PS3 game sizes

[DemoCoder]

The 4Kb and 16kb demoscene categories show how amazing and crazy you can get with procedurals. Hell, with the right high level representation and geometry compression techniques, they could probably uber-compress most geometry (HOS, topological surgery, edgebreaker, etc), represent all music with MPEG-4 Structured Audio, compress all textures with JPEG2000 on disk, ...

The point is, what's a better use of the developers time? Time wasted trying to fit into a more constrainted space budget, or time spent working on the rest of the game? IMHO, putting extra work into compression only makes sense if you need more I/O bandwidth, but if you're got extra space and don't need the bandwidth, then why bother? (for bandwidth, I'd prefer utilize the HD first if I can)

The fact is, the smaller the physical RAM, the smaller the disk space, the lower the bandwidth, the more constrainted budgets you place on the devs. Granted, *every* console and game will have a set of budgets, but fitting something into 4Kb is alot more work than fitting it into 64Kb.


PS3 helps in the sense that it has a higher disk space budget (both HD and optical), but fails in the area that main memory is less flexible and half of it is dedicated to the GPU. It is also assymetrical, and harder IMHO to develop for.

However, I think the arguing against PS3's extra space is like bashing a console for having more RAM and accussing them of finding excuses to fill it up. If PS2 games like God of War take a large fraction of a DVD on a machine with only 32mb of system RAM and 4mb of video memory, I don't imagine it will be hard for a system with 16x the memory capacity to exceed DVD requirements. (and DXTC doesn't change the argument, PS2 CLUT was 4:1/8:1 as well)

IMHO, the real downside of BR is that they didn't really boost the bandwidth and lower latency. But, the savior is the fact that every PS3 has an HD, they are large, and you can plop in bigger ones if you like, since it uses standard drives.

 

[-tkf-]

Waht i wonder more is what else is on that Motorstorm disc taking up about 13Gigs? Haven't heard anything about movies in this one...

I think it can be concluded that whatever they are using those 13gb for it must be a waste because with a few tweaks it could have fitted on a DVD9, and if it could fit on a DVD9 it could fit on a CD-ROM etc etc..

More space has never ever been a bad thing, faster cpu´s have never ever been a bad thing, faster graphic processors have never ever been a bad thing more memory have never ever been a bad thing but in the great console war of 2007.

IF Sony had decided to equip the PS2 with a BluRay drive it could be argued that it was overkill, but putting a next gen storage media in a next gen console makes alot of sense, be it DVD back in time or BR/HD-DVD today

We wouldn´t be having this discussion if the XBOX 360 featured a HD-DVD drive would we?

 

[-tkf-]

IMHO, the real downside of BR is that they didn't really boost the bandwidth and lower latency. But, the savior is the fact that every PS3 has an HD, they are large, and you can plop in bigger ones if you like, since it uses standard drives.

As long as it is on par with the competitions DVD tech?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The game as it is requires that much space - no matter what you think about how that space is used isn't really relevant.

Overall I can agree that the use of the BRD space is 'proper' even if you don't think what's added (multiple languages on one disc for example) is necessary. Another example is HD video. For those that say you can shrink and compress video to fit it onto a DVD, you can, but then that's not using your HDTV. Considering all the people who say how naff SDTV looks on HDTVs once you've seen HDTV, I find it surprising that some seem to be okay with hefty video compression when the option exists for high quality HD.

However on this example I'd say how they use the space is very relevant. Some 3-4 GBs perhaps of HD video could be replaced with a few large JPEGs and a little code to scroll them across the screen, with an audio track in the background. Okay, there's probably some point or Insomniac wouldn't have done this, but I'm blowed if I know what it is! There's absolutely no point in using large video files for this. If your movie is nothing but a scrolling pic or still, it is a waste of space to use a movie.

 

[TheChefO]

For those that say you can shrink and compress video to fit it onto a DVD, you can, but then that's not using your HDTV. .

What's wrong with upscaling dvd-class video for in-game use?:smile:

 

[TheChefO]

The 4Kb and 16kb demoscene categories show how amazing and crazy you can get with procedurals. Hell, with the right high level representation and geometry compression techniques, they could probably uber-compress most geometry (HOS, topological surgery, edgebreaker, etc), represent all music with MPEG-4 Structured Audio, compress all textures with JPEG2000 on disk, ...

The point is, what's a better use of the developers time? Time wasted trying to fit into a more constrainted space budget, or time spent working on the rest of the game? IMHO, putting extra work into compression only makes sense if you need more I/O bandwidth, but if you're got extra space and don't need the bandwidth, then why bother? (for bandwidth, I'd prefer utilize the HD first if I can)

The fact is, the smaller the physical RAM, the smaller the disk space, the lower the bandwidth, the more constrainted budgets you place on the devs. Granted, *every* console and game will have a set of budgets, but fitting something into 4Kb is alot more work than fitting it into 64Kb.


PS3 helps in the sense that it has a higher disk space budget (both HD and optical), but fails in the area that main memory is less flexible and half of it is dedicated to the GPU. It is also assymetrical, and harder IMHO to develop for.

However, I think the arguing against PS3's extra space is like bashing a console for having more RAM and accussing them of finding excuses to fill it up. If PS2 games like God of War take a large fraction of a DVD on a machine with only 32mb of system RAM and 4mb of video memory, I don't imagine it will be hard for a system with 16x the memory capacity to exceed DVD requirements. (and DXTC doesn't change the argument, PS2 CLUT was 4:1/8:1 as well)

IMHO, the real downside of BR is that they didn't really boost the bandwidth and lower latency. But, the savior is the fact that every PS3 has an HD, they are large, and you can plop in bigger ones if you like, since it uses standard drives.

Great post

I agree on the balancing act that BR enables devs to save time from having to worry about disk space at the end and that helps make up for the extra dev time in working with ps3 arch over xb360.

How do these two Time Savers compare? In other words :
The time invested in preparing/shrinking a game to fit in dvd9 (vs BR)
compared to
The time invested in coding to cell/ps3 (vs XB360)

This will obviuosly vary but - avg and range, if you can.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's wrong with upscaling dvd-class video for in-game use?:smile:

The same thing that's wrong with upscaling DVDs for watching films on HDTVs - it's not as good! All the HDTV owners I know who comment on watching HDTV say it looks fantastic compared to SDTV and they'd never want to go back. Thus surely they'd all prefer HD cutscenes in their HD games. You can argue about that being worth n hundred more dollars on the system, but that's a different topic. You can't fairly argue that given BRD, devs should be expected to avoid HD movies and fit the game onto DVD if they cut the movies. In-game movies are part of the whole game experience and spending disc-space incorporating them in high quality is a valid use of available space as improving the quality of any aspect of the game.

 

[TheChefO]

The same thing that's wrong with upscaling DVDs for watching films on HDTVs - it's not as good! All the HDTV owners I know who comment on watching HDTV say it looks fantastic compared to SDTV and they'd never want to go back. Thus surely they'd all prefer HD cutscenes in their HD games. You can argue about that being worth n hundred more dollars on the system, but that's a different topic. You can't fairly argue that given BRD, devs should be expected to avoid HD movies and fit the game onto DVD if they cut the movies. In-game movies are part of the whole game experience and spending disc-space incorporating them in high quality is a valid use of available space as improving the quality of any aspect of the game.

Interesting, I concur. :smile:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38511

I'd like to see HD in-game cutscenes either using in-engine or cgi. But for dvd9 it is a sacrifice the platform will have to live with being limited to sd res cuts or in-engine. Or perhaps h.264 HD 720p.

 

[Phil]

However on this example I'd say how they use the space is very relevant. Some 3-4 GBs perhaps of HD video could be replaced with a few large JPEGs and a little code to scroll them across the screen, with an audio track in the background. Okay, there's probably some point or Insomniac wouldn't have done this, but I'm blowed if I know what it is! There's absolutely no point in using large video files for this. If your movie is nothing but a scrolling pic or still, it is a waste of space to use a movie.

I can't really comment on what Insomniac did for the movies and why they chose the methods they used (I haven't played it) - but surely, there must be some reason they did it they way they did?

Even if it's simply down to "saving time", surely that's a benefit that either can be used to an advantage to spend more time on other more important things or to save development costs?

In the end, I guess my point is that you can't simply look at a game and nitpick about how much more efficient it could have been done (like by being able to fit it onto a DVD9) without taking into account the added time/costs/resources that would have been necessarey to make it possible.

And then, lets assume for a second that one could fit it onto a DVD9 with minimal effort: how well would that game work, given the DVD9 would be completely filled up, where as on a BRD it would be using around a third of its usuable space? Surely a BRD filled up to 1/3rd would have quicker seek times than an equivilant DVD9 where the data is spread across the entire disk?

 

[TheChefO]

I can't really comment on what Insomniac did for the movies and why they chose the methods they used (I haven't played it) - but surely, there must be some reason they did it they way they did?

Even if it's simply down to "saving time", surely that's a benefit that either can be used to an advantage to spend more time on other more important things or to save development costs?

In the end, I guess my point is that you can't simply look at a game and nitpick about how much more efficient it could have been done (like by being able to fit it onto a DVD9) without taking into account the added time/costs/resources that would have been necessarey to make it possible.

And then, lets assume for a second that one could fit it onto a DVD9 with minimal effort: how well would that game work, given the DVD9 would be completely filled up, where as on a BRD it would be using around a third of its usuable space? Surely a BRD filled up to 1/3rd would have quicker seek times than an equivilant DVD9 where the data is spread across the entire disk?

Good point regarding seek times. Don't devs place relevant data in groups to speed loading times?

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Well, I don't think the question is whether the extra space was "wasted" or not, per se, but whether they use of it made any visual difference. It might have been "easier" to not worry about compression, not worry about scripting to scroll a static image, not worry about coding an in-engine cut-scene, be able to place large redundant chunks of data for improved seek times, etc. And if it is easier, and saves money in production, then I think it is a good use. Perhaps they went the extra step and spent more money to figure out how to "use" more of the disk space, but who really cares? If in the end, all that extra space hasn't resulted in a better gaming experience, then it really isn't much of a testament to the almighty BRD, is it?

I think there will be games that are such a testament, in time, but this one just isn't it.

 

[TheChefO]

Well, I don't think the question is whether the extra space was "wasted" or not, per se, but whether they use of it made any visual difference. It might have been "easier" to not worry about compression, not worry about scripting to scroll a static image, not worry about coding an in-engine cut-scene, be able to place large redundant chunks of data for improved seek times, etc. And if it is easier, and saves money in production, then I think it is a good use. Perhaps they went the extra step and spent more money to figure out how to "use" more of the disk space, but who really cares? If in the end, all that extra space hasn't resulted in a better gaming experience, then it really isn't much of a testament to the almighty BRD, is it?

I think there will be games that are such a testament, in time, but this one just isn't it.

Agreed - also BR would not get the scrutiny it gets if it didn't affect ps3 in so many ways. Also the impact of multiplat games this gen will affect the impact BR would have had if it were standard across multiple systems. Similar to how HDD was largely ignored last gen.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

but surely, there must be some reason they did it they way they did?

That's the million dollar question! Writing a static image scroller can't be much more effort than writing a video player though. Dunno. It could be the video did save them time and money. It's still a waste of space though! And you can't look at 6 GB of video and say 'this wouldn't fit onto a DVD9 when that video could easily be transformed into a couple hundred megs tops of picture and MP3.

It could be that they were intending CGI, but time or money constraints saw them switch to static images and in-game movies. With the movie player in place they stuck with that.

 

[-tkf-]

It could be that they were intending CGI, but time or money constraints saw them switch to static images and in-game movies. With the movie player in place they stuck with that.

This is a valid explanation though one should think that the cutscenes wouldn´t have been a time issue but more a money issue.

 

[infinity4]

isn't video memory size a limiting factor for taking advantage of storage sizes??? there was an article on d-pad.net (i think) which said that ps3 blu ray storage is limited by 256mb video memory. oh well, they made Gran Turismo 4 out of 4mb video memory and 32mb main memory, who knows???

 

[Shifty Geezer]

isn't video memory size a limiting factor for taking advantage of storage sizes???

No. You can stream data in. As a simple example, you could have a 16KB PONG game with 15 GBs of music playing in the background. You could have a 16 KB PONG with 15 GBs of photo backdrops. You can have a scene occupy 256 MB of RAM, but load in new models and textures every time the scene changes.

 

[assen]

but surely, there must be some reason they did it they way they did?

Well, it's a no-brainer - they send the script to an outsourcing movie production shop, they receive in return movies + localized voiceovers, and simply play them. The alternative would require developing some authoring tool for the artists to define the slideshow, which would waste precious programmer's time, much more important for a PS3 launch title than disc space.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

No. You can stream data in. As a simple example, you could have a 16KB PONG game with 15 GBs of music playing in the background. You could have a 16 KB PONG with 15 GBs of photo backdrops. You can have a scene occupy 256 MB of RAM, but load in new models and textures every time the scene changes.

However, VRAM limits what you can show on screen at once, and i think thats what they meant in the article.

 

[scooby_dooby]

In the end, I guess my point is that you can't simply look at a game and nitpick about how much more efficient it could have been done (like by being able to fit it onto a DVD9) without taking into account the added time/costs/resources that would have been necessarey to make it possible.

No, but you certainly can look at the game and ask "What does the extra space add to the game itself??", in this case, next to nothing, nothing but a minor time-savings.

For all the money put into the HW, I would expect to see larger worlds, more assets, higher res textures, etc etc. In other words, something tangible, I would expect to see a better game on screen. Otherwise, the money they are losing would've been better spent on Development Tools, which also allows for time savings without burdening the consumers with additional costs.

 

[patsu]

But Blu-ray is more than just disk space ? It also enables a whole new movie business revenue. Perhaps this is partly why we have free online games ? If so, this is "better game" right ?

Why don't people wait for events to pan out. We are only seeing the launch games now. We all know launch games are done with limited toolsets and time.

Currently, the extra space translates into time saving for developers. As one of the Heavenly Sword developers mentioned, it is nice they don't have to worry so much about space when developing the game. We should be able to see the benefits (or non-event) in a year or two. Just be patient.

Martha
OOXX