Finally a voice of reason
Some people forget just how old and crappy both systems are
QFT
The Technology of GTA IV/RDR *Rage Engine*
- Thread starter babcat
- Start date
Finally a voice of reason
QFT
There's quiet a discussion going on. Sadly as expected almost complete silence of Rockstar in regard to their tech prevents any factual discussion.
As for Joker statement one can read it as he wants ie the Ps3 is not superior or the 360 is a bit better, as N_B put it he could make the his statement clearer but as long as Sony first party developers deliver perception won't change.
Actually the most important part in this discussion and in Joker454 is indeed about perception. I don't know how systems are perceived in US but I can speak for France, the word on the street (many forum (sorry I'm an internet freak...), discussion with random people) is that the PS3 has quiet the lead over the 360. Actually lately things have gotten even worse and lot of people think that the 360 is maxed out whereas PS3 will still deliver more and more. As I said I don't know for others countries till by watching Joker454's attitude I feel like this trend is not France specific.
I think it's the reason behind most of his statements, it's not to start wars about a 100x100 difference in pixels count but I guess he tries to change how the 360 hardware is perceived at least on this very forum. N_B put it nicely it's a lost battle as long as Sony delivers but actually it's imho worse one or two games highly impressive games on the 360 would change nothing simply because whether the 360 is a bit better or not the differences with top of the line Sony product will be perceived as marginal by the intended market, it would also a bit too late to change anything.
This discussion should happened imho in the general forum instead of here because it has more to do with marketing than with technical considerations, perception about the 360 most likely will never change, it's something Ms will have to consider for future: expectations for a given product are set at its launch that's it.
As for Joker statement one can read it as he wants ie the Ps3 is not superior or the 360 is a bit better, as N_B put it he could make the his statement clearer but as long as Sony first party developers deliver perception won't change.
Actually the most important part in this discussion and in Joker454 is indeed about perception. I don't know how systems are perceived in US but I can speak for France, the word on the street (many forum (sorry I'm an internet freak...), discussion with random people) is that the PS3 has quiet the lead over the 360. Actually lately things have gotten even worse and lot of people think that the 360 is maxed out whereas PS3 will still deliver more and more. As I said I don't know for others countries till by watching Joker454's attitude I feel like this trend is not France specific.
I think it's the reason behind most of his statements, it's not to start wars about a 100x100 difference in pixels count but I guess he tries to change how the 360 hardware is perceived at least on this very forum. N_B put it nicely it's a lost battle as long as Sony delivers but actually it's imho worse one or two games highly impressive games on the 360 would change nothing simply because whether the 360 is a bit better or not the differences with top of the line Sony product will be perceived as marginal by the intended market, it would also a bit too late to change anything.
This discussion should happened imho in the general forum instead of here because it has more to do with marketing than with technical considerations, perception about the 360 most likely will never change, it's something Ms will have to consider for future: expectations for a given product are set at its launch that's it.
I think there is a thread about multi-platform development. If we bring different games into this thread, we may as well move the discussion there.
As for RDR, while a game like RDR is impressive in scope, it should never be forgotten that it's been five year in the making. With the biggest part of the work being art and content creation, there has been little room to 'redo' the engine with modern insights into multi-platform or even specific platform development in mind.
As for RDR, while a game like RDR is impressive in scope, it should never be forgotten that it's been five year in the making. With the biggest part of the work being art and content creation, there has been little room to 'redo' the engine with modern insights into multi-platform or even specific platform development in mind.
*hugs*
The lower res framebuffer may be making the dither pattern that much more noticeable. QAA ought to have smoothed it out somewhat otherwise compared to "plain" 2xMSAA.
It would be fewer polygons to render, for instance. (pardon the pun) Though I find it difficult to believe grass itself is difficult... might be a combination of things (rest of the scene, lighting the grass, fillrate, bandwidth...) - grass being the easiest to remove. *shrug*
Here's the problem I have with this. Other than the Uncharted information, all of this was known already. If you check back on this thread before it was necro'd you'd see all of it (including speculation as to whether SPUs could handle some of the load from the RSX). There's been nothing new brought to the table. It's why I say most of this is established fact.
The only new information that can be brought to the table is in regards to the evolving multi-plat game landscape. But we dismiss this new information under the heading of 'they made different decisions and are justified in doing so'. The first part is a given, but the second part we accept as an article of faith. We see it claimed so often, but don't see it backed up. Rather, what we do see is circular logic repeating how justified the technical compromises are based on the architectural differences of the systems. Without facts, what we have isn't a technical discussion but rather opinion layered on opinion.
With all due respect, Graham, how smart developers are and how hard they work has no bearing on a technical discussion (note that this applies to lazy devs comments too). All we have to judge whether they did a good job or not is on the end result.At the end of the day, I can bet you that some exceptionally smart people worked exceptionally hard for an exceptionally long time getting both the PS3 and 360 looking and running as good as they do. Some people forget just how old and crappy both systems are
dragonelite
Veteran
I believe it has more to do with a constant streaming world instead of loading levels.
A lot of people still mix open world with sandbox games.
From my understanding sandbox games are more big open levels where you can do your own thing.
Not sure if this helped you.
Offhand, I think there's two importnat components to a game being "open world". One is streaming rather than loading sections, for a continuous progression, and the other is the possibiltt to turn, face and move in any direction at any given time for a decent distance, such that the engine has to be capable of you running two blocks north, east, south or west at any point, in contrast to a game that knows you can only move north as the other directions have been conveniently blocked with rubble.
Games like Uncharted 2 know where the player is going, so can allocate more resources to any given are. A game that's open world like GTA won't box the player in so much, so the engine has to worry about far more possibilities and so be unable to provide as much detail to a given area (until we get Megatexture!).
Games like Uncharted 2 know where the player is going, so can allocate more resources to any given are. A game that's open world like GTA won't box the player in so much, so the engine has to worry about far more possibilities and so be unable to provide as much detail to a given area (until we get Megatexture!).
I just didn't want to be treated like mushroom (kept in the dark, and fed sh*t).
True/ But sadly there's very little more technical information that can be brought to the table. Without seeing their code, or watching a presentation describing their engine, we don't know what limits they are hitting in these boxes and can't speculate as to whether those limits could be addressed in other ways. eg. We know about PS3's MSAA limits and why it typically lacked the same level of AA in cross-platform titles, but we never had the opportunity to look at SPU usage and consider theoretical alternative AA strategies. Now we have MLAA and we can start speculating if a cross-platform game like RDR could feature it, but without knowing how their SPU code runs, we can't fairly comment. Some claim they should be using SPUs to do MLAA. Some claim the SPUs are tied up with just rendering the game as it. We can't be sure either way, and a lot of discussion is thus faith-based.
The assumption that this certain game could have been done significantly better (ie. at 720p resolution) on the PS3, but Rockstar has not cared / is incompetent, is just as much speculation, too.
Yet some people state it as a fact and pull out some crazy explanations and conclusions to justify this point. That is what I have a problem with.
Yet some people state it as a fact and pull out some crazy explanations and conclusions to justify this point. That is what I have a problem with.
Again, if you read carefully, I don't think anyone mentioned RDR HD for PS3 here. No one outside knows (yet ?). Some are asking for root causes, some are wondering if the developers work hard enough, how would the PS3 visual look like, some are asking whether the developers can use specific techniques in the game, etc.
Would a multiplayer map be considered "open world", ie a multiplayer map from BFBC2? Or is it just not big enough?
Certainly, you're absolutely right! Both are speculation. I've given my take on it, and it's OT for this thread -- I'd assume that the opposite opinion would also be considered OT for this thread. And as far as I can tell, there's nothing to discuss here to prove it either way.
Billy Idol
Legend
Good question! Or for instance look at the Killzone 2MP maps - there are some ultra huge ones with massive draw distance (I am thinking about this brownish map, the one where at the ground you have this sand constantly waving
yrrhus Rise iirc ) - it is so ultra huge, no pop in superb graphics massive action/particle 16+ people playing + physics!Here is a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRnt0NKsB2w
(edit: at about 00:50 when he looks across the map you get a glipmse how large it is!)
So where is the difference to an open world game?
Which was a major contributing factor to the crappiness of this thread, and other similar major game discussions.
Not big enough. Though 'big enough' is the wrong term. You could have an area the size of, say, the largerst MAG map, but full of building you can visit full of unique content you can use. You couldn't fit all of that in memory at once, so the engine would have to fetch the bits of the world you could see as you come across them. Walk down a street and it needs load in any of the buildings either side of you whether you enter them or not, because you don't want 5 seconds standing in the doorway as it loads. And then as the junction it needs to have every road available to show you, and then the houses you may enter, or the street behind you if you turn around. In contrast, a great big map of streets that form a simple grid, with no house interiors and repetitive exteriors, requires a much simpler engine and the developers could fit more detail into a less varied set of assets.
Just out of curiosity, would MLAA work in a game like this? The game is using A2C, which from my understanding requires MSAA, or can the MLAA perform the same kind of sampling? Would they be able to use quincunx AA for A2C on foliage and MLAA for other geometry, or is that a huge loss in efficiency?
Just curious what the advantages and disadvantages of MLAA are. I don't remember exactly how God of War 3 handed foliage, but I know there wasn't much in the game. There are those vines on rock faces that you climb, but I can't remember how they're rendered.
Just to be clear, I'm not speculating on whether they have idle time to perform the MLAA or not, just whether MLAA could work in a game like this if you had the resources, and what the drawbacks or considerations might be. There really is a huge amount of ground foliage and it is drawn for extremely long distances. I wish I had a capture card. There is one cliff side over a long stretch of desert, and you can see ground foliage and cacti as far as the eye can see. There is some distance where things start to blur a little, I imagine to hide LOD transitions, but that distance is very very far away.
Just curious what the advantages and disadvantages of MLAA are. I don't remember exactly how God of War 3 handed foliage, but I know there wasn't much in the game. There are those vines on rock faces that you climb, but I can't remember how they're rendered.
Just to be clear, I'm not speculating on whether they have idle time to perform the MLAA or not, just whether MLAA could work in a game like this if you had the resources, and what the drawbacks or considerations might be. There really is a huge amount of ground foliage and it is drawn for extremely long distances. I wish I had a capture card. There is one cliff side over a long stretch of desert, and you can see ground foliage and cacti as far as the eye can see. There is some distance where things start to blur a little, I imagine to hide LOD transitions, but that distance is very very far away.