MikeB on 10 Jan 2007 wrote (that's before the PS3's official launch here in Europe):

"People have already managed to distribute Linux games for the PS3 on DVD, if they would add Nintendo Wii controller support and some Wii-sports inspired games (hopefully SPE enhanced for fast 3D graphics), I will likely buy a standalone Wii controller for the PS3!

Wishful thinking: I think a PS3 or 4 would be powerful enough support VR headsets in amazing ways. IMO that could really revolutionize the gaming industry, we have already seen motion tracking used in Virtual Reality. The PS3 is able to render stored images as falling photographs is a nice novelty.

But imagine what could someday become possible with VR support. Imagine watching a Blu-Ray movie through a VR headset, with you appearing to be seated in a cinema watching the movie played on a large screen in the virtual distance. Imagine yourself driving Gran Turismo 6 with a steering wheel, looking from the car's interior, being able to quickly move your head to see who's driving next to you. If only I could be Sony's CTO. "

Sony is now really going the road I wanted them to. I stated I wanted Sony to release something similar but more accurate and faster than the Wii-mote, a couple of years later we have Playstation Move, my main hardware spec criticism at launch was that the PS3 did not have PVR/DVR capabilities, a couple of years later they release PlayTV and Thorne and are moving further into this direction (although it still isn't perfect), now they seem to tackle my wishes for a virtual reality capable console.

Head tracking, stereoscopic 3D and hand tracking combined IMO provides so much potential I think most cannot even imagine at this point. But imagine playing a shooter while holding a Playstation Move scharpshooter:

Looking through the 3D headset you look at the gun in your hands, you see yourself holding and moving an "over the top" heavy gun, you look at your body and you see you're wearing cool army clothes, etc. Can you imagine the immersive gaming potentials with such a setting?

Can people now understand why I am so ethusiastic about the PS3 hardware potential since before the console launched as a tech enthusiast, this while preferring Philips over Sony and never having owned a PS2? In the past I have been often called a pure blinded Playstation fanboy, I think developers are now demonstrating me to be the tech enthusiastic hardcore gamer I claim to be and not just some random raving lunatic (most often claimed by Microsoft fans)!

Do people now agree?

Anyway the source of my comment can be found here:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=21541&forum=17&start=900&viewmode=flat&order=0

Someone here asked for such, sometimes I prefer not to provide a link. This is because of much trolling going on within some discussions which do not benefit the topic at hand. The mr anonymous posting there generated endless out of context quotes and false allegations not that different from what you will see on many other forums, this guy at some point was especially upset because I at the time stated the XBox 360 was failure prone (unlike what Microsoft claimed at the time, he insisted I take it as a fact) and for stating the PS3 is more powerful than the 360 (unlike what Microsoft claimed, in an email to journalists claiming the 360 to be multiple times more powerful than the PS3, which he wanted me to take as a fact because Microsoft said so).

So that's why I don't always provide links, anyone can easily find the my posted comments using an exact phrase within the posting between quotes. For example type "SPE usages" in google and your surely to find my original thread I started on NeoGaf, likewise if you type "PS3 technical discussion" you are surely to find this thread.

Here on VGChartz I once stated I may wait with buying a new 3DTV until when there would be no requirement for additional glasses (I currently own a 1080p Philips HDTV). Some were sceptical this was at all possible. Since then of course Nintendo anounced its 3Ds (which uses a slider to adjust for different distance between both eyes).

Toshiba and Sony are now demonstrating their glasses-free 3DTVs at CES 2011:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H09494K_a2Q

With regard to the 3D headset prototype, the reporter here stated it was the most impressive piece of tech they got to see at CES 2011 so far:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ity-zjvB9p4

MikeB... I'm afraid to be the one to ask this but...

Are you having a "technical" discussion with yourself?

@ Hynad

No, everyone is free to contribute. I am however trying to collect all the relevant data in one place and finally settle some past disputes here on VGChartz. I think the time is ripe for this.

In the past I got insulted far too often for my long term outlook for the PS3's hardware capabilities and potentials. For example even someone who claimed to be a games developer insulted me here on VGChartz for suggesting the Cell would be well suited for performing tasks such as anti-aliasting on the Cell's SPUs (Now in God of War 3, Killzone 3, LittleBigPlanet 2, Infamous 2, etc). Other VGChartz members instead of looking at this objectively sided with this "developer" as I don't develop games myself, but this guy is entirely depended on tools provided to him by low level developers and thus didn't really understand the underlying technology.

In regards to MLAA.

It's just a post-processing filter which has been shown to provide decent AA quality with little overhead.
However... The Xbox 360 can do it with it's unified shaders and do it faster than the Cell can manage it.
For instance with the Xbox 360 it only requires 3.79ms to perform MLAA on a 720p image, In comparison, the God of War 3 implementation requires 20ms of a single SPU (4ms using 5 of them).

http://iryoku.com/mlaa/

Still, even with all the strengths of the PS3 and Xbox 360, I still feel wanting more... Most of the games aren't even 1080P, and texture quality, shadows and such still leaves me desiring for something significantly better.

@ Permalite

No, the 360's architecture isn't well suited for how the anti-aliasing is done on the PS3. Of course the task will be split across different SPUs as this makes sense. However some people don't seem to understand those used SPUs aren't reserved specifically for just implementing anti-aliasing. This should be evident to anyone taking a look at Killzone 3, how the Killzone 2 game engine was technically structured and the extra tasks now running on the Cell's SPUs.

The benefit of implementing anti-aliasing on the Cell's SPUs IMO especially regards flexibility (apart from freeing up resources for the GPU) and thus far better options for addressing aliasing issues, this like I tried to explain to the "developer" in the past and I think the end results actually look amazing in games such as God of War 3 and Killzone 3. Eurogamer a long time after this discussion wrote:

"The fact that the God of War III MLAA operates on SPU has some very specific advantages - the Cell's satellite processors are far more flexible in terms of how they can be programmed, leading some to believe that GPU implementations will struggle to match the quality level. " while discussing the use of MLAA on PC/360.

The above reads as if they read my comments from yesteryears which finally got them thinking, but with enough know-how they could have come to these insights many years ago like I did before it actually got implemented in modern games.

Also to clarify further with regard to my previous comment, regarding technical potentials IMO don't take the perspective of a random games developer for granted. Creativily talented people can create awesome games in a game like LittleBigPlanet 2 but that doesn't per se make them an expert on how the underlying technology operates, they have a perspective on the tools they are provided with.

I assume you didn't read my post so I suggest you visit that link and read my post again in it's entirety.

Another advantage of the Xbox 360 and the use of MLAA is that it can be used in conjunction with the eDRAM daughter die (With it's logic, 4x AA is essentially free) so you can do a regular AA pass on the image, then... You can also perform MLAA.
Remember MLAA is just a Post-Processing effect, there is no need for dedicated hardware to perform the effect.

Think of it as a picture you have in Photoshop, then with a brush you go around all the edges of the objects in the picture and blur the edges, it's essentially a more advanced version of that, and a GPU can actually do it incredibly quickly.
Consequently however, some games are better to use MLAA in than others, games with allot of contrasting shades of colours are well suited to MLAA.

It's also able to work in conjunction with regular AA and can be run on a Graphics cards programmable shaders, or via Software... A-la the PS3.

In the PS3's case however, it makes sense to run it on the CPU, as it's more GPU limited than CPU limited, whilst the Xbox 360 is the reverse as it's more CPU limited than GPU limited.
The PC is a no Brainer, the GPU's there are beasts, might aswell take advantage of all that parallel processing that is available.

Really enjoying this thread.

@Permalite - 4xAA is only free if the framebuffer fits into the 10mb of ram. This means losing out on other things, such as post processing effects and possibly resolution (as seen in games such as Alan Wake and the Halo series).

Another thing to consider is that all of this MLAA processing would have to be done on the GPU on the 360, which can have a detrimental effect on your framerate. Trying to fit your framebuffer into 33ms and then having something like MLAA come in at nearly 4ms is quite damaging.

The PS3 would be doing MLAA on the CPU to free up time for the GPU. Thus, no framerate hit at all.

MikeB's 2011 propoganda drive?  Lets list a arbitary set of technical features to impress people and then some games that use them pretending like no other platform can do said features. 7 pages of bites, well done.