Some developers knows how to handle the PS2!!!

When Sony introduced the PS2 they said:
If games continiue to be programed like 32-bit games then the PS2 will not be used as it should. Of course you can create good games like RRV and TTT but this is not the way games should be programed on it.


That was almost 2 years ago. What have happened? The developers have now managed to do things on the PS2 that is absolutely briliant and in the spirit of what Sony wanted.
The first example is GTA3.
This is the first game to stream the city in realtime from the DVD.
Because lack of memory(only 32 megs for all that stuff in GTA3) but a lot of memorybandwith to burn thing like this is possible to solve on the PS2.
The PS2 doesnt have the whole city in memory when you play GTA3. It only have a little bit of it. When you drive the car around the streets of Liberty city the DVD spinns and streams the city in realtime.
This is not the way the PC version will work. They have more memory so they can handle the whole city in memory (I think).
There is some things about streaming the city that causes some problems. if you do something in the city like blocking the street with alot of cars and then take a car and drive away from the place and then return to the place everything is back to normal. This because of streaming. They will propably solve this kind of problems when GTA4 arrives. But this is a cool way to use the PS2.


The other game that uses a similiar technic is Baldurs Gate : Dark Alliance. have you thought: How the hell have they managed to make the game look prerended!! Look at the textures!! With only 4 Mb of videomemory? How the hell?!?
Well Black Isle thought of the idea of streaming textures in realtime!! this is a freaking nice idea!! When you go around the caves the PS2 streams hundreds of megabytes of textures.
Well , theoreticly you could almost stream endless amount of textures in a game!!

This is how Sony want developers to use the PS2!!
And more and more developers are starting to use this kind of technics. And we haven´t seen everything the PS2 can do yet.

Thoughts?

Isn\'t this what we\'ve been saying will happen for the past 2 years? Now we just have games eeking out that actually benefit from the R & D spent learning these new techniques, and I\'ll bet their methods are still pretty crude. Can\'t wait to see what awaits in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation.

Anyone have an idea as to just HOW many MB of textures the PS2 can stream into a frame of animation?

Originally posted by SonyFan


Anyone have an idea as to just HOW many MB of textures the PS2 can stream into a frame of animation?

This topic will probably end up in consoledebating and that is something I don´t want to happen. So i hope noone starts to flame or saying other console stuff. Lets keep this topic to the PS2.
Well to your question:
The PS2 has a DVD that works in speed x4. One movie that is about 3 hours should fit in a dubblelayer DVD.
One layer holds 4.7 GB of info. One movie then equals about 9.4 GB

9.4 GB=180min=10800 sec

9.4 GB=9625.6 MB

9625.6 MB = 10800 sec

1 sec= 9625,6/10800=0.891259 Mb

The DVD works at the speed of 4x
This gives a theoretical streaming speed of:

0.891259 x 4= 3.56 Mb/sec

So the theoretical highest number should be 3.56 Mb/sec with Textures.

So if this is used ingame. If you walk like 100 meters in a game (speed=1 meter/second) the game engine could render about 356 Mb of textures.
That is a lot!!!!
Imagine this technic used in a cargame!! LOL

If the PS2 can stream 3.56 Mb of textures each second this means about 120 Kb textures/frame!! (30fps) or
60 kb textures/frame (60 fps).

I know this is theoreticly noncence but it is interesting!

The texture streaming is done by streaming from the main memory (32MB) to the Video Buffer (4MB). I think Hideo Kojima said that the Video Buffer could be updated many times a frame. So I guess it all depends on that. i.e if the 4MB VRAM could be updated 10 x 4MB = 40MB in each frame.

Yeah its nice to see developers finally getting to grips with the PS2.

Still though they have a long way to perfecting what Sony intended. GTA 3 is a cool game but theres no deneying its shoddy framerate and well basically average visuals. So they may have adaptered the use of streaming technology but this could have been accommolished without streaming technology if Sony designed the PS2 more like the X-Box (sorry to bring that into the debate). What im getting at is that although GTA3 is a great game and what they have accomplished is good it could have been accomplished with standard technology when the PS2 was first launched if it used a more PC style archecture.

OK so the PS2 isn\'t using a PC style archecture but how long will it take before games like GTA 3 are smooth (60fps) with amazing graphics, thats Sony\'s ultimate goal. Is there enough time to reach it ? Wouldn\'t using standard archecture be a better idea considering something like the X-Box should be able to do GTA 3 from day 1.

Im just debating if streaming technology is a good idea. Developers may have started to got to grips with it but how long do we have to wait before they can use it efficently?

I think you aren\'t taking into account huge the City was in GTA3.  There was tons of information to be processed not to mention all the AI routines.  It would take a lot of processing power to put GTA3 on the highest level grapically because the processor is so busy with all the other information. :cool:

IMO streaming is the way of the future. i think we will se more and more of this later on. When main-PC-mother-boards have enough memorybandwith the Pc will propably start streaming to.
Its way cheaper. Why put 256 Mb of memory on a GPU when you can reach the same result with just a fraction of that amount of memory. Today it is harder to program but later on I belive it will be more or less a standard.