360 GPU and a boatload of other acronyms

A good discussion about the future of the 360 and it’s ability to render some of today’s newest graphics. The discussion started around the ability to render the scenes displayed in EA and Crytek’s newest demo called Crysis displayed at GDC.

Acert93

Xenos is not a miracle chip. What it is, though, is a chip designed "smartly". There is really little point to continue increasing the TMUs. Sure, it helps in "Super DX9" games, which are really just DX7 games with some shaders tossed on top. News Flash: Oblivion was the FIRST game to require SM2.0. Yeah, scary. It is a 4 year old API and we are just NOW seeing games require it.

Where Xenos excells is in shaders, specifically SM3.0 (plus the extra stuff it can do beyond that spec). How many PC games use SM3.0? FEAR, SC:CT, Far Cry, Oblivion... uhhh.... maybe a couple others. How many build around it? 0. All these games are DX9 games with an added path for some "extra goodies". And we wont be seeing any SM3.0 heavy games any time soon... maybe never. Why? Because while Nvidia owns 88% of all SM3.0 GPUs, their SM3.0 performance SUCKS. It is 1/4th the speed of the comparable X1000 series GPUs in heavy dynamic branching.

The issue is a paradigm one. Xenos IS NOT A PC CHIP. It was designed for the consoles and is much more future looking. Sure, a couple games have used HDR+AA, and most now have 4xAA. But by all developer accounts they are hardly touching the Shader ALUs. None have used the hardware tesselation or HOS. Until recently developers were stuck using the manual tiling and could not use XPC. A number of titles, mostly ports of Xbox engines or PC games, could not use the eDRAM because they did not do an early Z-pass which made them incompatible with the eDRAM tiling.

But as much as we can knock the 360 in areas (I had a post this weekend outlining all the issues MS has had and continues to have), some of you PC fanboys are waaaay too biased. Look at something as simple as Kameo or PGR3. No racer on the PC gets close to PGR3. Further, Kameo has over 1M particle physics-effects on screen at a time without slow down. You CANNOT do that on a current PC--the 360 chewed through it. And some filtering issues aside, CoD2 runs very, very well on the 360. Much better than a $300 GPU.

There will be games designed for the 360 from day 1. The new PGR, Forza, Halo, etc. These titles will use the eDRAM correctly and move the work load away from the TMUs to the Shaders. Those who are judging the software by the early PC/Xbox ports can dance all you want, but this is no different than when the PS2 got a lot of PS1 ports or when the Xbox got a number of PS2 ports. Its not like the Xbox 360 has not provided high-end PC graphics on a cheap console--because it has.

Obviously the 360 wont be the best hardware on the market. The X1900 already has more raw PS power; the R600 will have Geometry Shaders, more shader performance across the board, more effecient shading model, and resolve a number of issues Xenos has. Of course the 360 has eDRAM and 100% speed HDR which resolves a number of pipeline stalls, and it is a closed box with a very close symbiotic relationship with the CPU that has 2-4x as much realworld vector performance per core over an x86 chip.

Ultimately we are seeing the "dead end" of the DX7 approach. DX8 and DX9 just added more robust shader models, but ultimately DX was designed with progrability as an extra feature--not the core. Further, the hardware and engines were designed with a 1:1 TMU:Shader arrangement. I can count DOZENS of games where the X1900XT is less than 5% faster than the X1800XT. The X1900XT has 3x the peak shader performance, so why no improvement? Because the games are NOT suited for the extra shader power.

Toss in all the features the Xbox 360 has and you can make some really great software. But basing its performance off of SM2.0 games designed with PC (or Xbox!) hardware paradigms in mind is really foolish. The PC is a great format for those who have the money. But reality is that PCs are expensive and get fewer games and even fewer exclusives. For those of us who like mods, Mice, and like spending crazy money it is a great platform. But the "PC is always better" arguement is pretty much wrong.

GrimThorne

Yes Acert. It is the end of the "screenshots" era. We will no longer be able to determine the visual fidelity of games through frozen game footage or target video. It simply no longer measures up to the quality displayed in full motion game footage.

Acert it seems to me that many are not taking into consideration that Crytek2 wasn't even designed around the final build of DX10.

MSDN subscribers who have already been downloading betas of Longhorn/DX10/Vista have already stated that the 360's Xenos GPU already surpasses the criteria for WGF2.0 - WGF2.2+. These were earlier builds of DX10. But that's only the half of it. The Xenos natively supports a number of advances that the X1900 and DX10 itself does not support natively.

For example, DX10 at this time(as far as we know) does not natively support physics, hair, water and clothing. The Xenos supports all of these natively and a host of post processing features which it is capable of rendering in just one texture pass.

The Xenos will even support Geometry Shaders. That's right, the Xenos can generate geometry. While this feature is not done natively, it is accomplished through the Xenos' innovative MEMEXPORT function. By slaving one the three Xbox 360's Cores through the Xenos' MEMEXPORT function, the Xenos can create geometry.

BTW, the Xenos' MEMEXPORT function is another advance that the X1900 doesn't have. I would be very surprised that whatever hardware Crytek used to demonstrate the Crysis engine has the Xenos' MEMEXPORT function or one texture pass multi-post processing features. No current hardware or vaporware has the Xenos' specs.

The only snag I would see is soft shadows. Despite what the misinformed have been saying around here, the 360 can indeed do soft shadows. The problem is that the Xenos is no different than any other gaming hardware with soft shadows turned on. Games will take performance hits when soft shadows are applied. Crysis could run at a respectable frame rate with soft shadows applied if Crytek developed for the 360's hardware and not just provide a lazy coded port.

If Crysis becomes a port, then Xbox360 version will probably suffer. If Crytek develops a seperate version to play to the strengths of the Xenos then it's possible to make the game even better than the PC version would be.

There is so much to the Xenos, but developers have to be willing to exploit the hardware and develop exclusively for it.

Hay buddy, spare a dime?

Heh, so many good 360 titles and so little cash. I picked up Burnout Revenge and while I’m not ready to write a metareview of it I’m really impressed. If you’re looking for a racing title that actually has action this is the game for you.

I also nabbed Ghost Recon:Advanced Warfighter. I didn’t mind the series on the PC and kind of got sucked into the hype for this game for the 360. Overall it’s an impressive game but the experience is really marred by a ton of bugs and strange AI behavior. The online portion seems fun but I haven’t played much in this space yet. I’ll write a metareview as soon as I finish the single player game and spend some time online with it.

I still need to go pick up Oblivion but I may wait a month to go pick it up. I’m still on the fence about Battlefield 2, the graphics are sort of a turn off to me, I really don’t like the dark sepia tone they seem to add to everything. Gameplay looks fun but again the graphics to me seem very distracting and so I’ll wait for some reviews first.

Next Gen Cost

Here is something I posted on the TeamXbox forums that I thought I would write down. Someone on the forums complained about the extra cost of 'next-gen' titles, here are my thoughts on the subject.

Well it's pretty subjective, some titles to you worth the $60 may not be worth that to others, gameplay is not something that you can attach a pricetag to and have everyone agree with.

For the most part I will agree with you however. Titles that are ports (and lets be serious here, a game with a few new graphical tweaks and the bump to high-def are ports) don't deserve the higher pricetag.

Games like GUN, THAW, Quake4, King Kong simply don't deserve the extra cost considering the titles exist on the other platforms and only add marginal improvements over the other platforms (if any improvements at all).

Titles like Outfit, Full Auto deserve the extra cost because they exist only on the 360 and while you may disagree at their visuals they do leverage the hardware and Live connection better than any last gen titles.

Titles like Burnout Revenge are a mixed bag. You could put them in the first category (not worth the money) but the developers have put enough effort into them as ports to make the extra cost worth it, better graphics, better sound, heavily expanded online options warrant the cost in my opinion.

Rentals and Plugins

I cancelled my online rental subscription with GetGames.ca.  While the service in general is pretty good I found that shipping time to me was exceedingly long, upwards of 2 weeks in some instances.  This coupled with the fact that the 360 just doesn’t have a lot of games yet and the most popular games in my queue aren’t the ones I’m getting caused me to cancel.  I may go back to them in a year or so but for now I will concentrate on buying the games or renting them from my local Blockbuster.

Sadly it costs over $10 to rent a 360 game for a week here so in the end I’m thinking that using EBAY and buying the games locally is a better option.

Also version 2.0 of the web browser plugin for Windows Media Center was released.  Version 1.0 was promising though I honestly didn’t use it a whole lot.  I will probably try out v2.0 to see if it’s much better.  The developer wants a $10 donation to remove the banner (which supposedly is applied if you haven’t registered) so I will have to see first if I’ll use the browser more now that it’s features have been expanded.  You can read more and download a version for yourself HERE.

NHL2K6 Metareview

I got NHL2K6 to try out (rental) but I was REALLY disappointed.  I don’t know if the team that developed this software is from Canada but if they are then they should be flogged, whipped, beaten and clubbed with a broken hockey stick.  This game is just plain bad, especially if you are a hockey fan.
The voice-overs are weak and extremely cheesy.  The gameplay looks like something taken back from the NES or earlier.  The graphics for a next gen system look like pure ass and I’m sure NHL98 I have for my PC could easily compete with it.  The amount of player control is very good and probably would take a while to really master but playing in single player mode these expert control mechanisms are irrelevant.  I didn’t take the game online but possibly the control schemes would be of value there but the game left such a negative impression on me I couldn’t bother to take the game online.  I played it for about 1.5 hours and returned it as it was a huge disappointment.  
This is in pretty sharp contrast to the overall positive impression FIFA:RTWC left on me.  I would say that NHL2K6 is the worst 360 game I’ve played, even worse than PDZ which I had as my gamer motto:  “PDZ=garbage”.  That doesn’t say much for NHL2K6

The Outfit Multiplayer Demo

I finished about 2 hours of playing The Outfit multiplayer demo last night, overall I think it's a pretty fun game, the multiplayer portion anyway. Most of the other players were happy with the game and only a few comments were negative and mostly because the game just isn't their "style" rather than actual complaints of the game.
My Likes:

• decent teamplay type game, the team that is organized and actually communicates totally dominates, if you play with a bunch of idiots you're gonna get your butt handed to you


• graphics are fine and occasionally funny as hell..example: driving a jeep with my squad, figure "let me run over this enemy unit" he moves out of the way and lobs a grenade into the passenger seat. BOOM, myself and the rest of my squad (and our bodies) go flying


• network code seems stable and relatively lag free


• gameplay isn't new but is fun and nicely balanced, little downtime means you're almost always in the action


• being able to destroy pretty much everything is great, being able to snipe people driving a tractor is pretty fun


• Ron Pearlman doing voice overs

My Dislikes:

• occasional lobby bugs seem to boot people from games prior to start


• would prefer more feedback on when your shots hit enemy players, when you're getting hit by enemy players


• still on the fence on the auto-aim, kinda trivializes shooting and over simplifies the game, not a game breaker but I hope that it's possible to disable auto-aim in the retail version


• some of the vehicles are difficult to control, again not a deal breaker but I wonder if it's their idea of "balance" to make the most deadly items the most difficult to pilot

This game will probably get lost in this month's releases what with Oblivion and GR:AW but I may still consider it later on next month.

More FNR3 and FIFA meta-review

Well I haven’t gotten all of the FN:R3 achievements but I can safely say that I’ve finished the game.  Overall I think FN:R3 is a great game but I will also say that I put it down a lot quicker than I thought.  The game itself is fun but there could have been so much more to the overall career mode to make the game more engrossing.  I wasn’t terribly impressed with the game online either as it appears that everyone just throws haymaker punches and dirty shots to win the fight, rarely did I ever discover people who wanted to box.  In the end the game will probably end up being the most fun when 2-3 friends are over and people are punching the shit out of each other.  This is probably why I bought the game, while I am a boxing fan I wanted a game that would appeal to a larger audience and that was fun right out of the box.  

I finished FIFA:RTWC this weekend, pretty sad that you can finish an entire game in less than a week (considering I’m pretty much a casual gamer) but then I didn’t hit all of the points on the game and didn’t play an online match.  Initially I didn’t like the game as it seemed WAY too difficult, even on amateur mode but after a little experimentation I figured out what worked for me and was able to run through the “career mode”.  Once you figure out the mechanics of the game it grows on you and you start to look forward to making great passes and watching the replay of your goals over and over again, especially against a good opponent.  Some complaints about FIFA were length and the game does exhibit some pretty serious slowdowns.  The framerate can regularly drag and the speed up so that the gameplay looks rather humorous at times with people moving in slow-motion then the game catching up on the dropped frames and people running like they’re on speed or a bugs-bunny cartoon.  For a first attempt at a next-gen football game FIFA:RTWC is pretty decent but I can’t help to think that it would have been better to skip this version of the game and put out a more polished game that included not only the “road to the world cup” but include the world cup and spend more time tweaking the graphics and improving the gameplay.  Overall FIFA is a good rental but I don’t think I would buy it unless you’re a true dedicated FIFA fan.  The world cup version of this game should be out in 6 months or so and from what I’ve seen from screenshots it looks more like the title that should have came out for 2006 regarding soccer/football.