A Peek At the Origin of PS3's New Visualizer

Folks at the Gamasutra network had a quick sitdown with the Q-Games team, the people behind the PlayStation 3's new Gaia music visualizer. They discuss the origins of the project, as well as some possible plans for the future. "McLaren explains: 'This representation of the earth is a 3D model with some shaders and SPU trickery going on. We tried to accurately model the earth's atmosphere and have all the correct highlights on the oceans, etc. The texture data is sourced from the NASA Blue Marble project.'"

Re:at least!

[Sciros]

"at least" indeed.

Once Square and others start to really get going with PS3 (that is, once Japanese developers stop concentrating so much on the PS2, haha) it will pick up strength quickly. ...Yeah, really, the PS3's biggest problem might not be price/Xbox/Wii as much as it is the PS2 which keeps the PS3's target audience fully occupied since it's still doing alright in terms of games.

Re:In number?

[Gravatron]

Games like call of duty 4 proved you can get the ps3 and 360 to match visual for visual, and the first party sony games look fantastic, or at least Rachet and Uncharted did. I'd wadger that 9/10th of the early multiplatform release woes can be attributed to ether EA, who sucks at porting, or to the well publicised issues with the UT3 engine on the ps3. Ut3 on the ps3 plays great though, so I think epic must have finally figured out their problems.

The ps3 and 360 can really pull off some amazing visuals, its just going to take a year or two before we really see what they can do. Both consoles recent exclusives look fantastic, so i'm hopeful for the future.

Re:In number?

[provigilman]

It already does -- take a look at the new Ratchet and Clank. Heavenly Sword is pretty awesome too, tho much of it is simply high-def cutscenes.

The OP was talking specifically about multi-platform releases. Take Madden for example...the 360 version looked great, but the PS3 version could only get 30fps (as opposed to 60 on the 360) going. This is a problem.

First party games are always optimized for that platform, it's the multi-platform releases where you start to see who's better at what. Last-gen I only bought multi-platform releases for my XBox because they just simply looked better.

For current-gen, at least so far anyway, it seems to be going the same direction. The 360 has the best looking games (again, only talking multi-platform here), the Wii has the interesting IP's and control scheme, and the PS3 has what? They lost Assassin's Creed, GTA, DMC and a whole host of other exclusives... Sure, they have the FF series, but the 360 has a bunch of exclusive Mistwalker RPG's coming out!

If the PS3 doesn't clean up their act (and their graphics) in very short order, they're going to have problems.

Re:In number?

[king-manic]

The OP was talking specifically about multi-platform releases. Take Madden for example...the 360 version looked great, but the PS3 version could only get 30fps (as opposed to 60 on the 360) going. This is a problem.

First party games are always optimized for that platform, it's the multi-platform releases where you start to see who's better at what. Last-gen I only bought multi-platform releases for my XBox because they just simply looked better.

For current-gen, at least so far anyway, it seems to be going the same direction. The 360 has the best looking games (again, only talking multi-platform here), the Wii has the interesting IP's and control scheme, and the PS3 has what? They lost Assassin's Creed, GTA, DMC and a whole host of other exclusives... Sure, they have the FF series, but the 360 has a bunch of exclusive Mistwalker RPG's coming out!

If the PS3 doesn't clean up their act (and their graphics) in very short order, they're going to have problems.

I think it's just a case of the first gen development problems. It's hard to code your own solution to a new architecture so the PS3 versions of multi-platforms games seem poor due to this. However, the 360 first gen games were also nothing to write home about. There was nothing to compare it too but many looked like xbox games with a slightly higher poly count. So far I've always bought multi platform games on the PS3 because I hate live with a vital passion (their C policy is ridiculous I refuse to even use prepaid cards because of a poor customer experience). Nintendo firts party games have been varied. Fire emblem is my favorite the rest i could take or leave. For the 360 mass effect is awesome. And for the ps3 I'm addicted to Ratchet and clank. I think there's room for all of em and hope they succeed because only console manufacturer means the customer suffers.

Also, mistwalker is bleh.. Blue dragon wasn't fun. I'd rather play similarly blah Fable.

Re:Oh cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really beginning to wonder if you people are Microsoft paid astro-turfers that keep talking about Sony rootkits and Sony arrogance.

Technologically, the PS3 is turning out to be more interesting than I anticipated. Strangely, there is this powerful anti-Sony sentiment that has effectively killed interest in the platform on the internet.

Re:at least!

[tieTYT]

Once Square and others start to really get going with PS3 (that is, once Japanese developers stop concentrating so much on the PS2, haha) it will pick up strength quickly.

This is what I've been thinking. But then, you gotta think from the perspective of the people trying to make money off of the games they develop. They're thinking, "Why would I release this game exclusively on the PS3 when it has a fraction of the population as the 360 or the Wii?" They're thinking, "If I'm making this game exclusive so I don't spend energy/resources on porting, it makes sense to put it on the more popular system". The PS3 is not the pony to bet on.

Re:Oh cool!

[donscarletti]

Sony PS3 is a proprietary format, does not play games for any other platform, which is exactly the same as the other two consoles in the current generation. Sony PS3 uses USB and Bluetooth for controller communication, which are as standardised as anything else. Sony PS3 has slots for Sony's Memorystick, right next to its slots for SD and CF, the competing media. PS3 supports Sony's Blueray format as well as Toshiba's DVD and Sony's now standard CD.

As for the **AA, my (unhacked) PS3 lets me rip CDs to MP3s then copy them to other devices. I don't get what people are supposedly missing on the PS3 from those Japanese media tyrants called Sony, I can't speak for the XBox, but I've looked all through the Wii for the "Rip DVDs then share them on bittorrent channel" but if it was there I couldn't find it.

The Sony rootkit was a very evil thing to do, but it wasn't developed in house and only the music publishing division was involved. As for the competition, Microsoft calls its flagship rootkit an Operating System and still distributes it with impunity even though it contains DRM like NGSB and spyware like genuine advantage. As for Microsoft, everyone here has been chiding Sony because MS now has all the software being target for it. Doesn't this seem at all familiar to any of you? When Microsoft created the slightly cheaper platform that managed to take the market despite being not quite as powerful? All I know is that Sony's two generations of gaming hegemony were fun but Microsoft's twenty years of PC dominance brought nothing but crippled innovation and instability.

Re:Still no games?

[Total_Wimp]

Topic: The new visualizer for the PS3

Off Topic: Ranting about why any other aspect of the PS3 sucks

For the record, the new visualizer looks nice if you happen to be playing music, which the PS3 does fairly well. Please feel free to tear this comment to shreds if you'd like to get back on topic. In exchange, I promise not to rant about the red ring of death when responding to any article where Xbox hardware isn't specifically mentioned.

Cheers,
TW

Re:Oh cool!

[donscarletti]

I mentioned that PS3 supports Memory Stick and Blueray, as well as the competing SD, CF and DVD formats, it does not support either UMD or Beta though, I don't know why they are interesting to the topic. Who cares if it supports Sony's formats if it supports other ones also? Sure, Sony have a movie buisiness and movie buisinesses are evil here, but is that really a problem here? When Nintendo were censoring all the religious, sexy and violent parts out of their games, Sony came in and said anything goes. When Microsoft was paying to keep games off their competitors platforms, Sony kept comparitively to the highground. When Microsoft had recently made a console out of an off-the-shelf Celeron and Nintendo was researching how to re-release an overclocked Gamecube, Sony decided to try something crazy and released an 8 core asymetric processor with system RAM clocked to 1.2GHz and a 50GB optical medium. That's why this generation I switched from being a Nintendo to a Sony fanboy. Sure, Sony supports DRM, but they also support Linux, you've got to hack the others to get that. Honestly, I care more about Linux than I do about DRM.