VGleaks: Orbis Unveiled! [Updated]

Wow. I can't believe what I'm reading.

please elaborate. What is wrong or ridiculous with what I'm saying? Sony has more FP studios. Studio's that are considered some of the best in the industry, specifically with regards to the technical mastery of Sony's systems.

You think its coincedence that Killzone 2/3, Uncharted 2/3, Gow3/Acension, and The Last of Us are all considered by some the best looking games of the generation and THEY all come from Sony FP devs? Theres a reason why.
 
Yes that may be a thing. Maybe it is connected with Kinect which is build in (rumor).

I still want to believe that not every damn piece of silicon MS is trying to put in Durango is meant for Kinect.

please elaborate. What is wrong or ridiculous with what I'm saying? Sony has more FP studios. Studio's that are considered some of the best in the industry, specifically with regards to the technical mastery of Sony's systems.

You think its coincedence that Killzone 2/3, Uncharted 2/3, Gow3/Acension, and The Last of Us are all considered by some the best looking games of the generation and THEY all come from Sony FP devs? Theres a reason why.

The reason was that they were developing only for one system, and that system was the most powerful (consoles). It's not science rocket, Sony hasn't by some stroke of genius hired every genius programmer out there. Xbox had the best looking exclusives (heck chaos theory was multi and murdered), not the PS2.

If Orbis is the most powerful console, the same will happen again. But if it isn't, I expect the playing field to be much closer.
 
It's silly to say that Sony will destroy MS in first party games when we know NOTHING about what either company is doing in that department. Looking at past generations, yes, Sony should have the advantage. But MS has been pouring a lot of money into next-gen game development. I don't think the Xbox first party slate will only consist of Kinect games and up-ports of Gears and Halo.
 
I guess he means games that look brilliant and run well on the system ( smartly designed around the system's strengths ) Crysis 2 is neither the best looking game on both the systems nor does it run well. So the amount it does technically does not matter in the end because which game is technically superior to the other would be an endless debate that only the dev's can answer. GTA4/5 could be technically superior to Crysis 2 on consoles for all I know.

CryEngine marketed itself out of multiplatform development with the first Crysis, which had a 1GB minimum requirement. CryEngine 3 was created for mindshare and awareness on consoles. So for the first time, CryEngine 3 is going into next gen with their debut console game Ryse. It should even the playing field just a bit in performance.

Hopefully Crytek knows what to push and what not to push. If they can pull off performance balancing acts while looking outstanding like Naughty Dog, SSM, or Guerrilla Games... Then we are in for a visual treat.


please elaborate. What is wrong or ridiculous with what I'm saying? Sony has more FP studios. Studio's that are considered some of the best in the industry, specifically with regards to the technical mastery of Sony's systems.

You think its coincedence that Killzone 2/3, Uncharted 2/3, Gow3/Acension, and The Last of Us are all considered by some the best looking games of the generation and THEY all come from Sony FP devs? Theres a reason why.

Yes. They have more talented studios.

But the graphics you're describing in each of these games have been replicated on the other. Even in multiplats!

It's also ridiculous to ignore the graphical achievements from Rare, Bizarre Creations, Epic, Bungie, Turn 10, and 343i.
 
I still want to believe that not every damn piece of silicon MS is trying to put in Durango is meant for Kinect.

But that DSP will essentially offload CPU from all audio work (including probably Kinect part too). So it is hardware that will help Durango to have better performance, not hinder it.
 
Perhaps for processing audio input? Noise reduction/voice recognition?
That doesn't strike me as particularly "super". He said "super".
I would like to see Dolby headphone or other binaural option though. Let the game use normal positional multichannel audio and the system will process it so that you get positional audio with stereo headphones.


What else would you want to see? EAX type stuff, occlusion etc?
If we go binaural, I want the true stuff. Not a virtual flat area. I can have this right here, right now, from my headphones on my PC and it works great. What I want is height perception, "shots coming from 35 degrees ahead" is simply too little.
 
But that DSP will essentially offload CPU from all audio work (including probably Kinect part too). So it is hardware that will help Durango to have better performance, not hinder it.

I didn't think it was a big deal until I heard numerous devs opine about how much CPU overhead on the 360 was occupied by audio tasks. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a sixth to a third.
 
That makes me way more excited than before (and I was pretty excited then). I thought the SPEs were more powerful than that. That gives me two thoughts

1) maybe, just maybe, they could pull off BC with the 4CUs acting as surrogate SPEs

2) PS3 has a relatively shitty GPU, but smart developers could use CELL to do a bunch of pre and post-processing which transformed what the GPU could manage on its own. And that was with 150 GFLOPs.

Now you have a very capable GPU and, if you chose to, 400GFLOPs of SPE-like compute power which could do similar tasks.

This could push out some amazing stuff I think.

Correct. One thing that you guys may of forget or just left out the Cell has a PPU as well. I remember reading on here that Cell had around ~200gflops avaible to games(theoritical).

I completely agree with you being hopefull at the real possibility PS3 BC could be pulled off with Orbis because of the 4CUs.

I'm just worrried about the nVidia part of it. I wouldnt think RSX wouldn't be as difficult to emulate power wise, but licensing would be an issue, no?
 
It's silly to say that Sony will destroy MS in first party games when we know NOTHING about what either company is doing in that department. Looking at past generations, yes, Sony should have the advantage. But MS has been pouring a lot of money into next-gen game development. I don't think the Xbox first party slate will only consist of Kinect games and up-ports of Gears and Halo.
MS won't match Sony's output. However they will market the hell out of what they have, and seeing as they are pushig for new IP's, it is going to be a fun ride.
 
But that DSP will essentially offload CPU from all audio work (including probably Kinect part too). So it is hardware that will help Durango to have better performance, not hinder it.

Well yeah, I was talking about the philosophy behind it. Kinect is just such a gimmick you know? It's something that can add very little to videogames by itself IMO
 
Probably answered a billion times, but how does this stack up with the rumoured Durango specs?

Is it similar to the PS360 situation again?
 
I still want to believe that not every damn piece of silicon MS is trying to put in Durango is meant for Kinect.



The reason was that they were developing only for one system, and that system was the most powerful (consoles). It's not science rocket, Sony hasn't by some stroke of genius hired every genius programmer out there. Xbox had the best looking exclusives (heck chaos theory was multi and murdered), not the PS2.

If Orbis is the most powerful console, the same will happen again. But if it isn't, I expect the playing field to be much closer.


PS3 is not more powerful than the 360. Nowhere close to the XBOX/PS2 difference.

CryEngine marketed itself out of multiplatform development with the first Crysis, which had a 1GB minimum requirement. CryEngine 3 was created for mindshare and awareness on consoles. So for the first time, CryEngine 3 is going into next gen with their debut console game Ryse. It should even the playing field just a bit in performance.

Hopefully Crytek knows what to push and what not to push. If they can pull off performance balancing acts while looking outstanding like Naughty Dog, SSM, or Guerrilla Games... Then we are in for a visual treat.

Hopefully that is the case. This gen of consoles should handle the engine well it looks like.

MS won't match Sony's output. However they will market the hell out of what they have, and seeing as they are pushig for new IP's, it is going to be a fun ride.

We dont know that yet.
 
Not sure if we can answer this with what we know but could the 14+4 set up be customized so that 2 of the extra CUs could be doing rendering and 2 could be doing other compute tasks or does it have to be all 4 doing rendering or doing compute? If they can be fully customized it could be awesome for first party games, since I doubt third parties will get that deep into hardware. Say in Killzone they could use 16 CUs for rendering and 2 for destruction or something like that.
 
Probably answered a billion times, but how does this stack up with the rumoured Durango specs?

Is it similar to the PS360 situation again?
It seemsthat Orbis is more powerful but not that much. If you believe the experts Orbis has more potential
 
It's silly to say that Sony will destroy MS in first party games when we know NOTHING about what either company is doing in that department. Looking at past generations, yes, Sony should have the advantage. But MS has been pouring a lot of money into next-gen game development. I don't think the Xbox first party slate will only consist of Kinect games and up-ports of Gears and Halo.

I feel that pouring a lot of money into something doesn't always yield the best results. I have more faith in established studios with a proven track record rather than a cash dump. See Halo 4. While it is a Pretty game, the rest of the game is widely considered mediocre compared to what Bungie put out. I am sure 343 and any other startup will improve over time but Sony's FP studios are already there.
 
I thought I read some where that they were ditching it. Hmmm.



ed


Google said they ditched it in Skyrim?

If by ditch you mean telling everyone you did but not really. Then sure they ditched it. The problem isn't Gamebyro, it's Bethesda. They just aren't good at programming... or game design... or anything really. Well that's kinda being unfair, they're good at producing a lot of mediocre content and selling it.
 
I feel that pouring a lot of money into something doesn't always yield the best results. I have more faith in established studios with a proven track record rather than a cash dump. See Halo 4. While it is a Pretty game, the rest of the game is widely considered mediocre compared to what Bungie put out. I am sure 343 will improve over time but Sony's FP studios are already there.

I think Turn 10 was Microsoft's breakout AAA studio this gen.
 
MS won't match Sony's output. However they will market the hell out of what they have, and seeing as they are pushig for new IP's, it is going to be a fun ride.

I don't think exclusives even matter anymore. 360 has been doing fine with less exusives in comparison to PS3 lately. All MS need is a few exclusives here and there. But as long as they spend money on marketing and continue getting timed exclusive COD DLC they will be fine. Many gamers are in the Xbox ecosystem and I doubt they will switch. They won't leave their online profile with their gamerscore and friends lists even if the next Xbox ends up being weaker than PS4 and even if they still have to continue paying for Gold. MS is in a win win situation they have to make a terrible mistake to fuck up next gen such as $599 or losing 3rd party support which I think won't happen.
 
CryEngine marketed itself out of multiplatform development with the first Crysis, which had a 1GB minimum requirement. CryEngine 3 was created for mindshare and awareness on consoles. So for the first time, CryEngine 3 is going into next gen with their debut console game Ryse. It should even the playing field just a bit in performance.

Hopefully Crytek knows what to push and what not to push. If they can pull off performance balancing acts while looking outstanding like Naughty Dog, SSM, or Guerrilla Games... Then we are in for a visual treat.




Yes. They have more talented studios.

But the graphics you're describing in each of these games have been replicated on the other. Even in multiplats!

It's also ridiculous to ignore the graphical achievements from Rare, Bizarre Creations, Epic, Bungie, Turn 10, and 343i.

I'm not denying Gears 3 or Halo 4 are in the same league as some of Sony's FP games. Its basically to little, to late is what im trying to say.

Stop thinking about it on an idivdual game basis. Think about the number of games each companies cataloge of FP studio's can produce every 2 years, how many games each company can put on store shelves from only there FP studios, and how many games at certain point throughout the generation could of been considered the best graphical game out there at that time. Sony has a bunch evenly distriputed through out the whole gen.This why the impression in the idustry/gameing communty that PS3 had the best looking games. MS has two games release very late in the gen(one of which isn't FP), and they are argued to be equal on a technical level as some of Sony best FP games.

Tying this all back to what I was saying in my first post. Orbis has an outstanding foundation set up for it going into this gen to mack this gap even wider and more signifigant this time around.
 
PS3 is not more powerful than the 360. Nowhere close to the XBOX/PS2 difference.

PS3 is more powerful than the 360.

You are right in saying that it's not close to Xbox/Ps2 difference, but the difference in graphics is also nowhere close the differences that existed between Xbox/Ps2.

Compare Halo 2 to Killzone for example. Hell compare Halo 1 to Killzone...
 
Correct. One thing that you guys may of forget or just left out the Cell has a PPU as well. I remember reading on here that Cell had around ~200gflops avaible to games(theoritical).

I completely agree with you being hopefull at the real possibility PS3 BC could be pulled off with Orbis because of the 4CUs.

I'm just worrried about the nVidia part of it. I wouldnt think RSX wouldn't be as difficult to emulate power wise, but licensing would be an issue, no?

Do ps3 games use openGL or libGCM? If developers mostly used those as a thin driver layer, they might be able to make them compatible with AMD stuff. Any coding to the metal might be trickier though
 
I feel that pouring a lot of money into something doesn't always yield the best results. I have more faith in established studios with a proven track record rather than a cash dump. See Halo 4. While it is a Pretty game, the rest of the game is widely considered mediocre compared to what Bungie put out. I am sure 343 and any other startup will improve over time but Sony's FP studios are already there.

Halo 4 was a good game. People just don't like change.
 
I don't think exclusives even matter anymore. 360 has been doing fine with less exusives in comparison to PS3 lately. All MS need is a few exclusives here and there. But as long as they spend money on marketing and continue getting timed exclusive COD DLC they will be fine. Many gamers are in the Xbox ecosystem and I doubt they will switch. They won't leave their online profile with their gamerscore and friends lists even if the next Xbox ends up being weaker than PS4 and even if they still have to continue paying for Gold. MS is in a win win situation they have to make a terrible mistake to fuck up next gen such as $599 or losing 3rd party support which I think won't happen.

The same goes for people invested in the playstation ecosystem who will probably not be willing to switch. So something has to give for either one to break into the other's share. First two years exclusives will matter a lot. Anyways my first console at least will be based on that as I cant afford both at launch.
 
I feel that pouring a lot of money into something doesn't always yield the best results. I have more faith in established studios with a proven track record rather than a cash dump. See Halo 4. While it is a Pretty game, the rest of the game is widely considered mediocre compared to what Bungie put out. I am sure 343 will improve over time but Sony's FP studios are already there.
I feel like it's gotta start somewhere and bumps along the way are bound to happen. Them buying studios is the last thing they should do, it has not worked out of them structure wise and output wise. With creating their own studios, they make the culture, they control the pace and everybody working there knows the deal.
 
Pretty much every Sony studio is busy with next generation development at the moment. Some of them have more than one team too. I really don't think MS will match their output. However, they have invested in a fair few studios, so people should expect exclusives from them too.
 
The same goes for people invested in the playstation ecosystem who will probably not be willing to switch. So something has to give for either one to break into the other's share. First two years exclusives will matter a lot. Anyways my first console at least will be based on that as I cant afford both at launch.

Pricing will be crucial, moreso than exclusives.

If prices will match, then it's down do the games, considering I don't think any of them will have a big established IP ready for launch (like Gears, or Halo, or GT).

But if that happens, oh boy. Imagine having GT6 ready for launch. People will go nuts.
 
Well yeah, I was talking about the philosophy behind it. Kinect is just such a gimmick you know? It's something that can add very little to videogames by itself IMO

It depends how it is provided.
As add on without hardware processing unit (only camera etc) Kinect was imo afterthought to dependent on developers good will to include it in games.

With Kinect as standard hardware in every box with power reserved to Kinect use only this may be a big thing. And with individual resources it can be just applied to every game without problem and not downgrading GFX as it was with PSEYE or Kinect.

I think MS is trying to recreate Wii success with Wii remote. They believe Kinect will be their main selling factor as WiiU pad was for WiiU.

It is not bad strategy. If this catches on they could win generation.
If they could provide 100% working without problems Kinect then even i would be interested in it. Question is if they can create Kinect that will not suck. We don't want another "Bamm There it is" allover again and wagging hands all over place to have Kinect mercifully respond to your gests.
 
PS3 is more powerful than the 360.

You are right in saying that it's not close to Xbox/Ps2 difference, but the difference in graphics is also nowhere close the differences that existed between Xbox/Ps2.

Compare Halo 2 to Killzone for example. Hell compare Halo 1 to Killzone...

Says who? You have got to understand that sometimes certain studios are talented at certain things. SSM for eg have always had great programmers. ND too and Sony has made sure that they retain that talent across gen's. There is nothing wrong in one studio being more talented in outputting better graphics than the competition. Some are good at it while some are not. and It speaks nothing about the overall quality of the game.

One can give Sucker Punch the budget of a Rockstar game and they still may not produce comparable open world games on a technical level as well as Rockstar. Very few can do that level of world building and many have failed with those budgets.Some studios are good at certain things. In this case the difference in power between the two consoles is certainly not the reason. PS3 is crippled by a lot of problems that are not present on the 360 and vice versa. They are almost identical in power.
 
Can you say are there any specific strengths of Durango other than larger amount of RAM?

Larger armounts of RAM might be the biggest stregnth of all. If an engine can leverage the lower bandwith, there can be some incredible things done.

However, Orbis is a compute monster, and as far as we know, approximately 50% more powerful in the pure flops department. It also has three times the bandwith.

It all depends on your engine, and how you design things. In the end, I've heard a nudge that a certain developer prefers the Orbis ram setup.
 
I've talked a little bit about the memory move engines and surface compression. I've specified that the audio hardware in durango is some crazy shit, not just an encoder. I've been told a number of things I've been explicitly asked not to share, and I don't want to get anybody fired.

I'm guessing that's beamforming , ultrasonic motion sensing & maybe some other crazy stuff.
 
Do ps3 games use openGL or libGCM? If developers mostly used those as a thin driver layer, they might be able to make them compatible with AMD stuff. Any coding to the metal might be trickier though

Well RAGE was OpenGL game so both X360 and PS3 were ok with ogl.

That's why i said earlier that Carmack will be happy with new consoles (assuming they will do native OGL).
 
Sony stop the apu machine and back to the drawing board!.Easy, only copy paste cell (the most efficient compute processor in the world) between the cpu and gpu and leave the CUs for what they are better!.That MS is making you another Xenon!.Wake up!.
 
Sony stop the apu machine and back to the drawing board!.Easy, only copy paste cell (the most efficient compute processor in the world) between the cpu and gpu and leave the CUs for what they are better!.That MS is making you another Xenon!.Wake up!.


What are the CUs better at? They're basically big SIMD engines, perfect for ancillary game stuff - just look at what CELL managed with a shit GPU.
 
Sony stop the apu machine and back to the drawing board!.Easy, only copy paste cell (the most efficient compute processor in the world) between the cpu and gpu and leave the CUs for what they are better!.That MS is making you another Xenon!.Wake up!.

Add mushrooms. Mushroom soup is the best.
 
That's your prerogative. I've been told by multiple sources I trust that there's still a bit of Orbis info yet to be determined, and quite a bit of Durango info that hasn't surfaced. Durango's CPU in particular is appreciably different than Orbis.

Can you elaborate on either of these things? Sony still plans to change the specs? How are the CPU's different? Is one better clearly better then the other, or will be very very similar and just have some small disadvantges and advatages?

I remember the original rumor hinted at Orbis have a strong GPU and Durango having the stronger CPU, which most thought was ironic cause it was the oppisate with PS3/360. That rumor basically ended when all the leaks pointed to both consoles using a 1.6ghz 8 core Jaguar based CPU.

Could Sony decision to use 4CU's from the GPU for mainly compute hint at where its strengths lie?
 
Larger armounts of RAM might be the biggest stregnth of all. If an engine can leverage the lower bandwith, there can be some incredible things done.

However, Orbis is a compute monster, and as far as we know, approximately 50% more powerful in the pure flops department. It also has three times the bandwith.

It all depends on your engine, and how you design things. In the end, I've heard a nudge that a certain developer prefers the Orbis ram setup.

I would think that Oribis set up would be easier to work with .
At least Japanese devs won't have it so hard this gen .
The PS3 being so hard to work with really hurt them , i expect there output to go up next gen .
 
People that thought 4GB of memory was out of the question are forgetting one thing. Both the Orbis and Durango are not going to be 4 year lifecycle consoles. I would bet that those are even going to surpass this generation in terms of that.
 
Can you elaborate on either of these things? Sony still plans to change the specs? How are the CPU's different? Is one better clearly better then the other, or will be very very similar and just have some small disadvantges and advatages?

I remember the original rumor hinted at Orbis have a strong GPU and Durango having the stronger CPU, which most thought was ironic cause it was the oppisate with PS3/360. That rumor basically ended when all the leaks pointed to both consoles using a 1.6ghz 8 core Jaguar based CPU.

Could Sony decision to use 4CU's from the GPU for mainly compute hint at where its strengths lie?

I wouldnt dismiss that depending on yields they decide to increase the CU number.
 
That depends on the third party game. CryEngine 3 games have pushed the consoles just as much as any first party game.

It was also the wake up call to show how weak the current consoles are.

Horrible IQ horrible FPS. C2 could have used most advanced techniques for consoles but absolutely don't deserve to be even taken into account as graphical benchmark for consoles.

They should first focus on making C2 IQ rather good and framerate at least solid 30.
 
I don't think exclusives even matter anymore. 360 has been doing fine with less exusives in comparison to PS3 lately.

The number of exclusives hasn't been that different imo, MS have just devoted more resources to the kinect/casual crowd. Exclusives, core exclusives specifically, will matter much more early in a generation since it's the core gamer that typically picks up a system close to launch.

I'm not denying Gears 3 or Halo 4 are in the same league as some of Sony's FP games. Its basically to little, to late is what im trying to say.

Stop thinking about it on an idivdual game basis. Think about the number of games each companies cataloge of FP studio's can produce every 2 years, how many games each company can put on store shelves from only there FP studios, and how many games at certain point throughout the generation could of been considered the best graphical game out there at that time. Sony has a bunch evenly distriputed through out the whole gen.This why the impression in the idustry/gameing communty that PS3 had the best looking games. MS has two games release very late in the gen(one of which isn't FP), and they are argued to be equal on a technical level as some of Sony best FP games.

Tying this all back to what I was saying in my first post. Orbis has an outstanding foundation set up for it going into this gen to mack this gap even wider and more signifigant this time around.

IMO this is hard to determine when we don't really know the size of MS FP studios.

I do think these new teams or studios may have more growing pains than Sony's studios though. I guess this could be seen with the halo 4 backlash, but they were in a unique position, taking over an established IP. Assuming these other studios are creating new IPs, they may not run into the same issue. We'll see.

PS3 is more powerful than the 360.

No, it really isn't. They have different strengths, but one isn't more powerful than the other. Comparing exclusives is pointless, so I'm not sure how a case can be made that either is more powerful than the other.

Do ps3 games use openGL or libGCM? If developers mostly used those as a thin driver layer, they might be able to make them compatible with AMD stuff. Any coding to the metal might be trickier though

PSGL was first, followed by libGCM, which is now the standard API used by most studios IIRC. Even with games that codes to the "metal", a thin layered API is used. This goes for both systems.
 
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