@jetrii
About TPS vs FPS:
Yes, I'm sure many other TPS swap models a-la-Uncharted. I only brought it as an example because it is a game that I find beautiful to look at and still was able to use such an obvious optimization (incidentally I read that Naughty dog is going to use the hyper-detailed Drake model for both cutscenes and gameplay in Uncharted 2... I wonder if it will make an obvious difference visually)
That was the whole core of my TPS/FPS idea anyway: TPS can decide more easily on texture/geometry vs performance tradeoffs because the view scene is much more "controlled". Controlled as in having a big character right in the middle, in a known and limited range of distances, and in having a much smaller logarithimc spread for the distances of other objects as well.
It seems to me that FPS don't have this luxury because by definition the camera is much more free, and the object right in the middle of the scene, ie the one the player is concentrating his/her attention on, is potentially the worst looking one because of scaling.
About processors:
You seem to be knowledgable on the subject, but I can't understand the whole Cell vs GPUs ongoing issue. From what I read it was my impression that we're moving towards fading the distinction between CPUs and GPUs, or at least that's what I got from my reading about Larrabee, about GPGPUs, and about the ideas that Cell themselves could be responsible for the rendering.
If this generation of consoles ends up with a longer lifespan, couldnt the whole CPU/GPU issue be moot at the point, with Sony sticking with an updated Cell and asking IBM to develop a Larrabee-like rendering subsystem based on a number dedicated SPUs?
Of course additional SPUs could "help in" if required, a bit like Guerrilla did with their deferred rendering techniques, using SPUs to have thousands of real light sources and complex post-processing.
If this is the trend Nvidia is basically the weakest player because their GPGPUs won't be able to match the flexibilty of "real" CPUs (Intel's Larrabee, AMD+ATI could very much move in the same direction, IBM/Sony could as well with Cell)
