Please elaborate.
Are you saying 30M/s will/might have significant impact on CPU (CELL to be specific) compared to 10M/s max?
Scalability of ND's Uncharted engine *spawn
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Please elaborate.
Are you saying 30M/s will/might have significant impact on CPU (CELL to be specific) compared to 10M/s max?
Naughty Dog does have the advantage of having the ICE team situated right at Naughty Dog premises making Edge Tools for PS3 development, one would think that they would have some sort of streaming technology available.
IMO there are a lot of assumptions in this thead here:
Laa-Yosh is clearly arguing based on the logical argument, that because U2 looks as good as it does, the team obviously pulled every lever in the 'smokes & mirrors' book to achieve that, hence why the game is so linear in its path as a result.
He made some assumptions in the process of where he thinks some of the loading is done, alluding to the limitations of the engine, which I and some others in this thread have refuted (having played the game and experimented with it, I think that's only fair). While that doesn't negate his logical assessment of the game-engine (which for all we know could be quite accurate), it doesn't prove the limitations of the engine and how flexible it is.
Therefore it's difficult to reach a definite conclusion on if an open-world game would be possible at these visuals with minor changes to the engine. At this time, only ND would know.
Now I think it's obvious that the graphics scale with the amount of speed at which the player can travel through the 'loading-zones'. If he has cars, helicopters, or even aeroplanes at his disposal, obviously puts more strain onto the engine. Take these options away and limit him to a certain walking speed, perhaps put certain platforming elements in strategic places and you should be able to crank the graphics up noticably.
Laa-Yosh is clearly arguing based on the logical argument, that because U2 looks as good as it does, the team obviously pulled every lever in the 'smokes & mirrors' book to achieve that, hence why the game is so linear in its path as a result.
He made some assumptions in the process of where he thinks some of the loading is done, alluding to the limitations of the engine, which I and some others in this thread have refuted (having played the game and experimented with it, I think that's only fair). While that doesn't negate his logical assessment of the game-engine (which for all we know could be quite accurate), it doesn't prove the limitations of the engine and how flexible it is.
Therefore it's difficult to reach a definite conclusion on if an open-world game would be possible at these visuals with minor changes to the engine. At this time, only ND would know.
Now I think it's obvious that the graphics scale with the amount of speed at which the player can travel through the 'loading-zones'. If he has cars, helicopters, or even aeroplanes at his disposal, obviously puts more strain onto the engine. Take these options away and limit him to a certain walking speed, perhaps put certain platforming elements in strategic places and you should be able to crank the graphics up noticably.
BTW and just to add for clarification sake:
Is Jak & Daxter an open-world game?
Is Jak 2/3 an open-world game?
The former features a world that can be explored with no loading times and the player is open to chose his direction and can walk from end back to the beginning. The world however is quite linear although still very open in the areas it offers.
The latter, Jak 2 and 3, offer an open-world city at its center with alternative exploration outside the city. The open-world aspect is definately the city though, as the alternative places are more linear in their design.
Are both these games open-world per definition?
Is Jak & Daxter an open-world game?
Is Jak 2/3 an open-world game?
The former features a world that can be explored with no loading times and the player is open to chose his direction and can walk from end back to the beginning. The world however is quite linear although still very open in the areas it offers.
The latter, Jak 2 and 3, offer an open-world city at its center with alternative exploration outside the city. The open-world aspect is definately the city though, as the alternative places are more linear in their design.
Are both these games open-world per definition?
Of course, but this is true about most discussions in this forum that aren't about counting pixels or frames. We can't suddenly have a problem with speculation.
AC was used as an example of an open-world game earlier in this thread, and it fits this model, it seems. It seems like cheating, but then all open world games 'cheat' to greater or lesser extent -- very very few of them will say, let you get in a jet and zoom over the city, then parachute out at any point. Even GTA4 doesn't.
The reason why I'm asking, is because I haven't played AC, but have played the GTA games and also know the Jak & Daxter games quite well. I also think the Jak games bear some relevance, as the [streaming] tech that was developed there, has matured over time (perhaps into something different) to what has become Uncharted on PS3.
I also think there's a bit of a difference in Jak 1 to Jak 2/3. In Jak 1, there is no city to explore, but on the other hand, you do have an open-world setting that can be explored freely without being forced on a linear-path. From the village that you start out at the beginning of the game, you can get to the beach, to the jungle and later to other parts of the game. All of these areas feature a large area that can be explored. Despite all this, the paths leading to these areas are quite "linear". You can only access the beach through the village and not from the jungle for instance. Also the game later becomes quite a bit more linear as well. It is possible to walk all the way back and explore previous areas at any time, while also being able to use teleports to get back quicker. As far as I can remember, there's a short hickup, but no loading screens. A notable observation is that you can actually view the village from the jungle in all its detail and the moving windmills etc.
Jak 2 and 3 differ a bit, since a large part of the exploration is done in the city which is huge and offers more of that open-world feel like you would get in GTA4.
The question wasn't to form any specific argument, but for my own understanding. I guess you could look at it from two angles: open-world in the mind of the player who doesn't have to fix to a linear story path, can go anywhere he wants, but is limited in how he gets there or confined to narrow alleys with minmal long distance view - or open world in a more technical sense in which the engine is so flexible that it allows to do pretty much anything. The former doesn't necessarely have to be the latter. While I would put GTA4 in the latter (open world in a technical sense - given it can do pretty much everything and regardless of speed or type of transportation), other games might be closer to the former, using fixed paths to get around bounderies of the engine.
Why, doesn't the HD subsystem in the PS3 support DMA?
Well even with DMA CPU will still be used a bit and data needs to be defragemented to keep cache reading speed optimal.
I'm sure they do. That can't overcome the limits of the discs we are reading from though. If a scene you are looking at is made of 200 MBs assets, and you move to another completely different scene in 15 30fps frames, you need to load 200 MBs of new assets in 500 ms. If those assets are spread across 10 areas on the disc requiring head searches of 30 ms to find the next bit of data, that's 300ms spent just trying to get to the data before you get to load it in. HDDs are below that and BRDs are well above that.
Point is, this is the limiting factor whatever you're showing. If it isn't in RAM ready to use immediately, you need to fetch it ASAP. That's always going to be too slow, so you need to manage prefetching, which means needing to load in stuff you're going to see. The nature of open ended games means that could be quite diverse, so you need more in RAM at a given moment, requiring smaller assets or more duplication.
Ha ha ha!
I'm not sure why everyone is obsessing over flying in helicopters and jets, as that is an important detail in how you're streaming might work if you had them, but not important in the general sense of having an open world game.
I thought open world games were fairly well understood, but I'm guessing it's more of a grey area here if people are calling Batman: AA an open world game. Batman is a game mostly full of branching corridors, like most linear games. It has a large map split into smaller chunks to give the illusion of a contiguous open world, but it is nothing like GTA, Saints Row, Oblivion, Fallout 3 - the games people generally use to define the term. Assassin's Creed is also much much much different than Batman. For one, the maps are much large, with indescribable amounts of traversable terrain, that can be navigated in any direction. If Batman is an open world game, then the bar for "open world" is set very very very low.
What does Jak and Daxter have to do with Uncharted 2? Different engine on a different platform. Just because Jak and Daxter was "open world" which seems to be doubtful from the descriptions provided, doesn't mean that Uncharted 2 would be capable of being "open world" in the same way. That's a doubtful assumption.
This whole thing started as a question about whether an open world game could be made using the Uncharted 2 engine, while maintaining the visual fidelity, quality of Uncharted 2. Streaming is an issue, maybe an issue that they have potentially solved. Even assuming that somehow you had infinite creative people to do all the artwork, memory would be a big limitation, as it is on any platform with any game engine. I think there is a reason you haven't seen an open world game already that can match the best visuals of the best linear titles. I'm not sure why anyone would think it would be different for Naughty Dog.
Oh, and to clarify the argument about Gears, because people seem to have greatly misunderstood:
Gears uses a tailored version UE3. If you license UE3, you do not necessarily get all of the features that the modified Gears engine supports. More importantly, I think the point was that the UE3 engine is made to be licensed and supports a wide range of features that may not be used in an individual title like Gears. To say that UE3 is not flexible because Gears is linear and has hidden loading during the ear piece sequences is flat out wrong.
Now, maybe Uncharted 2 engine, or the base engine has a lot of features to make it more flexible for other types of games, but it seems highly unlikely because it is not a commercially licensed engine and it would not be in their financial interest to develop features that they would not be using. Only ND knows.
But back to the point, none of that is actually relevant to the question of whether the Uncharted 2 engine could be used to make an open world game that maintains the same level of visuals. They even said they were "maxing" the PS3, so I'm not sure where the extra resources are supposed to come from to support a world that is vastly larger and more complex.
ihamoitc2005
Veteran
Infamous
Is infamous considered an "open world" game?
Is infamous considered an "open world" game?
Yes, it's totally open-world.
What's up with all this talk about "maxing the ps3"?
I guess, you were all believers too when Epic said Gears 2 is the absolute max possible on 360 hardware or something along those lines.
Uncharted 3 will not only use ps3 more efficiently but also have more "tricks" to make everyone happier.
Scott, I'm sorry but all the talk about "maxing a console" for whatever console is pretty stupid, and frankly has no place in console tech. Software evolves, algorithms evolve, tools evolve, tricks evolve...
Besides the obvious, I'm telling you Uncharted 2 does BD streaming, meaning if they had gone with a less convenient method (like regular install, mendatory cutscenes with background install or some hybrid of those two) they could have up to 4 times better data/area.
Which is also why it's not clear what's possible with a more none-linear streaming tech with everything else being similar (character speed, software, tools etc).
I guess, you were all believers too when Epic said Gears 2 is the absolute max possible on 360 hardware or something along those lines.
Uncharted 3 will not only use ps3 more efficiently but also have more "tricks" to make everyone happier.
Scott, I'm sorry but all the talk about "maxing a console" for whatever console is pretty stupid, and frankly has no place in console tech. Software evolves, algorithms evolve, tools evolve, tricks evolve...
Besides the obvious, I'm telling you Uncharted 2 does BD streaming, meaning if they had gone with a less convenient method (like regular install, mendatory cutscenes with background install or some hybrid of those two) they could have up to 4 times better data/area.
Which is also why it's not clear what's possible with a more none-linear streaming tech with everything else being similar (character speed, software, tools etc).
And here we're back to definitions and degrees. A game that limits your character to slow movement, gates him with invisible (or 'memory') walls and intra-map loading like AC is the same sort of open world game as Saints' Row 2? Or even GTA4? Is 'open world' something that refers to player experience or to technology?
I agree, though. The weakest part of my argument is 'Batman as an open-world game'. I'm not the one who called it that, and I think we need a much stronger taxonomy for open world games, if we want this to fit. But I think that it's very very close to a few other games that people do think are open-world, like Infamous or AC. Smaller-scope, of course, as I've said from the start.
If we're narrowing definitions I wouldn't say that the last two are the same sort of game as the last two! Not in terms of tech and not in terms of player experience. The worlds in the last two are 'open', but is that the criteria? What makes Final Fantasy XII not open-world, then? We seem to want to use the term broadly and narrowly at the same time.
Hasn't the distinction this far been about how the game can reliably stream chunks of the world in and out given a player's supposedly free range of movement? In that sense, Altair's movement is very limited. Both games use limited movement and lots of clever tricks to guide the player's motions and make sure they don't do something the engine can't foresee. Batman's tricks seem a lot more straightforward than AC's, but then the scope is much smaller. Because the engine wasn't designed around that sort of gameplay.
But that's not even the point, is it? Arguing over what comprises an open-world game isn't what the thread's about. It's about scalability of the engine. Is Batman a bigger-scale game than U2 (and Gears), in terms of the size of the environments? I'd say so, considerably. Is anyone going to categorically state that no, U2's engine would not be able to deliver a Batman:AA analog? Especially based on the arguments that have been used so far regarding game design and streaming?
I think you've misunderstood. You're not following my argument, even though you seem to be replying to me. No one is saying UE3 is not flexible. What I'm saying is that the conclusions drawn by Laa-Yosh hinge almost entirely on the way U2 was designed. What I'm saying is that those conclusions can't be drawn from that, and offered a counter-example. His response, and here is where things get particularly unreasonable, was that Gears does not use UE3, and therefore Gears and Batman don't use the same engine. Which again, is true, but has a corollary that people can't seem to see.
Edit: in fact, you seem to have understood exactly the opposite of what I was saying, so I'll clarify again. I'm not saying UE3 is not flexible. How could I? There's a couple dozen UE3 games out there, from shooters to JRPGs to again, Batman. What I'm saying, in fact, is that UE3 is flexible and scalable (to a degree). If we were to look at Gears and Gears 2, the showcases for the engine, using Laa-Yosh's criteria, though, we would come to similar conclusions regarding scalability because Uncharted and Gears share a lot of the single-player trickery. My point is, then, that these conclusions would be wrong. When speaking in terms of what sort of games can be made with an engine, a game provides evidence of what a game engine can do. I don't believe it provides evidence of what a game engine can't do.
Right. We don't know. We never know anything that's not explicitly put in a tech paper or told to us by a dev who worked on the code. For all I know. ND's code is the worst spaghetti code ever made. But what's the standard for the benefit of the doubt here? 'We don't know, therefore it can't?' or 'We don't know, therefore maybe?' Either is fine, but then we do have to apply the criteria consistently. The third option is there too, but it's against the purpose of this forum.
How strict is 'same level of visuals'? Even the MP mode doesn't maintain the 'same level of visuals'. I've already said I'm not talking about 'same level of visuals' because the game's graphics are indeed designed around the sort of game it is. How about recognizable? At this point, how many people are still saying it can be done without any compromises?
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3D graphics is all about cheating and "smoke and mirrors" -- those up in arms over this shouldn't be discussing topics in the tech forum. Normal Maps are a hack to make an object appear to have more geometry than they really do and offers cheap shadowing of said faked geometry.
Hacks, cheats, and smoke and mirrors are the name of the game.
The problem is some cheats are suspect to break the illusion in different circumstances. e.g. Parallax Occlusion looks great unless you get flush with the geometry and the illusion is destroyed. So many devs are using a trick of adding some small geometry (e.g. facade garnishment on building edges) to prevent the player from ever getting a flush look at the parallax mapping.
It is no insult to say ND would have to change their streaming setup some and thus reduce some asset quality and/or technical approach, to deploy a persistent AI and scripting (more CPU resources), and some of their "cheats" may be broken by a free roaming large world (+ cost of creating said assets in full detail/interactivity) and so forth.
I find it insulting to believe ND would "leave performance on the table" by building a game that didn't maximize their game design. Why build a full "GTA style open world" and build a game that leans more toward linear paths and smaller sandbox experiences?
As someone else noted, there is a reason why UE3's linear games with small sandboxes (GeoW2) are much better looking than their open, large map counterparts (e.g. Frontlines). Openness has a certain cost.
Does anyone doubt an open world has certain costs that a more linear experience can save and invest in better quality?
Hacks, cheats, and smoke and mirrors are the name of the game.
The problem is some cheats are suspect to break the illusion in different circumstances. e.g. Parallax Occlusion looks great unless you get flush with the geometry and the illusion is destroyed. So many devs are using a trick of adding some small geometry (e.g. facade garnishment on building edges) to prevent the player from ever getting a flush look at the parallax mapping.
It is no insult to say ND would have to change their streaming setup some and thus reduce some asset quality and/or technical approach, to deploy a persistent AI and scripting (more CPU resources), and some of their "cheats" may be broken by a free roaming large world (+ cost of creating said assets in full detail/interactivity) and so forth.
I find it insulting to believe ND would "leave performance on the table" by building a game that didn't maximize their game design. Why build a full "GTA style open world" and build a game that leans more toward linear paths and smaller sandbox experiences?
As someone else noted, there is a reason why UE3's linear games with small sandboxes (GeoW2) are much better looking than their open, large map counterparts (e.g. Frontlines). Openness has a certain cost.
Does anyone doubt an open world has certain costs that a more linear experience can save and invest in better quality?
Betan, I know the PS3 isn't "maxed", and that's why I used quotations. I just think that the PS3 is pushed nearer to its limits in terms of memory budget, cpu time, gpu time than it was before. Of course there are always new and better ways of doing things, but at some point you hit a state where advancement slows down and changes become more and more minor, even if appreciable. The dev used the term "maxed" when talking about their software, which I don't think is meant in absolute terms, but that they are making significant use of its resources.
My point was that if they increase the scale of the world, they have to do it within the same constraints, and I don't think that would be possible while maintaining the visual quality since they are now pushing the hardware relatively hard.
I think the further you stray from the format of Uncharted 2, the greater the visual differences would be. Batman and GTA are very different games in terms of size and structure and pose different challenges.
I believe that was the topic when this thread started: whether the engine could scale to a large "open world" game while maintaining it's visuals. If the argument is just whether it could do an open world game, regardless of visual quality, then there really isn't anything to talk about.
Whether you could do a bit of work to support an appropriate method of streaming, or whether one is already in there is unknown. If quality is not an issue, then I'd say something in the scale of Batman could probably be done. If you're talking GTA, then I wouldn't care to guess. The only thing I know is that it is extremely unlikely that you'd be able to do a game like GTA while maintaining the visuals of Uncharted2 because of memory constraints. Maybe a developer with experience could chime in, or some tech docs, but I think Laa-Yosh's points about memory, streaming and loading assets were valid in this regard, and I don't see any reasonable attempts to refute them. The only argument I've seen so far is, "There is no proof that it can do it, but that doesn't mean it can't."
My point was that if they increase the scale of the world, they have to do it within the same constraints, and I don't think that would be possible while maintaining the visual quality since they are now pushing the hardware relatively hard.
I think the further you stray from the format of Uncharted 2, the greater the visual differences would be. Batman and GTA are very different games in terms of size and structure and pose different challenges.
I believe that was the topic when this thread started: whether the engine could scale to a large "open world" game while maintaining it's visuals. If the argument is just whether it could do an open world game, regardless of visual quality, then there really isn't anything to talk about.
Whether you could do a bit of work to support an appropriate method of streaming, or whether one is already in there is unknown. If quality is not an issue, then I'd say something in the scale of Batman could probably be done. If you're talking GTA, then I wouldn't care to guess. The only thing I know is that it is extremely unlikely that you'd be able to do a game like GTA while maintaining the visuals of Uncharted2 because of memory constraints. Maybe a developer with experience could chime in, or some tech docs, but I think Laa-Yosh's points about memory, streaming and loading assets were valid in this regard, and I don't see any reasonable attempts to refute them. The only argument I've seen so far is, "There is no proof that it can do it, but that doesn't mean it can't."
Suppose there is such a point, or a point of diminishing returns, are we there yet based on % figures from ND?
A little OT but, for some reason, that reminds me people claiming the end of Moore's law every five year or so. Yet it's still holding up.
Just tell me this, why do you keep ignoring streaming speed and its importance?
That depends on the scale of the world, how the world is connected and their streaming medium.
GTA is impossible with the current tech. Not only because of the world setup, but because of the fast car option that game has for transportation.
I think the early "console enthusiasts" who claimed such nonsense are long gone though, so no need to repeat the same arguments over and over again.
Whoever said non-linear streaming had additional memory implications was a wise guy, you should probably listen to him more often, like for example when it comes to streaming speed.
Anyway, there is no question that "non-linearism" brings more constraints, of which most important is for memory.
There are also unused options to make up for some of the constraints, and even hypothetical tech improvements.
Let me put it this way, if U2 is the absolute best ND can do (techwise), then there is no way they can even do AC's world with U2 level of detail.
But I guarantee you U2 is not the best possible, so there is a point when you are scaling up U2's world, where you can match U2's level of detail.
this is orthoganal tothe discussion. We aren't saying ND won't surpass U2. the question is igf the code they have written for U2 can be extended without modification to render larger areas with the same level of detail.
there's nothing at all against ND as developers, or the effort they've put in, and no mention of the room the PS3 may or may not have to produce better games in the future. These are completel non-issues to the discussion at hand.
One could liken the argument to "can Usain Bolt run the ffastest 3400m ever recorded?" Answering that question with "I'm sure Usain Bolt can run faster than he did when he set the world record for the 100m" misses the question completely.
