Yeah, it's been mentioned often. Uncompressed sound is a capacity whore, especially with that many channels. To top it off, Insomniac's partnering the game's extensive environmental damage feature with textured sound (ie: different sounds when objects hit the ground, depending on what type of floor it is, how it hit) and then positioning this on the soundstage.

Edit: Damn, Cetra responded after I posted:

Could it be because of the water simulations the cell has to be running on some stages? 4GB a stage? SL BR are 25GB, it's a bit much for them to be topping it off so soon.

But they're not so huge as to take up that much space. The texture work on the dragons is impressive, but overall there seems to be a lack of either good ones or decent AF.

IIRC, both the CELL and RSX handle audio to some degree, so it wouldn't be a problem there. As for the BR streaming, I'd have to find out what the bandwidth is for a 2x BR drive.

I'll give you this much, considering the Menials (mutilated humanoid enemies in Resistance) have some of the best skin texture work around even in the close shots. Throw in the massive stages claimed by both the media and Insomniac themselves and you've got a lot of models to cover.

Well, I won't say it quite like that. The developers have the space, and the tools in front of them to present us with varied environments. Whether they're willing and/or talented enough is the question. It's what seperates the White Knight Stories and Ridge Racer 7 from Sega's pathetic golf game.

Cetra: Good point. If I can get more variety in my game that is always welcome ^^

MetalSphere: Good points, all of which seem quite plausible too.

Na those are mostly procedural in nature so they don't take much space. I bet most textures just have a few layers of damage textures. So figure the entire map is actually textured four times.

Again it depends on a lot of things. What if the dragons have 15 levels of damage textures? This honestly isn't an unreasonable number for a main model. So you just multiplied your required texture space of one model by 15. Apply the same idea to enemy models but say with 4-5 layers. Oh and you need your normal maps and lighting maps and such for each texture layer as well. Starting to get the picture? Now because of the nature of this type of thing you won't be loading all 15 layers at once. Rather when a texture 'gets damaged' you will swap the texture out with another texture. This is commonly what is done when developers mention the streaming abilities of the Blu-Ray drive. Your entire level can be 4Gb, but you won't be loading it all into memory at once.

It isn't an issue of processing. Actually uncompressed sound has no processing requirements because...you don't need to uncompress the stream. Also 2x BR-Drive = 72Mbps. Now you might be thinking "3Mbps isn't a big deal compared to that." Well that again isn't the whole story. If you are directly streaming audio without a buffer then you can't interrupt the stream at any point to load something else or the sound will obviously skip.

Well the obvious solution is you can make a sound buffer, then if you need to interrupt your sound stream then you can start reading from the buffer. But let's consider that. I just mentioned uncompressed sound runs at about 3 Mbps. A reasonable length buffer you would need when considering the need to stream in and out textures on almost constant basis would be a 60ish MB sound buffer. You are going to use 60 MB of 256MB of main memory just to buffer your sound stream? Uh no.... And of course this is all assuming you'd even be able to do something like this. You also need to account for seek times and such when reading stuff off the disc. I just really don't see it being a reasonable option to stream uncompressed sound off the disc if you are doing any type of texture streaming which most PS3 games will be doing.


This is true. Developers still need to be willing to make use of such space and tools. Fortunately texturing these days don't really require a lot of manpower or time.

PS3 Startup and Motorstorm from same magazine that broke the ZOE3/SH5 confirmation.

Source

Key points:

Pics:

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm9.JPG

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm1.JPG

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm2.JPG

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm3.JPG

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm4.JPG

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm5.JPG

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm6.JPG

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm7.JPG

http://www.psm3mag.com/resources/psm3/psm8.JPG

And the level itself probably has light and normal maps for the various damage textures underneath. I see where you're going. The size of the stage, the various models (cars, shelves, desks) will all have this to a lesser degree.


Well, the drive alone won't be enough, it'll be caching quite a bit on the HDD itself to help it along (we'd need a 6x BR drive to equal a 12x DVD drive's streaming rate).

While what we get coming off the disc may not be uncompressed in the end, in part due to the concerns you raised, it'll likely make up a far larger part of the disc's capacity than nearly any game to date.

Skill and art direction are, though. These two will take care of themselves though, one good group to watch is Japanese developers as they get fiddling with textures and shaders.

Bad news for Sony.

Sony's grand scheme seems to be quickly falling apart.

The source

Hint: Of course retailers are going to favor a cheap console over an expensive one, they can stock more of them and get more $$$ per batch.

Of course that's true in Japan. Considering how PS3 releases with 100,000 over there. PS3 in the US should fare much better.

Besides, Japan loves the quirky stuff.

I like the quirky stuff too, but that's beside the point.

EDIT: On a second note.....The PS3 can't be lifted with one hand? Wow...is it really that heavy? Didn't see that coming....

It weighs eleven pounds and is slightly wider and taller than the original Xbox, so the weight and the way it's spread make that a bad idea.

Oh wow, I really always thought it was closer to the weight of the PS2, because it never looked that big in the shots. Maybe because it was always in front of a large HDTV....

I'd be scared to move mine around if I had one....just because it looks so fragile. And if you drop it.......:aargh:

Meh. At least the PS3 weighs a pound lighter then my 360, so that'll be a plus for me.

Of course Wii will sell more this winter, there will be way more available. Don't need a survey to figure that out. Next year is the big question in who will sell the most.

Agreed. They're taking a survey right in the middle of Nintendo country -- Japan. Obviously retailers over there will put their money on the Wii selling better than the limited-supply PS3. Not only that, but the Wii will definitely be launching with likely ten times the amount of units the PS3 will be launching with.

I wonder, though, what a similar survey would result in if done in the States.

I found an interesting tidbit of info on Assasin's Creed about AI. According to Ubisoft the crowd AI of the 360 version will be slightly better then the PS3 version apparently due to it's improved threading. Not that this matters, it's just the crowd, and if I push them I want them to stay out of my way and not pursue me anyway, lol.

But really though. Is this do to improved threading of the 360? Or just that because Ubidoft has been spending so much time making 360 games lately that they're knowledge of how the PS3 works is really what's limitting them? Not that they would admitt to that one if it were true.

Link here: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3154110

Ubisoft is very much in Microsoft's coffers after the Splinter Cell 5 exclusivity announcement. They've already got SC:DA in the pipes for the PS3, but to cut off the console even though by the time SC5 rolls around it'll be moving full tilt?

That's the problem with Ubisoft. The Montreal branch always wants to go Sony only, the California branch always wants to go M$, and Japan always wants to go multiplatform. The only problem with cutting this SC after all the others being on all systems is that they've slit their throat in being able to continue the series on any other system. So if the 360 tanks, Splinter Cell will go along with it. Then again after doing what they did, perhaps they deserve it.

Well, I wouldn't word it so strongly, but what they're doing is pretty stupid on the face of things. The series has enjoyed very good sales on nearly all of the platforms it's been on so why suddenly (and willingly) restrict yourself to one platform even though the other is likely to catch bigger sales?

The simple answer to this is moneybags, paid exclusive, etc...

PS3 XMB Icons: http://www.jp.playstation.com/hardware/ps3/index.html

Edit: PS3 Game and Peripheral pricing revealed:

Source

IGN's got it up too.

Adapter:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ardadapter.jpg

Remote:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../PS3Remote.jpg


Jump for joy ladies and gentlemen, looks like getting your PS2 saves onto the PS3 will be cheap it seems. And the prices are far more reasonable than the $70 Sixaxis rumor going around. As if Sony was really going to pass up the option of providing another peripheral, one that nearly every PS2 owner will probably buy.

So, a PS1/PS2 Memory Card adapter, eh? Well, I guess that's one answered question. No options at all would've sucked, but now we got a choice at least.

Are those confirmed for the US? Because it seems the US doesn't quite get the same cost as Japan. It looks like the prices abvoe were all in yen. Any luck on US Prices?

You didn't catch all of IGN, BTW...

I have no idea how that carries, but it sounds significantly more.

Nope, those Sony titles work out at roughly $50 US, and that Sega Golf game is about $60. From Software's like Square-Enix in that they can charge whatever the hell they want and know Japan will still eat it up no matter how terrible it is. =)

I was just thinking, will there be a PS1/PS2 controller adaptor? I liked how I could use my PSX controllers with Timesplitters when I got my PS2 on release, but do I have to buy another controller for Resistance multi?

There will be an adapter for PS1/2 controllers which will also support the custom controllers for thoes systems too. If thoes controllers will work for PS3 games has yet to be seen. If they do though any game that uses the motion sensor won't be playable with thoes controllers obviously.

A USB adapter/multitap for PS2 controllers is probably on the way, and even games that use the tilt function will probably be playable as I doubt that'll be the only control method. As for the games, Japan has a different pricing model altogether not to mention everything over there is more expensive.

Source

They're just blowing away the 360's accesory line-up and pricing out of the water, especially if they stick with the controller price at $40 instead of the $50 wireless one MS provides. Only thing you can really compare the memory card adapter to would be the 360's memory card itself, where one is $13 and the other is $40. Hopefully Sony'll keep the prices as close to the Japanese ones as possible.

Again, why would they bump them up substantially? Japan usually has higher prices, their games already cost more (and have a far greater price range then ours) as do most gaming items, period.

Maybe we'll see the memory card adapter at $15, but there really isn't much reason to bump the controller's price up when you have the pricing edge here.

Doesn't the US almost always get a better deal than most countries? At least that's what it seems like. Except possibly Japan.

I like the Li-Ion Idea though. Good stuff.