RancidLunchmeat said:
Misunderstanding you here, perhaps you already explained in a previous post that I missed.. but if the drive spinrates slow down gradually when the laser needs to read more to the inside of the disc, isn't that the same thing that the DVD drive does?
Not really. The spinrates of the DVD stay almost the same. So when the laser reads the layers and data at the outside of a DVD, the laser will pick up most of the data because of how the data is printed and structured on the disc, and because the outside of a DVD at speed x will provide more data than the inside of a disc at speed x.
First.. do you have any links to this? I think I see what you're proposing, and if that's true.. that's a huge benefit to BR, I'd just like to see some evidence.
You might want to google on 'CAV' and 'CLV'. I have this audio/video magazine here that explains some of it, but I cannot scan it. There is a small article on Gamespot talking about it too, but there should be more extensive stuff on the Net.
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek
Second.. I'm not really sure that I'm certain of what you are proposing. If the RPM spinrate is variable but the data transfer rates are constant, couldn't that also be expressed as handicapping the higher spinrates in order to maintain a constant data transfer rate?
If that is the case, then BR offers no benefit at all.. other than a constant data rate. Which might be nice to know and utilize, but I'd think far more game developers would rather have incredibly fast times at one end and slower times at the other (because.. we're talking essentially about things that can be segmented as 'load times'), rather than having a constant 'middle ground' delay for the entire process?
Well, CLV technique seems to be also available for the devs on PS3, so when you are looking for highs/lows they can use it whenever they need it. I don't know if the CAV technique handicaps max-BR speeds that greatly.
It makes sense of you look at it that way you are saying it, comparing to CLV, but I don't know if you can compare the two that easily. I'm not expert on this, Blu Ray has a slightly different design than traditional DVD/CD techniques in terms of lasers, reading and storing data.
I might be totally and completely misunderstanding what you are saying.. but if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that on a DVD games will load the first 5 chapters of the game quick fast and in a hurry, but the last 5 chapters in a game slowly and pathetically. The BR game will load all 10 chapters of the game at the same speed, which will be a median ground?
Well, you are exagerating it a bit, not saying speeds become pathetic at 8MB/s, that's still very decent, but it surely is misleading to say that 12x 15MB/s DVD speed is available for the entire disc. The average is 10-12MB/s the max is 15MB/s, and the minimum is 8MB/s.
Also note that seperately loaded game-chapters/levels are not always stored chronicly on an optical disc, that could also be completely random. I would say heavily accessed gamedata is stored at the fastest outside layers of a DVD, and the less important data would preferably we stored more and more to the slower inside.
On the other hand, when you are streaming, I think as a designer you just want ithe data to stick close together no matter where on the optical disc. Because you don't want the laser constantly flying over the disc using lot's of seeking-time looking for textures and objects when you instantly need them to be streamed onscreen, so in that case I would say 'geographicly close' data of the gamemaps, should also be 'geographicly' close to eachother on the disc to avoid seeking.
