Battlefield 3

[Suntory_Times]

Originally Posted by sonicboom

if you were going to shift to pc gaming, why would you stick with a controller? the keyboard and mouse is far more accurate for fps. even if you aren't used to it initially, you'll adjust quickly and wonder why you ever played fps with a controller.

I prefer playing wiht a controller to. In fact I prefer playing with motion controlls for fps like the move with the new killzone. It just makes the game more immersive for me.

[Dave_6]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFNWljIBgTA

[RiseDarthVader]

The PS3 version of Battlefield 3 is currently performing better then the Xbox 360 version according to a DICE programmer working on the Frostbite 2 engine.

@BaroldTheHooker Not done until we ship, a bit early to make fair comparisons between the two but ps3 has a lead by offloading gpu w/ SPUs

http://twitter.com/ChristinaCoffin/s...11733962391552

[DonRSD]

Originally Posted by Dave_6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFNWljIBgTA

Originally Posted by RiseDarthVader

The PS3 version of Battlefield 3 is currently performing better then the Xbox 360 version according to a DICE programmer working on the Frostbite 2 engine.

http://twitter.com/ChristinaCoffin/s...11733962391552

hopefully we dont get an 'xbox port'
let the 360 get a ps3 port of 'what it can handle' ala SF2, nba jam, MK series in snes/genesis days

[binarymelon]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

hopefully we dont get an 'xbox port'
let the 360 get a ps3 port of 'what it can handle' ala SF2, nba jam, MK series in snes/genesis days

Even if that happened I don't think it would be as bad as some previous cases. Wasn't the PS3 the lead platform for Frostbite 1.5? The devs should be very familiar with it.

[nremdn]

Originally Posted by binarymelon

Even if that happened I don't think it would be as bad as some previous cases. Wasn't the PS3 the lead platform for Frostbite 1.5? The devs should be very familiar with it.

I'm sure he realizes this, but logic does not apply to Mr. Don. Nothing can stop his hating, he is an unstoppable hate machine. I <3 Don, you big angry guido

[Toptube]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

hopefully we dont get an 'xbox port'
let the 360 get a ps3 port of 'what it can handle' ala SF2, nba jam, MK series in snes/genesis days

***

Originally Posted by Ascended_Saiyan

Here are some GDC performance slides on DICE's Frostbite 2.0 engine.

SPU Translucency (Xenos vs. SPUs)


Culling (SPUs vs. Xenos and Top PC CPU)


SPUs and RSX Shading


Wow! It really took 3rd party a while to show some signs of life on the PS3 side of development, but it looks like it might pay off!

[tarvis]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

let the 360 get a ps3 port of 'what it can handle' ala SF2, nba jam, MK series in snes/genesis days

The SNES version of Mortal Kombat was junk. There was some horrid latency in the controls that wasn't present in the Genesis version. Junk.

[DonRSD]

Originally Posted by tarvis

The SNES version of Mortal Kombat was junk. There was some horrid latency in the controls that wasn't present in the Genesis version. Junk.

i was talking about the graphics hence the MK, SF 2 & nba jam references.

---------------------------------


TOPTUBE

can you break down all that computer lingo for us 'not sophisticated in computer lingo' people? lol

[tarvis]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

i was talking about the graphics hence the MK, SF 2 & nba jam references.

Graphics at the cost of, or in lieu of, playability isn't a very good argument against ports to arguably better hardware.

[RaijinUT]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

i was talking about the graphics hence the MK, SF 2 & nba jam references.

---------------------------------


TOPTUBE

can you break down all that computer lingo for us 'not sophisticated in computer lingo' people? lol

Nothing much at all.. Just showing processing times for part of the graphic part of the Frostbite Engine.

Here is the actually press conf if you want to read up...

http://publications.dice.se/

[Toptube]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

i was talking about the graphics hence the MK, SF 2 & nba jam references.

---------------------------------


TOPTUBE

can you break down all that computer lingo for us 'not sophisticated in computer lingo' people? lol

I'll just put it in basic layman terms, partially because I'm too lazy to REALLY break it down. Basically, each version of BF3 is hardly a port. While based on the same basic engine, each version is getting its own discrete customizations to exploit the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the platforms.

What does this mean for the PS3 version? Well first of all it means that BF3 on PS3 is going to look and run as good as possible. Maybe on par with exclusives. Before we go further, we first need to know a bit about how the PS3 works:

Cell can do graphics work. We've always known this. Certain things it can do very very quickly. Relatively speaking, it can do those things more quickly than graphics cards or other CPUs. But offloading these tasks to Cell has not been widely adopted by multi-platform games because, well mostly because of lazyness in percieved difficulty (The PS3 has a series of very small but very fast caches directly dump to the XDRAM. XDRAM is plenty fast enough to dump and fill these caches, but since they are small this has to be very closely monitored. These caches need to be closely managed so that they are filled and dumped when Cell finishes one thing and is ready for the next. If they aren't filled and dumped at the right times, Cell idles because its caches aren't big enough to just keeping bringing in data. Really that makes a lot of sense and is the case with any memory management, but other systems generally just use a couple of large caches so they don't have to worry as much about dumping no longer needed data) and poor planning (I.E. if you don't start your project with this stuff in mind, its going to take you way longer to make it work later). In the end, this almost always ends up as specific, custom code which devs often just wright off because it seems to difficult/time consuming.


The key areas that multi-platform games suffer on PS3 are shader complexity and lighting effects, but its because the RSX has a harder time with geometry (the basic pieces of 3D objects) than the other guys. So to make up for it in multi-platform games, they would often will scale back shader resolution and lightsources. This visual disparity between 360 and PS3 multi-plat games is less than ever, due to many devs planning their engines well, but the 360 versions still often run a bit better and sometimes have Anti-Aliasing. To have a good look at a dev that is still behind the curve on developing for PS3, just have a look at Epic's Bulletstorm comparisons. (its inexcusable).

----DICE has always been pretty good about keeping constancy across platforms in the overall visual results. But this time they are aiming from the beginning, to use the strenghts of the PS3 hardware. RSX has trouble with Geometry. Its fine at shading, but if its doing both at the same time it hurts both. Cell can do shader work and other things in the graphics pipeline, and often much more quickly. So offload shader work to Cell, since its faster we may as well do more complex shaders! Meanwhile, RSX is doing Geometry and textures, since it doesn't have to split its bandwidth and pipleline time between shading and geometry, its geometry fillrate can be optomized.

At this point its unclear if the PS3 version will look better than the 360, but it should run better. Due to the speed of the Cell's SPUs, I'm inclined to think it may have a few effects that the 360 version will not. I guess we'll see.

It also may mean that aside from DX11 specific effects (which aren't dramatic) and obvious resolution increases, the PC version may not look way different/better this time.

[Suntory_Times]

^ Keep dreaming. The PC version unless stunted by the developer will kill the console versions.

[slick1ru2]

I think I am forgoing SOCOM 4, which in my book is no longer SOCOM for this title.

[RiseDarthVader]

The PC version is probably still going to look significantly better. It is the lead platform this time and with DirectX 11 effects such as tesselation and soft shadows combined with much more powerful hardware that what's availiable in either consoles.

[Toptube]

Originally Posted by Suntory_Times

^ Keep dreaming. The PC version unless stunted by the developer will kill the console versions.

Originally Posted by RiseDarthVader

The PC version is probably still going to look significantly better. It is the lead platform this time and with DirectX 11 effects such as tesselation and soft shadows combined with much more powerful hardware that what's availiable in either consoles.

yeah guys, don't take my last comment too seriously. I wasn't trying to say THAT'S HOW IT IS.

I fully expect the PC version to look much better, even before resolution bumps. But DICE HAS been hyping up the PS3 tech as well as universal engine upgrades like streaming and deferred rendering. And considering the PS3 version only has to render and track 1/3 of the players, well the visual gap may not be quite as large as BC2 was.

[DonRSD]

Originally Posted by Toptube

I'll just put it in basic layman terms, partially because I'm too lazy to REALLY break it down. Basically, each version of BF3 is hardly a port. While based on the same basic engine, each version is getting its own discrete customizations to exploit the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the platforms.

What does this mean for the PS3 version? Well first of all it means that BF3 on PS3 is going to look and run as good as possible. Maybe on par with exclusives. Before we go further, we first need to know a bit about how the PS3 works:

Cell can do graphics work. We've always known this. Certain things it can do very very quickly. Relatively speaking, it can do those things more quickly than graphics cards or other CPUs. But offloading these tasks to Cell has not been widely adopted by multi-platform games because, well mostly because of lazyness in percieved difficulty (The PS3 has a series of very small but very fast caches directly dump to the XDRAM. XDRAM is plenty fast enough to dump and fill these caches, but since they are small this has to be very closely monitored. These caches need to be closely managed so that they are filled and dumped when Cell finishes one thing and is ready for the next. If they aren't filled and dumped at the right times, Cell idles because its caches aren't big enough to just keeping bringing in data. Really that makes a lot of sense and is the case with any memory management, but other systems generally just use a couple of large caches so they don't have to worry as much about dumping no longer needed data) and poor planning (I.E. if you don't start your project with this stuff in mind, its going to take you way longer to make it work later). In the end, this almost always ends up as specific, custom code which devs often just wright off because it seems to difficult/time consuming.


The key areas that multi-platform games suffer on PS3 are shader complexity and lighting effects, but its because the RSX has a harder time with geometry (the basic pieces of 3D objects) than the other guys. So to make up for it in multi-platform games, they would often will scale back shader resolution and lightsources. This visual disparity between 360 and PS3 multi-plat games is less than ever, due to many devs planning their engines well, but the 360 versions still often run a bit better and sometimes have Anti-Aliasing. To have a good look at a dev that is still behind the curve on developing for PS3, just have a look at Epic's Bulletstorm comparisons. (its inexcusable).

----DICE has always been pretty good about keeping constancy across platforms in the overall visual results. But this time they are aiming from the beginning, to use the strenghts of the PS3 hardware. RSX has trouble with Geometry. Its fine at shading, but if its doing both at the same time it hurts both. Cell can do shader work and other things in the graphics pipeline, and often much more quickly. So offload shader work to Cell, since its faster we may as well do more complex shaders! Meanwhile, RSX is doing Geometry and textures, since it doesn't have to split its bandwidth and pipleline time between shading and geometry, its geometry fillrate can be optomized.

At this point its unclear if the PS3 version will look better than the 360, but it should run better. Due to the speed of the Cell's SPUs, I'm inclined to think it may have a few effects that the 360 version will not. I guess we'll see.

It also may mean that aside from DX11 specific effects (which aren't dramatic) and obvious resolution increases, the PC version may not look way different/better this time.

great explanation.
thank you

Originally Posted by Toptube

yeah guys, don't take my last comment too seriously. I wasn't trying to say THAT'S HOW IT IS.

I fully expect the PC version to look much better, even before resolution bumps. But DICE HAS been hyping up the PS3 tech as well as universal engine upgrades like streaming and deferred rendering. And considering the PS3 version only has to render and track 1/3 of the players, well the visual gap may not be quite as large as BC2 was.

im just hop[ing the ps3 version is superior to the 360 version. im sick of getting 'ported 360 games' which means only 6gb of data as opposed to using he 50gb blu disk

[1blufan]

Originally Posted by Suntory_Times

^ Keep dreaming. The PC version unless stunted by the developer will kill the console versions.

We get it, any PC with the right Graphics card will out shine any console.

[RiseDarthVader]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

im just hop[ing the ps3 version is superior to the 360 version. im sick of getting 'ported 360 games' which means only 6gb of data as opposed to using he 50gb blu disk

There would be no reason for the game to take up a 50GB BD or even a 25GB BD. Hell Killzone 3 I think takes up 9GB not including the pre-rendered cutscenes and extra language audio files. And all the Bad Company 2 cutscenes were rendered in-game.

[Mavrick]

Just got this in my inbox