Loakum @Driftwood Awesome! I’m loving it! It does show a much crisper picture and the frame rate looks good! I was playing Stella Blade and Dragonball Soarkling Blast! :) (4 Days ago)
Driftwood @Loakum: enjoy, the one Sony sent us will be there on launch day. Coverage will follow asap. (6 Days ago)
Loakum *takes a large sip of victorious grape juice* ok….my PS5 pro arrived early! So much winning! :) (6 Days ago)
Driftwood @reneyvane: non ils l'ont publié le 1er octobre et je crois que tu l'avais déjà linkée. ;) (4 Weeks ago)
CraCra Y a un souci sur les forums ? (7 Weeks ago)
nostradamus very few with religious beliefs are naive or zealots, but for sure don't find amusing their beliefs being thrown in for clout. maybe STFU with that discourse? (10 Weeks ago)
Driftwood Download is now functional again on Gamersyde. Sorry for the past 53 days or so when it wasn't. (> 3 Months ago)
Driftwood Another (French) livestream today at 2:30 CEST but you're welcome to drop by and speak English. I will gladly answer in English when I get a chance to catch a breath. :) (> 3 Months ago)
Driftwood GSY is getting some nice content at 3 pm CEST with our July podcast and some videos of the Deus Ex Mankind Divided preview build. :) (> 3 Months ago)
Driftwood For once we'll be live at 4:30 pm CEST. Blim should not even be tired! (> 3 Months ago)
Driftwood More Quantum Break coverage coming in a few hours, 9:00 a.m CEST. (> 3 Months ago)
Driftwood We'll have a full review up for Firewatch at 7 pm CET. Videos will only be tomorrow though. (> 3 Months ago)
Driftwood Tonight's livestream will be at 9:15 GMT+1, not GMT+2 as first stated. (> 3 Months ago)
My comments on this game/machine been good or bad does not mean i like/hate the machine i am not a fan nor a hater, just i have a opinion and wish to share it.
I think this whole issue is blown up out of proportion.. 99% of all games still have enough space on a single DVD.. Only exception until now was Blue-Dragon, and now this quote from someone at BC, that's all.. I still don't need a HD-DVD or Blu-ray drive for my games, not in my PC or my Xbox 360..
In the Netherlands we have a saying, 'exaggerating is an art'.. That's what people are doing, exaggerating this problem..
DVD won't die out in 2 years time, I don't even have a DVD drive in my PC for 2 years now, and most people will use DVD for many years to come for their movies and games etc.. And even if it did die out MS will most likely have their next Xbox ready by then.. I expect a next-gen Xbox end of 2009 or in 2010.. With a affordable HD opticaldrive and/or big harddrive to install games on..
http://www.cyberwarriors.nl
http://home.xmsnet.nl/bigbear/fiat124.jpg
Instead of selling a external HDDVD they could have it intergrated and keep the price. I don't give a sh*t about pricedrops. It's the gaming that's important. That's why PS3 is going to defeat XBOX 360 next year and the year after until another next-gen consoles gets released. Then probably discs will have 300 GB space but Microsoft will stick with intergrated HDDVD. Idiots !! =/
Sony had to delay due to HD Optical Media.
Sony had production issues due to HD Optical Media.
Sony came in at $500 -- and went up to $600 due to HD Optical Media.
Sony had to include a standard HDD with HD Optical Media due to a number of technical issues, even though it is well known that the HDD on the Xbox was under utilized with no killer apps or functionality and killed price reduction.
Sony has lost market leadership and is on the verge of being irrelevant due to price point due to HD Optical Media.
Sony has lost a crapload of money due to HD Optical Media in the PS3.
HD Optical Media sales have been slow and incapable of offsetting the losses of inclusion.
There is no market leader with significant fragmentation in the HD Optical Media market halting cost reduction, market penetration, and market significance.
Few games make noticable/relevant use of HD Optical Media because the reality that most games can a) span disks b) content is the MOST expensive part of game development and developers don't have the money to build such content in most situations c) with dynamic non-prebaked lighting and shadowing and the use of shaders for materials and diversity content size isn't exploding in many situations d) most of your huge open world games aren't actually that large last gen and have been managable this gen, e.g. Oblivion which is huge.
Maybe you are happy to shell out $600 for a console.
But there is a balance; the PS2 had this right. A balance of power, price point, release, and publisher support.
$600, regardless of technical merits, stalls market penetration which in turns turns of publisher support. You kill publisher support your special features get further under utilized, especially when they cost a crapload of $$$$ to support.
If you want cutting edge at no expense the console market isn't the right market. Look to the PC.
Not including HD Optical Media was one of the best moves MS made.
I will comment on the technical aspects later, but for consideration: PGR4 is essentially 2 games:
PGR3 (5 tracks)
+
PGR4 (5 new tracks, new features, upgraded graphics, etc)
I commented in the past how people are overlooking how excellent the ambient lighting is in PGR4, notably in overcast situations. And now we know why -- they are prebaking day / night scenarios into their textures. It is difficult to over estimate what BC has done artistically in delivering convincing ambient lighting in low contrast environments -- personally I think they should be showing more night / day scenarios that are WAAAY Sexier. The fact they give you day or night + various lighting conditions is pretty good as this isn't "day or night" but "pick a time of day OR time of night + atmospheric conditions".
10 tracks, by far the most detailed out there (blow away Forza and GT5) with various lighting conditions and weather is pretty significant. Not perfect of course.
But 10 courses with dozens routes, time of day, and weather in realworld locations is significant when compared to a game like FM2 with about the same number of tracks and only a couple different variations and limitations in time and weather.
The fans have spoken. Concerning the graphics of the Halo 3 Beta: "There's so many little effects and things going on that make this game pretty much 2nd only to Gears at the moment."
Most devs are lazy... they dont bother optimizing a game fully or compress as much as they could due to cost constraints, 1 reason why, once in a while a game comes along, that runs on the same resources but trashes the competition to kingdom come...
This will be a good game, and it will look great, no doubt there... 360 needs the 65nm and better venting with a slot loading quiet dvd drive.
GoW, War3, Halo, MYST, Civilazation
The fans have spoken. Concerning the graphics of the Halo 3 Beta: "There's so many little effects and things going on that make this game pretty much 2nd only to Gears at the moment."
The reality is prebaked assets are higher IQ than dynamic ones. PGR4 does have a lot of dynamic elements -- lighting, shadowing, AO Maps, HDR, etc -- but it appears to get the results they wanted they would need to recompile their textures for day / night scenarios.
This seems pretty reasonable considering the image quality they have shown in non-ideal lighting scenarios. I know I sound broken... but full bright day time and night with spotlights are ideal, high contrast lighting situations with low ambient light requirements to trick the eyes. Obviously it CAN be done, but the reality is there is a cost. We see very, very few games that have day/night cycles *in realtime* and in all cases they look less - or use more power - to solutions with static elements. Obviously art and design are the major factors in deciding which route you go. After all the hubbub about Killzone and its static precomputed scenarios (and pretty crap dynamic shadows) and all the praise it got for awesome graphics I am pretty convinced most people call good art good graphics. And it is true to a degree as the best tech decisions are the ones that highlight your art, but there does become a point where you scratch your head.
In BC's case I think they made a mistake in regards to consumer "eye of appeal" namely they won't really appreciate what they have done in regards to low contrast lighting. People want the perfect settings -- dark, ominous with outrageous lightning and thunder or summer days, wind in the hair, sunglasses and glitzy cars.
Half overcast with minor sunbreaks with drizzly rain and puddles? People hate that weather and don't really dream about it to begin with.
Pretty lame to call them lazy.
As for compression... games are compressed to hell and back. It is vital to compress the titles to get quick transfer from the disk to the system memory--essential. And then you run into redundancy issues because you may have packed a texture or model or another asset with one stream for one level and need it in another.
A game like PGR isn't easy to compress. You have 10 distinct locations, and instead of being a tiled art game (think of a game like Battlefield or Halo where the ground is repetitively tiled) the city is VERY diverse with a TON of unique content. A lot of variety in signs, window displays, and world geometry.
This will be a good game, and it will look great, no doubt there... 360 needs the 65nm and better venting with a slot loading quiet dvd drive.[/quote]
The fans have spoken. Concerning the graphics of the Halo 3 Beta: "There's so many little effects and things going on that make this game pretty much 2nd only to Gears at the moment."
And for those, like youself, you refuse such (and the performance improvement to boot) you can do the ol' disk swap.
Or your bitterness & PR mess of disk swapping/caching can mean less tracks. Hey, I guess you won afterall!
Seriously, take your stance: HD Optical Drive, and all its baggage, or DVD9 and its baggage.
Which would you have done Lebato?
The fans have spoken. Concerning the graphics of the Halo 3 Beta: "There's so many little effects and things going on that make this game pretty much 2nd only to Gears at the moment."
http://www.cyberwarriors.nl
http://home.xmsnet.nl/bigbear/fiat124.jpg
Procedural texturing could be the lifesaver for DVD9 games. Use it for brick sidewalks, etc, and use regular bitmaps for signage, lane markings, etc.
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/11/09/Procedur...
Bathroom degrading over time with procedural texturing. This tech was used for Roboblitz. In the bit-tech article the guy said the game without procedurals would have come in at around 527mb, but instead came in at 48mb with procedural texturing.
http://video1.bit-tech.net/profx_bathroom_02.mov
Forget about the Xbox, this is different. In the Xbox days I NEVER had any problems with storage, but today, with demos, videos, sometimes bigger saves, and generally more options to fill up the space (DLC, saving "movies/replays", ghosts, XBLA), things go full really quick.
I once suggested that 20GB was enough, and I still think it is, but not considering installing content aside from things like XBLA. But there's no point in arguing this because I bet MS wouldn't allow such stupidity, unless their ultimate goal is make us buy another HDD.
And yes, Xbox 360 HDD prices are complete ripoffs, I also agree there, but you shouldn't buy those seperatly anyway imho..
http://www.cyberwarriors.nl
http://home.xmsnet.nl/bigbear/fiat124.jpg
Forget about the Xbox, this is different. In the Xbox days I NEVER had any problems with storage, but today, with demos, videos, sometimes bigger saves, and generally more options to fill up the space (DLC, saving "movies/replays", ghosts, XBLA), things go full really quick.
I once suggested that 20GB was enough, and I still think it is, but not considering installing content aside from things like XBLA. But there's no point in arguing this because I bet MS wouldn't allow such stupidity, unless their ultimate goal is make us buy another HDD.
Sony has impressed me with a few things... (off topic, little big planet, GT5, Home, user made mods imported from PC UT3, (curiosity)) The thing that impressed me the most from the get go with Sony and its PS3 is being able to put whatever size drive you can find and purchase and install it yourself, as long as it meets their specs. I mean you can pick up a 500 GB drive for the cost of MS's 120GB. MS needs to drop the price on their HD drive. If it was competitively priced I'd buy one, say $80.
Expection is Nintendo who also makes a profit on the console itself.. No wonder if they ask 250 dollar/euro for a GC 1.1.. Yet most people think that's ok, and even dare to say the Wii is cheap.. Talk about logic..
http://www.cyberwarriors.nl
http://home.xmsnet.nl/bigbear/fiat124.jpg
Expection is Nintendo who also makes a profit on the console itself.. No wonder if they ask 250 dollar/euro for a GC 1.1.. Yet most people think that's ok, and even dare to say the Wii is cheap.. Talk about logic..
I don't know what the pricing is on Wii accessories, I don't know anything about Wii, I could care less about that thing.
Now, even if Sony sells expensive accessories, they give you a choice. With MS, the play and charge kit is $20, with Sony, you can use your standard mini-usb cord I just bought from Ebay for about $2. With MS, you are forced to buy their HDD if you want an upgrade, with Sony you can buy a "regular" hard drive from wherever you like and install it, it works.
So yeah that sucks. That's one of the things I didn't like at all about MS and the 360.
Procedural texturing could be the lifesaver for DVD9 games. Use it for brick sidewalks, etc, and use regular bitmaps for signage, lane markings, etc.
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/11/09/Procedur...
Bathroom degrading over time with procedural texturing. This tech was used for Roboblitz. In the bit-tech article the guy said the game without procedurals would have come in at around 527mb, but instead came in at 48mb with procedural texturing.
http://video1.bit-tech.net/profx_bathroom_02.mov
There are a lot of reasons to do procedural textures, and some textures are generated right now with such in the creation process.
PGR3/4, though, use high resolution photographs cleaned up and mapped to geometry. This is NOT procedurally compatible, nor is it compatible with the typical, "tile repetitive grass, rock, etc surfaces, intertwined for variety" to produce unique results. PGR is a bitmap intensive design -- and hence why it looks so awesome and very similar to the real world. Each course has over 100k unique photos.
The fans have spoken. Concerning the graphics of the Halo 3 Beta: "There's so many little effects and things going on that make this game pretty much 2nd only to Gears at the moment."
Instead of loading textures the normal way, the procedural algorithms would perform the task of loading the textures into memory. This process wouldn't impact the way textures are created at all, but procedural tools would have to be used in that creative process.
They wouldn't be useful for everything of course, but for realistic armor, skin, other real time materials for trees, walls and floors it would be exceptional.
Because Xenos also serves as the 360's memory controller it would most likely be generating the textures directly into the unified memory be way of it's MEMEXPORT function. The CPU wouldn't be burdened with the algorithms alone because of the 360's architectural profile. It's ALL unified.
Another way would be if procedural textures are utilized when loading a level, the Xenon cores would have the task of generating the textures and Xenos at the same time could load the level geometry and models into memory. This would also unburden the CPU and again the textural procedures are actually loading and decompressing faster than normal textures because the data is so much smaller during this process.
But besides saving storage space, the ability to scale textures without loss of fidelity is what should really have developers jumping on the bandwagon. The ability to use procedural algorithms to generate for example a 4096x4096 texture and then scale it to 512x512 without losing any detail sounds exciting.
Instead of selling a external HDDVD they could have it intergrated and keep the price. I don't give a sh*t about pricedrops. It's the gaming that's important. That's why PS3 is going to defeat XBOX 360 next year and the year after until another next-gen consoles gets released. Then probably discs will have 300 GB space but Microsoft will stick with intergrated HDDVD. Idiots !! =/
All in all I don't really care.
"So we've worked around the problem by providing different lighting models per city. For example, Macau is always in the daytime, but if you play it during a storm everything looks darker and more foreboding. If you play during a blizzard then things are slightly tinged blue and everything seems more frozen."
Isn't that essentially day and night just using bad weather as an excuse? Anyway this should potentially be hell for GTA so I guess we'll see how they do it eh? ;)
Oh nvm only thing that will happen is the lighting will change overhead :)
Hironobu Sakaguchi is coming back to reclaim the throne :)
October 20th 2007 (A good day)
Don't ask any questions just shut up and buy Halo : Ghosts of the Onyx one of the greatest books ever.
Procedural textures like others have said are certainly not a solution because some programmer trying to make some textures look great wont be better at it than a great artist. I prefer they continue to do textures using great artists I don't want something to look technically impressive, but generic as hell.
Hironobu Sakaguchi is coming back to reclaim the throne :)
October 20th 2007 (A good day)
Don't ask any questions just shut up and buy Halo : Ghosts of the Onyx one of the greatest books ever.
Instead of selling a external HDDVD they could have it intergrated and keep the price. I don't give a sh*t about pricedrops. It's the gaming that's important. That's why PS3 is going to defeat XBOX 360 next year and the year after until another next-gen consoles gets released. Then probably discs will have 300 GB space but Microsoft will stick with intergrated HDDVD. Idiots !! =/
Anyway adding a HDDVD this late in the game is almost suicidal.
Same thing could be said about the people at SCEA. Idiots !!=/