FU#% A$$ NO!!!!

Ok. First things first. Heres a photo of GT5P that I instantly noticed in these very threads posted by a Sony Fan. Now notice the car on the left half cut out of the picture. Look at it's rear back left wheel. See the rim? It's close up to the camera and you can see the rim is not perfectly round. You can see where the polygons are. You dont get this in Forza 3, because there is more poly's.

Now this next shot is taken from Forza 3 inside of a car. Do you see how much detail has gone into the inside of the car in Forza 3? No wonder they have used alot of polygons per car. I cannot find a single interior shot on the net for GT5P of an interior in photomode.

And finally a comparison. It's actually quite noticeable from the outside to between the 2 games. Forza 3's car models are quite a bit better. The look more solid and weighty. They look less cartoony and more real.

I hope this helps. Interior detail is so close to the actual car, down to near perfect light swith models. + The outside of the car is visibly better. And not one single Forza 3 image can be seen showing the polygons like the first pic of GT5P here.

Hey Selnor, you really did put a spotlight on that issue! Thanks for taking the time.

Btw, isn't it ironic that Microsoft said that the Xbox 360 would have a game which would exceed Killzone 2 this year and arguably in terms of impressiveness they just did and yet people hardly believed them?

Oh and I feel very, very, very, vindicated, because I said that tessellation was a major unused feature of the Xbox 360 GPU and I guess I get to be proved RIGHT!

Squilliam said: Hey Selnor, you really did put a spotlight on that issue! Thanks for taking the time. Btw, isn't it ironic that Microsoft said that the Xbox 360 would have a game which would exceed Killzone 2 this year and arguably in terms of impressiveness they just did and yet people hardly believed them? Oh and I feel very, very, very, vindicated, because I said that tessellation was a major unused feature of the Xbox 360 GPU and I guess I get to be proved RIGHT!

No problem. I'm sure some will try and rebutle it. I have become more defensive over the past month against PS3 fanboys because I have seen no end of BS to be honest. Forza 3 is a perfect example. There are still some credible people though like CGI Quality. And yeah M$ did say they were not worried about KZ2 graphics. After seeing Forza 3, Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2, Lost Planet 2 and AC2 I can see why. Graphics between the 2 consoles are a moot subject now. The only ones that really stir up about it are the ones who paid £400 just because they bought into the PS3 power hype.

As I pointed out, using CoD4 as an exmaple, maxed out is more about the engine (or code) and how well (or not) its optimized and suits the console.  Maxed out is meaningless the way its normally bandied about.  Using CoD4 engine I could max out (given access to the level editor) both consoles easily.

I have to say your comparison is also flawed and not the way to go - its factual but tells us more about the relative coding skills (very good in both cases I'd argue) of IW and the relative suitability of their engine for each console.  Clearly, I would presume given IW roots in PC coding and engines, the engine slightly favours the 360 and clearly IW skills at that point would slightly favour the 360.  As you state the 360 version is slightly superior to the PS3 for framerate, etc. (in fact most third partiy titles, particularly those from developers with strong PC roots) tend to and will continue to tend to run slightly (emphasis on slightly) better on 360.  I'm playing Red Faction on PS3 and it looks great, but I'd bet that the 360 version has slightly better AA and framerate (again emphasis on slightly).

What I find funny about all these arguements is that you could max out both consoles even with a game with graphics quality of a PS2 title if you wanted to.

I wish people would realize that consoles have an theoritical upper limit and its always in fairly easy reach - the challenge is writing very well optimized code that, ideally, has been designed specifically for the architecture of each console (which is why devs didn't and too an extent still don't like how different the archtectures of the 2 HD consoles are).  That's why almost always the absolute best looking titles are exclusive and/or based on console specific engines.

I'd argue that the most graphically impressive titles to date have slightly edged to the PS3 (I'm thinking Uncharted and Killzone 2 mainly here and Uncharted 2) but I believe that's more due to each having been built from the ground up, at serious expense, for the console.  The best looking 360 title I've played is Gears 2, but I noticed it had some slight issues with texture pop-in, etc down to the fact that while fantastically optimized for 360 it was nonetheless built on a non-specific engine.  I expect titles like Forza 3, etc. to show 360 in a fantastic light, and a lot of that will be down to the engine being so specific to the console, plus well optimized.

Funnily enough, overall for the traditional home of graphical posturing (FPS and TPS) the PS3 has more titles on custom engines to the console than 360 (so far as I am aware, as due to nature of 360 many developers are clearly tempted to go middleware on the engine with U3 or similar engine).  Of course the 360 architecture lends itself to this (while the PS3 does not) so that choice makes perfect sense.

In the end both are really powerful consoles, I'd argue probably about even graphically when all is said and done, with the PS3 having a moderate (and probably mostly unexploited) advantage in potentially processing power with the 360 having (for some developers) an advantage in architecute familiarty and ease of coding.

Hopefully soon we'll see what the latest, console friendly tech from ID and Crytek looks like on the Hd consoles - that should be interesting.

wow this thread has really brought out the fanboys lol

I can't be bothered to argue any more , got revision to do. Congrats you win , Forza 3 is superior looking than a game released 2 years before it only to be trumped by the already complete GT5 upon it's release.

Ok, let me correct myself. Forget what I said about pre-rendered lol. But yes, like you say with "on rails" gameplay (QTEs) - or I'd describe it as 'fixed camera view' - its easier to make something look good compared to when you have full movement and camera freedom (="normal gameplay"). That's why God of War and Star Wars Force Unleashed use QTE's - which certainly look better than the regular gameplay.


@ Akvod

Read above.

(and Heavy Rain looks as good in it's regular gameplay as in it's QTE's because it never has gameplay with real freedom over both movement and camera, like normal games do.)

So my conclusion is still valid - the X360 can easily do Heavy Rain, especially as the game looks now (in it's post taxidermist demo state)... which isn't impressive at all.

Eurogamer (UK) is a biased source (the worst one available within the mainstream gaming press, like I said so even long before they started their 360 vs PS3 propaganda articles). I know World of War performs solidly on my PS3. With regard to COD4 devs have claimed the PS3 version has a slight edge over the 360 version, but I think those games although development was geared at the XBox 360 first and foremost are practically identical.

Even if the XBox 360 version would have had a slight edge, it does not mean it maxed out the PS3 hardware. As we know even some early PS3 exclusives did not use the SPUs at all (extremely fast processors, the bulk of the Cell's performance). With regard to the 360 we know early launch games already tapped the bulk of the Xenon's CPU resources from all 3 cores.

So, the maturity and optimisation of a games engine can determine the amount of yet untapped resources. And of course the PS3 has a lot more resources available (like 8 processor Cell, 50 GB Blu-Ray discs, default harddrive, etc), so requires far more effort to "max out".

Won't comment on EA's quite silly declarations, nor on opinions floating around about the graphical excellence of various games. I'll keep it on one sort of technical issue that emerged:

@Selnor
That wheel rim in the GT5:P shot is really weird, but it doesn't look like it's suffering from low poly count to me.
Look at the image in full resolution, and notice how the weird non-circular shape only happens on the top-left and not on the bottom right. If a circle is approximated with a low poly count, the error happens all around. Plus notice how the vertices between those "polygons" you think you're seeing there are actually smoothed beyond AA, ie again that doesn't look like missing polygons.

I really can't say what's happening there, though, because I have never played GT:P, nor am I familiar with its looks first-hand. Could it be that we're seeing a "vibration" optical effect there?

As for Forza looking "more solid and less cartoonish", that's up to the lighting/reflection, not to the polygon count. Both games seem to exhibit perfect modeling to me.

And @Squill
Does Forza 3 use tessellation in its engine?