@wegster
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Cars: Read somewhere about poor controls

One thing I've found annoying is while pressing the gas button the left stick controls the car. But, let off the gas and don't press on the brake, eg simulate coasting, and the left stick moves the camera about. Invariably I end up looking at a tire and crashing into a cop car.

Speaking of cops they're rude! The first time I "died" it was because while walking in an intersection a cop car without it's lights on hit and sent me to the hospital (died).

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Missions, fine, but I'd like to drive across the bridge, head for bright lights or interesting sights, and then be able to find a new place to explore.

You can do this. But, it appears you don't get missions out of this. For example I went and found the strip bar. I subsequently got beat up and killed for trying to jump on stage.

Took the first date out bowling. Bowling was something I won't revist unless there's some other mission.

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The only place I've found to save is Romans

In the beginning you're given an apartment. When/if you make it back there. Crawl into bed you can save the game and the clock progresses 6 hours. Not sure but I'd assume some healing is done as you sleep off your hang overs.

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Is it fun? Yes. Is it perfect and deserves a '10' score? Probably not.

Agreed.

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Sound: Good soundtrack. Haven't been overwhelmed by sound effects in surround, though

There is a setting to configure your speakers for rear or side surrounds. You may want to do this perhaps it's set wrong. There has been some decent surround effects of traffic. Though yes I don't recall the strength of police sirens chasing me getting louder or software based upon distance. Did I miss this or did they?

@BrianK

Good catch on the driving/controls. I hadn't noticed, but umm, I'm sure I'm 'driving funny' too

Yes, the AI is...'interesting' - people will hit you, and you can ram into a car next to a cop, and no action.

Heh, same here, walked on stage, and suddenly got pummeled, ran outside, stole a car, and off I went, but I did go with Roman. It doesn't seem there are too many areas to 'find on your own,' however, at least not so far. If a store or bar, etc, is lit up, you should see it, and be able to go in it.

Yeah, I guess the save spot is marked as 'safehouse' on the map? I'd still prefer more than one save location, though, or able to set autosaves so you can restore from one or more of them.

I have configured for my surround setup; I simply wasn't blown away by the sound, like an occasional movie or game might do. It didn't seem to take advantage of surround very strongly, it didn't make me 'feel like I'm there.' By comparison, War of the Worlds in the DVD demo mode made me worry from the other room, house thumped and I could have sworn my windows were shattered, and watching some movies makes me literally have to look around to make sure it's the movie and not the sounds -it's not a crappy system.

All of this is only initial; I'll pay a bit more attention when I play wth it next..

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@wegster

Doesn't it auto-save after you complete a mission? Something flashes up to that effect. If not, I'm going to have to redo some missions from last night as I was suddenly too tired to bother going to the safe house (I managed to play it a bit last night after all)

The car physics are really growing on me. I've getting used to making sharp turns by steering in the opposite direction and then flinging it round with a tap of the extra hand-brake. The cars feel more weighty when you crash, but not in a dull lifeless way. One police car managed to turn my car into a ramp and launch itself into off the road into a hedge with a satisfying thump. I found a good ramp for an insane stunt over a highway last night and it tells me there are 50 of them. Finding those will not be easy.

I haven't seen a dodgy country music station, which is pity. Driving a pick-up to country music is a signature of GTA for me! I haven't worked out how to do the taxi driver missions either. I've tried all the buttons and if I pull by someone and beep, they generally drop whatever it is they're carrying and run away!

Chris

@clebin

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Doesn't it auto-save after you complete a mission?

Yes it does this on at least the PS3 version by default, but if several people are playing the game, the game asks if you want to turn auto-saves off. Me and my girlfriend both play the game with seperate save games.

@wegster

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wegster wrote: @MikeB The PS3 vs 360 graphics and resolutions - don't really care about, I'd added that simply as a data point more than anything. From what I've seen, they both look 'good enough' with the resolution differences or not. I think we're seeing more 'next gen' in number of moving items on screen and other areas moreso than 'best graphics ever' in either case, but they're 'good enough.'

What! It doesn't run in 1080p? Those darn lazy developers!
I kid, I kid. But I hope someone around here starts to realize that game engine complexity can/does effect the overall graphical output of the game...a point I was trying to make a few pages ago...especially when a cpu has to assist in graphics...

@MikeB

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MikeB wrote: The guys over at Beyond3D are discussing the minor differences between the two versions (both are good and receive raving reviews!), with regard to graphics rendering the PS3 is generally agreed to sport better filtering (AF) resulting in better anti-aliasing / cleaner look for far the environment in the distance and better lighting creating a more realistic look. 360: PS3: Other differences are less prevalent pop-ins and less loading times on the PS3 due to the harddrive install. Some nearby graphics may look a little sharper on the 360 due to the PS3 version's slighly lower rendering resolution 640p, but side by side screenshots don't really show this.

This is a poor/bogus example because if the shots were taken at the same "in-game" distance then the amount of pixels used to make up the 360 shot would be higher and more detailed and would require less filtering.

Let me be more mathematically precise. The PS3 shot is 640x292 the 360 version should be 720x329 for them to be taken at the same "in-game" distance assuming the same level of pixelation in these photos...

Now let me ask you this: if the 360 version was made to also render in 640p, do you think it would reduce pop-ups and speed up load times? Do you think they could have applied better filters?

@Lou

No, you are wrong there will be the exact same amount of pixels on a TV screen, this due to scaling. But you would potentially loose details if the assets are of high enough quality.

No the Beyond3D guys aren't faking these screenshots.

@MikeB

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MikeB wrote: @Lou No, you are wrong there will be the exact same amount of pixels on a TV screen, this due to scaling. But you would potentially loose details if the assets are of high enough quality. No the Beyond3D guys aren't faking these screenshots.

No, you are wrong, one would scale a picture from 640p to 720p or 1080p and for the 360, it would either be 720p native or scaled to 1080p. The pixelation in these 2 shots looks the same, hence they could not have been taken at the same ingame distance.

What I'm saying is that if Niko was probably 64 in-game feet from this sign on the ps3, where as he was 72 in-game feet from this sign on the 360 because the pixelation looks the same (ie, the size of these chunky blown up pics which could have been stretched at the source's discretion...) and they should not be the same if one was rendered at a higher resolution (720p vs. 640p).

PS,
How do you know the source can be trusted? Just being a member of Beyond3D isn't enough for me.

@clebin

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haven't seen a dodgy country music station, which is pity. Driving a pick-up to country music is a signature of GTA for me!

Answer is the Xbox360. You can route music from your iPod, PC, or store on the 360 itself and play in any game.

@clebin
Yes. it auto-saves. However, that is not a visibile set of saves, just a single save point. In the event you decide you want to go back, only a single save point will be visible when you do a Load.

If you simply continue from where you left off, not a problem.

Yes, the ramps are pretty cool off the highway

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@MikeB
PS - very odd. Big difference in six-axis use in bowling vs analog stick only. Six axis I get more strickes, and it's ok.

Six axis for motorcycle controls is pretty decent. For helicopters, it's miserable.

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@clebin
One thing is driving me nuts. Now that I have a gun, when driving, the handbrake button (L1) now fires the gun, and set off on a huge chase. Apparently, they DO still set up roadblocks in GTA4, something a reviewer claimed was not the case.

Haven't figured out how to go back to using e-brake, seems to fire the pistol now in car even if 'hands' are selected for weapon.

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@Lou

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Lou wrote: @MikeB Quote: MikeB wrote: @Lou No, you are wrong there will be the exact same amount of pixels on a TV screen, this due to scaling. But you would potentially loose details if the assets are of high enough quality. No the Beyond3D guys aren't faking these screenshots. No, you are wrong, one would scale a picture from 640p to 720p or 1080p and for the 360, it would either be 720p native or scaled to 1080p. The pixelation in these 2 shots looks the same, hence they could not have been taken at the same ingame distance. What I'm saying is that if Niko was probably 64 in-game feet from this sign on the ps3, where as he was 72 in-game feet from this sign on the 360 because the pixelation looks the same (ie, the size of these chunky blown up pics which could have been stretched at the source's discretion...) and they should not be the same if one was rendered at a higher resolution (720p vs. 640p). PS, How do you know the source can be trusted? Just being a member of Beyond3D isn't enough for me.

MikeB is correct.

There is clearly more detail in the 360 version (and high frequency content). The PS3 version has clearly been filtered with a low pass filter. This would be consistent with covering up the unwanted effects of scaling from 640 to 720. Try walking far back from your monitor until you can't see the pixels and the spotting effects in the sign blur. You will then notice that the first image appears to have more detail in the burger and looks better. When you are close up the blurring effect of the PS3 looks better.

More 360 and Blu rumors.

'Chinese-language Economic Daily News reporting that Pegatron (an OEM subsidiary of Asus that handles "motherboard and component OEM manufacturing") has been tapped to assemble "Xbox 360 consoles equipped with a Blu-ray Disc ROM drive.'

IMO this would be a great move for the 360 and some soft of BD is needed to help defend against the PS3 and give the 360 a longer life.

@BrianK

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/02/xbox-360-blu-ray-console-by-september/
Perhaps they will announce it at E3...

Also, a multiplayer update seems to be coming for Super Stardust HD...

Last edited by Lou on 02-May-2008 at 04:00 PM.

@Bit7

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Bit7 wrote: @Lou MikeB is correct. There is clearly more detail in the 360 version (and high frequency content). The PS3 version has clearly been filtered with a low pass filter. This would be consistent with covering up the unwanted effects of scaling from 640 to 720. Try walking far back from your monitor until you can't see the pixels and the spotting effects in the sign blur. You will then notice that the first image appears to have more detail in the burger and looks better. When you are close up the blurring effect of the PS3 looks better.

No, you are not getting it. In those shots, if one came from a 640p image and another came from a 720p image, for the pixel density to be the same, the 360 image was taken with the in-game camera slightly farther away. Both burger pics consist of 25 pixels in width. By my calculations, the 360 pic's burger should have 28 pixels in width if they were taken from the exact same ingame camera position. This is why the comparison is quite biased.

Last edited by Lou on 02-May-2008 at 04:20 PM.

@Lou

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Lou wrote: @wegster Quote: wegster wrote: @MikeB The PS3 vs 360 graphics and resolutions - don't really care about, I'd added that simply as a data point more than anything. From what I've seen, they both look 'good enough' with the resolution differences or not. I think we're seeing more 'next gen' in number of moving items on screen and other areas moreso than 'best graphics ever' in either case, but they're 'good enough.' What! It doesn't run in 1080p? Those darn lazy developers! I kid, I kid. But I hope someone around here starts to realize that game engine complexity can/does effect the overall graphical output of the game...a point I was trying to make a few pages ago...especially when a cpu has to assist in graphics...

No argument here with that point.

Although, it might be interesting to answer the other Q - if both PS3 and 360 were running at native 720 without upscaling, what differences might we see?

It is of course possible that Rockstar is more familiar with the 360 than the PS3, so reduced the PS3 native resolution down slightly for better performance, but that it's due to their experience with 360 vs PS3 development, or it could say something else.

I do tend to believe the first, as not surprisingly for Sony, the PS3 has a larger learning curve over the PS3, but..who knows?

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@wegster

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It is of course possible that Rockstar is more familiar with the 360 than the PS3

They are now comfortable with the PS3 hardware, but they still haven't "cracked it".

"I think it was challenging for a lot of companies, but it's also a machine where, now that we've got comfortable with it—I don't want to say we've cracked it, but we've got comfortable with it—we know we can make our games"

The end result is what matters the most:

Rockstar co-founder:

"The 360 games have a certain look to them; PS3 games have a certain look to them. I like the way [the PS3] renders."

Basically the PS3 is a lot easier to code for than the PS2 (from scratch), but the 360 in hardware has more in common with past technology thus game engines need to adapted far more to get the most out of its much greater potential.

GTA IV development was lead on the 360, thus game engine wise and assets wise the game is 360 orientated. I stated in a lot of posts even dating back years before the PS3 launched, game engines will have to be adapted in certain ways for the Cell.

Last edited by MikeB on 02-May-2008 at 05:27 PM.

MikeB wrote:

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Other differences are less prevalent pop-ins and less loading times on the PS3 due to the harddrive install. Some nearby graphics may look a little sharper on the 360 due to the PS3 version's slighly lower rendering resolution 640p, but side by side screenshots don't really show this.

It appears the B3D guy may be incorrect with regard to the 640p rendering claim according to various reports. This may be the reason it doesn't show in side by side screenshots.

From GamesRadar: "We captured the raw video in uncompressed 720p, with no post-processing to either stream. Shown side-by-side, it’s quite difficult to tell the difference between the two versions. Only a highly trained eye can see the subtle shifts in color, the minor variations in shadow detail."

So without the post-processing they may be identical with regard to overall detail. It's probably the AF, choice of colors and lighting which results in a difference. This seems to indicate both are either rendered in 640p or 720p.

Last edited by MikeB on 03-May-2008 at 12:08 AM.

@Lou

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No, you are not getting it. In those shots, if one came from a 640p image and another came from a 720p image, for the pixel density to be the same, the 360 image was taken with the in-game camera slightly farther away. Both burger pics consist of 25 pixels in width. By my calculations, the 360 pic's burger should have 28 pixels in width if they were taken from the exact same ingame camera position. This is why the comparison is quite biased.

No. Let me take a more extreme example. Say that the game used 360p (exactly half the resolution). If the shot was taken from the exact same distance you would see the same size sign (relative to the available area) but it would be half the resolution. (try changing the resolution in a PC 3D game if you don't believe me). When you upscale that 360p image to 720p you would then see the exact same number of pixels in the sign. Only the upscaled one would look very blurred.

BTW. I am not saying that the game is definitely using 640p. Only that the level of filtering present in the screen shot makes it plausible.

Last edited by Bit7 on 03-May-2008 at 03:01 AM.