MGS4 3D engine post mortem [translation needed]
- Thread starter gongo
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Yet that extra RAM and BW shouldn't have been used. If the demo did use those features, it wasn't Sony's fault for undelivering on promised performance, but the developers writing to a spec that was never intended for PS3 - the developers were at fault.
I think you're reading into that what you're expecting to read, rather than follow the lines of simplest explanation. Kojima said he was misreported, and we all know journalists do that all the time!
My personal opinion is MGS4 wasn't a wonderfully efficient use of PS3 hardware. PS3's an ecclectic design, and with a graphics architecture the Japanese devs weren't generally familiar with either. No other dev is reporting 90+% utilisation of hardware, so why would anyone expect Kojima's first PS3 title to manage that and be crashing up against the hardware limitations of the system? I think the potential in PS3 was just too tricky to be tapped and enable Kojima's vision within the time to create one game with no prior development experience of the machine. For him, it was a disappointment, not achieving the artistic vision he hoped for, and being an honest guy he voiced that diappointment. This doesn't reflect terribly on the hardware, nor the developer, only the ease with which people can forget how hard it is to actually create stuff! We see time and again games that fall short of the intended marks. I am quite sure another couple of AAA titles in, Kojima can find a lot more legroom in PS3 to attain better results, just like all the other devs are finding.
And this goes back to that OP comment - is there actually anyone else saying Sony overpromised, or was that reference to the Kojima misreported comment which he then corrected?
You could be right about that but didnt Kojima's crew used ps2 in a wonderfully efficient way even though developers say ps2 was more complex than ps3 is now?
Nearly one year earlier release date than intended sounds more realistic to me.
Just think about it; when they first wanted to release ps3 blu-ray drives were not ready; when they released it, sony didn't have enough ps3s to satisfy demand, it was too expensive, devkits were in a bad shape, expensive and it had been just a few months since developers had them, there was a severe lack of exclusive games, motorstorm had lack of content, warhawk's single player campaign was canceled,GTP was released in a very early state(final game can be released at 2010),nearly everything got delayed, they had to show killzone2 in a veary early state; home, which is synonymous with ps3's online service was going to be released two years later.Sony really needed a high profile ps3 exclusive to release at first half of 2008.
I think we have a release date problem here,nothing wrong with the hardware or cell, it is just that competitors found themselves in a very good situation to lie about ps3 hardware and get away with it.
I don't have official information about this so I may be wrong of course but I feel otherwise.
Besides that, the main problem here, in my opinion, is that popular japanese developers such as Konami, Tecmo, etc, are out of the loop when it comes to familiarity, efficiency and advanced techniques regarding next gen consoles. None of them, and only Capcom, fill the bill for taking advantage of the hardware.
JRPGs and fighting games look old gen compared with, let's say, Gears of War, which is still able to hold its own with the best graphical showcases on either the PS3 or the Xbox 360.
There is a game with lots of smoke and "fog" effects, which makes an extensive use of the effects provided by alpha blending. I'm talking about Lost Planet.Indeed, and my favorite part of the trailer is right at the beginning, with the PMC soldier's viewpoint. Amazing environmental effects and grenade explosions, smoke etc.
What are the odds that we'll see that level of effects during this generation of consoles, after devs learn the ins and outs of both platforms?
(in fact, I'd like to ask exactly why that kind of effects is so expensive, but I fear I'm already OT'ing this thread too much.Perhaps I should read something about alpha blending and stuff)
I'm not sure though, excuse me if I am wrong.
I don't know about how much MGS changed, but I remember Laa Yosh saying that KZ2 2005 trailer featured 128 bit!!!!!!!! HDR but things change over time and the final game doesn't feature HDR at all.
I feel the lack of a streaming/LOD says more to explain about how MGS4 ultimately turned out than any other factor. I've spied some geom-LOD with respect to NPCs but in the overall I would say its largely not used. There doesn't appear to be any streaming of any sort. MGS4 sings because of its outstanding artwork and attention to detail. The technology that supports that isn't exactly in the same league IMO. Something to be considered is that Kojima notes that Japanese developers are behind the curve with respect to technology as compared to western developers. This isn't surprising given just what platforms are popular in Japan.
thatdudeagain
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You see, I think the problem is that most Japanese dev's (including KojiPro) aren't familliar with Pc graphics card shaders, wich is what the consoles now run on. Kojima was able to take advantage of the PS2 because the GS was not a dedicated graphics card and was more familar at the time. The real difficulty came from the EE (specifically the VU0 & VU1).
Now, not only did he (Kojima) have to tend with a processor that has 7 spu's simmilar to the VU0 & VU1, but also has the misfortune of figuring out multipipeline GFX processing, not to mention blu-ray shortcommings.
Now, not only did he (Kojima) have to tend with a processor that has 7 spu's simmilar to the VU0 & VU1, but also has the misfortune of figuring out multipipeline GFX processing, not to mention blu-ray shortcommings.
can someone translate this
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20080912/mgs04.htm
I think its more of a memory problem for them, as they mention something like the 05 trailers use 300 mb of Vram in comparison and 800K polygons or something.
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20080912/mgs04.htm
I think its more of a memory problem for them, as they mention something like the 05 trailers use 300 mb of Vram in comparison and 800K polygons or something.
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Thing is - the shadows were a direct result of porting over from their PS2-era codebases, right down to still using the same screen space filter to soften them (which is mathematically complete nonsense, but looks pleasing enough to the eye as opposed to hard-edge volumes in Doom3 powered games and the likes).Sigfried1977 said:
I don't think anyone in their team expected to stick with those - giving up shadow casting from fences, trees etc. alone would have been a pretty sad sacrifice to make.
I hate shadow-map aliasing like the plague, but it's hard to beat getting physically accurate soft-edges and being able to choose what casts shadows yourself rather then that choice being made for you by the technology at start of project.
Found the presentation, its even been dubbed to english by someone.
http://files.filefront.com/MGS4+PS3+Devkit+TGS+Demo+Eng/;4440530;/fileinfo.html
Some things in the video. Also the framerate varies, 25fps and in the otacon scene which looks tremendously better it seems like upper 10's to 20-25fps.
I don't believe they used ps3 hardware efficiently because there are already ps3 games surprasses it.
Just look at the rsx only games like, motorstorm, heavenly sword, ratchet and clank and compare them to mgs4, mgs4 isn't more than them.
Latest kz2 footage is already miles beyond it.
Do you really know the meaning of a cpu as fast as a gpu?
If you think Cell's peak performance is matchable by a core2duo or a quad core you definitely don't.
If you dont want to believe me, suit yourself.At the end of this generation we will see games which uses cell processor to its theoretical peak and they will be proof enough.
Just look at the rsx only games like, motorstorm, heavenly sword, ratchet and clank and compare them to mgs4, mgs4 isn't more than them.
Latest kz2 footage is already miles beyond it.
Do you really know the meaning of a cpu as fast as a gpu?
If you think Cell's peak performance is matchable by a core2duo or a quad core you definitely don't.
If you dont want to believe me, suit yourself.At the end of this generation we will see games which uses cell processor to its theoretical peak and they will be proof enough.
???
Cell helps the RSX out by doing graphics related task. you can find info here and in dev interviews/documents released. For all those games.
Pure opinion, doing analysis of both showcases shows the titles being quite even regarding "weight" (2005 trailer of MGS4). Like weighting in KZ2's one quarter resolution effects vs etc etc....
What GPU a Geforce1, 2, 3, 4? That comment leaves a huge black hole. Also I want my GPU to handle the graphics and the CPU non graphics related tasks. For PS3 the Cell needs to pick up the RSX's slack to be competitive.
Not in graphics rendering since Cell is more like a hybrid CPU/GPU. But you said animations, AI and physics then yes. Peak is not important either unless it can be sustained in average...
A HD4870's peak perfomance is 1200gflops, a 7800GTX has around 200-250gflops (shader wise).
Since when is your speculations and thoughts equal to facts?
There are already games that takes great use of Cell, it is ignorant to think devs havent grasped how to program for Cell even after all these years and several gen. of PS3 games. If you are going to hang on "see games which uses cell processor to its theoretical peak" then it will never happen, period.
You seem to think Cell is a holy grail but the chain aint stronger than it weakest link. And Cell cant devote all its processing time for graphics rendering together with RSX unless you want 0 gameplay. AI, physics, animations etc aint for free.
Some people already used cell to its peak performance in some applications.
Cell also is not a hybrid gpu/cpu, it is just a cpu, it can help graphics because it is general purpose and very fast, pc cpus cant help graphics because they are so slow at such tasks.
What do you mean when you say "you seem to think cell is a holy grail"?I don't really care ,I just pointed out what I know to be true.
This is going off topic and I am sure such discussions are not wanted here and already discussed a thousand times.
I am not going to discuss this further.
By the way, where can I find the analysis killzone 2?
Cell also is not a hybrid gpu/cpu, it is just a cpu, it can help graphics because it is general purpose and very fast, pc cpus cant help graphics because they are so slow at such tasks.
What do you mean when you say "you seem to think cell is a holy grail"?I don't really care ,I just pointed out what I know to be true.
This is going off topic and I am sure such discussions are not wanted here and already discussed a thousand times.
I am not going to discuss this further.
By the way, where can I find the analysis killzone 2?
Read documents released by devs, take a good look at buffer grabs or similar.
MGS4 looks better than those games while having the cutscenes running in realtime with arguably the best looking character models in gaming and with zero pop ups or screen tearing.
And it's funny how some of you bring up Uncharted as having better textures than MGS4, but conveniently chose to ignore the absolutelly horrible pop ups and screen tearing the game is plagued with, while MGS4 is a completely smooth ride from start to finish. Imagine having pop ups, pauses and tearing with every camera change in MGS4's cutscenes or in gameplay. It would completely destroy the game. The developers really did an outstanding job eliminating those issues in MGS4 and i think the installing has a lot to do with it.
wait. Whats 25fps? The tech demo? they said something about a "timer" thats why the framerate dropped (whatever that means). Other than that the demo run at 60fps without human intervention
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