PS3 games and the lack of 1080p

[MikeB]

LordTheNightKnight said:

MikeB said:

LordTheNightKnight said:

 

Here we go again. Still not getting detail is stored in the texelss in 3D games, not in the pixels. It's texture resolution that matters here more than screen resolution.

Of course texture resolution is of relevance just like rendering resolution, aliasing problems are however usually not noticed in textures (hand picked color contrast) but around in-game characters, on track edges, powerlines, etc.

With regard to texture quality (details), Blu-Ray and a default harddrive comes into play. More space on Blu-Ray means more and/or higher quality textures can be streamed. The harddrive can be used to store speed critical data (notice the texture popups in for example Mass Effect) or to be used as cache for the Blu-Ray drive to stream data.

Uncharted is one of the visually most impressive games this generation without any in-game load times, this is achieved by seamless streaming (game does not need to install to HD). But this is just Naughty Dog's first effort, they expect to be able to deliver dramatic improvement with future games.

So what if Blu-Ray and the hard drive allow more texture room in the Roms? You still need room in the RAM to actually show them off. That is why 1080p is not feasible for most games. Resolution needs RAM to be higher. The PS3 has only 512MB.

It's not that hard to put together.

We are talking about a device which has very high bandwidth, so not all data needs to be in memory for levels like was for instance the case for Resistance 1 and Motorstorm, first generation PS3 games which only streamed 7.1 quality audio. Note they do still look great even while having all the data pre-loaded for each level!

This is where texture (and to lesser extend geometry) streaming comes into play. With Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction Insomniac's game engine matured further into a next gen gaming engine.

To quote Insomniac:

"Ratchet & Clank on the PS3 uses texture streaming which allows us to get about 150 MB of extra VRAM in each level. This allows for much higher resolution textures than we used in Resistance, as well as more texture variety."

However that's only the beginning, expect more texture streaming as well as geometry streaming for Resistance 2.