IGN has compiled a list of gaming technology they expect to have a significant effect on this year's products. Leading the list is the 3D technology being pushed in television and films. A number of popular games are already set up to handle this, and more are on the way. They also suggest that improved Blu-ray technology, which allows much more storage, will pave the way for even bigger and better looking games. IGN hopes that brain-computer interfaces, such as Emotiv's headset, will become responsive enough to be taken seriously, and notes that DirectX 11 and a broader adoption for PhysX are on the horizon.
They also suggest that improved Blu-ray technology, which allows much more storage, will pave the way for even bigger and better looking games.
I wasn't aware that we were hitting the 50Gb limit of today's BR-DL disks. To my knowledge, only one game has even come close (MGS4) and even then, it apparently only uses about 31Gb.
They also suggest that improved Blu-ray technology, which allows much more storage, will pave the way for even bigger and better looking games.
I wasn't aware that we were hitting the 50Gb limit of today's BR-DL disks. To my knowledge, only one game has even come close (MGS4) and even then, it apparently only uses about 31Gb.
I think that the expanded capacity for Blu-Ray discs will hardly have an impact on how games are produced unless they are Blu-Ray disc, or Playstation 3 exclusive. And yes, the only game to come close to using an entire BD is Metal Gear Solid 4. And even then, size doesn't mean a good game, Chrono Trigger is only a few megabytes in a SNES cartridge and I play that game more often these new 10GB and up games. And tons of digitally distributed games are tiny in comparison to disc based games but they play jus
I don't know if I'd call the prospect of not having to change disks "Exciting", many people are already living the dream with HPCs in front of their TV's. Maybe not the most ideal solution, but I certainly don't think bigger disks are going to really change much just yet.
How about AI that doesn't suck? I know AI isn't easy, but neither is cutting edge graphics. We get more and more bling, more and more boom, more and more razzle dazzle but frankly most of the games I play the AI just sucks. I don't know about everyone else but I would rather have some challenging AI than more fancy bling bling graphics. I personally think that we have far passed the "good enough" stage in that department.
What would be nice is some decent AI that would put up a good fight along with some
Usually it's artwork that takes the bulk of the space. How many artists and designers and how much time would you need to create 50GB of artwork/maps/levels? If you could programmatically create it quickly, you are unlikely to need all that capacity right?
The more artists and designers, or time taken (render time etc), the higher the costs of producing the game.
Whereas most game rules (and game play) seem to fit well within a few megabytes, if not just a single MB.
Textures. Even compressed, they take up tons of space and you need a lot of them to make levels look nice and pretty. The more detailed, the more textures you're going to need. Heck, even to make it looks BAD from a distance, so as to increase performance (LOD) you guessed it, you need another texture.
yes, Mipmapping is one technique to help prevent aliasing - it really is pre-computed anti-aliasing on the texture itself. Ripmaps provide better anti-aliasing (since they do perspective oriented scaling), but they also use a lot more memory.
For mipmapping, you may have something like this
using the convention 0x=hexidecimal (base 16, where letters A through F represent numbers 10-15 - FF below is the number 255 [15*16+15]) A=alpha (transparency - 0=fully transparent, FF means fully opaque), R=red, G=green, B=blue
the mipmap averages these for the next level (this is called isotropic filtering)
0xFF111119
then depending on the distance, either the higher resolution or lower resolution is used. There are a number of extensions to this idea that give better results (i.e. trilinear filtering, anisotropic filtering, ripmaps), but that is deep ending a bit.
Not really. I think textures are last or nearly last as far as disk use on most games - I think only models typically use less, although if you count shaders those typically take up less memory than anything, but they are really more like code.
Pre-rendered movies usually take up more space than anything else.
Video cards need to split the video ram between geometry and textures, so when it comes to textures, you've usually got 250-300MB of active VRAM to work with. A 512x512 32 bit texture t
But now imagine this, entire television shows on a single disc, you could purchase every season of LOST, every episode, on a single disc. Or The Sopranos, The Office, South Park, or even Anime shows on a single disc. Futurama entire series on a single disc? Please sign me up, immediately.
I accept that this is an improvement, but I really don't think it is anything more than a tiny one. Besides which this is something that storing media on the system achieves and would do better, just imagine not having to c
Frankly, _I_ like my TV shows in boxes. Married... with Children is effing long and I want it to take a considerable part of my DVD rack.
If I was all about size I could just as well download everything as DivX and store it on my NAS/Mediacenter.
Also, I think prices for those should would have to come down (and would thus have much more of an impact than squeezing everything onto a single disc). I don't know how it is in America, but here they even started splitting the Star Trek seasons up in the hopes that
Whilst cut-secenes rendered by game engine became more popular, pre-rendered are still common. All that extra space could be used to store different variations of character's gear instead of sticking to the default. E.g. in RE4 cut-scenes the character is always rendered in the starting cloth even if you are wearing some other vest.
This does not require that much more effort to create, it would add a little to the immersion and a DVD release could use one version as current games.
In RE4 on the PS2 and PC, the cut-scenes were pre-rendered as video files, however on the Gamecube they were real time and I believe they reflected the outfits you were wearing at the time.
Not to mention the controls for PC sucked. Why is it that when companies do console to PC they end up butchering the controls? Either rip off the controls of a game in the genre that worked, or make everything customizable so your shitty control setup can be changed.
I bought Cold Fear when it hit the bargain bin and frankly it was unplayable. The controls were so bad you spent more time fighting them than the monsters. But the one off the top of my head that POed me the most recently was GTA:SA. I loved
They release box sets of entire shows all the time. I don't see why putting it all on one disk would make it any more expensive than putting it on several.
Additionally, there is still the problem of content creation - which game studio has the time and resources to generate that much actual game content nowadays, not just pre-rendered ultra-HD cutscenes or music? MGS4 is a pretty good example. It takes an immense amount of work to create a game with that much detail that it fills up a Bluray disk.
Most of that space could be filled up with procedurally generated environments, but that's just the same "more of the good old stuff" philosophy that Sony's been fol
And also lets not forget that BluRay is pretty damn slow. In the case of MGS4 you needed 8 minutes of install time to the HD and then again like 4 minutes on each chapter change, not fun. Having gigantic amounts of storage isn't all that useful when you can't read them from the disc fast enough.
It's not Blu-ray that's slow, it's the PS3's blu-ray drive that is slow. It's only 2x, which is slower compared to the 360's 12x DVD drive, but a 4x BR drive is easily faster than this. Today, BR drives are 6x and higher (at least their PC drives are), so it's not really a problem of the format.
I'll say to you what I'll say to the guy below - if this were the case, then why do 360 games typically have similar or shorter loading times as their PS3 counterparts? Why do (certain) PS3 games NEED to be installed?
I'll say to you what I'll say to the guy below - if this were the case, then why do 360 games typically have similar or shorter loading times as their PS3 counterparts?
The amount of data (Duh). The 360 is loading smaller/more heavily compressed textures, the PS3 not so much.
Why do (certain) PS3 games NEED to be installed?
Pulling from the HD is faster than from the BR drive, so they install on the HD what they need quickly and keep on the BR what they can spend some time loading
I've been hearing about some of the newer games going to a "progressive install" kind of methodology, initial install is small, but as the game progresses it continues to copy stuff from the BR to the HD.
We aren't talking a huge difference in speed (single layer outer edge 360 VS PS3 BR) therefore we must be talking about a huge difference in the amount of data.
You don't win a prize for being the biggest idiot in a console gaming thread retard.
And the Oscar goes to... Anonymous Coward, for his post "Butthurt Fanboy Wharrgarbl"!
"Thank you! Thank you! I couldn't have done it without Cheatos, obesity, and shame. I didn't win this just for me, I won this for everyone who attaches their identity to a corporation to derive some semblance of self-esteem. Thank you!"
I'll say to you what I'll say to the guy above - if this were the case, then why do 360 games typically have similar or shorter loading times as their PS3 counterparts? Why do (certain) PS3 games NEED to be installed?
If either of you (anonymous cowards) can give some valid reasons why, I'll listen.
I predicted the article would be bollocks before I clicked, and I was right! Let me make some other predictions:
3D Gaming - these glasses have been around for years. Maybe they work better now that everyone has bigger screens with higher refresh rates, but they were useless before. Nobody wants to sit in front of a PC wearing glasses. Perhaps if it were released for consoles it may take off, but I don't think the penetration of 120Mhz TVs is large enough to justify it.
Blu-Ray Super Disc - do games really need that much storage? Nope. My prediction for the number of games released in 2009 using super discs? Zero.
Brain Computer Interfaces - I am sure they could sell a few as a gimmick but my understanding is that control is very limited - a few noisy axises at best. I have a hard time imagining a game that could be controlled by brain easier than by fingers. I put it in the Sounds-Good-to-Investors-Neat-Picture-For-Press-Release-Consumers-Don't-Care bucket.
OLED screens - on their way, but immature. It will take years before they are competitive with LCD. In any case, not really gaming related as such.
Wii MotionPlus - well duh, great scoop there, IGN! The MotionPlus opens up some additional options for games, I expect some neat things. But it won't be the game-changer that the Wii originally was. Nintendo have a history of adding stuff to consoles, none of their previous efforts have really set the world alight. A modest success, used by only a few games (but these may be classics).
Windows 7/DirectX11 - better faster, stronger, snore. Nothing revolutionary from the users perspective. Developers might be tempted if Windows7 takes off (which I think it will, if only because it will be shoved down our throats)
240Mhz TVs - good I guess, but this is not the time to launch an expensive piece of equipment. Its not like consoles are actually going to output at 240Mhz, so the motion-compensation filters had better be good.
Play-TV - could be a game changer if Sony pulls finger and markets it world-wide. Sony really needs to give the public a new reason to have a PS3, PlayTV could be the tipping point. But I think it might be too little, too late since PVRs aren't exactly rare at this point and it seems limited.
Somebody please correct me when I am wrong here, but I was under the impression that technology like those 240Hz TVs are meant for movies, not for games. As far as I understand it, they take a handful of frames and then calculate inbetweens to reduce the jitter when the camera is panning in a film. So far so good, the problem however is that they actually need the last frame before they can start displaying the first one, meaning they will generate plenty of lag, which is a non-issue for movies, but makes t
Agree with most but the blu-ray. You do have some games that need it, and they ship on multiple DVDs. Why you will not have any games shipped is because no one, except PS3, ship with them as default.
One just needs to look at CD readers on computers. They were default items for a long time before CD distributed games became a common method.
I can't agree more. "Bigger/Better/Faster"... Yay!
What about native DirectX support for other platforms, so I can start playing games again. I don't have any Windows-based computers at all (both at office and home).
What about an open game platform where you can play games, with mods, in an Xbox Live'ish environment. I like some parts of Xbox Live, but the lack of dedicated community based servers/mods make it inferior to PC.
What about internet/browser based gaming. ID Software is coming with Quake Live now.
I actually dread PC games coming on Blue-Rays. On DVDs it's a tolerable convenience but once games get beyond a certain size it's a nightmare to install. The options are:
1. Hey! Let me install this 50GB game on your HD, just give me a couple hours.
2. Let me install only a couple of GB and require load times for reading off the Blue-Ray disk.
To a certain extend, I would like some reasonable constraints placed on how much bloat goes into a game.
Perhaps if it were released for consoles it may take off, but I don't think the penetration of 120Mhz TVs is large enough to justify it.
Dude, I want to know where you are getting your TVs that can refresh 120 million times per second. That seems like it would eliminate flicker, for sure!
Having tried many HMD in my previous job, I was very surprised to try the latest one which are light and finally usable. My money is on this.
I feel it saddening, however, that no game technology focus on the gameplay. Devices, better resolution, better graphic quality, but the games are still the same as Quake I (and less fun than Duke Nukem 3D)
The limiting factor on game size really comes more down to the system it runs on and the economics of making a game. It basically is two interlocking parts:
1) You can only make a game so big, so involved, so varied, and still expect to make money on it. You cannot spend $1 billion on a game and ever hope to make any money. Thus there are limits as to how much can be in your game: How many different scenes, characters, etc. It costs money to have artists, animators, writers, etc work on all those assets. So
I really wish that more game developers would go procedural; the concept has been around forever (or at least since Strike Commander) and could go a long way towards enhancing replayability. I don't think we are going to see the one thing that I PERSONALLY THINK is the thing most needed, however; a end to sloppy code, relying on gigantic libraries, etc. We need a Chris Sawyer for the year 2009; programming in assembly, using OpenGL, Procedural synthesis, and capable of making use of a distributed computing me
Sure that you mean Strike Commander? I can't remember anything procedural in that game, maybe the terrain, but other then that it was a very artwork heavy game, quite similar to what we have today. Procedural stuff such in Elite or Elite2 on the other side was extremely impressive, whole solar systems that fit onto a floppy disk, neat stuff. But that was a long time ago and color swapping an image to produce yet another planet isn't going to impress people today. The big disadvantage of real 100% procedural
Thus you find that when you take the amount of game you can design and hope to make money, and the amount of assets you can fit in RAM, you get a number that is your real limit, regardless of how much space you have. You also find that for the most part, a DVD is just fine. While you'll find some games on the PS3 that use more, it is with HD videos. That's nice and all, but not really relevant to the core of how good a game looks.
Am I the only one with ears? Its the sound! Many larger PS3 games come with
Wrong? What's wrong is your calendar. The article is from 2008 and there's been mostly bad news since it was written. As to how 2009 will go, the time to crow would be in 2010.
Developers who use DirectX are locking themselves up into Windows and Xbox.
Developers who use OpenGL are locking themselves up into Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Playstation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS (?), PSP (?).
Guess which one has more total marketshare?
Hint 1: both choices include Windows, so choose carefully.
Hint 2: over 25% of students on campus use a Mac. Grandma using her old Windows 98 PC at home to check email isn't a gamer yet is counted as part of the total Windows Marketshare.
Yeah, but you see there are more aspects to this than just portability, like performance or scope. You'll need more than just OpenGL to do what DirectX does, if I'm not mistaken.
If those handhelds use OpenGL (like the iPhone) they probably use OpenGL ES (embedded systems), which is a subset of OpenGL.
I'm venting a bit (ok, a lot) here, but I've found that Apple makes it extremely painful to write cross platform OpenGL code. First, they use a non-standard macro file for glext.h, but the framework prefers it over any you include even if you #include yours first, so you need to define a variable GL_GLEXT_LEGACY so it doesn't get included. Then Apple recommends you don't use macros a
This is why there are so few (if any) good third-party games on the Wii.
All of the platforms have diverged to the point where you can't simply port and sell. If you're developing a Wii game, you damn well better be designing around the controls. If you're developing a DS game, you damn well better be designing around touch screen, and two screens. If you're developing for the PC, you damn well better be taking advantage of the mouse and keyboard. If you're developing for the PS3, you damn well better be
Actually, it's not the only way. Unfortunately, though, the others are a lot more... limited.
1. For a start, there are the two Zalman 3D monitors which use simple polarizer glasses and don't need any particular frequency. Simply: odd rows are polarized in one direction, even rows in the perpendicular direction, so each eye sees only half of them.
Upsides: Every single frame is split into two like that, so 60Hz is enough. It works right out of the box with the Nvidia Vista drivers. No flickering because it's not shutter-glasses.
Downsides: needs Vista. Or the iz3d drivers in XP which honestly aren't that mature yet, and it's a pain in most games to get a neat 3D both afar and in the weapon you have in your hands. You get half the resolution either way. Any text which isn't in a huge font, _will_ be broken by seeing only every other line of it. But the worst is that the 3D effect only works in a vertical angle of +/- 8 degrees. You only need to slide in your chair a little or even move your head a bit if you're close to the screen, to just start seeing double instead of 3D.
2. The iz3d stacked tft monitor. Basically it's two monitors in one, and again it uses polarizer glasses to separate them.
Upside: works in XP too. No resolution loss. Angle is much less of a problem. No flickering because it's not shutter-glasses.
Downside: well, it's the iz3d drivers again. It takes a lot of fiddling for the 3D effect to work, and even then it doesn't seem to have the depth that the NVidia drivers manage out of the box. Trying to go any higher will just cause you to see double, as the brain just gives up. Again it's a big problem to have both good depth illusion _and_ not see your weapon doubled in a FPS. (E.g., in Hellgate London literally there's almost no setting except flat where the gun doesn't double in first person.)
Also see what Tom's Hardware had to say about it.
3. The eDimensional glasses and drivers.
Upside: they work in XP (and _only_ in XP.) They work with non-Nvidia cards. And eDimensional claims that they work with TFTs too. No refresh rate restriction: if you don't mind a _lot_ of flickering, you can even run their drivers on a 60Hz screen, effectively getting only 30Hz to each eye. It's much cheaper than the nVidia glasses it will work with the Nvidia drivers too, if you have Vista and an 120Hz display.
Downside: it will only work as well as the nVidia drivers if you actually get the nVidia drivers to use it. I.e., you're back to needing 120Hz and Vista.
Downside: The eDimensional drivers, to put it mildly, suck. First of all there's the issue that it makes the image interlaced if you use them instead of nVidia, and probably only Loki knows why they needed that on a CRT. Worse yet, it stays interlaced even on the desktop once it went interlaced. So it's all the disadvantages of a Zalman display, but it flickers and it has a bunch of other own disadvantages. Like that they've crashed more than once on me. Or that a lot of the time they just make the image interlaced, but not actually 3D. E.g., WoW, the porster child of the "we support 3D glasses" generation, just goes interlaced and starts flickering the glasses, but is otherwise just as flat as ever.
Upside: if you have a CRT, you can use a combination of the iz3d drivers and an eDimensional utility which just activates the glasses. The iz3d drivers don't know how to use the pin that controlls the shutter-glasses, but will happily render alternate frames for them if you activate the glasses otherwise. This actually doesn't have the interlaced effect, and actually works with more games.
Downside: the iz3d drivers still have the same downsides as before in rendering 3D. With an extra nasty twist I found out the hard way. If your fps drops below a limit (about 40 fps), the image starts just jumping between left eye and right eye, for no obvious reason, making the game unplayable. So basically you have to give up virtually eye candy in any game to have enough of the reserve so that doesn't
As soon as I can afford a Larrabee CPU (thinking 30 cores?), I'm going to put it to good use. Mass virtualization of games comes to mind (undetectable bots anybody?).
Where are you getting the idea that it'll be anything close to powerful enough for that?
Virtualising games? Crazy. It's a graphics card, not a magical artifact.
Bigger and better games? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wasn't aware that we were hitting the 50Gb limit of today's BR-DL disks. To my knowledge, only one game has even come close (MGS4) and even then, it apparently only uses about 31Gb.
Re: (Score:2)
They also suggest that improved Blu-ray technology, which allows much more storage, will pave the way for even bigger and better looking games.
I wasn't aware that we were hitting the 50Gb limit of today's BR-DL disks. To my knowledge, only one game has even come close (MGS4) and even then, it apparently only uses about 31Gb.
I think that the expanded capacity for Blu-Ray discs will hardly have an impact on how games are produced unless they are Blu-Ray disc, or Playstation 3 exclusive. And yes, the only game to come close to using an entire BD is Metal Gear Solid 4. And even then, size doesn't mean a good game, Chrono Trigger is only a few megabytes in a SNES cartridge and I play that game more often these new 10GB and up games. And tons of digitally distributed games are tiny in comparison to disc based games but they play jus
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I don't know if I'd call the prospect of not having to change disks "Exciting", many people are already living the dream with HPCs in front of their TV's. Maybe not the most ideal solution, but I certainly don't think bigger disks are going to really change much just yet.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How about AI that doesn't suck? I know AI isn't easy, but neither is cutting edge graphics. We get more and more bling, more and more boom, more and more razzle dazzle but frankly most of the games I play the AI just sucks. I don't know about everyone else but I would rather have some challenging AI than more fancy bling bling graphics. I personally think that we have far passed the "good enough" stage in that department.
What would be nice is some decent AI that would put up a good fight along with some
Content (Score:2)
How many artists and designers and how much time would you need to create 50GB of artwork/maps/levels? If you could programmatically create it quickly, you are unlikely to need all that capacity right?
The more artists and designers, or time taken (render time etc), the higher the costs of producing the game.
Whereas most game rules (and game play) seem to fit well within a few megabytes, if not just a single MB.
For example the quake executable itself is l
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Re: (Score:2)
I thought that mipmapping was to stop it aliasing badly?
Re:Content (Score:4, Interesting)
yes, Mipmapping is one technique to help prevent aliasing - it really is pre-computed anti-aliasing on the texture itself. Ripmaps provide better anti-aliasing (since they do perspective oriented scaling), but they also use a lot more memory.
For mipmapping, you may have something like this
using the convention 0x=hexidecimal (base 16, where letters A through F represent numbers 10-15 - FF below is the number 255 [15*16+15]) A=alpha (transparency - 0=fully transparent, FF means fully opaque), R=red, G=green, B=blue
0xAARRGGBB
0xFF000033 0xFF000000
0xFF444444 0xFF000000
the mipmap averages these for the next level (this is called isotropic filtering)
0xFF111119
then depending on the distance, either the higher resolution or lower resolution is used. There are a number of extensions to this idea that give better results (i.e. trilinear filtering, anisotropic filtering, ripmaps), but that is deep ending a bit.
Parent
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Not really. I think textures are last or nearly last as far as disk use on most games - I think only models typically use less, although if you count shaders those typically take up less memory than anything, but they are really more like code.
Pre-rendered movies usually take up more space than anything else.
Video cards need to split the video ram between geometry and textures, so when it comes to textures, you've usually got 250-300MB of active VRAM to work with. A 512x512 32 bit texture t
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error correction - 1 1/3MB if mipmapped. I was thinking of normal maps, not mipmaps when I typed that.
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I accept that this is an improvement, but I really don't think it is anything more than a tiny one. Besides which this is something that storing media on the system achieves and would do better, just imagine not having to c
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Frankly, _I_ like my TV shows in boxes. Married... with Children is effing long and I want it to take a considerable part of my DVD rack.
If I was all about size I could just as well download everything as DivX and store it on my NAS/Mediacenter.
Also, I think prices for those should would have to come down (and would thus have much more of an impact than squeezing everything onto a single disc). I don't know how it is in America, but here they even started splitting the Star Trek seasons up in the hopes that
Bigger and prettier games (Score:2, Interesting)
This does not require that much more effort to create, it would add a little to the immersion and a DVD release could use one version as current games.
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In RE4 on the PS2 and PC, the cut-scenes were pre-rendered as video files, however on the Gamecube they were real time and I believe they reflected the outfits you were wearing at the time.
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Not to mention the controls for PC sucked. Why is it that when companies do console to PC they end up butchering the controls? Either rip off the controls of a game in the genre that worked, or make everything customizable so your shitty control setup can be changed.
I bought Cold Fear when it hit the bargain bin and frankly it was unplayable. The controls were so bad you spent more time fighting them than the monsters. But the one off the top of my head that POed me the most recently was GTA:SA. I loved
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They release box sets of entire shows all the time. I don't see why putting it all on one disk would make it any more expensive than putting it on several.
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Additionally, there is still the problem of content creation - which game studio has the time and resources to generate that much actual game content nowadays, not just pre-rendered ultra-HD cutscenes or music? MGS4 is a pretty good example. It takes an immense amount of work to create a game with that much detail that it fills up a Bluray disk.
Most of that space could be filled up with procedurally generated environments, but that's just the same "more of the good old stuff" philosophy that Sony's been fol
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And also lets not forget that BluRay is pretty damn slow. In the case of MGS4 you needed 8 minutes of install time to the HD and then again like 4 minutes on each chapter change, not fun. Having gigantic amounts of storage isn't all that useful when you can't read them from the disc fast enough.
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It's not Blu-ray that's slow, it's the PS3's blu-ray drive that is slow. It's only 2x, which is slower compared to the 360's 12x DVD drive, but a 4x BR drive is easily faster than this. Today, BR drives are 6x and higher (at least their PC drives are), so it's not really a problem of the format.
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I'll say to you what I'll say to the guy below - if this were the case, then why do 360 games typically have similar or shorter loading times as their PS3 counterparts?
Why do (certain) PS3 games NEED to be installed?
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I'll say to you what I'll say to the guy below - if this were the case, then why do 360 games typically have similar or shorter loading times as their PS3 counterparts?
The amount of data (Duh). The 360 is loading smaller/more heavily compressed textures, the PS3 not so much.
Why do (certain) PS3 games NEED to be installed?
Pulling from the HD is faster than from the BR drive, so they install on the HD what they need quickly and keep on the BR what they can spend some time loading
I've been hearing about some of the newer games going to a "progressive install" kind of methodology, initial install is small, but as the game progresses it continues to copy stuff from the BR to the HD.
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360 DVD is only 12x on single layer DVDs (how many games come on single layer DVD, answer: just 4), for everything else, it's 8x.
360 is also CAV, so it's only 8x at the very edge of the disc, everywhere else it's all downhill from there.
2x BD is 71Mbit/Sec constant across the entire disk surface.
8x DVD is 86.4Mbit/sec only on the outer edge, and then peak transfer speed.
From a different AC Post [slashdot.org]
We aren't talking a huge difference in speed (single layer outer edge 360 VS PS3 BR) therefore we must be talking about a huge difference in the amount of data.
Answers (Score:2)
"why do 360 games typically have similar or shorter loading times as their PS3 counterparts?"
The XBox 12x DVD is about 16 MB/s and 2x Blu-ray is only 9 MB/s.
"Why do (certain) PS3 games NEED to be installed?"
To speed up loading.
Re: Oh Shut Up! (Score:5, Funny)
You don't win a prize for being the biggest idiot in a console gaming thread retard.
And the Oscar goes to... Anonymous Coward, for his post "Butthurt Fanboy Wharrgarbl"!
"Thank you! Thank you! I couldn't have done it without Cheatos, obesity, and shame. I didn't win this just for me, I won this for everyone who attaches their identity to a corporation to derive some semblance of self-esteem. Thank you!"
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I'll say to you what I'll say to the guy above - if this were the case, then why do 360 games typically have similar or shorter loading times as their PS3 counterparts?
Why do (certain) PS3 games NEED to be installed?
If either of you (anonymous cowards) can give some valid reasons why, I'll listen.
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And the article is about technologies for 2009...
2009 will be... (Score:2)
My Predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
I predicted the article would be bollocks before I clicked, and I was right! Let me make some other predictions:
3D Gaming - these glasses have been around for years. Maybe they work better now that everyone has bigger screens with higher refresh rates, but they were useless before. Nobody wants to sit in front of a PC wearing glasses. Perhaps if it were released for consoles it may take off, but I don't think the penetration of 120Mhz TVs is large enough to justify it.
Blu-Ray Super Disc - do games really need that much storage? Nope. My prediction for the number of games released in 2009 using super discs? Zero.
Brain Computer Interfaces - I am sure they could sell a few as a gimmick but my understanding is that control is very limited - a few noisy axises at best. I have a hard time imagining a game that could be controlled by brain easier than by fingers. I put it in the Sounds-Good-to-Investors-Neat-Picture-For-Press-Release-Consumers-Don't-Care bucket.
OLED screens - on their way, but immature. It will take years before they are competitive with LCD. In any case, not really gaming related as such.
Wii MotionPlus - well duh, great scoop there, IGN! The MotionPlus opens up some additional options for games, I expect some neat things. But it won't be the game-changer that the Wii originally was. Nintendo have a history of adding stuff to consoles, none of their previous efforts have really set the world alight. A modest success, used by only a few games (but these may be classics).
Windows 7/DirectX11 - better faster, stronger, snore. Nothing revolutionary from the users perspective. Developers might be tempted if Windows7 takes off (which I think it will, if only because it will be shoved down our throats)
240Mhz TVs - good I guess, but this is not the time to launch an expensive piece of equipment. Its not like consoles are actually going to output at 240Mhz, so the motion-compensation filters had better be good.
Play-TV - could be a game changer if Sony pulls finger and markets it world-wide. Sony really needs to give the public a new reason to have a PS3, PlayTV could be the tipping point. But I think it might be too little, too late since PVRs aren't exactly rare at this point and it seems limited.
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Somebody please correct me when I am wrong here, but I was under the impression that technology like those 240Hz TVs are meant for movies, not for games. As far as I understand it, they take a handful of frames and then calculate inbetweens to reduce the jitter when the camera is panning in a film. So far so good, the problem however is that they actually need the last frame before they can start displaying the first one, meaning they will generate plenty of lag, which is a non-issue for movies, but makes t
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One just needs to look at CD readers on computers. They were default items for a long time before CD distributed games became a common method.
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I can't agree more. "Bigger/Better/Faster"... Yay!
What about native DirectX support for other platforms, so I can start playing games again. I don't have any Windows-based computers at all (both at office and home).
What about an open game platform where you can play games, with mods, in an Xbox Live'ish environment. I like some parts of Xbox Live, but the lack of dedicated community based servers/mods make it inferior to PC.
What about internet/browser based gaming. ID Software is coming with Quake Live now.
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1. Hey! Let me install this 50GB game on your HD, just give me a couple hours.
2. Let me install only a couple of GB and require load times for reading off the Blue-Ray disk.
To a certain extend, I would like some reasonable constraints placed on how much bloat goes into a game.
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Perhaps if it were released for consoles it may take off, but I don't think the penetration of 120Mhz TVs is large enough to justify it.
Dude, I want to know where you are getting your TVs that can refresh 120 million times per second. That seems like it would eliminate flicker, for sure!
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You'd still get people complaining that they can see the scanlines or something.
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I feel it saddening, however, that no game technology focus on the gameplay. Devices, better resolution, better graphic quality, but the games are still the same as Quake I (and less fun than Duke Nukem 3D)
I doubt that bigger storage will mean much (Score:2)
The limiting factor on game size really comes more down to the system it runs on and the economics of making a game. It basically is two interlocking parts:
1) You can only make a game so big, so involved, so varied, and still expect to make money on it. You cannot spend $1 billion on a game and ever hope to make any money. Thus there are limits as to how much can be in your game: How many different scenes, characters, etc. It costs money to have artists, animators, writers, etc work on all those assets. So
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0Eg3dBnsHk [youtube.com]
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I really wish that more game developers would go procedural; the concept has been around forever (or at least since Strike Commander) and could go a long way towards enhancing replayability.
I don't think we are going to see the one thing that I PERSONALLY THINK is the thing most needed, however; a end to sloppy code, relying on gigantic libraries, etc.
We need a Chris Sawyer for the year 2009; programming in assembly, using OpenGL, Procedural synthesis, and capable of making use of a distributed computing me
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(or at least since Strike Commander)
Sure that you mean Strike Commander? I can't remember anything procedural in that game, maybe the terrain, but other then that it was a very artwork heavy game, quite similar to what we have today. Procedural stuff such in Elite or Elite2 on the other side was extremely impressive, whole solar systems that fit onto a floppy disk, neat stuff. But that was a long time ago and color swapping an image to produce yet another planet isn't going to impress people today. The big disadvantage of real 100% procedural
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Am I the only one with ears? Its the sound! Many larger PS3 games come with
Another list of 50 things for 2009 from Kikizio... (Score:4, Informative)
http://games.kikizo.com/features/50-hottest-things-in-2009-gaming-p1.asp [kikizo.com]
The 50 Hottest Things in Gaming in 2009
Here's another list, much more expanded, in case you don't like the watered down version IGN is offering.
Retro (Score:3, Insightful)
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Stop using DirectX already! (Score:2)
Developers who use DirectX are locking themselves up into Windows and Xbox.
Developers who use OpenGL are locking themselves up into Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Playstation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS (?), PSP (?).
Guess which one has more total marketshare?
Hint 1: both choices include Windows, so choose carefully.
Hint 2: over 25% of students on campus use a Mac. Grandma using her old Windows 98 PC at home to check email isn't a gamer yet is counted as part of the total Windows Marketshare.
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If those handhelds use OpenGL (like the iPhone) they probably use OpenGL ES (embedded systems), which is a subset of OpenGL.
I'm venting a bit (ok, a lot) here, but I've found that Apple makes it extremely painful to write cross platform OpenGL code. First, they use a non-standard macro file for glext.h, but the framework prefers it over any you include even if you #include yours first, so you need to define a variable GL_GLEXT_LEGACY so it doesn't get included. Then Apple recommends you don't use macros a
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This is why there are so few (if any) good third-party games on the Wii.
All of the platforms have diverged to the point where you can't simply port and sell. If you're developing a Wii game, you damn well better be designing around the controls. If you're developing a DS game, you damn well better be designing around touch screen, and two screens. If you're developing for the PC, you damn well better be taking advantage of the mouse and keyboard. If you're developing for the PS3, you damn well better be
It's not the only way (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's not the only way. Unfortunately, though, the others are a lot more... limited.
1. For a start, there are the two Zalman 3D monitors which use simple polarizer glasses and don't need any particular frequency. Simply: odd rows are polarized in one direction, even rows in the perpendicular direction, so each eye sees only half of them.
Upsides: Every single frame is split into two like that, so 60Hz is enough. It works right out of the box with the Nvidia Vista drivers. No flickering because it's not shutter-glasses.
Downsides: needs Vista. Or the iz3d drivers in XP which honestly aren't that mature yet, and it's a pain in most games to get a neat 3D both afar and in the weapon you have in your hands. You get half the resolution either way. Any text which isn't in a huge font, _will_ be broken by seeing only every other line of it. But the worst is that the 3D effect only works in a vertical angle of +/- 8 degrees. You only need to slide in your chair a little or even move your head a bit if you're close to the screen, to just start seeing double instead of 3D.
2. The iz3d stacked tft monitor. Basically it's two monitors in one, and again it uses polarizer glasses to separate them.
Upside: works in XP too. No resolution loss. Angle is much less of a problem. No flickering because it's not shutter-glasses.
Downside: well, it's the iz3d drivers again. It takes a lot of fiddling for the 3D effect to work, and even then it doesn't seem to have the depth that the NVidia drivers manage out of the box. Trying to go any higher will just cause you to see double, as the brain just gives up. Again it's a big problem to have both good depth illusion _and_ not see your weapon doubled in a FPS. (E.g., in Hellgate London literally there's almost no setting except flat where the gun doesn't double in first person.)
Also see what Tom's Hardware had to say about it.
3. The eDimensional glasses and drivers.
Upside: they work in XP (and _only_ in XP.) They work with non-Nvidia cards. And eDimensional claims that they work with TFTs too. No refresh rate restriction: if you don't mind a _lot_ of flickering, you can even run their drivers on a 60Hz screen, effectively getting only 30Hz to each eye. It's much cheaper than the nVidia glasses it will work with the Nvidia drivers too, if you have Vista and an 120Hz display.
Downside: it will only work as well as the nVidia drivers if you actually get the nVidia drivers to use it. I.e., you're back to needing 120Hz and Vista.
Downside: The eDimensional drivers, to put it mildly, suck. First of all there's the issue that it makes the image interlaced if you use them instead of nVidia, and probably only Loki knows why they needed that on a CRT. Worse yet, it stays interlaced even on the desktop once it went interlaced. So it's all the disadvantages of a Zalman display, but it flickers and it has a bunch of other own disadvantages. Like that they've crashed more than once on me. Or that a lot of the time they just make the image interlaced, but not actually 3D. E.g., WoW, the porster child of the "we support 3D glasses" generation, just goes interlaced and starts flickering the glasses, but is otherwise just as flat as ever.
Upside: if you have a CRT, you can use a combination of the iz3d drivers and an eDimensional utility which just activates the glasses. The iz3d drivers don't know how to use the pin that controlls the shutter-glasses, but will happily render alternate frames for them if you activate the glasses otherwise. This actually doesn't have the interlaced effect, and actually works with more games.
Downside: the iz3d drivers still have the same downsides as before in rendering 3D. With an extra nasty twist I found out the hard way. If your fps drops below a limit (about 40 fps), the image starts just jumping between left eye and right eye, for no obvious reason, making the game unplayable. So basically you have to give up virtually eye candy in any game to have enough of the reserve so that doesn't
Parent
MOD PARENT UP!!! (Score:2)
Informative + Interesting.
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As soon as I can afford a Larrabee CPU (thinking 30 cores?), I'm going to put it to good use. Mass virtualization of games comes to mind (undetectable bots anybody?).
Where are you getting the idea that it'll be anything close to powerful enough for that?
Virtualising games? Crazy. It's a graphics card, not a magical artifact.