Gran Turismo 5

[RacingManiac]

I tried to avoid smoke in my shots since the game handles any effects like that (smoke, dust, rainspray, snowdrift...) very poorly(seriously, worse than old games like GTR or even EA's F1 games). But half a second later its all smoky....


To illustrate the issue, look at the pic below and note where the diffuser of the car is, noticed all the edges with the jaggies...

[Magnum9987]

800HP McLaren F1 oversteers even with maximum downforce and maximum sensitivity LSD. Needed an additional 4 degrees of negative camber to make it a winning car.

[RacingManiac]

The game does pity you enough that if you bronze the Vettel challenge then you can win a X2010.....Which for one reason or another I was able to button down and just do it...won me the regular RBR paint job version....supposedly silver and gold wins you different color one including one in bare carbon. And B spec level 35 wins you another one....




Don't enjoy driving it as it is more like Wipeout than GT, but it sure looks cool...

[NSXType-R]

I tried to avoid smoke in my shots since the game handles any effects like that (smoke, dust, rainspray, snowdrift...) very poorly(seriously, worse than old games like GTR or even EA's F1 games). But half a second later its all smoky....


To illustrate the issue, look at the pic below and note where the diffuser of the car is, noticed all the edges with the jaggies...

Shadows in general look really terrible.

[pimento]

It's very CPU intensive to do shadows nicely, for relatively small rewards - most studios will lower shadow quality to add shinyness elsewhere. For PC gamers it's a good place to start to eke out a few extra Fs per S.

[Matra et Alpine]

^^ and with the PS3 architecture it will not be a simple add more shaders as it is with DirectX implementations.
I still dont really think anyone has got those cell processors running like they COULD

[NSXType-R]

It's very CPU intensive to do shadows nicely, for relatively small rewards - most studios will lower shadow quality to add shinyness elsewhere. For PC gamers it's a good place to start to eke out a few extra Fs per S.

^^ and with the PS3 architecture it will not be a simple add more shaders as it is with DirectX implementations.
I still dont really think anyone has got those cell processors running like they COULD

It's odd right? It's not like the PS3 is a slouch at all.

Kazunori has lots of explaining to do, perfect game this is.

[Matra et Alpine]

DOn't think it's that odd as it was the issue raised with the PS3 architecture from day 1.
It's NOT symmetrical or structured for processing.
THe cells are great APUs, the interconnects are good and fast, but with no real infrastructure to use them effectively there were always never going to match DirectX and what the GPU boys coudl do there.
XBox I think ends up the winner ( gag! ) ... and PC more so.
You want bigger screen size, add in a graphics chip with more shaders, want more objects add mroe shaders, more detail add more shaders.
The PS3 was always going to be hard as every coder is having to work out what to do with each cell and no way to add more cells.
Sony really screwed it up, but not being a computer company it was inevitable.
Woudl be fun to go back and look at threads from 3 years ago where exactly what we're seeing ws being predicted

Not K's faut. The Playstation is knobbled by it's architecture

[werty]

You think they will learn from this mistake when they make the PS4?

I bet they have someone else make it

[Matra et Alpine]

It's the software architecture they need to develop before the hardware
It's the only thing wrong. The PS3 per se is a great design, but they needed to make it so developers coudl use it without needing to know all the tech.
They'd be better licensing DirectX )
Just dont see the point of a PS4 as even a brand new console design will be behind.

Scenario ..... any Xbox competition comes along and "all" MS have to do is move to latest processor from Intel/AMD and latest chipset from nVidia/ATI and evey game written to date will run on it with no cost and run faster and with higher graphics features.

Never have looked back to see who is winner in the recent skirmishes in the console wars

PS3 future I see as cheaper versions only

[pimento]

Sony is a hardware company first, they then have to write software for it. MS coming in as a software company made a very canny decision on using standard PC based hardware. They also asked the publishers for input before they finalised the specs, which is why the Xbox 360 has 512 rams and not 256.

On a 'better spec'd Xbox' the current games wouldn't look any better as the engines aren't designed to scale, but there could be performance increases. The PS4 is anyone's guess.. the cell architecture is not bad if you can manage to utilise it properly but it's not easy - it might actually be better for Sony to continue down that familiar path rather than reinventing again. At least they could have backwards compatibility for the life of the product rather than merely the first gen one.

[Matra et Alpine]

^^ What basis do you say the engines won't scale ?
As they all use the DirectX interface then it is only a configuration in the DirectX library interface to enable more eg anti-aliasing, render depth ..
Of course developers who bypassed the interfaces or who didn't design for the future deserve the lack of sales they get !!
As games are available on the PC too then it's a no brainer for them.

If as has been oft quoted developers are managing the cell processing deployment decisions then it may well be doomed and unable even to consider adding new cells or even faster cells It's that lack of harware abstraction layer ( to get geeky ) that will continue to screw the PS developers until SOMEONE codes it and no individual is going to do that. Needs SOny to do ... and do they make profit on it yet to fund that ???
Hard to imagine that as games developers costs are so high having to develop too much of what woudl be thought the operating system there cant be lots of profits floating around for a shared library.

WIth the new bus architectures in the PC domain and multi-processor cores it's hard to see the cell having any future. It's only hope was to be somethgin SO much faster people woudl flock to it. They failed

[pimento]

Xbox games are very very much optimised for the specific hardware, see some of the terrible ports of 360 games to PC for examples - Rainbox 6: Vegas was shocking on PC, even with hardware that's vastly superior to an Xbox. Just chucking an Xbox game onto better hardware won't straight up produce better results because they're not coded that way. They could be, but they aren't because it'd mean either that on the 360 it wouldn't perform as well or it'd be considered a waste of time by the bean counters. Time is money, both are spent on areas that give immediate results. Some nebulous future proofing is considered unrequired - consumers can just buy the next game in the series if they want more shinyness!

[Matra et Alpine]

Pimento, picking a bad example is never good evidence
But what evidence is their that Vegas was a port to the PC ?
They released same time .... and what was so bad on the PC that worked on the XBox ??
Dont follow shooters.

The problem with developng hardware abstraction layers is you always get some smart-ass developer who decides they've found a better way and workaround the standards to get 1% better/faster

Also, some of the "port companies" in all aspects fo computers ( and I suspenct games ) do very bad jobs because the selection was based on price and not quality.

DIrectX coding means they ARE coded and trygin to NOT do DirectX involves 10s of man years of coding effort.


You missed the point completely about common core products as it performs then exactly at the capability of the paltform it runs on. So for example I can run a PC game on a 6 screen 3 cards with 6Gb each adn a total of 1500-off shaders to astound ... or I can run the same game with less screenspace and less detail and less render depth. Teh GAME stays the same and by addresing a wider market with one code base the develoepr gets more sales ! COmpare Mini spec with recommended spec on any PC game

It's not nebukous future proofing, it's using standardised libraries to improve the developemtn time and quality of products. MS knew this and created DirectX. Sony didn't and are suffering for it as predicted.

[pimento]

Evidence is the menu structures and whatnot being optimised for a gamepad whereas any PC gamer playing an FPS will use a mouse and keyboard. It also runs very very poorly on hardware that can easily handle a different game that uses the same base engine. Abstraction layers are all well and good, but better hardware doesn't make a game designed 4 years ago look all new and shiny. I know that DirectX games on PC will scale their shinyness/performance factors to allow running on much hardware, they're all coded that way. Xbox games don't need to be as it's all set hardware - a powerPC based CPU an a custom ATi GPU that also performs the duties of a northbridge chip that would ususally be separate on a PC motherboard. Game engines are heavily optimised for the exact hardware involved - the abstraction layer can only do so much, there's still hardware specific tweaks that are made to glean that extra shinyness out of it.

Anyway, I think we're nitpicking around the same points. Of course there's extra hardware based shinyness that can be added to current games when applied to gruntier hardware but they won't do it because they want us to buy the latest and greatest games.