Playstation 3 hands-on....is 1080p gaming in the cards?
Gaming site Kikizo claim to have gotten some seat time with a PS3
development kit running on near final hardware and have found out some very nice tidbits of information from three
separate (unnamed) developers.Among other things, they note that the hardware designs we've seen will likely change before launch, native 1080p games with full effects are unlikely, and that launch games are being designed with a 10x DVD drive in mind. There is also much praise for Sony's machine, with developers noting that it will probably be capable of handling more effects and geometry than the Xbox 360. These statements aren't surprising, 720p will likely be the sweet spot for gaming this generation, anything more than that increases memory needs to an almost impossible level, but the PS3 should be able to scale to match whatever your TV accepts just like the 360.
Also worth noting is that the developers they spoke to are targeting a fall launch as most likely. Other recent PS3 news from Joystiq has suggested the 2x Blu-ray drive it is most likely to feature will be the same speed as a 12x DVD player. If developers actually do make a 20GB game we could be looking at loading screens for quite a while. The development kit Kikizo looked at had no Blu-ray drive so they couldn't test those capabilities at all.
[Via Evil Avatar forums]
Filed under: Sony
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Patrick @ Feb 11th 2006 3:13PM
Some of the developer comments were kind of surprising (e.g. "Realistically, as libraries and experience with both machines grow, I think the PS3 will start showing things the 360 will choke at"). The difference between PS3 and 360 may be larger that Microsoft might like us to believe, over time.
I hope Sony shows more stuff soon though. I hate having someone describe something to you, second-hand.
Matt @ Feb 11th 2006 4:29PM
The 2x blu-ray (based on the gamespot graph) would be between a 6 and 7x DVD drive.
Jose Godinez @ Feb 11th 2006 4:41PM
This is a quote from eHomeUpgrade...
"Blu-ray single speed transfers data at a constant rate of 36Mbps (Megabits per second) or 4.5 MBps (Megabytes per second)... ... DVD single speed is rated at a little over 1.32MBps max. A 12X DVD, such as the one in the Xbox 360, transfers data at rates between 8.2 and 16.5 MBps for an average of around 13MBps."
Sounds like single speed actually doubles 12XDVD... I could be wrong. I don't know this to be true, just passing on info. Later...
Richard Lawler @ Feb 11th 2006 7:37PM
Jose, I think you mixed up the MBps and the Mbps. If you look at your qoute, single speed Blu-ray is 4.5 megaBYTES per second, while 2x blu-ray is 9 megaBYTES per second, becvause blu-ray reads the same speed all along the disc.
a 12x DVD drive varies from 8 - 16 megaBYTES per second depending on where the data is being read (inner edge slower than outer edge of the disc)
You won't see single speed Blu-ray drives because it would be too slow to play the movies, check here for more info:
http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/
speeds below are in MegaBITS(Mbps), divide by 8 for speed in megaBYTES (MBps).
" How fast can you read/write data on a Blu-ray disc?
According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future. "
12x DVD speed = 16,230.47KB/s = 15.849609375megaBYTES/sec
http://www.matisse.net/bitcalc/
http://www.osta.org/technology/dvdqa/dvdqa4.htm
Matt Gerlach @ Feb 11th 2006 9:58PM
Going off of the gamespot.com (not joystiq) graph, the 12x speed (full disc) is about a 4x blu-ray drive.
Many people expect the discs to be the full 9gb (that is why we are going with blu-ray for sony right?), so I assume it hits the full speed.
The only problem is...the speed they go with right now, is probably the speed they are going to have to stay with for the life of the console. You cant go with a 2x now, 2 years from now upgrade to 4x. What is the point? Developers cant expect to see a 4x drive, when you have the possibility that the majority (assume most people buy it at the beginning) have a 2x drive. So you are calling for 150 megabits/sec, when most consoles can only get 75 megabits/sec.
Richard Lawler @ Feb 11th 2006 10:27PM
Even if the disc is full, the vast majority of the data on a DVD is not at the outer edge. Only the data at the outer dge will be read at maximum speed, so to compare the maximum speed of a DVD drive to the constant speed of a blu-ray drive is flawed. Most of the data is going to be read at speeds slower than that, and thats what programmers design for.
A 12x DVD drive would not even be close to a 4x blu-ray drive through most of the disc, and it would only be close, but still slower at the very outer edge of the disc, compared to a Blu-ray drive that would read at 18MBps everywhere.
To say a 2x Blu-ray drive compares to a 12x DVD drive speed-wise is a pretty accurate statement in my opinion, it's not a big difference. The key element here is that for stuff like game data, if designers do suddenly fill up the disc w/ 20gb's of textures, it would take an incredibly long time to load them, so it is unlikely many games will really take advantag of the space, other than FMV playback.
Matt Gerlach @ Feb 12th 2006 11:03AM
I agree on the max space/load time aspect.
Now...if they dont fill the disk because it would take so long to load, is there a point then? The console industry, your hardware has to be the same (spec-wise) for the life of that console. You can add on (like say MS's add on HD-DVD drive), but you can not require that add on be there for game developers to develop for (people may not have it).
So...is there a point to blu-gen in the gaming world right now, outside of Sony trying to avoid losing another format war?
Pogube @ Jul 5th 2006 4:51AM
It's cool...
Iruceon @ Jul 5th 2006 5:59PM
I don't know. I don't even want to know...