I find this rather strange though. Texture detail seems to be exactly the same. Especially once you get up close to objects, because the blurriness hides the detail of smaller things on screen better.
*Copied relevant bits* -AlS
Memory & Texture Mapping (types/formats/techniques/res) *Spin-off*
- Thread starter Nesh
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I find this rather strange though. Texture detail seems to be exactly the same. Especially once you get up close to objects, because the blurriness hides the detail of smaller things on screen better.
*Copied relevant bits* -AlS
Memory & Texture Resolution *Spin-off*
Sorry, I can't agree. The PS3 textures seem to me of lower resolution, even though it's not the brutal 2x2 downscaling we've seen elsewhere. Find an identical spot with sharp detail, e.g. specular highlights, and count the visible transitions.
Sorry, I can't agree. The PS3 textures seem to me of lower resolution, even though it's not the brutal 2x2 downscaling we've seen elsewhere. Find an identical spot with sharp detail, e.g. specular highlights, and count the visible transitions.
The textures are definitely significantly worse on the PS3 than the 360. But this is only occasional and only a few textures here and there are noticeably downgraded.
The dead Big Daddy figure has pretty bad textures, but that's probably a worst-case scenario. Because Big Daddy is essentially just a dead "prop" in the level (i.e., he isn't an active character that you fight yet), the developers decided to downgrade the hell out of his textures just for that level, in order to save memory/texture-space for everything else. That's because it doesn't matter if the Big Daddy has crap textures, because he's just lying there for decoration purposes.
All these texture degradations are probably to account for the smaller memory footprint of the PS3 (caused by various factors such as Sony's relatively large background OS, and the memory required for software upscaling to 1080p).
You haven't been reading up on this, I'm guessing. The developers have already stated that the low-res Big Daddy was a mistake, that he was meant to have high-res textures, but it got overlooked when they were creating the demo. It was most definitely not intentional.
djskribbles
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to me, texture resolution looks the same for the most part.
like? Can you post an example? Even if you are right I think the difference would be almost non-existent
It wasn't a "mistake" per se. More like, it might have been a bad decision to cut textures THAT severely on THAT particular model/prop (considering the iconic and eye-catching significance of the Big Daddy figure). Whatever the case may be, some textures HAD to be cut. If it wasn't cut on the Dead Big Daddy prop, then it would have been cut ELSEWHERE. The devs HAVE TO cut textures somewhere to get the game to fit into the PS3's RAM footprint.
We all already know that the PS3 has less memory to work with (by virtue of the slightly more bloated Sony OS, and the memory required for 1080p software upscaling). It's just a matter of making the best decisions on which textures they had to cut in order to get the game running with the limited amount of memory (or RAM) that they got. Cutting the textures on the dead Big Daddy prop piece might not have been the best decision in terms of publicity's sake, but I didn't really find it a big deal, as I pretty much just walked by him at that stage of the game/demo anyway.
They wouldn't sanely cut the Big Daddy's textures from 512x512 to 32x32 (an approximate ratio of texture reduction based on texel size), to save a few hundred KB of RAM at best and create such an eyesore. If the RAM is limiting, they'd select multiple textures and reduce them all by a smaller amount, reducing texture consumption by megabytes, reducing fidelity across a range of objects, but producing nothing to the catastrophic effect of the Big Daddy problem. This doesn't look in any way to me a texture resolution issue - they haven't even got filtering enabled! It's a bug of sorts, a goofed parameter or something.
Well when a PS3 game has the best textures on consoles...I think there's another solution to cutting texture resolution. Yes, it might be the easy solution - but it's not the only one.
You have to realize the mindset of a developer that is trying to shoehorn a 512MB 360 game into, say, a ~480MB PS3 game. Every precious little KB counts. Their own inner-dialogue is that, if they can arguably cut down textures drastically on something that won't be too noticeable or obvious, then they'll do it. They have to magically somehow come up with that missing ~32MB of RAM somehow or another.
You say they might have just "goofed up" on this one part. I would say that that's consistent with what the community manager on the 2K forums said, which was basically, "You're right guys, this kind of poor quality isn't consistent with our own level of equality/expectations." Which is another way of saying, as I interpret it, that they made a poor decision to cut texture resolution THAT drastically on that particular object in the demo/level. Which, in turn, is to say that they could've averaged out the texture-cutting more judiciously and less ostensibly.
I actually don't agree that it was such a glaring misstep or poor decision. You could see other textures in the PS3 demo that were just as bad, but these worst-case examples are ones that the player has to normally go somewhat out of his way to reach and/or notice. To me, when I played the demo, I pretty much just took a quick glance at the dead Big Daddy object, stole some of his items, and walked right on by without blinking an eye. He was an insignificant object, an insignificant prop (maybe not so insignificant now, in hindsight, based on all the negative publicity he's stirred up). Plus, he was obscured and covered-up by the water distortions/refractions that were raining all over him anyway; the glaring texture degradations were only visible if the player were to go out of his way to get RIGHT up close and behind him, and scrutinize his rear textures really closely.
That might be more of a testament to the level of talent of the developer (Naughty Dog). It's also a subjective argument as to whether or not Uncharted necessarily has the "best textures," on a technical basis, on all consoles.
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I don't doubt it's testement to the talent of the developer, but they aren't doing myricals. There is another solution other than reducing texture resolution.
Yes, it's subjective - but I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to agree that Uncharted has better textures than BioShock 360. Thus, it's still possible to have the same texture resolution. Plus, in comparison pics i see no difference in texture reoslution, but only a slight blur in the PS3 version (this is despite the exception that is the downed Big Daddy)
It's not just a matter of texture resolution. It's also texture variety. Uncharted may have 200 unique textures per scene at 512x512, but if Bioshock or some other 360 game has 400 unique textures per scene at 384x384, then the latter is technically fitting in a more impressive amount of texture-work, despite the lower average resolution per texture.
Uncharted has very sharp-looking textures, but in my best effort to be objective about it, that game's visual style and jungle setting also lends itself to have a lot of repeat texture-work (i.e., fewer individual/unique textures per scene).
48 for PS3 I believe.
Leave people to argue the toss though cause this off topic branch will be pruned before you know it
Didn't Uncharted have 2048x2048 resolution textures with up to 8 layers? (including reflective for wet effects etc)
And I really can't find very many repeat textures anywhere in the game, to be honest. That's one of its biggest strengths when it comes to textures. They are unique, high-res, and beautiful. I don't know about clever blending effects to create even more unique looking textures from less original data, but it doesn't look like they've done that a lot. In an interview Evan Wells also mentions that part of the reason the game wouldn't fit on DVD is the hi-res textures, which would have to be toned down (total game size is 22Gb, with no repeat data).
I could only find the way the texture streaming is handled on the PS3 in the tech-notes they released some time ago, streaming them from BluRay to HDD to memory, with memory defragmentation, a solution which allowed them to have much higher quality and varied textures, they claim, as well as being extremely easy to implement (they say it took them 3 days and that all developers should be using this technique on PS3)
And I really can't find very many repeat textures anywhere in the game, to be honest. That's one of its biggest strengths when it comes to textures. They are unique, high-res, and beautiful. I don't know about clever blending effects to create even more unique looking textures from less original data, but it doesn't look like they've done that a lot. In an interview Evan Wells also mentions that part of the reason the game wouldn't fit on DVD is the hi-res textures, which would have to be toned down (total game size is 22Gb, with no repeat data).
I could only find the way the texture streaming is handled on the PS3 in the tech-notes they released some time ago, streaming them from BluRay to HDD to memory, with memory defragmentation, a solution which allowed them to have much higher quality and varied textures, they claim, as well as being extremely easy to implement (they say it took them 3 days and that all developers should be using this technique on PS3)
Upto 8 layers of unique textures on every surface? And jungle? Have you played the game? There's tonnes of different areas, and each is very varied with loads of textures strewn accross the place.
What you have to understand is that, in a game like Uncharted that is purely linear, it is easier to create unique textures for each area (and therefore fully utilise the available texture memory) because the developer knows exactly what texture asset is going to be needed next.
With games like BioShock, where you have a large level with lots of different areas, each needing its own identity and therefore its own identifying unique textures, this isn't necessarily possible. Being able to move pretty much anywhere within the level at any time creates its own problems in texture, streaming and memory management and, with the relatively weaker memory capabilities of the PS3 compared to the 360, it's inevitable that such games will either have a reduced texture count or reduced texture and/or rendering resolution than a game that uses the 360's memory and rendering capabilities to its optimum.
But titles such as uncharted? It's effectively a corridor-based action adventure with little to no deviation from the path that the developer intended, making it easier to work with on the memory-management front.