The relative signifigances of "Tilt" and Bluray.

[pipo]

...still IMO I think that for some things DS3 will still be better (eg traditional fighters).

Good point.

To add to my previous thoughts, since Sony's official line is something like 'we've dropped rumble in favour of tilt', I'm still not sure if I like that trade-off.

Like the guys at GS wrote in http://game-science.com/2006/09/23/tgs2006-impressions-jr/

One thing that was strongly apparent is the lack of vibration in the controller hurts FPS games pretty badly. You don’t notice you’re under fire as quickly with on-screen warnings as you do with vibration, but perhaps they can improve the on-screen reaction so that it’s more obvious.

I'd really like it to have both.

 

[ninzel]

I think the motion sensing is cool,it adds another dimension to control that will hopefully be put to good use. Button pushing is pretty unexciting and detached.

The Blue Ray I just see as the next logical step in increasing storage capacity. Cart-CD-DVD-BD-ROM/HD-DVD. Nothing new or unexpected.

 

[-=P3tRaN=-]

I think there are a lot of programmers in this very forum, that laugh at the way sony is presenting the bluray.

I mean a good coder is always a compact coder. thats a rule that was in existance way before sony even started to think about creating software.

spreading everything as much as possible in order to fill a disk and make a point about it, may have a significance for the average casual gamer,
but I am 100% certain that these tactics (BluRay: the heart of graphics of ps3) makes a few knowledgable people giggle a lot.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think there are a lot of programmers in this very forum, that laugh at the way sony is presenting the bluray. I mean a good coder is always a compact coder. thats a rule that was in existance way before sony even started to think about creating software. spreading everything as much as possible in order to fill a disk and make a point about it, may have a significance for the average casual gamer.

Actually the sorts of comments devs give (Faf for example) say 'we've been compressing for years for performance reasons and will continue to do so no mater how much storage you've got.' Those games using GBs of BRD storage are using compressed data as it loads 10x faster than not, and transfer speed is a large bottleneck. I think the thing to laugh at isn't Sony's posturing (which is quite silly) but people thinking because they've got all this space, they'll stop compressing assets and drive load times through the roof while totally gimping their streaming possibilities. It's amazing how quick armchair coders and analysts are to call devs lazy or claim Sony are causing independent developers to change their development habits just to market Sony's console.

 

[-=P3tRaN=-]

I am not an armchair analyst, if you are referring to me. I still write code sometimes, and have done that for years, but not for the game industry.

If you would like my bare-bones opinion on bluray, I'd gladly give to you in a pm, because I dont want to stir the forum.
it has to do with some patents expiring soon though, if you know what I mean.

also I never named a coder, or even call someone lazy. I wrote about knowledgable people that giggle in front of their monitors when they read "bluray: heart of graphics of PS3" on the official site.
so if you are indeed referring to me, I think you are very wrong.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

also I never named a coder, or even call someone lazy.

Your whole post was about devs using more disc space than needed, saying good programmers are compact coders and it's not needed. You don't need to name names. Saying that, you're inferring that every developer working on PS3 who is using more than a DVD's worth of space is a bad coder not writing compact code.

I agree with the comment that 'BRD makes PS3's graphics superior' is bogus, given that we're seeing XB360 games look mighty fine too. But the argument (not just from you, but others who complain about devs using BRD's space) that devs are lazy and not using compression, or deliberately bloating their products just to make them larger, is a daft one.

 

[PiNkY]

Well I'd bet quite a hefty sum that code density isn't really part of the storage problem. Obviously having larger discs lifts some constraints in terms of the amount of art assets you can use. But nevertheless you have to load this stuff into ram and these load times are probably a much larger bottleneck then total storage (even when streaming) this gen. Unified memory should be an advantage for the 360 when it comes to texture resolution (however I don't know what additional costs are associated with main memory (XDR) texturing on PS3).

 

[-=P3tRaN=-]

Your whole post was about devs using more disc space than needed, saying good programmers are compact coders and it's not needed. You don't need to name names. Saying that, you're inferring that every developer working on PS3 who is using more than a DVD's worth of space is a bad coder not writing compact code.

I agree with the comment that 'BRD makes PS3's graphics superior' is bogus, given that we're seeing XB360 games look mighty fine too. But the argument (not just from you, but others who complain about devs using BRD's space) that devs are lazy and not using compression, or deliberately bloating their products just to make them larger, is a daft one.

since you are pushing it, I'd say that it my personal opinion (again) than many devs if left alone, would not go for 1080p at least for now, for all the logical reasons.
be it lack of 1080p panels on the market, or the fact that every new hardware has a learning cycle in order to master, or other reasons that are really common sense.

and excuse me for saying this, but I do find the statement "a 4 gb single level on a fps => bluray required" a little funny.
and when I get the hardware and the game, then I will be able to say much more on this subject. or even giggle more about it.

pinky right above has a point of what the true "heart of graphics" might be. (not referring to the UMA 360 part, I did not make a console comparison)

but tell me shifty, since you seem like a very knowledgable person yourself, dont you agree that bluray has to do with patents expiring soon?

 

[Powderkeg]

and excuse me for saying this, but I do find the statement "a 4 gb single level on a fps => bluray required" a little funny.
and when I get the hardware and the game, then I will be able to say much more on this subject. or even giggle more about it.

I too find that almost laughable. Am I honestly supposed to believe a single level of Lair is more detailed that the entire Elder Scrolls Oblivion game?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

since you are pushing it, I'd say that it my personal opinion (again) than many devs if left alone, would not go for 1080p at least for now, for all the logical reasons.
be it lack of 1080p panels on the market, or the fact that every new hardware has a learning cycle in order to master, or other reasons that are really common sense.

1080p isn't the issue I'm contesting. Disc storage is.

and excuse me for saying this, but I do find the statement "a 4 gb single level on a fps => bluray required" a little funny.

Why? I mean, if you're using 4 GB for a level, you're going to need something bigger than DVD, no? I think what you find funny is the idea that they're using 4GBs for a level. Perhaps that isn't an accurate figure. However, that's not the only company saying they're using BRD's capacity.

pinky right above has a point of what the true "heart of graphics" might be. (not referring to the UMA 360 part, I did not make a console comparison)

I've no argument at all about heart of graphics or whatnot. I'm just wondering why you think anyone using more than 9 GBs of disc space is lazy or deliberately bloating their products? That's my only issue and only reason I'm posting here. I think it wrong to say developers creating games that are over a DVD in capacity are either being lazy, incompetant, or deliberately oversizing their games at Sony's bidding.

but tell me shifty, since you seem like a very knowledgable person yourself, dont you agree that bluray has to do with patents expiring soon?

I've no idea. I'm not at all knowledgeable on optical disc technologies, let alone patents!

 

[SPM]

First I'll bring up my thoughts about the controller. From what we've seen and heard about the 'sixaxis', it appears to have all the functionality (speaking from a motion sensing perspective) of the wiimote minus the ability to detect it's position in space.

Anyone know how Wii controller can detect it's position in space? It is possible to do this with some sort of positional sensor using three wireless or IR transmitters to fix it's position in 3D space. This would probably be too expensive though. More likely it uses accelerometers and integrates acceleration with respect to time to keep track of position, with some sort of zeroing over time overcome drift problems - somewhat like aircraft Inertial Navigation Systems. If this is the case, then PS3 should be able to do the same provided it's accuracy is sufficient. 6 axis means 3 axis rotations and 3 axis displacement.

Also for the tilt, it is possible that the controllers have a ring laser gyroscope, which would give a permanent fixed reference for rotations, however I think it is going to be too expensive. More likely the controller measures rotational acceleration and integrates it with respect to time to get the rotational position, again with some sort of zeroing over time to overcome drift problems.

This is all my conjecture of course, but it would be nice is anyone has hard informaton on this.

 

[-=P3tRaN=-]

but tell me shifty, since you seem like a very knowledgable person yourself, dont you agree that bluray has to do with patents expiring soon?

I've no idea. I'm not at all knowledgeable on optical disc technologies, let alone patents!

I'm no specialised expert either.
but you should find some interest on my pm

cheers

 

[nonamer]

Fpr one you are just talking about FPS, and here you may have reason (cant say has I never tried it), but we should confess that for first gen titles the things look very promissing even on the FPS area.

But what about a Tennis game, or racing, or sports, fighting there is many kinds of games that are better even on last gen controlers that most, IMO, can only improve with this aditions this even before of talking about things that cant just be possible with a M+KB (as simple as a Wiisports like things). Anyway you cant even say that a M+KB is better overall than a PS2/XB/GC controler and it will be much harder to do that over a DS3/Wiimote.

I was basically refering to the pointing aspect of the Wiimote. So perhaps there was some confusion in that if you mean all controls in general then of course there is no clear winner. However, in the pointing and motion detection aspect it's pretty clear that Mouse + Kb > Wiimote > SixAxis.

About Wiimote being better than DS3 I thought you are refering to the new features on both (as in the Wiimote they are indeed better and does have more, like the pointer), still IMO I think that for some things DS3 will still be better (eg traditional fighters).

Indeed. Outside of motion detection it's not as clear.

 

[thatdude90210]

So with 256MB of memory for graphics, and 4GB of data for the level... how does that work? Will there be lots of "loading" screens? And supposedly games are installed into the harddrive for faster loading, right? If so, 20GB isn't much if you have to install games into it... doesn't seem to leave much room for demos and arcade games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So with 256MB of memory for graphics, and 4GB of data for the level... how does that work? Will there be lots of "loading" screens?

Consider a hypothetical building occupies 4 MB in a game. In a city of 1000 buildings, that's 4 GB of data. Now when playing the game, if you can see 50 buildings, you only need to have in RAM 200 MB of data. As you move around the city, buildings you can't see any more are removed from RAM and the new building you can see loaded in their place. This is called 'streaming' - loading and unloading data as needed. This is also why the idea of developers using uncompressed assets just to fill up the drive is ridiculous. If you can load 10 MB/s, and your data is uncompressed at 4 MB a building, you can load 2.5 buildings a second. If compressed to 400 kb per building, you can load 25 buildings a second. Streaming data needs compressed data as decompressing is faster than straight loads. Devs have used compression for years and will continue to do so. No-one is going to use uncompressed data and let the loading times grow to astronomical proportions for no advantage, just to make for big games to promote a larger drive capacity (though there may be compromises, such as an uncompressed megatexture needing random access. Dunno how that might pan out).

And supposedly games are installed into the harddrive for faster loading, right? If so, 20GB isn't much if you have to install games into it... doesn't seem to leave much room for demos and arcade games.

I don't think there's been any word on a need to install games to the HDD, and even if so, that's got nothing to do with the relevance of BRD providing better graphics. That's a matter of useability of the PS3.

 

[Squeak]

Anyone know how Wii controller can detect it's position in space? It is possible to do this with some sort of positional sensor using three wireless or IR transmitters to fix it's position in 3D space. This would probably be too expensive though. More likely it uses accelerometers and integrates acceleration with respect to time to keep track of position, with some sort of zeroing over time overcome drift problems - somewhat like aircraft Inertial Navigation Systems. If this is the case, then PS3 should be able to do the same provided it's accuracy is sufficient. 6 axis means 3 axis rotations and 3 axis displacement.

Also for the tilt, it is possible that the controllers have a ring laser gyroscope, which would give a permanent fixed reference for rotations, however I think it is going to be too expensive. More likely the controller measures rotational acceleration and integrates it with respect to time to get the rotational position, again with some sort of zeroing over time to overcome drift problems.

This is all my conjecture of course, but it would be nice is anyone has hard informaton on this.

It's very simple, it works basically like an optical mouse.
The wiimote has a IR camera that sees the sensorbars two light spots (the sensorbar doesn't have any sensors, it just some IR diodes in a rectangle.).
By looking at how the spots shift in the x,y coordinates and how they approach and go away from each other (z), it can determine how it's being moved (It can probably also detect accurate tilt by looking at the two spots).

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Consider a hypothetical building occupies 4 MB in a game. In a city of 1000 buildings, that's 4 GB of data. Now when playing the game, if you can see 50 buildings, you only need to have in RAM 200 MB of data. As you move around the city, buildings you can't see any more are removed from RAM and the new building you can see loaded in their place.

Now consider this:
Artists usually won't have the time to model and texture 1000 individual buildings. They'll create building blocks, generic textures, and re-use as many of these as possible. A few simple tricks are enough to build an entire city with only 15-20 types of houses; things like different lightmaps, or as simple as showing the other side of the building from the player's point of view.

There are of course some exeptions, for example PGR3 must use a lot of individual textures for all the buildings they've copied. But I can assure you that for fictional enviroments, the above mentioned method is the prefered solution.

Oh, and streaming isn't that easy to implement...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Now consider this:
Artists usually won't have the time to model and texture 1000 individual buildings. They'll create building blocks, generic textures, and re-use as many of these as possible. A few simple tricks are enough to build an entire city with only 15-20 types of houses; things like different lightmaps, or as simple as showing the other side of the building from the player's point of view.

I don't disagree with any of that. I was just explaining how a 4GB level can be used when you have less than 4 GB RAM. Though it is worth pointing out that for whatever reason, R:FoM is using lots of GBs of data and they're not alone. I'll leave it to others to decide whether they're being recklessly inefficient or Sony are sinking stupid money into the content creation of or whatever other possible explanations.

 

[Tagrineth]

Who remembers Panzer Dragoon Saga?

 

[-tkf-]

I think there are a lot of programmers in this very forum, that laugh at the way sony is presenting the bluray.

I mean a good coder is always a compact coder. thats a rule that was in existance way before sony even started to think about creating software.

Why is it so hard to understand that with more space the devlopers will use this space?

If your aim is a SL-DVD, your game will fit on that, if your aim is DL-DVD your game will fit on that, if you want to make a 3 disc SL-DVD game because of better streaming then you do that.

Whatever you pick there may be compromises all depending on your type of game.

If you have 25GB you aim for that or you don´t have to worry about it and you can use your resources for something else.

For all that matters the 360 could have a CD-ROM drive and the argument would still be the same.

Making up arguments that 640kb is enough is pointless, how can more space not be a good thing? how can it not end up benefitting the gamers? Only in this Console war could anyone say that Blu-Ray isn´t gonna benefit games.