Microsoft leaks details on Xbox Next

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God, i must have missed the PC 9800XT Athlon 64bit version of Jak2....

anyway less detailed than anything released this generation
does quality detailed texturing and per-pixel graphiX count?

especially since it's running on the "oldest and underpowered" console of the 3...
AND how visually underpowering it IS, shows, for those, NOT associated with the dark blue box, that have given it a run.
 
chapban. said:
God, i must have missed the PC 9800XT Athlon 64bit version of Jak2....

does quality detailed texturing and per-pixel graphiX count?


"Detailed" in terms of geometry. Obviously more memory and texture compression will always help the Xbox have more detailed textures. If one's perception of "good graphics" is just "textures" then it's fine by me.

Detail means more that textures.
 
"detailed" as "on the whole". Geometry may strengthen Jak2 outlook but the other factors have the game looking real "flat" and "monotonous". Ain amongst tEh WoW this gen ImhO. At least NOT the WoW as some may make out of it.

HAS to be said, it is REAL good programming, but just overall visually lacking in the end, due to underpowering hardware. :)
 
Just out of curiosity, Chap, and this will be my last reply in this thread with regards to this issue, have you played and finished Jak2? Or are you talking out of screenshots on the net?
 
OF coz i play! Couldnt bother to play more or complete it. Rest assure i try to get my grubby hands on those BIG on the GraphiX(tm) games. :LOL:

AND if i were to based on those "9800XT-64bit" screenshots, i be less speaking up against the graphiX. :LOL:
 
chapban. said:
OF coz i play! Couldnt bother to play more or complete it. Rest assure i try to get my grubby hands on those BIG on the GraphiX(tm) games. :LOL:

AND if i were to based on those "9800XT-64bit" screenshots, i be less speaking up against the graphiX. :LOL:


Then maybe you should have tried to play it a bit more, the best areas and the biggest WOW factors come a bit later in the game. Also it looks like you picked it up "for the graphiX(tm)" and as soon as you didn't see per-pixel effects you stopped playing. I fail to see why you even bother... Oh well, your loss...

See ya
 
ERP said:
Squeak said:
Dio said:
Cases such as those you mention like wood and skin is where it is absolutely at its best. Perfect compression just about every time at 4bit quality, no need for alpha, colour animation, etc.
Even better compression for those kinds of textures (if exact reproduction is not recuired, but only the overall "look" of a surface is to be captured), can be achieved by detail texturing a low-res map, an operation that does involves alphablending.
A prime example of that, is the grass in Halo.
But again, question is if xbox, like you claimed, really can take advantage of DXT1?

DXT1 works fine on NV2A, it has the same restrictions as on NV30, in so far as it's implemented to the letter of the spec.
Though the quality is seriously lower on NVIDIA < NV30 chips (including NV2A). They use 16 bit interpolation instead of interpolating at 32bit. NV2A and GF4 (IIRC) have a dither which helps but doesn't improve the quality upto the level of NV30.

A NV20 is not out of spec just running the DXT1 spec at its lowest possible quality. The improvement to visual quality of the same DXT1 texture on NV30 is significantly better than previous NVIDIA chips (AFAIK ATI have always used 32 bit interpolation).
 
Squeak said:
Even better compression for those kinds of textures (if exact reproduction is not recuired, but only the overall "look" of a surface is to be captured), can be achieved by detail texturing a low-res map, an operation that does involves alphablending.
I'm slightly confused - there's no restriction on alpha blending with DXT. If you mean alpha channel textures, they can be accomodated at 8bpt, but the detail texturing schemes I've seen don't rely on alpha channel information.

But again, question is if xbox, like you claimed, really can take advantage of DXT1?
I'm not in the habit of commenting on hardware that I haven't had a hand in and don't really know the facts on. Maybe someone else who has experience with the xbox GPU can answer any questions on this issue. (edit: I see someone did)
 
marconelly! said:
Jak 2 almost undoubtely draws more polygons
The postemortem Naughty Dog wrote in Game Developer was very interesting. It's an extremely clever seamless world engine. As a result it's possible it's drawing a few less polygons than you might think, because it's got LOD algorithms working hard behind the scenes.
 
Marc,

Could you take any screen shots tha thad less going on in them for halo? You could have bothered to find something more comparable, such as the night fighting level where you encounter many more aliens and things going on. You aslo forget that halo could be played with two players through the single player game, rendering everything twice. Not just rendering everythign in lower detail with two players, but actually rendering everything twice.

Like I said before, comparing a platformer to a a first person shooter, just shouldn't happen to begin with. As the 3D engines needed to create those worlds are completly different beasts. What's even worse is that you're comparing a game released last fall to one released moe than 2 years ago? Why don't you compare the graphics to halo 2 and see which one stands up better?

You're also acting like halo's framerate is always fluctuating, however it's actually not, it only does that when there's a hell of a lot going on. There's a lot of things that affects framerate other than the geometry, such as the physics and AI. two things done completely different between these games.

Jak2 could get away with a much more simple physics engine, while halo's engine was capable of rag doll characters and stackable objects (like Havok). Halo combined different methods for drawing the world (indoor and outdoor) seamlessly. Even the AI in the games is dramatically different and can't be compared. Jak 2 spends a lot of time on swapping out low/high res models for detail. Halo doesn't do this at all as they didn't have time to create LOD models.

Both games have poly budgets that are spent differently. Halo spends it's polys on characters as you can always get close to everything in the game. Jak2 doesn't do this until you have cutscenes (where they swap the models with high res versions). It also uses smaller polys through out the terrain, in order to keep it smooth for driving vehicles, and the simple fact the camera is so close. Jak 2 can get away with less gemetry in the terrain and spend those polys on small details. What's interesting is that a game from two years ago still has better texturing thenn a PS2 game released a few months back.
 
Qroach said:
What's interesting is that a game from two years ago still has better texturing thenn a PS2 game released a few months back.


Unless we get a PS2 with 64MB Ram and texture compression, that statement is quite stupid.

What's interesting is that a game for a console released 2 years before another is pushing loads more polygons than the new one.

A statement that is just as stupid really....

You should know better, Qroach, arent you some kind of developer or something? :rolleyes:
 
Unless we get a PS2 with 64MB Ram and texture compression, that statement is quite stupid.

Tell that to Marc. He's the one that wanted to compare both textures and geometry between those games. BTW, if you couldn't see the sarcasim in that stement after I repeatedly said the games shouldn't be compared directly then that's not my problem.

What's interesting is that a game for a console released 2 years before another is pushing loads more polygons than the new one.

:rolleyes: .


You should know better, Qroach, arent you some kind of developer or something?

As I said before, tell it to marc. I'm certainly not suprised you didn't say his comment was "stupid" when he originally said it. As usual taking sides... Come on, you know better London boy. :rolleyes:
 
Qroach said:
Unless we get a PS2 with 64MB Ram and texture compression, that statement is quite stupid.

Tell that to Marc. He's the one that wanted to compare both textures and geometry between those games. BTW, if you couldn't see the sarcasim in that stement after I repeatedly said the games shouldn't be compared directly then that's not my problem.

What's interesting is that a game for a console released 2 years before another is pushing loads more polygons than the new one.

:rolleyes: .


You should know better, Qroach, arent you some kind of developer or something?

As I said before, tell it to marc. I'm certainly not suprised you didn't say his comment was "stupid" when he originally said it. As usual taking sides... Come on, you know better London boy. :rolleyes:


I did get your "sarcasm", you didnt get mine....
In fact I said:

What's interesting is that a game for a console released 2 years before another is pushing loads more polygons than the new one.
A statement that is just as stupid really....

Meaning "saying the thing in italics is just as stupid"
But hey... Oh, that also explains the fact that i'm in no way taking sides.
 
Managing data from the hard drive is so much faster than the DVD drive that there isn't room for debate on whether it can be used to significantly enhance data streaming. You could probably move through the Jak world at several times the current engine's max speed if the game took advantage of a hard drive.

Arguing the point is like claiming that 64 MB of RAM doesn't improve performance potential because the PS2 gets by just fine with 32. Unless it can be argued that the hard drive doesn't improve data streaming potential, there's really nothing to say. No one claimed that streaming on a more limited scale wasn't possible on PS2 or other HDD-less systems.

There's also something to be said for being able to jump right back into worlds as complex as Halo's maps after having saved and quit, with every change still intact, without a loading screen.
 
cthellis42 said:
An interesting article on the backwards compatibility situation.

Jen-Hsun Huang weighing in: Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, says his guess is that the next Xbox won't be compatible with the old one. "It's virtually impossible on many levels," he adds. "On an intellectual-property level. On practical levels, too."

When asked to explain (might this be sour grapes talking?), Huang says for cost reasons, Microsoft isn't likely to be willing to put additional chips in the box to ensure hardware compatibility. Moreover, he suggests that current Xbox games make use of Nvidia's proprietary graphics shaders and that Microsoft might have to license them to use them again.


Dave Orton disagrees: By contrast, Dave Orton, president of ATI, says, "It's not outside the realm of possibility to make a compatible Xbox." He didn't discuss specific products his company is making for Microsoft, but he says that if you just consider the timing (about five years) between the consoles, then Moore's Law dictates that the new machine will be eight times as fast as the old one. With such an increase in raw processing speed, Xbox Next should have plenty of horsepower to emulate the old games via software. That is, the new hardware will be fast enough to execute the old games even if they have to run through software translation.

And of course there's the Connectix angle we've talked about before: On the processor side, Microsoft might have to employ its Connectix software to get the Intel code to run on the IBM PowerPC. That problem raises the prospect of additional costs and engineering efforts. "It's not a trivial amount of work," says Dean McCarron, an analyst at PC chip market researcher Mercury Research in Scottsdale, AZ. "It will be a massive task of integrating different technologies."

More to the article than that, so link over. ^_^
Interesting... Last year they seemed to think it was entirely possible...
 
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