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

[Fdooch]

[q]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/img296/8...re1317a1uq.jpg[q]

The shader on this wall could be using detail bump mapping. The textures used could be quite small.

 

[Tahir2]

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

A: Memory space for textures

The situations will improve as procedural and other texture techniques and better art management comes into effect over the coming years.

 

[Blazkowicz]

it's important to note that most (if not all, nowadays) PC games store textures in system memory that are also being used in graphics memory. by this, i mean, if you are 100MB of textures in video ram you have those 100MB of textures duplicated in system ram, in addition to any textures you have cached for later use. so a console with a mostly unified memory system wouldn't have that problem.

yes. that should change with windows Vista and VDDM drivers, but for now there are problems with games such as FEAR and BF2 where on max texture detail more than 1GB RAM are eaten

 

[London Geezer]

it's important to note that most (if not all, nowadays) PC games store textures in system memory that are also being used in graphics memory. by this, i mean, if you are 100MB of textures in video ram you have those 100MB of textures duplicated in system ram, in addition to any textures you have cached for later use. so a console with a mostly unified memory system wouldn't have that problem.

Huh? Are you serious? First time i hear that, and i can't have missed this in the last 10 years i've been playing around on PCs...

EDIT: wow...

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

I think it concludes that in terms of memory usage/performance ratio PC's are a pile of Trash compared to console's.

 

[reptile]

I think it concludes that in terms of memory usage/performance ratio PC's are a pile of Trash compared to console's.

As far as pure gaming goes, yes. But a pc is not a console, it's running multiple applications, they all have their needs and priorities. Textures have system memory "backups" for a reason - they have to be restored somehow when you're switching back to the game. It is _not_ an option to simply eat up video memory and decline access to any other application. I imagine most of the people complaining about this behaviour would be quite upset if they were unable to receive f.e. an important skype video call just because they're playing a game. (not the best example but you get the idea )

 

[Hardknock]

[q]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/img296/8...re1317a1uq.jpg[q]

The shader on this wall could be using detail bump mapping. The textures used could be quite small.

Parallax Mapping

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

Parallax Mapping

Deatil Texturing

 

[Ragemare]

Tbh I'v played kameo and it didn't look any better than PC games I have seen running on my friends GF6800, regardless of the texture detail or the technology used. The fact is the game art is just plain stupid and not alot more can be said

The fact is Consoles are more effecient than windows PC's, but PC's have more brute force at their disposal, thus PC's, sooner or later, get better graphics.

Anyway, flame bait aside, as MS have said, distance based LOD, instanceing and procedural geometry/ textures are going to be used more heavily in future games in order to maximise scene complexity, of course PC's may use this too, if it is faster than just putting more stuff in memory, but when since have PC's and Consoles been in a graphics competition with each other?

If the majority of people switched platform because one is percieved to be more powerfull than the other, consoles would be dead already. Peoples main interest is in the type of experience the games offer, graphics and physics are a part of that, but it more or less comes down to the type of game the different platforms incourage or can support and how that game is played on each platform.

While graphics are often at the centre of any PC Vs Console debate, they are actually quite insignificant in the grand scheme of things. PC's serve a different market and purpose to consoles so compareing them in some sort of attempt to work out which is generally better is futile. People are going to claim thats not what they are doing, but it's blatantly obvious that they are, I think this passed far from a genuine technical comparison a while ago.

Btw have I said that PGR also looked shit when I played it?

*Watches small amount of reputation get smaller*

 

[Pozer]

Also, Wasn't the xbox 360's RAM doubled from 256 to 512 relatively late. I wanna say sometime last summer. I think it was well after design decisions were made for the launch games atleast. That and most of the launch games extremely rough around the edges to begion with. I doubt any efficiently used the 512. PD0 still has amazing textures though.

 

[AlNom]

Also, Wasn't the xbox 360's RAM doubled from 256 to 512 relatively late. I wanna say sometime last summer.

That would be post-E3. I had the impression that the RAM was doubled early 2005.

 

[Frank]

To the original question: if you make the textures twice as big, they take up four times as much space. And if you only add the (same size) normal maps to that, you just went from 64MB to 512MB. And, what about the glowmaps, reflection maps, specular maps, bump maps, displacement maps, detail textures, shadow maps and all the other nice stuff you would want?

Like Tahir2 said: wait for techniques that can get rid of many of those. And in the mean time: reduce the amount AND the resolution to make all of them fit.

 

[OVERLORD]

Some Halflife 2 textures for the debate:-

http://halflife2.filefront.com/screenshots/File/54499/

http://halflife2.filefront.com/screenshots/File/47101/1

http://halflife2.filefront.com/screenshots/File/54352/1

http://halflife2.filefront.com/screenshots/File/52458/1

 

[see colon]

To the original question: if you make the textures twice as big, they take up four times as much space.

huh? if you make the textures twice as big they take up twice as much space. four times as big takes up four times as much space.

 

[Rodéric]

huh? if you make the textures twice as big they take up twice as much space. four times as big takes up four times as much space.

Twice as big (in resolution) = 4 times bigger (in space)
That's because twice as big as 512*512 is considered to be 1024*1024, which is four times bigger. (double each dimension, and so quad the surface)

 

[see colon]

no, that would be 4 times as big. twice 512*512 is 1024*512.

 

[AlNom]

keyword: "considered"

technically, you're right, but people consider doubling the resolution to be twice the dimensions.

 

[see colon]

i learned how to calculate the surface space of a quadralateral in 4th grade.

 

[Tim]

i learned how to calculate the surface space of a quadralateral in 4th grade.

We are not talking about surface area, we are talking about resolution.

 

[see colon]

the size of a texure is determined by it's surface area. it's easy, you multiply the x by the y and you get the surface area.