So wait the games for the ps3 are all blu-ray ?!

[masterwong]

I find it strange that if all the games that are on the ps3 are blu ray that the games aren't longer , especially comparable to the 360. Forget about graphics quality, even though it should be much better on the ps3 , when considering the same titles, there is no major difference . I mean if a blu ray disc can hold 25 gb and most 360 games are 6 gb.....what are these guys doing? There should be bonus levels , secrets within secrets, massive unlockables , not to mention the audio and all the "downloadable" content already on the disc !

[billysastard]

I find it strange that if all the games that are on the ps3 are blu ray that the games aren't longer , especially comparable to the 360. Forget about graphics quality, even though it should be much better on the ps3 , when considering the same titles, there is no major difference . I mean if a blu ray disc can hold 25 gb and most 360 games are 6 gb.....what are these guys doing? There should be bonus levels , secrets within secrets, massive unlockables , not to mention the audio and all the "downloadable" content already on the disc !

because of the low read speed and seek times of the br drive in the ps3 data has to be stored uncompressed and multiple times across the disc to keep load times acceptable, when done well like on uncharted 2 it works almost seamlessly, almost as well as a gamecube disc, when its done badly you get modnation racers where it takes 5 mins to load the cars, or watch the delay selecting different cars on motostorm 1.

oh and the br discs that ps3 uses can hold 50gb not 25, but on your last point i do agree in theory they should have everything on the disc.

the only exception is res evil 5 gold edition, the 360 version is just the standard re5 game disc and a download code to allow new buyers only to get some free dlc, the ps3 version does have all the gold edition features on the disc, making it much better value than the shoddy 360 verson.

[masterwong]

because of the low read speed and seek times of the br drive in the ps3 data has to be stored uncompressed and multiple times across the disc to keep load times acceptable, when done well like on uncharted 2 it works almost seamlessly, almost as well as a gamecube disc, when its done badly you get modnation racers where it takes 5 mins to load the cars, or watch the delay selecting different cars on motostorm 1.

oh and the br discs that ps3 uses can hold 50gb not 25, but on your last point i do agree in theory they should have everything on the disc.

the only exception is res evil 5 gold edition, the 360 version is just the standard re5 game disc and a download code to allow new buyers only to get some free dlc, the ps3 version does have all the gold edition features on the disc, making it much better value than the shoddy 360 verson.

Wow i didn't know that, so how big is the typical ps3 game ? How many gb actual being used ? And where did u get ur info ? But thats what i mean , things like load times should be gone and the games should be much much much longer. Look at that 360 game blue dragon that use 3 discs I think . I dunno know I just feel that developers should up the ante and start to real use at least 60 % of the ps3 disc space ( i keep hearing they haven't used its full power too graphically that is, but i am not talking about that). I think sony did a wise thing as far as certain specs ,so in theory their machine should have a longer life span , but if what u say is true they need to upgrade the drive . Honestly i feel it was put as an anti-piracy measure only.

[billysastard]

Wow i didn't know that, so how big is the typical ps3 game ? How many gb actual being used ? And where did u get ur info ? But thats what i mean , things like load times should be gone and the games should be much much much longer. Look at that 360 game blue dragon that use 3 discs I think . I dunno know I just feel that developers should up the ante and start to real use at least 60 % of the ps3 disc space ( i keep hearing they haven't used its full power too graphically that is, but i am not talking about that). I think sony did a wise thing as far as certain specs ,so in theory their machine should have a longer life span , but if what u say is true they need to upgrade the drive . Honestly i feel it was put as an anti-piracy measure only.

getting the exact file sizes is hard because they tend to pad the discs but if i remember correctly resistance fall of man was around 17gb in total but with duplicate files and padding removed it was around 3.5gb, most isos for the ps3 seem to be around the 20-30gb range, modern br drives are a lot faster than the ones in the ps3, remember they were new then and it wasnt so much for anti piracy as to get acceptance of the blu-ray video format because sony assumed that everyone with a ps2 was going to run out and buy a ps3, that didnt happen of course but it did help gain wider acceptance of the (inferior to hd-dvd) blu-ray format and no doubt did contribute towards blu-ray winning the format war for video, in fact whilst blu-ray has now caught up with hd-dvd in terms of features it is still a worse format in many peoples minds because of the restrictive drm and region encoding.

[masterwong]

If instead of padding they put any kinda content they would blow the 360 away, weird. Companies only use a console's full potential near the end, like resident evil 4 for the gamecube and god of war for ps2. If they began like that they would make more money.

[ThreeDog]

The padding is there out of technical requirement.. the result of removing it would be even slower loading times, loss of remaining streaming functionality and increased wear on the laser.

Games of the length of the ones you have given as examples cost more to develop on modern systems and take longer to develop on modern systems, so claiming they will make more money is not a sensible statement.. Development costs will increase as will publishing costs if they use 50gb discs so unless they also raise the price of games substantially and sold a lot more copies there is no extra money for filling a blu-ray.

Then you have multi-platform issues as well where they try to keep games the same for each platform.. if they did what you're saying it would result in lots of lost sales. Storyline issues also come into play you don't want to pointlessly add ten hours to a game when it really adds nothing to the experience either.

Simply put until they increase efficiency of development, decrease development costs, convince the public to pay more, have the same media storage capacity in each system including PC, have faster drives and hardware specifications that can really take advantage of what blu-ray could offer you're not going to see any different.

Why do we really need blu-ray when a PC game on two DVDs can offer higher resolutions, higher quality textures/shaders/effects, equal or better cut-scene quality, better load times and still can slide in at under 10gb with compression?

The answer is that the industry is still not ready to fully embrace blu-ray, right now all blu-ray can really offer are larger assets on the disc but this cannot aid texture quality or game length - only less compression on movie scenes and perhaps uncompressed audio.. maybe even an alternative language audio track but nobody does that on the Playstation 3 really.

[masterwong]

The padding is there out of technical requirement.. the result of removing it would be even slower loading times, loss of remaining streaming functionality and increased wear on the laser.

Games of the length of the ones you have given as examples cost more to develop on modern systems and take longer to develop on modern systems, so claiming they will make more money is not a sensible statement.. Development costs will increase as will publishing costs if they use 50gb discs so unless they also raise the price of games substantially and sold a lot more copies there is no extra money for filling a blu-ray.

Then you have multi-platform issues as well where they try to keep games the same for each platform.. if they did what you're saying it would result in lots of lost sales. Storyline issues also come into play you don't want to pointlessly add ten hours to a game when it really adds nothing to the experience either.

Simply put until they increase efficiency of development, decrease development costs, convince the public to pay more, have the same media storage capacity in each system including PC, have faster drives and hardware specifications that can really take advantage of what blu-ray could offer you're not going to see any different.

Why do we really need blu-ray when a PC game on two DVDs can offer higher resolutions, higher quality textures/shaders/effects, equal or better cut-scene quality, better load times and still can slide in at under 10gb with compression?

The answer is that the industry is still not ready to fully embrace blu-ray, right now all blu-ray can really offer are larger assets on the disc but this cannot aid texture quality or game length - only less compression on movie scenes and perhaps uncompressed audio.. maybe even an alternative language audio track but nobody does that on the Playstation 3 really.

Your first point on removing the padding may be incorrect . If you look at the past, the gamecube isos, ps2 isos, the wii and 360 isos have all been shrunk and striped to play on hard drives in particular or burned to disc. The hard drive ones save the laser , load times are the same or faster and the only game i can think about that gave trouble with streaming functionality is gamecube naruto that required an audio fix.

Not a sensible statement lol ouch ! So the Blue dragons and other lengthy games lost money ? Were the Blue dragons and the like the same $50-$60 price of new games or 2-3x the regular price ? Are you taking into account the benefits using one disc instead of 2 or 3 ? They use blu ray in all the games anyway! Its the difference mainly between a mainstream game and xbla game for instance. I mean some of those games are pretty cool and original but obviously lack depth/content. True i don't know if they will make more but we as consumers would get more bang for the buck.

I agree with the "multi-platform issue" but adding ten hours to a game pointless!!!????and adds nothing to the experience ?! Really?

Finally yes the industry apparently is not ready, but how do you know what can and can't go on these blu ray discs? Maybe your are a developer or know peps in the biz i dunno.

[billy_dimashq]

ThreeDog's spot on about padding. It's needed because discs are circular and so data is read more quickly at the edges than on the inside. Even hard drives have the same issue because they are basically circular discs being read while spinning (but I think the difference isn't that great). Removing padding from an iso and playing that from the hard drive isn't like removing the padding and playing it from another disc because the hard drive is inherently quicker than the optical drive to begin with. A padded disc with 100MB of data on the outer edge can be read a lot quicker than a non-padded disc with the same 100MB of data on it but on the inside of the disc.

When stripped isos are burnt back to disc, they should be burnt back in a padded state. Remember the padding is usually just zeros so it doesn't actually make the iso file size larger (you could have a 100MB padded iso with 100MB of data that, when burned to DVDR, takes up 4.7GB of space).

Companies use a console's full potential near the end because that's how it works - the console comes out and developers learn to use it. As time goes by, they learn more and more tricks and just get better at programming to the console's strengths. Reaching a console's full potential at the start of its life is probably impossible. Even if it was possible, it's definitely not desirable. If a game like God of War came out at the start of the PS2's life, we'd become used to such great graphics that later games would not look so great. If by potential you literally just mean disc space, then that's definitely not a mark of potential. I could make a game with everything uncompressed and unoptimised and it'll fill a 50GB BR disc, but hand that code to a seasoned developer and they may be able to knock that down to 5GB. Either way, the game is still the same, and to say the 50GB version is better or reaching the full potential of the BR disc would be a ridiculous claim.

I think God of War 3 is around 40GB? And MGS4 is supposed to be around that size as well.

I think RAM plays the biggest part in how much you can do in a given level. It's no good having all this storage space if you can't get that information into the RAM quickly enough (even if it's installed on the hard drive) to stop things like texture and model pop-up.

The multi-console problem is simply because so many people own a 360. Last gen, the PS2 was the leading console so multi-platform games were designed with the PS2 in mind as that was where the money was at, then they were ported to the Xbox and Gamecube but these ports would rarely play to the other two consoles' strengths.

I think it could be a no-win situation, though. Some people will be happy with extra content, others will complain and say the extra content was thrown in to make up for the lack of a lengthy single-player campaign or whatever. The RE5 example above shows you can use BR effectively even when dealing with a multi-console release.

[masterwong]

So you are saying the padding decreases the "loading" times when read from disc ...ok. Seems like they increased the capacity with blu-ray but no corresponding speed increase.
I think it is the multi-platform issue that is the root of the problem. If developers would take each platform/console separately even with the same game, maybe divide into teams or something we would benefit. (nearly impossible and quite costly i know)
Its about time they use the blu-ray drive and 7-8 processors is all i am saying.

[ThreeDog]

Not a sensible statement lol ouch ! So the Blue dragons and other lengthy games lost money ? Were the Blue dragons and the like the same $50-$60 price of new games or 2-3x the regular price ? Are you taking into account the benefits using one disc instead of 2 or 3 ? They use blu ray in all the games anyway! Its the difference mainly between a mainstream game and xbla game for instance. I mean some of those games are pretty cool and original but obviously lack depth/content. True i don't know if they will make more but we as consumers would get more bang for the buck.They spend more and make less, some games have not made back their money where they may have selling the same amount on the Playstation 2.

More time spent developing, bigger teams, more detail, more deadline bonus, tougher hardware requirements for little gain.

We may get more for our money but what do they get?
These companies do not make games so you can have fun that'is just a side effect.

Developers/Publishers make these games to make money.. and if they have to develop a game for 4-6 years to fill a 50gb disc and sell at the same price.

Unless they're planning on selling something like 20 million copies this just does not make sense and nor does splitting teams for multi-platform games.. that has already been tried and what it comes down to is pleasing the customer and that normally requires making an equal gaming experience otherwise they'll get negative press all over the internet (Look at MAFIA II)

[masterwong]

Its about time they use the blu-ray drive and the 7-8 processors is all i am saying. What that doesn't make sense either ? lol.

[ThreeDog]

Its about time they use the blu-ray drive and the 7-8 processors is all i am saying. What that doesn't make sense either ? lol.

What doesn't mate sense is actually doing that ;)
Also there are not eight processors.

[masterwong]

3.2 ghz cell broadband engine , 1 PPE and 7 SPEs ...yeah they should use all that. I make complete sense you are just blind and think every thing you say is right because you are a moderator.

[ThreeDog]

No, i just do not class the SPE as a fully fledged processor it isn't really like another core either.

Still i stand by my original statement do not expect things to change with the Playstation 3 any time soon, we all wish it would but there we go

Anyway what good was your last line, having an interesting discussion and you have to be a **** about it ;) and no you did not make complete sense because a lot of what you have said kind of goes well against the technological and the practical aspect of developing on the console which we tried to discuss with you.

I stand corrected fairly easily when i am given what i need, remember this in future, you can end a discussion in a friendly way even when you do not manage to prove your case :)

[masterwong]

The padding is there out of technical requirement.. the result of removing it would be even slower loading times, loss of remaining streaming functionality and increased wear on the laser.

Games of the length of the ones you have given as examples cost more to develop on modern systems and take longer to develop on modern systems, so claiming they will make more money is not a sensible statement.. Development costs will increase as will publishing costs if they use 50gb discs so unless they also raise the price of games substantially and sold a lot more copies there is no extra money for filling a blu-ray.

Then you have multi-platform issues as well where they try to keep games the same for each platform.. if they did what you're saying it would result in lots of lost sales. Storyline issues also come into play you don't want to pointlessly add ten hours to a game when it really adds nothing to the experience either.

Simply put until they increase efficiency of development, decrease development costs, convince the public to pay more, have the same media storage capacity in each system including PC, have faster drives and hardware specifications that can really take advantage of what blu-ray could offer you're not going to see any different.

Why do we really need blu-ray when a PC game on two DVDs can offer higher resolutions, higher quality textures/shaders/effects, equal or better cut-scene quality, better load times and still can slide in at under 10gb with compression?

The answer is that the industry is still not ready to fully embrace blu-ray, right now all blu-ray can really offer are larger assets on the disc but this cannot aid texture quality or game length - only less compression on movie scenes and perhaps uncompressed audio.. maybe even an alternative language audio track but nobody does that on the Playstation 3 really.

First paragraph, how do you know that the the padding is a requirement ?! The only way would be to compare a burned ps3 disc backup without padding to an original . No one has copied a ps3 game onto a disc yet .......


Second paragraph, so a better , longer, content packed product, wouldn't make more money or is ” not sensible statement “ Bro of course costs are gonna be more, and the game take longer to make that is EXACTLY what makes the god of wars and metal gears great !! And they make a tonne of cash no?


Third para, you started strong and I began to agree BUT you said “ pointlessly add ten hours to a game” you gotta smoking something strong.


Hey it is risky to put more into a game because there is no guarantee of success , this is why there are few innovators I mean how many FPS and RTS are there ?



No, i just do not class the SPE as a fully fledged processor it isn't really like another core either.

Still i stand by my original statement do not expect things to change with the Playstation 3 any time soon, we all wish it would but there we go

Anyway what good was your last line, having an interesting discussion and you have to be a **** about it ;) and no you did not make complete sense because a lot of what you have said kind of goes well against the technological and the practical aspect of developing on the console which we tried to discuss with you.

I stand corrected fairly easily when i am given what i need, remember this in future, you can end a discussion in a friendly way even when you do not manage to prove your case :)

Haha I wasn't being an @##@ or insulting you, we are on the same side ...we all want kick-ass games. What I am saying is simply USE ALL THE HARDWARE . The problem arises when you say I don't make sense. Its like selling a music album on a DVD but only using a CD capacity its dumb...you can add more songs etc etc. Think of it this way...So I have the latest 50 cent album on a cd and you have it on a dvd , not only do you need better and more expensive hardware to play the dvd , guess what, its the same music. I open my mouth and say “hey fill the damn dvd” Get it?:rolleyes:

[ThreeDog]

True i wish they could do more too, what id love to see is a Mass Effect game (4?) with a universe that is pretty much full. Remember the first game where you could actually land on planets with the mako and explore rather than start a mission?

The padding/duplication revives streaming functionality.. if the laser is not in the right place fast enough you're going to see skipping jumping and popping. Part of the mastering process includes finding the optimal location of data on the disc.

[Angelus3K]

PS3 games don't have padding, the Blu Ray drive is 2x speed and is constant ie the speed doesn't change if the laser is reading the inner or outer circle of the disc.

[billy_dimashq]

PS3 games don't have padding, the Blu Ray drive is 2x speed and is constant ie the speed doesn't change if the laser is reading the inner or outer circle of the disc.

...so it slows down the disc as it gets closer to the edge.

Oh, yeah :)

There's talk of padding files found in PS3 games, though, but I don't think there's much (the rumour that Resistance has 17GB of padding has been debunked).

Not sure whether CLV is only for BR films, though (just like I expect it would be for DVD films). Seems it also applies to games. I'm not a developer so I've no idea whether having a constant speed is a good thing or not but I'd have thought CAV would be better because you can get the maximum read speed out of the drive which is good for loading games more quickly (but means the disc layout needs to be optimised to take advantage).

[ThreeDog]

PS3 games don't have padding, the Blu Ray drive is 2x speed and is constant ie the speed doesn't change if the laser is reading the inner or outer circle of the disc.

Yeah the disc is just pretty much empty and the drive is arse slow.. so much for excuses.

For the record Metal Gear Solid 4 is only 30gb when previous dumps have hit 38gb so there must be padding/duplication as the backup manager will not even copy that content to the drive.

[ogredeschnique]

If instead of padding they put any kinda content they would blow the 360 away, weird. Companies only use a console's full potential near the end, like resident evil 4 for the gamecube and god of war for ps2. If they began like that they would make more money.

There is also the fact that it was a completely new system when it was released.
Just like anything new, people have to learn how to get the most out of it. That takes time.

This is why the games later in the life cycle of the console were better.

The SDK is available to you as well as the pro game creators. The people making the games are doing as good as they know how to at the moment.

Think about the difference between GTA3 and San Andreas. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

[masterwong]

PS3 games don't have padding, the Blu Ray drive is 2x speed and is constant ie the speed doesn't change if the laser is reading the inner or outer circle of the disc.

I presumed 3 dog knew what is was talking about..........lol he finally admits and sees the light " yeah the drives are pretty much empty...." Well 3 dog now would be the time to compare an original copy to a jailbreak disc copy to see if all that jazz about read speed , loading times was true (bet there is no difference haha) . Its funny how billy_dimashq has 2 posts and joined right around when i started the thread to back 3dog up..his first words "ThreeDog's spot on about padding.."lmao:)

[ThreeDog]

I presumed 3 dog knew what is was talking about..........lol he finally admits and sees the light " yeah the drives are pretty much empty...." Well 3 dog now would be the time to compare an original copy to a jailbreak disc copy to see if all that jazz about read speed , loading times was true (bet there is no difference haha) . Its funny how billy_dimashq has 2 posts and joined right around when i started the thread to back 3dog up..his first words "ThreeDog's spot on about padding.."lmao:)

Already compared loading times from the hard drive are decreased dramatically and ripping speed is very time consuming the drive is just slow as hell. Jailbreak disc copies do not work correctly. I do not know who billy_dimashq is.

I was led to believe that the discs were padded by some reputable people as well as certain rips by scene groups particularly the rip of MGS4, I took their word for it. I can admit when im wrong and just have :)

All this means is that developers do not fill the discs and do not wish to use the full potential of the hardware, some of them hiding behind excuses others not wanting to spend the money.