PhyreEngine - New Hotness Sponsored by Sony? (moved)

[ChryZ]

There is an interesting item on the GDC agenda:

https://www.cmpevents.com/GD08/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=6653

PhyreEngine - The New Hotness Sponsored by Sony

Speaker: Richard Forster (Senior Engineer, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe)
Date/Time: Thursday (February 21, 2008) 4:00pm — 5:00pm
Location (room): Room 2010, West Hall
Track: Programming
Experience Level: All

Session Description
Already used in several top selling multi-platform titles, PhyreEngine provides tools and technologies aimed at simplifying development on multi-core architectures whilst offering state of the art performance - and it's free. We will show how PhyreEngine components can enhance your games, and unveil some of our latest additions.

I never heard of the "PhyreEngine", but from the session description it seems to be out there.

Unfortunately I was only able to find this wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ps3_games

Recently, Sony announced a new tool set that will be free to all developers known as "PhyreEngine" that will offer highly optimized lightweight libraries for CELL SPUs. These libraries will provide code for animation, compression (expected to greatly improve loading times), and many more features. The package will also provide 'GCM Replay', a powerful RSX profiling tool to allow developers to gain the most out of the PlayStation 3's graphics chip.

So, it's

-multi-platform?
-multi-core architecture?
-free?

WTH?! Anyone got more details about this?

 

[patsu]

So do they all come under the Playstation Edge Toolkit ? PSSG, SPURS, GCM Replay, and Phyre Engine.

 

[Carl B]

Phyre seems to originate from within the same umbrella group as PSSG did, so I'm trying to look into whether it's an evolution, re-branding, separate/complementary tool set, or what. It's feature sets seem to target the same areas though.

 

[MrWibble]

So do they all come under the Playstation Edge Toolkit ? PSSG, SPURS, GCM Replay, and Phyre Engine.

Of those, only GCM Replay comes under the Edge banner AFAIK - Edge is the name for stuff done by WWS, rather than the R&D lot that do most of the rest of the SDK. It includes GCM Replay (a PC application for profiling graphics) and a few bits of SPU code.

 

[ChryZ]

So do they all come under the Playstation Edge Toolkit ? PSSG, SPURS, GCM Replay, and Phyre Engine.

It seems Phyre is related to PSSG (the engine that Codemasters used for DiRT).

Good read: http://psinsider.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=3&m_articles_articleid=722

I can't believe, that the tech is free.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I can't believe, that the tech is free.

Not really free. After buying Sony's SDKs, you'd expect some tools and libraries with it! And Sony owe it to the devs to provide as much as possible so they can use Sony's hardware, write games, and grow the market.

 

[MrWibble]

Not really free. After buying Sony's SDKs, you'd expect some tools and libraries with it! And Sony owe it to the devs to provide as much as possible so they can use Sony's hardware, write games, and grow the market.

I'm not the one that pays for anything around here, but AFAIK the devkits cost money, but the software bits and stuff are free. SDK to me = software, though I know a lot of people refer to "an SDK" meaning a devkit.

So presumably if you wanted to develop on the cheap you could sign up as a developer and not buy a lot of hardware. Maybe just a debug unit to test on?

I think you're right though - Sony should be doing more to help in this area. They need to be making more stuff available to independent developers and generally opening up their platform the way Microsoft are doing.

They've done it before, in a kind of half-measure kind of way, but it's yet to be properly seen on PS3 beyond the rather crippled Linux effort.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sony were talking about 'homebrew' before MS really did, but it's MS who are leading the pack here. How exactly could a homebrew dev write for PS3 anyway, versus XNA? Won't PS3 development be a mammoth undertaking without some high-level interface? Wasn't there talk of Java games in Home arcade boxes?

 

[Arwin]

Although you can develop stuff for at least the Cell processor relatively easily by installing Linux, and thus not even needing an additional PC, you can't easily release anything to other non-Linux installed PS3s. Things could have been very different if the RSX had been opened up in Linux, but it seems to me that they haven't had the time, haven't made a good deal with Nvidia on the matter, or, and that seems to me the most likely one, are too afraid yet of opening up the system for piracy, something which they've so far been the most successful of the three in fighting against.

It is a shame though and I hope XNA will push them to open up. I would love to toy around (and even more love others to be able to) using Cell for physics, RSX for graphics, and above all, the Sixaxis for motion detection.

 

[MrWibble]

Sony were talking about 'homebrew' before MS really did, but it's MS who are leading the pack here. How exactly could a homebrew dev write for PS3 anyway, versus XNA? Won't PS3 development be a mammoth undertaking without some high-level interface? Wasn't there talk of Java games in Home arcade boxes?

I think Sony really dropped the ball on this one. No idea what they were thinking.

Regards development though, I don't think it's that much of a struggle. If you're a developer that wants to do everything themselves at a low level (ok, I'm probably in that camp to some degree!) then it's not a trivial platform.

However if you just want to put something together that's fun, and then maybe tinker under the hood later, the high-level tools are there. I'm sure that's what PSSG was all about, though why it's not open to non-licensed developers I don't know. Perhaps they'll consider opening it up under this new banner?

 

[patsu]

Sony were talking about 'homebrew' before MS really did, but it's MS who are leading the pack here. How exactly could a homebrew dev write for PS3 anyway, versus XNA? Won't PS3 development be a mammoth undertaking without some high-level interface? Wasn't there talk of Java games in Home arcade boxes?

The Linux side is more for SPU development so far. I don't know if they are going to make it into an XNA kind of toolchain. I supposed they could but without access to RSX, it might not be useful for making games.

Phil Harrison mentioned Java games and scripts may be possible in Playstation Home (I think some interview/article mentioned that they tried Java games but failed initially). I don't know what the latest status is.

Then there is BD-J authoring. With the defeat of HD DVD, I saw some announcements about new Blu-ray authoring tools. On paper, these should be useful/extensible to Playstation Home arcade.

In any case, Microsoft certainly has a leg up Sony in "prosumer" games. All we get so far is a picture of a few In-Shirt XMBs ;-)

 

[archangelmorph]

I think Sony really dropped the ball on this one. No idea what they were thinking.

Regards development though, I don't think it's that much of a struggle. If you're a developer that wants to do everything themselves at a low level (ok, I'm probably in that camp to some degree!) then it's not a trivial platform.

However if you just want to put something together that's fun, and then maybe tinker under the hood later, the high-level tools are there. I'm sure that's what PSSG was all about, though why it's not open to non-licensed developers I don't know. Perhaps they'll consider opening it up under this new banner?

PSSG was a scenegraph rendering platform created by Sony to ease the 'resource-drain' of PS3 development for third party professionals who were looking to develop for the platform but didn't have the resources to do everything from scratch..

It was never intended to be a 'gamemaker' for 'homebrew' or anything like that...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The Linux side is more for SPU development so far. I don't know if they are going to make it into an XNA kind of toolchain. I supposed they could but without access to RSX, it might not be useful for making games.

Looking at those 7 XNA games just released, they could all be done on Cell only. Consider the average Flash based webgame, which is much of the scope of these open platforms, and they're all CPU only but work out fine. Even if lack of RSX will constrict some people, an engine that's Cell only (something that ought to be in development for other Cell devices. Isn't there an OpenGL implementation for it yet?!) would see a lot of use and should compete with XNA Live! games in most instances.

 

[patsu]

It's a possibility. If OpenGL for Cell is released, open source folks like http://www.ranulf.net/ps3/python/ will jump in too.

EDIT: PS3 Lua Player on OpenGL is mentioned here: http://pspupdates.qj.net/LuaPlayer-OpenGL-for-PSP-PS3-Windows-and-the-kitchen-sink/pg/49/aid/77654

 

[MrWibble]

PSSG was a scenegraph rendering platform created by Sony to ease the 'resource-drain' of PS3 development for third party professionals who were looking to develop for the platform but didn't have the resources to do everything from scratch..

It was never intended to be a 'gamemaker' for 'homebrew' or anything like that...

While their number one target might be professional developers, any effort towards simplifying development could be repurposed towards homebrew stuff. Especially if you consider the cross-platform nature of the system. Plus they've presumably been working on it since it came out, which was a while ago.

Look at some of the comments Sony have made about it in the past - they've certainly suggested they might open it up beyond the pros.

I don't see anything that suggests they're going to do that at GDC - this looks like a tech-talk (although the new name is interesting - they must have an agenda for that... ). I just think they *should* open up, and this could be one avenue for doing that.

I'd love to be able to tinker with PS3 stuff at home. I'm getting increasingly less active with coding at the office these days and I miss it. PC stuff is dull and while 360 is a possibility, I don't own one, and I don't want to be tied to doing everything in C#. I know PS3, so thats what I really want to play with and the Linux thing doesn't really do it for me.

 

[whome0]

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/21/gdc08-phyreengine-sonys-new-free-cross-platform-engine/
GDC provided some information

a new "free to use graphics engine" from Sony Computer Entertainment. According to the presentation, the package includes full documentation, "70+ samples" and "full source code and artwork" of sample game templates. Working on both OpenGL and Direct3D, this engine will allow developers to more easily develop for the PS3 by using PC environments they're more familiar with. A "simple recompile" is supposedly all that's needed to make the game run on the PS3. Sony is promising "ongoing development and support" for the PhyreEngine.

The ramifications of this subdued announcement are actually quite significant. Three titles have been revealed to have used the PhyreEngine for development: flOw, GripShift and DiRT. Of those three, only one is exclusive to PlayStation.

This is not a direct XNA clone at the moment. We may very well create PhyreEngine game and run it on PC, but running on ps3 box might require ps3-devkit toolchain(?).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

$1200 debug kit required? Not really mainstream...

 

[Carl B]

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/21/gdc08-phyreengine-sonys-new-free-cross-platform-engine/
GDC provided some information


This is not a direct XNA clone at the moment. We may very well create PhyreEngine game and run it on PC, but running on ps3 box might require ps3-devkit toolchain(?).

Well, Joystiq is behind the times then in their reporting, because PhyreEngine is indeed PSSG by a new name. They should have connected some dots though, since Sony was known to be directly linked to DiRt back in the day, and this knowledge being widespread completely outside of the interview.

Anyway although already basically confirmed in the posts above, I 'officially' confirmed with Jason that PhyreEngine is a rebranding of PSSG. There have been some improvements made and obviously I think the name change alludes to a greater push to prime time for the engine. He's also proud to mention that CodeMasters won a TIGA award for their engine tech... which of course incorporates aspects of PSSG(Phyre). So, I would imagine things like that will help to raise its profile/mindshare... to say nothing of the catchy new name.

(whome0, if you're interested in this stuff beyond what Joystiq is aware of, read the interview linked in post #5)

 

[Titanio]

$1200 debug kit required? Not really mainstream...

Cheaper than a Wii dev kit for Wii-Ware AFAIK..

Of course, for a hobbyist/indie, there'd be no way to get your game out there, except via the usual channels of becoming a licensed dev or submitting the game to Sony for PSN publishing or something.

I think a sandboxed runtime environment embedded in Home (arcade machines) is far more likely to offer opportunities for indies and hobbyists than this kind of thing though.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The Home arcade boxes shown so far have been dirt simple. Home itself is going to gobble resource giving a limited workpool for development. I suppose RAM isn't a major concern as homebrew will have trouble filling hundreds of megs with assets, and if the processing power is there games to the degree of LocoRoco, flOw, and these latest XBA showings will be possible.

Would it be feasible to produce a limited Linux based OS just for testing on PS3s? It could lock out any dangerous stuff and offer a simple runtime environment, installable through the Other OS option. There'd be an issue with the existing harddisk structure though as Linux divides the HDD in two, so where'd you fit a third partition?