End of Gen Slickness

[Matt]

It's hard to say without knowing what spec the new machines are. If they're not a massive leap from what we have now, then I can see more of a push for framerate as there won't be a lot of extra gain in the visuals themselves.

If the rumoured "6 times more powerful GPU" in the neXtbox turns out to be true, you devs are screwed. Gamers are expecting 1080p resolution, which is four times the fill rate of current gen 720p titles - and many games don't even hit that. So we could end up with (and of course it's not this simple) 1080 res but identical frame rate and effects as this gen. With, er, a bit of tesselation thrown in

[Brad]

and there are a number of examples of not even 720p at barely 30fps. Jesus, these current consoles are utter crap!

[PaTaito]

I think as far as the art not looking as good at 60fps, the original metroid prime may disagree with that one. How many of that type of game were 60fps on the cube? I think starfox adventures was, but thats all i can think of.

Metroid was one of the most beautiful cube games period imo.

I think that with current games its not all a case of late generation slickness, does anybody know how long a game like uncharted 3 was in development? compared to something similar which doesnt look as good and runs at 30fps? I dont know because i'm too lazy to find out lol, but i think development time and cost comes into things just as much as tech progression.

I dont think too much should be read into an early gpu spec for the next xbox either.

[Adrock]

Replied before a big edit from PaTaito, its not relevant now.

[PaTaito]

Replied before a big edit from PaTaito, its not relevant now.

I only added the bottom line

But just adding something more about the whole xbox gpu spec, didnt the original 360 get a big upgrade before release? Possibly they realise that wii-u wont be all that powerful, and are just throwing something out there for sony to pick up on. You can bet your bollocks that if sony come forward with something substantially better(which i bet they will) microsoft will update their spec.

Or possibly they have looked at nintendo's current gen strategy with the wii and are trying to enter the market at a low price from day one, with a visually underwhelming machine...albeit with no gimmickry outside kinect to rely on.

[EvilBoris]

But Metroid Prime could of looked better had it not been at 60fps, that's what Flabio is saying.
He wasn't saying that it's impossible to have a game look nice at 60, just that 60fps will prohibit what you can achieve.

A trade off is made somewhere , you literally can't have it both ways.
It may of even been a happy accident that Metroid Prime Ran at 60fps.
Metroid Prine could of initially been an N64 game or had been in development on the first GameCube dev kits, Nintendo upped the spec last minute and that would of given games an instant boost.

[Flabio]

Jesus, these current consoles are utter crap!

It's mainly the lack of RAM at fault. You can't even HOLD a 1080p triple buffer in memory on them, and triple buffering is pretty much required for 60fps.

[PaTaito]

But Metroid Prime could of looked better had it not been at 60fps, that's what Flabio is saying.
He wasn't saying that it's impossible to have a game look nice at 60, just that 60fps will prohibit what you can achieve.

A trade off is made somewhere , you literally can't have it both ways.
It may of even been a happy accident that Metroid Prime Ran at 60fps.
Metroid Prine could of initially been an N64 game or had been in development on the first GameCube dev kits, Nintendo upped the spec last minute and that would of given games an instant boost.

Yes i realise that a few extra effects would have been nice, but metroid for whatever reason IS one of the most gorgeous cube game available, and runs at 60fps. And look at the sequel, they kept the framerate...artistically the games were some of the best on gamecube despite the maximum framerate.

Despite its simplicity Super Mario World was always one of my favourite snes games for its art style/visuals...and that was a launch title.

I guess art is the wrong word, we are talking sheer image quality right? In which case yes obviously you can do more at 30fps. But then imo using console battlefield 3 as an example, if thats all we get for using 30fps....give me 60 anyday.

60fps itself adds to the beauty of a game as much as anything. Fluidity should not be underestimated imo, and like someone else mentioned, COD is so enduring thanks in no small part to the fluid style thanks to the framerate.

What i hate is when current games dont even get rendered at 720p, even at lower framerates.

[EvilBoris]

I think that with current games its not all a case of late generation slickness, does anybody know how long a game like uncharted 3 was in development? compared to something similar which doesnt look as good and runs at 30fps? I dont know because i'm too lazy to find out lol, but i think development time and cost comes into things just as much as tech progression.

That game, like any 1st party Flagship title will of had near unlimited money literally pumped into it, it's not a game to make a profit on, it's a game to showcase just how fantastic the PS3 is and it makes for nice adverts, which in itself will sell a few more consoles and subsequently a few more games.

[Brad]

I think the issue is what makes a game look better? I'd argue that whatever you did to Prime to make it look better when stationary e.g. better textures, higher poly count, would be lsot the moment the game started moving at 30fps rather than 60. To problem is that almost everyone in the world disagrees with me it seems. The importance of how good the screen grabs look wins. The difficulty of getting youtube and others to display 60fps video at a decent resolution probably also makes it difficult to demonstrate how good your games look. If people end up looking at 30fps video of your 60fps game then your game might look inferior to its competitors.

[PaTaito]

I think the issue is what makes a game look better? I'd argue that whatever you did to Prime to make it look better when stationary e.g. better textures, higher poly count, would be lsot the moment the game started moving at 30fps rather than 60. To problem is that almost everyone in the world disagrees with me it seems. The importance of how good the screen grabs look wins. The difficulty of getting youtube and others to display 60fps video at a decent resolution probably also makes it difficult to demonstrate how good your games look. If people end up looking at 30fps video of your 60fps game then your game might look inferior to its competitors.

Exactly right.

[EvilBoris]

Well that's exactly it, when you are at the cinema watching footage of that 60fps game at 24fps it becomes irrevelant or if you are looking at a youtube video or a screenshot in a magazine it does too.

If it was relevant to the games buying public then they would have giant claims on the adverts saying that the game ran at a faster framerate than currently viewed.

Even the Holy Grail of 60fps : Ridge Racer, has been cut down to 30FPS on the Vita, because it will sell more units looking like it does.

I think PC is where you need to be if you want more than your prescribed 30FPS, you get all the benefits of the art (and then some) and the frame rate improvement to boot*

*unless it's Batman, or LA Noire or From Dust :P

[PaTaito]

Even the Holy Grail of 60fps : Ridge Racer, has been cut down to 30FPS on the Vita, because it will sell more units looking like it does.

I remember how awsome it was when ridge racer 60fps was bundled with type 4. Type 4 itself was 30fps, and i was more impressed with the bundled disc.

Kind of nails how i feel personally.

[Kaido]

I think it's great that next gen we won't have to choose between decent visuals and good framerate, it will probably be a choice between outstanding visuals and good framerate. Games that don't spend more than present on their art department should run at 60 fps just thanks to the hardware. And games that run slower should at least look far better than anything now.

I hope we'll get 2 out of 3 of framerate / texture resolution and loading speeds / screen resolution for most games next gen, where currently we're lucky to get 1.

[rmoxon]

One of the most impressive advances this generation has been with facial animations.

Mass Effect was really impressive at the time, but going back to it, its not particuarly impressive at all and thats mainly down to the fact that things have got even better now with stuff like LA Noir. It also has to be said that the videos of the facial animations in the third Mass Effect game look nothing short of astounding.