Slashdot Mirror
Sony Endorsing Open Graphics Format For PS3
News for nerds writes "At the tech talk as part of the forthcoming SIGGRAPH 2004 conference on August 11th, an open graphics file format for the interactive 3D [videogame] industry called COLLADA will be unveiled by Sony Computer Entertainment. COLLADA is supported by major 3D toolchain companies including Alias, Criterion, Discreet, Emdigo, Novodex, Softimage and Vicarious Visions. If you combine this with the recent news that Sony has joined Khronos Group to support OpenGL/ES, OpenMAX, OpenVG and OpenML, it seems evident that Sony is quietly fighting back against the loudly trumpeted Microsoft XNA (/. coverage) with its plan of an open game development platform."
Sony... Open Format... Did the wires get crossed here or what?
Just wanted to point out that the w3C recently published their intention to have a finger in this pie. With this, they hope to be able to support graphic formats that are representable in XML - notably SVG.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
My school has an upper year course for designing PS2 games, and currently it is very hard to get into. They have to keep a small number of people in the class due to the large costs involved in purchasing an SDK and console. Also, from what I have heard, the programming for PS2 is difficult because it uses assembly with multiple processors/gpu's. Hopefully this new open source side will lead to easier access to the development side, increasing programers and allow for more people to get in the industry.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
Of this.
--Sony is trying to leverage existing open standards (OpenGL/ES) for engine development, and create a standard for middleware & engine communication. This allows Sony to spend less $$$ on internal development costs, eases 2nd & 3rd party development costs, thus allowing for easier porting of games. --This also could help development houses wary of the new EA/Criterion merger, and make new middleware products like RenderWare to be more easily accepted. --Open standards should mean more $$$ spent on better game-play, and could mean more innovation too. --This does NOT mean ps3 dev. kits will be opensouce, or even cheap... With opensouce or cheap kits, Sony would loose $$$, and their stock holders do not like that. --This does NOT mean that idie game companies can now make ps3 games... although it helps if they ever want to port from pc (opengl/es :)
--This does NOT mean a lot of things, but is a step forward, in a common interest of Microsoft rivals/haters/many /.ers
> Is that why the PS2 is an absolute horror to program for (as seen by the poor-looking games that come out on it)?
;-)
Partially.
It's a multi-processor machine - It has (only) 7 "cpus".
You think multi-threading is hard with 2 cpus?! Try keeping the EE (main cpu), VU0, VU1 (the 2 vector units, with 4K and 16K of RAM respectively, used for physics, and transorms, respectively), the GPU, and shuttingling data from the IOP to main ram, and IOP to the SPU, ALL in sync, *without* data stalls. Gee, you think this is trivial?
> Having Linux (which the PS2 does) doesn't seem to have made development any easier.
I'm not aware of any professional game developer using linux on the PS2. It already has it's own propiertary OS - you don't need a more bloated one. Every K counts, when you only got 40 megs total RAM.
You only have 4 megs of VRAM (video). After reserving memory for the screen (640x480), double-buffered, and a z-buffer, you only have ~ 2 megs left. Guess we'll have upload textures every bloody frame. Shit, how come we're out of main memory?! Fortunately none of the sound data has to even touch main memory.
> The developers that don't have a huge budget can't afford to make PS2 games, they flock to Xbox.
Dev kits are expensive whatever route you go.
One of the factors is that the XBox is way easier to develop fore. Most PC developers can easily get a handle on the 733 Mhz + GeForce 3.
--
The evolution & supposed pre-ancient history of man is a crock...
One of the many proofs that something intelligent existed long BEFORE man supposed came into being:
Progression of "apparent" history of "man" - Hominidae is 3 millions years old
Geological Time Frames perspective
A machined 3D relief map 120-million years old in a 1-ton stone, with inscriptions. WTF?!
Actually, PS2 memory cards are memory sticks, but they're in a different package, a necessity brought about by the use of a totally different format in the memory cards for the PS1.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's a file format aimed at intermediate resources in the content development pipeline. You make your level in 3dsmax or maya or wings3d or whatever, export it to MyLevel.COLLADA, then use a bunch of processing tools on that, and eventually compile it into a binary format that you can ship on a CD and load very quickly at runtime; the game itself never sees the intermediate file format. The inline tools will include: lightmap generation (including fancy new kinds of lightmaps like precomputed radiance transfer), normal-map generation, mesh simplification, BSP compilation, auto-portalization, flow field calculation, AI waypoint placement, and the list goes on as people dream up new things to play with. Along the content pipeline, these tools suck in the file, inject their particular contribution, and spit the modified file back out.
.3DS, and the more "flexible" formats such as MS's .X and Softimage's .XSI (essentially the same thing) have crappy predefined templates that all the known exporters conform to. Creating a custom, extensible file format specifically for holding tons of intermediate assets is pretty much a requisite unless you plan to write a 3dsmax plugin for each task. Having a custom, extensible file format that all the known content-creation tools conform to means you can use pretty much anything to make your game content without worrying about data being lost in the conversion process - everything is retained.
.3DS replacement.
You can't do much (aka any) of that in file formats such as
At least, that's what my intermediate file format does. This "collada" one might just be a new
Only a fucking idiot would misconstrue that statement.