New Mark Rein interview

[pipo]

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=66314

Video: http://www.eurogamer.net/tv_video.php?playlist_id=721&s=l

"Developers were just getting final PS3 hardware [around E3], which is a long time before ship," Rein told Eurogamer TV in an exclusive interview now showing. "Developers did not have finished Xbox 360 hardware last year at E3. So Sony's actually maybe in a better place vis-a-vis Microsoft in relation to launch."

I was thinking about this the other day. I expect the PS3 launch titles to be a lot more advanced than the 360 launch titles were because of this and Sony's 'better' Alpha and Beta kits.

On top of that the 360 had a couple of Xbox ports...

"[The E3 demo of GoW] was using our single-threaded renderer. We have our new Gemini multi-threaded renderer working in the engine right now," Rein explained. "The final game's built on it, it gives us better frame rates and more fluidity - UT 2007 will also benefit from it. It only gets better from here. So if you were impressed with Gears of War at E3, the finished game's going to be much better, it's going to be spectacular."

 

[Platon]

I was thinking about this the other day. I expect the PS3 'launch' titles to be a lot more (advanced) than the 360 titles were because of this.

I have been saying this forever, not only does Sony given developers dev kits before MS did, but even at E3 last year, before the xbox360 was launced, even then Sony had dev kits that better represented the final hardware, and with the xenon having such an unconventional design didn't make things better...

 

[elementOfpower]

Forgive my ignorance, because I'm sort of new at all of this (beginning programmer), but is there anyone that can clarify what is meant by this quote?

"[The E3 demo of GoW] was using our single-threaded renderer. We have our new Gemini multi-threaded renderer working in the engine right now," Rein explained.

Does he mean CPU multithreading or GPU? Do GPUs even have that capability?

"The final game's built on it, it gives us better frame rates and more fluidity

This is great news, because I did notice some framerate problems and screen-tearing in the E3 demo.

 

[chris1515]

Forgive my ignorance, because I'm sort of new at all of this (beginning programmer), but is there anyone that can clarify what is meant by this quote?



Does he mean CPU multithreading or GPU? Do GPUs even have that capability?



This is great news, because I did notice some framerate problems and screen-tearing in the E3 demo.

He means CPU multithreading.

 

[Jesus2006]

Does he mean CPU multithreading or GPU? Do GPUs even have that capability?

CPU wise.

This is great news, because I did notice some framerate problems and screen-tearing in the E3 demo.

Hm, i might be over sceptical, but didn't they say some time ago that they had already switched to this multi threaded renderer (long before E3)? Seems a little strange to that this should have been done just now, at the end of development...

 

[elementOfpower]

Thanks. That's what I thought but I just wanted to make sure.

I do hope that he's right and that the final game will have a better framerate/less tearing.

 

[Type_Raver]

Any mention on the Wii? The article doesnt say anything...

 

[Qroach]

I was thinking about this the other day. I expect the PS3 launch titles to be a lot more advanced than the 360 launch titles were because of this and Sony's 'better' Alpha and Beta kits.

On top of that the 360 had a couple of Xbox ports...

Well two things, having stable or final hardware is one thing but also having a stable development environment seriously helps. I can't tell you what state sony's tools are in for PS3, but I know during PS2 launch many of the tools were pretty broken (based on my friends complaints about those tools or lack thereof). I'm not expecting launch titles to be that much more advanced if any. Launch titles are always rushed, no matter what anyone tells you. It will be the titles that ship after launch that will show off much more (like Hevenly sword.)

Your still gonna get some ports on PS3. It just depends from what platform.

 

[Qroach]

CPU wise.
Hm, i might be over sceptical, but didn't they say some time ago that they had already switched to this multi threaded renderer (long before E3)? Seems a little strange to that this should have been done just now, at the end of development...

I don't think he said that. I thought he said before E3 they were working on it, but not that it was implemented. Multi threaded code is a lot of work, and consideirng how new these consoles are, I doubt they could have done this faster or earlier.

Since when has optimizing towards the end of development been a problem? Also I'm sure the engine team was working on this at the same time as regular development and it was a matter of dropping in a new renderer module.

 

[Titanio]

Any mention on the Wii? The article doesnt say anything...

On the video he references his previous comments about it being "gimmicky", laughing off the furor that created, saying he thought some games would be gimmicky, but that it was a given Nintendo et al will make amazing games for it. He thought the latter was was so obvious it went without saying.

 

[Arwin]

On the video he references his previous comments about it being "gimmicky", laughing off the furor that created, saying he thought some games would be gimmicky, but that it was a given Nintendo et al will make amazing games for it. He thought the latter was was so obvious it went without saying.

Yes, he said that for Nintendo to make great games for its own platform was as much a given as expecting an appartment you buy not to have oxygen as an extra.

 

[pc999]

On the video he references his previous comments about it being "gimmicky", laughing off the furor that created, saying he thought some games would be gimmicky, but that it was a given Nintendo et al will make amazing games for it. He thought the latter was was so obvious it went without saying.

Only that? Too bad , ClyffB said during E3 that their are on talks with Nintendo, I would like news on that.

 

[ChryZ]

They are working on GoW for how long ... 12-18 month? And they are now switching to multithreading, after a couple of public demos? Is this normal or is their x86 legacy haunting them?

 

[Tap In]

haha.... E3 GoW was on a single thread as speculated all along. :smile:

cool, the multi-threading sounds like it will smooth out those few shortcomings that people pointed out (ie Framerate, smoothness).


This game may be a showcase of Next Gen consoles like no other yet.


oh and this also seems to support the notion that 360 launch titles were rushed compared to PS3 launch titles.

 

[Acert93]

oh and this also seems to support the notion that 360 launch titles were rushed compared to PS3 launch titles.

Wasn't that a given though? The first one out always gets a ton of portware and up-qualitied last gen games.

And with those who argue the PS3 devkit situation is better, same tune I have been singing for a year Yeah, there may be some tool deficencies compared to MS, but they had comparable performance and featureset envelopes in the Alpha kits in Spring of 2005 and we able to get Beta kits out before E3 2006. MS Alpha kits were nothing like the final hardware and the Beta kits arrived in the Summer of 2005 about 3 months before software went gold for launch. Not to mention some of the basic featureset API issues MS did not get ironed out until late Spring, so even the tools point is not a universal win

Between next-gen being more "in swing" now than 12 months ago, and having roughly comparable hardware for 18 months out from launch, I hope and expect PS3 launch software not only to be miles ahead of MS launch software, but to be at least rough parity with the best MS has this fall and to avoid most of the hurdles of first man out/early launch. Indeed the PS3 has been officially delayed 6 months as it is

 

[Titanio]

haha.... E3 GoW was on a single thread as speculated all along. :smile:

Not necessarily. The renderer was not multi-threaded, doesn't speak for what else might have been running on seperate threads.

They are working on GoW for how long ... 12-18 month? And they are now switching to multithreading, after a couple of public demos? Is this normal or is their x86 legacy haunting them?

Well, again, he's referring specifically to the renderer. It sounds chiefly like an optimisation to me, and optimisations are not at all unusual later in a game's development. UE3 is on a seperate development track, also..as it gets updated, games in development using it can opt to upgrade to the latest also to benefit from these improvements.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Hm, i might be over sceptical, but didn't they say some time ago that they had already switched to this multi threaded renderer (long before E3)? Seems a little strange to that this should have been done just now, at the end of development...

They probably switched over to using it in main development before E3 but he said that it probably was best to not use it for the E3 demo. Everything had to work with no surprise glitches. That last thing Microsoft would have need is a blue screen of death because the render did some funky stuff with the code.(Bill Gates being there I expected something to go wrong like at CES but I guess he has better luck with games.) They would have handed E3 over to Sony. In short, they were playing it safe.

 

[Inane_Dork]

And with those who argue the PS3 devkit situation is better, same tune I have been singing for a year Yeah, there may be some tool deficencies compared to MS, but they had comparable performance and featureset envelopes in the Alpha kits in Spring of 2005 and we able to get Beta kits out before E3 2006. MS Alpha kits were nothing like the final hardware and the Beta kits arrived in the Summer of 2005 about 3 months before software went gold for launch. Not to mention some of the basic featureset API issues MS did not get ironed out until late Spring, so even the tools point is not a universal win

The question is if that is a good thing or not. While the answer is apparently obvious, the consequence is that all (or almost all) the parts are producable at full settings. That means they were not necessarily cutting edge at E3 and they're quite likely not cutting-edge at launch.

The extreme here would be the Wii's dev kit situation. Sure, they had great dev kits way in advance. But what made that possible was not necessarily a good thing.

 

[Platon]

Yeah, there may be some tool deficencies compared to MS, but they had comparable performance and featureset envelopes in the Alpha kits in Spring of 2005 and we able to get Beta kits out before E3 2006. MS Alpha kits were nothing like the final hardware and the Beta kits arrived in the Summer of 2005 about 3 months before software went gold for launch.

Exactly

Between next-gen being more "in swing" now than 12 months ago, and having roughly comparable hardware for 18 months out from launch, I hope and expect PS3 launch software not only to be miles ahead of MS launch software, but to be at least rough parity with the best MS has this fall and to avoid most of the hurdles of first man out/early launch.

Indeed, but it seems no matter what, launch games always are made in haste ...

 

[Tap In]

Not necessarily. The renderer was not multi-threaded, doesn't speak for what else might have been running on seperate threads.

I guess when they said single thread I always assumed they were referring to the engine but you make a good point that other things may have been on other threads as I had assumed (sound etc).

either way it's most likely one hell of an optimization and a better look into what the box is capable of, to a degree.