Load time in 360

[one]

In reading this IGN review for PGR3, I found a footnote about load times.

8.5 Presentation
A fine polish over this entire game gives it a clean, sleek presentation. Load times aren't very short, though, and there are lots of them.

Now, as it's not clear whether they reviewed it on Premium or Core I'm not so sure about HDD usage, but if it has an HDD attached just like all other review kits, then it's likely that PGR3 doesn't use HDD for caching. In the original Xbox, all titles could use HDD for caching, but this time it's gone. Do you expect this generational transition will go smoothly?

Bill Gates and J Allard said network is the media, but for gaming, it still requires some persistent storage locally if not entire games happen in a remote server like demonstrated in the IBM Cell Physics Game demo. Do you think there's a possibility that 360 games use HDD more in future unlike a launch title, in an implicit way or in an explicit way like an HDD-only game?

 

[Hardknock]

Kameo has very small loading. And COD2 has faster and less loading than the PC version.

PGR3 appears to be a rush job in multiple ways. So far I think we have a pretty good number of launch games that are taking advantage of cacheing. Which bodes well for the system going forward.

 

[robofunk]

I'd say PGR3 uses more of the 512MB then any other game they've reviewed.

 

[one]

Kameo has very small loading. And COD2 has faster and less loading than the PC version.

PGR3 appears to be a rush job in multiple ways. So far I think we have a pretty good number of launch games that are taking advantage of cacheing. Which bodes well for the system going forward.

Well, there are Core System in the market now as you know, which is the difference.

 

[wco81]

Couldn't you benchmark pretty easily by loading the game with and without the removeable HDD?

 

[drpepper]

didn't MS say that they told the developers to design the game around the core package, that is with no HD? Or is this caching mechanism automatic?

Well.. NM, i guess you can have the game check the hardware...

 

[Edge]

> "In the original Xbox, all titles could use HDD for caching, but this time it's gone."

And next to no games used it, and thus probably one of the reasons MS decided to offer a 360 version without a HD. Lots of current Xbox games have loading issues!

It's highly questionable to think that HD solves loading problems, cause if that was the case, PC games would not have loading problems. I'm not sure why people automatically think the HD is some kind of cure all to load times?

Console manufacturers have to provide developers better tools in optimizing their games to load faster, and how to stream content in, after the initial load.

 

[Guden Oden]

It's highly questionable to think that HD solves loading problems, cause if that was the case, PC games would not have loading problems.

Slow level loads on PCs is due to any number of reasons, some which may include:

*File system fragmentation
*Disk contention from other applications (peer-to-peer filesharing for example)
*Pagefile swapping
*Bloatware programming in the game's loading routines
*Poor gamefile storage format
*Gamefile storage format heavily compressed

None of these would be the case on a console, though on the other hand its harddrive is likely to be considerably slower compared to a contemporary desktop drive. I still think the pros for a console would outweigh the few cons, and theoretically allow a console to load much faster. Particulary if it loads simultaneously from HDD and optical disc. This would require a decent amount of smart thinking/programming from documented lazy programmers tho, so this might remain theory rather than practice.

Teh future will have to tell. With the amount of RAM in x360 (and PS3), customers are likely to rebel unless some smart loading schemes are implemented though. I'm also curious exactly how much noise the optical drive in x360 causes. A PC 12x DVD drive cause a fair amount of racket after all.

 

[scooby_dooby]

More than anything I would bet it's the extra 2 CPU cores and some optimized loading code to make use of them.

If we're going to cherry pick quotes:
"COD2 from GamePro - with 720p widescreen support, normal and specular mapping, dynamite particle effects, and lighting-fast load times, you might not even miss your mouse. "

I think the load times will be decent, same as any other console.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Slow level loads on PCs is due to any number of reasons, some which may include:

*Gamefile storage format heavily compressed

None of these would be the case on a console.

Isn't compression actually expected to be used extensively as a speed optimization? We've had this loading time debate before (like every other) and it was definitely made clear that loading smaller files and decompressing is faster than loading uncompressed files.

 

[ERP]

Isn't compression actually expected to be used extensively as a speed optimization? We've had this loading time debate before (like every other) and it was definitely made clear that loading smaller files and decompressing is faster than loading uncompressed files.

Most console games are already loading compressed assets.
OK you might use a better compression scheme, but your only talking about 10-20% savings over what's already in use at most.

Memory increased by a factor of 8, DVD read speed by , if a developer tries to treat it like an XBox it'll load slower.

Having said that developers are aware of what is tolerable in load times and they'll build their games accordingly, so I don't expect on average slower loading.

 

[Powderkeg]

If you think the 360's load times are bad you should have played Ultima (The first) on the Commodore 64 with 5 inch floppy disks and no hard drive.

I could make a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk in the time it took that game to load.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Anyone who had a 48k Sinclair Spectrum/Timex 2000 knows load times. Not only did games take an age to load, but that was when they worked! You could spend ages tweaking levels to try and get the thing to load without crashing.

 

[dukmahsik]

load schmoad!

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

Without the harddrive standard, I don't expect devs to break their necks making games load faster.

 

[jvd]

We need the mad carts !!! No load timez is uber leet dude

 

[typoEDR]

We need the mad carts !!! No load timez is uber leet dude

Yeah... $1000 cartridges...

 

[Fafalada]

*Gamefile storage format heavily compressed

Like ERP said most console titles already store the game-data compressed on discs. And moreover, most decompression schemes are orders of magnitude faster then disc transfers, so long as your loader can interleave load-time processing with disc reading (which any half-decent loader SHOULD), you pretty much eliminate any such overheads - in other words, compression should accelerate load times, not the other way around.

Having said that developers are aware of what is tolerable in load times and they'll build their games accordingly, so I don't expect on average slower loading.

Right - on average, load times probably improved over PS1 in this gen - sadly that didn't stop EA from giving us glorious 1minute loads in some of their early titles.

 

[Guden Oden]

Isn't compression actually expected to be used extensively as a speed optimization?

I meant that compression would not be a problem on a console like x360, because unlike some PCs it'll have the grunt to deal with it. Poor wording on my part.

 

[skilzygw]

I have question, how about a compressed game for xbox360 vs an uncompressed game on blu-ray. Will the blu ray load faster since it's uncompressed or slower because the data is spread across a further space on the disk increasing seek times?

or other reasons,

Thanks.