New PGR3 update..

[Bobbler]

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.

This just reminded me of something...

On the Xbox/PS2 era the DVD drives were 2x (right?) and were able to give a sustained 3MB/s or so at best. The HDD in the Xbox could probably reliably give 20-25MB/s at 5400rpm.

The Xbox2/PS3 era have 12x+ DVD drives or so which is around 17MB/s at best. The HDD the Xbox2 has is probably 20MB/s (maybe 25mb/s if its a pricier 2.5inch drive). The actual improvement an HDD will make in load times and all that jazz is far lower this next generation compared to disc loading than this current generation. With smart placement of information on the DVD/BD then there really shouldn't be much of a difference. Of course seek times are still an issue, but that gets reduced somewhat by planning on the placement of information on the disc, I think.

It seems the inclusion of an HDD is more about DL'ing stuff than anything else. If you can do it with an HDD, with some creative design, you could do it with the DVD/BR drives going into the next gen consoles.

Sorry for the slight derail...

 

[carpediem]

"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?

Ok, so you just confirmed that is actually IS a texture, like they already said.

 

[Johnny_Physics]

"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?

Don't argue semantics with me please. What you're saying is equal to arguing that a picture from a digital camera is not what people commonly refer to as a photo, instead it's a bitmap.

The point is, they took a photo and, as I cleverly said, edited it.
They edited it so that it works as a base texture, or a colormap or whatever. They made it tile, obviously, perhaps it was given a twirl through a high-pass filter or some other processes...
But, in the end they appear to be doing more or less the same thing that they did with Project Gotham Racing 2.

 

[Iron Tiger]

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.

This just reminded me of something...

On the Xbox/PS2 era the DVD drives were 2x (right?) and were able to give a sustained 3MB/s or so at best. The HDD in the Xbox could probably reliably give 20-25MB/s at 5400rpm.

The Xbox2/PS3 era have 12x+ DVD drives or so which is around 17MB/s at best. The HDD the Xbox2 has is probably 20MB/s (maybe 25mb/s if its a pricier 2.5inch drive). The actual improvement an HDD will make in load times and all that jazz is far lower this next generation compared to disc loading than this current generation. With smart placement of information on the DVD/BD then there really shouldn't be much of a difference. Of course seek times are still an issue, but that gets reduced somewhat by planning on the placement of information on the disc, I think.

It seems the inclusion of an HDD is more about DL'ing stuff than anything else. If you can do it with an HDD, with some creative design, you could do it with the DVD/BR drives going into the next gen consoles.

Sorry for the slight derail...

The higher density of a BR disc means that more data can be read per revolution than from a DVD. That said, I don't know what the rotation speed of the PS3's BR drive will be, relative to the X360's DVD drive, but I think it can be assumed that the PS3 will have faster seeks and transfers than the X360.

 

[3roxor]

It looks very good but nothing new nor surprising compared to what they showed us last time. I hope they show something else next time..like the cars, the track or those watching people or something.

 

[blakjedi]

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.

This just reminded me of something...

On the Xbox/PS2 era the DVD drives were 2x (right?) and were able to give a sustained 3MB/s or so at best. The HDD in the Xbox could probably reliably give 20-25MB/s at 5400rpm.

The Xbox2/PS3 era have 12x+ DVD drives or so which is around 17MB/s at best. The HDD the Xbox2 has is probably 20MB/s (maybe 25mb/s if its a pricier 2.5inch drive). The actual improvement an HDD will make in load times and all that jazz is far lower this next generation compared to disc loading than this current generation. With smart placement of information on the DVD/BD then there really shouldn't be much of a difference. Of course seek times are still an issue, but that gets reduced somewhat by planning on the placement of information on the disc, I think.

It seems the inclusion of an HDD is more about DL'ing stuff than anything else. If you can do it with an HDD, with some creative design, you could do it with the DVD/BR drives going into the next gen consoles.

Sorry for the slight derail...

The higher density of a BR disc means that more data can be read per revolution than from a DVD. That said, I don't know what the rotation speed of the PS3's BR drive will be, relative to the X360's DVD drive, but I think it can be assumed that the PS3 will have faster seeks and transfers than the X360.

if you dont know the rotation speed or the seek transfer rate how can you say that?

 

[Tap In]

It looks very good but nothing new nor surprising compared to what they showed us last time. I hope they show something else next time..like the cars, the track or those watching people or something.

I agree, but in time ....all will be revealed.



I think we will be pleasantly surprised.

The Samsung hi-def kiosks (with demos probably in end of October) will be night and day to the tid-bits of crappy screens we've seen so far.

 

[AlNom]

But, in the end they appear to be doing more or less the same thing that they did with Project Gotham Racing 2.

Something wrong with photo-sourcing?

 

[scooby_dooby]

The higher density of a BR disc means that more data can be read per revolution than from a DVD. That said, I don't know what the rotation speed of the PS3's BR drive will be, relative to the X360's DVD drive, but I think it can be assumed that the PS3 will have faster seeks and transfers than the X360.

why would that be assumed? That would require a 4x blu-ray drive which I think is beyond an reasonable expectation.

Most likely the DVD transfer speeds will be faster tha Blu_Ray, twice as fast if it's a 1x BR drive. I'm not sure about seek times, but I've heard seek times wil also be lower on the initial BR drives.

 

[mckmas8808]

That would require a 4x blu-ray drive which I think is beyond an reasonable expectation

Well Sony has 6X drives working in the labs so....

Who knows maybe Sony can put a 4X drive in the PS3. To me I wouldn't see why they wouldn't put at least a 4X drive in the console. Putting in a 2X or even worst a 1X drive could defeat one big advantage in having the Blu-ray drive.

 

[Johnny_Physics]

But, in the end they appear to be doing more or less the same thing that they did with Project Gotham Racing 2.

Something wrong with photo-sourcing?

Not at all, I appreciated it in PGR2 and it looks even better in PGR3, despite the flaws that I sooo want to nitpick at. Building upon something that gives great results is not a stupid or bad thing to do.
Using photos as a base or a source can give great results. Just look at a game like Max Payne.

So I wasn't judging the technique in itself, I just pointed out an error in Scooby's post where he corrected someone that refered to the image as a photo.

 

[c0_re]

With smart placement of information on the DVD/BD then there really shouldn't be much of a difference.

yes but thats read only data, you can read and write to a HD and it's still much faster. For games like oblivion you need that data to be dynamic not static information.

 

[randycat99]

...which is why you would store dynamic content in RAM, which would be far faster than any HD. At the processing speeds of the kind of hardware to appear in these consoles, hitting a HD for anything dynamic will be pretty much game-over. Refer to any Windows machine relying on cached HD data, and you realize it's not a situation you want to be where speed is concerned.

 

[AlNom]

Not at all, I appreciated it in PGR2 and it looks even better in PGR3, despite the flaws that I sooo want to nitpick at. Building upon something that gives great results is not a stupid or bad thing to do.
Using photos as a base or a source can give great results. Just look at a game like Max Payne.

So I wasn't judging the technique in itself, I just pointed out an error in Scooby's post where he corrected someone that refered to the image as a photo.

You just had to say you weren't crazy. I totally agree. Plus I think it's insane to make textures from scratch for a real-world city.

I was thinking of Max Payne too.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

You don't need a 4x BR drive to match a 12x DVD drive.

Source: Blu-Ray FAQ

12x DVD = 133.2Mbps (16.65MB/s)
1x BRD-ROM = 54Mbps (6.75MB/s)

You need a 2.5x drive, but a 2x would suffice. Don't expect a 4x drive IMO.

On topic, those textures are nice. PEACE.

 

[Fafalada]

Of course seek times are still an issue, but that gets reduced somewhat by planning on the placement of information on the disc, I think.

It can be reduced "a lot" but reality is that not everyone bothers. Or better put - it's really really easy to run your disc reading speed into ground with poor seek-management - I'm literally talking about orders of magnitude differences.
This generation included - biggest HDD speedups come from better seek times, not read bandwith, the games with good seek management are the ones that see the least speedup from HDDs.

I figure that with more memory larger continous reads will be more common, so the seeks should become less of an issue (especially with BRD), but that's still just speculation at this point.

 

[PC-Engine]

Well Sony has 6X drives working in the labs so....

Yeah they have 8L BRDs in those Area51 labs too so....

Oh btw PGR3 again continues to impress. 8)

 

[rabidrabbit]

The PGR3 pre-release PR screens that show various building faces continue to impress.
But I won't be really impressed until I at least see screens that have more than just one building face, even if it's done with the game engine. A some tens more of those buildings faces plus a few cars plus gameplay plus physics... If the building faces are meant to show what the game rendering engine is capable of with one building face, I expect the final quality in-game to drop quite considerably.

It's just that I don't see the point in releasing these high resolution one buiding face screens for a racing game, as the previous style (much much lower quality) screens that showed actual racing were much more descriptive of what the game was at the state of development :?

Did they re-write the rendering engine completely after E3, or what is the explanation for the dramatic increase in quality of the claimed building faces in game.

 

[Sean*O]

which is why you would store dynamic content in RAM, which would be far faster than any HD.

How would that work when the RAM is constantly being flushed?

Re: PGR 3

Someone(s) has already pointed out that there is a faint reflection of a minivan in the windows of the firehouse. I bet that gets a quick photoshop fix before the final release.. where it may not have before it was released to view on the internet.

Good way to QC your content.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

which is why you would store dynamic content in RAM, which would be far faster than any HD.

How would that work when the RAM is constantly being flushed?

There's been dynamic content in games for years. It's a case of not flushing that area of RAM. The difference in a vast RPG or destructible scenery is how much data needs to be set aside. This could be alot. But in such cases, a 20 GB drive full of custom soundtracks and DL'd content etc. could quickly get filled up with a few games, which'll require a degree of wiping game saves? That level of faff doesn't suit a console - I just want to play games, without needing to uninstall other games to make enough room. I expect devs will aim to keep HDD content at a minimum, in the order of megabytes, which may well not be enough for recording large changes of data.

So i don't know how much recording of destroyed scenery we'll have, and netiher do I see where a MemStick couldn't offer the same functionality (though with the same problem of needing available space, doh!)