MikeB said:
I think you are mixing things up, I like Blu-Ray technology but I love the Cell technology! If you really want to know, I have been advocating similar approaches to processing technologies since the early 90s. Coming from an Amiga background (heterogeneous multi-processing) there were some innovative forward thinking new solutions, one of which was the multi-processing BeBox computer (inspired by the Amiga) in 1995. The hardware approach was very right, sadly with the Windows and MacOS dominance, legacy software compatibility is more powerful than innovation and the market was being held back from any real such advancements for a decade. Luckily legacy compatibility plays less a part with game consoles and allows for leap frogging competitors from a core technology perspective. Being a tech enthusiast, I also followed the demoscene a lot. Programmers and artists who really explore ways to get the most out of the hardware. This isn't really possible on ever changing diverse PC hardware and I never liked this and also Windows has become so horribly inefficient. So it's a combination of different factors why I like the PS3 so much. It has a solid technological foundation together with a solid userbase and very talented developers supporting it. The PS3 is market changing hardware, not only for Blu-Ray but also serves as a stepping stone towards (long overdue) much more modern computing architectures. |
Demo Scene is not about pushing hardware to its limits as much as it is about finding a limitation in what you're doing in order to give the appearance of more advanced visuals ... Often what is done is not much different from pre-rendering backgrounds (as was done in the Resident Evil Remake).
While Windows (and other modern operating systems) does have a large overhead, if it is taking more than 10% of your system resources you're doing something wrong and gaining 10% of processing power is pretty meaningless in terms of improving visuals now.
Anyways, the primary reason why the ever changing hardware approach of the PC became the dominant approach is because hardware is cheap in comparison to the cost of optimizing most programs ... Adding $25 at retail to the cost of every program ends up being far more expensive to the average user than telling them to spend $1000 to upgrade their computer every 2 (and now 4) years.
