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452.73 MB .exe X360 demo......70sec. loading time!!

Hdd 4 lyfe!!!

So, does every game detect the hdd automatically? The hdd is worth it if only to help speed up load times and if every game supports it in terms of speeding up load times.

Gregory am cry.
 
Load times depend a lot on the developers too... I expect decent developers will be able to load in a small amount of core code/data at the start and load remaining data while you are playing.
 
mj1108 said:
On the dashboard it says there's 10 gigs free and you can see the system has the HDD attached to it.
Click to expand...

owned-kick.jpg
 
Microsoft's last two decisions regarding the X360 hardware configuration largely had to do with business and not software optimization for the end user.

1) 256MB->512MB of RAM without increasing the speed of the disc reader (still 12x dvd, right?). Regardless, it'll take twice as long as before to load all of that into the RAM, so for the lion's share of games that use that extra RAM for higher quality texturing, you're going to see almost linear growth in load times. Even though it will negatively affect load times in all games, this was a concession made to game DEVELOPERS as well as to marketers, because it's clear that the 360 needs to keep up with the Sony Joneses on this mark. The RAM will get cheaper, but the added load times were a known gaff that'll be around for good.

2) Having an HDD-less configuration even possible. By requiring developers to make their games run without the hard drive, but not offering an automatic in-hardware hard drive-aware caching system, the result will be longer load times for everyone, not just those without the hard drive. Caching shit to the hard drive is a complicated process, and it's one that's further compounded by the fact that people are going to be able to rip out their hard drive at will (so long as the game isn't saving), and the system has to be able to
respond without missing a beat. That means you can't really cache anything that's mission critical that isn't on the disk (such as variable data for swap space) without making the hard drive non-removable during game play.

The ability to cache information to the HDD will be so impossible to optimize well, that I doubt we'll ever see it as efficiently as it was done on the Xbox. The good news is that with 512MB of RAM, it'll be far less necessary, but not having that free swap space as virtual memory (I can't imagine that they could use it as normal swap, unless they're going to warn the user that they can't remove the hard drive without powering the system down).

Yeah, I think minute-plus load times are probably just going to be the norm for initial game boot-up, regardless of hard drive.

Clever developers will ensure that after the initial load, subsequent loading is streamed efficiently without interruptions to gameplay, but lazy developers will probably stack multiple gigantic loads between areas.

Just something you have to live with when you don't have a guaranteed swap available, and have to be constantly filling up a whopping 512MB of memory off the disc.
 
Juice said:
Microsoft's last two decisions regarding the X360 hardware configuration largely had to do with business and not software optimization for the end user.

1) 256MB->512MB of RAM without increasing the speed of the disc reader (still 12x dvd, right?). Regardless, it'll take twice as long as before to load all of that into the RAM, so for the lion's share of games that use that extra RAM for higher quality texturing, you're going to see almost linear growth in load times. Even though it will negatively affect load times in all games, this was a concession made to game DEVELOPERS as well as to marketers, because it's clear that the 360 needs to keep up with the Sony Joneses on this mark. The RAM will get cheaper, but the added load times were a known gaff that'll be around for good.

2) Having an HDD-less configuration even possible. By requiring developers to make their games run without the hard drive, but not offering an automatic in-hardware hard drive-aware caching system, the result will be longer load times for everyone, not just those without the hard drive. Caching shit to the hard drive is a complicated process, and it's one that's further compounded by the fact that people are going to be able to rip out their hard drive at will (so long as the game isn't saving), and the system has to be able to
respond without missing a beat. That means you can't really cache anything that's mission critical that isn't on the disk (such as variable data for swap space) without making the hard drive non-removable during game play.

The ability to cache information to the HDD will be so impossible to optimize well, that I doubt we'll ever see it as efficiently as it was done on the Xbox. The good news is that with 512MB of RAM, it'll be far less necessary, but not having that free swap space as virtual memory (I can't imagine that they could use it as normal swap, unless they're going to warn the user that they can't remove the hard drive without powering the system down).

Yeah, I think minute-plus load times are probably just going to be the norm for initial game boot-up, regardless of hard drive.

Clever developers will ensure that after the initial load, subsequent loading is streamed efficiently without interruptions to gameplay, but lazy developers will probably stack multiple gigantic loads between areas.

Just something you have to live with when you don't have a guaranteed swap available, and have to be constantly filling up a whopping 512MB of memory off the disc.
Click to expand...

Doesn't going above 12x for a DVD drive be really unstable?

As for having 512 Mb of ram it does come with the downside of trying to fill it up in a timely manner.
 
HomerSimpson-Man said:
Doesn't going above 12x for a DVD drive be really unstable?

As for having 512 Mb of ram it does come with the downside of trying to fill it up in a timely manner.
Click to expand...

Well having the extra ram does outweigh that downside.
 
PS3 _and_ X360 will have crappy load times if all the games fill 512 meg* in one go.

But the games won't have crap load times - if they are coded properly (streaming etc)
 
DaveB says it's compiling shaders. I know BF2 does this whenever I change graphics settings, and it takes at least that long to do, so that makes sense IMO. Not sure why it's do it everytime, but hey, Dave's pretty tight with the ATI guys. PEACE.
 
damn. Load times suck so much, I cant even finish Conker X-box because I have to sit through 4 loading screens everytime I die...
 
Pimpwerx said:
DaveB says it's compiling shaders. I know BF2 does this whenever I change graphics settings, and it takes at least that long to do, so that makes sense IMO. Not sure why it's do it everytime, but hey, Dave's pretty tight with the ATI guys. PEACE.
Click to expand...

It could be curing cancer for all I know, doesn't change the fact that people are going to think, "Damn load times take forever!!" They're not going to sit there and go, "You know, if I didn't know this game was actually just compiling shaders I'd by mildly annoyed at the load times I'm currently experiencing."
 
Sounding either like damage control or common sense, but do you think this demo was truly optimized for loading?

You're taking a lot for granted here.
 
The sooner 360 is out, the better, if only so we don't have to be dragged down with this kind of assinine speculation EVERY TEN FUCKIN MINUTES. How the fuck did we establish 360 load times from a PC exe?
 
Is it just me, or do all these demos for the different companies have horrible animation? Other than that, it showed off the cinematic qualities quite well.

I think the 70 second loading times will be reduced by half. There's always this speculation before consoles come out that their loading times will be incredible, then they always end up being somewhat managable.
 
element said:
games can't load longer then 40 seconds.
Click to expand...

Is that according to Microsoft's suggested documentation? IIRC, you're a bit in the know, and it sounds right for the guidelines to be in that ballpark. What happens if a load takes longer? I doubt Microsoft won't let the game get licensed or that the 360 will blue screen. I think games of a huge scope like Oblivion (I know that's the one you're familiar with) will probably need a huge initial load to get rolling.

Even forty seconds is a LONG FUCKING TIME to be staring at a blank screen. Seriously, could they have designed the 360 to look and act more like a Windows PC?

Still, to fill up all 512MB could take upwards of that, and I agree with other people that clever streaming is going to be necessary to make people not uber pissed off. What it might mean is that while the system has all that RAM, it doesn't mean that RAM should ever all be used by a given environment.

Also, on the Conker comment, I agree. If I have to wait more than a second or two after dying in a game, I quit playing it immediately. I just don't have the patience after dying to not get immediately back in the action. Same goes for when I have to play a level over from the very beginning. Some games just ask not to be re-attempted upon the first failure. But I think that's primarily a design flaw and can be avoided 99% of the time. A full reload should be completely unnecessary.
 
Uh, am I the only one who think it is really dumb to base the overall loading time of Xbox 360 games based on that demo?
 
HomerSimpson-Man said:
Doesn't going above 12x for a DVD drive be really unstable?
Click to expand...

Yes. If you go much above that, the discs can shatter from the rotational forces.

I'm not sure what people suggest would be a better solution. The 2x or 3x Blu-Ray drive that was talked about a while back for the PS3 (haven't been following closely) had a slightly slower data transfer rate than a 12x DVD.
 
Even forty seconds is a LONG FUCKING TIME to be staring at a blank screen. Seriously, could they have designed the 360 to look and act more like a Windows PC?
Click to expand...
well it wouldn't be a blank screen. it has to be animated, have instructions, tips, blah blah blah.
 
element said:
well it wouldn't be a blank screen. it has to be animated, have instructions, tips, blah blah blah.
Click to expand...

Which is interesting to watch once or twice. A 40 second load screen is about 35 seconds too long.
 
element said:
I agree. I wouldn't expect many games to be 40 seconds long.
Click to expand...

I don't expect 40 seconds too often, but there way too many games this generation that went well past my threshold. I would venture to say that 20-30 seconds wasn't completely out of the norm.
 
It'd be interesting to get a stopwatch out and compare what we think "feels like" 30 seconds and what actually is thirty seconds.

Something tells me that load times this generation rarely breach the 20 second mark, but I haven't stopwatched them in a long time either.

Somebody care to actually test a couple games (like the load for a game of Madden 06 or Jade Empire or some other intensive game)... if those games don't come close to 40 seconds, I've got a feeling that some of these next gen games are going to feel unbearable. Especially if you load more than once.
 
Im a bit confused by this "takes ** to fill the ram" comment thats sprung up a couple of times today, is that length of time generally considered to be a good benchmark of how long games will take to load?


If so:

SATA is about 10x faster than 12x DVD (150mb/sec -> 15mb/sec), although its probably fair to say it'll never quite reach that speed on an actual transfer.

So does that mean games that use HDD cache properly could

A. Load 10x faster than off the DVD

B. Take a maximum of 5-10 seconds to load (fill the ram)?
 
That 70 secs is most likely not all 'loading' time.
It's probably the time needed to calculate shadows, compile shaders, extract compressed data, or whatever. Shouldn't be any indication of loading times on x360
 
I can't stand loading times - it's not about impatient, it's more like just keeping interest up. Well, ok, maybe it's impatience.

But I'm ok with one long loading time, if the game does a lto with what it loads - ie. has a long play time. GTA had pretty large load times, but the play time you got for that was pretty significant (especially if you were just meesing about!). I'd rather one long load time, adn then forget it for ages, rather than 5 second load times every minute.
 
Jesiatha said:
Yes. If you go much above that, the discs can shatter from the rotational forces.

I'm not sure what people suggest would be a better solution. The 2x or 3x Blu-Ray drive that was talked about a while back for the PS3 (haven't been following closely) had a slightly slower data transfer rate than a 12x DVD.
Click to expand...

What? We've been using 16x DVD's for a long time now.
 
eso76 said:
That 70 secs is most likely not all 'loading' time.
It's probably the time needed to calculate shadows, compile shaders, extract compressed data, or whatever. Shouldn't be any indication of loading times on x360
Click to expand...

As Zuo said, whatever the person has to wait for to get into the action should be, for common terminology sake be referred to as "loading." Of course, loading has always included other preprocesses that are run as soon as data hits the RAM, but now with more complex shaders, that time is compounded.

I can't wait until the load times make a couple games worse than their current gen equivalents. And by a couple of games I mean the Tony Hawk port.
 
eso76 said:
That 70 secs is most likely not all 'loading' time.
It's probably the time needed to calculate shadows, compile shaders, extract compressed data, or whatever. Shouldn't be any indication of loading times on x360
Click to expand...

Yeah, the 360 won't have to calculate shadows and compile shaders. We've all see the shots of DOA4, PD0, Saint's Row, and Frame City Killers. :D
 
Juice said:
As Zuo said, whatever the person has to wait for to get into the action should be, for common terminology sake be referred to as "loading." Of course, loading has always included other preprocesses that are run as soon as data hits the RAM, but now with more complex shaders, that time is compounded.
Click to expand...

Ok, what i meant is, it's not representative of the transfer rate. Transfer rate is not something that can be optimized, while these other operations can take more or less time depending on the game and on how they are programmed; this is a tech demo, who knows, maybe it's doing some crazy stuff you'll never see in games, calculating shadow maps every time it's launched, drawing procedural textures...maybe something that could have been previously calculated and stored on the dvd if this wasn't a tech demo and they actually bothered optimizing loading times.
 
eso76 said:
Ok, what i meant is, it's not representative of the transfer rate. Transfer rate is not something that can be optimized
Click to expand...
It certainly can. Put your data in sequential manner on the DVD disc instead of having lots of tiny files scattered everywhere certainly makes a huge difference. Also using a very simple compression algorithm for the data can make the transfer be even better than the maximum hardware transfer rate while not using much CPU, especially with monster CPUs like in Xbox 360/PS3. Of course it depends on what you are loading, it's already DXTC textures it won't change much...
And this topic is funny cause the demo is most certainly loading from the hard drive of the console, unless I missed something.
 
Blimblim said:
And this topic is funny cause the demo is most certainly loading from the hard drive of the console, unless I missed something.
Click to expand...

It was streaming from Moore's iPod, d00d.
 
urk said:
Yeah, the 360 won't have to calculate shadows and compile shaders. We've all see the shots of DOA4, PD0, Saint's Row, and Frame City Killers. :D
Click to expand...

:D

Anyway, you won't get shader compilation like in BF2 in final X360 games, as they are aiming for one target only, so they'll be precompiled and stored on the disc. They are only done in this because its a demo most likely, so not optimised.


As for loading? Its a bit like typing in a word processor. The time between your keypresses may seem small to you, but for the computer it has time to make a cup of tea.

So while the intro is playing (taking maybe 1x of the 12xDVD), the other 11x can be loading data in parallel. While you're selecting your profile and setting up your options/choosing what level to play - loaded another 200MB right there.
 
Blimblim said:
It certainly can. Put your data in sequential manner on the DVD disc instead of having lots of tiny files scattered everywhere certainly makes a huge difference.
Click to expand...

Of course, that's optimizing loading times, but transfer rate remains 15mb / sec for a 12x dvd drive. Of course having more data in sequence helps achieving those maximum transfer rates figures, my point is the transfer rate factor, assuming developers are careful enough to put data in a sequential manner, isn't as variable as other things not related to technical limitations.
 
Assuming a 12X DVD drive runs at an average of 8X (10.8MB/s or so,) which is a fairly reasonable real life estimate, it'd take around 47 seconds to completely fill 512MB of RAM. Of course, part of that RAM is used for the actual game logic, so 40 seconds do seem as a reasonable worst case.
 
even 40 seconds is a damn long load time

especially if it was something like the allready mentioned conker were you have 3 or 4 loading screens after a death thats almost 2 - 3 minutes just to get back into a game
 
It also seems like the trend is for load times to be worse at the beginning of the generation, as in the grand scheme of things, unless your game design requires it, coding a streaming engine for the game world isn't the top priority when you're initially starting development on a new platform.

I'm guessing though.
 
element said:
no it wasn't. You can't run executables from a remote device (USB connection). DVD or internal HDD.
Click to expand...

You found me out! It was streaming from his PSP!
 
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