Id / John Carmack announces the PS3 version of RAGE will run at only20-to-30fps, breaking promise of all versions running at 60fps. Meanwhilethe Xbox 360 version still runs at 60fps

On Jul 31, 2:30*pm, Tim O wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:48:19 -0700 (PDT), Air Raid

wrote:
The Xbox 360 and PC versions of id's Rage sport higher framerates than
the PlayStation 3 version, the latest issue of Edge magazine reveals.

I realize this post is intended to start a flame war, and as a fan of
PC gaming, I often try to wind up the console players, but lets take a
serious look at the issue.

Rage was programmed by id, traditionally a PC game company.
The XBox360 shares so much architecture with the PC, that it's not
surprising an id game would run well on it.

The few technical articles I've read about the PS3 seem to infer that
its an extremely powerful console, but that power is difficult to
exploit. Sony built something great, but also very proprietary. If you
look at their technology through the years, that is very typical Sony.
For programmers that aren't completely immersed in PS3 architecture,
making a port must be very difficult.

A beacon of light in a dark tunnel.

On Jul 31, 2:55*pm, (GMAN) wrote:
In article , Tim O wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:48:19 -0700 (PDT), Air Raid
wrote:

The Xbox 360 and PC versions of id's Rage sport higher framerates than
the PlayStation 3 version, the latest issue of Edge magazine reveals.

I realize this post is intended to start a flame war, and as a fan of
PC gaming, I often try to wind up the console players, but lets take a
serious look at the issue.

Rage was programmed by id, traditionally a PC game company.
The XBox360 shares so much architecture with the PC, that it's not
surprising an id game would run well on it.

I thought the 360 was more akin to a PowerPC mac?

Both systems' CPUs are based on the PowerPC design. Hell, a lot of the
design of the Xbox 360 CPU itself was gleaned off work paid for by
Sony in development of the Cell.

However, there's more to "system architecture" than just the physical
design of the CPU.

The few technical articles I've read about the PS3 seem to infer that
its an extremely powerful console, but that power is difficult to
exploit. Sony built something great, but also very proprietary. If you
look at their technology through the years, that is very typical Sony.
For programmers that aren't completely immersed in PS3 architecture,
making a port must be very difficult.

Maybe these companies should look for better , more capable programmers and
not the hacks that they hire.

They don't need to. The main crux of the problem is Sony once again
defying all logic to produce a system architecture completely
different not only from its rivals' but also from the previous
generation!

The problem was pretty much as bad with the PlayStation 2 but a few
things worked in Sony's favor the previous go-round:

a) Their only competition at launch had a huge disadvantage in
customer confidence thanks to the shenanigans of the hardware
manufacturer.

b) The competition that came a year later consisted of a brand new
console with no built-in consumer confidence due to the manufacturer
being a virgin and another "family friendly" iteration from a
manufacturer that lost core gamer support early in the generation
before that.

c) The console didn't cost $500-600.

Even more important, strong sales early on meant that developers were
willing to invest in learning a brand new architecture because there
was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. People were
buying lots of hardware and lots of games so you don't want to leave
yourself out of contention for that bounty.

On the other hand, this generation, people aren't buying as much
hardware and not nearly as much software so the reward doesn't look
nearly as promising.

On Aug 1, 1:13 am, parallax-scroll wrote:
On Jul 31, 1:30 pm, Tim O wrote:

On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:48:19 -0700 (PDT), Air Raid

wrote:
The Xbox 360 and PC versions of id's Rage sport higher framerates than
thePlayStation 3version, the latest issue of Edge magazine reveals.

I realize this post is intended to start a flame war, and as a fan of
PC gaming, I often try to wind up the console players, but lets take a
serious look at the issue.

Rage was programmed by id, traditionally a PC game company.
The XBox360 shares so much architecture with the PC, that it's not
surprising an id game would run well on it.

Actually that is not really true. Although the Xbox 360 shares much
in common with PC architecture on the software side, as far as
Microsoft's tools, development environment, DirectX API, etc, but if
you take a close look at the actual hardware architecture of the 360,
it's not a PC at all. The Xenon CPU is a custom triple-core PowerPC.
No PC uses PowerPC CPU that I'm aware of.

Both CPUs are based off of the PowerPC design. So you've got one
architecture - the 360's - that is using a decidedly "non-PC" CPU but
in ways that are essentially the same as how PCs work and you've got
another - the PS3's - that is using an even "less PC" CPU based off
essentially the same core design in ways that are not at all like how
developers have been programming on the PC.

Gee... wonder which one will be harder to work with...

The Xenos GPU, is also a
custom piece of silicon, that has no direct PC counterpart. Although
PC GPUs that shipped after the 360, starting with the R600 (Radeon HD
2900), took after the 360's GPU, it would not be correct to say the
360's graphics architecture is based on any PC design. The embedded
graphics memory is one of many features that make the 360's Xenos GPU
a very "anti PC" architecture.

What do you mean by "embedded graphics memory?"

The memory stands apart from the CPU and GPU and is in fact graphics
memory that is being used as both system and graphics RAM as needed.
However, this isn't the only or even first time this has been done.

It's not unlike the GameCube & Wii,
which, like 360, use a PowerPC CPU and a highly custom, console-
specific GPU created from the ground up specifically for the console.
Unlike the original Xbox which used a GPU (NV2A) very similar to the
GeForce 4. Overall, Xbox was just a slightly modified PC in almost
every way, from it's Celeron/Pentium III CPU, to its bus architecture,
to its GPU.

The PS3 actually has more PC-based architecture in it than the 360
does. While the CELL CPU is totally alien to PC architecture, the RSX
GPU is very much a PC-based design, it's basicly a stripped down
GeForce 7800.

The few technical articles I've read about the PS3 seem to infer that
its an extremely powerful console, but that power is difficult to
exploit. Sony built something great, but also very proprietary. If you
look at their technology through the years, that is very typical Sony.
For programmers that aren't completely immersed in PS3 architecture,
making a port must be very difficult.

The PS3 is really not much more powerful than the Xbox 360. The
biggest advantage PS3 has, is the amount of floating point performance
it gets from the CELL CPU (over 200 GFLOPs) It's roughly twice that
of the Xbox 360 CPU (over 100 GFLOPs) .

That's decidedly more powerful. It's not night and day but it's not an
insignificant improvement.

It's very hard to get all the
performance from the CELL because the performance is divided up
between the 7 SPE units. While the 360 CPU is easier to use because
it's got 3 identical PowerPC cores.

Agreed.

The 360's Xenos GPU is very much superior to the RSX GPU in PS3.

?!?!?!

Where did you get this idea? Have you even *looked* at the specs for
the two GPUs? The Xbox 360's GPU is decidedly *not* superior to the
PS3's GPU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_(graphics_chip)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX_%27...Synthesizer%27

The reason the Xbox 360's graphics performance is a little better is
because of the memory architecture. The 360 has a notably higher
memory bandwidth and also has a lot more flexibility in how the total
console memory is used at any given point in time.

For the most part, the extra power that CELL has, has to go into
making up for the shortcomings of RSX, just to get roughly upto the
360's level in graphics. Sure there are some PS3 games specifically
written to take full advantage of the architecture which outperform
any 360 game, yet there are so many more 360 games that outperform the
same game on PS3, and some 360-only games that outshine anything on
PS3.
Overall the 360 and PS3 are very close in capability, much closer
than PS2 and original Xbox.

The Xbox *blew away* the PlayStation 2 in terms of specs. Ultimately,
though, the much larger and obviously more diverse software library
helped cement Sony's lead in the previous generation.

Both consoles are well behind even
modern low-end PCs that have decent gaming performance.
example: the AMD RV770 GPU used in Radeon 4850 has 1 TFLOP (1000
GFLOPs) of raw shader/compute performance for graphics, while Xenos
and RSX have 200 ~ 250 GFLOPs of shader performance, that's 1/5 or at
best, 1/4 that of a current low-end PC graphics card. On the highest-
end of PC gaming, with 4 AMD GPUs on two cards, (CrossFire 4870X2s)
you get 4800 GFLOPs (4.8 TFLOPs) of raw performance, and that was as
of fall 2008, almost a year ago. That is 20 times the performance of
the 360's Xenos GPU (240 GFLOPs). The gulf in performance between
the highest-end PC configuration and 360 / PS3 is about the same as
the gulf between 360 / PS3 and the Wii's Hollywood GPU
(12 GFLOPs).

I must say, as a console gamer, I am already looking forward to the
next-gen Xbox3 and PS4, as well as the rumored 'Wii HD'

As a tech enthusiast, as far as the PC side, I am looking forward to
the upcoming DX11 GPU from AMD & Nvidia, the R8xx/Evergreen and GT300,
as well as Intel's 'manycore' Larrabee architecture.

Personally, I need to see more of the Larrabee.

On Aug 1, 2:00 am, wrote:
On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:13:43 -0700 (PDT), parallax-scroll



wrote:
On Jul 31, 1:30 pm, Tim O wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:48:19 -0700 (PDT), Air Raid

wrote:
The Xbox 360 and PC versions of id's Rage sport higher framerates than
thePlayStation 3version, the latest issue of Edge magazine reveals.

I realize this post is intended to start a flame war, and as a fan of
PC gaming, I often try to wind up the console players, but lets take a
serious look at the issue.

Rage was programmed by id, traditionally a PC game company.
The XBox360 shares so much architecture with the PC, that it's not
surprising an id game would run well on it.

Actually that is not really true. Although the Xbox 360 shares much
in common with PC architecture on the software side, as far as
Microsoft's tools, development environment, DirectX API, etc, but if
you take a close look at the actual hardware architecture of the 360,
it's not a PC at all.
The Xenon CPU is a custom triple-core PowerPC.
No PC uses PowerPC CPU that I'm aware of.

Which is really a testament to how good DirectX is at running on
multiple CPU platforms. What a shame that the PS3 came out with the
selling point that it was some sort of super computer of the future,
with all sorts of mind boggling possibilities, when the reality is
that the aging XBox 360, despite it's on-paper specs, simply had a
much more mature software architecture with which to build games upon.

The Xenos GPU, is also a
custom piece of silicon, that has no direct PC counterpart.

Very true, because the average 3 year old PC runs circles around it.
We would need to go back further to find a true PC counterpart.

Although
PC GPUs that shipped after the 360, starting with the R600 (Radeon HD
2900), took after the 360's GPU, it would not be correct to say the
360's graphics architecture is based on any PC design. The embedded
graphics memory is one of many features that make the 360's Xenos GPU
a very "anti PC" architecture. It's not unlike the GameCube & Wii,
which, like 360, use a PowerPC CPU and a highly custom, console-
specific GPU created from the ground up specifically for the console.

Not disagreeing, would just like to once again point out that all
these games, despite their higher price tag, not only perform inferior
to their PC versions, but also lag behind in terms of control options,
modifications and the like.

Inferior from whose perspective? While I, as a very avid PC gamer
years ago, know that ultimately a mouse is going to give you
infinitely more control and precision than a gamepad, people who have
always played console games and don't play PC games would have a much
harder time dealing with a mouse and keyboard.

As far as "user mods" and the like, how much does this really make a
difference? Even when I was clocking in 8-10 hours per day playing
Unreal Tournament, Quake, Doom, Half-Life, etc., I never really gave
much thought to most user created content because ultimately most of
it was far inferior to what the game's designers put together.

I'm sure there would be console gamers who would be interested in this
sort of thing but if they don't know about it or don't care about it,
then really in the end it's not an advantage.

As far as graphical quality is concerned, it really boils down to a
comparison of the price tags. Console games are generally, what, $10
more than their PC counterparts? How many games would you have to buy
to make up the difference in price between even a $400 Xbox 360 and a
PC with the specs needed to play *all* of the available games at a
graphical quality noticeably higher than that provided by the console
on a television set limited to 1080p resolution?

I imagine for even mid-range PCs, the graphical improvements would be
very much like the improvements from upscale DVD to Blu-ray - there,
but not necessarily noticeable enough to the typical consumer to
really matter.

Unlike the original Xbox which used a GPU (NV2A) very similar to the
GeForce 4. Overall, Xbox was just a slightly modified PC in almost
every way, from it's Celeron/Pentium III CPU, to its bus architecture,
to its GPU.

They should have made the 360 more like a PC, since a PC is better at
gaming.

The PS3 actually has more PC-based architecture in it than the 360
does.

Difficult to imagine. The PC and Sony are kind of like a water and
wood combination.. the result can be pretty in the short term and
tends to rot over time.

While the CELL CPU is totally alien to PC architecture, the RSX
GPU is very much a PC-based design, it's basicly a stripped down
GeForce 7800.

How unfortunate for those that paid a lot for this crapstink thinking
they would get entertainment value out of it.

Plenty of PS3 owners got plenty of entertainment value out of their
machine. Even with an inferior software library, there's still a good
selection of games (it's not as if multiplatform games somehow don't
count for anything). If only the Blu-ray drive wouldn't crap out so
quickly...

The few technical articles I've read about the PS3 seem to infer that
its an extremely powerful console, but that power is difficult to
exploit.

And power that is difficult to exploit is not very powerful is it?

Well, that's really the problem Sony's facing here. Sony was just too
ambitious. They wanted to blow away the competition from a technical
standpoint but ultimately forced themselves into a tight corner.

Sony built something great, but also very proprietary. If you
look at their technology through the years, that is very typical Sony.

That's Sony alright. Every technology decision is founded in "how can
we lock them into our brand?", rather than "how can we make our brand
known for value proposition to the consumer". Just like Apple.

Unfortunately for Sony, their decisions didn't turn out quite like
Apple's did.

For programmers that aren't completely immersed in PS3 architecture,
making a port must be very difficult.

Making a fun game has been a challenge for them too.

The PlayStation 3 has plenty of fun games.

The PS3 is really not much more powerful than the Xbox 360. The
biggest advantage PS3 has, is the amount of floating point performance
it gets from the CELL CPU (over 200 GFLOPs) It's roughly twice that
of the Xbox 360 CPU (over 100 GFLOPs) .

If only processing floating point numbers were fun, this would make
for great gaming!

If only someone had come up with a way to harness that power to
produce cutting edge physics and AI...

The 360's Xenos GPU is very much superior to the RSX GPU in PS3.

Therein lies the crux of the thread subject line.

The only problem is that his statement was 100% incorrect.

For the most part, the extra power that CELL has, has to go into
making up for the shortcomings of RSX, just to get roughly upto the
360's level in graphics. Sure there are some PS3 games specifically
written to take full advantage of the architecture which outperform
any 360 game, yet there are so many more 360 games that outperform the
same game on PS3, and some 360-only games that outshine anything on
PS3.

And almost all of them, where a port to PC was even attempted, perform
better than either one, offering better graphics, even with lots of
other services running in the background, an e-mail client, the PC
doubling as a web server, and so forth.

Assuming, of course, you had a good enough computer for this to be
true. Even then, for 99% of the people out there, the PC solution
would mean playing on a 21" monitor at the desk in the bedroom instead
of on a 42" television in the living room. Whether that's important is
ultimately up to the individual.

Overall the 360 and PS3 are very close in capability, much closer
than PS2 and original Xbox. Both consoles are well behind even
modern low-end PCs that have decent gaming performance.

Amen brother.

That's funny. I can buy a low-end PC right now that would cost more
than an Xbox 360 and even a PlayStation 3 and wouldn't be able to play
crossplatform games with quality that's even equal to the consoles.

I must say, as a console gamer, I am already looking forward to the
next-gen Xbox3 and PS4, as well as the rumored 'Wii HD'

The innovative Wii controller throws a whole different topic in. They
did something nobody else was doing, focused on having fun, and
benefitted from it. Hats off to Nintendo.

Agreed.

As a tech enthusiast, as far as the PC side, I am looking forward to
the upcoming DX11 GPU from AMD & Nvidia, the R8xx/Evergreen and GT300,
as well as Intel's 'manycore' Larrabee architecture.

Is there really any evidence that DX11 will be that more compelling
than DX10? And was DX10 really that much more compelling than DX9?
I'm not trying to be overly skeptical here, as I look forward to new
technology too, but I get the increasing sense (especially after
eyeballing FC2 at DX10 at high resolutions with everything maxed) that
we are "there" when it comes to graphic quality, and that game
developers should be focusing on things like immersion, value to
consumer, overall fun factor. Breaking away from the hyped corporate
marketing-team inspired bull**** and focusing on how to appeal to
gamers rather than buyers of well advertised crap.

On Aug 1, 11:15*am, wrote:
On Sat, 1 Aug 2009 00:57:35 -0700 (PDT), argento32



wrote:
On Aug 1, 4:00*am, wrote:
On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:13:43 -0700 (PDT), parallax-scroll

wrote:
On Jul 31, 1:30*pm, Tim O wrote:
On Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:48:19 -0700 (PDT), Air Raid

wrote:
The Xbox 360 and PC versions of id's Rage sport higher framerates than
thePlayStation 3version, the latest issue of Edge magazine reveals..

I realize this post is intended to start a flame war, and as a fan of
PC gaming, I often try to wind up the console players, but lets take a
serious look at the issue.

Rage was programmed by id, traditionally a PC game company.
The XBox360 shares so much architecture with the PC, that it's not
surprising an id game would run well on it.

Actually that is not really true. *Although the Xbox 360 shares much
in common with PC architecture on the software side, as far as
Microsoft's tools, development environment, DirectX API, etc, but if
you take a close look at the actual hardware architecture of the 360,
it's not a PC at all. *
The Xenon CPU is a custom triple-core PowerPC.
No PC uses PowerPC CPU that I'm aware of. *

Which is really a testament to how good DirectX is at running on
multiple CPU platforms. *What a shame that the PS3 came out with the
selling point that it was some sort of super computer of the future,
with all sorts of mind boggling possibilities, when the reality is
that the aging XBox 360, despite it's on-paper specs, simply had a
much more mature software architecture with which to build games upon.

The Xenos GPU, is also a
custom piece of silicon, that has no direct PC counterpart.

Very true, because the average 3 year old PC runs circles around it.
We would need to go back further to find a true PC counterpart.

Although
PC GPUs that shipped after the 360, starting with the R600 (Radeon HD
2900), took after the 360's GPU, it would not be correct to say the
360's graphics architecture is based on any PC design. *The embedded
graphics memory is one of many features that make the 360's Xenos GPU
a very "anti PC" architecture. It's not unlike the GameCube & Wii,
which, like 360, use a PowerPC CPU and a highly custom, console-
specific GPU created from the ground up specifically for the console.

Not disagreeing, would just like to once again point out that all
these games, despite their higher price tag, not only perform inferior
to their PC versions, but also lag behind in terms of control options,
modifications and the like.

Unlike the original Xbox which used a GPU (NV2A) very similar to the
GeForce 4. Overall, Xbox was just a slightly modified PC in almost
every way, from it's Celeron/Pentium III CPU, to its bus architecture,
to its GPU.

They should have made the 360 more like a PC, since a PC is better at
gaming.

The PS3 actually has more PC-based architecture in it than the 360
does. *

Difficult to imagine. *The PC and Sony are kind of like a water and
wood combination.. *the result can be pretty in the short term and
tends to rot over time.

While the CELL CPU is totally alien to PC architecture, the RSX
GPU is very much a PC-based design, it's basicly a stripped down
GeForce 7800.

How unfortunate for those that paid a lot for this crapstink thinking
they would get entertainment value out of it.

The few technical articles I've read about the PS3 seem to infer that
its an extremely powerful console, but that power is difficult to
exploit.

And power that is difficult to exploit is not very powerful is it?

Sony built something great, but also very proprietary. If you
look at their technology through the years, that is very typical Sony.

That's Sony alright. *Every technology decision is founded in "how can
we lock them into our brand?", rather than "how can we make our brand
known for value proposition to the consumer". *Just like Apple.

For programmers that aren't completely immersed in PS3 architecture,
making a port must be very difficult.

Making a fun game has been a challenge for them too.

The PS3 is really not much more powerful than the Xbox 360. *The
biggest advantage PS3 has, is the amount of floating point performance
it gets from the CELL CPU (over 200 GFLOPs) *It's roughly twice that
of the Xbox 360 CPU (over 100 GFLOPs) .

If only processing floating point numbers were fun, this would make
for great gaming!

The 360's Xenos GPU is very much superior to the RSX GPU in PS3.

Therein lies the crux of the thread subject line.

For the most part, the extra power that CELL has, has to go into
making up for the shortcomings of RSX, just to get roughly upto the
360's level in graphics. *Sure there are some PS3 games specifically
written to take full advantage of the architecture which outperform
any 360 game, yet there are so many more 360 games that outperform the
same game on PS3, and some 360-only games that outshine anything on
PS3.

And almost all of them, where a port to PC was even attempted, perform
better than either one, offering better graphics, even with lots of
other services running in the background, an e-mail client, the PC
doubling as a web server, and so forth.

Overall the 360 and PS3 *are very close in capability, much closer
than PS2 and original Xbox. * Both consoles are well behind even
modern low-end PCs that have decent gaming performance.

Amen brother.

I must say, as a console gamer, I am already looking forward to the
next-gen Xbox3 and PS4, as well as the rumored 'Wii HD'

The innovative Wii controller throws a whole different topic in. *They
did something nobody else was doing, focused on having fun, and
benefitted from it. *Hats off to Nintendo.

As a tech enthusiast, as far as the PC side, I am looking forward to
the upcoming DX11 GPU from AMD & Nvidia, the R8xx/Evergreen and GT300,
as well as Intel's 'manycore' Larrabee architecture.

Is there really any evidence that DX11 will be that more compelling
than DX10? *And was DX10 really that much more compelling than DX9?
I'm not trying to be overly skeptical here, as I look forward to new
technology too, but I get the increasing sense (especially after
eyeballing FC2 at DX10 at high resolutions with everything maxed) that
we are "there" when it comes to graphic quality, and that game
developers should be focusing on things like immersion, value to
consumer, overall fun factor. *Breaking away from the hyped corporate
marketing-team inspired bull**** and focusing on how to appeal to
gamers rather than buyers of well advertised crap.

Screw tech talk.

I find PC Gaming annoying and prefer console gaming. I don't care what
the power under the hood is. I know what I like though and PC gaming
isn't for me I'll take my PS3 and 360 anyday.

It's okay man. *A lot of people just stick to playing tic tac toe on
paper because it gives them a headache to try to wrap their feeble
minds around the technology.

And this is where your argument loses credibility because you've
revealed yourself to be an elitist jackass.

On Aug 2, 12:32*pm, Tim O wrote:
On Sun, 2 Aug 2009 08:09:13 -0700 (PDT), argento32

wrote:
Girls don't touch trolls like you.Stick to your fantasies. Did you
have to look up all those big words yourself it did mommy help you?

The guy is a name changing troll in the newsgroup, but if you're going
to play match-wits, he definitely has you beat.

Perhaps just leave it alone.

I don't know... neither one of them really impressed with their
flames. At least argento32 didn't need to go vulgar.

On Aug 1, 12:34 pm, wrote:
On Sat, 1 Aug 2009 16:26:54 +0100, "The dog from that film you saw"



wrote:

wrote in message
.. .

Is there really any evidence that DX11 will be that more compelling
than DX10? And was DX10 really that much more compelling than DX9?
I'm not trying to be overly skeptical here, as I look forward to new
technology too, but I get the increasing sense (especially after
eyeballing FC2 at DX10 at high resolutions with everything maxed) that
we are "there" when it comes to graphic quality, and that game
developers should be focusing on things like immersion, value to
consumer, overall fun factor. Breaking away from the hyped corporate
marketing-team inspired bull**** and focusing on how to appeal to
gamers rather than buyers of well advertised crap.

we are not 'there' in computer graphics.
does a race game look like real life cars - in the same way a crappy low
resolution AVI can ? - does a desert in fallout 3 look like a real life
desert?
does a character in a modern game look like a real person?
no no and no.
we are still in the 'looks like a cartoon 'era.

Whether or not the graphics are "there" is a subjective discussion we
could debate all day I suppose. I don't think it makes much sense to
choose a specific game (i.e. Fallout 3 etc) and say because the
artistic style of that game is not realistic enough to your tastes,
that it is a benchmark for what current technology is capable of.
While I've had plenty of fun with some of Bethesda's games, I wouldn't
say realistic graphic style is their strong point. Many 3D artists
are also into comics and related drawing styles, so a cartoony look
often creeps into their work by design.

To me, how much fun I have with a game is all that matters. "Good"
graphics (which I define as not only visually appealing but also
running consistently smooth on whatever machine I'm running it on) do
not necessarily have to be realistic to be immersive to me. TF2 was a
good example of cartoonish graphics that resulted in a game that I
enjoyed. Arma2 is an example of a very ambitious attempt at realism
which probably makes some tradeoffs in the fun-factor area in order to
do so.

Maybe I am one of those where a certain level of surrealism can
enhance the gameplay. You mentioned race games.. I find the graphics
in Grid to be as realistic as a racing *game* needs to be. Do they
look like real cars? The answer probably depends on who you ask. If
I want total realism, I should hope someone comes out with a
contraption that is perfectly modeled like the inside of a car, which
I can sit in...and, it has features built in that actually break my
legs in real life if I slam into a wall too hard. Very realistic!
Fun? I guess, if you want a true racing sim you gotta take the real
life bumps and bruises along with it. Instead of playing first person
shooters, lets just get real guns and go out in a field somewhere and
shoot at each other. Granted there won't be any respawns when we die,
but at least its realistic.

Isn't the whole reason we are playing games to get away from reality
a bit? Isn't exercising our imagination part of the fun? Is what we
really are after is an interpretation of real life that plays off
metaphors of reality, without requiring us to experience the less
pleasant aspects of the same real life activity?

This is why I don't think graphics need to be perfectly realistic,
only immersive, and to me even graphics with varying levels of
cartoonishness or surrealism can still be immersive. Your mileage may
vary.

If you truly believe what you're saying in this post then your whole
argument about how PC gaming is so much better because the graphics
capabilities of PCs is notably higher doesn't make any sense.

You're absolutely right that graphics don't have to be top-of-the-line
in order for a gaming experience to be great. From that perspective,
PC games really have no advantage because anything above and beyond
what consoles do is just gravy.

Top end consoles games are plenty immersive, not just from a graphics
perspective but from a game design and/or concept perspective as well.

The whole "my PC is better than your console" mentality is really just
absurd.

On Aug 1, 9:20*pm, "Tom" wrote:
"Memnoch" wrote in message

...

On Sat, 1 Aug 2009 13:14:17 -0700 (PDT), parallax-scroll
wrote:

I would say that within the next 5 years or so, realtime graphics on
PC will rival the first Toy Story movie. *Many would say PC graphics
have already surpassed Toy Story, but they confuse realistic artwork
with technical graphics quality, and it just isn't true.

Interesting that you mention Toy Story (2005). Compare that to say Final
Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001). Even 8 years later that film has
phenomenal artwork. Games wise I think Toy Story has been surpassed and I
don't think we are too far from equaling the Final Fantasy film.

You mean 1995 for Toy Story :-). I agree with your statement though. I
actually went and saw FFTSW at theatres, and though I was blown away by the
graphics animation in that movie, still unrivalled even for any PC animation
to this day, but the story was pretty weak so I thought it was not worth it.
That and the fact it was a total box office bomb. I wondered if if the
producers and distributors (Square and Columbia Pictures respectively) put
any thought into the risk of making this movie. It cost nearly $140m to make
(probably would be cheaper today with the newer graphics technologies), but
it barely broke even, if at all, even with rentals included after the
theatre gig was up. On opening weekend, there were only about 60-70 people
in the whole theatre and it opened in over 2600 theatres nationwide. *By
week four, it was down to less than 150 theatres being shown. By week six,
theatres gave up on it.

It ranks right up there with some of the biggest budget bombs ever made.

Two words: uncanny valley.

On Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:25:40 -0400, William Wparks023@gmail wrote:

On Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:09:46 GMT, " gnomon wrote:

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:01:20 -0400, William Wparks023@gmail wrote:

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:05:48 +0100, Shawk
wrote:

Nice troll... certainly got a number of bites. I'd give it 8/10 except
that with the x-posted groups the replies were entirely predictable - it
was hardly a challenge. 6/10 is fair I think.

Nice (although somewhat vacant) attempt to gain attention and a
feeling of self importance by adding a follow up. I'll wait to see
how your attempt turns out before giving it a final score though.

In that case let me jump in! I score Shawk's follow-up high for
accuracy, but deduct a bit for scoring such a mediocre troll above
5/10. On the other hand you gave those stylistic points right back
with your IKYABWAI ... ... so in all I dunno about a final verdict
either. Should the ref keep calling out the seconds after ...9, 10,
or mightn't it be better to just call in the medics?

Looks like we may be winding down, so I give Shawk a 2/10 and his
sock-puppet account (which he likes to crossdress while using) a .5/10
at the peak of my optimism.

If we can get a few more, I've got plenty of scoring to dole out?

Before making any further attempts at trolling you should learn how to
look up ips. Unless you want to continue scratching bottom.

just my $.02, as they say.

On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:01:33 GMT, " gnomon wrote:

Before making any further attempts at trolling you should learn how to
look up ips. Unless you want to continue scratching bottom.

just my $.02, as they say.

You can always feel free to suck it if you wanted to make another $.02
the easy way that is.