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[GashPrex]

Yeah I am sure people who know more can figure something from these

 

[explodet]

Sony.... slideshow....
... losing... consciousness.....

*thud*

 

[Sho Nuff]

Does most of what we need

...But not all?

Way to sell your XNA-killer. Jeezus

 

[Jonnyram]

I hope the PS3 can handle 2D gaming too, because the PSP seems to be having a rough time (probably just the screen, though).

 

[speedpop]

I hope the PS3 can handle 2D gaming too, because the PSP seems to be having a rough time (probably just the screen, though).

That doesn't surprise me

 

[Lord Error]

...But not all?

What exactly IS Open GL ES? That's for "embedded systems", right? Shouldn't it be expandable like regular OGL, so that they can add whatever they still need into it?

I hope the PS3 can handle 2D gaming too, because the PSP seems to be having a rough time (probably just the screen, though).

Huh? What's wrong with Lumines (pretty crazy 2D stuff there) or Darkstalkers? Both are just so much better than any 2D I've seen on any handheld, gaming or PDA.

Besides, how could the PSP 2D performace be any indication of PS3?

 

[xexex]

Xenon with over a teraflop of targeted computing performance > PS3's 288 GFLOPs, or less

:lol



powerpoint slides? Xenon got em, too.

XNA Slides cooler than Sony Slides.

Xenon rules.

PS3OWNED.

 

[bigfurb]

I hope the PS3 can handle 2D gaming too, because the PSP seems to be having a rough time (probably just the screen, though)

This is the 1st I've heard about the psp having problems with 2d. Would you mind elaborating more on this jonny?

 

[Lord Error]

Xenon with over a teraflop of targeted computing performance > Cell PS3 with maybe 288 GFLOPs, or less

But how will it handle 2D?? Microsoft's own Windows CE and Pocket PCs haven't been the greatest in that area! :lol

 

[Jonnyram]

Huh? What's wrong with Lumines (pretty crazy 2D stuff there) or Darkstalkers? Both are just so much better than any 2D I've seen on any handheld, gaming or PDA.

I should clarify - we know it's a screen issue. I was just kidding. Anything with large black areas will cause problems on the current PSP screens when scrolling.

Besides, how could the PSP 2D performace be any indication of PS3?

It's just an indication that Sony forgot the basics because they were too busy pushing 3D power. PSP is great for 3D. Way better than any other handheld. But they dropped the ball on 2D thanks to the screen. We know from past experience that Sony thinks little about 2D. If they accidentally leave some important 2D function out, it would not be good, right?

 

[Fafalada]

It's just an indication that Sony forgot the basics because they were too busy pushing 3D power. PSP is great for 3D. Way better than any other handheld. But they dropped the ball on 2D thanks to the screen. We know from past experience that Sony thinks little about 2D. If they accidentally leave some important 2D function out, it would not be good, right?

Well the current screen is probably the reason why you can enjoy your PSP for 200$ instead of 300$ though. Would you pay 100$ more so your 2d would be ghosting free?

As for 2d "functions" - 2d is a subset of 3d, and every modern 3d rasterizer since (and including) N64 has had a feature set that can do anything that any 2d console ever devised could do, and more.
Anyway, I guess once we get PSP Oled the 2d games will no longer be an issue either.

 

[WasabiKing]

Sony.... slideshow....
... losing... consciousness.....

*thud*

Do you know what the D in GDC stands for? CUE STEVE BALLMER!

 

[Vince]

Xenon with over a teraflop of targeted computing performance > Cell PS3 with maybe 288 GFLOPs, or less

I fear for the level of shit that will be spewed when Sony releases "targeted computing preformance" numbers. Hell, lets throw in the 28 calculations used per pixel to Bilinear Filter and the kitchen sink while we're at it and superinflate that sucker... wait, likely already did.

.. So when did hardwired functionality become "targeted computing". Atleast Sony's PR bullshit is cute -- we'll jack your ass into The Matrix and even throw in the woman in the red-dress and an EE powered ICBM for free -- this MS bullshit is just wrong.

PS. Faf, are their plans to move to OLED? That would be nice...

 

[Lord Error]

I should clarify - we know it's a screen issue. I was just kidding. Anything with large black areas will cause problems on the current PSP screens when scrolling.

The color bleeding? Same thing can trouble the 3D graphics, so I wouldn't say they just forgot about the 2D. It's just what the screen is like. They acepted that particular screen flaw as being better than having everything fade out with fast updates (which is what 99% of handheld screens are doing). With motion, this screen keeps good picture and color consistency but has some color bleeding. Don't get me wrong, I know it's not perfect, but it's better than screen on any handheld I've ever seen, and being offered on a device with a much lower price at that.

 

[xexex]

Vince, both the Soviet Union and the United States bluffed about their capabilities in the cold war. the U.S. discovered that the Soviet's ICBM missile capabilities were not as awesome as they claimed. The U.S. smart weapons in Gulf War 1991 were not as devastatingly accurate as first claimed/hyped. videogame and graphics card makers BS for sure, but so do nuclear superpowers :lol

It's true that a small but real supercomputer with a teraflop of general purpose computational performance provided by general purpose CPUs would eat Xenon like a great white shark eating a goldfish. but hey, Microsoft has to come out swingin' - they can't say, well' we're gonna deliever 90 GFLOPs.....when people remember that their old Xbox1 was supposed to be 80-120-140 or whatever GFLOPs (NvFLOPs!)...

 

[ImNotLikeThem]

ok normally these would be boring, but i gotta give it MS and the "all your core are belong to us" :lol unexpected a bit.

 

[DCharlie]

"Well the current screen is probably the reason why you can enjoy your PSP for 200$ instead of 300$ though. Would you pay 100$ more so your 2d would be ghosting free? "

... i was all set to drop $500 on one! but yeah, i see your point.

Galaxians becomes pretty hard to play as soon as things start moving

"So when did hardwired functionality become "targeted computing". Atleast Sony's PR bullshit is cute -- we'll jack your ass into The Matrix and even throw in the woman in the red-dress and an EE powered ICBM for free -- this MS bullshit is just wrong."

Cute? PR bullshit is PR bullshit no matter which way you cut it and both are guilty.

"Don't get me wrong, I know it's not perfect, but it's better than screen on any handheld I've ever seen, and being offered on a device with a much lower price at that."

I think the other thing that is disappointing is there was no bleeding on the screen at TGS. It's starting to look like that's where the price savings came late in the day. I played Puzzle Bobble for an age, and i'm damned sure i'd have noticed the very noticable ghosting that goes on... not that the screen is bad per se - it's fricken awesome. I would however pay through the nose for a machine with the TGS screen.

 

[Jonnyram]

Well the current screen is probably the reason why you can enjoy your PSP for 200$ instead of 300$ though. Would you pay 100$ more so your 2d would be ghosting free?

Yes I would. And actually my PSP cost $250 rather than $200

As for 2d "functions" - 2d is a subset of 3d, and every modern 3d rasterizer since (and including) N64 has had a feature set that can do anything that any 2d console ever devised could do, and more.

I don't know much about 3D graphics programming - the main area I'd ask about would be 2D hardware scrolling.

 

[Vince]

My point is that Sony's 'targeted preformance' will, more likely than not, be higher than Microsoft's. My point is that you're comparing the general computation of a single IC (Cell) against an entire system composed - mainly - of a GPU churning out massively parrallel hard-wired operations that are, for all intents and purposes... dumb.

If you're going to Bullshit, give us something exciting: Tell us how it's going to make blueberry muffins, document and write my neuroscience research up for me while lighting candles and giving me tips on making the girl orgasm 29 times in a row. Learn from Ken and Kaz.

This Microsoft stuff is B-quality, kinda pathetic in a me too way. :lol

 

[DCharlie]

"If you're going to Bullshit, give us something exciting: Tell us how it's going to make blueberry muffins, do my neuroscience research for me and while giving me tips on making the girl orgasm 29 times in a row. Learn from Ken and Kaz. "

um, but then Sony would just say "ours makes blueberries orgasm and your girlfriend will receive 29 muffings...."

 

[Vince]

Haha, about time I get a reply from you that's not serious

 

[xexex]

My point is that Sony's 'targeted preformance' will, more likely than not, be higher than Microsoft's. My point is that you're comparing the general computation of a single IC (Cell) against an entire system composed of a GPU churning out massively parrallel hard-wired operations that are, for all intents and purposes... dumb.

If you're going to Bullshit, give us something exciting: Tell us how it's going to make blueberry muffins, do my neuroscience research for me while giving me tips on making the girl orgasm 29 times in a row. Learn from Ken and Kaz.

This Microsoft stuff is B-quality, kinda pathetic in a me too way. :lol

Vince, I know I know. I was being kind of an a-hole by comparing the whole Xenon to just one component of PS3. but hey, we Xbots have to be a sneaky as possible this time, since our mothership is not going to be a 'big' or as 'badass' as the competitions ship. :lol


obviously Sony is going to make PS3 look like it smashes Xenon in computatational power with the combined might of Cell CPU and next-gen Nvidia GPU. I think PS3 will even beat Xenon for real, in many areas. but we will see if this greater performance translates into noticably & significantly better looking and better playing (framerate, control) games.

Microsoft has launched their opening salvo. or maybe their second salvo if XNA announcement at last GDC was the first. I wonder how SCEI chiefs are going to respond.
they probably have the more powerful hardware, but how will they introduce it to the world. I cant wait to see what happens next.

 

[Project Midway]

Man, GAF fanboy wars are going on at full force. Every thread has same old same trollin'n'baiting going on. I havent yet decided if I love it or hate it. :lol

I think I'm too old for this, threads are moving way too fast for me. :\

 

[Shogmaster]

Well the current screen is probably the reason why you can enjoy your PSP for 200$ instead of 300$ though. Would you pay 100$ more so your 2d would be ghosting free?

Actually, it's the 24bit color depth of the LCD is costing us in slower pixel draw (rarely will you get sub 25ms 24bit LCDs). If they went with a 18bit LCD, it would do 16ms no problem, and we'd never notice the missing colors in games. Sony dropped the ball on this one for the pursuit of wowy paper specs.

 

[xexex]

this is the kind of image that Sony probably wants to impress opon everyone

Xenon being the 'small' great white in the upper left. off to the side and not very important. while Playstation3 being the Megalodon MegaShark in the middle. in the center of the world, the most important thing in your life.

(Nintendo on the right, in the distance, fading into nothingness :lol )

 

[Lord Error]

Galaxians becomes pretty hard to play as soon as things start moving

Damn, same with Galaga, I presume?

DC are you sure you weren't so enchanted by the PSP at that TGS to not notice any ghosting? Seriously, though - keep in mind that not only it becomes obvious under speciffic and rare circumstances, but it's also one of those things that you can just 'forget' you're seeing, or not notice it unless someone points it out for the fist time - much like it takes time for people to spot something as obvious as a dead pixel on their monitor for the first time - but once they see it, they can always find it in a split second.

Would anyone really develop such a small series of screens as to be used *only* for pre-production models and then stop making them altogether? Seems weird.

 

[golem]

Would anyone really develop such a small series of screens as to be used *only* for pre-production models and then stop making them altogether? Seems weird.

well, they do need screens to prototype and wouldnt be a stretch to ask for the best screens possible to be produced before budget considerations came into play. i havent really heard grumblings about the psp's 2d abilities till this thread though

 

[Fafalada]

Vince, unfortunately right now Oled version is just my wishfull thinking ;P

Actually, it's the 24bit color depth of the LCD is costing us in slower pixel draw (rarely will you get sub 25ms 24bit LCDs).

Well at one point the prototype devkit units had screens with pretty flawless refresh rate - but as you point out, harder to make, thus obviously more pricey.

"Sony dropped the ball on this one for the pursuit of wowy paper specs."
It could have had something to do with positioning the machine as media player also - current refresh rate doesn't hurt movie playback, but 18bit would.

I don't know much about 3D graphics programming - the main area I'd ask about would be 2D hardware scrolling.

Well if put it into rough numbers, PSP could scroll in order of ~70 fullscreen layers, complete with rotation and scalling. Good enough?

Galaxians becomes pretty hard to play as soon as things start moving

Actually I wonder if most of these 2d games wouldn't benefit from a "30fps" mode, when things start to interfere with gameplay, trading off some fps for a better picture would make sense.

 

[DCharlie]

"keep in mind that not only it becomes obvious under speciffic and rare circumstances, but it's also one of those things that you can just 'forget' you're seeing, or not notice it"

i can do that with Ridge no problem because it's not really affecting game play, and you are right, you do just get used to it and forget.

However, for Galaxians, the damn divers become damn near invisible or , at best, difficult to see. The reason it would seem is that the sprites seem to become shaded darker around the edges (perhaps to cut down the actual ghosting issue) but then puts a strain on your eyes...

you'll notice it right away - once you move your ship left and right, one side darkens and it looks weird. Perhaps there are more options i need to look at?

DOH! maybe i should get rid of the filter option! what a forgetful cock munch! I will try that later.

 

[TTP]

I played Puzzle Bobble for an age, and i'm damned sure i'd have noticed the very noticable ghosting that goes on...

Well, you don't notice bleeding playing Lumines either.

 

[DCharlie]

"Well, you don't notice bleeding playing Lumines either."

there is bleeding in it - but i always thought it was a funky effect!

 

[gofreak]

Thanks for the slides! Was hoping these would get out. Hopefully we'll get a transcript from these sessions eventually, would be nice to read everything word for word..

 

[xexex]

more SCEA "CELLIDES" :lol

 

[Panajev2001a]

...But not all?

Way to sell your XNA-killer. Jeezus

Add to OpenGL ES something like COLLADA, OpenMAX, etc... and the picture should be clearer.

Also, will we see this stuff used in SCEJ... boh...

 

[mrklaw]

Collada doesn't seem to be selling itself as an XNA-killer though. It sounds more like a simple setup to allow easy reuse of art resources, models etc. Much like a Max plugin

 

[gofreak]

Collada doesn't seem to be selling itself as an XNA-killer though. It sounds more like a simple setup to allow easy reuse of art resources, models etc. Much like a Max plugin

True, although a little bit extended from just plugins.

XNA is really a catchall term for everything MS is doing. Comparing it to individual aspects of Sony's development platform doesn't make much sense (though I don't think people are doing this, really). Unfortunately Sony hasn't given us a handy and attractive catch-all term for PS3's dev environment.

 

[Shompola]

True, although a little bit extended from just plugins.

XNA is really a catchall term for everything MS is doing. Comparing it to individual aspects of Sony's development platform doesn't make much sense (though I don't think people are doing this, really). Unfortunately Sony hasn't given us a handy and attractive catch-all term for PS3's dev environment.

The SONY catch-term is "We know that you will create even more..."

 

[gofreak]

The SONY catch-term is "We know that you will create even more..."

:lol We need an acronym, damnit!

 

[Lord Error]

If they went with a 18bit LCD, it would do 16ms no problem, and we'd never notice the missing colors in games. Sony dropped the ball on this one for the pursuit of wowy paper specs.

Unless every single PDA maker (I won't even go into gaming handhelds and cellphones) has dropped the ball MASSIVELY in choosing their screen, I'd say Sony did the right thing asking for the screen they got. I cannot stress it enough I guess, but as it is, PSP screen IS the best handheld screen on the market. It has it downside(s) but it's much more forgivable compared to problems with other handheld screens.

there is bleeding in it - but i always thought it was a funky effect!

Actualy - that is a funky effect! I was wondering the same thing, but Lumines does have intentional motion trails - the color bleeding, when it's visible, actually looks different. It really matters a lot what color combination is used for it to happen.

 

[GashPrex]

our very own faf sounds less than excited to program for cell in this thread on beyond3d after seeing these slides

Well there was nothing really conclusive said in that discussion though Razz

Anyway what do they expect me to do with no broadcast and no dotproduct, replicating scalar value into entire vector for every dotproduct during matrix and vector transforms? Crying or Very sad
Don't even get me started on compiler trying to work in such ways, it took GCC like a decade just to support madds.

I guess that's their recipe for over 80% utilization of both pipes. Have a permute every cycle -_-
Seriously though, if that's really the case, I predict it'll be years before we get anything even remotely decent code generated by a compiler. If ever at all.

Well no - forcing this type of data rearranging effectively eliminates any real chance of writting readable code, especially if it's in C++.
And I don't know how much you've dealt with writting non-graphics code for vector units, but this kind of limitations will make it insanely difficult to write efficient physics code. Heck you even run into issues with VUs with a far more capable ISA.

Thing is people whine about managing multiple processors and this and that, but according to this, writting fast code for just 1 SPE will be obfuscated mess that would make even raw VU assembly code look prettier in some ways.

Well, it still forces using you to use bizarro classes such as vector4x4. Basically it boils down to obfuscating your algorithms into quadruples or whatever the larger atomic unit you will define.
And I doubt anyone would prototype any new code in that manner, so we'll be back to writting nonoptimized and optimized versions of code - feels like 1999 all over again.

etc... etc...

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

Do you know what the D in GDC stands for? CUE STEVE BALLMER!

DONUTS!

DONUTS!

DONUTS!