
PS3 Oblivion Approaching PC Quality Visuals 242
fistfullast33l writes "After taking a beating in Gamespot's side by side Comparison of Xbox 360 and PS3 graphics, Playstation 3 owners may finally have something to hold over the 360 fans. Both Gamespot and IGN have previews posted yesterday that talk up the graphics and performance improvements over the 360 version. Load times and texture quality and draw distance have been improved, as well as 'new shaders dedicated to rendering the foreground cleanly with sharper details, so rocky landscapes now have craggy appearances instead of smooth, non-distinct surfaces,' according to IGN. They end with the ultimate hype, 'screens from the PS3 version should approach those from high end PCs running Oblivion, which is an impressive feat.' How is this possible? Gamespot reports that 'Oblivion will make extensive use of the PS3's hard drive by caching multiple gigabytes of data, which seemed to help with load times from what we saw.' While there are no official reports of this making it into the new 360/PC expansion Shivering Isles, a rumor on the Gamespot preview says that 1up might have the scoop."
Alright (Score:5, Insightful)
But the real advantage of playing Oblivion on a PC is the plethora of modifications. The marginal difference of graphical performance between xbox360, PS3, and high-end PC Oblivion is not really that important.
So this article leaves me asking..."So what?"
And the PS3 isn't a terrible piece of equipment, it's just an expensive one. I wouldn't be suprised to see nice graphics on it, I would demand it.
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PS. I thought the PS3 was supposed to have superior graphics to high end PCs?
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Still, the Xbox 360 spits out better graphics than any computer *I've* ever owned. You couldn't even buy a video card with equivalent power for 400 bucks, much less the rest of the box.
Oh and good luck getting your PC to output HD resolutions that are compatible with your TV, running
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I didn't even think about outputting to an HD TV, but my computer is fully capable. It has the output for both conventional and component, all I need are the cables. If I was the kind of person who downloaded m
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Re:Alright (Score:5, Funny)
-Eric
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Re:Alright (Score:4, Funny)
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Approaching? (Score:3, Insightful)
ps, the Wii is so much more fun - its peppy [google.com]!
Approaching stickyness.? (Score:2, Funny)
*note to self* Do not buy a used PS3 from Liquidcooled.
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Thanks, poor-man's 360 (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be very possible on the 360 if they could assure the 360 actually had a hard drive. Unfortunately, this assumption cannot be made due to the hard driveless 360s floating around out there. Not including one of the best features of the XBox on the value edition 360s was a big mistake and it looks like Microsoft is already beginning to pay for it.
Re:Thanks, poor-man's 360 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Thanks, poor-man's 360 (Score:4, Insightful)
The other difference is the PS3 version is basically installing the game. What else do you call caching large quanities of data to a hard drive to be read back? Next generation every game is going to require 10 minute install times every time you switch discs. Oh joy, if only they gave us driver issues then it'd be all the reasons some of us got out of the PC market.
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Essentially though it's installing, it has to be done to allow the game to run, it doesn't have to be done on the fly (the 360 has ru
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Yes there is. Losing half their target market is something preventing them from requiring to own a hard drive.
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The hard drive adds NO capability to the Xbox, only speed. Games do not need the hard drive, they will run exactly the same either way, only with longer load times.
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Unless it's heavily compressed (e.g. high-end fractal stuff combined with procedural texture enhancement) on the game disc and less compressed (e.g. S3TC) on the hard drive, and the decoder and the game can't fit into RAM at once.
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It's still just a speed problem.
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And what you said isn't even verifiable. How are you judging what makes an argument dumb? What metric are you using?
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This argument keeps getting posted here, and it's FALSE. The HD adds nothing to the 360 that wasn't already there - There's nothing a game can do with the HD that it CAN'T do without!
You can make the game load faster (after the first load) with the HD, but there's no reason for the game itself to be any different.
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Ummm... Why the hell would I want to load up my Hard Drive with install data? They are compensating for Blu-Ray having poor read speeds.
Worst mistake ever, Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
-Eric
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Umm... it's possible anyway.
if(HardDrivePresent() == 1) CacheGameData();
They don't need to assume anything, just use an if/then statement. Sorry, but some XBOX 360's lacking a hard drive aren't affecting the games like that. The only real damage they're doing is causing a developer to think about how the gam
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Now, the 360 doesn't cache multiple gigabytes of data, so it's not likely as efficient as the PS3 version, but it doesn't really have to be as the data is loaded more quickly from the 360 DVD drive in the first place.
Not having a standard hard drive does not pr
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hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
PS3 should damn well be better! (Score:5, Insightful)
That PS3 isn't mopping the floor with PeeCee right now is suprising, especially given that its halfway between the cost of a normal console and a new gaming rig (logarithmically speaking). What's more suprising is that the article submitter doesn't agree with my assumption.
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"Console sold for 50% more than nearest competitor, and claimed to be twice as powerful, shows graphical improvement over competitor in one game"
This is not a win for the PS3. This makes the mess that is the PS3, is just a little less awful. When games are regularly coming out and show significant improvement over the XBox 360, we'll talk. In the meantime, like hell am I paying 50% extra for "Well, it's better in this game!"
Not really... (Score:3, Insightful)
At least you admit to being confused ;). The XBOX360 wasn't out-performing PCs when it was released either.
Now for my response to the parent (Xugumad):
Compare the XBOX360 launch titles to the current XB
Only said by console fanboys with an e-machine (Score:5, Insightful)
The original Xbox was nothing but a cheap PC that was OK performance wise for a $500 PC when it was designed. However, the PC equivalent in hardware actually was cheaper than the Xbox just a few months after the Xbox was released. Now that old Xboxes are dirt cheap, the equivalent PC is more expensive (prices for a computer can't go below about $200 no matter what is in them due to component count and size). Integration/elimination of excess components saves maybe $100 in real manufacturing costs. It was dumb to buy an Xbox and put all that effort into putting Linux on it back then, now it actually makes sense.
If you want to make a console where the price point is below the integration sweet point of $200 based on common components that sells over a million somehow, then you can probably just beat the price/performance ratio of PCs. The Wii is actually pretty close to this where Nintendo is making money and giving people a somewhat reasonable box for the price. The only reason to buy a console is for their exclusive games and the console's simplicity/integration. Kind of like why Apple thinks it can sell Macs for a premium over PCs with the same hardware.
Not true (Score:5, Insightful)
Consoles outperform a similar aged PCs because the game can be tuned to the exact hardware (it is impossible to optimize a game for a Geforce 6, Geforce 7, Geforce 8, Radeon X800, Radeon X1800 and also cover Pentium 4, Pentum Core Duo, AMD X2, and PowerPC. On top of that console's have historically had a massive advantage in that they have 'no' OS to run and have a much lower resolution.
Just look at the Gamecube's best looking games Star Wars: Rogue Squadren 2 and the Resident evil games
Re: No really, it's true (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not going to call OS overhead a massive advantage. If you reboot your machine and refrain from running any services it shouldn't make that big a difference; it's not as though the console has no OS. This is an advantage, to be sure, but not one that is going to make up for the gap between PC and console hardware.
Resolution is a red herring here. It's why consoles have been able to get away with having weaker hardware, not an example of why they are better. Consoles are just now starting to support resolutions that were standard in PC games five years ago. This is not evidence that they are equally powerful. It means they were doing less to begin with.
By the way, I don't know about a Pentium 4, but the Athlon XP 1.66GHz and GeForce Ti 350 I bought in 2001 at the same time I bought my GC, was later able to run UT2K4 and Doom 3, both at resolutions and with effects that look better than what the GC could do. Could it have handled Rogue Leader? Yes. Absolutely it could have, and at a higher resolution too. Could the GC handle Doome 3? Eh... considering that the biggest problem I had with my hardware was the limited video ram, I'm going to say the GC would have choked and died.
Of course the GC was cheaper, easier to set up, and doesn't crash (not that my Linux box crashes ever since NVidia and X.org got their act together so crashing game != crashing box, but crashing game isn't something you expect either on a console). Consoles have advantages. Performance has never been one of them.
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No, they really don't. Neither the NES nor the SNES outperformed the contemporary Amiga or Ataris, the PlayStation did not outperform a 450MHz P2 with a VooDoo2, and the PS2 did not outperform a 1GHz Athlon with a GeForce 2.
For example, Tomb Raider Screens on the PlayStation [gamespot.com] compared to the PC [gamespot.com].
On top of that console's...have a much lower resolution.
Which just brings your definition of "outperforming" further into question.
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there are no magical cheap chips. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sorry to go all grammar nazi about this, but grammar makes a difference here: Selling a console below manufacturing costs is not a definition of magical cheap chips, but of magically cheap chips instead.
So, yeah, you kinda missed the GP's point there.
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Only said by pc fanboys with four e-machines (Score:2)
The problem is that almost all major commercial titles that support single-screen multiplayer are console exclusives (e.g. Smash Bros.) or multi-console exclusives (e.g. Bomberman). Too bad for owners of set-top PCs.
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This type of delay (which Sony screwed up because they missed their original launch date) + the fact that there's a lag in PC games taking advantage of the latest cards + Standard definition television's free "anti-aliasing" have contributed to consoles always having a minor, switfly overcome, but real advantage to PCs when they launch.
To my knowledge this is true all the way back to the NES and Ata
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I see stuff like this all the time. Sure it is a sale, but a frequent one.
866 MHz 128 MB PC for $60
http://www.surpluscomputers.com/store/main.aspx?p
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So what (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'm a console guy, but I'm still able to recognize that PC games have a signi
A modest look at it... (Score:2, Informative)
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Yeah sales of Oblivion totally tanked after the horse armor incident.
wait no they didn't
Well, it had better. (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the PS3's architecture, that's to be expected. It has a decent GPU on the back end, and all those underutilized Cell CPUs to do things like generate procedural textures. The obvious approach for textures on the PS3 should yield a look like Pixar's All Renderman All the Time, with every pixel generated by little shader programs written in San Raphael, instead of compositing in real-world images like everybody else.
The big advantage of procedural textures is that they survive zooming in. In the film world, this isn't as critical, because you know how close the camera will get to a background, and you only put in detail the camera can see. In games, the user can move around and get close to a textured surface, which usually looks terrible.
Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
The real comparison would involve both development cost and quality of the game if they were developing for both platforms simultaneously.
Same issue with both tests (Score:2)
The PS3 didn't beat the 360 in this first comparison, but the games do look fine for first-generation titles. The real graphics battle will likely come next year.
Now that the Oblivion developers have had a while to work with the PS3, I would say it would be likley to look better than the 360 version which was an early title for that console. In both tests it's a matter of timing as to what looks better where.
Really both are about equal in terms of graphics ability, which we all knew
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You just answered your own question. Of course console game engines have been patched. In fact, that's probably the game component most commonly patched for the simple fact that it's usually the smallest component on the disc, with models, textures, sounds and such taking the bulk of the space.
I meant quality (Score:2)
I know some of this has been said... (Score:2)
I'm glad that they are making it look better. Too many games are on both the 360 and the PS3 in which the PS3 version pales in comparison...Fight Night Round 3 is the perfect example of this.
In the case of Oblivion, they have taken a game that was fantastic when it was first released (and still is now) and vowed to make it better. While this seems obvious to many people, they still took the time and the effort to do it.
Now.
My question to you PC Gamers
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Actually the only difference I could see in the side-by-side (other than the obvious default gamma differences in the other games) is that they toned down the ridiculous overuse of bloom on the PS3 version. Then again they didn't really show much of the game, did they? I think the PS3's real problem is that it has half the RAM of the 360. As procedural textures go, the PS3 will probably annihilate the competition
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wow! (Score:4, Funny)
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Next question?
Took a beating? (Score:2)
I don't think the results of that comparison are so clear. Where the 360 does better, it is significantly so but not really a deal breaker. Where the PS3 does better is much more in-your-face stuff that makes the 360 look childish. Examples:
* The rear view mirror and the street light in the last Need for Speed picture. Where are you looking? I hope you are looking at the rear view mirror or traffic signals while diving instead of the buildings. So... bad drivers should buy the 360
No Oblivion screenshots? Booo! (Score:3, Insightful)
Y'know... based on the
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Quake 2! (Score:2)
Seriously, I think people are missing a major point that seeing a console optimized game that is ported from other systems. This is actually a promising look for the PS3's future. While I own a 360, and want a Wii, I do hope the PS3 lives because I still hope for a new version of FF7.
Bit early to call winner (Score:2)
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What does the Wii being fun have anything whatsoever do do with a graphical comparison of game consoles that actually made t
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Funny)
I think a good analogy would be, while the PS3, 360, and PC are all comparing dick sizes, Wii is walking around in a string bikini and DD size braw...
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What did you expect?"
No matter what, the PS3 can't win. GoW (gen2 release) > Resistance (gen1 release), and all the 360 fanbois can it. PS3 Oblivion > 360 Oblivion, and the 360 Fanbois cry unfair because they've had 8 months extra to work on it. You guys continually adjust your argument to suit the facts.
Yes, Sony have been dicks in the way they've over-hyped the console. And yes, the PS3 is comparatively expensive (for a console). But as a blu-ray
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with no neck and heavy use of the word 'fuck' so they can say IT'S A MATURE TITLE. Viva is colourful and fuzzy,
and I like the animation better. The critters are softer - gears don't animate much beyond moving their limbs and jaws,
while piñatas have soft, deformable bodies. I don't count 'sploding the enemy in Gears
I have no issues with the graphics of Oblivion on 360 - I have both t
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Gears does remind me of quake though, with 255 shades of brown
In what world do you live? (Score:2)
Besides, as far as the purpose intended, the Cell processor and memory architecture of a PS3 is more sophisticated
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Since we are talking about Cell, yes, the leave one SPE disabled (to help yield) and Sony eats up one for their dedicated use, leaving game developers 6 instead of the full 8 SPEs. Even at this point, if you can reasonably express the algorithm in a way that is amenable to the BPEs, the Cell will wipe the floor with the equivalent processor. Getting to that point is not always possible for everything and often non-trivial for the things that will go there. It just so happens a lo
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Most C2D machines I price out end up being between $1000-1500.
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RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
Your link (1/17):
The PS3 Oblivion team compensated for the slower drive by duplicating data across the Blu-ray disc, making it faster to find and load
Today's link (2/6):
Bethesda's Pete Hines also commented that recent reports of data duplication on the PS3 Oblivion disc have been exaggerated, and this technique isn't different from the similar strategy that was employed in the creation of the Xbox 360 game last year.
Congratulations (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Congratulations (Score:4, Insightful)
Once again, comparing apples and oranges. This is not going to be a Politically correct post, because lets face it Gamers are some of the stingiest bunch in the universe when it comes to purchasing games. They do buy games and pirate but they are not going to reward crap. There is too many games and not enough money (and time) to play them all, enter piracy.
** If you're a serious gamer (both PC and console), you don't give a shit about what platform the game is on. You are at some point going to pirate console games, period.
** With that PC, I can RIP games for my consoles, so that money I spent on my PC is saving me money on all my overall gaming habits. The cost of a PC is easily amortized by the fact of what you get out of owning a PC, and access to ripping peripherals and software (DVD, blu-ray, HD-DVD) period.
** The PC does other things like... you know... cracking and RIPPING GAMES, which is widespread in the REAL WORLD(TM) not in corporate capitalist fantasy land where every individual purchases games at their full retail price.
** Not everyone buys their PC (or PC parts) new.
No one except those who can afford it (or want it bad enough) buy the latest video card. The people that own the top end are a VERY small percentage of the market. Most capable video cards are under $200 and many now reaching $100 price point, 6x less then the PS3 and 5x less then the xbox, and since most people NEED computers nowadays, the extra "cost" is negligable since they need it to access the worlds most important utility: The internet. Next the person that bought a new system could have been sitting on their last one for enough years to get a decent amount of use per $ out of it.
Now let's turn it around shall we? What about all the EXTRA controllers you need for your console if you want to play party games? (oops there goes another $100-200), what about online services? Online content downloads? Oh and that extra $10-15 PER GAME in the full retail price of your console games. Oh lets not forget the price of the modchips you are going to buy either now or later in the cycle after many more of the games have been released.
Gaming as a hobby may cost more on the PC in terms of hardware, but it decreases your total cost of ownership in terms of games you can own and play on your own time through ripping and burning and saving you money in gas and game purchase/rental fees on the gaming turds that were not good enough to buy.
Everyone OWNS a PC for other things besides gaming and the overall use of a PC (not just games) will keep getting better as computational power increases and software developers find new ways to exploit that.
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Also, my computer can do a LOT more than a PS3. I can play games, serve web pages, and RUN ANY PROGRAM THAT I WANT ON IT.
I can even WRITE programs for it. For free. Without being sanctioned by Sony.
Yes, it's more expensive, but the point was that the PS3 graphics aren't comparing to PC graphics because the PS3 d
What about non-split screens? (Score:2)
Um, because nobody cares? because playing on a split screen sucks beyond belief?
You may be right. But then what about Tetris? What benefit is there of putting each tetrion on a separate screen vs. putting them side-by-side as seen in The New Tetris for Nintendo 64? And what about WWE, Bomberman, and Smash Bros., which support four players on one non-split screen that shows all of the arena? Why hasn't Bomberman for PC been updated in a decade?
Four video cards for four players? (Score:2)
But won't you need to buy four video cards at $250 each for a four-player game? Virtually no major commercial PC titles from the last decade support a split-screen or shared-view (e.g. Bomberman) mode for use with SDTVs or HDTVs.
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I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Source?
Just go to any electronics store, and check out the difference between an SDTV and an HDTV (it doesn't even have to be 1080p, 720p is fine) with an HD signal. Move around and change the distance at you're viewing it as well. Not o