Really?

I don't think I have ever seen it...

good thing to know

Possibly it could be to do with the amount of compression used on the disc. It's possible that when it's installed the files are not compressed as much. We all no compressing data destroys some of it's authenticity.

If by install it unpacks some of the compression (like a zip file does) then yes the game could appear sharper. Nothing really changes it would just be better quality.

I think what he is saying is overstated. I am sure the games do look better because of reduced pop in and that may give the appearance of the graphics looking better overall. I don't think compression has anything to do with it really. Installing to the hard drive doesn't change the fact that the data still has to fit into the 522MB of RAM on the system.

I'm sure Mass Effect will look much better simply because in the install would reduce the texture pop in and stop the frame rate hitches that occur when the game has to access the disc. I am sure something similar would be the case with Oblivion, GTAIV, or any other game that streams data due to the large free roaming environments being rendered.

i only want this for Mass Effect thats all.

Reduce load times? Yes.

Make graphics better? no.

 this

The medium the game is loaded from won't affect the graphical fidelity with the exception that very slow loading can lead to frame hitches -- pauses while data is loaded off of the medium. However, a well programmed game for a console won't run into those in the first place.

The guy is either lying or stupid.

I'm rather looking forward to this upgrade for a few games. Methinks that games like Mass Effect, GTA and possibly other open world games + all games that have lots of texture pop in will be vastly improved using this feature.

That said, I'm sure that the graphics won't get better as in better texture sets. They will get better as in 'loads proper texture in time now instead of too late' though.

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Offtopic:

I can't believe I'm actually reading posts here that say there already are (for existing games) 2nd sets of ultra-high quality textures installed onto the DVD for a feature that didn't exist when the games where developed.

Not only that, but this extra set of textures apperantly also takes no space (well no real space anyway) on the disc because of secret uber-compression that manages to make these vastly bigger datasets so small they a) fit as an extra set and b) still look better than the textures (which are usually stored in a compressed form on the disc anyway) already available.

Now, I could go and explain just why this is extremely unlikely (read: no way it is true), but I don't think a three page long discussion about the merrits of compression and its real-life limits is proper for these boards.

Graphics driver update included in the NXE maybe?

In that the game would look a bit better whether it was installed or not.

About the only possible explanation for what he saw. Either that or he's just wrong.

I just wanna know what the load time for skipping a taxi ride in GTAIV is reduced by when installed to the HDD.