Many game developers were unaware of the PS4's RAM increase

[Tetsu]

Imagine what games will look like a year after PS4 has been out. . This is only the beginning

I wonder how many people have thought of that. It was in my mind from way back, remembering how good early trailers of pre-release PS3 games looked, compared to third and fourth generation games like Metal Gear Solid, Killzone and the Uncharted games. And remember all the scoffing over the Killzone 2 trailer? Boy, were they ever right wrong.

And as supposedly difficult as the PS3 was to program, it didn't take a suitcase full of money and a Hollywood graphics studio to create GT5. Sure, a lot of work, and Polyphony Digital squeezed about as much horsepower out of the PS3 as they could. And came up a little short, resulting in occasional screen tearing and slowdown, and shoddy particle effects causing jaggies. At night, only a few cars had headlights casting light. But still, GT5 is one of the best looking racers out there, with unmatched replays and physics arguably competitive with a PC sim. Just take a sports car on street tires around a curvy track like the Indianapolis Infield and be ready to smile.

Now, imagine GT5 with none of the issues and limitations. People freaked out when they saw 16 cars on track at once. How many could the PS4 render and throw around a track realistically? 24? 32? Who knows, but the potential is there for multiclass racing, a real Course Maker, an Event Maker, (nearly) universal Race Modification, a Livery Editor - finally! - and who knows what else is in store for offline as well as online racing? Is weather that matches the actual conditions at the racetrack out of the question? Not anymore.

In a Battlefield or Killzone game online, how many players could participate? If a demo running on the GPU can generate a million objects with physics and lighting properties attached, what does that say for destructible assets in a war game like those? And as said before, that 8GB of fast ram means huge playfields filled with objects brought to life with physical and A.I. properties. We should start seeing games with clouds generated by the PS4, not pixelmapped backgrounds.

All this could be possible in the first generation, and as one developer said, the only limits this time will be their imaginations, and skills as programmers. This is gonna be one seriously sweet launch.

[MATRIX 2]

I wonder how many people have thought of that. It was in my mind from way back, remembering how good early trailers of pre-release PS3 games looked, compared to third and fourth generation games like Metal Gear Solid, Killzone and the Uncharted games. And remember all the scoffing over the Killzone 2 trailer? Boy, were they ever right wrong.

And as supposedly difficult as the PS3 was to program, it didn't take a suitcase full of money and a Hollywood graphics studio to create GT5. Sure, a lot of work, and Polyphony Digital squeezed about as much horsepower out of the PS3 as they could. And came up a little short, resulting in occasional screen tearing and slowdown, and shoddy particle effects causing jaggies. At night, only a few cars had headlights casting light. But still, GT5 is one of the best looking racers out there, with unmatched replays and physics arguably competitive with a PC sim. Just take a sports car on street tires around a curvy track like the Indianapolis Infield and be ready to smile.

Now, imagine GT5 with none of the issues and limitations. People freaked out when they saw 16 cars on track at once. How many could the PS4 render and throw around a track realistically? 24? 32? Who knows, but the potential is there for multiclass racing, a real Course Maker, an Event Maker, (nearly) universal Race Modification, a Livery Editor - finally! - and who knows what else is in store for offline as well as online racing? Is weather that matches the actual conditions at the racetrack out of the question? Not anymore.

In a Battlefield or Killzone game online, how many players could participate? If a demo running on the GPU can generate a million objects with physics and lighting properties attached, what does that say for destructible assets in a war game like those? And as said before, that 8GB of fast ram means huge playfields filled with objects brought to life with physical and A.I. properties. We should start seeing games with clouds generated by the PS4, not pixelmapped backgrounds.

All this could be possible in the first generation, and as one developer said, the only limits this time will be their imaginations, and skills as programmers. This is gonna be one seriously sweet launch.

lol wut?

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/05/gr...on-to-develop/

5 years, $60 million. Pretty sure that qualifies.

[YoungMullah88]

Hey but some will rather pay 50 million to get first dibs on dlc...Go figure. Can't wait to see what PD will do with the ps4. Not into Sims but I always enjoyed gt series

Sent from my Note II

[ps3freak18]

Hey but some will rather pay 50 million to get first dibs on dlc...Go figure. Can't wait to see what PD will do with the ps4. Not into Sims but I always enjoyed gt series

Sent from my Note II

You can always bank on PD to make a gorgeous game. Many were disappointed with GT5 but I didn't have many complaints about it. I thought it was a proper addition to the series.

[Tetsu]

lol wut?

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/05/gr...on-to-develop/

5 years, $60 million. Pretty sure that qualifies.

You're behind the curve on that price. Speculation is more than $80 million, but that's why I included "and a Hollywood graphics studio." Maybe I should have capped that AND...

[mynd]

Draw distance will be better across the board, much much better.

It wont affect draw distance at all.

Can't wait for open world games. Pop-in could be almost a non issue, which is massive for third party studios especially Unreal engine games.

Pop in should be minimal due to tessaltion, but memory has nothing to do with it.

High res textures. You know how Naughty Dog say they model all their environments at really high resolutions then scale them back, well now they simply won't have to scale them back any more. Or to a much lesser degree.

Now your cooking, not only high res texture but bump and cube maps.

When we're seeing ultra high res assets running at 60fps on large 1080p screens is when it starts feeling next-gen.

Absolutly

anti-aliasing and AF will also benefit and you could say more RAM can be a crutch for less talented developers.

Extra ram will make no difference to aa. But that extra bandwidth of gddr will.

Probably won't see many bad ports.

I would expect to see no ports at all.
The system is so straight forward, i would be leading on the PS4.
There will be no bad ports, ever.

Also all the operating system stuff. So many problems on the PS3 that just wouldn't have been there with more RAM.

yeah, i think it will definatley give them room.

Although i suspect with all this stuff they are adding, they always planned 8gb, no way could you do what they want to do with just 512mb.

Me personally, I am a big fan of this system as it stands.

[Tetsu]

(RAM) wont affect draw distance at all.

Pop in should be minimal due to tessaltion, but memory has nothing to do with it.

I don't see how you can say that. Every object on a screen requires ram to hold the models and textures. Even doing tricks like using a few tree models and then repopulating them can only get you so far. Culling polygons for simpler distant objects can only get you so far. Try looking out the rear on a GT5 replay as the system undraws objects not too far behind you.

If ram doesn't matter, why have graphics cards with a GB of ram or more? 256MB should be plenty, or 128.

[Insanehead]

PC games will be the bottleneck of future PS4/Xbox720 games.

[Completely Average]

I don't see how you can say that. Every object on a screen requires ram to hold the models and textures.

It doesn't matter what your RAM can hold, you cannot display it unless you have the memory bandwidth to move it. The amount of RAM increased but the bandwidth stayed the same, so there will be no change in draw distances or pop in.

If ram doesn't matter, why have graphics cards with a GB of ram or more? 256MB should be plenty, or 128.

There are lots of reasons for GB or more RAM, NONE of which have anything to do with draw distances. Increasing resolution increases the amount of RAM required for the frame buffer and back buffer. Pixel Shading increases it more. AA increases it even more. The primary reason for having a GB or more RAM on a video card is so you can run pixel shaders in games at high resolutions with AA.

When the original Voodoo 3D video card was released it only had 4MB of RAM with 2MB dedicated to the Frame Buffer and it was limited to 640X480 resolution. The Voodoo2 increased the RAM to 8MB/12MB with 4MB being dedicated to Frame Buffer which allowed 800X600 resolution. You could link 2 Voodoo2 cards together in SLI, doubling the RAM for the Frame Buffer and achieve 1024X768 resolution. And so on.

AA requires a complete raw frame, then a second complete sample frame, then a final rendered frame for 2X AA. If you then move to 4X AA you have the raw frame, 4 sample frames, and the final rendered frame. 8X AA has the raw frame, 8 sample frames, and the final rendered frame.

And so on. Draw distances have no meaningful relation to the amount of RAM available.

PC games will be the bottleneck of future PS4/Xbox720 games.

Not hardly. A current high end gaming PC already easily exceeds what the PS4 and next Xbox will be able to do. The PC I'm sitting on right now has a MUCH faster CPU, a much more powerful GPU, more RAM, and more memory bandwidth than either of the next-gen consoles will have. The PS4 is only about equal to a current mid-range gaming PC. Take an Intel i5 at 3.4GHZ, 8GB of system memory, and a ATI HD 7970 or Nvidia GTX 680 and you've already got a PC that is more powerful than either console. Your video card alone will have significantly more memory bandwidth than the entire PS4 system.


What will change is that for at least a few years the new generation of consoles will drastically increase the baseline graphics of PC games. Developers will finally be able to drop the long obsolete DX9 level graphics that multiplatform PC games are limited to now and start with DX11 support, which will raise the minimum settings of PC games drastically.

But trust me when I say, even Crysis 3 could cripple a PS4 if it were forced to run the game with all of the maximum PC settings intact at 1080p resolution with 16X AF and 8X MSAA. The GPU bandwidth requirements alone would leave you with single digit frame rates.

[Tetsu]

In other words, if you're just displaying wire frames, you can have infinite draw distance...

[Insanehead]

Not hardly. A current high end gaming PC already easily exceeds what the PS4 and next Xbox will be able to do. The PC I'm sitting on right now has a MUCH faster CPU, a much more powerful GPU, more RAM, and more memory bandwidth than either of the next-gen consoles will have. The PS4 is only about equal to a current mid-range gaming PC. Take an Intel i5 at 3.4GHZ, 8GB of system memory, and a ATI HD 7970 or Nvidia GTX 680 and you've already got a PC that is more powerful than either console. Your video card alone will have significantly more memory bandwidth than the entire PS4 system.


What will change is that for at least a few years the new generation of consoles will drastically increase the baseline graphics of PC games. Developers will finally be able to drop the long obsolete DX9 level graphics that multiplatform PC games are limited to now and start with DX11 support, which will raise the minimum settings of PC games drastically.

But trust me when I say, even Crysis 3 could cripple a PS4 if it were forced to run the game with all of the maximum PC settings intact at 1080p resolution with 16X AF and 8X MSAA. The GPU bandwidth requirements alone would leave you with single digit frame rates.

I'm thinking about content. Perhaps due to the massive space offered by the blu-ray, PS4 games will be able to produce better looking graphics, content, and high quality FMVs, whereby PCs have to be cut down to fit several DVDs.

From what I read, Uncharted 3 already taking up close to 50GB of blu-ray.

[mynd]

I don't see how you can say that. Every object on a screen requires ram to hold the models and textures. Even doing tricks like using a few tree models and then repopulating them can only get you so far. Culling polygons for simpler distant objects can only get you so far. Try looking out the rear on a GT5 replay as the system undraws objects not too far behind you.

If ram doesn't matter, why have graphics cards with a GB of ram or more? 256MB should be plenty, or 128.

Ram matters for having more complex models and higher res textures.
It also holds the frambuffer.

It has nothing however to do with your z buffer (depth) this is more to do with gpu.


Plenty of games reuse the same models (open field with grass for example) but still have draw distance and pop in.

Generally as a rule, because the further you view the more you are actually taking in due to field of view, you also have to limit how much you draw.

Again , nothing to do with ram, its simply you cant spend the entire time drawing everything. Every draw command takes time.

[IWAO]

As long as developers are happy

I'm happy

[claud3]

still believe that they knew something... But many will avoid the console if it is not money worthy for them and therefore the make some believe they never knew