What is stopping Next-Gen developers from using High-Res textures?

[Druga Runda]

Things will get better. Hopefully...

next genereration

 

[pc999]

That page has been updated several times since then. If it no longer applied I think Epic would have it removed already (like some other stuff they removed).

Thanks, didnt realised that.

BTW I also do agree that lighting and even more shadows is what give the bigger impression in a image, not only games but for reallistc painting or some more sensations/emotional effects like it is used in sec XVIII/XIX, movie special effects, image illusions that is one really important thing, I do hope for a big improvement (or meybe even some more specialized HW for that, in Rev and/or RSX).

Also as scooby_dooby show (pick also eg UC2) imagine what could they do with even 256 mgs of RAm.

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

This is from Unreal Technology page:

Next-generation consoles may require reducing texture resolution by 2X, and low-end PC's up to 4X, depending on texture count and scene complexity.

Yes but do remember that was put on there technology page WAAAYYYYY before the Spec's of the Next Gen's were known.

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

RAM-wise, next-gen consoles are the equivalent of a 3-4 year-old top-notch PC. Look at the texture resolution for top games from back then.)

I have and frankly they dont even compare to the Next Gen's. NO PC game has even got texture's remotely close to the one's in Kameo.

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/8132/picture1317a1uq.jpg

 

[Guilty Bystander]

Pfff... what a total nonsense thread.

If you would have ever played Kameo you should know to stuff it.
Certain textures might be 1024x1024 but the majority are 2048x2048 or 4096x4096.

Still name me one PC title boosting 2048x2048 textures.
Not even 3Dmark2005 breaks the 1024x1024 PC rule

 

[cloudscapes]

Condemned as well, very nice hi-res textures.

cloudscapes - I don't see how you can compare PC ram to Console ram. Look what xbox did with just 64mb. What PC w/ 64mb(combined!) could ever run gfx like FarCry or Splinter Cell 3? Hell, SC: 3 has really nice fairly hi-res textures and it's on a 64mb console.

If they can do this with 64mb:
http://xboxmedia.ign.com/xbox/image/article/613/613045/new-chaos-theory-levels-revealed-20050512000738631.jpg
http://xboxmedia.ign.com/xbox/image/article/592/592847/tom-clancys-splinter-cell-chaos-theory-20050302044530766.jpg

I expect extremely nice looking textures with 512, PC comparisons notwithstanding.

I know I can compare PC to console ram because this is something I have to do all the time at work. It's what my supervisors tell me as well, and also pure logic. We simply don,t have as much RAM on the consoles as a reccomended-settings PC, so we scale them down, or else we bust the limit.

By the way, those aren't x-box screenshots. Official screenshots are almost always enhanced, and these definatelly are.

 

[cloudscapes]

Next gen memory capacity may be the equivalent of a 3 year old high end PC, but its performance and more importantly its usage isnt an equivalent at all. Development on an open system like a PC vs. the closed system of a console isnt very analogous at all. You're always going to get much more effecient usage of resources on a console, and that certainly includes memory.

I agree completelly that the usage isn't the same between a console and a PC, but in most cases it can't be too different either. Consoles are not always perfectly optimized. Very often a game has to be developped for multiple consoles with the same engine in paralel. Compensations need to be made very often because the product is developped over a very short period of time, so they usually don't have the time to create four different systems of loading textures from memory, or other optimizations.

The texture quality difference between consoles and PC aren't scalable RAM meg to RAM meg, I wasn't tryign to say that, but it still has a huge impact, and is almost always the biggest limiting factor in texture quality.

 

[AlNom]

Still name me one PC title boosting 2048x2048 textures.
Not even 3Dmark2005 breaks the 1024x1024 PC rule

UT2004

Doom 3 has a few 2kx2k and 1kx1k normal maps for the larger enemies.

 

[cloudscapes]

I have and frankly they dont even compare to the Next Gen's. NO PC game has even got texture's remotely close to the one's in Kameo.

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/8132/picture1317a1uq.jpg

That is indeed a great-looking texture!

You'll find exceptions everywhere, depending on how many resources are used for other parts of the game. It's all about what the devs sacrificed to achieve that level of detail in that texture. It's a trade-off.

It doesn't change the fact that the next gen consoels have 512MB of RAM. A megabyte is the same as a megabyte from two generations ago, that hasn't changed! Compression techniques also haven't changed much, with the exception of 3Dc (i think). DXT is still DXT.

Dev houses can do the math that you simply can't fit as much in 512MB as you can in 1280MB + scratch disk, so they make a decision to reduce the quality of textures, reduce the bitrate of sounds, reduce the number of triangles, reduce the number of animation keyframes, etc. Some improvements have been made, but not enough to make a 512MB console game look the same as a 1280MB PC game that fully utilizes the memory.

- RAM is the reason the detail will be lower.

- That won't stop some devs from putting emphasis in some elements to bring it out.

- If they were to make a PC version of Kameo and had time to redo the art to utilize the extra RAM, then it would look considerably more detailed. You can't dissagree with that, no matter how good Kameo looks on the 360.

- For those times when the PC version's textures don't look too different from the console version's, I think this is the reason (in most cases). Often, when a game is made for both PC and console, they utilize the art assets from the console version and use the same stuff for the PC version, maybe upgrading a small percentage. POP3 is the perfect example of this. There simply isn't enough time to upgrade everything.

 

[Hardknock]

I have and frankly they dont even compare to the Next Gen's. NO PC game has even got texture's remotely close to the one's in Kameo.

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/8132/picture1317a1uq.jpg

You're right, I took that picture too

I haven't seen any textures in any game that compare to the ones in Kameo and PDZ. Rare really outdid themselves with the limited time they had with the system. Which is really why I'm disappointed in everybody elses output. I'm not sure if it some technical hurdle or just asset creation.

One thing of note, to my knowledge there have only been 2 or 3 PC games in the past 2 years that have had HDR lighting (far cry with HDR Patch and SplinterCell3) or parallax mapping (F.e.a.r for bullet holes ONLY and SplinterCell3), while out of the 18 X360 launch games we already have 2 or 3 that have HDR lighting + Parallax mapping. That's already a pretty big step up if you ask me.

I don't think Ram between the two is directly comparable. I remember Cliffy saying with 512MBs of ram he'd be able to get over 1GB with compression techniques...

 

[see colon]

Not even 3Dmark2005 breaks the 1024x1024 PC rule

3DM05 uses 2048*2048 textures for DST/R32F depth textures.

MDK used non-square textures that were 1200 pixels wide.

 

[cloudscapes]

..F.e.a.r for bullet holes ONLY...

I don't think Ram between the two is directly comparable. I remember Cliffy saying with 512MBs of ram he'd be able to get over 1GB with compression techniques...

mmmm... there are a few walls in FEAR that have paralax too. anyways, it's true there isn't that much.

With 512MB RAM, you could get over 1GB with compression techniques, for sure! With 1024MB RAM however, you could get double as well, so that argument is irrelevant, IMHO.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I know I can compare PC to console ram because this is something I have to do all the time at work. It's what my supervisors tell me as well, and also pure logic. We simply don,t have as much RAM on the consoles as a reccomended-settings PC, so we scale them down, or else we bust the limit.

By the way, those aren't x-box screenshots. Official screenshots are almost always enhanced, and these definatelly are.

Well, it seems to me that to get comparable image quality for a console like the XBOX(with 64mb), you need a computer with at least 256mb of ram, and a 32mb memory card, for example games like far-cry instints, splinter cell 3, or halo 2. They would never run on a PC with anything elss than 256+ mb of total system ram(gpu included).

If we extend that logic, then these next gen system should be able to pull off image quality comparable to what we'll eventually see on machines with 2GB+ total system ram(gpu included).

Maybe the textures won't 'technically' be as high res, because I know what you're saying, a mb is a mb, but they will stil be able to pull off graphics that will only be possible on PC's with much greater amounts of ram than 512mb.

 

[cloudscapes]

Well, it seems to me that to get comparable image quality for a console like the XBOX(with 64mb), you need a computer with at least 256mb of ram, and a 32mb memory card, for example games like far-cry instints, splinter cell 3, or halo 2. They would never run on a PC with anything elss than 256+ mb of total system ram(gpu included).

If we extend that logic, then these next gen system should be able to pull off image quality comparable to what we'll eventually see on machines with 2GB+ total system ram(gpu included).

Maybe the textures won't 'technically' be as high res, because I know what you're saying, a mb is a mb, but they will stil be able to pull off graphics that will only be possible on PC's with much greater amounts of ram than 512mb.

Yes and no.

Windows itself uses a fair bit of resources. The XBOX itself uses a minimalist W2K kernel but its memory footprint is so low that it's practically not an issue. Because Windows' memory managment is so bad, it will swap even if you aren't using all the available RAM. Taking all this into consideration, if we were to install a minimalist kernel onto a PC, I have no doubt the devs could get Halo 2 to work on a 64MB shared-memory PC. Obviously, I can't proove it though.

Extending that logic like you described isn't fair though. The 256MB PC that would bearly run Halo 2 (if at all) would be because of Windows' swapping and hogging of resources. However, once we go over a certain amount (like 768MB RAM) suddenly it's a non-issue (except FEAR and a few other recent titles). As soon as we cross that barier where Windows has enough memory to run properly along with a game, then it's fine. Multiplying that number by four just because Halo 2 (which runs perfectly on the 64MB XBOX) will only run on a 256MB PC isn't the right way to calculate it, because of the Windows resource issue mentioned above.

And finally I perfectly agree with your last paragraph, but also for the same Windows resource issue reason. You're going to need more RAM to compensate for Window's (and background processes) resource-eating, but not *that* much, if the original art assets are kept intact and not upgraded.

 

[AlNom]

Well, it seems to me that to get comparable image quality for a console like the XBOX(with 64mb), you need a computer with at least 256mb of ram, and a 32mb memory card, for example games like far-cry instints, splinter cell 3, or halo 2. They would never run on a PC with anything elss than 256+ mb of total system ram(gpu included).

Actually, it's interesting to note that Halo PC takes well more than double the amount of RAM when running.

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

All this about Next Gens getting cut down textures due to only 512meg of RAM is complete Bull shit, Try showing me a PC game that looks as good as Halo2 or Forza that only needs a total of 64meg of RAM for every thing.

Console's can STREAM.

When a PC loads a particular section of a map, HL2 for example it loads EVERYTHING it needs for that section, even the data and textures that you wont see for 20-25mins. Console's on the other hand only load what they need to and thus can get the same rusults with far less RAM.

How many PC gamea actually COMPLETELY fill a 256me GPU????

NONE.

Doom3, HL2, FarCry, FEAR more than likely dont even fill a 256meg card on MAX settings

 

[scooby_dooby]

Extending that logic like you described isn't fair though. The 256MB PC that would bearly run Halo 2 (if at all) would be because of Windows' swapping and hogging of resources. However, once we go over a certain amount (like 768MB RAM) suddenly it's a non-issue (except FEAR and a few other recent titles). As soon as we cross that barier where Windows has enough memory to run properly along with a game, then it's fine. Multiplying that number by four just because Halo 2 (which runs perfectly on the 64MB XBOX) will only run on a 256MB PC isn't the right way to calculate it, because of the Windows resource issue mentioned above.

I hear what you are saying, as you increase the amount of ram, the impact of windows becomes less and less. BUt this assumes windows resource needs are static.

Windows resources will also rise, no? Windows Vista is around the corner, so PC's again are going to need even more ram in the future, the cycle continues...

 

[Hardknock]

All this about Next Gens getting cut down textures due to only 512meg of RAM is complete Bull shit, Try showing me a PC game that looks as good as Halo2 or Forza that only needs a total of 64meg of RAM for every thing.

That is more a credit to the developers, not the actual hardware.

Console's can STREAM.

When a PC loads a particular section of a map, HL2 for example it loads EVERYTHING it needs for that section, even the data and textures that you wont see for 20-25mins. Console's on the other hand only load what they need to and thus can get the same rusults with far less RAM.

This is not correct, one of the main complaints about PC games is the constant "loading" screens every few minutes.

How many PC gamea actually COMPLETELY fill a 256me GPU????

NONE.

Doom3, HL2, FarCry, FEAR more than likely dont even fill a 256meg card on MAX settings

I know Doom3 does for sure at the max settings. Again, these games were made at much higher resolution textures on the PC than a 480x320 console game and thus will take up a lot more ram.

 

[cloudscapes]

Actually, it's interesting to note that Halo PC takes well more than double the amount of RAM when running.

Well, if they've improved the quality of the textures, normal-maps, stuff, and maybe made it so that the engine chached a little more of the level in the RAM, then it's to be expected. Also take into account Windows' poor memory managment and other OS-related things.

Just guessing though. I seem to remember that they enhanced the PC version, but I don't know by how much, nor do I have a link to back it up.

crap

You obviously don't know much about game developpement. I won't bother explaining why you're misinformed on so many counts.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I hear what you are saying, as you increase the amount of ram, the impact of windows becomes less and less. BUt this assumes windows resource needs are static.

Windows resources will also rise, no? Windows Vista is around the corner, so PC's again are going to need even more ram in the future, the cycle continues...

I have this theory that Windows automatically detects how much RAM you have and mutates so it can fill exactly two thirds of it.