So Sony really got it right with Blu Ray

[MikeB]

Fumanchu said:

MikeB said:

NJ5 said:

MikeB said:

Constant read speeds requires a considerable different approach as compared variable read speeds. Devs are still learning how to get the most out of this. Konami has been designing games for CD and DVD for ages, MGS4 is their first Blu-Ray game. Motorstorm 1 was a slow loader for instance, Pacific Rift with a lot more varierty and more impressive visuals loads a lot faster.

Constant read speeds should make optimization easier, not harder... After all, it makes the drive's behavior more predictable, therefore it should be easier to take the most out of it.

Yes, that's the case for the long run. But not for the short run with devs adapting their legacy loading routine approaches.

 

Can you explain what this is? And why it would affect the constant linear velocity of the BD?

Do you have any seek time comparison specs?

There are different loading routines, for example one game on the Amiga would quickly load an intro logo animation together with loading music first, as the loading is optimised the game engine expects data to be delivered at certain time spans (failing to do so can cause problems and the game for instance stops loading), copying them onto the Amiga harddrive without loading routines patches the game takes almost exactly the same time to load as from diskette, no matter that data can be delivered much faster.

Another Amiga game may just load one big file before execution and this will load much faster when on the harddrive, considering modern games have far more data than there is RAM this isn't the modern approach for loading within games.

In the past games mostly loaded into memory in one go, then games loading started to be devided up into game sections, for instance most data for each level is loaded seperately (less memory demands, faster loading). Then streaming game engine were developed, where parts of levels such as mostly audio and graphics are streamed within each seperate level (less memory demands, faster loading).

MGS4 was developed to run on the harddrive, optimising for data streaming (harddrive cache / Blu-Ray) would have required a lot more effort, using the harddrive you don't need to optimise as much. It requires a lot more planning (which data to stream to harddrive from Blu-Ray disc in advance to make everything work as seamless as possible) and thought.

Regarding seek times follow the link I provided earlier, read the quoted comments and follow the link there for more information.