Will Blueray give us more variated/unique textures?
- Thread starter MistaPi
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It depends on what the OP is thinking of.
In a given load, for the current scene, you can't fit any more textures than memory will allow, but across the entire game, more capacity on the disc could allow more variety (of any asset). So in one part of the world, instead of pulling assets used repeatedly elsewhere in the world, you could load unique assets for it. More capacity knocks down one barrier to having a higher amount of unique assets in a game.
I know of only one game that might shed light on this topic (The Darkness), and it is not in favor of Blu-Ray. There are reasons to discredit that game, though, so I'm not there's a clear answer to be had.
My initial response is that time and money are more the limiting factors in producing more textures than disc space. And if not that, RAM size is.
My initial response is that time and money are more the limiting factors in producing more textures than disc space. And if not that, RAM size is.
I remember a similar matter being talked about in arstechnica. It was if I remember correctly whether the developer will exploit the extra space in the disc format or not. It brought out an example of a tree. Would a developer spend hours making each tree different? Even if he did spend hours making 1000 different trees the problem would have been the bandwidth and ram. Too many variations wouldnt have been able too be streamed and run.
So it mentioned another solution. Leave it up to the hardware take the same tree data and process it making various alterations of the same data. It was something like that. I cant remember the exact thing.
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Darkness is an example of limited ram size, not much to do with a hard drive or blu-ray. I think the OP is talking about unique occurances of textures, which could end up in games as to what Titanio is referring (streaming a multitude of different objects, that are all held on the disc, but are not all seen at one time). Your talking about better textures, when MistaPi is asking about orginal/unique textures. But again, this can be applied to much more than just textures.
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If you had a thousand different trees on your disc, you wouldn't need to put a thousand trees into memory at any one time 
You'd load off the trees for a particular area..you'd only have a certain area in memory at any one time. You could procedurally generate the trees at runtime - and for some types of asset that might be a good solution - but you give up artist control then.
Memory is the limiting factor when it comes to how much you can have loaded for a current area, but disc capacity is a limiting factor when it comes to how much unique content is present across the entire game - across all areas that can be loaded. Or in other words, in how much unique content you can have per area, versus assets that are repeated or shared from other areas in the game.
Inane mentions a big factor here - that is, development cost. But I think it's safe to say games will get more ambitious and more unique content will be put into games - more unique models, more unique textures, more unique voices etc. Tools will get better here too, where they can help (not everywhere). A pertinent example is the megatexturing technology John Carmack is talking about - putting a unique texture on every single surface in a game, with tools that semi-automatically generate the textures (i.e. the tool does some generation and then an artist goes in and touches things up - works well for some types of texture in the game, and some of the larger ones e.g. terrain, but not all). Could you imagine that for a game like Oblivion or any other large-scale world? The data storage requirement would be huge.
You'd load off the trees for a particular area..you'd only have a certain area in memory at any one time. You could procedurally generate the trees at runtime - and for some types of asset that might be a good solution - but you give up artist control then.Memory is the limiting factor when it comes to how much you can have loaded for a current area, but disc capacity is a limiting factor when it comes to how much unique content is present across the entire game - across all areas that can be loaded. Or in other words, in how much unique content you can have per area, versus assets that are repeated or shared from other areas in the game.
Inane mentions a big factor here - that is, development cost. But I think it's safe to say games will get more ambitious and more unique content will be put into games - more unique models, more unique textures, more unique voices etc. Tools will get better here too, where they can help (not everywhere). A pertinent example is the megatexturing technology John Carmack is talking about - putting a unique texture on every single surface in a game, with tools that semi-automatically generate the textures (i.e. the tool does some generation and then an artist goes in and touches things up - works well for some types of texture in the game, and some of the larger ones e.g. terrain, but not all). Could you imagine that for a game like Oblivion or any other large-scale world? The data storage requirement would be huge.
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Doesn't the 360 disc drive read faster then the PS3 disc drive? Would that make a better payoff in terms of variety? I'm interested in pros/cons.
they'll get over it
PG assets will be more widely used for the next 5 years then a huge volume of costly art ssests filling Blu Ray discs. IMO
Afaik the DVD-Drive in the XBOX is rated at 12xspeed, but this is most likely best case scenario since it´s a CLV drive. So 8-12 speed would be more realistic.
Afaik 2xBlu-Ray is just about 8xDVD speed.
Then we have the DL issue where the 360 is rumoured (not confirmed but very likely) to be 8xspeed, or 6-8 speed afair (CLV).
But the Blu-Ray is still 2x with DL media, not that it will be used that often.
And someone claimed that seek times on Blu-Ray is faster than the DVD drive as well.
So all in all, they are about the same when it comes to SL DVD vs Blu-Ray but Blu-Ray is faster than DL DVD.
You can add Epic's Mark Rein, the Assassin's Creed team, Polyphony Digital's Kazunori Yamauchi, and a whole bunch of other Asian producers.
oh.
Actually Bluray has slower seek times than DVD.
How did you get that? Even from your post, SL DVD can be faster than Bluray, and DL DVD can be slower than DVD. Meaning that depending on where your data sits on the discs, the DVD can be faster (if it's in the outside tracks) or slower (if it's in the inner tracks) than Bluray, because Bluray has the same transfer speed across the disc - the speed of the motor changes to allow this, wheras DVD transfer speeds change because the disc always spins at the same speed.
It's a very variable kind of situation.
Yeah and it´s obvious that developers have to spend lots of time on where they place their assets if they want to get the last bit of speed from DVD´s. And make sure that it fits on those exact places as well. How many would go through that work? How possible is it in a real game enviroment? I think it´s obvious that DVD has Zero speed advantage compared to Blu-Ray but a real problem regarding space.
Insomniac(a sony 1st party) guys can say whatever they want but i don't see any variety in the textures of resistance.In fact the game suffer from the "one-colour" syndrome that other games have suffered through the years.All i see is brown or gray.
I don't think that blue-ray will result on better textures that's all PR talk and "usual" sony BS.When i see a game with more varied textures than something like "Viva Pinata" on the ps3 then we'll talk again.
I don't think that blue-ray will result on better textures that's all PR talk and "usual" sony BS.When i see a game with more varied textures than something like "Viva Pinata" on the ps3 then we'll talk again.
I suggest you check the screenshots, i see at least one or 2 colors more.
Of course, i´m not an expert but rumour has it that you can have different textures eventhough they are all based on a grey,brown or red color scheme.. may be rumours though!
Afaik, RR6 was 360 game, is Namco developing exclusively for Sony now?
Viva Pinata might have more varied colour, but I wouldn't be so sure about [/i]texture[/i].
You do know the difference between colour and texture, do you?
For all we know, Resistance might even have more colour tones than Viva Pinata.
Colours in VP stand out more, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has more colours.
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