required. In this way, Kojima is the antithesis of Carmack or Newell in regard to PS3 - and as some people dont like what Carmack and Newell point on the PS3, others feel the opposite, and could not agree with Kojima either.

 

[Teasy]

I could understand the discussion on it's technological merits on how the space is/will be utilized,
but i don't get is (i'm reiterating )...
why are some people so offended that Kojima wants to use that space?

Nobody's offended that he wants to use the space available to him. People are simply questioning why he feels he needs not only all that space but in fact twice as much as is even available on PS3 at the moment..

 

[Darkon]

Nobody's offended that he wants to use the space available to him. People are simply questioning why he feels he needs not only all that space but in fact twice as much as is even available on PS3 at the moment..

Koji never asked for 50 GB BD.

 

[Teasy]

Koji never asked for 50 GB BD.

He doesn't no, but he does say that the 25GB BlueRay discs will "become too small in no time". Which does give the impression that he wants more space then the 25GB discs can provide, maybe not for MGS4 but in the near future.

 

[Nesh]

Perhaps he didnt ask for a 50GB BR in that part but he may have asked for it in a different part in the interview or talked about it afterwards or in another interview

 

[Eleazar]

With as good as compression has gotten over the years I just don't understand why uncompressed data is even needed anymore. Even audiophiles compress their audio files with lossless formats like monkey audio and flac. I have yet to hear any difference between an original recording and a compressed version using a good lossless format. I would imagine this is even possible with a non lossless format. I am not as much into video, but I can't say uncompressed videos will be needed either. It's not like it is a movie where the whole experience is focused on watching the film. You play the game and then a cutscene shows up to help advance the story. These cutscenes are usually rather short, if at most 3-5 mins. I would also imagine that video compression is mature enough to where it would be rather difficult to tell the difference between an uncompressed video and a high quality compressed video. It is just unnecessary. I wouldn't be surprised if someone like ID, EPIC, Valve, Infinity Ward, Crytek or even EA games could have the same quality of audio/video on 1 or possibly but not necessarily 2 DVDs.

Lets be honest with ourselves though, MGS has always had a crapload of cutscenes. In fact, I might go as far to say that it seems a bit excessive. I remember back with MGS2 people would say the game was like playing through cutscenes. I am not saying this is a good or bad thing. I am just saying that another possibility is that MGS4 needs that much data because it will have a lot of cutscenes.

The part about the audio(the bottle and the shovel) isn't really anything new, at least as far as I know. The PC market has had stuff like this for a while now. In fact, the blurb from Kojima about sound, reminds me of Creative's EAX and XFI marketing a whole lot.

 

[Naboomagnoli]

I was under the impression that EAX was more about applying effects to sounds (such as echo, reverb etc) to create the sensation of being in different environments. I haven't read up on it, mind you - it'd just surprise me that ticking the EAX checkbox in sound settings would open up a significantly larger and more detailed library of sounds, as opposed to choosing high sound quality against low quality. Incidentally the retail version of Battlefield 2 allowed all users to choose the ultra high quality sound setting, which had a larger variety of sound samples. I had it and it was great. Subsequent patches locked the option to X-Fi users only though.

 

[assen]

With as good as compression has gotten over the years I just don't understand why uncompressed data is even needed anymore. Even audiophiles compress their audio files with lossless formats like monkey audio and flac.

Lossless isn't interesting, it's about 2x compression. And audiophiles refuse to accept lossy. Take one Hideo Kojima, sprinkle audiophileness liberally, let simmer for 18 months, spread the resulting MGS4 on a dual-layered 50 GB Blu-ray.

 

[Polygon Crusher]

I was under the impression that EAX was more about applying effects to sounds (such as echo, reverb etc) to create the sensation of being in different environments. I haven't read up on it, mind you - it'd just surprise me that ticking the EAX checkbox in sound settings would open up a significantly larger and more detailed library of sounds, as opposed to choosing high sound quality against low quality. Incidentally the retail version of Battlefield 2 allowed all users to choose the ultra high quality sound setting, which had a larger variety of sound samples. I had it and it was great. Subsequent patches locked the option to X-Fi users only though.

Old soundcards for PC like Audigy1/2 can apply material effect to sound. This is demonstrated in the Audigy 2 demo program where the hearing point is a the middle room of 5 rooms (in a cross formation). Each room has a different material structure and all four room sounds are combined to hear in the middle room (or each can be heard separetly).
The demo can be "tweaked" (modifying files) by changing the material density, weight and a lot of other variabels for some fun fun.

EDIT: Also some or most OpenAL games have settings for the materials to produce a correct sound depending on material, room size, position and objects obscuring the the player "ears".

 

[Dregun]

Old soundcards for PC like Audigy1/2 can apply material effect to sound. This is demonstrated in the Audigy 2 demo program where the hearing point is a the middle room of 5 rooms (in a cross formation). Each room has a different material structure and all four room sounds are combined to hear in the middle room (or each can be heard separetly).
The demo can be "tweaked" (modifying files) by changing the material density, weight and a lot of other variabels for some fun fun.

EDIT: Also some or most OpenAL games have settings for the materials to produce a correct sound depending on material, room size, position and objects obscuring the the player "ears".

I think what they plan on doing with MGS for PS3 is quite a bit different from what your referring too. Instead of just "rooms" or the "environment" adjusting what a bottle might sound like while it hits the floor. They are referring to the sound the bottle makes while it hits a metal shovel from a wooden table in a closet with a puddle of anti-freeze on the ground over a manhole with rusty sewer pipes.

Slight exaggeration...no wooden table

Dregun

 

[Polygon Crusher]

Good sound is always a pleasure!

I think what they plan on doing with MGS for PS3 is quite a bit different from what your referring too. Instead of just "rooms" or the "environment" adjusting what a bottle might sound like while it hits the floor. They are referring to the sound the bottle makes while it hits a metal shovel from a wooden table in a closet with a puddle of anti-freeze on the ground over a manhole with rusty sewer pipes.

Slight exaggeration...no wooden table

Dregun

EDIT: What you said then has not much to do with sound algorithms but more with how many sound effects they put in the game (every material has a special sound and then the sound is proccessed to get the right "KLING"!)

Well if the soundcard can do what I said it can, calculate sound based on material in the room/zone, objects obstructing the direct line of hearing between the player and sound source then it can't get better except for better precision (more calc checks) and higher sound quality (24Bit, 96Khz+).

Oh and also the ability to proccess sound for several rooms and mix the result together for the room which the player is in (taking into account the distance between and objects obstructing the hearing path to the player ears).

 

[Firewarrior]

Thats one of the most interesting things I ve ever heard about next gen games and most innovative use of sound.

Yeah pretty amazing this means I have to spend some money on some surround sound for my home!

 

[fireshot]

I am sure Kojima is stating his experience about moving from PS2 to PS3 development. I wonder how he juggle RSX bandwidth between graphics and sound?

 

[pipo]

Thats one of the most interesting things I ve ever heard about next gen games and most innovative use of sound.

What part are you referring to? I don't see anything particually innovative there...

Maybe they haven't done stuff like that before, but things like environmental 5.1 effects and filtering depending on ground / floor / distance has been done on last generation consoles.

Yeah pretty amazing this means I have to spend some money on some surround sound for my home!

Long overdue.

 

[Firewarrior]

What part are you referring to? I don't see anything particually innovative there...

Maybe they haven't done stuff like that before, but things like environmental 5.1 effects and filtering depending on ground / floor / distance has been done on last generation consoles.



Long overdue.

Hehe and about what he was referring to here it is.

"With next-generation consoles, both cinematics and in-game sound will closely resemble those found in Hollywood films," according to Tojima. He fully expects gamers to "be surprised by the quality of sound coming into their ears--the sound will react to their conditions in the 3D world like never before." For example, in the scenario where a bottle falls off a table, hits a metal shovel, and then rolls onto a carpet, conventional sound processing would have the bottle make the same sounds regardless of the environment, or what it collides with. That same scenario on the PlayStation 3 might have the bottle make a metallic tink when it hits the shovel, and then create a muffled rolling sound as it travels across the carpet. If the room had its own sound variables, the bottles sound might get take on some echo if in a bathroom, or get slightly quieter if in a bedroom. Then you have to factor in on-the-fly surround encoding, which would make the bottle pan from front to back or side to side in your room, depending upon the way it rolled.
The Metal Gear Solid team flew around the world to capture specific sounds for environments in the game. The group actually lugged surround-sound audio-recording equipment to capture sounds from undisclosed locations all around the world. Tojima's team also recorded special sound effects just for the game, instead of using prerecorded, CD-based sounds.
The new audio-processing capabilities of the PlayStation 3 allow Tojima and his team to manipulate sound in a variety of different ways. Tojima says that, "With this power, we can give the player a better environment to experience, as the hardware can produce more sounds in real time based on where the player is in a room and what objects are in that room." Last year's Tokyo Game Show trailer emphasized the theme "No place to hide!" and Tojima, as sound director, will do all he can to envelop the player in the world of Metal Gear Solid. "In a battlefield with no place to hide, you will hear impending dangers all around you, in all 360 degrees."

This what is going to force me to get some decent surround sound.

 

[PARANOiA]

Is this really that different from what happens today, though?

Games have these details at the moment, unless I'm going nuts. Try walking on a wooden floor, then move to carpet in any game made since the PS2 and you'll make a different noise.

Right? Or not?

 

[baten]

Is this really that different from what happens today, though?

Games have these details at the moment, unless I'm going nuts. Try walking on a wooden floor, then move to carpet in any game made since the PS2 and you'll make a different noise.

Right? Or not?

I guess the difference in sounds will be similar to the difference in the graphic quality of the carpet and wooden floor that will be seen on the PS3, as opposed to PS2.