Reasonable said:
Quill I'm playing GoW3 right now and that camera's on rails alright! Firm rubber ones I'll admit, so that if I push the stick waaay over to the side it slightly 'blips' beyond the set FOV, but rails nonetheless. It's a great engine, but whether they could or couldn't allow free camera they haven't, and that gives huge advantages in how much you can shove on the screen as the Santa Monica devs know pretty well, if not near enough exactly, what you are capable of putting on screen at any time and can control the streaming of assets/textures/geometry accordingly. A game with full 360 view in your control simply has account for less predictable control of what you're going to choose to put on the screen. GoW3 is also focused on character models (understandably) with very static geometry (even the big moving ones) an minimal phyics so far as I can see from me play experience - which is fine, but again less versitle so far as the evidence seems to show. And I like versitily and control of the camera - so there! Besides, if we're just talking pure visuals then GT5:P - and almost certainly GT5 from the media I've seen - are the real visual masters on PS3 in terms of the produced image on screen. |
See I was like that at first as well. However the arrival of one of the God of War 3 developers on Beyond3d.com was enough to dispel this idea.
But moreover, even if it WAS possible to predetermine it, it just isn't a good idea anyway. First, the time to implement such a system would be better spent doing something else. Second, it would detrimentally affect the time it takes to build levels which negatively affects what art and design can achieve in a fixed amount of time. Third, just outright rendering those objects in the first place would be faster than trying to be "clever."
They cannot optimise as heavily due to the camera as you might think because at any one moment the camera could zoom in and change angle quite considerably over the space of 150ms or 4 frames and there simply is not time to seek and then stream, load and display information unless its already available. The optimisition comes from knowing precisely how many enemies on screen at what time and controlling the scenery and how quickly the player progresses.
You may like control over the camera but such control does not allow for dirty awful floptimisation. You cannot say because Uncharted 2 has X camera and God of War 3 has Y camera that the former has more technical marvel mojo points. I have more quotes if you want me to lay them out for you, but in the end it'll be a victory for education over ignorance and flatulence.
But yeah GT5 is probably the greatest technical marvel of any game released to date when it releases! In this case however its down to personal preferrence really, the majority of technical achievement people call out is in reality an artistic achievement. Technology lets you throw more polygons at a problem but art makes what polygons you've got look far better than you'd imagine. However don't look too hard, just enjoy the game.
Tease.
