Sony @ GDC: Phil Harrison's Keynote

[expletive]

I made the point to say that myself.

The original post I was responding to was that PS3 had not differentiated itself versus what we have seen to date on 360. I disagreed with that, and I'm highlighting the example of Motorstorm and its described environmental interaction. As it is described, it sounds fairly unprecedented on any platform. What they're doing there can probably be tied back to CPU activity. My extended point is that if we're seeing more sophisticated usage of the CPU in PS3, earlier, despite it being harder to work with, it might say something about its potential relative to other systems. Motorstorm isn't the only example - looking at the descriptions of various things shown yesterday, Sony's exclusive developments at least seem to be often trending toward deep behavioural simulation (physical and AI) and an attention to the small details. Now, I don't know everything that's in development for 360 right now, but it's a valid point looking at what we've seen to date which is what the OP I was responding to was referring to.

Well we havent really seen anything WRT the PS3 tech demos, and the accounts that ive read dont compare any of this to 360 games or tech demos. So i dont see what exactly the basis for comparison is and how that basis makes any hardware 'bake-off' valid at this point. Can't we just wait until theres playable games for both systems before we make the comparisons?

 

[Synergy34]

it's curious that nobody seen motostorm but they used their interpretation of what they have not seen to judge the hardware.
this is sick

No they aren't, they are using other people's interpretations of the Motostorm vid and i think that they are vaild cause other than maybe inconsistant framerate and the look of the graphics reports, every site has pretty much posted about how the cars interact with the ruts in the mud.

 

[Titanio]

Warhawk using mixed Cell/RSX rendering (!)

Well we havent really seen anything WRT the PS3 tech demos, and the accounts that ive read dont compare any of this to 360 games or tech demos. So i dont see what exactly the basis for comparison is and how that basis makes any hardware 'bake-off' valid at this point. Can't we just wait until theres playable games for both systems before we make the comparisons?

I was replying to just such a comparison, and arguing always with the qualifier of how things were being textually described.

Anyway, listening to the Playsyde audio from the conference, there are some very interesting technical details that seem to have been lost in some of the reporting. Most exciting, and surprising, is that Warhawk is already mixing Cell-rendered graphics with RSX rendered-graphics - its clouds are rendered with a volumetric software ray-tracer running off a SPU! Other SPU usage mentioned included procedural geometry generation for the ocean, animation, physics, collisions and particles. They talk a bit also about a significant proportion of their CPU budget being focussed on what they term "HD behavioural simulation" - large-scale combat simulation that's constantly evaluated. They're also keen to stress how despite its complexity, Cell's entry point can be quite accessible - none of their code uses assembly.

Also, one small detail about the Havok/Ninja Theory demo - Harrison went out of his way to say that the demo was using game production code and assets, it wasn't 'just' a tech demo. Similarly, the vehicle destruction demo was taken from a "game environment", from an unannounced upcoming game - talked about bullets augmenting the cars geometry as it is ripped to shreds etc.

Surprised to hear about mixed Cell/RSX rendering at this stage!

 

[Carl B]

Hey, good detective work Titanio! Now I have to go listen to the audio myself...

 

[expletive]

Surprised to hear about mixed Cell/RSX rendering at this stage!

I cant decide if this is good news or bad news? It intially strikes me as a deficiency in RSX but youre not the only one to think its cool so i must be missing something. Why is this "good news?"

 

[ROG27]

I was replying to just such a comparison, and arguing always with the qualifier of how things were being textually described.

Anyway, listening to the Playsyde audio from the conference, there are some very interesting technical details that seem to have been lost in some of the reporting. Most exciting, and surprising, is that Warhawk is already mixing Cell-rendered graphics with RSX rendered-graphics - its clouds are rendered with a volumetric software ray-tracer running off a SPU! Other SPU usage mentioned included procedural geometry generation for the ocean, animation, physics, collisions and particles. They talk a bit also about a significant proportion of their CPU budget being focussed on what they term "HD behavioural simulation" - large-scale combat simulation that's constantly evaluated. They're also keen to stress how despite its complexity, Cell's entry point can be quite accessible - none of their code uses assembly.

Also, one small detail about the Havok/Ninja Theory demo - Harrison went out of his way to say that the demo was using game production code and assets, it wasn't 'just' a tech demo. Similarly, the vehicle destruction demo was taken from a "game environment", from an unannounced upcoming game - talked about bullets augmenting the cars geometry as it is ripped to shreds etc.

Surprised to hear about mixed Cell/RSX rendering at this stage!

I've seen pictures on GAF, and while small...they are mighty impressive graphically. People expecting full-out CGI quality graphics might be disappointed...but people expecting that are morons. The assets from the pictures (in-game assets) look slightly better than anything I've seen on X360 to date (especially that car being blown to bits). From non-final development hardware (and without even the use of assembly coding or anywhere near a full grasp of the hardware), things are looking mighty good right now. PS3 won't have you playing CGI, but I think it will take things to the next level graphically...by means of physics, simulation, and animation, especially.

 

[Titanio]

Just to warn you, the Playsyde encoding seems to cut out after about 17 minutes - there's supposed to be 40-odd minutes. The demos mentioned above, and The Getaway, are the only ones I could listen in on. Hopefully BlimBlim might fix it

I cant decide if this is good news or bad news? It intially strikes me as a deficiency in RSX but youre not the only one to think its cool so i must be missing something. Why is this "good news?"

They explicitly went out of their way to say it was NOT due to any deficiency on RSX's part - that you don't have to do software rendering on Cell, but you can if you want to do even more. It's good news, because it's one manifestation of all that speculation we've had about Cell helping explicitly with rendering, and in a launch title to boot, which is quite surprising. It means the GPU doesn't have to worry about doing this, and thus can do more elsewhere, and given what they're using this for, they're likely saving some main memory bandwidth also (if they're talking about frame compositing twixt Cell and RSX). Cell is excellent with graphics in its own right, so it's quite encouraging to see it being leveraged in this way so soon.

 

[zRifle1z]

But you do need figures, and then someone skilled to interpret them for you. Lots of people didn't need figures to tell them that the PS2 or GC were pushing more polygons than the Xbox, or any amount of crazy stuff.

What they've shown is a feature of a game. It isn't obvious to anyone whether or not the 360 could do this level of work. I'm inclined to think it can, and once you store the data (e.g. tyre track), which both systems strike me as able to do, you then only have to test for collision and then friction against a small a small area of track per wheel to generate results. If the 360 can't do it exactly the same, it'll do something that's nigh on indistinguishable for the average gamer I'll bet my ... something or other on it.



But still, by the reasoning in your fist paragraph and to paraphrase "have you seen a game on the PS3 with that level of scale? I don't need numbers to tell me there isn't one."

Scale is all part of design. I remeber the Tower of Babel demo for DC where a camera flew towards a town from far away, eventually getting up to the buildings and then flying between streets (done in 2 weeks by AM2 btw). Did it refelect typical DC games? No, but they could have hyped it as the "scale" console I suppose.

I don't care much for what consoles are touted as. In what we've seen so far the PS3 hasn't differentiated itself from the 360. It's important for Sony that they somehow differentiate their hardware from Microsoft, selling the idea that you're buying into a better gaming experience than with their competitor. To do this they *need* you to believe that the magic Cell can open up incredible new depths of immersion that nothing else can, and that even though you can't see the difference in graphics (because maybe MS got the better GPU) it's there working its magic.

Everything in the way Sony has presented the PS3 since E3 last year has been to this end. It's a well coordinated, well rehearsed show. Even though all they're showing you is first some bogus pre-rendered CGI and a couple of tech demo's, then now, finally, some 360 looking stuff, people are actually starting to see the magic of Cell just like Sony intend.

Cell inside. Cell: the way it's meant to be played.

Cell may well allow for games you couldn't do on the 360, but we sure as hell haven't seen them yet and the difference (when we see it) won't be what it's being marketing as being. For now I'll take my Cell enhanced world with a shot of Emotion Synthesis, Blast Processing and little Matrix on the side.



Couldn't come to the same level? What level is that?! We don't even have a way of judging what level the PS3 is at yet, how detailed its games will actually be or how these games will pan out against the 2007 and beyond 360 games they'll actually be up against when they leave the presentaion demo circuit and hit the market.

Heh. I'm not saying that PS3 games couldn't eventully come to the level of Oblivion, but ...

QFT

I agree, and my point exactly.

Titanio I understand where you are coming from, and I agree to a certain extent. The problem lies in the fact that it is very easy for Sony to sit back and look at tech demos and game play of 360 to develop demos to exploit what was not shown by MS. They have had almost a year to do just that.

Look at the photos on the previous page. Motostorm for example. The effects described sound great, and may or may not be capable on the 360, but where is the rest of the game??

The picture with the car being shot? How much of this will be capable in an actual game? What will it matter? Will the game be fun?

I asked the same question when MS showed the car crash scene. I got my answer in Full Auto. Great effect not so great game. It was also answered in the Burnout Demo I downloaded in XBOX Arcade. Fantastic effect that made for a fun game.

I would truly love to see what the PS3 can do with an actual game thats all, and let that be the comparison to the other consoles. Not the smoke and mirrors. IMHO the Tech Demo's are getting old when that is all you try to base the system on.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Anyway, listening to the Playsyde audio from the conference, there are some very interesting technical details that seem to have been lost in some of the reporting. Most exciting, and surprising, is that Warhawk is already mixing Cell-rendered graphics with RSX rendered-graphics - its clouds are rendered with a volumetric software ray-tracer running off a SPU! Other SPU usage mentioned included procedural geometry generation for the ocean, animation, physics, collisions and particles.

Thanks for reporting. I've raytraced offline volumetric clouds and they're normally extra slow, so this sounds quite impressive to me. They idea of mixing Cell graphics with RSX graphics makes me go all fuzzy inside!

 

[Phil]

Look at the photos on the previous page. Motostorm for example. The effects described sound great, and may or may not be capable on the 360, but where is the rest of the game??

Perhaps this is the right time to point out that GDC is short for Game-Developer-Conference - hence, a conference aimed at developers to show what they've been working on, what they're doing with the hardware, how and why they are doing it to etc to gather ideas and methods and approaches. Perhaps this is the reason why "rest of the game" isn't there. This isn't E3 just yet. Just a thought worth mentioning.

Cheers Phil

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I would truly love to see what the PS3 can do with an actual game thats all, and let that be the comparison to the other consoles. Not the smoke and mirrors. IMHO the Tech Demo's are getting old when that is all you try to base the system on.

These aren't Sony tech demos (Well, Rubber Ducks is!). These aren't created just to exploit areas that haven't been demonstrated on XB360. These are games in development. They are the game's current engine producing visible results. What you're seeing in Motostorm and Warhawk etc. are what's being written to go into the product that'll be sold. Some bits may be cut and downscaled to make the final game, and some bits may be improved. But game companies aren't ina habit of producing graphics engines just for the fun of it. This isn't the same as PS2's tech demos; these are game demos.

 

[expletive]

Perhaps this is the right time to point out that GDC is short for Game-Developer-Conference - hence, a conference aimed at developers to show what they've been working on, what they're doing with the hardware, how and why they are doing it to etc to gather ideas and methods and approaches. Perhaps this is the reason why "rest of the game" isn't there. This isn't E3 just yet. Just a thought worth mentioning.

Cheers Phil

There's plenty of journalists there. Hype is hype, i dont think its worthwhile to dice it up into "GDC Hype" or "E3 Hype". Sony knows well everything shown is going to make it to the net splashed all over IGN, 1up, Gamespot...

So i think rifles point is a valid one in that we need to understand how all of this fits into the end-user experience. Up until now, we've only had Sony and developers telling us that it will, but of course we'd expect them to, theyre trying to sell consoles. Nothing can replace people playing actual games though.

 

[Carl B]

There's plenty of journalists there. Hype is hype, i dont think its worthwhile to dice it up into "GDC Hype" or "E3 Hype". Sony knows well everything shown is going to make it to the net splashed all over IGN, 1up, Gamespot...

Hype or not though, assuming those clouds really were the product of a ray-tracer running on an SPE, that's just awesome. Volumetric clouds are a perfect use for that extra SPE you may have laying around unused at this stage in the game.

 

[avaya]

No one covering the Factor 5 "Lair" Presentation that's going on right now?

 

[one]

Look at the photos on the previous page. Motostorm for example. The effects described sound great, and may or may not be capable on the 360, but where is the rest of the game??

The launch is what, 8 months away? Did we complain when MS just had talked about 'HD Era' at GDC 2005 without showing a game or demo?
See you at E3 2006!

 

[function]

The launch is what, 8 months away? Did we complain when MS just had talked about 'HD Era' at GDC 2005 without showing a game or demo?

But the PS3 is launching in Spring!!

Sorry, bad/out of date joke.

There were so never going to launch in spring it's not funny.

 

[Titanio]

No one covering the Factor 5 "Lair" Presentation that's going on right now?

I've no doubt there are people there who'll report on it but it only got started 20 minutes ago. I don't think you'll see live reports from this one

 

[avaya]

I've no doubt there are people there who'll report on it but it only got started 20 minutes ago. I don't think you'll see live reports from this one

OK thanks for the heads up.

 

[wco81]

On the region-free gaming, publishers will have to decide if it's worth delaying a product to get all the localizations in for a one-SKU/multilingual product.

Then they have to decide if it's worth distributing certain titles overseas.

Of course there will also be PAL/NTSC support issues they have to decide on.

Of course, as consumers, we could always import games with caveat emptor in mind.

It doesn't sound like there will be some region lockout mechanism. More that if a publisher isn't ready to distribute a certain game to all regions, there won't be the laguange or TV format support in place.

As for HDD use, you would think for something like Motorstorm with track deformations, the game would have to write to the HDD to keep track of them.

 

[fireshot]

Of course, and yet, there are countless of topics of discussions of the past 3 years discussing the potential benefits and strength of CELL - to assume that the physics aspect that is being supposedly pushed has somewhat to do with CELLs benefit and strength isn't exactly far-fetched is it?

At the end of the day, everyone will believe what they want to - and that contrary to all evidence. I think it's really up to you to believe what you want to. Fact is, these architectures (Xbox360/PS3) are quite different and naturally will feature different limits, different strengths, even different weaknesses that will force developers to use different approaches. Everything in engineering gives a trade-off and I expect the design-choices of talented developers on PS3 to lean on the physics part since its one of its key strengths.

Them discussed benefits are down to a quater (32/4 v 7/1). and with a gpu from nvidia's shelf, god knows how much strength is 'left'.