I have noticed a curious pattern in many of the newest (and not even so
new) games: They will often list as "minimum requirements" specs which are
much higher than what would be sufficient to run the game. Especially this
seems to be the case with the CPU.

  As I understand it, "minimum system requirements" should mean "if you
want this game to run and be playable at a decent frame rate, you should
have at least this kind of system". However, you can often play the game
at decent framerates with a much poorer system, at least if you turn down
the graphical quality.

  For example, I recently bought the game "The Last Remnant", and it lists
as minimum CPU requirement an Intel Core 2 Duo or an AMD Athlon X2.

  Note that both of those processors are 64-bit and with two cores. So
the "minimum system requirements" is telling me that I *need* at least a
two-core 64-bit processor to run the game.

  However, the game runs just fine with my single-core 32-bit Pentium4.
I have even maxed up all graphical settings and I'm getting pretty good
framerates (something like 20 FPS and up). Of course this is mostly thanks
to my GPU, but at least the CPU isn't getting badly in the way.

  The minimum system requirements list, in fact, doesn't make at all clear
whether the game will work with a 32-bit processor at all. But it does.

  Incidentally, the game "Assassin's Creed" lists the same two CPUs as
a minimum requirement, yet also runs on my P4. (Although this one is so
much heavier that I have to run it in low-to-medium settings if I want
to get any decent framerates. Especially higher-quality shadows clog the
system quite badly, especially at the bigger cities which have hundreds
of buildings. In the biggest cities I have to turn shadows completely off.
But it runs, nevertheless.)

  Perhaps the idea is simply "yes, it will run on an older CPU, but in
that case you will need a much faster GPU to compensate", and what they
are listing is some kind of "average minimum" hardware settings to get
the game running ok. However, it would still be nice if they were a bit
more specific, especially about whether the game is 32-bit or not. And
maybe give a few example "minimum" hardware assemblies which will run
the game.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

What bugs me is when they list things like "Needs a GPU with pixel shader 2 
and texture mapper 3".  How the heck am I supposed to know that? Give me a 
sample level for free download so I can see if it works. :-)

On another note, how long does an xbox 360 game take to really load? 
Bioshock takes like 90 seconds to go from starting the game to asking 
whether I want to load the level or start a new game. That seems kind of 
long, especially since I've copied it to the hard drive. I suspect they're 
making me sit through animated logos every time just because they can, 
without actually doing anything in the background.  I noticed GTA is the 
same way.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

Post a reply to this message

Regardless of the degree of veracity of anything that has been written
in this thread, I'm not sure that such a thread is very relevant here.






only joking of course. I sorta agree with you in the case where this 
citations comes from. There is just this problem of this group being 
p.o-t, so anything posted here is not very relevant here.

Post a reply to this message

andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Regardless of the degree of veracity of anything that has been written
> in this thread, I'm not sure that such a thread is very relevant here.

> only joking of course. I sorta agree with you in the case where this 
> citations comes from. There is just this problem of this group being 
> p.o-t, so anything posted here is not very relevant here.

  I don't understand what you mean. Approximately 100% of people who
read this group are computer users. There's a rather big probability
that a significant part of them play computer games, so the subject
is interesting to them. The subject is also non-controversial. It's not
like I'm questioning someone faith or life philosophy.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 6-6-2009 23:32, Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> Regardless of the degree of veracity of anything that has been written
>> in this thread, I'm not sure that such a thread is very relevant here.
> 
>> only joking of course. I sorta agree with you in the case where this 
>> citations comes from. There is just this problem of this group being 
>> p.o-t, so anything posted here is not very relevant here.
> 
>   I don't understand what you mean.

That is not entirely true.

> Approximately 100% of people who
> read this group are computer users. 
So? A fair amount have views on religion too, close to but not entirely 
100% I would guess. Possibly about the same percentage as those playing 
games.
> There's a rather big probability
> that a significant part of them play computer games, so the subject
> is interesting to them. 
Well, I  don't, but that is not the point.
> The subject is also non-controversial. It's not
> like I'm questioning someone faith or life philosophy.

Not sure if it is non-controversial because it is about games. Some 
people have very definite feelings about some games and how much 
hardware you need to play them correctly. Besides, if something is 
totally non-controversial there is no point in posting it here nor 
anywhere else.

Finally, I am sure you read the 'only joking of course' part of my post 
too. So this reply is rather silly. Then again, it is probably not 
directed at me (see my post in that other thread), so let the innocent 
bystanders judge. ;)

Post a reply to this message

On 6 Jun 2009 17:32:12 -0400, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>  I don't understand what you mean.

Double Dutch humour ;)

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   I have noticed a curious pattern in many of the newest (and not even so
> new) games: They will often list as "minimum requirements" specs which are
> much higher than what would be sufficient to run the game. Especially this
> seems to be the case with the CPU.

In the earlier days the minimum requirements tended to be specified so
that the game/program would start, but wouldn't be anyhow usable.

I'd think that it's a question of responsibility. If the game-maker
tells you that this game will run on this (minimum) configuration and it
doesn't, they're responsible for it and have to return the money. It
might even be the slowest possible configuration they've actually tested.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Perhaps the idea is simply "yes, it will run on an older CPU, but in
> that case you will need a much faster GPU to compensate", and what they
> are listing is some kind of "average minimum" hardware settings to get
> the game running ok. However, it would still be nice if they were a bit
> more specific, especially about whether the game is 32-bit or not. And
> maybe give a few example "minimum" hardware assemblies which will run
> the game.

	My guess is that they're listing the minimum specs that they
_guarantee_. In other words, they didn't bother testing it with anything
lower.

	It's really the only explanation I can come up with - otherwise they're
needlessly limiting their market (unless they're in bed with the
hardware manufacturers).

-- 
Don't take life so seriously.  It won't last.


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> a écrit dans le message de
news:4a2acc3f@news.povray.org...
>  I have noticed a curious pattern in many of the newest (and not even so
> new) games: They will often list as "minimum requirements" specs which are
> much higher than what would be sufficient to run the game. Especially this
> seems to be the case with the CPU.

I don't know about game makers, but I do list "higher than necessary minimum 
requirements specs" to customers because lots of Windows machines are filled 
with CPU-hogging, RAM-eating crapware (installed by the
computer maker or by the user) that completely nullify the actual minimum 
requirements. Machines that are well cared for would be fine with those 
specs, but that's not the case for the general population. After seeing some 
of my stuff crawl on other people's machines (where it should have run 
smoothly), raising the requirements a little bit was definitely a good 
practice, and I'm not even talking about games or CPU-intensive software, 
just simple office applications.

G.

Post a reply to this message

Mueen Nawaz wrote:

> 	My guess is that they're listing the minimum specs that they
> _guarantee_. In other words, they didn't bother testing it with anything
> lower.

I would imagine this is what it is too.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   As I understand it, "minimum system requirements" should mean "if you
> want this game to run and be playable at a decent frame rate, you should
> have at least this kind of system".

No, it basically translates to "this is the slowest thing on which we promise
this game to run anywhere close to playable - if you have a slower system and
experience problems, our support team will tell you to go fly a kite".

The reason for choosing a certain system as the minimum requirement may be
manifold: The game may actually have been observed to not run properly on
slower systems; or the game developer isn't expecting any member of the target
group to be running a slower system, and so didn't bother to do extensive
testing on any slower system.

Or, the game distributor may want to deliberately exaggerate the game's minimum
requirements, to reassure high-end gamers that the game is indeed laden with
cutting-edge graphics and effects, and not just lame old standard stuff.

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:

> Or, the game distributor may want to deliberately exaggerate the game's minimum
> requirements, to reassure high-end gamers that the game is indeed laden with
> cutting-edge graphics and effects, and not just lame old standard stuff.

Once upon a time, this seemed to be Microsoft's strategy. Every new 
product they realised required more and more hardware to run. Because if 
it requires more hardware to run, that's "better". Right?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Gilles Tran wrote:
> I don't know about game makers, but I do list "higher than necessary 
> minimum requirements specs" to customers because lots of Windows 
> machines are filled with CPU-hogging, RAM-eating crapware (installed by the
> computer maker or by the user) that completely nullify the actual 
> minimum requirements.

In a similar vein, I get a (nauseating) kick whenever a game manual 
suggest, "If you have problems, try turning off your antivirus!"

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:

> In a similar vein, I get a (nauseating) kick whenever a game manual 
> suggest, "If you have problems, try turning off your antivirus!"

Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
something? I've yet to see that one personally...

(With the possible exception of Norton Antivirus, which is annoying to 
the point of almost being adware itself.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
> something?

  Yes. I had some kind of problem between F-Secure and AQtime, which
made the latter sometimes behave erratically.

  After discussing about it with the AQtime developers, they fixed the
problem on their side.

  Besides, I suppose resident scanners can sometimes slow things down,
especially if they decide to scan the files the game is trying to read...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
> something? I've yet to see that one personally...

I once had an AV program pop up a box asking if I really wanted to install 
something, and by the time I answered the program had decided something had 
timed out and failed out.

I also had Avast get false positives on a couple of things, including 
Quickbooks, forcing a reinstall.

I haven't had it screw with a game, tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Besides, I suppose resident scanners can sometimes slow things down,
> especially if they decide to scan the files the game is trying to read...

Real-time virus scanning: the attempt to improve the perceived 
responsiveness of virus scanning by waiting for the user to request access 
to a file before blocking access until it has been scanned.  :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > Or, the game distributor may want to deliberately exaggerate the game's minimum
> > requirements, to reassure high-end gamers that the game is indeed laden with
> > cutting-edge graphics and effects, and not just lame old standard stuff.
>
> Once upon a time, this seemed to be Microsoft's strategy. Every new
> product they realised required more and more hardware to run. Because if
> it requires more hardware to run, that's "better". Right?

Well, I didn't have the impression they deliberately *exaggerated* the minimum
requirements - they *were* that high...

Post a reply to this message

clipka wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Or, the game distributor may want to deliberately exaggerate the game's minimum
>>> requirements, to reassure high-end gamers that the game is indeed laden with
>>> cutting-edge graphics and effects, and not just lame old standard stuff.
>> Once upon a time, this seemed to be Microsoft's strategy. Every new
>> product they realised required more and more hardware to run. Because if
>> it requires more hardware to run, that's "better". Right?
> 
> Well, I didn't have the impression they deliberately *exaggerated* the minimum
> requirements - they *were* that high...

No - I got the impression they deliberately made the software 
inefficient so that people would mistake this for "powerful".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:26:51 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with
> something?

Yes.  Performance impact of some AV software can cause all sorts of weird 
problems.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   For example, I recently bought the game "The Last Remnant"
[...]
> I have even maxed up all graphical settings and I'm getting pretty good
> framerates (something like 20 FPS and up). Of course this is mostly thanks
> to my GPU, but at least the CPU isn't getting badly in the way.

  Speaking of which, it's rather impressive what kind of graphics modern
3D cards can produce. For example this game uses quite effectively a
combination of focal blur, luminous blooms and (I assume) HDRI for
rendering really impressive images... in real-time.

  The focal blur is not used only for shows, but actually for composition
purposes. For example there's a cut-scene (rendered in real-time with the
game engine) which has some objects on the foreground and some people in
the background. The focus was on the people while the objects were blurred.
Then the people started talking about the objects and turned to look at
them, and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
blurred. Really cool-looking.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
> something? I've yet to see that one personally...

...OK, I guess I've just been lucky then! :-}

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
> blurred. Really cool-looking.

Very cinemagraphic!

Next up: Making the splashing of water based on the actual movement of water 
in the simulation. :-)

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/HarmonicFluids/

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Have you ever seen an AV program actually cause a problem with 
> something? I've yet to see that one personally...

Yes.  If the AVG full system scan kicks in while you're playing a game, 
it can slow things down to the point where the game is unplayable.

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> No - I got the impression they deliberately made the software 
> inefficient so that people would mistake this for "powerful".

They honestly didn't, although it appears that way to many people.

Since the majority of Windows licenses come from new computer purchases, 
MS targets computers that will be mainstream in 6-12 months time for 
optimization.  They optimize until those machines run their software 
well, and then stop optimizing (focusing on other things, like adding 
features, hunting bugs, or working on other software).

While it's true that the software *could* be made to run just as well on 
older hardware, MS just doesn't put the effort into making it work 
because they won't ever see enough of a return on it to justify the 
developer time.

This strategy nearly killed Windows Mobile, too.  MS was targeting 
phones they expected to be released, but all of a sudden people realized 
that their phones were now "good enough" and manufacturers stopped 
upgrading the hardware at the same rate.  Suddenly, MS was left with a 
mobile OS that expected more powerful hardware than it had available, 
and so every Windows phone out was complete crap for a while (you could 
argue that they're still complete crap, but that's for other reasons).

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   The focal blur is not used only for shows, but actually for composition
> purposes. For example there's a cut-scene (rendered in real-time with the
> game engine) which has some objects on the foreground and some people in
> the background. The focus was on the people while the objects were blurred.
> Then the people started talking about the objects and turned to look at
> them, and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
> blurred. Really cool-looking.

Yeah, Red Faction: Guerrilla does that, too, with the added bonus that 
you get to knock down buildings with a sledgehammer :)

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

andrel wrote:
> On 6-6-2009 23:32, Warp wrote:
>> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>> Regardless of the degree of veracity of anything that has been written
>>> in this thread, I'm not sure that such a thread is very relevant here.
>> 
>>> only joking of course. I sorta agree with you in the case where this
>>> citations comes from. There is just this problem of this group being
>>> p.o-t, so anything posted here is not very relevant here.
>> 
>>   I don't understand what you mean.
> 
> That is not entirely true.
> 
>> Approximately 100% of people who
>> read this group are computer users.
> So? A fair amount have views on religion too, close to but not entirely
> 100% I would guess. Possibly about the same percentage as those playing
> games.

Way to derail the thread, thanks.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
>> blurred. Really cool-looking.
> 
> Very cinemagraphic!
> 
> Next up: Making the splashing of water based on the actual movement of
> water in the simulation. :-)

I'm interested in that, but I don't care about realtimeness :)

Post a reply to this message

On 8-6-2009 20:26, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> On 6-6-2009 23:32, Warp wrote:
>>> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>>> Regardless of the degree of veracity of anything that has been written
>>>> in this thread, I'm not sure that such a thread is very relevant here.
>>>> only joking of course. I sorta agree with you in the case where this
>>>> citations comes from. There is just this problem of this group being
>>>> p.o-t, so anything posted here is not very relevant here.
>>>   I don't understand what you mean.
>> That is not entirely true.
>>
>>> Approximately 100% of people who
>>> read this group are computer users.
>> So? A fair amount have views on religion too, close to but not entirely
>> 100% I would guess. Possibly about the same percentage as those playing
>> games.
> 
> Way to derail the thread, thanks.

I do my best ;)
Actually I though of it as binding two threads together.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

I know this is tangential to the thrust of your post, and please forgive 
my ignorance, but in VERY GENERAL terms, how does a game run faster on 
two cores?  What is done to exploit the added processor?

-Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Charter wrote:
> I know this is tangential to the thrust of your post, and please forgive 
> my ignorance, but in VERY GENERAL terms, how does a game run faster on 
> two cores?  What is done to exploit the added processor?

You have to have two separate compute-heavy tasks that utilize different 
sets of data.

In general, with current architectures its very difficult to get more 
than two or three parallel tasks.  Generally, physics and graphics, 
possibly AI or game logic (scripts and such).

Physics can be multithreaded fairly effectively, but in current 
implementations it tends to use the same hardware the graphics system 
uses.  So to boost one, you have to sacrifice the other.  Although I 
believe NVidia offers the ability to dedicate a single card to physics, 
and use the remaining card(s) for graphics (giving them an excuse to 
sell tri-sli systems, with one card for physics and two for graphics).

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
> I know this is tangential to the thrust of your post, and please forgive 
> my ignorance, but in VERY GENERAL terms, how does a game run faster on 
> two cores?  What is done to exploit the added processor?

  That's a problem with which game engine developers have been struggling
since it became clear that the future is in multiple cores rather than
increased GHz (ie. when a rather surprising wall was hit many years ago at
the about 4 GHz boundary, after which both Intel and AMD decided that it's
way too difficult to push clockrates any further than that, and instead
future development will be in the x86-64 architecture and especially
multiple cores).

  A relatively easy and cheap way of using multiple cores is to distribute
independent per-frame tasks to different threads. For example the physics
engine, the CPU part of the rendering engine (which handles things like
deciding which parts of the scenery are visible and which aren't, and thus
which parts are sent to the GPU to render), the AI (which eg. controls NPC
and enemy movement), and other such things a game calculates with the CPU
relatively independently can be distributed to multiple threads.

  The problem with that technique is, of course, that those tasks are
wildly different in complexity, and some of the tasks are really fast to
calculate while others require a lot more processing power. Also they
often are not 100% independent, but some tasks must at least partially
be calculated before or after some other tasks.

  If from the to-be-done-per-frame work a very heavy task takes, for
example, 80% of the available time and the other tasks take the remaining
20%, putting that heavy task to one thread and the others to another thread
will not be utilising the available processing capacity fully (because the
second core will be idle over half of the time). This is, in fact, a very
relevant problem in actual game engines. While it helps a bit, of course,
the time saved is only 20% in this example, rather than the optimal 50%
with two cores. Also an even bigger problem is that adding more cores will
not help at all (because one core will still be doing 80% of the work).

  The optimal solution is to make the tasks themselves multithreaded.
However, this is a VERY HARD problem, and it's what game developers have
been struggling for almost a decade. Not only is modifying algorithms to
be multithreaded a very difficult task, but doing it efficiently is an
even more difficult one. Multiple threads will not speed up anything if
most threads have to wait in mutexes for other threads to free the
resources. Mutex-free, wait-free algorithms are the panacea of game
development, and very difficult to come up with.

  I don't know, but I assume that a lot of work has been put into making
one of the heaviest tasks in a game multithreaded, namely physics engines.
That's probably one thing which most benefits from multiple cores nowadays.
Of course other heavy tasks could also theoretically be done in parallel,
such as hidden scenery removal.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   A relatively easy and cheap way of using multiple cores is to distribute
> independent per-frame tasks to different threads.


>   The problem with that technique is, of course, that those tasks are
> wildly different in complexity,


>   I don't know, but I assume that a lot of work has been put into making
> one of the heaviest tasks in a game multithreaded, namely physics engines.

One more quick note: Many of the "other" tasks, like game logic, AI and 
script execution, are so "light" compared to the physics and graphics 
routines that developers don't even bother spawning separate threads for 
them.

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Thanks for your reply, (and Chambers' also), I have a duo-core laptop 
for my wife to use and I did notice that it is not really too much 
faster than this aging single processor machine, except when there is a 
need to run two heavy applications simultaneously.  So I wondered about 
games.

-Jim

Post a reply to this message

Warp escreveu:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>>   For example, I recently bought the game "The Last Remnant"
> [...]
>> I have even maxed up all graphical settings and I'm getting pretty good
>> framerates (something like 20 FPS and up). Of course this is mostly thanks
>> to my GPU, but at least the CPU isn't getting badly in the way.
> 
>   Speaking of which, it's rather impressive what kind of graphics modern
> 3D cards can produce. For example this game uses quite effectively a
> combination of focal blur, luminous blooms and (I assume) HDRI for
> rendering really impressive images... in real-time.
> 
>   The focal blur is not used only for shows, but actually for composition
> purposes. For example there's a cut-scene (rendered in real-time with the
> game engine) which has some objects on the foreground and some people in
> the background. The focus was on the people while the objects were blurred.
> Then the people started talking about the objects and turned to look at
> them, and the focus gradually shifted to the objects, leaving the people
> blurred. Really cool-looking.

heh, focal blur was available even for PS2.  Resident Evil 4 has a 
sniper and binoculars both featuring focal blur.  Metal Gear Solid 2 and 
3 used it a bit in the in-game engine cinematics as well as many other 
games to impressive effects.  The system screen itself is loaded with 
focal blur effects.

Heck, even some of the last and great PSOne games, like Vagrant Story, 
faked some focal blur of sorts by rendering a few extra polygons for 
foreground objects in a rapid flickering fashion...

Have you played Mirror's Edge yet?  Now that is more impressive, with 
it's fake but vivid real time global illumination with color bleeding...

and, well, some people would find it completely unnaceptable by today's 
standards to play a FPS in 20 FPS (pun intended).  The spoiled brats say 
it's impossible to hit enemies with a stuttering frame rate.  Me?  I've 
blasted my way both on the original SNES Star Fox in its glorious 15 FPS 
as well as in Goldeneye on N64 at 20 FPS, I'm ok with that...

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> heh, focal blur was available even for PS2.  Resident Evil 4 has a 
> sniper and binoculars both featuring focal blur.  Metal Gear Solid 2 and 
> 3 used it a bit in the in-game engine cinematics as well as many other 
> games to impressive effects.  The system screen itself is loaded with 
> focal blur effects.

  Was it a true focal blur, or was it only a cheap trick, like for example
rendering part of the scene to a stencil buffer (or such), blur it, then
render the sharp part on top of it. With this kind of method you only get
two planes of blur (or a few, if you do it for more than one "plane"), but
it's impossible to get eg. a floor getting increasingly blurry the farther
it's from the camera.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> heh, focal blur was available even for PS2.  Resident Evil 4 has a 
>> sniper and binoculars both featuring focal blur.  Metal Gear Solid 2 and 
>> 3 used it a bit in the in-game engine cinematics as well as many other 
>> games to impressive effects.  The system screen itself is loaded with 
>> focal blur effects.
> 
>   Was it a true focal blur, or was it only a cheap trick, like for example
> rendering part of the scene to a stencil buffer (or such), blur it, then
> render the sharp part on top of it. With this kind of method you only get
> two planes of blur (or a few, if you do it for more than one "plane"), but
> it's impossible to get eg. a floor getting increasingly blurry the farther
> it's from the camera.

I believe it was like that in the case of the PSone, not 2, but I can't 
be sure.  The blur in the case of the sniper rifle at least felt 
continuous enough...

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nemesis wrote:
> and, well, some people would find it completely unnaceptable by today's 
> standards to play a FPS in 20 FPS (pun intended).  The spoiled brats say 
> it's impossible to hit enemies with a stuttering frame rate.  Me?  I've 
> blasted my way both on the original SNES Star Fox in its glorious 15 FPS 
> as well as in Goldeneye on N64 at 20 FPS, I'm ok with that...

I don't call myself spoiled, but anything under 45 gives me a severe 
headache, and even 60 gives me a light one after about an hour.

Although, that's only for games.  For some reason, movies & TV don't 
have the same effect on me.

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers <Ben### [at] gmailcom_no_underscores> wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
> > and, well, some people would find it completely unnaceptable by today's
> > standards to play a FPS in 20 FPS (pun intended).  The spoiled brats say
> > it's impossible to hit enemies with a stuttering frame rate.  Me?  I've
> > blasted my way both on the original SNES Star Fox in its glorious 15 FPS
> > as well as in Goldeneye on N64 at 20 FPS, I'm ok with that...
>
> I don't call myself spoiled, but anything under 45 gives me a severe
> headache, and even 60 gives me a light one after about an hour.

No prob.  I can call you spoiled.  Spoiled. :)

Star Fox on SNES was a space shooter and it run in measly 10-15 FPS.  I loved it
and ran it for hours on end.  Same for Goldeneye, except it improved up to 20
FPS and much better texturing and polygonal detail... :)

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nemesis wrote:
> Star Fox on SNES was a space shooter and it run in measly 10-15 FPS.

Yes, I enjoyed it quite a bit at the time, though I don't know how I 
would do with it now.

-- 
Chambers

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>> and, well, some people would find it completely unnaceptable by today's 
>> standards to play a FPS in 20 FPS (pun intended).  The spoiled brats say 
>> it's impossible to hit enemies with a stuttering frame rate.  Me?  I've 
>> blasted my way both on the original SNES Star Fox in its glorious 15 FPS 
>> as well as in Goldeneye on N64 at 20 FPS, I'm ok with that...

I don't play FPS games much, but the ones I have played I find much easier 
with *minimum* frame rates of 30+.  There's no point in having a nice smooth 
60 FPS as you walk around, only for it to drop to 15 when 5 enemies start 
shooting at you.

I play racing sims most of the time, and there I think having a high frame 
rate (like 30+) is even more important, as accurately controlling your 
vehicle based on the visual feedback is the main part of the "game".  Again, 
having a nice smooth 60 FPS as you drive around is useless if it drops to 15 
when a few other cars get very close to you.

> I don't call myself spoiled, but anything under 45 gives me a severe 
> headache, and even 60 gives me a light one after about an hour.

My LCD only redraws at 60 FPS so I don't think I would notice anything 
higher.  My old CRT used to go up to 120 Hz (at a low resolution) and if you 
ran a game or animation at 120 Hz it really did look smoother than 60 Hz.

> Although, that's only for games.  For some reason, movies & TV don't have 
> the same effect on me.

Movies and TV generally have motion blur in each frame, so it's not so 
"stuttery" as a game at low frame rate.

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Chambers wrote:
> I don't call myself spoiled, but anything under 45 gives me a severe 
> headache, and even 60 gives me a light one after about an hour.

Sounds like you have artificial lighting going on, or you're sitting in an 
entirely dark room?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Darren New wrote:
> Chambers wrote:
>> I don't call myself spoiled, but anything under 45 gives me a severe 
>> headache, and even 60 gives me a light one after about an hour.
> 
> Sounds like you have artificial lighting going on, or you're sitting in 
> an entirely dark room?

I certainly use a fair amount of artificial lighting.  Now that you 
mention it, when I let the sun in things seem to go better for me...

I thought I was just getting old.

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Chambers wrote:
>>> I don't call myself spoiled, but anything under 45 gives me a severe 
>>> headache, and even 60 gives me a light one after about an hour.
>>
>> Sounds like you have artificial lighting going on, or you're sitting 
>> in an entirely dark room?
> 
> I certainly use a fair amount of artificial lighting. 

Think "beat frequencies."  And yes, I've noticed it too as I've gotten older.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Darren New wrote:
> Think "beat frequencies."  And yes, I've noticed it too as I've gotten 
> older.

I assume it has to do with the combination of lights pulsing (don't 
flourescents flicker?) and the refresh of the screen?

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
> I assume it has to do with the combination of lights pulsing (don't 
> flourescents flicker?) and the refresh of the screen?

That can be a problem, yes. Especially with fluorescents, which actually 
aren't on all the time.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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> That can be a problem, yes. Especially with fluorescents, which actually 
> aren't on all the time.

And CRTs, which aren't on all the time either :-)

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