@MikeB

I know it might be a bit unfair but combine these 2 thoughts...
Quote:

You are talking about AMOS developers, I am talking about demo coders

& Quote:

PS3 raises the bar, and to get the most out of it requires some high-level wizardry

Demo coders would hit the hardware directly. I made some crappy one's myself way back when. But as you noted the PS3 raises the bar. We now not only have in-order execution but controlling multi-processing. As for hardware the current YDL supposedly doesn't get at all the power in that box. Demo coders are going to have a hardtime hitting either hardware. That is where XNA comes in. It's definitely more complicated then AMOS, AMOS was nice. AMOS though seemingly produced games that all looked the same, I think the diversity is wider in XNA. My belief is today middle-ware is important for the demo coder or home programmer. The cost is well worth the benefits it opens up In your words -- XNA does the high level wizardy and instead of building your own spells you get a very large book.

@AMiGR

Quote:

Ehm, game programmers that do not know about multiprocessing will have problems not only on the PS3 but on the XBox 360 and even modern PCs as well. So, please... try again.

Have you noticed significant gains from many games when you went multi-core with your PC? So far I haven't.

First party PS3 developers are like later Amiga developers, they have learned a lot about multi-processing and they are required to do so (it's a crucial part of the system, like the Amiga custum chips), else they will never tap into the true power of the PS3. I think when we see the fruits of their labour, many developers will follow and learn as they will not want to be left behind.

@MikeB

Quote:

First party PS3 developers are like later Amiga developers, they have learned a lot about multi-processing and they are required to do so

Again & the 360 as it is a multi-threaded multi-processor machine too.

@MikeB

Quote:

maybe I am a little bit objective after all.

If so I missed it.

Quote:

Some PS3 owner perspectives from one small Fight Night 3 thread:

Yeah, from people who felt they had to justify their vast amount of spent money. I still place my trust in the showdown at the Apollo rather than a thread by fanboys. Besides that I don't like it when action games have choppy frame rates. Sorry. Have you noticed how no-one else posts quotes from random fanboy sites? That's because no-one takes them seriously.

Quote:

Sounds all too familiar to me, it has been like stepping into the ring with hardcore XBox 360 fanboys

I'm sorry, but I'm a gamer (bold added for dramatic effect because we all know that a point gets through better like that - just like TYPING IN ALL CAPS!) - not a system fanboy. If I were to be called fanboy of anything it would be SEGA hardware. Well, I can appreciate a system for being really good and be enthusiastic about that, but I've been through all the brands and indeed own systems and games from virtually every console/computer system.

Quote:

You are talking about AMOS developers, I am talking about demo coders and games like Lion Heart.

Uhm... NO? Do you think churning out 3D engines etc. is the equivalent of coding in a BASIC dialect? If so I suggest you read up on things - just a teeny tiny bit. For the record: Some of the pretty hardcore developers are psyched about XNA. Just wait and see over the year what's going to hit the pipes.

Quote:

BTW, Resistance doesn't look bad at all

No-one says it looks bad. It just looks mediocre (at best) compared to current games. When it comes to gameplay... well, we'll see which one lasts longer. The semi-anonymous launch title, or the game that's well on its way to surpass Halo in raw numbers.

On a side note: Lost Planet and Dead Rising have both passed the one million mark. Well done Capcom.

@MikeB

Quote:

Most game programmers don’t know much about multiprocessing. The PS3 raises the bar, and to get the most out of it requires some high-level wizardry.

It requires more footwork due to Sony's apparently lackluster development tools.

This is all just too familiar. This is a replay of when the PS2 came out and it was oh so insanely powerful compared to everything - even the Xbox which launched later. Too bad none of it actually materialized into better looking/running games.

Yes things are apparently more even this time around - but then again they aren't. One year's head start, better/more games, better looking games, better development tools, better utilization, lower prices, more choice, better system software. The only real advantages for PS3 that I can currently think of are 1. powerful CPU and 2. brand name. In time more things may be to its advantage, but so far? Not really.

Some seem to be blinded by the latter - or perhaps just wearing blinkers because of hate/preconceptions?

@BrianK

Quote:

Again & the 360 as it is a multi-threaded multi-processor machine too.

And that's probably good for people owning multi-core PCs. Currently in the PC world probably a majority of people still owns a single core PC and rely mostly on Graphic card updates to supply them with increasingly impressive gaming experiences. As the XBox 360 and PS3 installed base grows multi-platform developers will probably have to enhance their multi-core skills.

@AMiGR

Quote:

Fight Night not only does not look better on PS3, it looks worse

I trust those who own both versions more than I trust you, and of course my own eyes based on the screenshots I have seen. EA and the mainstream media agrees as well, except for *one* article, and based on which I couldn't see much of a difference based on their downscaled images and those even lacked the actual fighters in them, which you will be looking at most of the game...

@MikeB

Quote:

of course my own eyes based on the screenshots I have seen.

In that case you should really check out the 720p comparison videos of the games.
Yes, the PS3 version has an additional mode, but there are less effects and in most cases they don't look as good. Besides that the frame rate is silky smooth on 360 while it isn't on PS3.

Last edited by Trezzer on 14-Jan-2007 at 11:14 PM.

@MikeB

Comparison. Seriously, look at them. Just look at them, for God's sake. While you're looking at them, note to toned down lighting, the missing lighting in the crowd, the missing particle effects, the generally fake looking crowd, the signs on the walls etc. Do you mean to tell me that my eyes are wrong and the PS3 version has all these things and I don't see them because I'm not a believer or something? The **ONLY** thing that looks better on the PS3 is the skin texturing.

_________________

@AMiGR

Maybe it's just the timing of the shots, but it sort of looks like the slight motion blur is missing from PS3 too.

Last edited by Trezzer on 14-Jan-2007 at 11:27 PM.

@Trezzer

That's a good thing, I hate motion blur...

_________________

@AMiGR

I know where you're coming from, but in reality it's not necessarily a bad thing. In a game like GTA it looks crappy because, well, it's just not done well and used to hide poor frame rates. But in Fight Night R3 it looks more like what you'd see on films or animation - frames contain in-between information which makes motion looks smoother. If you go from point A to C in two frames, you'll get a smoother sense of movement if the frames contain the motion blur that would normally be caught by a camera.

Just have a look at classic animation techniques (especially fast-paced stuff like Tom & Jerry) if you want to see what I mean.

@MikeB

I think the real questions concerning the PS3 vs. Xbox 360 processor debate are: how highly is Xbox 360's CPU utilized and, at the end of the day, how much of PS3's Cell potential can be realized in gaming?

We all know games of today and yesterday haven't really been all that multi-threading, games all around are just now getting the hang of it (general purpose or special purpose cores, either way). Home computers have just recently been getting multiple cores. Xbox 360 has three cores, PS3 has one plus the seven specialized ones (of which 1-2 are reserved). Xbox 360 has also specialized vector capabilities and multi-threading built into these processor cores thus enabling them to perfor many tasks at once. Clearly PS3 also has a very interesting multi-processing ability.

Your assumption seems to be that the hype is correct: when PS3's SPUs are mostly/fully utilized (and they will be, I guess, you assume) the end-result will be far more than what a fully utilized Xbox 360 is capable of. (Although Sony's graphics chip doesn't seem to be quite as powerful than that of Xbox 360's, so that may level the playing field a bit too.) You seem to even think that Gears of War has already set the level Xbox 360 is capable of (which I doubt)?

I guess the questions boil down to this: is your assumption correct or is it not - when and where do the Xbox 360 and PS3 eventually "max out"?

I say we don't know. I'd be much more comforted in the idea of purchasing a PS3 if I didn't have to go by alleged future potential alone. Sony promised quite a bit for PS2 too that never did materialize.

I actually hope PS3 does live up to the promise one day. That would benefit me as a gamer. At the moment I'm just trying to find out and paint as realistic a picture of the situation as possible.

***

As for those comparison shot's... urgh, the PS3 version looks really a lot worse. For someone who expected PS3 to kick Xbox 360's pants from the get go, well, all these things add to a quite to disappointment. But of course PS3 can do better and will do better - the real interesting question is how much better and how much better will Xbox 360 do than currently...

Last edited by jtsiren on 15-Jan-2007 at 12:02 AM.

@AMiGR

BTW that GameSpot article, was the article with downscaled screenshots I was reffering to.

GameSpy: "As we've said, there's no doubt that the PS3 version of Round 3 is the strongest of all of the releases when it comes to visuals."

GameZone: "The PS3 online component is far more robust than the 360, and there is a bit of a graphical upgrade, utilizing the high-def functionality of the system much better than the 360. The Get in the Ring feature doesn’t just put you in the boxer’s shoes, you see the fight through his eyes, and the ring movement is terrific, allowing gamers to really feel like they are part of the fight. As you take damage, the edges of the screen begin to blur out and the more damage you take, the worse your vision becomes and the slower your reaction time. You can’t quite feel the punches, thankfully, but the game does an excellent job or relaying the damage and effects of those punches. Try to go toe-to-toe, and you may end up trying to put the knockdown cursors together to rise off the canvas. In many regards, the game becomes much more tactical.

With the added components it is fair to say that Fight Night Round 3 is an overall better title than its 360 counterpart."

Other:

"Visually, Fight Night sees a few upgrades as well -- but they're so minimal when in motion that its hardly noticeable unless you're actively looking for them (re: the sweat looks more realistic and the lighting has been enhanced). "

" EA added more sweat effects to the PS3 version as opposed to the 360 counterpart. These sweat effects look really lifelike and not added there for the fact to say they added new effects."

"EA also spent some time with the visuals of the boxers on the PS3 and they look like they are crisp with a bit greater detail than the 360 version.

But what's more of an eye-oper, Electronic Arts:

"The whole industry knows it's been a challenge; the PS3's a very complex piece of equipment. On one hand it's a challenge, on the other hand there's tremendous potential in that box. I think it's going to take developers a little while to figure out how to unlock that power.

We've got games coming out now where we feel we've hit maybe 20 per cent of the potential of PlayStation 3. We know the power's there, but like any new platform it's going to take us a little bit of time to unleash it."

Last edited by MikeB on 15-Jan-2007 at 12:16 AM.

..

Last edited by MikeB on 15-Jan-2007 at 07:42 AM.
Last edited by MikeB on 15-Jan-2007 at 12:30 AM.

@MikeB

The scaling down doesn't make effects or lighting disappear. If you've invented such a scaling filter, I'd love to know, you could sell it for really good money, you know! Now, the XBox grab you pasted is also scaled down but that's irrelevant. In fact, based on those two grabs, I will have to take the "better skin texturing on PS3" argument of mine back, it looks blury. The boxer shorts look as if they have metal bump mapping, they look horrendous. In fact, it looks as if the skin texture is of a different resolution than the boxer short texture, since they do not appear to fit all that well at all. Compare this to the other grab you pasted. The background is absolutely consistent to those oh-so-bad scaled down shots.

Mike, seriously now, nobody is saying that the PS3 is weak or that the PS3 will not get spectacular games, etc. but you have to face the SIMPLE truth: The current games do *not* look better and do not use the PS3's abilities.

XBox Shot 1

These two are **very** good PS3 shots:
PS 3 Shot 1
PS 3 Shot 2

Based on various shots I've seen, some you've pasted others I've found, I dare say that it seems that not every character uses the same quality textures on the PS3 version. Some look better than the XBox, (the black guys for instance), others look pretty much the same while others look worse.

Last edited by AMiGR on 15-Jan-2007 at 01:20 AM.
Last edited by AMiGR on 15-Jan-2007 at 01:17 AM.

_________________

Because Cell is open you can find out exactly what developers can do with it. It's throwing up quite a few surprises.

e.g. The "special" processors on cell are just as flexible as any other processor (you can do what ever you like with them). The difference is that there are some things that will not run as well - i.e. control code - which takes such a small proportion of compute time in a game they don't even bother writing it in compiled languages.

They *should* be relatively weak at parsing tree structures. However, this is where the research papers come in, one team got it to run a problem which Cell should not like, they modified it to work better and the result was pretty astonishing - a single cell processor beats a 128 node Blue Gene system and isn't far behind a 256 node system.

Cell has shown similar speed ups on other problems, if this work can be used in games Cell won't just get a 2X advantage over Xenon, it'll be much, much bigger.

--

Regarding 360 threads:
The 360 has 6 hardware threads but this is primarily to hide memory latency. When one thread runs out of data the other kicks in, though both can issue one instruction per cycle.
The execution resources are limited though e.g. you cannot issue 2 vector arithmetic instructions per cycle. The 6 threads are not equivalent to 6 SPEs.

That said, while SPEs don't have hardware threading support they can do it in software. IBM have compiler support for up to 8 threads per SPE - useful for those tasks SPEs are not normally good at. I suspect we'll see this in games where there are lots of baddies each with their own Ai requirements.

_________________
Whyzzat?

@minator

To be honest, I do not doubt that the Cell *architecture* is interesting or that it has potential, I just doubt that the version used in the PS3 can do all they claim it can do in *games*.

_________________

Having some experience in game programming, while this is a popular discussion, it's obvious that we don't have many professional level game developers here. I love this thread. It's one of the best I have ever read on this or other sites, the finer points of a lot of the discussion here are getting lost with opinions that are focused on details that really don't match the reality of the situation. A lot of specific things that are being pointed to to say one architecture is "better" than the other here just is not the case.

Most of the things that I see being pointed to here were either the result of someone's "optimization" attempt or a decision by the coding team, not really an example of something that couldn't have been done better, given more time and different coding "decisions". Programmers decide things like texture resolution based on the lowest common denominator and the largest number of "cards" in use out there. Game companies spend lots of money finding out these demographics every year. If you get improvement over that it's usually not because it was "budgeted" in the cost of production.

I would just say that much time goes into both "middleware" and OS development. New hardware changes happen very often and just because something comes out doesn't mean you'll see it fully supported with optimization for sometime to come. That's why most systems have firmware update capabilities as well.

We are just getting decent support for 1 GPU, let's forget mulitples a moment and multi-cores? Could things be better yes, you have to look at both potential and not assume that the game programmers wrote it to "best" take advantage. Most work to get "ACCEPTABLE" performance out.. Most of these big companies feel that it's okay if it looks the same from platform to platform because they don't want one person feeling their system is "substandard"..

Game programmers like most programmers develop a style of coding, and when a new capability comes along if it means they have to change to adapt to it, they are slow to do this, they'd rather drudge along with what is "ACCEPTABLE" than go out of their way, after all they'll get more work if they can keep pumping out more mediocre titles.

That's why all the innovative stuff comes from the small studios that don't have contracts, they get noticed for pushing out that extra performance or making something innovative or new. If you asked someone at a major studio that's been around for a while if they'd rather work on their "NEW" project, or a licensed product from a studio or a "franchise" title, they'd tell you probably their own product.

I am not against the big guys or companies that have been around for years, but if you really want to use for comparison a game title to say one system is better, you have to take a title that is from a small unknown studio and one that is on more than one system if you can get that lucky to be fair with your comparison.

-Don

Last edited by DonnieA2 on 15-Jan-2007 at 01:53 AM.

New Sales Figures prove who won December..

QUOTING From Engadget:

Official Holiday 2006 console sales figures don't surprise
Posted Jan 14th 2007 11:15AM by Evan Blass
Filed under: Gaming



Well despite the fact that CNBC recently reported some erroneous figures regarding console sales for this holiday season, it looks like the official numbers still show a resounding Xbox 360 victory among next-gen systems during the month of December. Official stats being published by The NPD group show that Microsoft sold 1.1 million of its boxes last month, followed by Nintendo with 604,000 Wiis, and PS3 bringing up the rear with 491,000 consoles sold. It's not all bad news for Sony, however: when we add in all systems sold during this time period (not just the three that everyone has been fussin' and fightin' over), the overall king of Holiday Season 2006 was actually the PS2, with 1.4 million systems pushed out the door. Sure these last-gen boxes can be found for much cheaper than their newer counterparts, but at least Sony is making a profit off of them, unlike the $300+ it's losing on each 20GB PS3. We'll leave the analysis of these numbers to the experts (a.k.a. fanboy commenters), and simply note that we were way ahead of the curve on this one -- we picked up Holiday 2006's most popular console way back in October 2000


http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/14/official-holiday-2006-console-sales-figures-dont-surprise/