@MikeB

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LOL I just realized you're Jürgen

Hehe. Took you just 1160 posts to find that out

Sat. is my birthday and that will be my present. So I'll wrap it up and will make it my own gift (maybe I let my wife give it to me )

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greetings to your family

Thx and greetings back to you. Yes we're doing good. Finally we're settling in - after 3 years now. Weather is nice, unlikely chilly, though (we had below 0C last week, usually its never blow 10C or so). But still sunny and over the day we reach 18C or so. It's still winter, after all

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@BrianK

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Microsoft's 360 as a product was looked at in the market as an 'upgrade' to those who already owned an Xbox. However, Microsoft is now claiming that close to 1/2 the 360s sold were sold to people who didn't own an Xbox. Which is good it means new people are coming to those console. If the PS3 doesn't get to the 70% marketshare Sony has with the PS2 it'll likely be seen that Microsoft and Nintendo were able to make in roads into canibalizing Sony's base. Undoubtably, like me, some people will end up with both a PS3 and 360 under their TV.

In that case, 20M have not returned as customers...

:P

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Jorge wrote: @Hammer Well, then maybe I should call it the "VBA for game programming". Take it easy guys. I'll cheer you up

Refer to AMOS 3D/AMOS Pro/AMOS Complier IDE stack for earlier example. VC# is closer to Delphi 7 than VBA (Office 2003).

We all know the result of Microsoft’s rapid application development tools in the business application market.

Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2007 at 10:40 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2007 at 07:10 AM.

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@Jorge

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The biggest problem for AmigaOS, though, is Blitter support. The AmigaOS reaches its fast visual response in big parts because it can offload a lot of gfx i/o to the blitter (e.g. moving windows on the screen and swapping areas etc). That said, I don't know, how fast a fb (p96) driver would work on a PS3. But then again. The cpu access into vmem on the PS3 is faster then what current OS4 gfx boards can handle thru the blitter within vmem (as long as you don't read back from there). But, hay, there are still 7 copros. Blitter ops could be easily offloaded to one of those.

Note that 1 SPU is reserve for system use.

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@Jorge

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People think the PS3 has a lot of potential which can be exploited over time. The 360 has some more potential, too. The PS3 is a launch machine and can compete with a pretty much optimized 360.

X360's middleware is not quite optimized in terms of AMD’s CTM goals..

Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2007 at 07:51 AM.

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@Jorge

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I'd guess with a 40GB/sec FB write access even SW renderer would be fast :)

Actually it’s less than 40GB/s i.e. refer to the picture in http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32171

Recall RSX's bandwidth VS Geforce 7600GT bandwidth.

Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2007 at 10:03 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2007 at 10:02 AM.

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@Lou

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In that case, 20M have not returned as customers...

They're still busy playing Halo 2

Now when Halo 3 comes out...

@Lou

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XNA is not point & click programming any more than Visual Studio 6 was.

I guess you haven’t programmed in VC++ (part of VS6) then?

VC++/MFC/ATL plumbing code (e.g. message pump loops) must be programmed via classic typing.

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@Jorge

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Maybe its not. Its just this subtle message which is transported thru the MS marketing guys (and that's why I said for me XNA is just another "engine" (in extended terms)).

It comes with a 3D engine that supports D3D8 shaders and D3D9 shaders (recommended hardware).

The industry is littered with licensed 3D engines and middleware e.g. Doom3/Quake3, Unreal3, SpeedTree, Havok and ‘etc’. Groups that uses 3D engine and middleware adds their content e.g. artwork/models/interactions, story plot, voice acting and ‘etc’. Without an engaging game content, the game is reduced to a glorified tech demo.

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They sell you a dev system "which does not cost you much" - unless you really need something in depth

The question should be asked is “Does it do the job?”

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But it is hard to find people who understand the fundamentals now a days. And by spoiling the kids even more with even better dev tools nobody cares to look below the surface any more

Emmm, there are differences between system programmers and application programmers** (focused more on business desktop rules).

**Ranges from MS Office VBA programmers to managed accounting/MIS programmers.

Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2007 at 11:34 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2007 at 11:25 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 19-Jan-2007 at 11:20 AM.

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@Hammer

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I guess you haven’t programmed in VC++ (part of VS6) then?

I have and I was agreeing with you, not being sarcastic. Especially that when it comes to UI on a bitmap, there's no friendly GUI editor like there is for apps with "windows" on the desptop.

Also, VB.net 200X = C#.net 200X (just BASIC syntax replaced with C syntax)

You can use VB.net 2005 Express for "XNA" programming but the marketing of XNA is geared towards luring the traditional "C" programmers over to Microsoft's platform.

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Considering the extra storage space you can further reduce seektimes by duplicating certain data which needs to be read for each level on seperate locations on the disc closest to the seperate level data areas.

Sadly we see misinformation all around the web, not only at Ars Technica or exaggerated PS3 opinions like those from Times Magazine:

A random example of webmasters coming to the wrong conclusions and IMO you can't blame them if even well funded media set a bad example:

"This largely negates one of the major advantages that Sony kept repeating Blu-ray had over the HD-DVD competition : Higher capacity. If developers need to copy a game to the disc twice in order to get acceptable transfer rates of data when required, then the effective maximum capacity of the disc is actually halved topping out at 25GB instead of the marketed 50GB. This certainly will have an impact on ambitious titles such as Oblivion, which really push the boundaries of gameplay."

http://islandgamers.wordpress.com/2007/01/19/ps3-2-copies-of-games-on-a-disc-to-overcome-slow-bluray/

1) Seektimes for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are similar, both are sightly slower than for DVD.
2) The XBox 360 HD-DVD drive and most other HD-DVD drives offer half the transfer rate of the PS3's Blu-Ray drive. 1.5x drive Blu-Ray speeds is the standard.
3) HD-DVD drives aren't currently used for gaming, just for watching movies.

Maybe the industry should have stuck to CD, seektimes are even better.

I hope they will bundle the Oblivion expansion for the PS3 on the same disc, there's more than enough space left to include several expansion packs. IMO that's a plus!

Last edited by MikeB on 19-Jan-2007 at 12:35 PM.

@MikeB

Whether you like it or not it seems that the Bluray drive isn't fast enough compared to the 360 DVD drive - which is what is relevant for games. Repeating the reverse or comparing it to the HD-DVD drive isn't going to make it any more true.

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HD-DVD drives aren't currently used for gaming, just for watching movies.

They won't be on 360. Ever.

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Maybe the industry should have stuck to CD, seektimes are even better.

So far it seems like DVD was the smarter choice.

Last edited by Trezzer on 19-Jan-2007 at 02:22 PM.

@Lou

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In that case, 20M have not returned as customers...

@Thread
Someone made a comment about renting Blu-Ray from NetFlix.NetFlix does have HD-DVD too.

Last edited by BrianK on 19-Jan-2007 at 02:14 PM.

@Trezzer

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Whether you like it or not it seems that the Bluray drive isn't fast enough compared to the 360 DVD drive -

The average XBox 360's drive speed for a dual layer 8.5GB DVD is about 7.93MB/s, with half of the disc reading significantly faster than this and the other half significantly slower than this.

The average seek times on Blu-Ray disc are slightly higher, this is due to much more data fitting in the same amount of space which requires more precision. But as I pointed out this can be reduced if necessary.

The Blu-Ray drive isn't slow with a sustained data reading speed of 9MB/s. That's more than is required to display high def Blu-Ray movies, if the PS3 can stream such high quality movie content, surely it can stream a lot of graphics content like textures/polygon data, sound etc.

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They won't be on 360. Ever.

No, but I think it's likely a successor will either use a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive. Games will expand, if you want to include 1080P FMV and game content, 7.1 PCM uncompressed sound like Resistance supports, etc you will easily run out of space on a DVD.

DVD was a good choice for the PS2 as there wasn't any better alternatives readily available at the time, but I am glad Sony aimed higher for the PS3. For one I don't like the sound the XBox 360 makes (and I have one of the more silent models), I also don't like to have to swap discs in the future like would be required with Blue Dragon on the XBox 360, I also like the fact that Blu-Ray discs are hard to scratch.

A PS3 with a DVD drive instead of Blu-Ray would have been a huge dissapointment for me!

Last edited by MikeB on 19-Jan-2007 at 03:42 PM.

@Trezzer

In that case, Nintendo was right in sticking with carts on the N64.
Interestly, Nintendo's GC drive was slower on paper that the Xbox's but load times on the GC were very minimal compared to the PS2 and Xbox...it had quite a low average seek time and got to speed quite fast.

Anyway, SD cards and the like are up to 8GB, pretty soon you'll see "carts" come back, lol!

Actually, I run alot of homebrew on my Gamecube from SD card and I have no complaints about seek times...

Really, seek times is what really slows down most media and as with most projects, they load lots of smaller files many times over and that is what is time consuming vs. 1 large file once.

I remember back in the day when harddrives were coming into there own and the average seek time was the main selling point...besides capacity...

@Hammer

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Actually it?s less than 40GB/s i.e. refer to the picture in http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32171

That picture is rather old (IIRC it was before the final RSX revision) and rather misleading. The story is so wrong it's not worth reading but this is part due to the slide being rather misleading.

It is misleading because the "local memory" is RSX actually graphics memory.

It's also now wrong, the XDR memory read speed for the Cell has since been measured at > 20 GBytes per second.

--

However, the really relevant information is how fast can you get data on screen from a guest OS.
In this case it has been measured by someone running Linux on a PS3:

Using 4 SPEs to blit to the framebuffer, (full screen mode under Linux):

1080i: fps: 801 [6336 MB/Sec]
720p: fps: 1577 [5544 MB/Sec]
480i: fps: 2759 [3637 MB/Sec]

from:
http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=7209

I think that'll be fast enough...

Last edited by minator on 19-Jan-2007 at 04:25 PM.

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@minator

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Using 4 SPEs to blit to the framebuffer, (full screen mode under Linux): 1080i: fps: 801 [6336 MB/Sec] 720p: fps: 1577 [5544 MB/Sec] 480i: fps: 2759 [3637 MB/Sec]

I don't doubt these rates but what do our developers think here about the Cell and graphics? If the Cell is so kick butt at graphics why did Sony wince at the last moment and add a graphics processor? They claimed the Cell would do it all. Why did Sony not let the Cell do it all if it could?

@Lou

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Interestly, Nintendo's GC drive was slower on paper that the Xbox's but load times on the GC were very minimal compared to the PS2 and Xbox...it had quite a low average seek time and got to speed quite fast.

Partially true but not quite. The constant read speed certainly helped it achieve good loading times, but in practice it turned out that Xbox typically loaded a bit faster and PS2 a good bit slower. Check out some of the many cross-platform reviews on IGN.com where they have measures in seconds for each platform. Xbox was usually the winner - of course it also had the advantage of HD spooling when necessary.

As for solid state - yeah, that's definitely on the way back in.

@MikeB

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The average XBox 360's drive speed for a dual layer 8.5GB DVD is about 7.93MB/s, with half of the disc reading significantly faster than this and the other half significantly slower than this.

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The Blu-Ray drive isn't slow with a sustained data reading speed of 9MB/s. That's more than is required to display high def Blu-Ray movies, if the PS3 can stream such high quality movie content, surely it can stream a lot of graphics content like textures/polygon data, sound etc.

Except the 360 has fast loading times and the PS3 generally does not. And Oblivion has to have data put on the disc several times whereas the 360 version (as far as anyone knows) did not have to. What does that tell you about your numbers?

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For one I don't like the sound the XBox 360 makes

It's not inherent to the dvd medium. I'm sure they can and will decrease the noise levels in later revisions. Personally I don't sit with my ear against my 360, so while I do notice if it's running, it's quieter than whatever I have on - be it film, music or game.

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A PS3 with a DVD drive instead of Blu-Ray would have been a huge dissapointment for me!

Perhaps it would have been less of a disappointment for the rest of the world. For one it could have cost a couple of hundred dollars less, it could have launched with much higher numbers, and it wouldn't be forcing the next Betamax down peoples' throats whether they want it or not. The PS3 has plenty of cpu muscle to use the same techniques as the 360 uses to keep game sizes down.

Last edited by Trezzer on 19-Jan-2007 at 08:01 PM.

@Trezzer

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And Oblivion has to have data put on the disc several times whereas the 360 version did not have to.

See Sony was right! They clearly needed Blu-Ray.

I agree with you on the 360 sound. The DVD drive is annoying. GoW they provided some mechanism where the drive doesn't seem to make as much noise as often. But playing a Live Arcade or HD-DVD the sound it's quiet. Now some of this may be our setups and that our stereos have an 11. Perhaps if one is sitting on top of the 360 it's more of annoyance.