http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VFFR-5a-Ko

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VFFR-5a-Ko

Antes tarde Duke Nukem (wordplay that only works in portuguese with the well
known saying)

But I don't buy it, both ways.  It's just hype for the old game playing with its
legendary hold-on...

Btw, I thought it'd be another guitar solo... and speaking of games, how much
did you enjoy Alan Wake after all?  I recently bought a PS3 and finally got to
grips with nextgen gaming.  I'm positively impressed with Assassin's Creed,
classic Prince if Persia gameplay and mindblowing historical reconstructions...
Never thought too high of Ubisoft, but I take my hat for this.

Anyone into Crysis 2?

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Btw, I thought it'd be another guitar solo... and speaking of games, how much
> did you enjoy Alan Wake after all?

  I posted a semi-review in the past.

  The graphics and the storyline were absolutely superb (hard to find any
other game with such profound writing and storytelling), although the
gameplay suffers a bit from total linearity.

>  I recently bought a PS3 and finally got to
> grips with nextgen gaming.  I'm positively impressed with Assassin's Creed,
> classic Prince if Persia gameplay and mindblowing historical reconstructions...
> Never thought too high of Ubisoft, but I take my hat for this.

  I warmly recommend Assassin's Creed 2. I don't know how it is on the PS3,
but on the Xbox 360 it looks really gorgeous. They really pushed the
technical capabilities of the console. (The Xbox 360 often suffers from
surprisingly poor graphics compared to a top-of-the-line modern PC, most
probably because the console has so little RAM, but this game certainly
doesn't show such limitations.) I was also surprised how much I liked the
game otherwise (I was not expecting much because Oblivion pretty much
immunized me to the wonders of free open sandbox gameplay.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   I warmly recommend Assassin's Creed 2.

it's certainly on my list once I end Altair's quest.

> I don't know how it is on the PS3,
> but on the Xbox 360 it looks really gorgeous.

They are pretty equivalent, whatever Sony's hype for the Cell.  PS3 looks
slightly graphically better on its exclusives by its second parties, but for
multiplatform 360 has an edge, since it's basically PC tech and producers tend
to target that.

> They really pushed the
> technical capabilities of the console. (The Xbox 360 often suffers from
> surprisingly poor graphics compared to a top-of-the-line modern PC, most
> probably because the console has so little RAM, but this game certainly
> doesn't show such limitations.)

PC gaming is out of reach for a Linux guy.

In any case, PC gaming is cramped by the success of consoles:  what does it
matter to have all that power when it's used basically to run console game ports
with resolutions going higher than your monitor supports and frame rates higher
than your eyes support... LOL  Nextgen gaming to me is not playing Wii games on
PC via emulator with top settings, it's playing games that were not possible
before on previous hardware.  It was total shock coming from Shadow of the
Colossus to Assassin's Creed -- that's nextgen no doubt.

Plus I never enjoyed typical PC games like FPS, strategy and simulations... I've
been grown on arcades and consoles...

> I was also surprised how much I liked the
> game otherwise (I was not expecting much because Oblivion pretty much
> immunized me to the wonders of free open sandbox gameplay.)

I'm not a fan of open-world when it comes to GTA, where you just mindlessly roam
around bullying and killing people -- plus I play games to get away from
everyday reality and being thrown into a typical urban environment is not my
idea of fun.  Thus, although you are a professional historical assassin in AC,
such freedom is put to good use by having main goals, having to explore the
environment to find out how to tackle them and having many minor objectives...
let alone the great historical setting and top graphics.

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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> In any case, PC gaming is cramped by the success of consoles:  what does it
> matter to have all that power when it's used basically to run console game ports
> with resolutions going higher than your monitor supports and frame rates higher
> than your eyes support...

  With more RAM you can have higher-resolution textures, shadow maps and
so on. Also most game engines support all kinds of graphical effects which
require both RAM and computing prowess and can be turned on and off. With
the console, with its limited RAM and somewhat aging display hardware, they
tune the game settings so that it will work at a good framerate on the
console, while on the PC they leave it up to the player to tune the settings
to the max if he wants and his PC can handle it. And it's not only about
textures and visuals: Also the sheer amount of objects to render can be
limited on the console due to lack of RAM and the aging display hardware.

  The difference can sometimes be pretty striking when comparing side by
side: Textures, view distances, shadows, visual effects can all be
significantly better on a top-of-the-line PC compared to the Xbox 360.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > In any case, PC gaming is cramped by the success of consoles:  what does it
> > matter to have all that power when it's used basically to run console game ports
> > with resolutions going higher than your monitor supports and frame rates higher
> > than your eyes support...
>
>   With more RAM you can have higher-resolution textures, shadow maps and
> so on.

at least as far as producers provide them. ;)

> Also most game engines support all kinds of graphical effects which
> require both RAM and computing prowess and can be turned on and off. With
> the console, with its limited RAM and somewhat aging display hardware, they
> tune the game settings so that it will work at a good framerate on the
> console, while on the PC they leave it up to the player to tune the settings
> to the max if he wants and his PC can handle it. And it's not only about
> textures and visuals: Also the sheer amount of objects to render can be
> limited on the console due to lack of RAM and the aging display hardware.
>
>   The difference can sometimes be pretty striking when comparing side by
> side: Textures, view distances, shadows, visual effects can all be
> significantly better on a top-of-the-line PC compared to the Xbox 360.

yep, but a top-of-the-line PC is also significantly expensive, plus games only
run on Windows.

More than that, my early comparison between Shadow of the Colossus for PS2 and
Assassin's Creed as a current gen tech should illustrate what I expect from
nextgen:  more, better everything, not simply better framerate, higher res
textures or more depth of field showing exactly same geometry.

SotC was topnotch on the PS2, but compared to AC it looks barren and empty, with
far less detailed world, far less detailed character and AC brings not just more
world visible at all at once, but much more detailed and populated with a
stunning number of characters themselves far more detailed than main character
in SotC.  Plus much better texturing, lighting, effects etc.

That's nextgen, not just better tech settings or slightly clear textures...
we're still to see that, even on PC.  I suspect only when Crytek and Epic reveal
their nextgen engines running on latest GPUs...

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On 25/03/2011 07:32 PM, Warp wrote:

>    I warmly recommend Assassin's Creed 2. I don't know how it is on the PS3,
> but on the Xbox 360 it looks really gorgeous.

I found the graphics to be fairly tame on the PC versions of AS1 and 
AS2. I also liked the style of AS1 more than AS2. (It's really hard to 
take people seriously when they speak with an Italian accent. It just 
sounds like a bad comedy sketch.) That said, AS2 is certainly not a 
*bad* game. It's much bigger than AS1, and a lot more varied too. It's 
just much harder to keep track of what's supposed to be happening...

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

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I found the graphics to be fairly tame on the PC versions of AS1 and 
> AS2.

  Depending on how powerful your PC is, you might be simply comparing it
to other PC games, rather than to other Xbox 360 games.

  The Xbox 360 has a pretty decent CPU and GPU even by today's standards
(although the GPU is probably getting a bit antiquated by the month), but
the absolutely major flaw of the system is the amount of RAM: 512 MB, which
by today's standards is absolutely puny. (Many PC games have had a minimum
requirement of 1GB for years.) What is worse, the RAM is shared by the CPU
and the GPU, in other words, the GPU doesn't have its own RAM (as is
customary in a PC). This means that graphics and other game data have to
share the 512 MB (unlike on a PC, where graphics can be done mostly on the
GPU's RAM and whatever the game needs on the main RAM).

  This is a real shame because the hardware is otherwise pretty capable.
The major problem is that games run out of RAM pretty fast, and have to
be content with lesser memory-hungry graphical settings such as lower
resolution textures, shadow maps, and so on. It also often limits visiblity
distances and forces somewhat drastic LOD changes.

  Having played several Xbox 360 games and, while they were graphically
nice, being slightly disappointed at some of the graphics (especially
low-resolution textures are sometimes a bit annoying), I was positively
surprised at the graphical quality of Assassin's Creed 2. Most textures
are really crisp, and the levels of detail are really high even at very
large distances. While you can sometimes see changes in LOD as you move,
it's surprisingly rare. And this on an open sandbox game.

  I'm sure they had to resort to pretty clever tricks to get this while
being constrained by 512 MB of RAM in total.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> Orchid XP v8<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> I found the graphics to be fairly tame on the PC versions of AS1 and
>> AS2.
>
>    Depending on how powerful your PC is, you might be simply comparing it
> to other PC games, rather than to other Xbox 360 games.
>
>    The Xbox 360 has a pretty decent CPU and GPU even by today's standards
> (although the GPU is probably getting a bit antiquated by the month), but
> the absolutely major flaw of the system is the amount of RAM: 512 MB, which
> by today's standards is absolutely puny. (Many PC games have had a minimum
> requirement of 1GB for years.) What is worse, the RAM is shared by the CPU
> and the GPU, in other words, the GPU doesn't have its own RAM (as is
> customary in a PC). This means that graphics and other game data have to
> share the 512 MB (unlike on a PC, where graphics can be done mostly on the
> GPU's RAM and whatever the game needs on the main RAM).
>

It's one of the reason to refuse any PC with an integrated video. Most 
laptops are in that case, and all netbooks. Those also have shared main 
RAM/graphics RAM.
Another problem with that, is that the CPU always have to wait for the 
GPU. Whenever the GPU, and other display hardware, is accessing your 
RAM, NOTHING else can access it. If it was the other way around, you'd 
get corrupted display with shearing, horizontal and vertical rolling, 
and lot of flicker.

Depending on the resolution used, colour depth and refresh rate, it can 
hit your CPU performance by over 50%.
On multicore systems, it's even worst.



Alain

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Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:
> It's one of the reason to refuse any PC with an integrated video.

  When I bought my current PC a friend of mine had a bit earlier bought
an almost identical one (same motherboard, same CPU, same amount of RAM).
The difference was that he wasn't going to use his PC for gaming, so he
was content with the integrated GPU on the motherboard, while I bought
one of the top GPUs of the time. (Well, another difference was that he
had more hard drives, but that's inconsequential.)

  Because it's not every day that one can test almost identical hardware
setups side-by-side, with the only difference being the GPU, we tested
with a version of 3DMark. The difference in speed was outright astonishing.
His computer ran it at about 1-2 frames per second at worst, while mine
ran it at a comfortable 15-20 frames per second at the lowest (higher on
average).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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