Not been much discussion on this topic so far. I'm just wondering how it'll work on the system. With video, it seems the resolution is set through the dashboard only and not inside each game title as is the case today (assuming such settings are possible).
What about sound? We know x360 is able to do 5.1 dolby surround of the digital variety, and I believe it also supports analog pro-logic 2 encoding. So is this preference also set through the dashboard?
What do people think will happen with sound on x360, considering it is now entirely CPU-driven. It was claimed by a certain member of this forum, that the original xbox, courtesy of its hardwired and programmable DSPs would have far better surround sound than gamecube with its relatively paltry 81MHz 16-bit DSP. Well, how much of all those supposed capabilities were really ever exploited, and how much CPU power does this - and other - members think devs will dedicate for advanced sound effects on x360?
What we get most of the time on the PC is pretty much directional audio where sound behind the player comes out of the back speakers etc, with some reverb or such for particular indoors locations (houses, caves etc). And maybe occlusions if there's an obstruction inbetween the source and the player. All the checkboxes on creative's soundcards in particular are mostly unused by the vast majority of developers, so one has but to wonder what can, and will be done on x360. Particulary if advanced sound processing should prove itself to be computationally costly.
While simple mixing of even a huge number of channels will not consume a very large amount of on-paper bandwidth, many small accesses from a large number of locations will lead to lots of page breaks on main memory accesses, inefficiencies in transfers across the the FSB, etc, which might have a noticeable impact on overall system performance. Thus, it makes me curious.
Any x360 dev input on this and any other related subject I may have overlooked would of course be extra appreciated.
What about sound? We know x360 is able to do 5.1 dolby surround of the digital variety, and I believe it also supports analog pro-logic 2 encoding. So is this preference also set through the dashboard?
What do people think will happen with sound on x360, considering it is now entirely CPU-driven. It was claimed by a certain member of this forum, that the original xbox, courtesy of its hardwired and programmable DSPs would have far better surround sound than gamecube with its relatively paltry 81MHz 16-bit DSP. Well, how much of all those supposed capabilities were really ever exploited, and how much CPU power does this - and other - members think devs will dedicate for advanced sound effects on x360?
What we get most of the time on the PC is pretty much directional audio where sound behind the player comes out of the back speakers etc, with some reverb or such for particular indoors locations (houses, caves etc). And maybe occlusions if there's an obstruction inbetween the source and the player. All the checkboxes on creative's soundcards in particular are mostly unused by the vast majority of developers, so one has but to wonder what can, and will be done on x360. Particulary if advanced sound processing should prove itself to be computationally costly.
While simple mixing of even a huge number of channels will not consume a very large amount of on-paper bandwidth, many small accesses from a large number of locations will lead to lots of page breaks on main memory accesses, inefficiencies in transfers across the the FSB, etc, which might have a noticeable impact on overall system performance. Thus, it makes me curious.
Any x360 dev input on this and any other related subject I may have overlooked would of course be extra appreciated.
