What's your opinion on Blu-ray technology?
- Thread starter PSman
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pc999 said:In that gif the DVD comes from a 480i or 480p?
Personally I found that image (DVD) strage it looks worst than everything else I saw in a recent TV (last 10-15 years), meybe it is from any other reason
As i said, the fact that the guy actually took the picture of the TV screen means you'll never see it properly, for obvious photographic-related issues (colours bleeding into each other being the most obvious issue). The same goes for the HD image too though.
It just showed the difference between a crappy pic of a SD feed and a crappy pic of a HD feed.
scooby_dooby
Legend
Shifty Geezer said:
Greater decompression power also enables you to compress assets which would otherwise have not been feasible. Take a look at GTA on PS2, and XBOX, xbox's audio file are all compressed to mp3 and it saves multiple GB's. It's not that PS2 was unable to decompress an mp3.
So it's not always about increasing the compression ratio, as maybe increasing the number of files being compressed.
Besides, I think alot will come when developers dicide to make conserving space a priority. right now, it's pretty haphazard, according to some studies (from MS) something like 40% of textures in some games are not even used, they're just left over because of bad design practices. i.e. dev are scared to remove stuff, cause they're not sure if it'll break something so they just leave it in.
8gb is alot of space, and if used smartly, I can't see it being any sort of limiting factor this decade, not unless you need hours of HD video. And again, multiple discs are not the end of the world.
edit - 40%
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Absolutely. As I mentioned later replying to Graham, it all depends how well current-gen compression is managed to consider next gen. If current gen is wasteful on space, getting more onto next-gen disks is feasible. But if it's not, a fivefold increase in assets is going to mean a fivefold increase in requirements. Netiher GTA nor CON as examples are going to give a good idea of the average and we really need to know this.scooby_dooby said:
I know that feeling
But I say I carefully prune my stuff (with lots of backups) to be sure I don't include wastage.assen said:
Sure I'm a programmer, but it's got nothing to do with programming.
I'd go the way I described because it would allow me to build a richer better looking experience.
Why do you think that GTA doesn't look very good graphically?
It isn't the space issue, it's limited by what can be streamed, and that only gets worse with more memory available.
I'm telling you that the artists I work with are not constrained by the disc space today. They are constrained by memory and what we can stream off the disc.
You guys make compression sound so easy. Textures are already in a compressed format, and also the biggest art asset block in almost all games. So what are you going to compress?
Compression is hard to automate with a piece of software.
Better placement of your data on the disk, and in-game loading (streaming), help to reduce load times as much as or more than compression.
Compression is hard to automate with a piece of software.
Better placement of your data on the disk, and in-game loading (streaming), help to reduce load times as much as or more than compression.
IMHO HD-DVD and Blu-Ray aren't the best optical format successors to DVD. All you get is increase in size, but no real performance boost in speed.
Some top flight engineers left Sony and formed Optware. They created the HVD format which will provide very fast transfer rate with high capcity. The good news Toshiba and Intel are backing Optware now. The bad news is the cost of a HVD disc is high. At least the electronic guts of the hardware are similar to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, so HVD players should be in the same price range. Also Toshiba is ensuring that HD-DVD and HVD are compatible with each other.
Some top flight engineers left Sony and formed Optware. They created the HVD format which will provide very fast transfer rate with high capcity. The good news Toshiba and Intel are backing Optware now. The bad news is the cost of a HVD disc is high. At least the electronic guts of the hardware are similar to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, so HVD players should be in the same price range. Also Toshiba is ensuring that HD-DVD and HVD are compatible with each other.
scooby_dooby
Legend
Edge said:
And you make it seem like textures are the majority of disc space.
You make discspace it seem like such a huge hurdle. It's not, it's something that can be worked around, there are many things that can help, better asset tracking, better planning, better compression. Worst case scenario it's a multi-disc game.
You can argue that it takes more development time to cram stuff onto a smaller disc, that's certainly true, but that's true for many different aspects of the system, it's all about designing to the systems strengths.
X360 dev's will have to spend extra time implementing tiling into their engines, finding ways to minimize cpu>gpu bandwidth, and making sure their games fit on a disc. Conversely, PS3 dev's will have to spend extra time making their engine work with the SPE's, dealing with limited framebufffer bandwidth and design the game around a non-unified memory architecture. These are just rough examples, but the point is both systems have limitations that can lead to extra development time being required, and for 360, disc space is just one of those issues.
I think when you look at the big picture though, the superior development environment and tools for 360 should help offset the fact they have to spend some extra time cramming things on disc.
I guess to bring this back on topic a little, I think that improved development tools, and asset tracking can go a long way to making DVD's last to the end of this generation without needing an expensive bleeding edge disc format. And solving it using a software approach, rather than hardware, brings none of the potential downsides of a new format like delayed launch, lack of reliability, and lower transfer/seek speeds.
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You're forgetting that Blu-ray is also a selling feature by being a next generation HD movie player. A feature so big, that Microsoft felt it needed to issue a knee jerk reaction and support a competing format with less studio support in an act of desperation against Sony's superior format. The HD player for the 360 will be like attaching a boat anchor to your console, that adds NOTHING to games (besides looking stupid having an extra drive coming off such a nice sleak looking unit), while the Blu-ray format for the PS3 adds three times more space than 360's limited space format, which even you have admitted now needs all kinds of expensive compression schemes and extra formatting/coding to match Blu-ray's extra space.
Microsoft's HD-DVD unit, is like admitting to making a mistake. I guess that's what you get when you rush a console to market with last generation features. HD-DVD drive for 360 = bad marketing
Microsoft's HD-DVD unit, is like admitting to making a mistake. I guess that's what you get when you rush a console to market with last generation features. HD-DVD drive for 360 = bad marketing
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scooby_dooby
Legend
Edge said:
Wow, I don't see how you can go that far man. The HD-DVD driove is just MS tossing a wrench in Sony's plans.
They haven't taken any risk whatsoever, they haven't spent alot of money. All MS has had to do is publically declare support, put out some anti BR fud, and outsource a bunch of hd-dvd drives. It's a low risk / high reward situation, and why wouldn't they do it?
What MS is saying to the world is HD-DVD discs are unnescessary for GAMES. That's it. You're reading far too much into it beyond that. They are not saying 'we made a mistake', that's a little ridiculous. They've found a way to offer a similar level of functionality as PS3, with none of the drawbacks that Sony will have to deal with. It's a fine strategy. Not to mention, there's no gamble, if HD-DVD fails...so what? if BR fails, sony is up sh!t creek without a paddle.
I think it's a smart move for MS in their position, I also think BR inclusion is a smart move for Sony in their position, so I'd say both companies are making smart moves right now.
Of course the inclusion of BR will be great for marketing, that goes without saying, but that's not a huge factor. Games, as always, will be what ultimately move systems.
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as witnessed some bleuray demonstration on a beta player (projected on a 720p hdtv 50inch) i can clearly say. WOW I CANNOT WAIT
since there is almost no hdtv content over here in europe, i think we are more easely impressed with HDTV material. ( hd tv is coming, but is expensive and very selected regions will or are already getting it)
(never saw anyware hddvd material , at least Sony has their Sonycenters in every town to promote their BD media)
since there is almost no hdtv content over here in europe, i think we are more easely impressed with HDTV material. ( hd tv is coming, but is expensive and very selected regions will or are already getting it)
(never saw anyware hddvd material , at least Sony has their Sonycenters in every town to promote their BD media)
scooby_dooby said:
I guess I'll refer again to this and ERP's comments, but do we have data on this? Transfer speed is known, but seektime? (I wouldn't be surprised if it's a bit higher, i'm just wondering if there is data out there).
And also, what impact a much higher scale of data replication on the disc would have on seek time, in a format with much more capacity? If you can trade capacity off against seek time, then that's obviously useful if streaming is a priority.
I've seen various references to this in relation to Blu-ray now, in terms of improving streaming capability versus DVD, e.g.
David Braben said:
Random thought out of the blue, so to speak:
There were rumors going around a while ago that BDA approved a provision for a 9GB variant of BD using the red-laser DVD physical layer with the BD logical format on top.
Supposing that is true, Sony could in theory ship PS3 games on 9GB discs, and still rightfully claim that "all PS3 games are on Blu Ray Discs".
In fact, supposing that this is true, Sony could in theory ship dual SKUs of PS3 -- one with a true BD drive that plays movies and games, and one with just a DVD drive that only plays games to compete with the core 360 SKU on price.
It would mean PS3 loses a lot less money for Sony, and would also jive with the rumor that was going around a while back that PS3 devs are being told to limit their games to 9GB or less (unconfirmed).
Or it could just be a Plan B in case the BD hardware isn't ready in time or isn't available in sufficient numbers.
There were rumors going around a while ago that BDA approved a provision for a 9GB variant of BD using the red-laser DVD physical layer with the BD logical format on top.
Supposing that is true, Sony could in theory ship PS3 games on 9GB discs, and still rightfully claim that "all PS3 games are on Blu Ray Discs".
In fact, supposing that this is true, Sony could in theory ship dual SKUs of PS3 -- one with a true BD drive that plays movies and games, and one with just a DVD drive that only plays games to compete with the core 360 SKU on price.
It would mean PS3 loses a lot less money for Sony, and would also jive with the rumor that was going around a while back that PS3 devs are being told to limit their games to 9GB or less (unconfirmed).
Or it could just be a Plan B in case the BD hardware isn't ready in time or isn't available in sufficient numbers.
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