PS3 - Optimistic views on programming

[icecaveman]

Volatile shares their view on the PS3 :pinch:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives...rogramming.html

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Sounds about right. "Slightly better than a top-end PC" makes sense considering the hardware. And they talk about how OpenGL and Cg make working with the GPU very easy, but how making use of the Cell is harder depending on what you want it to do. It's interesting how they talk about using the SPEs as what sounds like additional shaders (the water ripples example). I'd been wondering what they'd end up being useful for.

The only part I took issue with was:

20 minutes of HD-TV footage takes up around 4.7GB, so an Xbox 360 game would quickly run out of space.

That's clearly a completely made up number with no basis in fact. If that were true, it would mean you could only fit 1 hour on an HD-DVD disc. But of course that's not true. In fact, you can easily fit more than 2 hours of 1280p video (ie. better than HD) on a standard DVD disc - Terminator 2: Extreme Edition proves this.

[icecaveman]

It's interesting how they talk about using the SPEs as what sounds like additional shaders

We already knew that considering Kojima told us MGS4 would use the SPEs for HDR :shifty:

[psyko_x]

Sounds about right. "Slightly better than a top-end PC" makes sense considering the hardware. And they talk about how OpenGL and Cg make working with the GPU very easy, but how making use of the Cell is harder depending on what you want it to do. It's interesting how they talk about using the SPEs as what sounds like additional shaders (the water ripples example). I'd been wondering what they'd end up being useful for.

The only part I took issue with was:

That's clearly a completely made up number with no basis in fact. If that were true, it would mean you could only fit 1 hour on an HD-DVD disc. But of course that's not true. In fact, you can easily fit more than 2 hours of 1280p video (ie. better than HD) on a standard DVD disc - Terminator 2: Extreme Edition proves this.

no i'm pretty sure that number is accurate for 1080p video

the 1080p resolution video on the terminator dvd is encoded in wmv which makes the file much smaller..and incompatible with dvd players

[icecaveman]

no i'm pretty sure that number is accurate for 1080p video

the 1080p resolution video on the terminator dvd is encoded in wmv which makes the file much smaller..and incompatible with dvd players

What are you talking about? Xbox can play WMV so what are you trying to say? That videos for in game cut-scenes should be encoded in MPEG2 so they can be played on any DVD player? Doesn't make any sense.

[TheNay]

Consoles are stupid these days, within less than 12 months better games are out on the pc or the same game is on the pc and looks equally the same with the right hardware.

Eg, Call of Duty 2 or Need for Speed Most Wanted, I played it on the 360 and my computer, looks the same to me, but don't get me wrong, its good for the price compared to a more expensive pc to get the same results, but you can do more with a pc aside from gaming ;) Just my view.

[magik]

Consoles are stupid these days, within less than 12 months better games are out on the pc or the same game is on the pc and looks equally the same with the right hardware.

Eg, Call of Duty 2 or Need for Speed Most Wanted, I played it on the 360 and my computer, looks the same to me, but don't get me wrong, its good for the price compared to a more expensive pc to get the same results, but you can do more with a pc aside from gaming ;) Just my view.

The difference is, every 6 to 12 months you also need to upgrade to the latest Video Card (which ranges anywhere between $400 ~ $800) to get the graphical capability of new games that the $300/$400 Xbox 360 or PS3 ($???) will have for years to come. Thus, PC gaming is economically "stupid".

[micro]

Thats the way it is with most Consoles when they come out, JUST slightly better then high end pc, but that soon changes..

[TheNay]

The difference is, every 6 to 12 months you also need to upgrade to the latest Video Card (which ranges anywhere between $400 ~ $800) to get the graphical capability of new games that the $300/$400 Xbox 360 or PS3 ($???) will have for years to come. Thus, PC gaming is economically "stupid".

Umm I had my 6800GT for over a year now, and Most Wanted just came out a few months ago.

Plays the same to me ;)

I'm not saying consoles are garbage, they serve a purpose, and the purpose is for games and media.

While a PC is for games, media, and all sorts of other things you can't do on a console which in the end is better to have.

[magik]

I'm not saying consoles are garbage, they serve a purpose, and the purpose is for games and media.

While a PC is for games, media, and all sorts of other things you can't do on a console which in the end is better to have.

Agreed. But for most gamers (i.e: not the hardcore gamer) it doesn't make sense financially to keep their PC up to date with the latest gaming graphic capabilities. It is much cheaper and easier to get the latest Console. For those looking for more than just gaming (i.e: Web Browsing, Photo Editting, Word Processing, Programming, etc etc), of course, a PC is essential, nobody argues that.

[icecaveman]

Stay on topic, or at least on "programming" for consoles/PCs no need for another PC vs Console war

[Brandon Live Veteran]

We already knew that considering Kojima told us MGS4 would use the SPEs for HDR :shifty:

I still don't get that. They must mean some kind of pseudo-HDR, because HDR has little to do with shaders. HDR typically means greater than 32-bit color depth.

no i'm pretty sure that number is accurate for 1080p video

the 1080p resolution video on the terminator dvd is encoded in wmv which makes the file much smaller..and incompatible with dvd players

Huh? You seem to be misunderstanding how video works. DVDs are encoded in MPEG2. Yeah, if you encoded at HD resolutions in MPEG2 it would take up more space. But that wouldn't work with a normal DVD player either. And the bitrate that you encode it at could be whatever you want, and that is what determines the file size. And since there's no DVD standard encoding rate for HD resolutions, this "20 minutes" number must have been pulled out of the ether.

The standard codec for Xbox 360 videos is VC-1 (aka WMV-HD), with which you can easily fit hours of HD video on an Xbox 360 DVD-9 disc. Thus, the claim made in the article was completely inaccurate.

[icecaveman]

I still don't get that. They must mean some kind of pseudo-HDR, because HDR has little to do with shaders. HDR typically means greater than 32-bit color depth.

I thought true HDR as Microsoft defines it was first made using Shader Model 3.0? But I could be wrong ofcourse, and ofcourse Sony might not be using true HDR at all like you say pseudo, but HDR uses floating points and that's where Cell shines.

On August 9, 2004, Microsoft updated DirectX once more to DirectX 9.0c. This also upgraded the Shader Model to 3.0. Shader Model 3.0's lighting precision, according to Dr. Sim Dietrich Jr., has a minimum of 32-bits. Also all lighting precision calculations are now floating-point based. nVidia states that contrast ratios using Shader Model 3.0 can be as high as 65535:1 using 32-bit lighting precision. Support for high dynamic range rendering was primarily for graphics cards supporting Shader Model 3.0, but Shader Model 2.0 soon became an industry standard along with Shader Model 3.0 for HDR rendering. High dynamic range rendering is now offered to graphics cards using either Shader Model 2.0 or 3.0. Up to this point however, the difference between scenes rendered in high dynamic range using either Shader Model 2.0 or 3.0 is negliable.

[yankee lion]

The only part I took issue with was:

That's clearly a completely made up number with no basis in fact. If that were true, it would mean you could only fit 1 hour on an HD-DVD disc. But of course that's not true. In fact, you can easily fit more than 2 hours of 1280p video (ie. better than HD) on a standard DVD disc - Terminator 2: Extreme Edition proves this.

What if it was uncompressed? Uncompressed video is huge, I think...

[icecaveman]

What if it was uncompressed? Uncompressed video is huge, I think...

People won't see that detail unless they like to skip through frame by frame :rofl:

in other words it's just useless waste of space, and the more space the game takes, even on a blu-ray it gives you slightly longer loading times since the disc needs to spin slightly more.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

What if it was uncompressed? Uncompressed video is huge, I think...

But why would you give a number for uncompressed video when no one in the world would even consider for 1/2 of a second using uncompressed video? Besides, uncompressed video would be much larger. 20 minutes of uncompressed 1080p video @ 30FPS with 24-bit color would be something like 220GB. And that's without any audio :)

No, they made it up. Pure and simple.

[psyko_x]

I still don't get that. They must mean some kind of pseudo-HDR, because HDR has little to do with shaders. HDR typically means greater than 32-bit color depth.

Huh? You seem to be misunderstanding how video works. DVDs are encoded in MPEG2. Yeah, if you encoded at HD resolutions in MPEG2 it would take up more space. But that wouldn't work with a normal DVD player either. And the bitrate that you encode it at could be whatever you want, and that is what determines the file size. And since there's no DVD standard encoding rate for HD resolutions, this "20 minutes" number must have been pulled out of the ether.

The standard codec for Xbox 360 videos is VC-1 (aka WMV-HD), with which you can easily fit hours of HD video on an Xbox 360 DVD-9 disc. Thus, the claim made in the article was completely inaccurate.

jesus why don't u go buy the dvd before you talk about it?

the 1080p video on the terminator dvd is encoded in wmv not mpeg2. secondly, the highest resolution for dvds is 720p not 1080. thats why if you actually bought the dvd you would notice that the normal movie is in normal 720 resolution and if u pop it into a computer u'll find a wmv file which is the 1080p version.

that wmv file won't play on standalone dvd players. u gotta have a pc..or maybe a xbox360 since it's microsofts technology

[icecaveman]

jesus why don't u go buy the dvd before you talk about it?

the 1080p video on the terminator dvd is encoded in wmv not mpeg2. secondly, the highest resolution for dvds is 720p not 1080. thats why if you actually bought the dvd you would notice that the normal movie is in normal 720 resolution and if u pop it into a computer u'll find a wmv file which is the 1080p version.

that wmv file won't play on standalone dvd players. u gotta have a pc..or maybe a xbox360 since it's microsofts technology

What has that to do with anything? Who cares if it won't play on your standalone DVD player? :rofl:

And the highest resolution for normal DVDs is 480p, but since the Terminator was encoded with WMV-HD and it actually is 1080p and it fits on this standard DVD-9.

[psyko_x]

What has that to do with anything? Who cares if it won't play on your standalone DVD player? :rofl:

And the highest resolution for normal DVDs is 480p, but since the Terminator was encoded with WMV-HD and it actually is 1080p and it fits on this standard DVD-9.

sorry i made a mistake about the 720p. it is 480

anyways my point was that the number the person stated in the article wasnt just made up. brandon live tried to use the example that a full movie in 1080p resolution (terminator 2) can fit on a dvd and i was saying that thats not really relevant because that movie is encoded in wmv format, not mpeg2 like standard dvds. the person in the article is talking about mpeg2 encodings since thats what ps3's bluray will read. bluray doesn't use wmv. do you understand that?

and btw the max bitrate for bluray is 36mbps. so let's suppose a 1080p movie is encoded at 30mbps.

30mbps*(60seconds)*(20minutes)=36000mbits for 20 minutes

36000mbits/8bits = 4500MB=4.5GB

[Brandon Live Veteran]

sorry i made a mistake about the 720p. it is 480

anyways my point was that the number the person stated in the article wasnt just made up. brandon live tried to use the example that a full movie in 1080p resolution (terminator 2) can fit on a dvd and i was saying that thats not really relevant because that movie is encoded in wmv format, not mpeg2 like standard dvds. the person in the article is talking about mpeg2 encodings since thats what ps3's bluray will read. bluray doesn't use wmv. do you understand that?

and btw the max bitrate for bluray is 36mbps. so let's suppose a 1080p movie is encoded at 30mbps.

30mbps*(60seconds)*(20minutes)=36000mbits for 20 minutes

36000mbits/8bits = 4500MB=4.5GB

What the heck are you talking about? Blu-Ray supports VC-1, the same codec that the Xbox 360 uses.

Nowhere in the article do they mention MPEG2 or any other codec. Like I said, someone made up that number. Hopefully they'll post a correction.

jesus why don't u go buy the dvd before you talk about it?

the 1080p video on the terminator dvd is encoded in wmv not mpeg2. secondly, the highest resolution for dvds is 720p not 1080. thats why if you actually bought the dvd you would notice that the normal movie is in normal 720 resolution and if u pop it into a computer u'll find a wmv file which is the 1080p version.

that wmv file won't play on standalone dvd players. u gotta have a pc..or maybe a xbox360 since it's microsofts technology

What??? I own the DVD. I know that it's in WMV. But so are videos on the Xbox 360, which is what the article was talking about.

Standard DVDs use MPEG2 (at 480, not 720), but that has nothing to do with this discussion. Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension skills?

Oh, and as I remember, the Terminator 2 disc is actually 1280p - but it might have been 1080p and my memory is just playing tricks on me.

[psyko_x]

What the heck are you talking about? Blu-Ray supports VC-1, the same codec that the Xbox 360 uses.

Nowhere in the article do they mention MPEG2 or any other codec. Like I said, someone made up that number. Hopefully they'll post a correction.

What??? I own the DVD. I know that it's in WMV. But so are videos on the Xbox 360, which is what the article was talking about.

Standard DVDs use MPEG2 (at 480, not 720), but that has nothing to do with this discussion. Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension skills?

Oh, and as I remember, the Terminator 2 disc is actually 1280p - but it might have been 1080p and my memory is just playing tricks on me.

1. i think ps3 will use mpeg2

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-enterta...decs-140423.php

2. i think the article is about the ps3 not the xbox 360 since the title is "Possession and the art of PS3 programming". the guy is saying that typical hd videos that we will have on bluray will take about 4.7gb of space for each 20 minutes

3. no the resolution is 1080

[Brandon Live Veteran]

1. i think ps3 will use mpeg2

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-enterta...decs-140423.php

I don't care what the PS3 is using. That's not what they were talking about.

2. i think the article is about the ps3 not the xbox 360 since the title is "Possession and the art of PS3 programming". the guy is saying that typical hd videos that we will have on bluray will take about 4.7gb of space for each 20 minutes

20 minutes of HD-TV footage takes up around 4.7GB, so an Xbox 360 game would quickly run out of space.

How the hell do you read that as having anything to do with the PS3? Do you not see the flaw in that statement?

[firen]

Whatever, the point is PS3 is easy to program for. That's good news considering Guerrial Games also said it was easy to program for as well.

Sounds about right. "Slightly better than a top-end PC" makes sense considering the hardware. And they talk about how OpenGL and Cg make working with the GPU very easy, but how making use of the Cell is harder depending on what you want it to do. It's interesting how they talk about using the SPEs as what sounds like additional shaders (the water ripples example). I'd been wondering what they'd end up being useful for.

I think they were talking about programming aspect right? or am i mistaken..

[yankee lion]

I don't care what the PS3 is using. That's not what they were talking about.

How the hell do you read that as having anything to do with the PS3? Do you not see the flaw in that statement?

Relax man, I think psyko_x was trying to prove that they didn't pull numbers out of thin air. 20 minutes of HD content can be 4.5 gig, it can also be alot less, and a lot more.

[icecaveman]

Whatever, the point is PS3 is easy to program for. That's good news considering Guerrial Games also said it was easy to program for as well.

I think they were talking about programming aspect right? or am i mistaken..

Appart from the fact Sony just recently purchased Guerrial so their words can't be taken seriously.