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[Gambit]

They fucking better.

But knowing Nintendo, they'll do something wrong.

Touch-only controls is my guess.

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

why would you want that much edam on the CPU? Wouldn't it make more sense on the GPU for post processing/AA etc, where you need bandwidth?

Prft, that's nothing. I expect nothing less than 768MB (and even that would be disappointing)

They fucking better.

But knowing Nintendo, they'll do something wrong.

They'll release them separately on the Virtual Console, running emulated in 1080p.

 

[Always-honest]

Touch-only controls is my guess.

We're still far away from controlling analog sticks with our mind, so that's a pretty safe bet ;p

 

[AzaK]

They would do it wrong. They would make it 720p or some shit.

Cool, so it would be higher res than a lot of ps60 games.

I can't really go by the Zelda tech demo since everything is stage and the only thing you can control is the camera.

Yeah and you could change the lighting on the main screen in realtime as well as a full render with camera control to the tablet. All on crappy early devkit hardware.

 

[Log4Girlz]

These rumors would support the "butt load" of edram comments some have made. I assume they meant megabits and not megabytes, because the latter would be impossible. So between 96 and 128 MB of teh fast ramz.

 

[Übermatik]

These rumors would support the "butt load" of edram comments some have made. I assume they meant megabits and not megabytes, because the latter would be impossible. So between 96 and 128 MB of teh fast ramz.

I love the fact you use "butt load" as a quote, as if IBM/Nintendo said it themselves

 

[le.phat]

The floor demo was an improved build and yes, I think it overall looked better than any current console game.

The lighting in the Zelda demo was superior to anything in current consoles as well. That at least is somewhat backable since it does use effects to a degree current consoles don't.

First off, You are comparing a technical demo to an actual game. In a closed enviroment both ps3 and 360 could render technical demo's just like that.

Second off, there ARE actual games that look more impressive then those demo's. Compared to Uncharted 3 or God of War 3, actual games, these demo's feel pretty mediocre, visual design aside.

 

[mrklaw]

First off, You are comparing a technical demo to an actual game. In a closed enviroment both ps3 and 360 could render technical demo's just like that.

Second off, there ARE actual games that look more impressive then those demo's. Compared to Uncharted 3 or God of War 3, actual games, these demo's feel pretty mediocre, visual design aside.

It kind of looked like the Smough and Ornstein boss fight in Dark Souls. Minus the giant spider. But its difficult to look at it entirely objectively when you're thinking 'ooh, Zelda in HD...dribble'

 

[Log4Girlz]

I love the fact you use "butt load" as a quote, as if IBM/Nintendo said it themselves

You mean they didn't?

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Even if the screen had a higher pixel density? I guess I am just selfish I don't care if the other people playing have a smaller screen I just don't want to have to pay more than 50 bucks for a controller that would only get used when I have friends over. You couldn't see it working, image it like the size of an Iphone screen.

It's not like all screens are the same cost by the inch, though. Go with a higher density smaller one and you're talking more about size reduction than cost reduction.

 

[MDX]

why would you want that much edam on the CPU? Wouldn't it make more sense on the GPU for post processing/AA etc, where you need bandwidth?

Shared... its shared.

 

[mrklaw]

Shared... is shared.

embedded.....is embedded. You embed on the die for speed. The rumour suggested a separate GPU. If the GPU is a different chip to the CPU then you don't get the bandwidth benefits of edram for the GPU. And usually thats where you want the bandwidth - see Xbox 360 for instance.


either the rumour means 758MB but its mistaken about embedded and means unified instead.

Or it means 768Mb and it does mean embedded, but might be mistaken about embedded on the CPU and its the GPU instead?

 

[Log4Girlz]

They'll use 3M's glue that was developed with IBM and it'll be a cpu, memory and GPU stacked on top. BELIEVE.

 

[EatChildren]

People are really questioning the Wii U Zelda demo's visual quality to the 360/PS3? Maybe in geometry and textures, sure, but you'll be hard pressed to find a single 360/PS3 game with such nice, accurate global illumination and what appears to be some decent radiosity.

 

[Log4Girlz]

People are really questioning the Wii U Zelda demo's visual quality to the 360/PS3? Maybe in geometry and textures, sure, but you'll be hard pressed to find a single 360/PS3 game with such nice, accurate global illumination and what appears to be some decent radiosity.

Well, I can't really argue against someone saying that the HD Twins can replicate that now in a similar demo.

 

[ugoo18]

Well, I can't really argue against someone saying that the HD Twins can replicate that now in a similar demo.

The best tech demo i've seen from the PS360 was that Killzone 2 tech demo and if i remember correctly that wasn't even done on PS3 hardware.

 

[mrklaw]

People are really questioning the Wii U Zelda demo's visual quality to the 360/PS3? Maybe in geometry and textures, sure, but you'll be hard pressed to find a single 360/PS3 game with such nice, accurate global illumination and what appears to be some decent radiosity.

Just looked like nice lighting and some tasteful bloom. Will have another look though, it was impressive

 

[GaimeGuy]

Well, I can't really argue against someone saying that the HD Twins can replicate that now in a similar demo.

The major graphical differences from now on across generations are going to be in lighting and animation, not how much detail you can get into a texture or model.

See: Battlefield 3 on PCs compared to Battlefield 3 on PS3/360

 

[MDX]

embedded.....is embedded. You embed on the die for speed. The rumour suggested a separate GPU. If the GPU is a different chip to the CPU then you don't get the bandwidth benefits of edram for the GPU. And usually thats where you want the bandwidth - see Xbox 360 for instance.


either the rumour means 758MB but its mistaken about embedded and means unified instead.

Or it means 768Mb and it does mean embedded, but might be mistaken about embedded on the CPU and its the GPU instead?

768 MB of DRAM “embedded” with the CPU, and shared between CPU and GPU

IBM introduced the following technology in 2007:
High K
eDRAM
3D Stacking (TSV)
Air Gap

A combination of these could explain this rumor.

 

[Log4Girlz]

IBM introduced the following technology in 2007:
High K
eDRAM
3D Stacking (TSV)
Air Gap

A combination of these could explain this rumor.

...for a Nintendo machine?

 

[mrklaw]

IBM introduced the following technology in 2007:
High K
eDRAM
3D Stacking (TSV)
Air Gap

A combination of these could explain this rumor.

no.

768MB is too much. Even IBMs own material is saying Mb, and thats quite a commonly mis-read thing, so if its embedded, 768Mb (96MB) is much more likely the correct amount. 3D stacking gets you some efficiency, but not that much.

and I still think it'd be wasted on the CPU. Well, not wasted ,but not as useful as if it was on the GPU - 96MB is enough for a nice frame buffer

 

[blu]

You mean they didn't?

Technically, this is all IBM have officially said on the subject:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34683.wss
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/photo/34681.wss

Curiously enough, in the regurgitated newsbit making rounds on the internet, the quantifier "a lot" has been used in conjunction with edram. But we have no credible source for that, AFAIK. IBM's own claim is that in comparison to sram, they can put 3x the amount of memory in the form of edram. So wheres you'd have 4-8MB of on-die L2/L3 in other designs, you could in theory have 12-24MB of similar-purpose memory in IBM's. That tells us next to nothing about how much edram Nintendo could afford to put on a separate die (ala Xenos) if they decided to.

 

[EatChildren]

Well, I can't really argue against someone saying that the HD Twins can replicate that now in a similar demo.

Maybe they can, but I haven't seen it. Geometry and texture work isn't anything overly amazing, but the lighting engine in that tech demo is fantastic at that framerate.

Whether or not that can get something with that clean and accurate lighting/shadows in a full game is impossible to say, but if they can it should look stunning.

 

[MDX]

no.

768MB is too much. Even IBMs own material is saying Mb, and thats quite a commonly mis-read thing, so if its embedded, 768Mb (96MB) is much more likely the correct amount. 3D stacking gets you some efficiency, but not that much.

and I still think it'd be wasted on the CPU. Well, not wasted ,but not as useful as if it was on the GPU - 96MB is enough for a nice frame buffer

I was simply referring to the sharing between cpu and gpu.
That it could be done as a 3D stack.
Not necessarily the amount of the edram.

And where does IBM say Mb vs MB?

But one thing that is missing from the rumor, is the amount of main ram.
Thats why everyone assumed the system sucked because they assumed that the 768 was main ram. Until it was pointed out it was edram. But when people realized that meant the WiiU would kick some ass, that amount of edram became impossible.

If I would leak such details about the devkit, why not also mention the amount of main ram in the unit? Unless the 768 edram is the main ram. So either this is the most ludicrous rumor conceived, or this is an actual leak with some forward thinking designs.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Maybe they can, but I haven't seen it. Geometry and texture work isn't anything overly amazing, but the lighting engine in that tech demo is fantastic at that framerate.

Whether or not that can get something with that clean and accurate lighting/shadows in a full game is impossible to say, but if they can it should look stunning.

If they could have had a playable area with other NPC's, some A.I. and still have that lighting, then we could definitively say the graphics are superior at least on one level. Let's hope for a playable e3 demo!!

 

[mrklaw]

I was simply referring to the sharing between cpu and gpu.
That it could be done as a 3D stack.
Not necessarily the amount of the edram.

well sure, but the comments/recent rumours I was talking about was the embedded part.

And where does IBM say Mb vs MB?

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/32970.wss

they say up to 1Gb, which tallies with the rumour of Nintendo testing out both 768MB and 1GB systems.

 

[MDX]

Technically, this is all IBM have officially said on the subject:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34683.wss
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/photo/34681.wss

Curiously enough, in the regurgitated newsbit making rounds on the internet, the quantifier "a lot" has been used in conjunction with edram. But we have no credible source for that, AFAIK. IBM's own claim is that in comparison to sram, they can put 3x the amount of memory in the form of edram. So wheres you'd have 4-8MB of on-die L2/L3 in other designs, you could in theory have 12-24MB of similar-purpose memory in IBM's. That tells us next to nothing about how much edram Nintendo could afford to put on a separate die (ala Xenos) if they decided to.

Ok, but the WiiU is a custom chip.
If we look at the iPhone:

When you compare the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 3G you can see that Apple made a vast amount of improvements, the iPhone 3G featured a 620MHz processor (underclocked to 412MHz), 128MB eDRAM, a 1150 mAh battery, a 2 megapixel camera and either 8GB or 16GB of flash memory. A year later Apple released the 3GS, this boasted improved specs including an 800MHz processor (underclocked to 600MHz), 256MB eDRAM, a 1219 mAh battery, a 3 megapixel camera and either 8GB,16GB or 32GB of flash memory.
The iPhone 4 features Apple’s A4 processor which is said to run at around 1000MHz (not underclocked), 512MB eDRAM, a 1420 mAh battery, a 5 megapixel camera and

If products like the iPhone can have up to 512 eDRAM, then why cant
the WiiU possibly be using more than that amount?
Is eDRAM that expensive?

 

[MDX]

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/32970.wss

they say up to 1Gb, which tallies with the rumour of Nintendo testing out both 768MB and 1GB systems.

I see, thanks.

 

[BurntPork]

Great, now people have gone back to believing that it'll be weaker than the current gen. :/

Ok, but the WiiU is a custom chip.
If we look at the iPhone:



If products like the iPhone can have up to 512 eDRAM, then why cant
the WiiU possibly be using more than that amount?
Is eDRAM that expensive?

The iPhone costs WAY more than the Wii U will?

 

[blu]

Ok, but the WiiU is a custom chip.
If we look at the iPhone:

If products like the iPhone can have up to 512 eDRAM, then why cant the WiiU possibly be using more than that amount? Is eDRAM that expensive?

Calling the iPhone's mDDR/LPDDR2 'edram' is a bit disingenuous (not your fault, i know). The special thing about edram, is that it sits on some very custom & very direct/short buses, normally on the same piece of silicon as the logic that makes use of said edram. By saving on the 'wiring latency' inherent to the standard memory interfaces and protocols, and by using massive-width data buses (1024bit data bus is nothing special for edram), that otherwise 'ordinary' dram memory achieves latency and BW characteristic of sram (which is a conceptually different kind of memory, inherently faster and moreso expensive). I can assure you that nothing of the performance characteristics of the iPhones memory would qualify it as edram as per this discussion. Basically, comparing iPhone's PoP memory to IBM's edram macros is akin to claiming that the accessibility of a Corolla should somehow dictate the accessibility of an F1, since they're both 'cars' /yet another bad car analogy

 

[MDX]

Great, now people have gone back to believing that it'll be weaker than the current gen. :/



The iPhone costs WAY more than the Wii U will?

But its BOM is like under $200.
I think even 512MB of edram costs like $10

The thing about it is, I just dont see Nintendo making a
conventionally designed console. They have been in the business for more than 25 years. Thats why I find this rumor fascinating, its something they might do, that the other two console manufactures wouldn't see coming. Not to take anything away from the MS and Sony design teams. They might come out with fantastic solutions as well.

 

[wsippel]

If products like the iPhone can have up to 512 eDRAM, then why cant
the WiiU possibly be using more than that amount?
Is eDRAM that expensive?

IBM/ Qimonda eDRAM is not exactly the same thing - at all. Their eDRAM is meant as a replacement for SRAM, as an extremely high bandwidth, low latency local memory pool, typically cache. We're talking hundreds of gigabytes per second, not 5GB/s or whatever the A5 does. It makes very little sense to use that technology as a replacement for regular RAM.

 

[Xun]

When you look at all of the lighting and particle effects done in real time and in 1080p, yes I would say that it's more powerful than PS3/360.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27Lf4uVuE50

Was it really 1080p though?

The image Nintendo sent out to press was an upscaled 720p image.

 

[crazy monkey]

We saw this

We will see something incredible following this.

that is all i need baby. There be some awesome looking games on it.

 

[MDX]

Calling the iPhone's mDDR/LPDDR2 'edram' is a bit disingenuous (not your fault, i know). I can assure you that nothing of the performance characteristics of the iPhones memory would qualify it as edram as per this discussion. Basically, comparing iPhone's PoP memory to IBM's edram macros is akin to claiming that the accessibility of a Corolla should somehow dictate the accessibility of an F1, since they're both 'cars' /yet another bad car analogy

IBM/ Quimonda eDRAM is not exactly the same thing - at all. Their eDRAM is meant as a replacement for SRAM, as an extremely high bandwidth, low latency local memory pool, typically cache. We're talking hundreds of gigabytes per second, not 5GB/s or whatever the A5 does. It makes very little sense to use that technology as a replacement for regular RAM.

Ok, you guys are right, iPhone was a bad example to use.

But lets take a look at the Gamecube, which used 24MB of 1t-sram as its main memory right? Which normally is used as embedded ram.

And I know the Wii used a slower traditional ram for main ram, but I recall hearing some developers barely touching that when making their games. They were content with the 24MB 1t-sram that was also available embedded on the GPU.

So lets say that Nintendo wanted to take the same principles and designs of the GC, and wanted to make a machine capable of 1080p graphics, yet was compact, and ran green.
In other words, how would a modern version of the Gamecube look?

 

[Shin Johnpv]

http://i.imgur.com/UPJOpl.jpg

Really, you've never seen a PS360 game that looks better than this?

And as for the bird demo AFAIK there's no direct feed footage/shots so it's probably unfair to judge it too harshly but even then it had some slowdown, had no AI, and looked like this:

http://i.imgur.com/bLNgu.jpg

Yes I do. The real time lighting that's going on in the Zelda and Bird demos are beyond what's been done even in the best of PS360 games. The quality of the global illumination being used, and the smoothness, and subtlety in the color bleed in the higher quality bird demo is beyond the current generation. I also love how you seemed to have found the most highly compressed jpeg of the bird demo out there, so that all it's colors and detail were crushed.

While the polygon count and the textures of the Zelda Demo aren't above what the current gen can do (which makes sense since I could have sworn they said they based the demo on TP assets) the lighting engine is well ahead of just about anything on the PS360.



For people who don't know what maybe myself or EatChildren are talking about in regards to color bleed/radiosity maybe an explanation is needed.

So when you have say a green object sitting next to a white object. The light that hits the green object is going to have all the frequencies absorbed except for green and that's what its going to bounce back. So when that green light hits part of the white object its going to reflect back as green, mixed with the white light.

I found this image online to give you a quick example.

Notice how the color of the different objects "bleeds" off into close by objects. It's easily noticeable with the blue of the wall effecting the cylinder, or cone effecting the donut shape.

Now if you watch a quality feed of the bird demo you'll see this kind of stuff all over the place on it. Which you don't see in current gen light engines.

 

[blu]

Ok, you guys are right, iPhone was a bad example to use.

But lets take a look at the Gamecube, which used 24MB of 1t-sram as its main memory right? Which normally is used as embedded ram.

While 1t-sram is indeed very fast, the 24MB in the cube/wii were not embedded - they were sitting on a 64bit 2.7GB/s / 4GB/s external bus. The actual embedded 1t-sram was all-in-all 3MB on flipper's die (10GB/s + 7GB/s / 15GB/s + 11GB/s).

And I know the Wii used a slower traditional ram for main ram, but I recall hearing some developers barely touching that when making their games.

That traditional ram (GDDR3) was essentially Hollywood's pool.

They were content with the 24MB 1t-sram that was also available embedded on the GPU.

The 24MB die was packaged on the GPU, not embedded. It was still sitting on a similar 64 bit external bus, albeit much closer to its controller (note: the GPU is the north bridge/mem controller in the cube architecture).

So lets say that Nintendo wanted to take the same principles and designs of the GC, and wanted to make a machine capable of 1080p graphics, yet was compact, and ran green.
In other words, how would a modern version of the Gamecube look?

I consider as an indirect successor to the cube, architecture-wise, the xb360. Apparently, the true successor will be WiiU, with high probability, unless nintendo radically changed their mind.

 

[Shanadeus]

.

 

[Aizu_Itsuko]

Hm, bear with me now. Assuming the eDRAM rumour is true, what if that's the only RAM on the Wii U?
Just an obscene amount of eDRAM but no normal RAM, how would it deal with games and how easy would it be to develop for?

Both the GC and the Wii have 3MBs of eDRAM.

A current gen system like the 360 has 10MBs of eDRAM on its daughter die (105 million transistors).

You won't see 768MBs or more of eDRAM with hundreds of GBs/s of bandwidth on any next gen system for obvious reasons.

And even if we assume it was talking about megabits and that's all the memory it has, then the WiiU has 96MBs of total RAM.

In other words, absurd.

The most probable scenario is still 1-1.5GB of main RAM, a good chunk of eDRAM (mainly for framebuffers and the like) and maybe an additional small pool of slower memory for other uses.

 

[ugoo18]

Really, you've never seen a PS360 game that looks better than this?

And as for the bird demo AFAIK there's no direct feed footage/shots so it's probably unfair to judge it too harshly but even then it had some slowdown, had no AI, and looked like this:

It did not look like that, even offscreen footage of the demo looked much better than that. 0:13 onwards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OHUwDShrD4

Same here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVKMMYFbVgk&feature=related


Same with the Zelda Demo, the offscreen footage that is available looks better than PS360 games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUJFNpPVtbE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hte5f8PyatE&feature=channel_video_title



Uncharted 3 Direct Feed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z99qgk7jfgM


Gears of War 3 Direct Feed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0N7XTQjPdQ


God of War 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsTY5EL6OUc

 

[bgassassin]

While 1t-sram is indeed very fast, the 24MB in the cube/wii were not embedded - they were sitting on a 64bit 2.7GB/s / 4GB/s external bus. The actual embedded 1t-sram was all-in-all 3MB on flipper's die (10GB/s + 7GB/s / 15GB/s + 11GB/s).


That traditional ram (GDDR3) was essentially Hollywood's pool.


The 24MB die was packaged on the GPU, not embedded. It was still sitting on a similar 64 bit external bus, albeit much closer to its controller (note: the GPU is the north bridge/mem controller in the cube architecture).


I consider as an indirect successor to the cube, architecture-wise, the xb360. Apparently, the true successor will be WiiU, with high probability, unless nintendo radically changed their mind.

Piggybacking off of this. For those who want a better understanding about the eDRAM on Xenos, you can read this article. It's something I read awhile back to help me understand things better in general. The link goes to the third page where the following info can be found just in case some of you want to read from the beginning.

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/4/3

The one key area of bandwidth, that has caused a fair quantity of controversy in its inclusion of specifications, is that of bandwidth available from the ROPS to the eDRAM, which stands at 256GB/s. The eDRAM is always going to be the primary location for any of the bandwidth intensive frame buffer operations and so it is specifically designed to remove the frame buffer memory bandwidth bottleneck - additionally, Z and colour access patterns tend not to be particularly optimal for traditional DRAM controllers where they are frequent read/write penalties, so by placing all of these operations in the eDRAM daughter die, aside from the system calls, this leaves the system memory bus free for texture and vertex data fetches which are both read only and are therefore highly efficient. Of course, with 10MB of frame buffer space available this isn't sufficient to fit the entire frame buffer in with 4x FSAA enabled at High Definition resolutions and we'll cover how this is handled later in the article.

 

[BlackNMild2k1]

I'm gonna quote this because no one seems to be answering the question. The people that probably could answer it just seem to be telling us why it won't happen instead of what it would be like if it did happen.

We understand that it is absurd that that much eDRAM would be possible (especially financially), but what if it were true?

Hm, bear with me now. Assuming the eDRAM rumour is true, what if that's the only RAM on the Wii U?
Just an obscene amount of eDRAM but no normal RAM, how would it deal with games and how easy would it be to develop for?

 

[AceBandage]

I'm not 100% sure how eDRAM works, but I'd assume that trying to run an entire game with just that would be a pretty big strain on the CPU.
It would probably be insanely fast, though.

Also, holy crap this site is dying! Stop meditating, Guru!

 

[Azure J]

I'm gonna quote this because no one seems to be answering the question. The people that probably could answer it just seem to be telling us why it won't happen instead of what it would be like if it did happen.

We understand that it is absurd that that much eDRAM would be possible (especially financially), but what if it were true?

Borrowing this chain of posts with the answer coming from Doomed1 in the now closed rumor thread:

Do people reckon the Wii U could handle the PC versions of Arkham City and Battlefield 3?

Nope. Not with the same fidelity. Especially when the specs speak for themselves. It could handle it as good as the PS3 or 360 going by those specs.

If the game doesn't have ram eaten up by having to cater to that controller, it should look better though but we don't know how the system works right now.

[..]with the specs in this OP, you'd better believe it would run. Even under 1GB, 768MB of eDRAM would eliminate so many bottlenecks that you would be able to run data through the quad core in ridiculous chunks and thus get massively better speeds despite lower numbers.

 

[bgassassin]

I'm gonna quote this because no one seems to be answering the question. The people that probably could answer it just seem to be telling us why it won't happen instead of what it would be like if it did happen.

We understand that it is absurd that that much eDRAM would be possible (especially financially), but what if it were true?

There were two responses giving hypotheticals.

As simply as I can put this:

eDRAM is very, very fast because when it is put on the processor itself that is a huge deal. The Xbox 360 has 10 MB. This rumor says the WiiU can have up to 96 MB (assuming the rumor was misheard and they're not saying it's 768 MB, which is insane and practically impossible at present costs). So you see how big of a jump this is. This type of RAM can be used in many ways and developers will be able to push the system far beyond the PS3 and 360 if this is true.

The eDRAM is separate from the normal system memory, which is likely to be higher than it is in the HD Twins (they both have 512 MB) but probably no higher than 1024 MB. This sort of memory allows levels to be larger, geometry to be more complex and nicer textures to be used. A system memory upgrade is a good jump for the WiiU and a pretty obvious inclusion but nowhere near as big of a deal as the eDRAM stuff.

I would just add to his post that the eDRAM would handle the more memory intensive functions. Game coding would be helped on the CPU side, and on the GPU side (based on Xenos) things like AA and alpha blending so they won't depend on the slower memory. We talked a little while back about the current Wii U specs possibly running BF3 at max at 720p/60. That hypothetical console should make 1080p/60 at max easily obtainable. I'd assume 1GB of system memory would be virtually available only for textures and other less bandwidth intensive functions. But I'm still getting working the kinks out on things I'm relearning, so that's about the best I can do for now. To quote Einstein, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

Can one of you amazing tech people that have made this thread a fun read these past few months make a thread explaining how some of this basic tech stuff works and how console hardware works differently than PCs? Cost vs performance, RAM vs edRam vs speed, etc?

It can be a general help thread for all new next gen console discussion.

With the loop/720 discussion and all the previous ignorance earlier in this thread, i have had enough. It would be amazing to spread some knowledge up in this bitch so the level of discussion climbs a bit instead of the one and done ignorant posts that are so common.

It might even get sticky'd

I know Ace suggested that a couple of times awhile back. I wouldn't be capable of starting a thread like that.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Yes I do. The real time lighting that's going on in the Zelda and Bird demos are beyond what's been done even in the best of PS360 games. The quality of the global illumination being used, and the smoothness, and subtlety in the color bleed in the higher quality bird demo is beyond the current generation. I also love how you seemed to have found the most highly compressed jpeg of the bird demo out there, so that all it's colors and detail were crushed.

While the polygon count and the textures of the Zelda Demo aren't above what the current gen can do (which makes sense since I could have sworn they said they based the demo on TP assets) the lighting engine is well ahead of just about anything on the PS360.



For people who don't know what maybe myself or EatChildren are talking about in regards to color bleed/radiosity maybe an explanation is needed.

So when you have say a green object sitting next to a white object. The light that hits the green object is going to have all the frequencies absorbed except for green and that's what its going to bounce back. So when that green light hits part of the white object its going to reflect back as green, mixed with the white light.

I found this image online to give you a quick example.

Notice how the color of the different objects "bleeds" off into close by objects. It's easily noticeable with the blue of the wall effecting the cylinder, or cone effecting the donut shape.

Now if you watch a quality feed of the bird demo you'll see this kind of stuff all over the place on it. Which you don't see in current gen light engines.

That was really interesting. Thanks Shin!

 

[Succubus Slayer]

will sucks

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

will sucks

Great contribution to the thread.

 

[wazoo]

While the polygon count and the textures of the Zelda Demo aren't above what the current gen can do (which makes sense since I could have sworn they said they based the demo on TP assets) the lighting engine is well ahead of just about anything on the PS360.

All demos were running on Wii assets. It was clear Nnitendo was not ready to show anything for the system. I expect EAD studio Group 1 (Takao Shimizu team) and Monster Games to work 24h/day for the next E3.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

I wonder how Finaru Funtaji is gonna work next generation. They usually push the boundaries in graphics in each generation and we knowt he Xbox3/PS4 are gonna be stronger than the Wii. Will the U be ignored, will it get a shitty downport like the 360 version of XIII, or will the power of the 3 consoles be so similar that Square's new Luminous engine will be able to run on all 3 equally.

Anyone know more about Luminous that would know this?