LONG Load Times. The Future of PS3 Games? - IGN

[jpr27]

I am expecting Sony to put in the absolute minimum speed required for Blueray movie playback. I don't think even Sony believes that Blue Ray discs will be the norm for Ps3 games. I think the vast majority will come on DVD's. Only the most HD-FMV heavy games will need the extra space blueray offers, and with the kind of ingame graphics possible next gen, one wonders how important FMV will really be anymore.

I thought that the PS3 would be using Blueray for their games exclusively(and possible future HD movie player)? I understand the PS3 would support DVD playback for backwards compatability etc but will developers use DVD format for games? Or did I miss where Soney gave developers the option to use the DVD format for their games?

 

[_leech_]

I thought that the PS3 would be using Blueray for their games exclusively(and possible future HD movie player)? I understand the PS3 would support DVD playback for backwards compatability etc but will developers use DVD format for games? Or did I miss where Soney gave developers the option to use the DVD format for their games?

Why not give them the option? Sony didn't stop CD-based games on the PS2.

 

[DemoCoder]

There are many PC games that have agonizingly long load times, while sporting an order of magnitude better I/O performance.

By no fault of I/O performance though - blame the software for that. Fact is that games with bad load times don't even come close to utilizing the read speed of the external storage.

Yep, that was my point. PC with SATA II HD 10K RPM drive has poor load times!

One benefit BluRay has is that the data can be redundantly structured so that it can be loaded in different order. Typical PC titles treat file system as b-tree database, loading thousands of separate, tiny files!

I bet I could beat most PC game engines simply by pre-parsing my data into the memory layout format and using MMAP() to map one huge image into memory.

Ah, it almost reminds me of the C64 days of IsePick and Action Replay, and how I'd boost my load performance on the 1541 by "freezing" my games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Initial load times don't bother me. Anyone who spent 5 minutes loading 48k on their Sinclair Spectrum knows how to deal with load time - switch the console on then go get a cup of tea!

What concerns me is in-game loading. Current gen when you switch to a different scene or area say, the screen blacks out as the level is loaded. These loads are oft frequent and long, and they're the ones that break up the gameplay. I'm hoping devs work streaming well, and with the extra storage can hopefully manage seamless transition between zones in most games.

 

[_phil_]

switch the console on then go get a cup of tea!

..and crossing fingers not to have a 'read error b'

 

[Gholbine]

Well let's put it this way. It sure as hell won't be 1x, that's just plain stupid. If 1x is the best they can do, then Blu-Ray is not ready for use in the PS3, and Sony have made a big mistake. 2x is still pretty unacceptable. 6x has existed "in the lab" for a few months now, and you have to remember, that's 6x write speed, not read, and write always lags behind read.

I think they can manage a 4x drive easily, but I guess we'll just have to wait for an announcement.

 

[London Geezer]

But we all know that 2X Blueray has the same transfer speed as a 12X DVD (or close)... So what's the problem? 6X is just too expensive.

Just because it says "2X" doesn't mean that it's slow, when it has the same transfer speed of a 12x DVD, which incidentally is what X360 has.

 

[jvd]

Well let's put it this way. It sure as hell won't be 1x, that's just plain stupid

How so ? Just use a dvd and get 12x performance out of the drive . Sony still gets its trojan for bluray and they can still boast about storage size over the dvds in the xbox 360 .

6x has existed "in the lab" for a few months now, and you have to remember, that's 6x write speed, not read, and write always lags behind read.

Show me an article anywhere with a 2006 plan release for 4x drive let alone 6 x drives .

Ps3 will be launching next spring . Most likely march in japan . That gives them 8 months . You figure they need a good million systems to launch in japan which means they have to start producing the systems a few months before that . Figure january ? THat gives them 3 months . Which means the drive will have to be finalized in november / december . Lets not forget that each drive speed will cost more money to produce and they need to be able to produce them in the hundreds of thousands ramping up to the millions by the end of that year .

I don't see anything more than a 2x going into the system. 4x by the grace of god

I think they can manage a 4x drive easily, but I guess we'll just have to wait for an announcement.

Yet you don't have anyhting to back it up .


Looking at it logicly and seeing the need to a ) have the drives producable in 2005 , b) have the drives producable in the quanity needed at launch and through 2006 and c ) the price of the drive needs to be with in reason . and also lets not forget d ) there to my knowledge has yet to be any 2x drives made and e ) dev kits have a 1x drive in them

You can't really come out to the conclusion that a 6x drive will be there and its still very hard to believe a 4x will be there. There is just nothing to back this up .

 

[Arun]

Regarding PC games, you shouldn't even expect to be external-storage limited much of the time. I've recently optimized (by a fair amount, but I did not change the system drastically, so it's still FAR from perfect) a DX7-era 2002 game engine's loadtimes, and I was surprised to discover that only about 25% of the loadtime was actually reading information. And this is for an online game, with little preprocessing...
Things that took a fair bit of time:
- Creating mipmaps and scaling up the non-power-of-two GUI textures with gluScaleImage (30%+ of the loadtime). GOSH is that function slow, handwritten special-purpose function is 10x faster at least.
- Memory allocation (5% of the loadtime or so): but honestly a good engine would require less *freeing* of memory during loadtime, and would probably reuse it better.
- Initializing misc. systems, like the Sound API using fmod, etc.
- Decompressing.

What I'm just trying to say here is that, most likely, if a game's loading time sucks, you shouldn't be blaming the I/O & external storage (too much) - blame the programmer for not profiling and for having no clue how the overall loading system should work before programming it. Deciding what to load and when counts too.
I would at least hope that, next-gen, multithreading is used to its full potential for loading (9 threads, baby!) so that, if done properly, it actually is I/O limited. And then redudancy can come into play.
Once again though, I would assume (or maybe hope) that even current-gen titles are much more I/O limited than PC games, loading-wise, considering the closed environment and the much greater need to optimize


Uttar

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

IGN are stupid see link for details

http://forums.gamespot.com/gamespot/show_messages.php?board=314159282&topic=22470224&page=0

 

[Fafalada]

Well, that also depends on the type of game you're doing...

PS2 can read a raw 32MB in under 10seconds. In real-world, you'll only need 20MB or less rawdata to fill the memory, so ~6-8seconds is perfectly realistic load time target for a full memory load, and that's without having to use clever tricks that Democoder was talking about.

- Memory allocation (5% of the loadtime or so): but honestly a good engine would require less *freeing* of memory during loadtime, and would probably reuse it better.

Processing shouldn't be serial to I/O process in the first place. If you spend 5seconds reading the disc, that's 5 seconds you can hide all your load-time setup behind.

Once again though, I would assume (or maybe hope) that even current-gen titles are much more I/O limited than PC games, loading-wise,

They are, but it still happens often that I/O limits are a result of poor data planning and seeking your data transfer speeds into oblivion.

 

[Arun]

Processing shouldn't be serial to I/O process in the first place. If you spend 5seconds reading the disc, that's 5 seconds you can hide all your load-time setup behind.

Of course. I was talking of an engine developped between 2000 and 2002 on a very small budget and with few programmers here. But it's, imo at least, still a quite interesting example because many badly optimized titles, loading-wise at least, could share some of these characteristics. And a small part of loading will always be serial, although that's probably negligable so I'm not sure why I'm even mentioning it.

They are, but it still happens often that I/O limits are a result of poor data planning and seeking your data transfer speeds into oblivion.

That definitively is something PC programmers aren't very used to *grins* Although they imo definitively should be a little bit more aware of it, even though it relies on HDs.


Uttar

 

[pipo]

Well, that also depends on the type of game you're doing...

PS2 can read a raw 32MB in under 10seconds. In real-world, you'll only need 20MB or less rawdata to fill the memory, so ~6-8seconds is perfectly realistic load time target for a full memory load, and that's without having to use clever tricks that Democoder was talking about.

Oh sure, but I was thinking of games like RE4 (the great GC game) where they can only start loading the next room when you enter it...

So it's not always a case of crappy software.

And you want to talk crappy software? Don't get me started on the loading times of Top Spin.

 

[deathkiller]

I thought that the PS3 would be using Blueray for their games exclusively(and possible future HD movie player)? I understand the PS3 would support DVD playback for backwards compatability etc but will developers use DVD format for games? Or did I miss where Soney gave developers the option to use the DVD format for their games?

Oficial specs:

PLAYSTATION®3 DVD-ROM
PLAYSTATION®3 BD-ROM

http://www.us.playstation.com/Pressreleases.aspx?id=279

 

[mech]

Didn't Sony surprise the world with the DVD drive speed that they put inside the PS2? I forgot the number but wasn't it faster than most DVD players at the time?

I don't beileve so . Wasn't it a 4x ? dvd drives were also in mas production for 4 years before they put out the ps2. I belive pcs had a 8x avlaible at the time

Xbox had a varying drive speed, I believe 2x-5x, and PS2 had a constant 4x. PS2's was quite impressive for the time, especially so given the Xbox's generally slower drive launched quite a bit of time after the PS2.

I think I read somewhere the PS3 will have a 4x Blu-ray drive... but I could well be mistaken.

Note: I am not trying to do an XBox vs PS2 flame-bait in this post; I'm just posting both speeds to give some reference to PS2's drive speed.

 

[Fafalada]

But it's, imo at least, still a quite interesting example because many badly optimized titles, loading-wise at least, could share some of these characteristics

Oh I agree, it's also rather scary that the example you gave spent 5% of a loadtime on just purely allocations. But then I remember hearing the horror stories of first MaxPayne which apparently had half a million allocated objects just for startup...
It's amazing that thing ever even ran on a console.

And you want to talk crappy software? Don't get me started on the loading times of Top Spin.

Heheh, you should see the PC version. There's a 3-5second halt/pause between "every" point. It drove me nuts.

 

[PC-Engine]

So one was using a CAV drive while the other used a CLV drive?

 

[Arty]

IGN are stupid see link for details

So when IGN was the only source that Router functions were not "dropped" from PS3, they were THE only trust worthy source and now its the opposite ?

flip-flop .. flip-flop ..

 

[eDoshin]

IGN are stupid see link for details

So when IGN was the only source that Router functions were not "dropped" from PS3, they were THE only trust worthy source and now its the opposite ?

flip-flop .. flip-flop ..

This is the kind of nonsense that closed the forum. Unless u can link a particular person flip-flopping, DO NOT assume that one person's opinion reflects upon all others.

 

[Arty]

This is the kind of nonsense that closed the forum. Unless u can link a particular person flip-flopping, DO NOT assume that one person's opinion reflects upon all others.

Um, no. Your post and his (bashing other websites) is the kind of non-sense that got this forum closed.

When the Router function dropped story was doing the circles, IGN was touted as THE only source for correct news. Now when they report something which is not to somebody's liking, its the other way around ?