Slashdot Mirror
PS3 Oblivion Approaching PC Quality Visuals
fistfullast33l writes "After taking a beating in Gamespot's side by side Comparison of Xbox 360 and PS3 graphics, Playstation 3 owners may finally have something to hold over the 360 fans. Both Gamespot and IGN have previews posted yesterday that talk up the graphics and performance improvements over the 360 version. Load times and texture quality and draw distance have been improved, as well as 'new shaders dedicated to rendering the foreground cleanly with sharper details, so rocky landscapes now have craggy appearances instead of smooth, non-distinct surfaces,' according to IGN. They end with the ultimate hype, 'screens from the PS3 version should approach those from high end PCs running Oblivion, which is an impressive feat.' How is this possible? Gamespot reports that 'Oblivion will make extensive use of the PS3's hard drive by caching multiple gigabytes of data, which seemed to help with load times from what we saw.' While there are no official reports of this making it into the new 360/PC expansion Shivering Isles, a rumor on the Gamespot preview says that 1up might have the scoop."
You can increase the quality of graphics as much as you want, but the gameplay will never change. A dead rat will still look like a dead rat. On top of that, given what Bethesda did with Oblivion (charging for quest-by-quest content in an SP game), I wouldn't entirely count this as "good publicity." Sure the game is still there, it has prettier graphics, but the people behind the game are drowning it in bad business decisions.
Thank you for your random Wii plug that really has nothing to do with the article at all (except maybe the subject).
Yeah, way to not read the article.
Your link (1/17):
The PS3 Oblivion team compensated for the slower drive by duplicating data across the Blu-ray disc, making it faster to find and load
Today's link (2/6):
Bethesda's Pete Hines also commented that recent reports of data duplication on the PS3 Oblivion disc have been exaggerated, and this technique isn't different from the similar strategy that was employed in the creation of the Xbox 360 game last year.
I'd like to know where you can buy a PC that includes a C2D and a 8800GTS for "sub-$500". Just a 8800GTS runs you $400. Add in a low end Core2Duo ($170), and you're already over-budget. You still have a case, powersupply, motherboard, a gig or two of DDR2, harddrive, DVDplayer, and an OS to go. . .
1) The Oblivion developers already said that they are using the identical caching method for the 360 and the PS3, i.e. it is an optional cache 2) Despite what Sony says to the public it is a PS3 TRC requirement that games run without the hard drive being present. I think Sony either originally planned on making the hard drive an optional SKU and backed out, or they plan on doing it in the future to drop the price the system.
BTW, the shorter load times noted in the comparison seem out-of-date. The numbers they quote for the 360 (7-10 seconds) haven't been true in ages. I think the author either doesn't own a 360, is comparing it to Oblivion running on a Core unit, or he's talking about the initial release which had problems with the cache getting fragmented (fixed in a later patch). Again, the Oblivion guys themselves said they had to work around the inferiorites of the PS3 architecture- notably the slow-ass Blu-ray drive and Sony's lack of a unified game updating system.
It's not so bad when you consider that 2X Blu-ray is 9 megabytes per second and 12x DVD-ROM is about 16 megabytes per second. We had a similar shake-up when DVD-ROM hit the market, people were disappointed by 2X DVD-ROM which was about as fast as 16X CD-ROM. I hear 8X Blu-ray is on the horizon...I wonder if somebody will mod his PlayStation 3 to get a zippier drive, or if it will be offered in a later revision. The PS2 went through a tremendous number of hardware revisions.
I may make you feel, but I can't make you think.
Resistance sucks (so I say as the owner of a PS3 and Resistance).
Funny you should post this about Oblivion as that game actually does use the hard drive for caching on the 360. The game doesn't load as quickly on the core as it does on the premium, especially when going inside a building and coming back out again.
Now, the 360 doesn't cache multiple gigabytes of data, so it's not likely as efficient as the PS3 version, but it doesn't really have to be as the data is loaded more quickly from the 360 DVD drive in the first place.
Not having a standard hard drive does not preclude developers from taking advantage of it when it's there. They just need to make sure the game runs acceptably on a system without a hard drive. Personally, none of the 360 games I have take a long time to load. They're all much faster than my PS2 and about the same speed or faster than my XBox 1.
-Redundancy Man strikes again!