Author Topic: PS3 Graphics Indestinguishable from Movies!! (Read 7224 times)

BlackNMild2k1 · « **on:** January 25, 2005, 11:53:57 AM »

According to Gerhard Florin of EA in a recent articel on the BBC

Speculation on Next Generation

Simon Gardner - president of Climax's Action Studio

Quote
"We can thrown more polygons around and have better AI but if it doesn't make for a better game then that's not very useful."

At least Climax studio's gets the big picture, EA just wants their games to look more real, 'film quality'.

Pale · « **Reply #1 on:** January 25, 2005, 01:38:43 PM »

Haha, thats funny. We are sooooooooooooo far off from anything looking like the incredibles or finding nemo it isn't even funny.

Stimutacs Addict · « **Reply #2 on:** January 25, 2005, 02:57:41 PM »

^--- that's why i believe NIntendo could make sh!t happen w / the revolution

Caillan · « **Reply #3 on:** January 25, 2005, 04:55:15 PM »

Yeah, this is just like how the PS2 was a supercomputer, which is by 1990 standards. It's just like how it can also launch missiles, which is the same way an old 486 can.

I'm a sure a few authoritatian governments will ban the PS3 as well, so they can use that again too.

Currently, movies that use lots of CG have to schedule months ahead becuase it takes so long for them to draw each frame. They use massive Beowulf clusters to do so. A good PC now can render a decent CG still at about a frame per hour. Consoles have never technically been better than PCs for long after their launch, and desktop PCs will nto be rendering The Incredibles in three years.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #4 on:** January 25, 2005, 07:54:43 PM »

Caillan: Supercomputer doesn't necessarily meanpowerful, the PS2 architecture was built in a fashion similar to supercompuers, which unfortunately aren't vary useful for games. The Cell seems to follow a similar approach.

Either way, Sony promises that with every single system they release. Considering they never met those claims I don't see them doing it this time. Don't fall for their hype!

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #5 on:** January 26, 2005, 04:03:54 AM »

Is filmic even a word?

KDR_11k · « **Reply #6 on:** January 26, 2005, 04:06:44 AM »

Yep.

Pale · « **Reply #7 on:** January 26, 2005, 05:31:55 AM »

I believe super computer does mean powerful. The basic definition for it is somewhere along the lines of "Most powerful machine of its type at time of release." From there I guess it just depends on ones definition of "of its type" because it probably was the most powerful home video game console at the time of its release...

KDR_11k · « **Reply #8 on:** January 26, 2005, 06:09:24 AM »

Nope. Supercomputers are machines built for lots of processors for computing intensive tasks. Not every supercomputer is the largest of the world when it's planned or finished. The Cell architecture was built for these kinds of systems. Unfortunately supercomputers have problems with branching (since they usually serialize stuff, which might not work when some event in midst of a series requires a complete change of the pipeline from there on). The less the data changes while it is being processed, the more efficient the supercomputer will be. In game environments a minor change could mean a complete change of the following calculations (e.g. a state change or something of similar gravity) and therefore "pipeline trashing" (the entire pipeline becomes unusable and any other operations that were made on assumptions need to be redone). Of course, that's rather rare on a global scale since few entities change behaviour (a physics object, for example, would know only one state, "exists" and no matter how it's knocked the calculations will always be the same) though maybe AI could cause a headache here.
The best applications for supercomputers are those that require little cross-reference (e.g. every entity has its set of values and its behaviour depends only on that), the more you involve the results of other calculations the more you need to move stuff around between processors and the more often your pipeline can trash (sorry, I don't know the right term for a pipeline misprediction). Data streams are perfect, user input is usually a worst case.

Or maybe I got something completely wrong

.

Caillan · « **Reply #9 on:** January 26, 2005, 05:15:21 PM »

I'm sure you're right, but in common non-technical talk the term is taken to mean simply an extremely powerful computer, and one without major bottlenecks. Look at the popular online dictionaries. Sony purposely exploited the difference between the technical and non-technical term as a marketing stunt.

nemo_83 · « **Reply #10 on:** January 26, 2005, 08:31:46 PM »

the devide widens between the visions of what next gen means

MS and Sony want to make movies

Nintendo wants to make games

and the analogy of having a bigger canvas but a smaller brush sounds ridiculous. an artist would request the largest brush available so to be painterly. all of the canvases are getting larger, and Sony may have the largest canvas of all, but what matters is the quality of the brush. no artist would work with some fidly little acrylic brush, especially when the canvas is large. an artist would prefer a large caligraphy brush with a long handle and full head of fine hair. sony and ms are not artists, they are lawyers, mathematicians, scientists, statiticians, and marketers.

mantidor · « **Reply #11 on:** January 27, 2005, 05:50:40 AM »

I think that Nintendo is more scientist than Sony or Microsoft, while they are more like technicians, at least in what games are concerned

KDR_11k · « **Reply #12 on:** January 27, 2005, 07:07:01 AM »

Caillan: They probably did the same for their Toy Story claims. How many polies has Toystory per frame? Hipoly characters are usually around one million but the simplistic shape would allow for less. If there were around three million polygons (triangles) on screen, the PS2 could do that in optimum conditions (remember that "peak 66mT/sec" claim?) at 24fps, which constitutes realtime for movies. Unfortunately, once you factor in deformation alone that already gets impossible, not to forget textures, lighting and perhaps a tiny thing called a GAME.

nemo_83 · « **Reply #13 on:** January 28, 2005, 07:03:53 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: mantidor
I think that Nintendo is more scientist than Sony or Microsoft, while they are more like technicians, at least in what games are concerned

It seems Nintendo has a bad case of sequel-itis. They would rather rework the same pieces over and over again (Zelda) ever perfecting them, but not really changing the plot. Their games have grown formulaic over time. But I have faith that they know more about visuals than MS and Sony. Sony and MS seem to think its all about raw power but really it is about cutting the fat and having something efficient and flexible. Sony wants developers to carve their games out mountains of marble; Nintendo wants developers to use oil paint. I think I would go with Nintendo. Just look at WW, Nintendo knows what is best sometimes even when everyone else doesn't. WW's character designs and world were the most seemless living world I've ever seen in a game. I can't wait for the new one. WW reminded me of a Tim Burton film. It was really more disturbing visually than any blood and guts game out there. The game is not just a fantacy genre game; its world and every object in it are fantacifully designed and fit together better than any game I've seen in 3D.

What is wrong is not that games like Zelda and Metroid are bad games, it is just that people are looking for the next game like Zelda that will break new ground as well as be emaculately composed. Sometimes something fresh and even simple can be more enjoyable than tested elaborate work.

Shift Key · « **Reply #14 on:** January 29, 2005, 04:15:46 AM »

Quote
They would rather rework the same pieces over and over again (Zelda) ever perfecting them, but not really changing the plot.

Do you refuse to acknowledge the existence of Majora's Mask? Becuase that game was totally different gameplay- and plot-wise when compared to the other Zelda games.

Bill Aurion · « **Reply #15 on:** January 29, 2005, 05:16:08 AM »

Well, you could then say OoT is different from the others for introducing the horse, and WW for introducing sailing...As a whole, the fighting and exploration aspect of the series is identical...It's just that Ninty throws in new stuff to make us happy...

Gamefreak · « **Reply #16 on:** January 29, 2005, 09:53:53 AM »

It's the textures, texture effects, lighting, shadowing, etc. that really make things realistic, not the amount of polys (if you know what you're doing..)
The T-Rex in jurassic park had 70,000 polys. There are ships in Rogue Leader/Rebel Strike approaching that number...

Oh, and there have only been 3 3D Zelda's in the past 2 generations (1996 to now). That's hardly reusing the same things over and over again.. Especially where there have been 3 Jaks, 3 Ratchets, 3 3D GTA's, 3 Need for Speeds, etc. in this generation alone. Reusing franchises over and over is when you have a new game in the series every year (the EA approach). I don't see how Nintendo can be blamed when there have been 2 3D mario platformers in the past 8 years, and we had to wait 8 years between Super Metroid and Prime/Fusion. It's because people lump all the Marios and Zeldas and such together. I prefer to think of the Mario platformers, the Mario RPG's, and the Mario sports as 3 seperate series, same with 2D and 3D zeldas... Unlike Final Fantasy, which made a permanent jump from 2D to 3D and is thus one series, Zelda exists in two distinct forms that may share similar storylines, concepts, etc, but they still play differently. Same with Castlevania and Resident Evil. Who considers Castlevania 64, Lament of Innocence, and the upcoming Curse of Darkness as part of the 2D Castlevania line? Or all the RE spinoffs as part of the true series?

ThePerm · « **Reply #17 on:** January 29, 2005, 12:09:13 PM »

it seems as though nintendo is put to blame for having an exceptional first pary development system. They have their franchises...but because they are the driving force for the consoles and not the third parties then what they do is way more apparent then what people like naughty dog does.

BlkPaladin · « **Reply #18 on:** February 02, 2005, 08:42:53 PM »

Accually Sony was making claims simular to this before the PS2 came out, even a while afterward. That the graphics whould be so realistic, etc, etc. Its just how the Sony hype machine works.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #19 on:** February 03, 2005, 06:20:34 AM »

They did that for the PS1 as well, didn't they?

BlkPaladin · « **Reply #20 on:** February 03, 2005, 07:50:36 AM »

More then likely, its kind of sad if it is. That means the sames lies have worked for the past 2 generations and Sony is going to see if the third time is a charm.

darknight06 · « **Reply #21 on:** February 03, 2005, 11:46:21 AM »

So for them I guess this means mandatory full-scene anti-aliasing on every game, cuz that's the only way I can see them even coming somewhat close to movie quality game graphics. My big concern here is how many more consolidations are we going to see next gen in order to compensate for the inevitable rise of game production? How many more companies are going to either get taken over or cave in? Especially considering that you're supposedly going to have 5 major players out there, 3 with Next-Gen tech, 1 at N64 level, and one that supposedly at current gen level.

boggy b · « **Reply #22 on:** February 03, 2005, 12:48:02 PM »

A supercomputer must be able to lots of specific kinds of caclulations. And part of those calculations usually requires lots of very fast storage somewhere along the way.

Imagine a CPU with 3-4GB of Cache and you might be a little closer to a supercomputer, although not much.

Shift Key · « **Reply #23 on:** February 03, 2005, 05:54:03 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
As a whole, the fighting and exploration aspect of the series is identical...It's just that Ninty throws in new stuff to make us happy...

I just felt that the way MM was played was much different than any other game. You had to think differently because time was ticking away. Sure, you were still Link, but what you did (not save Zelda for once

) was what made it different.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #24 on:** February 04, 2005, 01:12:26 AM »

Imagine a CPU with 3-4GB of Cache and you might be a little closer to a supercomputer, although not much.

The Cell uses a fat-pipe-no-cache model which is more useful for CPU chaining since you won't be storing the data very long. I think it's rather popular with supercomputers as well because at those sizes cache becomes too slow and expensive. Eliminating cache along with the need for it (cache is used because RAM is too slow, the Cell has really fast RAM that's about as fast as cache) is necessary because cache is really a hacked-together solution. With the Cell you won't have cache trashing but you could have other issues. Though I'm not sure the Cell doesn't cause similar problems when your datachunk exceeds 32MB (the Cell's per-chip RAM size) since grabbing the data off another Cell will take more time and can cause a performance nightmare in games.

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Author Topic: PS3 Graphics Indestinguishable from Movies!! (Read 7224 times)