Tap In said:
Yes, but that means not using new high-compression formats. If done this way the idea that next-gen can use more complex compression like JPEG2000 to reduce storage needs won't work. Or the data is stored on disc as JPEG2000 or whatever, loaded and decompressed into DXTC files in RAM, which adds that overheard I was talking about. And isn't this the case with PGR3, using a core for decompression? Not that you could do it any other way probably as the disc speed is more likely the bottleneck than the storage in this case. But moving on to more content in more ways, streaming+decompressing means a more overhead than just streaming, and the harder the compression, the more the overhead. This only won't be an issue if as you say streaming is periodic, but if a constant background task you will be eating up a quantity of CPU cycles. I've no idea how much though. If all of 5% of CPU time it's probably not worth fussing over, but if 30%, it'll be having an impact on what the rest of the game engine could be doing and gives a reason why greater storage and less concer for compression could be better.Dave Baumann said:
( )weaksauce said:
I disagree with downplaying the benefit of a larger storage size that Blu-ray discs offer, since I think with a budget 2-3 times the size of a developer could make something 2-3 times larger/better/more detailed than a comparable game made for a system with only DVD storage and this would be a Good Thing.Platon said:
I don't expect every surface to have a separate texture that players can go looking for, but importantly we won't get repeating textures. Take a look at GT4 for some painfully obvious little grass tiles. If you want the same game but without the repetition, you'd want to mix up maybe 5 tiles. You get the same problem with buildings where you'd want to at least mix up enough buildings that you don't get two identical ones in the same view (unless their MacDonald's!) and you'd want enough variety in the graffiti that there's more than 4 slogans on the walls. Requirements over this gen would thus be, in the texture department, maybe 4x the size and 3 layers (diffuse, normal, and lightmap) and 5x as many textures, for 60x the storage requirements...well, we can see compression is needed no matter what! The question is what, and how that eats into other resources. Some will be smaller, some will be compressed differently. The question is whether XB360 versions of the same game will have more repetitions in the grahpics department. Does it matter? It doesn't affect gameplay, but it is something the eye is drawn towards. Humans are very good at recognizing repeating patterns; in crowds, buildings, grass textures, it all stands out and gets in the way of the illusion.Platon said:
Shifty Geezer said:
I'm sick of these remarks. This is a discussion forum where we discuss points. There's no flat-out accepting DVD is enough for next-gen games, or flat-out accepting XB360 is nerf'd because it hasn't got BRD or HDDVD.TheChefO said:
My problem is thisTheChefO said:
Citing an example for your argument is well and good and part of debate. Telling people to stop trying to discuss the matter because you have stated your opinion isn't. After your Oblivion example, you should be open to people raising points about how accurate that is or isn't a basis for determining all/average disk requirements for next-gen games, not telling people to shut up discussing the matter. Having seen Oblivion I think that's not the be all and end all of what next-gen games will be looking like or needing. A load of generic caverns and medieval villages doesn't show the same level of requirements as a city-based game for example. As for procedural synthesis, saying it's going to fix all our problems is lovely, but how's about presenting at least some intelligent points how that can be done without heavily impacting the rest of the system? In a GTA/Getaway type game with up to say 30 people on screen at a time, driving down a street so new characters are appearing all the time, how much of an overhead is generating firgures on the fly going to be compared to loading pre-made characters off disc? Want to argue cost of producing a thousand different characters on that disc in the first place? Fine. How's about pre-generating those character procedurally offline and save them onto disk. Want to argue that compression will save the day and these thousand characters of 2MB models and textures can be compressed to useable sizes on a DVD? Okay, go do it. Give examples of current mesh compression schemes that are showing 100:1 compression or what have you. Don't cite a single freak procedurally generated FPS created for a competition as evidence that all games can be compressed and procedurally created to fit any size medium. Point of fact the world record for petrol consumption is in excess of 10,000 miles per gallon, but no-one in their right mind is going to reference that competition as what to expect from a normal-use automobile, Want to debate the relevance of a 2MB per character figure and suggest that in reality the most a game will need is 50 components that with randomized texture colouring and transformation at load time can provide all the people you could ever want with negligable processing overhead? Please do.
I didn't miss that. What I was trying to say was that whoever posted that probably confused some statement about data capacity for something about yields.
I wouldn't be too sure of that. The thing with FMV is that it tends to grow in size pretty linearly with the length of time. Whereas realtime cutscenes, the part that grows in size with time is the animation sequence, which is comparatively small to the cost of whole models. Certainly, the shorter the cutscene, the better off you might be with FMV. The main thing FMV gives you is animation fidelity that would be a pain in the neck in realtime.
If all you needed was *A* texture, that never needed modification or fine tuning or extra polish at the end, no one would care. When you need 5000, it can get a little iffy on the cost side of things.
TheChefO said:
Sis said:
