New PGR3 update..

[mckmas8808]

but dev's must have the option of not allowing gameplay without one.

otherwise how would huxley, spore, or oblivion work?

i really think MS made a dumb move by hyping the HD to b removable...who wants to remove their HD anyways? if you wanted to be portablethat's what memory dards were for...i dunno what they're thinking, kinda nueters the in-game advantages of having a HD.

Wow I never realized that. I guess thats why MS told all devs not to expect the HDD to be there. Ok I'm starting to understand now.

I base part of this guess on the fact that cutting edge/expensive PC games (HL2, Doom 3, etc) have been using HD resolutions for a long period of time, use a lot of textures, and had large development budgets, ended up with much less than 8.5GB of space. Even a "AAA" title like EA's BF2 shipped on 3 CDs.

I didn't think you could compare the structure of a PC game to a console game. Not a good comparision.

Very few developers could afford to walk around a city, photographing thousands upon thousands of street fronts, create geometry for the cityscape, clean them up the textures and dice/crop them to fit the geometry, then add lighting/shadowing, bump mapping, etc...

Basically 1st party flashship titles and AAA 3rd party titles that are guaranteed to sell millions of copies.

Well thats what you need to lead in this console war. Great 1st party flagship titles and AAA 3rd party titles. I see your point but it really doesn't mean anything.

Yep. PGR3 looks like a next gen title while a lot of other titles look like tweeners.

Well the problem is we don't know what the others have now. Compare what Bizarre showed at E3 to what they have now and you can see there's a clear difference. The others have probably updated the look of their games too.

 

[scooby_dooby]

i dunno what they're thinking, kinda nueters the in-game advantages of having a HD.

It gives them the option of selling a HDD-less SKU eventually (there's lots of people that don't care or even want one, but would like a cheaper price), and of course offer HDD upgrades to people that want them.

I don't think they'll ever sell a HD-less SKU, what better way to ruin developer support for HD's, thus wasting the entire initial investment of including the HDD in the first place. Not to mention BC would be out the window, for whatever that matters.

Upgradeable you're right for sure. Also for repairs as HD was one of the main causes of xb1 failure.

i would just rather had it external but still secured with torx bits or something, that way it's easily upgraded and repaired, but you won't have people taking it off, therefore Dev's can count on it being there.

I don't see the great "usefulness" to having it portable, too many drawbacks(i.e. game caching, developer support)...when the user could just buy a MC and take their saves around.

 

[Tap In]

I still expect games to use the HDD.

iirc, Full Auto dev said at E3 that the HDD was being used for the "rewind time" portion of the game and many of the games will create seamless large worlds (Tony Hawk's new game, possibly Oblivion etc) and worlds where dead bodies are left in place after a battle and destructive environments stay destroyed using the HDD.

I would expect the HDD to be there 98% of the time though. Why would anyone remove it unless they are taking it somewhere or replacing it?


The reason for the portability is just that, to be used as a giant memory card to take to other people's homes and have access to all of your music, downloads and game saves and LIVE account.


you can basically take your live account to someone's house without LIVE gameplay access and play with them as your guest over LIVE on their X360.


Not that I'd EVER do that.

 

[seismologist]

I base part of this guess on the fact that cutting edge/expensive PC games (HL2, Doom 3, etc) have been using HD resolutions for a long period of time, use a lot of textures, and had large development budgets, ended up with much less than 8.5GB of space. Even a "AAA" title like EA's BF2 shipped on 3 CDs.

That's kind of like at the beginning of This gen where most PC titles shipped on a single CD. So technically these are "Doom 3/HL2" should be considered last gen games.

Midway through the X360/PS3 lifespan I'd hope we'll see games with enormous amounts of textures. Especially since the trend seems to be moving to more games with huge wide open environments a-la GTA.

 

[_leech_]

iirc, Full Auto dev said at E3 that the HDD was being used for the "rewind time" portion of the game and many of the games will create seamless large worlds (Tony Hawk's new game, possibly Oblivion etc) and worlds where dead bodies are left in place after a battle and destructive environments stay destroyed using the HDD.

That sounds contradictory, Microsoft said the X360 would remain fully-functional without the hard drive. Cutting down software features because a user left their drive at a friends house doesn't sound so fully-functional to me

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How much space is needed on HDD for most recordable changes, like damage and bodies? Presumably very little, in which case modern flash solutions might suffice?

Anyone know what part of Oblivion can't be got to work without an HDD?

 

[AlNom]

That sounds contradictory, Microsoft said the X360 would remain fully-functional without the hard drive. Cutting down software features because a user left their drive at a friends house doesn't sound so fully-functional to me

I guess it would be fully functional in the sense that you won't get a BSOD without the HDD. It would just be akin to not having a memory card -> no option to save the replay, but you can still play the game.

 

[Tap In]

That sounds contradictory, Microsoft said the X360 would remain fully-functional without the hard drive. Cutting down software features because a user left their drive at a friends house doesn't sound so fully-functional to me

I'm thinking that (as someone pointed out here before) there would be an "either or" instruction for the game.

If game starts w/HDD, act as A, if HDD is not present act as B so the game still runs.

similar to how a PS2/3 game would probably be built to use the optional HDD but with the added advantage of (let's say 98% probability) having a HDD present when designing the game.

 

[pc999]

so are we looking a before and after compression?

The first one looks much better.

:?

its real life top . ingame bottom

There is a real one and a ingame ss, now I am impressed.

 

[blakjedi]

If you look at the difference in the shadowing in the top of the windows of the photo versus the in-game, the shadows arent quite right - not enough depth or shadow... :? Is there not enough contrast in the HDR? Might this be a consequence of FP10? (if HDR is being used it may not be at all)

 

[Confidence-Man]

That sounds contradictory, Microsoft said the X360 would remain fully-functional without the hard drive. Cutting down software features because a user left their drive at a friends house doesn't sound so fully-functional to me

I doubt that would stop developers from using it. Most people will probably never even try to take it off. Why worry about the one in a hundred thousand who's going to remove it and leave it somewhere?

Besides, won't compatible Xbox games require the HDD to run?

 

[Iron Tiger]

I guess this puts to rest the debate on whether or not the lighting/shadows were "baked on", because clearly they are. The guy says there's still bump maps and specular maps, but other than the (premade and repeated) reflections in the windows, I don't see anything in the screenshot that's not present in the diffuse texture.

On the subject of the removable hard drive, did MS ever explain how you're going to transfer your data from the old one to the new one when you upgrade?

 

[c0_re]

The devs of Morrowind said without the hard drive the game wouldn't be possible, Obvlion wouldn't even come close to running of of the DVD or active in system memory the persistence of the world has to rest somewhere and that alone will use more than 512 MB of RAM.

 

[mistan]

Acert93 wrote:
I base part of this guess on the fact that cutting edge/expensive PC games (HL2, Doom 3, etc) have been using HD resolutions for a long period of time, use a lot of textures, and had large development budgets, ended up with much less than 8.5GB of space. Even a "AAA" title like EA's BF2 shipped on 3 CDs.

Ummm, BF2 also used anywhere from 600MB-1.2GB of RAM & Virtual Memory. And There's ALOT of swapping if you have the textures and/or terrain set to high. I had a lot of swapping going on with 768 Megs of RAM.

 

[Iron Tiger]

so are we looking a before and after compression?

The first one looks much better.

:?

its real life top . ingame bottom

There is a real one and a ingame ss, now I am impressed.

The top one isn't "real" per se. It's a touched up photo that likely has a lot of the real world lighting cues removed and replaced by the artists (or a rendering engine) with lighting and shadows that will fit with the setting of the game world. Some object also appear to have been replaced, duplicated or removed for better composition (and tiling) in the game world, and to work with the realtime specular effects, bump maps, and geometry.

 

[scooby_dooby]

If you look at the difference in the shadowing in the top of the windows of the photo versus the in-game, the shadows arent quite right - not enough depth or shadow... :? Is there not enough contrast in the HDR? Might this be a consequence of FP10? (if HDR is being used it may not be at all)

Neither of them is a real photo, top 1 is the texture used, with no lighting effects etc the 2nd one is the what building looks like with the in-game engine

As for HD, it seems already to be a trend of games not supporting ps3 because of lack of HD, huxley, spore and oblivion all come to mind as PC ports that seem at this point destined for x360 only.

I think we'll see some game that require the HD before playing, I mean how can they do an A or B scenario in a game like Oblivion? I just don't see how that would work, they would have to make less of a game to cope with not having a HD available for cache.

And we know the 360 will already have some sort of built-in flash memory, as the dashboard and OS are no longer stored on the HD like they were previously. So how much room on the flash memory will be available for other features?

I have no problem with a game saying "Sorry, please insert your HD before playing" it's an integral part of the machine, if a game can play without it go for it, if not, then it should just require it.

 

[Tap In]

....
I have no problem with a game saying "Sorry, please insert your HD before playing" it's an integral part of the machine, if a game can play without it go for it, if not, then it should just require it.

I agree

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think a lot of what is done on an HDD can be done with flash if you knew for sure there was say 512 mbs available. It's the uncertain of any form of streaming media that eliminates its potential I think.

 

[Johnny_Physics]

Neither of them is a real photo, top 1 is the texture used, with no lighting effects etc the 2nd one is the what building looks like with the in-game engine

The top one is a photo. It's just edited.

 

[scooby_dooby]

"What follows is an actual unlit, pre-effects PGR3 game texture, which shows the front of a building in New York City. As always, this was pretty much a random texture I selected from the archive."

They say it's a texture, I guess it's just a texture made from a photo?