I've been called a Nintendo fanboy, a Sony fanboy and a Microsoft fanboy all at some point through my tenure here
What a slut
I've been called a Nintendo fanboy, a Sony fanboy and a Microsoft fanboy all at some point through my tenure here
Point taken. I hope that, on the other hand, some people that value specs very highly also can see where I am coming from, and why it can be a bit tiring to read lots of posts (in almost every single thread it seems) that claim that the Xbox One is clearly an inferior system based on some numbers.. (perhaps a bit exaggerated, but I hope it's clear what I mean)
I'm an engineer, but not in computer science
I know almost nothing about how this stuff works, but the impression I have from several posters who are a lot more knowledgeable than me is that PS4 doubling its RAM pool should not really have any effect on resolution or framerate. Memory architecture may affect this, but RAM amount should not be important (unless, possibly, if we are talking about orders-of-magnitude differences).
More RAM should allow for stuff like larger levels/worlds and more detailed textures though. Possibly it could also theoretically allow for stuff like more advanced AI routines and more complex computations, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether practically RAM amount would make a difference here.
Edit: I found a post from someone who actually knows what he is talking about:
From this thread
What a slut
During the Forza 5 event At E3 a journalist was put in "Microsoft Jail" for taking pics of "..a laptop and a bunch of wires." Was this ever discussed?
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/i-got-thrown-in-microsoft-jail-for-taking-pictures-of-nothing/
NO YOU
See how effective that argument is
They make you play Halo 3's Cortana on Legendary for 48 hours non-stop.Put in "Microsoft Jail"? What the hell is that lol
During the Forza 5 event At E3 a journalist was put in "Microsoft Jail" for taking pics of "..a laptop and a bunch of wires." Was this ever discussed?
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/i-got-thrown-in-microsoft-jail-for-taking-pictures-of-nothing/
They make you play Halo 3's Cortana on Legendary for 48 hours non-stop.
I don't know. That whole incident sounds really fishy. I mean he was the only one to see the laptop with tons of cables, and the only to take a picture of it? I don't buy it.
Nobody else made it out alive.
Uh, I highly doubt that.
LMAO. MS Jail = Alcatraz?
I am cunning and devious, after all
haha seriously though, I've been called a Nintendo fanboy, a Sony fanboy and a Microsoft fanboy all at some point through my tenure here, so I suspect that means I'm doing something terribly wrong or terrible right lol
Thank you for this expanded explanation. Very easily digestible. I am still not entirely convinced it won't be of some help in making other tasks more doable and thus allowing the engine to have a smoother framerate, but it does sound like it wouldn't be of a substantial benefit either way.(
Uh-huh..."It was dark, so I took a couple quick photos with my flash so I could see."
Sim City ?
Diablo 3?
Diablo 3?
D3 could have been done locally - instead Blizzard decided to let servers handle some tasks for cheat protection...
Console versions will work offline...
See my example of an interesting use (at least to me):
One of my basic thoughts is changing level structure of ai opponents based on the gaming collectives' history with a level. Say there are 10 different ways to enter a compound. Vanilla level has guards mainly tightly controlling 6 of the ten tightly (b,c,h,i,j,k), and 4 of them in larger paths (a,d,e,f,g). After 80% of gamers targeted a certain 5 of the entrances (a,c,d,f,g,h), guard routines are sent down by the 'cloud' to adjust their paths. Now, (a,b,c,d,f,g,h) are the tightly covered entrances with lower 'spook' meters--making these entrances much harder to use.
The ai routine defaults to a certain path and structure, but the cloud offers the ability to dynamically alter the weights of certain locations on the game-map. Cutting off previous scenarios and encouraging players to move a certain way through the map that hasn't previously been explored by other players.
----
In Forza, they collect a lot of data on players previously to make an AI. That AI was crunched client side. With the 'cloud', they could iterate much more quickly on the algorithm to create these AIs, and also deploy them in much smaller batches. They could collect much more data and crunch it while the players console is offline rather than forcing them to wait.
In FPS, the entire global player data can be collected and analyzed. CS:GO, Valve tracks every bullet fired by every gun and where it hits other players. They track the kills/shot avg, and HS percentage, etc etc. Developers might be able to utlize that massive amount of information about how players are playing their games to create more useful client updates or dynamic map alterations.
With an RPG, you could enter a city which pings your entrance to a dev's cloud setup. Say you have some friends on your friends list, or friends of friends of friends all get lumped together into a virtual instance of the city where you can see other players. Similar to guildwars, but within a purely single-player experience. You might be able to trade loot with the players, but you can't group up. How crazy would it have been to be running around Ni No Kuni with other players that populate the cities?
Again, nothing unique, but lower cost in developing the hardware and infrastructure frees up resources to reinvest in creating different interactive experiences. My hope is to see the Demon Souls/Dark Souls inter-player relationships become more interesting as this next generation unfolds. This cloud infrastructure appears to me to indicate that the xbox team is investing heavily in these types of experiences, and encouraging developers to develop around 'interactive and dynamic' events.
EDIT: And of course my thoughts are just simple exercises...they could be completely garbage. Just my brief thoughts on such possibilities. I'm no game designer, but this and interactivity using the online systems are what I want from this generation. Increased graphics are one thing. Dynamic events and worlds and games are far, far more interesting to me.
This is something that took me just 10 minutes or so to come up with, and I really want game developers to utilize 'da klawd' to make more interesting gameplay experiences. I've been playing the same RPGs and Platformers and Shooters for the vast majority of my life. I'd must prefer to see new ways of gaming, and I think interactivity is the one of the most interesting ways of 'altering' a typical playthrough.
Infinitely powerful. That's the reason it can come to the PS4, coz of teh powurr.
It's such a pointless PR mess they created on the Cloud front too - instead of just being straightforward about the limited applications for such a thing and not trying to imply that it in some magical way allows their inferior specs to compete with vastly superior tech, they flubbed a simple underlined asterisk for their products that would have just made people think 'that's neat.'
Instead, now it's a punchline, everyone pretty much knows it's the type of 'advantage' that can be erased (or matched) in a second if its competitors decided to invest (even though technically that is already erased and then trampled upon by the significantly superior PS4 power advantage). It was just silly poor messaging everywhere from MS. They kept tripping themselves up for no reason. Really good Mattrick is leaving.
What limitations are those? Its additional computing power... its really only as limited as your imagination and technical prowess. Is it the holy grail? No! But it is a resource I would have KILLED for last gen. Yes Sony could easily do the same thing... but they haven't yet. Doing and making it a standard feature is world different than "can do". If it is not a STANDARD feature it really does not matter in the world of game development. (well unless SOny/MS/Nintendo "moneyhat's", usually with marketing support. I know thats how we put M+, Move, and Kinect into our game. Each of those were "paid for")
And its only a punchline among those who get their "facts" from the internet. Talk to an online engineer actually working on the platform. I talk to my old team all teh time and they have so many great ideas they are in the infancy of developing.
The ONLY thing i'd knock MS for (at this point) is for having subpar PR dept that couldn't present the info properly.
Really Microsoft? It wasn't like that for the 360.
http://majornelson.com/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-1-of-4/
CONCLUSION
When you break down the numbers, Xbox 360 has provably more performance than PS3. Keep in mind that Sony has a track record of over promising and under delivering on technical performance. The truth is that both systems pack a lot of power for high definition games and entertainment.
However, hardware performance, while important, is only a third of the puzzle. Xbox 360 is a fusion of hardware, software and services. Without the software and services to power it, even the most powerful hardware becomes inconsequential. Xbox 360 games?”by leveraging cutting-edge hardware, software, and services?”will outperform the PlayStation 3.
I have closed comments on this series of posts, except part 4 in order to keep the discussion around this in one area. You can comment here
Archive By Larry Hryb, Xbox LIVE's Major Nelson
I suppose a real world console example is NFS: Most Wanted.
Frame rate was pretty much same across PS3, 360 and WiiU, but the WiiU's having twice the memory allowed it to have the high resolution textures from the PC version and a few memory related effects added. The slow down found on the PS3 and 360 version when there was excessive alpha effects (memory bandwidth is key here) were also reduced on the WiiU.
What limitations are those? Its additional computing power... its really only as limited as your imagination and technical prowess. Is it the holy grail? No! But it is a resource I would have KILLED for last gen. Yes Sony could easily do the same thing... but they haven't yet. Doing and making it a standard feature is world different than "can do". If it is not a STANDARD feature it really does not matter in the world of game development. (well unless SOny/MS/Nintendo "moneyhat's", usually with marketing support. I know thats how we put M+, Move, and Kinect into our game. Each of those were "paid for")
And its only a punchline among those who get their "facts" from the internet. Talk to an online engineer actually working on the platform. I talk to my old team all teh time and they have so many great ideas they are in the infancy of developing.
The ONLY thing i'd knock MS for (at this point) is for having subpar PR dept that couldn't present the info properly.
What do you honestly think the cloud is capable of? Cause by the way you're psyched for it, I can pretty much say the cloud can't do that.
And Sony has a cloud too. They didn't put it to the forefront like MS did because ITS NOT A BIG DEAL.
What do you honestly think the cloud is capable of? Cause by the way you're psyched for it, I can pretty much say the cloud can't do that.
And Sony has a cloud too. They didn't put it to the forefront like MS did because ITS NOT A BIG DEAL.
This is me taking the first thing off the top of my head...
GTA. The city you are walking around in is being run by the servers. So it is a 100% living city. NPCs do not disappear around the corner. They may not be rendered in game when not in view, but their movement and such is non stop. All the console is doing is rendering what you see and sending your inputs to the servers. Think about that for a second. How much more "real" and "alive" would that world be? No more people/items/cars randomly generating,
Is this going to happen, no clue. But just one use of having dedcated servers for extra computing.
and thats off teh top of my head.
Edit: Oh and sony could do the exact same thing if they wanted. Its just a matter of doing it actually. Hope they do.
Pistolero said:Still, I don't think the specs advantage will matter that much at all. As proven by games like Quantum Break, the One is really a powerful machine, capable of producing AMAZING visuals. The differences will be minimal, imo, and won't convince a Halo fan, for exemple, of changing camps.
GAF 2013 reminds me so much of the 2006 edition, except the target of jabs was Sony at the time.
Still, I don't think the specs advantage will matter that much at all. As proven by games like Quantum Break, the One is really a powerful machine, capable of producing AMAZING visuals. The differences will be minimal, imo, and won't convince a Halo fan, for exemple, of changing camps.
If you're talking singleplayer, you don't need dedicated servers or the cloud for that. All you need is a table of possible behaviors/moods for the actors, and a design that requires them to persist. This can easily be stored on disc and run locally. For example, Morrowind did it on the original Xbox.GTA. The city you are walking around in is being run by the servers. So it is a 100% living city. NPCs do not disappear around the corner. They may not be rendered in game when not in view, but their movement and such is non stop. All the console is doing is rendering what you see and sending your inputs to the servers. Think about that for a second. How much more "real" and "alive" would that world be? No more people/items/cars randomly generating.
And what happens when you decide to play the game offline?
. lol
And what happens when you decide to play the game offline?
If you're talking singleplayer, you don't need dedicated servers or the cloud for that. All you need is a table of possible behaviors/moods for the actors, and a design that requires them to persist. This can easily be stored on disc and run locally. For example, Morrowind did it on the original Xbox.
If you mean one persistent identical city for multiplayer to use, then yes that requires dedicated servers, to keep all the actors in sync for all the player clients. But in that case there's nothing new about it; any multiplayer game with bots has done it already.
I'm not saying your idea is bad, or that some games wouldn't be improved. It's just that due to bandwidth, using the cloud for true local singleplayer will almost always be inferior to on-disc assets. Using the cloud for multiplayer on the other hand is truly useful--even indispensable sometimes--but not novel.
I agree It can all be done with less and much locally. But why make that sacrifice when MS is going to offer you the ability to offload X amount to some servers. Its not novel just as you say. What is though, is having the amount available and the idea of thinking of that resource as a standard feature, NOT something you or you publisher would have got pay for and add to a potentially long term cost.
Again I dont think its the most amazing thing since sliced bread. But it really is a potentially dope resource. I just think some people are being a bit too critical of this and should rethink the benefits.
And what happens when you decide to play the game offline?
Argh, as proven by nothing you mean. That is not evidence you can produce at trial for the substantive difference in power for these two systems. lol
Lol i love this post. Poor superdae.LMAO. MS Jail = Alcatraz?
Sadly for that you would have to require an online connection. Though maybe you could have an offline mode that was a "free play" mode that let you play the game but didnt save progress since it wasnt the "real" world you are in. I mean i guess.
Thats why it would be prefered to have a platform require a connection instead of the game. Prevents developers from holding back on certain features because they think will only reach a fraction of an install base. "Only X% of players connected to our game servers or our last game, so this time we shouldnt put as much efort into those features" <-- That Happens
No its not the end of the world for your game to say it requires something extra, but lest hurdles is always appreciated.
But isn't the memory bandwidth of the WiiU lower then that of the PS3 or 360?
Except it is something you and your publisher have to pay for. Respawn confirmed it's not free, even for Titanfall which is a platform exclusive. It may open options for devs, but as with anything there's tradeoffs. They could:I agree It can all be done with less and much locally. But why make that sacrifice when MS is going to offer you the ability to offload X amount to some servers. Its not novel just as you say. What is though, is having the amount available and the idea of thinking of that resource as a standard feature, NOT something you or you publisher would have got pay for and add to a potentially long term cost.
This is correct to a certain point. Once the resolution gets high enough it's starts taking a toll on the VRAM (or in this case the unified memory pool) but if a game was running 1080p at 60 FPS at 4 GB going to 8 GB will not help the frame rate at all on the other hand if a game was running at 1080p with 30 FPS and the VRAM was tapped out at 4GB than adding VRAM definitely helps the framerate.I'm an engineer, but not in computer science
I know almost nothing about how this stuff works, but the impression I have from several posters who are a lot more knowledgeable than me is that PS4 doubling its RAM pool should not really have any effect on resolution or framerate. Memory architecture may affect this, but RAM amount should not be important (unless, possibly, if we are talking about orders-of-magnitude differences).
More RAM should allow for stuff like larger levels/worlds and more detailed textures though. Possibly it could also theoretically allow for stuff like more advanced AI routines and more complex computations, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether practically RAM amount would make a difference here.
Edit: I found a post from someone who actually knows what he is talking about:
From this thread
Thank you, but that is just a paragraph from a popular press source in which transistor counts isn't mentioned.
I agree It can all be done with less and much locally. But why make that sacrifice when MS is going to offer you the ability to offload X amount to some servers. Its not novel just as you say. What is though, is having the amount available and the idea of thinking of that resource as a standard feature, NOT something you or you publisher would have got pay for and add to a potentially long term cost.
Again I dont think its the most amazing thing since sliced bread. But it really is a potentially dope resource. I just think some people are being a bit too critical of this and should rethink the benefits.
Are people forgetting PS4 will also have "the cloud"? Gaikai ring a bell?
Gaikai's "cloud" has nowhere near the same capacity.