Slashdot Mirror
A PS3 Hands-On Report?
Via a Joystiq post, a story on the site Kikizo which claims to have hands-on experience with the PS3. From the article: "Firstly however, the box. The stylish PlayStation 3 casing design that SCEI boss Ken Kutaragi revealed last year is, and always has been, empty - and no signs of a final, tangible casing solution appear to be in sight. 'I think to fit everything that Sony wants in there AND leave space for a 2.5 inch hard drive,' explains one senior developer working on a final kit, who will be our guide for much of this report, 'the machine would have to grow. The models they're showing off are way too small for what they want.'" Please view this with the appropriate amount of skepticism.
... If they go through with the 'purchased content is locked to a specific player' trick, I won't be buying one. I don't care how many formats it will play or how many Metal Gear's come out. The horribly low sellback value of videogames etc already makes me feel like I've been taken advantage of, I'm not going to support anything that makes that market worse.
The article fails to mention the impending Rootkit payload to be delivered in every box.
Yawn.
Another hit generating anti-hype piece.
Credibility of this 'report' is zero. Doesn't mesh with a wealth of facts we already know true about the PS3 from previous realtime demos and public Sony statements.
I'm surprised they didn't throw in a bogus 'Toy Story' graphics claim to go with the rest of the bullshit in this 'report'
PS Here's the Microsoft 'Toy Story' graphics claim:
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-250632.html
Why can't they add a caddie to each and every BlueRay media? You know, like the very first CD drives had: a piece of plastic about the disc itself so it's protected from dust, fingerprints, and scratches to the most precious surface area?
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
The site was painfully slow, so here is a summary of the information in the article:
The case we've seen for the PS3 is empty, and many developers are not convinced that sony will actually be able to fit everything into the case they've designed. The current development machines are towers. Along with a possibly redesigned case, Sony seems to be redesigning the controller, but is planning to keep the basic dual shock2 layout.
As for the graphics, looking at games running in realtime there is certainly nothing as impressive as the Killzone trailer, but but MGS4 trailer seems realistic to be ran in realtime. The graphics right now seem to be about equal to the "creme of the crop" 360 titles, and while the PS3 will certainly be able to provide better graphics than the 360- it will probably be a fairly marginal difference.
One thing to remember is that, while the PS3 may not be able to produce graphics that are substantially nicer looking than on the 360- it does seem to handle many more objects on screen at once.
Game developers seem to be targetting 720p as the target resolution. Developers aren't really expecting games to run at 1080p because the system isn't powerful enough to do 1080p at a reasonable resolution (or even 1080i)- but the PS3 is capable of doing some nice upscaling to 1080p. Dual 1080p output is a joke at this point.
The spring '06 release date isn't looking very likely. Developers are predicting summer 06 for Japan and a fall 06 or winter 07 release for the US and Europe.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
This whole tailoring the content to individual players will start eroding markets such as rental and resale of games, which isn't cool. Microsoft kept it to a minimum with the Xbox360 as they know that users do not want purchased content locked to them, but it seems as if the more people hear about the PS3 the more it is out of line with what they want and expect.
Business Voyeur
720p as the target resolution. Developers aren't really expecting games to run at 1080p
This seems to be key. Higher resolution does not always equal better image quality. When you boost the resolution of a shot, you reduce the amount of processing available for each pixel. If these systems are 10x the power of current systems, going from 640i to 1080p will consume 8x that power, giving you basically today's graphics, but sharper.
Some games would be wise to spend those clock cycles on higher resolutions. Geometry Wars, for example, would be great candidate for 1080p. Others should spend the clock cycles on effects, like the swirling clouds in survival horror games. Still others should be looking towards more intelligent character interactions (I'm looking at you, tactical squad shooters with AIs that runs blindly into death).
Personally, I feel that 640p ought to be enough for any game. Higher resolutions would be nice too, but better dynamic lighting, cloth effects, water effects and hair effects would be better. Higher resolutions expose poly problems and any effects shortcomings more, so it is best to shore these up first anyway.
Guaranteed placement on-screen would be great too. You're losing something like 30% of your usable screen area simply to not being sure that an edge pixel is an edge pixel. Ever wonder why the HUD floats annoyingly close to the middle of the screen? That's why.
And can we please stop putting an environment map on absolutely everything? Old stones in run-down castles are not high-gloss.
The ______ Agenda
Ah yes, this from Kikizo Games, who claimed to serve "12 million unique users per month" in an issue of MCV (UK trade mag) last year.
Y'know. More than IGN, Gamespot and every other game site around.
And you know what's worse? Them getting REWARDED for it. Because stupid editors at major sites decide that they'll throw HUGE amounts of traffic at articles that consist of lies, hyperbole and what amounts to stock photos.
Why is game journalism just a bunch of hot air and attention grabbing headlines? Slashdot, Joystiq - any other publication that decides to link to such rubbish. Well done, Kikizo. You've pulled the wool over their eyes - but most people will realise that you've not so much as got past security at any of Sony's offices.
My Mind Is Rewired. Is Yours?
so we'll see you for more hands-on with final, cased hardware (and presumably a final controller) in surely not much longer than a couple of months' time.
;)
i'm wondering if they got the huge desktop tower that "Josh" guy got at his workplace. or ex-workplace
The human eye has limited resolution, and there's little benefit to be had by exceeding that, so unless you have a very large screen (or you like to sit unusually close), you simply can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p at "normal" viewing distances on an average-sized HDTV. Some numbers:
The average eye is capable of resolving one minute of arc, a sixtieth of a degree. This equates to roughly 300 dpi, when viewed at a distance of one foot. Let's say the average distance from a couch to a TV is 7 to 10 feet. At 7 feet, you can resolve 300/7 = 43 dpi, at 10 feet it's 30 dpi.
So in order to fully resolve a 720p picture (1469 pixels diagonally) at 7 feet, the TV would have to be at least 34 inches diagonally to make out all the detail. At 10 feet you'd need a rather large 50 incher. For true 1080p, even at 7 feet, anything under 50 inches and you're missing out - and at 10 feet you'd have to get a whopping 74 inch TV!
Of course, for computer monitors, where you sit much closer (say 18 inches), it's a different story - optimal resolution really ought to be 200 dpi (for a 24" widescreen monitor, that's an amazing 4183 x 2353, or one of these). But if you're on a couch, you probably don't need true 1080p unless you're watching a projector on an 80" screen, or unless you spent so much money on your TV that you can't afford a decent-sized loungeroom.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
the times. A true NextGen console would have had used a 64bit Intel or AMD CPU, a Linux based OS, dev tools open to all developers, a choice of Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware, a modular casing that allows for hardware upgrades and expansion cards, et cetera et cetera et cetera.
Whats the point of having three completely proprietary platforms with virtually identical hardware specs, zero compatibility between them and no hardware upgrade path? Games just 2 to 3 years from now will need more RAM, beefier graphics chipsets and quite possibly hardware physics accelerators and the like. What do you do with your PS3/360/Revolution then? Throw it away? Buy a NextGen II console? What?
Sorry, but what Sony, MS and Nintendo are doing seems very 90s-thinking-applied-to-mid-00s-tech. Difficult to get excited about three proprietary consoles with no cross-platform compatibility.
This story has less content than the empty PS3 mock-ups.
In other news, Sony has recently laid off one of its senior developers on the PS3 project...
Probably because these Xbox Live Arcade games only tend to run $5, occasionally $10. The fact that every game has a demo available for it takes care of some of the "lending need" too. But I don't think many people purchase a game for $5 and then worry about being able to sell it later to make some of their money back! The pricing model basically puts it slightly above arcade game pricing, and it's even cheaper than a lot of game rental places. It's way, way below the $50-60 retail price standard that some people actually like to sell used.
If MS starts allowing significantly more expensive titles we might start to see some serious whining. But with a 50 meg game size limit I can't see them (or publishers) getting too crazy.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
In addition, resolution directly contributes to artifacts which are clearly perceptible. Moire is one. It'd still be useful to have a 20k by 20k screen instead of a 10k by 10k screen because it would reduce obvious optical effects that say "this isn't real."
The same thing applies to frame rate. People say "oh, gosh, you can't tell the difference between 60fps and 120fps. A really old study of film confirmed it." It's true that given two films at different high frame rates, you cannot tell the difference. The question is whether you can tell the difference between that film and reality, not whether you can correctly label the rate.
Stroboscopic effects on car wheels... the wheels appear to rotate backwards. Jittering on dolly scenes. Aliasing. Mach banding, my gosh. Mach banding.
Years ago, we hit 32bpp and everyone said "This is as much as the human eye can see. 16.7 million colours." Nonetheless, in a 32bpp scene you can tell that a given gray range only has 8bpp. You can see the bands very clearly, without any training. You may forget about it in the rush of the story, but it's far from imperceptible. The eye adjusts so that a large portion of its perceptive range is focused on examining the differences within the one scene.
Worse, an individual tends to learn to pick out the tiny things that aren't quite right over time. 256 colour photos at VGA were startlingly real to me in 1992. Now they look ridiculous, and not just because of the pace of technology. People trained in printing could see the problems back then.
When displays are sufficiently broad in gamut, detailed in resolution and high enough in frame rate that the optical effects of the light they are giving off match the optical effects of actual objects sitting there, then and only then will we be done.
This guys biggest complaint was about the PS3 was that developers don't think the PS3 can handle 1080p at high frame rates. He writes for a game magazine, he probably can't move out of his parents basement, let alone afford one of those hi-def beasts.
To clarify for the 360, Xbox live arcade games downloaded to the hard drive are available to all profiles on that machine. Some games are marked as restricted, such as Gauntlet, where if the game is downloaded to a memory card (which is a valid location to download to), that user must log into Xbox Live each time they play to verify the game. So you can take the game to another Xbox, but you'd need to sign in on each one you played it on.
I won't worry. Sony is not my concern. Good games on a system I can afford, THAT'S what I worry about. So far two of the three manufacturers can't seem to pull that off.
You can re-download any purchased content on any 360 your profile is signed into. No need to worry about backups.
"Don't worry, the PS3 will be the most powerful machine on the market..."
Probably, but is the extra 2 FPS over the 360 really worth paying an extra $300+ for the worthless blu-ray drive?
Seriously TFA has an interrogation mark in the title, how more vague could it be?
... well, basically nothing.
Its mentioned in several parts of the article sony NDA wibt allow the writers to be specific about games or certain specs about the Ps3 but the result is so incredibly vague, is hard they actually had a ps3 or they were just guessing.
Other than a few pointers that could have taken from recent news posts or common sense (the devs are not using 1080), most of the information in the article is already well known, and the writing style is is like pulling teeth
example "I will tell you about the graphics, the RSX chip is it as good as they promised? but first let me share a pointless well known fact" a few pages later, "the graphics are not going to be so good as kill zone 2 but MAYBE close to MGS4" gee, thanks.
Dont waste your time trying to read 10 pages of
Go ahead MOD my day!
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