Xbox 360 eDRAM. Where are the results?

[Nick Laslett]

I like particles. Whole games can look fancy just with judicious particle use. Naff particles can really make a game look bland too. Smoke and fire that looks like so many billboarded textures just detracts from the experience no matter the game.

As soon as I read the first post I thought of particle effects.

Criterion claimed that it was the EDRAM in the PS2 that made the particle effects in Black & the Burnout games better on the PS2 than the Xbox. Kind of ironic the situation is reversed this gen.

I also thought of ZOE2, already mention Nesh. It is a shame this game isn't better know, the particle effects were insane.

Good posts by nAO, Fran and Falada explaning some of the benefits of EDRAM.

I only played the demos of Lost Planet or Dead Rising. I never thought these games looked very good. Maybe it is just the art style I don't like, they didn't seem technically impressive to me. I've never thought of Capcom being very technical capable. I remember meeting the Criterion guys around the time of Devil May Cry's release and they were joking about the fact that Renderware could output 3x as many polygons, but Capcom had turned them down to develop their own engines instead. They had egg of their faces when the Sony benchmarks were released for DMC and Burnout.

The UE3 engine is definitely a blessing and a curse this gen, as already pointed out. I wonder how the CELL optimisation of UE3 will turn out? GeOW arrived at just the right time, nothing on the PS3 comes close to looking as good. A lot of that is to do with the textures. I was surprised that Insomniac was not able to get texture streaming in place for Resistance. That explains why the textures look sub-Black on the PS2. Resistance comes off very poorly when compared to Black let alone GeOW. They have got their texture streaming tech running now for Rachet & Clank.

Will Epic continue to refine the UE3 engine for the 360, or is it essentialy done now?

 

[pipo]

Will Epic continue to refine the UE3 engine for the 360, or is it essentialy done now?

I would be very surprised if it was 'done'. I expect at the very least more optimizations until UT ships.

Is there a roadmap for UE4? If they want to keep selling the current version they have to keep up with other engines too...

 

[Inane_Dork]

After the smashing success of UE3, Epic would have to be 7 kinds of retarded to target any other time than the next console launch with UE4. UE3 will be fine until then.

 

[pipo]

I didn't mean they have to ship UE4 this gen.

Just that IMHO they need to keep on working on UE3 if they want to sell it the next couple of years...

 

[Dural]

Well if last gen is any indication they should improve UE3 quite a lot. Unreal Championship for Xbox shipped on a slightly modified UE2 while UC2 shipped on a highly modified UE2 dubbed UE2X that still to this day looks good to me. I believe Cliff worked on UC and UC2 as well so GOW2 will hopefully be as big a jump graphically as UC was to UC2.

 

[Pozer]

Criterion claimed that it was the EDRAM in the PS2 that made the particle effects in Black & the Burnout games better on the PS2 than the Xbox. Kind of ironic the situation is reversed this gen.

Yeah I remember old interviews with criterion in which they said the EDRAM was the reason they preferred the ps2 platform. Now the situation is reversed.... There was an interview with the devs recently where they just say they are just sony fanboys....
I kinda respect that honesty....

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah I remember old interviews with criterion in which they said the EDRAM was the reason they preferred the ps2 platform. Now the situation is reversed...

You can't expect them to just favour the machine with eDRAM! If what PS2's eDRAM enabled last gen isn't limited in PS3 this gen, there's no need to care about eDRAM. Or if you lament the lack of eDRAM but love everything else about the machine, you can still prefer a machine despite it not having the eDRAM of it's rivals.

 

[Nick Laslett]

Yeah I remember old interviews with criterion in which they said the EDRAM was the reason they preferred the ps2 platform. Now the situation is reversed.... There was an interview with the devs recently where they just say they are just sony fanboys....
I kinda respect that honesty....

I believe the Criterion guys will favour whichever platform allows them the show off their superior technical skills the most.

It would seem that the unusal arcitecture in the PS3 should enable a greater amount of showing-off in comparision to the 360.

 

[vblh]

Given that you guys are talking about the merits of the edram the 360's design, i'd like to know what you think of the latest screen shots of PGR4.

If the game does launch with visuals on par or better than the leaked screen shots will those on the negative end finally admit that the edram was worth it or not?

 

[Rangers]

Given that you guys are talking about the merits of the edram the 360's design, i'd like to know what you think of the latest screen shots of PGR4.

If the game does launch with visuals on par or better than the leaked screen shots will those on the negative end finally admit that the edram was worth it or not?

Well, it's somewhat impossible to know in a vacuum.

In other words, maybe with a traditional design, Xenos could do just as well or better.

I think there's no question that without tiling the EDRAM would be a plus..the niggle is tiling's small performance hits.

I wish John Carmack would comment about this. Course he would probably give some sort of "it's good, but with caveats" answer that wouldn't solve much.

 

[Todd33]

I wish John Carmack would comment about this. Course he would probably give some sort of "it's good, but with caveats" answer that wouldn't solve much.

Well Carmack works on PC code, there is no evidence he has ever programmed for a console.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Well Carmack works on PC code, there is no evidence he has ever programmed for a console.

He already stated some time back that 360 was his graphics development platform for his next gen engine at that point in time (in favor of the PC development platform at that time). He has more recently pointed out that their next title would be available on 360/PS3 and the 360 is the lead console development platform.

 

[Gubbi]

I think there's no question that without tiling the EDRAM would be a plus..the niggle is tiling's small performance hits.

Sorry, but I think you are looking at this backwards. Tiling is what enables the use of EDRAM at higher resolutions. As such it's a massive performance booster, - the alternative is to have an external backbuffer.

The niggle is the complexity it adds for developers.

Cheers

 

[pipo]

*bump*

Will Epic continue to refine the UE3 engine for the 360, or is it essentialy done now?

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/779/779332p3.html

IGN: Speaking of the visuals, we've heard that Gears pretty much curb-stomped the 360 hardware. How much of the 360's potential do you think you actually used, and how much room does that leave for the sequels?

Rod Fergusson: To caveat everything - I'm not a techie. I'm a producer so I manage spreadsheets for a living.

IGN: But you must have a good idea.

Rod Fergusson: Well I don't have hard numbers but I do know that the Unreal Engine 3 and the way that our team worked with the platform - this being our first game on the 360, I think you're going to see the same sort of evolution that you'd see on other platforms. I certainly don't see Gears of War as a - whatever people want to call it, a second generation title, but for us it was a first generation, I certainly don't think that we've now hit the pinnacle, that Gears of War one was the pinnacle of what we're going to have.

IGN: I think that's a message that's being pushed now by certain competitors of the 360. That because the 360 is easy to program for, its high end potential has already been reached, so you're not going to see anything much better than Gears is.

Rod Fergusson: I don't believe that to be true at all. As time progresses, [and we gain a] a familiarity with the platform, optimisations with the engine, I mean, as more games ship with the Unreal Engine 3, and we've got a ton lined up, not from ourselves but from the industry, these are all going to improve the engine and the way it's going to be used. We're really early on in that lifecycle.


...


I don't think complexity necessarily means that there's more hidden potential. I think there's still equal hidden potential within the 360. Yeah it's easy to program for and yeah it's easy to get stuff up and running, but I still think in terms of squeezing the last ounce out of it. I mean, it's a multi-threaded machine, doing anything multi-threaded is complex and so, being able to do that in the most efficient way possible and being able to utilise the memory in the most efficient way possible and be able to use streaming in the most efficient way possible, these are things that will evolve over time. Gears of War does not represent the pinnacle of the Xbox 360. It certainly sets a great benchmark for other games to bring themselves up to.

 

[one]

*bump*



http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/779/779332p3.html

With a caveat like this words are futile and only actual games can prove what he claims

Rod Fergusson: To caveat everything - I'm not a techie. I'm a producer so I manage spreadsheets for a living.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What he said was okay - UE3 will improve over time. As a spreadsheet guy, he'll know if there'll be expenditure on developers to refine the engine.

 

[pipo]

With a caveat like this words are futile and only actual games can prove what he claims

Futile? For a guy in his position? You think he knows nothing about tech?

I agree with IGN, I'm pretty sure he has 'a good idea'...

 

[aselto]

It's pretty cool that he thinks the 360 has a lot more potential and whatnot, but does it really add anything to discussion about EDRAM?

 

[pipo]

It's pretty cool that he thinks the 360 has a lot more potential and whatnot, but does it really add anything to discussion about EDRAM?

It was an answer to Nick Laslett's question in this thread.

And to answer yours: probably not.

 

[joker454]

It's pretty cool that he thinks the 360 has a lot more potential and whatnot, but does it really add anything to discussion about EDRAM?

Alpha blending is free on 360. How's that for a benefit of edram?