Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[Arwin]

I hope 3D dies before next gen launches. Please please please please please ...

Ps- My eyes hate 3D technology. Extra minus for 2x glasses (6 eyes!)

You selfish person you! And besides, what is wrong with getting 60fps gaming for 2D and splitscreen as standard features next-gen? Because that would very likely become the norm if next-gen console games support 3D .

I love 3D by the way even though I also carry glasses. I'm very curious about the Sony HMD, although I think that for most games we'll need next-gen to get good enough quality and framerates for 3D to be more pleasant than 2D (though already now there are a bunch of games that are awesome in 3D).

 

[bgassassin]

With all the info we've heard, what do you guys think of an Xbox that has an APU with assisting ARM cores? This is taking all the rumors and putting them together. Heat and cost are going to be an issue so to keep both in check while getting as much power as possible they go with this route. And it would also jive with DICE talking about multiple processors.

 

[function]

You selfish person you! And besides, what is wrong with getting 60fps gaming for 2D and splitscreen as standard features next-gen? Because that would very likely become the norm if next-gen console games support 3D .

That would be nice, but an optimistic vision of 2D gaming in a 3D world! Not all parts of a game might scale to 60hz, leaving us speccy six eyeses with no real tradeoff when we want to stay at four.

I would support 3D forever and a day if 2D mode allowed you to have none crappy texture filtering and full screen AA that didn't blur, pixel pop, crawl or artefact all over the place. I've just finished Resident Evil 5. For most the game you move around slowly, chasing a mip-map transition around Africa in a hunt for clichés and bad QTE events. And Daytona USA on the 360 (just out) - very visible mipmap transitions, each pushing a pool of texture blur forever around the triple seven speedway.

I love 3D by the way even though I also carry glasses. I'm very curious about the Sony HMD, although I think that for most games we'll need next-gen to get good enough quality and framerates for 3D to be more pleasant than 2D (though already now there are a bunch of games that are awesome in 3D).

At least 3D would allow you accurately locate the position of mipmap transitions in 3D space, so you could now tell exactly where the 1990's were still happening.

Please MSonyU, fast trilinear and ansio and force people to use it. I'm normally in favour of developer choice above all, but when people are making choices this bad someone needs to set a minimum standard.

 

[Proelite]

If you'd replace "GPU" with "Shader block" it would kind of make sense.

or Powervr cores.

 

[ban25]

And Daytona USA on the 360 (just out) - very visible mipmap transitions, each pushing a pool of texture blur forever around the triple seven speedway.

It's Daytona USA, released in 1993. You're lucky it's not point sampled!

 

[AlNom]

So if the next xbox is supposed to be smaller than 360, someone explain to me how they'll achieve 4GB of RAM.

The relief on 3DS looks really nice, but I haven't played with one for any extended period of time, did anyone in here do ?

I played Ocarina of Time for a bit. I was kinda underwhelmed.

 

[hoho]

So if the next xbox is supposed to be smaller than 360, someone explain to me how they'll achieve 4GB of RAM.

I've got 1GB in my cellphone that's basically a year old and I bet I can get one with 2GB in a few months. Why is it hard to fit 4GB inside a box that has at least 10-30x the volume?

 

[AlNom]

Is that a serious question or are you just expecting some really shit ram speed on a tiny memory bus? :| How about the limited ram density of higher clocked parts thus necessitating a bucket of chips to achieve that target amount?

Come on...

 

[Masuta]

Xbox 10 next year -

http://wiki.twit.tv/wiki/Windows_Weekly_233

http://twit.tv/show/windows-weekly/233

 

[function]

It's Daytona USA, released in 1993. You're lucky it's not point sampled!

It's a hi-res 360 port released a couple of weeks ago, where the in-your-face mipmap shenanigans has nothing to do with its heritage! Someone has made a performance related decision. It was the wrong decision. And now I'm not buying it.

But I don't have any way of tying my hatred of such awful texture filtering to this topic, other than to point out that if people don't care then we really are at the point where there's no point in creating a super bleeding edge console ever again. And on that point I'll stop and not go any more off topic.

 

[Acert93]

You selfish person you!

Well... that's quite egoistical of you... I like 3D and wouldn't mind if more games supported it... though, I don't play my PS3 games in 3D, because the lower resolution makes my head spin, too, but on PC, with a full 1080P framebuffer, it's really amazing.

Talk about selfish and egotistical, some of use have pretty poor vision, must wear glasses at all times, and while 3D may make your head spin I literally cannot get the passive stuff to focus (my eyes aren't agreeable at all) and I spend my whole time trying to fight my eyes rather than enjoy the visuals--and the only thing I do get in return is a headache.

I know Sony is pushing 3D big but there are a LOT of consumers not sold on it. Telling us unconvinced folks that there is something wrong with us makes it even more annoying because I have no desire for it to be shoved down my throat.

Yes, full display split screen would be very cool -- but the luck of us getting developers to target 60Hz and all those features going up against games at 30Hz and far superior graphics that standard displays will show off will make for a pretty compelling contrast.

Not to mention all those warning about children should not use 3D / do not use for extended periods makes it a harder market sell when in many homes a game console is at least partially a kids toy.

Maybe the techniques will get a lot better and you could argue that Dual-GPU would be a perfect design for getting blistering 3D performance, but my experience in the theaters and in Big Box shops leaves a LOT to be desired. Not to mention wearing 2x pairs of glasses is just dumb--I don't really want to sit for 2-3 hours with extra glasses on.

 

[Proelite]

More "nuggets" from MSnerd in the comments section.

Correct. Secondly, these assistive cores are exactly that, assistive. They exist for the same reason you see dedicated hardware for H.264 decode in cheaper and smaller devices. The "main" processor is general purpose multi-core as well. And MS is directly involved in designing the processor base this time.

http://msnerd.tumblr.com/post/12233928364/clarity

 

[Rangers]

People say MSNerd is reliable, what is his track record? What he has he correctly predicted before?

These next box rumors are getting stupider and more unlikely by the day seems like. Still no credible rumors about the real next box.

And what is all this "win 9" stuff? I've never heard of it before. Am I supposed to believe Windows 9 is coming out in 2012 when Windows 8 is not out yet? Is that the idea?

 

[hoho]

Is that a serious question or are you just expecting some really shit ram speed on a tiny memory bus? :| How about the limited ram density of higher clocked parts thus necessitating a bucket of chips to achieve that target amount?

It was kind of half-serious. 4GB should be achievable with 4 chips by the time next XB is released. With smaller box I might be worried if it can fit good enough CPU or GPU but RAM is the last thing I'd worry about.

 

[rpg.314]

I can buy there being separate, dedicated cores for networking, sound, encryption, graphics (GPU, obviously) etc.

AI, physics cores suggest he's a bit misinformed. But I can see the overall idea making sense as a bit of speculation.

 

[sebbbi]

I can buy there being separate, dedicated cores for networking, sound, encryption, graphics (GPU, obviously) etc.

AI, physics cores suggest he's a bit misinformed. But I can see the overall idea making sense as a bit of speculation.

Newest Intel and AMD CPUs internally support AES instruction set for fast encryption. I doubt a future console would have a separate processing unit just for that (not cost effective). All current generation consoles process sound by CPUs, and the twice as wide vector units in the new CPUs make sound processing even faster on a CPU. Basic sound mixing isn't that CPU consuming, and if you want to do something fancy like realistic sound occlusion and bouncing, you likely want to use your engine's existing acceleration structures (shared with physics and graphics) to boost up the performance. Fixed function sound hardware isn't going to be the right thing for that.

Those rumors seem to be false in almost every way.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I know Sony is pushing 3D big but there are a LOT of consumers not sold on it. Telling us unconvinced folks that there is something wrong with us makes it even more annoying because I have no desire for it to be shoved down my throat.

I think you miss the major point (although let's be honest, you wanting 3D to die and take that away from everyone who likes 3D is just as bad as anyone wanting to force 3D onto everyone!). Arwin's point wasn't that everyone should want and like 3D, but in targeting 3D, consoles would have more juice for a better 2D experience so everyone's better off. Just run the 3D game in 2D mode and get better framerate or IQ or something. IMO 3D isn't a target anyway. The console will aim for a price/performance/power target and do the best 3D they can with that. Unless someone invents a special 3D coprocessor, 3D will just be implemented in software as part of the render pipeline as it is now, so it won't take anything away from the developers resources to do 2D games. Only if someone stupid mandates 3D for all games with no benefit for 2D will non-3D users suffer. Which seems odd, but SD users this gen really got the short straw when games were rendered at SD res, instead of at HD res and downscaled for beautiful IQ.

In terms of predicting next-gen hardware, I can't see 3D having any influence. Chances of Sony producing a 3D console with a 3D HMD as standard is none!

 

[Blazkowicz]

an encryption unit would be quite small, there's one in the VIA C7 for instance.

 

[tunafish]

an encryption unit would be quite small, there's one in the VIA C7 for instance.

The problem with separate encryption units, and the reason there has been a shift away from them into encryption-aiding cpu instructions, is that in modern software, (typically, requests and responses in web browsers), you usually only encrypt quite small chunks at a time. When you are never encrypting more than a few kb at a time, the cost of moving data to the dedicated encryption unit can easily wipe out most of the gains, especially when you often could otherwise process the data in the same pass you de/encrypt it.

 

[Sonic]

It's a hi-res 360 port released a couple of weeks ago, where the in-your-face mipmap shenanigans has nothing to do with its heritage! Someone has made a performance related decision. It was the wrong decision. And now I'm not buying it.

But I don't have any way of tying my hatred of such awful texture filtering to this topic, other than to point out that if people don't care then we really are at the point where there's no point in creating a super bleeding edge console ever again. And on that point I'll stop and not go any more off topic.

I'll have to check it out. The Model 2 version was awesome for its time. And if the 360 version is having problems with mipmap and other graphical stupidities then that harkens on either developer laziness and/r incompetence. There's no reason a Model 2 or Model 3 game should have graphical problems on current consols especially if given ports.

As time passes on more and more, I really wish Model 3 had some good AA. SuperGT is fuuugly these days.